Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

Lucy would have loved this .

The thought came from nowhere and made his throat ache.

He put his tea down with a clatter of spoon and saucer, and headed for the car park.

The sun was already very warm but Charlie didn’t mind. He turned his face towards it and closed his eyes and felt the lids heat up like little blankets.

There was a big voice from somewhere – like Mr King at sports day – saying things that Charlie couldn’t quite catch, drifting in and out with the breeze. Whenever the voice stopped it was as quiet as bedtime.

He almost dozed.

There was a sharp, crunchy sound and he opened his eyes.

At first he saw nothing. Then, squinting into the sun, he saw a man between the parked cars draw back his hand with a stick in it, and hit a car window. Charlie jumped at the sound of glass breaking.

‘Oh!’ said Charlie. ‘Oh!’

Bad man! He broke the window! Bad bad man! Nicola Park had broken a window in the school greenhouse and Mrs Johnson had been sooooo cross!

As Charlie watched, the man moved a few rows away, peering into cars. Then – first glancing left and right – he stopped and did the same thing again.

Charlie looked up towards the tents.

‘Mr King!’ he shouted. ‘Mr King !’

The man looked up and saw him. Charlie shrank back against his seat.

The man turned and walked quickly towards the minibus. As he came closer, Charlie saw his big green gloves and strangely flattened, featureless face. The man looked like the Guy they’d made at the school last Bonfire Night – but alive and walking.

Charlie had never been so scared in his life. Worse than lights out.

‘MR KING!’ he squealed into his own chest as he tried to stop the man unbuckling his safety harness. ‘MR KING!’

But the big voice was talking and then people were clapping too.

Charlie Peach continued to shout for someone to come and save him, but his terrified cries were quickly muffled by a strong woollen hand that smelled of hospitals.

Jonas was stopped half a dozen times on his way to the cars.

People meant well. He knew that. So he was polite and pleasant – and resisted the urge to tell them all to just go away and leave him alone.

A man in sunglasses and shirtsleeves shouted something he didn’t catch and started jogging towards him, and even before the man reached him, something told Jonas that this was bad news…

SHUT THE GATE. Shut the gate shutthegate shutthegateshutthegate…

Jonas ran in time to the words in his head. Ran for the first time in over a year. Ran to the gate and swung it shut with a clang that reverberated like a giant bell. A BMW X5 turning in from the lane lurched to a halt to avoid being hit by all five bars.

‘What the shit !’ said the driver angrily, and then saw Jonas’s uniform and downgraded his protest to ‘What’s going on?’

‘We’ve got a missing child,’ panted Jonas, not even looking at him – already scanning the field for Charlie Peach. He raised his voice and said it again: ‘We’ve got a missing child!’

The words were like a fire alarm going off. People moved to him as if magnetized.

The gateman in a hi-vis vest was Graham Nash from the Red Lion.

‘Has anyone left?’ Jonas demanded.

‘A few.’

‘Who?’

Nash looked defensive. ‘I don’t know. I’m busy getting people in. People going out aren’t my job.’

‘You notice anyone in particular? Strangers?’

‘Shit, Jonas, I don’t bloody know. I can’t know everyone. The kid’s probably getting an ice cream.’

Jonas knew Charlie Peach – he lived in Shipcott – and he knew that was not the case. He put Graham Nash on the road to direct traffic away from the show.

‘But it’s not even lunchtime,’ Nash protested. ‘People are going to be very pissed off if they’ve paid their entries and I won’t let them in.’

‘This gate stays shut until we find the boy,’ said Jonas coldly, then he looked hopefully at his phone. Finding he was within range of a signal, he stood stock still so as not to lose it and called DI Reynolds.

Reynolds said he’d be right there and told him not to let anybody leave. Jonas didn’t waste time explaining that he’d already done that – just said ‘Yes’ and hung up.

He and Mike King jogged back to the judges’ caravan and commandeered the PA system. Through shards of feedback, Jonas asked all judges in all rings to halt their classes while they searched for Charlie Peach, then handed the microphone to the boy’s carer to give a description of him.

The moment the announcement was over, the mood of the show changed as if a switch had been thrown. The urgency and purpose were palpable. Horses were dismounted and hitched to horseboxes, people left their deckchairs and put down their cups of tea and swarmed through the tents and the cars, crawling underneath, opening boots, checking the Portaloos.

Horse people, thought Jonas. Good or bad, they really get things done.

Steven heard Jonas Holly’s voice on the PA system and flinched hard enough for Em to notice.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing. Just made me jump, that’s all.’

She smiled at him and he tried to smile back but it didn’t feel right on his face. He was suddenly tense.

They listened to the announcement, sitting on the grass with Skip dozing over their heads. Another voice boomed out, describing a boy with pale hair and a Dr Who T-shirt.

‘His name is Charlie,’ the voice said. ‘Charlie? If you can hear this, come on back to the minibus, all right, big man? I’ll wait for you there.’

Steven and Em looked around them.

‘He’s probably getting an ice cream,’ said Em.

‘Mm.’ Steven hoped she was right.

He sat for a minute more, inwardly twitching.

He couldn’t do nothing; he stood up. ‘I’m going to help look,’ he told her.

Em scrambled to her feet. ‘I’ll come too.’

She tied Skip to a piece of twine attached to a random horsebox and draped her jacket across the mudguard. ‘We won’t be long,’ she shrugged.

Steven watched the crowds looking in and under cars and around the tents and toilets. If the boy were there, someone else would find him. Instead, Steven led Em to the edge of the meadow, which was bounded by thick hawthorn hedges run through with old man’s beard, bindweed and the occasional wild clematis.

‘Do you know the kids who have gone missing?’ asked Em.

‘Nah.’ He shrugged. ‘The girl, Jess, went to our school but I didn’t know her.’

‘You must be the only one,’ said Em wryly.

Steven shrugged and added, ‘The boy wasn’t from round here.’

They walked clockwise around the meadow. In most places the hedge was so thick they couldn’t even see the field on the other side. Elsewhere it was thinner, but still made impassable by thorns. The field sloped away at the far end, and the show disappeared over the close horizon. The sound of it disappeared along with the sight. Deep in the second corner, close to a single oak tree, Em noticed a break in the hedge. They couldn’t get close to it because of waist-high nettles, but by walking on a little way and looking back, they could see the posts of a stile, disused and almost hidden by the surrounding foliage.

‘You think he could have got through there?’ said Em.

Steven examined the nettles, then shook his head. ‘They’d be broken if anyone had gone through them.’

They walked on. Even though they were only a hundred yards from where people were searching desperately for the missing boy, it was quiet here. The loudest sound was the chirrup of crickets in the long grass, and the occasional thump and rustle of rabbits as they warned each other and ran away. One baby, too young to understand danger, sat in the open as they approached. They were less than ten feet away before it gave a playful binky and hopped into the hedge, making them both laugh.