He had a sudden flash of a baby opening its rosebud mouth for a spoon-train, and of Lucy scooping the drips off its smooth chin. The baby had his eyes, and Lucy turned to smile at him, radiating happiness.
Jim Courier came over and pointed at something on the map. Jonas kept his head low and nodded, although he could see nothing but the man’s blurred finger.
They moved on and Jonas emptied his mind and watched his own feet as they pointed his way across the fragrant hills.
Over the three days, not a single volunteer dropped out.
As his men reported to him by radio, the helicopter team crackled and Stourbridge called on variable phone lines from across the moor, Reynolds placed crosses over the satellite images of tumbledown barns and stands of trees, and watched the area left to search shrink by the hour.
At first he was delighted by the methodical way the ground was being covered. Then as they ran out of barns and copses and the children had still not been found, the relentless march of crosses denoting that a search had been completed in a particular grid took on a whole new complexion. Instead of triumphant, each cross made Reynolds feel more desperate.
The volunteers were thorough and reliable, and – as Stourbridge had promised – the hunt covered the ground faster than anyone else.
But all that meant was that it took them less time to discover absolutely nothing.
Startling, in’t it, the amount of fuss what’s made when it’s all too late? All them people hunting all across the moor. And all for nothing.
I took no pleasure in searching with them; just had to be done, that’s all – to keep things looking right. If I didn’t do that, people might talk. Ask.
Inquire.
Some of them, though … I had to stop myself looking at the stupid hurt in their eyes, just in case they seen something back in mine. But being there and hearing them bleat about the children and the maniac what’s got ’em made me want to kick all their arses – them careless bastards.
No one appreciates a single thing nowadays. No one values what they got. Not until it’s gone, at least.
And them children’s gone, that’s for sure.
Gone for good.
12
IT WAS NIGHT, and Mrs Paddon was in that warm, fluid state between sleep and wake when she heard a child crying.
She was a little deaf, and the walls of Honeysuckle Cottage were three feet thick and made of stone, but the sound was unmistakeable.
Mrs Paddon was nearing ninety and had never had children of her own, so the noise did not pull her from her slumber the way it might someone who had been a mother. Instead she kept her eyes closed, and allowed the faint sobs to take her back to the time when Jonas was a boy …
He’d been a sunny child, but too adventurous for her liking. There was always a tree to tumble from in the back garden, a bike to fall off on the steep lane, or a pony up at Springer Farm that bucked and bolted.
She’d heard him at times like that, sobbing just like this, and had always stopped whatever she was doing and stayed very still until she’d been sure someone was there to comfort him – until she’d heard Cath making soft cooing noises and kissing it better, or Desmond brushing him down and geeing him up. Moments later, she’d see Jonas back up the tree, back on his bike, Elastoplastered and ready for action. Only then had she resumed whatever she’d been doing.
Now, in her single bed, with most of her life behind her, Mrs Paddon drifted back to sleep to the sound of a child sobbing, and dreamed wonderfully of those balmy days when Cath and Desmond were still alive, when Jonas was sweetly innocent – and when she was young again.
When the old lady awoke the next morning, she could not even recall that her sleep had been interrupted; she only knew that it had been good.
Steven Lamb was on the skate ramp on the playing field the first time he saw Jonas Holly back on the beat. The shock was so great that he missed the lip and skidded to the bottom of the scuffed half-pipe on his chest and forearm – much to the amusement of Lalo Bryant.
‘Twat!’ Lalo chortled. He liked Steven, but he’d once broken his ankle on this very ramp and the memory of his own howling was always uncomfortably close. It had been nobody’s fault but his own, but he was constantly looking for balances and paybacks.
Steven got up and said nothing, but his stomach was in turmoil.
It had been easy to forget Mr Holly while he was stuck in his house up the hill, being all hermity. But the sight of him walking calmly through the village in his uniform – and the knowledge that he would be doing that every day from now on – made Steven feel slightly panicky. He crossed the crisp grass to retrieve his skateboard, then tucked it under his arm and walked away.
‘Don’t be like that!’ shouted Lalo.
But Steven hardly heard him.
Mr Holly was already passing the Red Lion by the time Steven reached the road. Barnstaple Road was the main – and very nearly only – road through Shipcott. Named in a simpler time when destinations were few.
