Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

A starling darted up under the eaves outside the window and he heard the chicks clamouring like crickets, almost overhead. They were probably in the attic. When they’d flown he would go up there and block the holes and put up nesting boxes instead.

Maybe he would. He hadn’t been up there since…

Lucy died.

Jonas sighed and looked down at the narrow plank of flesh that his body had become. His genitals seemed ridiculously large, jutting uselessly between his sharp hips, and thrown into relief by the early sun his ribs looked like ripples on a flat sea. On the plain between the two, even the scars on his belly seemed worse than usual – red and ridged and twisted and puckered.

They’d told him they would fade to white with time.

Time.

He looked at his alarm clock – something he hadn’t done with any good reason in over a year. It was almost six thirty.

Jonas swung his legs to the creaking floor and headed to the shower. One bathroom window framed a picture of the edge of Shipcott and the towering moor behind it. The thought of going back to the village he’d let down so badly made his gut ache, but he almost welcomed the feeling. He deserved it.

The other window displayed the burned-out farmhouse on the closest hilltop, charred rafters piercing the sky. He stared at the remains of Springer Farm as if into a mirror, while he slid his soapy fingers over the slats of his own ribcage.

He sat silently on the bed until he was dry, then he put on his uniform.

Reynolds mustered his troops in the car park of the Red Lion. They were due to start the search at 8am. Reynolds was in the empty car park by seven fifteen and nervous by seven thirty. The only other people there were the press and TV crews.

Memories of his thirteenth birthday worried at the back of his mind. His primary-school classmates seemed to have taken the move to various secondary schools as an opportunity to abandon him as a friend. His mother told him it was because he was too clever for them and he was sure she was right. But he was also sure that many boys would still come to his party – if only for a magician called El Gran Supremo, complete with top hat, wand and rabbit.

But they hadn’t come.

At least, only two of them had, and they didn’t count: the wispy Digby Furnwild – who went everywhere with an asthma inhaler and a handkerchief impregnated with Olbas oil – and the giant Bruce Locksmith, who would have braved a pit of wolves for free cake, let alone a child’s party. Bruce had eaten almost all the cake, but only made it halfway through El Gran Supremo before announcing that it was shit and he was leaving. He’d taken several going-home bags with him. Reynolds and Digby had sat in moribund silence at either end of the day-bed until Digby’s mother had come to fetch him. After Digby had left, Reynolds’s mother had gone ballistic because she’d found rabbit droppings on the lounge carpet.

He’d never hosted another party.

Until now. And now the thought that nobody would show while the nation’s press bore witness made Reynolds sweat. He’d Google-mapped the middle of the moor and divided the resulting print-offs into numbered grids. He needed fifty people, at least, to cover the area properly. He wished he’d asked Rice to take the lead on this one; then it would look bad for her if nobody came.

But by 7.45am there were a dozen or so police officers, including four dog-handlers, and eighteen Shipcott residents. It was better than nothing.

He took the officers aside and briefly ran through where they were right now. Forensics on the horsebox and the Knoxes’ Golf had been poor. The lab was checking out the green fibres found at both scenes, along with tiny traces of a sticky white plastic found in the broken car windows from the Pete Knox scene. They had no idea yet what that was or how – or even if – it was connected to the kidnap, and they were keeping these details from the press for now. He made no mention of the notes. They were his ace in the hole.

His men were already looking warm in their dark uniforms. It was going to be a scorcher. One asked if they could work in shirtsleeves and Reynolds was about to say ‘No’ when Elizabeth Rice said ‘Of course.’ He’d speak to her later.

With five minutes to go before the official start time, cars began to swing into the car park and disgorge dozens more occupants from surrounding villages. By 8am there must have been eighty people, all told, most of them ruddy-faced men and burly teenaged boys, several with dogs on bits of rope. Touching flat caps in greeting, leaning over to shake hands, voices curtailed and low out of respect for the reason they were here. There was an excited undercurrent of common purpose. They reminded Reynolds of a lynch-mob, and he could have kissed their feet just for showing up.

Rice moved through them, taking names and addresses and ignoring banter about taking down her particulars. There was always the chance that the kidnapper might join the throng of searchers – either to gain an insight into how the investigation was being conducted, or to throw them off the scent if they got too close. Or just for the thrill of being right there, shoulder to shoulder with the desperate and the needy, in a warm cocoon of knowledge and control.

Reynolds climbed on to a chair from the bar and from there on to the low roof of the coal bunker, so that everyone could see him and – hopefully – hear him.

He patted the edges of his notes together and ran through his opening lines in his head.

Ladies and gentlemen. You all know why you are here and I thank you for it. (PAUSE.) Someone has come among you and stolen your children. (PAUSE.) Our job today – YOUR job today – is to find them and return them to the bosom of their families…

It was a good speech. And thank God there were now people to hear it. What might have sounded too grand for an audience of twenty was going to sound positively Churchillian to a crowd of nearly a hundred. And on TV too…

He cleared his throat, and as he opened his mouth to start, a murmur of surprise, then welcome, ran through the group, and Reynolds looked up to see Jonas Holly.

His heart sank.

Isn’t he supposed to be on leave?

He watched people turn to shake Jonas’s hand or carefully pat his shoulder. It seemed as if they’d seen about as much of him over the past eightteen months as Reynolds had. There was certainly less of him to see. Despite his irritation, Reynolds was taken aback by how much weight Jonas had lost, when there’d been so little to lose in the first place. His cheekbones were too high and his eyes too big. He looked haunted.

Hi, you’ve reached Jonas and Lucy…

Reynolds wondered whether the message was still on the answering machine, growing less tragic and more plain weird by the day.

Jonas had stopped shaking.

Walking down the hill into the village – into the midst of the people he knew must despise him – had been an un nerving experience. This was not like driving to Mr Jacoby’s shop to pick up baked beans, when he could hide behind jeans and jumper and his father’s old fishing hat that he’d found in the cupboard under the stairs. This was him very publicly in uniform – once more assuming the mantle of authority that had so spectacularly failed the village where he’d been born and bred.

He’d stopped at the playing field on the way to the Red Lion. The playing field with the skate ramp and the swings, and the little stream where Yvonne Marsh had died. To stave off the moment when he would have to rejoin society at the Red Lion, he’d crossed the field. The grass had crackled almost as loudly from drought as it had with frost two winters ago. He’d stared into the rill under the old blackthorn and remembered the pain in his legs where the icy cold had seeped into his very bones as he’d bent over the half-naked woman…