Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

Steven looked down at the magazine for the first time and then back at Mark Trumbull.

‘I know where you live,’ he said, and started walking.

‘No you fucking don’t.’

‘Number seventy-two.’

Mark Trumbull hurried after him. His right hand was in a fist, but he wasn’t sure whether he should actually hit Davey’s brother or not. Some vague notion he’d picked up about Steven Lamb from the collective consciousness of school made him unusually cautious. ‘You gimme my magazine or I’ll fuck you up, shithead.’

Steven Lamb said nothing and kept walking. Mark Trumbull looked nervously up the street. His house was only fifty yards away and his parents were home.

‘Hey!’ he said angrily and clutched the back of Steven’s T-shirt.

Steven turned and slapped him so hard with the rolled-up copy of Beaver Patrol that Mark Trumbull staggered off the pavement and into the road, clutching the side of his head.

Steven kept walking.

He was at the front door.

‘Where’s the money?’

Mark Trumbull stood a few feet away – panic-stricken. He didn’t know how to stop Steven knocking. Maybe he was bluffing. He’d never knock.

Steven knocked. ‘Where’s the money?’ he said again.

‘Shit! Here!’ hissed Mark Trumbull. ‘Here! Just don’t… Just come away from the bloody door! Here!’ He dug in his jeans pockets and shoved money at Steven – crumpled notes, and coins spilling on to the pavement.

‘It’s not all here,’ said Steven.

‘I spent some. That’s all there is. I swear. I fucking swear !’ Mark Trumbull was sweating and almost weeping with panic. Steven wasn’t moving away from the front door of his house. Why wasn’t he moving away ?

Steven glanced at the magazine. ‘What else did you buy?’

‘Some cider. Another magazine. A skateboard. Please , mate…’

‘Bring the skateboard to school tomorrow and give it to Davey.’

‘OK! I will. I swear. Please…!’

The door opened and Mark Trumbull’s mother stood there, looking irritated.

‘Yes, what?’ she said to Steven, then noticed her son. ‘What’s going on, Mark?’

The bully looked pleadingly at Steven Lamb, who handed Mark Trumbull’s mother the curled copy of Beaver Patrol and walked away.

As he approached home, Davey and Shane were waiting on the doorstep.

‘Did you get it?’ Davey yelled from twenty houses away.

Davey asked three more times before Steven pushed past him and Shane, went inside and up to his bedroom, and shut the door.

‘He didn’t get it,’ said Shane flatly, and followed Davey inside.

Davey slapped the bedroom door with the flat of his hand. ‘Steven! Did you get it?’

‘What’s all the noise up there?’ said Nan from the front room. ‘I’m watching the War.’

After a brief pause, Steven opened the door. ‘I got what was left of it. About sixty quid.’

Davey and Shane exchanged shrugs.

‘That’s better than nothing,’ said Shane. ‘Thanks, Steven.’

‘You’re awesome , bro!’ said Davey. ‘Where is it then?’

‘It’s not yours.’

‘It is ours!’ Davey flared immediately.

‘You found it. That doesn’t mean it’s yours,’ said Steven. ‘Mark Trumbull owes you a skateboard. If he doesn’t give it to you tomorrow, let me know.’ He closed the door again and turned the key in the lock.

Shane was open-mouthed with injustice, while the anger rose higher and higher in Davey. He kicked the door.

‘Bastard!’ he yelled. ‘I don’t want a skateboard! I want my fucking money !’

He kicked the door three more times – hard enough to splinter the wood around the lock.

Davey was so angry with his brother that he never even heard Lettie coming up the stairs. Shane stepped swiftly aside, so she could get a clear run at her younger son.

ONLY TWO OF the three people on the list Elizabeth Rice had given Jonas actually lived within the force area. The third, Stanley Cotton, lived in Cumbria. Jonas had been to the Lakes once as a boy and was mystified by the idea that anyone who lived there would bother coming all the way to Exmoor on holiday.

There wasn’t much to see at David Tedworthy’s immaculate Dunster home. He’d already had the broken window in his Mercedes repaired.

‘Got photos if you want to see, though,’ he said helpfully. He and his wife had been nothing but helpful since Jonas had arrived. Mary Tedworthy had made him have a cup of tea and a rock-hard home-baked scone before he’d even been allowed to view the car. He’d nibbled at the scone slowly, and managed to slip the last few bites to an ancient and smelly Golden Retriever that had been drooling on his trouser leg since he’d sat down. Then the gleaming three-month-old Merc had been ready and waiting for him, still dripping from a wash – as if he were a prospective purchaser, not a policeman.

He looked through the digital photos on their state-of-the-art Apple computer. They showed a single smallish hole in the rear passenger window.

‘Were these taken at the scene?’ he asked.

‘No – when we got home. For the insurance.’

Jonas nodded at the pictures. Through the windows he could see only that the car was neat and clean. There didn’t appear to be any marks or fingerprints on the surrounding glass, but it was hard to be sure from photos. The lab would have found any prints anyway.

‘Did you notice anything at all out of the ordinary that day?’

‘No,’ said Mr Tedworthy. ‘We only wish we had. That poor boy.’

Mrs Tedworthy nodded in agreement. ‘Our granddaughter’s the same age.’ She handed Jonas a photo of the ugliest child he had ever seen.

‘Chloe,’ she said, as if it mattered – or improved things.

‘Lovely,’ he managed.

‘If anything happened to her, well—’ She glanced at her husband and he put a reassuring hand on hers, as if he’d taken care of things so that they’d never have to suffer something so awful, so she should stop worrying her pretty little head about it.

You’re wrong , thought Jonas sadly. No child was ever completely safe. To imagine that it was possible was a delusion. Lucy had wanted children, but Jonas had known better. Not that it gave him any satisfaction to have been proven right once again. Lucy just hadn’t understood how dangerous the world could be.

And never would now.

It was small comfort, but it was something.

He stood up to go.

‘There was one thing, though,’ said Mrs Tedworthy. ‘It struck us both as strange, didn’t it?’ she said, looking at her husband, who nodded.

‘What was that?’ said Jonas, suddenly alert.

‘Well, I had some embroidery supplies on the parcel shelf. Quite a lot, and they’re not cheap, you know. Right there in plain sight. And yet… they didn’t steal them.’

Jonas waited for a beat, in case she was joking.

‘Isn’t that strange, Mr Holly?’ she insisted.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Maybe the kidnapper wasn’t the needlework type.’

Tamzin Skinner sat on the metal steps of her mobile home, showing off her dirty toenails in pink flip-flops.

‘So though I’ve got insurance, it’s not worth claiming. They really screw you, these insurance companies, don’t they?’

‘They certainly do,’ Jonas said as he peered into the hole punched in the rear window of her rustbucket 1987 Nissan Sunny. Even though the hole was only the size of a ping-pong ball, Jonas guessed that the cost of repairing it would probably be more than the car was worth. Which was virtually nothing.

Skinner – a stick-thin forty-year-old with the dusty complexion and lip wrinkles of a lifelong smoker – was the only one of the three people on the list who had a police record. Low-level drugs and one caution for soliciting.