Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

Today they’d found nothing at Springer Farm, despite hours spent sifting the ashes looking for treasures and the bodies of the kidnapped children. Davey was adamant that it was the coolest place to hide a body, but their search had run them a merry dance through the gamut of anticipation, excitement and boredom – all in the space of about three hours. The sun had gone, although it would remain light for a good while yet.

They ran downhill past the cottages, then slowed to an amble, talking – as they always did – about nothing at all. Both had hazel sticks with which they whipped the heads off the cow parsley that lined the ditch along the base of the hedge. They were merciless, but the cow parsley seemed to come back as fast as they destroyed it. Before this it had been dandelions; later would come docks.

Davey sliced through several fronds at once and Shane chortled his approval. The foamy heads fell into the road in a pile.

‘Nice one!’ Shane took a penalty with the little pile of green-white flowers, which fountained off his toe, then plopped to the ground a few feet away.

‘And Collins scores the winner for England!’ He raised his arms and made a rushing sound that was supposed to be the roar of the crowd.

Davey didn’t answer.

He was standing over a slip of paper revealed by the dispersal of the clump of cow parsley.

Not a slip of paper at all. He bent to pick it up.

‘What’s that?’ said Shane.

Open-mouthed, Davey straightened up and showed him a twenty-pound note.

‘You. Are. Fucking. Joking! ’ Shane hurried back up to where Davey stood. The note was grubby and faded, but undoubtedly a twenty. More money than either of them had ever had at one time in their lives. Combined.

They stared at the note, and then at each other, then laughed, then stared at the note again.

‘It must have been in the hedge,’ said Davey.

‘Maybe there’s more!’ said Shane.

The boys set about the cow parsley like Dickensian schoolmasters – whipping, slashing and beating the vegetation into green and white hay on the tarmac.

‘There’s another!’ Shane reached in this time and retrieved a twenty.

‘Fuuuuuuck!’

They laughed like drunks and then went back to their destruction of the hedgerow.

Three more notes came to light before the witch leaned over her garden gate and shouted, ‘You boys leave that hedge alone!’

Giggling and giddy with wealth, Davey and Shane ran down the hill to home.

The thought of seeing the pile of crap that he’d spent his life savings on made Steven’s heart sink. But, because of Em’s trailer, he walked up to Ronnie’s house after tea.

Ronnie Trewell – popularly known as Skew Ronnie, because of his lifestyle as much as his limp – lived in a scruffy bungalow at the end of a cul-de-sac that clung to the side of the moor. There was a garage almost the size of the house, where Ronnie hid his stolen cars.

Used to hide them.

Ronnie had been rehabilitated, apparently, by attending a course in Tiverton where young car thieves were allowed to tinker with karts and then race them. Steven would have given his right arm to race karts, but it seemed he’d have to be pretty dedicated to a life of crime before he could hope for that kind of reward.

He knocked and Dougie opened the door. Dougie was Steven’s age. They skated together.

‘All right, mate?’

‘Yeah. All right? Ronnie in?’

‘Hold on.’

Dougie yelled for his brother while Steven stood in the dank hallway that smelled of old dog and chip fat.

Ronnie appeared in trackies and bedroom slippers, and the three of them went out to the garage.

The trailer was still there.

‘You want a hand taking that back?’ Steven said casually.

Ronnie shrugged. ‘They got plenty. They won’t miss it.’

The bike was still there too – in bits. But Ronnie’s enthusiasm for all things mechanical was infectious, and Steven was soon imbued with a sense of complete optimism about the task of reconstruction. Ronnie pointed out that the engine was largely intact, the tyres not perished, and the tank almost rust-free. The much-mentally-maligned Gary had, in fact, put all the smaller parts into plastic boxes and labelled them, and with Ronnie’s experienced eye for what went where, the three of them were soon making a bit of progress.

As night approached, the greyhound wandered in and out and peered knowledgeably at parts with its soulful marble eyes, and Ronnie passed round a can of Carlsberg. Although he knew it was nothing really, Steven felt it was a night he’d always remember – the harsh fluorescent lighting, the blue-green dusk framed by the black garage door, the machined metal between his oil-stained fingers, and the bitter bubbles on his tongue that tasted like the future.

At nine he stood up reluctantly and said he should be getting home before it got too dark.

Ronnie and Dougie spent a few minutes ripping the piss out of him for being a mummy’s boy, but he just smiled and rolled his eyes and brushed the garage dirt off the seat of his jeans.

‘Thanks,’ he told Ronnie.

‘Come up any time you want to work on it. You know where the key is.’

‘Cheers.’

‘Get home safe now!’ Ronnie and Dougie had a final laugh at his expense and then went inside and whistled for the dog.

Steven waited until everyone was asleep. Just after midnight he dressed quietly, took the torch from under the kitchen sink where his mother kept it for when the electric went out, and walked back through the silent village to Ronnie Trewell’s house.

The garage key was where Ronnie had told him it would be; the up-and-over door opened with barely a squeak, and the trailer rolled easily out on to the driveway.

So far, so good, thought Steven, as he closed the door and put the key back in the hanging basket that contained a bouquet of dead weeds.

The trailer was made of aluminium and was well balanced on properly inflated tyres, so Steven made good time down into the village, towing it behind him. But he’d hardly gone fifty yards up the hill towards Em’s house before he started to sweat and his hands to hurt from gripping the awkward metal so hard. He swung the trailer sideways so that it wouldn’t roll back down the hill, and stopped.

He had never considered that he might not be able to tow the trailer all the way to where it belonged. Now, if he couldn’t, he had blown it. If he couldn’t get it up this hill, he would be unlikely to get it back up the similar hill to Ronnie’s house. He couldn’t just leave it on the street. Anyone might hitch it up and tow it away and then it really would be stolen, instead of just ‘borrowed’.

Stopping and thinking had allowed Steven to get his breath back, and so he tugged the trailer another twenty yards before halting again, his hands burning. He was fit but slim – not a bulky young farmer like the boys who inhabited the YFC discos he had been to once or twice. The hill was long and unrelentingly steep, and the road was broken up in places that he knew from dodging them on his skateboard by day, but which he couldn’t see by night, making the trailer bump and lurch now and then. But Steven Lamb was not a boy who gave up easily. He’d been through more in his seventeen years than most people had in a lifetime, and that was a well of experience he often drew from when faced with a difficult situation. Sometimes he thought that was all he really had – this determination. Other boys were great at soccer or cross-country running or chatting up girls. Steven was just plain dogged . He hated to give up. It wasn’t a spectacular talent, but it was better than nothing.

So he turned the trailer so that he could push rather than pull it, and found that was better – he could get his weight behind it. Even so, it was only another fifty yards before he had to stop again, wiping sweat from his forehead with his arm.