Finders Keepers полностью

But Davey didn’t have a subtle bone in his body. Steven knew how Davey imparted news – he’d seen him do it a hundred times. Banging the front door, slinging down his schoolbag, shouting Mu-um! Mu-um! Rushing into the kitchen, and then stumbling over himself to get the words out. The vital news of his goal at soccer, his earth-shattering B in computer studies, his inside knowledge of the kidnap and murder of Jessica Took.

Steven knew how it went down.

So he wasn’t surprised to walk into the kitchen to find his mother smoking furiously over the sink, his nan staring blankly into space over a half-finished puzzle, and Davey happily spraying tomato sauce over what looked like more than his fair share of fish fingers.

They knew.

‘Hi,’ he ventured.

‘Hello, Stevie.’ His mother’s voice was husky.

Nan looked up at him, her eyes watery with memories.

Steven loved his brother, but – shit – sometimes he wanted to punch him so hard!

Nan reached out faintly and, when Steven took her hand, she drew him to her and squeezed his waist.

‘Glad you’re home,’ she said, and then released him. Steven stayed by her side though, and rested a hand on her shoulder.

That night Steven and Davey watched Top Gear with the sound lower than usual, Nan frowned at her clues and Lettie laid what she called their ‘valuables’ out on the coffee table: an electroplated teapot and four mismatched candlesticks. She rubbed them all with Brasso until her fingers were black.

No one had asked him yet about the bike. That suited him fine. Nan had said she’d buy him a helmet as an early birthday gift. Steven didn’t think she knew how much they cost. He couldn’t in good conscience let her spend money on a helmet before he had a bike to ride. She’d expect to see him wearing it. Expect to see him in the helmet on the bike.

Which he didn’t have.

If anyone had asked, he’d have had to tell them that he’d bought two wheels and assorted ironmongery.

So, at the end of the day, the news of Jessica Took’s kidnap had saved him from an awkward situation.

Sick.

Because they knew Shipcott better than anywhere else on the moor, Rice had booked them rooms at the Red Lion.

It was a mistake on every level.

Cheap but noisy, and with mattresses that had been almost folded in half by years of heavy sleepers, and then turned upside down in a misguided attempt to redress the balance; it was like sleeping on the peak of a Toblerone. On the first morning, Reynolds rolled over, lost his grip – and slid down the west face to wakefulness.

They met in the deserted bar for breakfast – full English for Rice, croissant for Reynolds. None of it enough to disguise the country-pub whiff of stale beer, dogs and old crisps trodden into the carpet.

Reynolds wished they’d stayed somewhere else. He stood up before Rice could start mopping up baked beans with her fried bread. She was passably pretty and had many pretty habits, but that wasn’t one of them.

‘Meet you at the car,’ he said.

Outside, the sun was already squint-worthy. How different. Last time he was here it had been in the middle of winter – a bitter January when snow had started and then continued in a way that had made him think it might never stop. The skies had been white or charcoal or pale blue by turn – none of them any indicator of how the weather might be even half an hour later.

This fresh, brilliant scenery brought with it little pricks of guilt, like pins left in a new shirt.

The pub was where they’d bickered and clutched at straws, while the killer went about his work unmolested. Less than a hundred yards away was Sunset Lodge, where four people had died while the police had dithered. Reynolds could even see the first-floor window where the killer had forced the latch. There, beside that doorstep, the killer had washed his hands of blood in a pile of snow, and there he had hidden in the alleyway beside the shop.

The village was a mosaic of memories he’d rather forget. Nothing had gone right for them then. The team – led by DCI Marvel – were behind from the start and never caught up. The killer had come softly, slain silently, and disappeared, like a snowflake which had been unique as it fell but was now just part of the whole once again. The only evidence that he’d ever existed outside the bloody crime scenes had been the notes that he’d left Jonas Holly – taunting him over his inability to stop the killings. And he’d taken Jonas’s own wife as his final prize – a cruel punishment for the young policeman’s failure. Reynolds had never felt more lost or beaten by a case, by a crime, by a place.

His hair had come out in handfuls.

Now he touched his fringe almost unconsciously, seeking the reassurance of soft strands instead of patchy scalp.