Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

Nightmare.

He couldn’t mess about here; he didn’t have the time. He grimaced and squeezed the base of his penis – willing the urine to come forth, and not caring if it hurt.

He had to get back to the bus.

But he couldn’t until he’d peed , for God’s sake! Was it too much to ask ? Ken glanced over his shoulder. He could just see the cream roof of his bus. He trusted the girls would stay put. They were good girls. Not like his Karen, who’d gone off the rails at sixteen and moved into a squat with a boyfriend who wore eye make-up. But you couldn’t be too careful, with those other children being taken. It wouldn’t happen to him , of course, but maybe he should have peed somewhere that actually had a view of Kylie and Maisie, just for peace of mind. Of course, that would have meant them having a view of him , too – and that would hardly have helped him relax enough to pass water.

They’d be fine. They were together. It was a bright summer afternoon and he was only fifty yards away.

He heard another car approach. A diesel, by the sound of the engine.

Come on !

A few more drops.

Above him, the car slowed and stopped. He looked up the hill but he couldn’t see it. The engine idled noisily.

Why? Ken frowned. He was sure he’d pulled over far enough for another car to pass. Maybe it was someone who’d stopped to see if the bus had broken down. People did things like that out here on the moor. Isolation brought out the best in people.

Most people.

Ken hoped it wasn’t someone who would report him for leaving the children alone while he took a piss. He reckoned cancer was a good enough excuse, but once it was voiced aloud and was out there in the ether, he’d have to go to the doctor and listen to him confirm that he had only months to live. Maybe weeks.

The distraction of his own mortality worked. A halting flow, and Ken started to feel the blessed relief in his bladder. It was going to be OK. He was going to make it. Maybe it wasn’t even cancer. Maybe he’d live to see Karen with an accountant, and a baby of her own—

Maisie screamed, high and reedy.

Or was it Kylie?

Ken Beard wasn’t sure, but he was suddenly scrambling back up the hill to the road, stones giving way beneath his Hush Puppies, knees hitting rocks, hands grasping clumps of brittle grass and thorny gorse.

Another short shriek.

‘ WHO’S THERE ?!’ he shouted. Or maybe that was just in his head, along with the terrible sound of panting and fear that made his brain feel as full to bursting as his bladder had recently been.

Were they just messing about? He’d read them the bloody riot act if they were. But they were good girls who’d never given him any trouble. He could see the maroon frames of the bus windows emerge, the dark glass, the struts, the cream lower paint, the neat lettering EXMOOR COACHES – CONTRACT OR HIRE.

The clatter of the diesel engine rose and Ken missed his footing and fell flat on his face. He got up to a sharp pain in his right knee but kept going.

He staggered up to the road, half on his hands and knees.

It was empty apart from the bus and the unmistakeable smell of diesel fumes. He hobbled to the steps and hauled himself up on the handrails.

The girls were gone.

Or hiding! Please God they were hiding! He limped down the aisle, looking madly from side to side at the seats, at the floor, even at the overhead luggage racks.

‘Maisie! Kylie!’

This couldn’t be happening. Not to him . The cancer was nothing compared to this hollow horror in his heart. He wished he had cancer instead of two missing children. Cancer would be a blessing.

He ran up and down outside the bus, looking underneath, then shouted the girls’ names furiously from the top of the steps.

‘It’s not funny!’ he yelled. ‘You get back here! It’s not funny! I’ll leave you! I’ll bloody well leave you and you can walk home and tell your mothers why you’re late! You get back here right now !’ His voice cracked.

He limped up and down the aisle compulsively. He could have missed them. They might be sitting very still, or curled into balls on the back seat, winding him up. He was close to crying, he was so scared. He had to call Karen and tell her he loved her, whatever she did, and to please come back home and everything would be OK, just like it was when she was little. Please, please, please come back. Please .

Frank Tithecott pulled his Royal Mail van over behind the school bus and got out. There was a curious thumping from inside the bus, and it rocked ever so slightly from side to side.

The postman climbed the steps cautiously, and was met by the disturbing sight of Ken Beard lurching down the aisle towards him, babbling about two children and a diesel car, and with his limp penis bobbing from side to side through his open slacks.

Frank took charge. He got Ken Beard to zip up and sit down, then called the police to tell them that it seemed two children had gone missing from the school bus.

That the driver was mazed.

And that there was a square yellow note on the steering wheel that read: You don’t love them .

The postman who’d stopped behind the school bus had told Reynolds that Ken Beard had been exposing himself at the scene. What he’d actually said was, ‘Come at me pretty as you please, bawling and babbling and with his dongle out.’ So Reynolds had quizzed the driver until he cried so hard he was no longer coherent, whereupon the local doctor was called to give him a sedative, and his nephew – a small-town solicitor who was there at short notice to safeguard his Uncle Ken’s legal rights – hurriedly removed himself from the case and called a proper criminal lawyer from Bristol.

Reynolds would have loved it if having your dongle out was conclusive evidence of serial kidnap, but life just wasn’t that simple. As it was, he was not even suspicious enough of Ken Beard to hold him in custody overnight.

The Bristol lawyer was turned back on the M5 and still charged the family £285.

A mobile incident room arrived from HQ – although this one was less grotty than the one they’d been assigned two winters back. Graham Nash allowed them to put it in the Red Lion car park, which was handy.

Reynolds now had twelve officers assigned specifically to the case, and could call on another dozen or so from the Exmoor team, in the form of men volunteering their days off, or beat officers like Holly and PC Walters, who could be seconded from regular duties as and when they were needed.

With most of Exmoor’s manpower concentrated on the abductions, other crimes on the moor took a back seat. Theft from garden sheds soared – doubling over the next two weeks from four to eight, and prompting one police-control-room officer to sigh without irony, ‘It’s all gone Chicago out there.’

Despite all the hustle and bustle and the new men and the new incident room and the new publicity and the new thermal-imaging search and the new Google maps Reynolds kept sticking on the whiteboard, in the hunt for five missing children there were no new leads.

KATE GULLIVER KNEW SHE’D done the wrong thing.

Even if it all turned out all right – which it surely would – nothing could change that.

Her conscience had wrestled with her instincts ever since she’d rubber-stamped Jonas Holly and cleared him for going back to work. While other clients were infinitely more troublesome by day, it was Jonas Holly who invaded her night-time thoughts and kept her from sleep.

A dozen times, lying in bed, she’d resolved to call him for a chat, and then failed to do so the next morning. And every day she put it off, she felt her initial knee-jerk decision swelling like a trick flower dropped in water, until she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think about anything other than Jonas Holly and that strange cold fear that had left her so weak that she’d sidestepped her own ethics.