Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

That was how he felt now. As if saying the words he’d come to say would only complicate things that were already fuzzy and fleeting in his own head. Still, he couldn’t go without saying something . He didn’t know much about women, but he knew that they were always more grumpy when they had wet hair, so he’d better make an effort.

‘It’s about Mr Holly,’ he said.

The woman – DS Rice – looked slightly more interested than she had a second ago, but Steven was lost again. How could he tell her all the stuff that was in his head?

He killed his wife! I think he did; I saw him hit her. He grabbed my arm. He said something about hurting children. Maybe he took those children. He could do it. If he could kill his wife he could murder children, couldn’t he? People hurt children – that’s what he said. People hurt children. And he scared me. I thought he was going to kill me. His voice wasn’t his voice and his eyes were like nothing. He could kill children. He could kill anyone. I know he could .

Here, in daylight, in the stale-beer bar of the Red Lion, talking to a policewoman with a towel on her head, it sounded like a case for Scooby-Doo.

DS Rice glanced at her watch.

‘I don’t think he likes children,’ Steven said carefully.

‘Why do you think that? Did he say something?’

‘Kind of. He told me people hurt children.’

‘But that’s true. Sadly. Isn’t it? People sometimes do hurt children.’

‘Yes. But…’ He struggled to explain and finally couldn’t. ‘It was just the way he said it.’ He paused and then finished in a rush: ‘I think maybe he took those children. And I think he could hurt someone. I know he could.’

‘That’s a serious allegation, Steven. Do you have any proof of that?’ DS Rice was looking at him sharply now, as if she was about to get angry with him.

Did he have proof? He knew it was true – he’d seen Mr Holly slap his wife – but did he have proof ? He knew what proof was, what evidence was, and it wasn’t just saying you’d seen something when there was nobody else there to back you up. That was just his word against the word of a policeman.

‘Not really,’ he said finally.

‘And what reason do you have to think he might have taken the children?’

‘Just… I don’t know.’ That was never going to be enough, he knew. ‘Just a feeling really.’

DS Rice looked at her watch quite openly this time. ‘OK, Steven. Is there anything else?’

He shook his head. He knew he’d failed. She’d already lost interest.

‘Well, thanks for coming in to speak to us, all right?’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘But I’m not making it up.’

‘I didn’t say you were.’

He thought she kind of had , but let it go.

Then she glanced down at his scuffed school bag. ‘You off to school now?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Anything else you want to tell us, you just come to the mobile unit in the car park, all right? Anything you think could help with finding the children. OK? After nine.’

‘OK,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Steven.’

Elizabeth Rice watched Steven Lamb leave the bar, hoisting his backpack on to his shoulders as he went. She didn’t remember what it was to be a child, but one thing he’d said had made her remember something.

It was just the WAY he said it .

It made her think of being sixteen and telling her mother that a neighbour, Mr Craddock, had made suggestive remarks to her at the bus stop on her way to school one day. She’d known Mr Craddock since she was small, and always thought he was a nice man. In the summer he would let Elizabeth walk his dog, Fuzzy, because her parents wouldn’t let her have one. Once he’d shouted at some boys who’d been teasing her. He always waved and smiled, and his wife did too.

And then that day at the bus stop – when she was sixteen years old – he’d asked her if they spanked her at school.

‘No!’ She’d laughed. The idea was silly. Nobody got spanked at school any more. Even the word was laughable. ‘They just give us detention.’

‘What about at home?’ Mr Craddock had said. ‘Does your daddy spank you?’

‘No,’ said Elizabeth, and hadn’t laughed, because suddenly this was making her feel uncomfortable.

They’d got on the bus together and she remembered how she’d hated the fact that he’d come up the steps behind her, knowing that he must be looking at her bare legs under the school skirt she’d always insisted on wearing just a little too short. Feeling that Mr Craddock had moved from the column marked ‘Nice Man’ to the one marked ‘Pervert’ in the mental list she kept. A list that seemed to be growing in direct proportion to her breasts.

It had been a week before she’d told her mother about it.

‘I’m sure he was just joking,’ her mother had said.

‘He wasn’t,’ Rice could hear herself saying now. ‘It was the way he said it.’

Now the grown-up Elizabeth Rice watched the boy pass the small leaded window, head down, frowning.

She went upstairs and dried her hair – which was shit – and mentioned the conversation to Reynolds over breakfast.

‘Steven Lamb?’ he said, prissily rubbing his fingers and thumb together to dislodge crumbs.

‘Yes,’ said Rice. She thought that Reynolds might be a lot more attractive if he didn’t always have the continental breakfast. Croissants weren’t manly.

‘He’s that kid who nearly got killed by Arnold Avery.’

‘I thought it rang a bell.’

‘Interesting,’ mused Reynolds, raising a Roger Moore eyebrow.

Rice didn’t ask why. That was what Reynolds wanted and she hated playing silly games, in or out of a relationship. If it really was interesting she had no doubt that he would tell her anyway. His ego wouldn’t be able to resist it.

It only took a moment…

‘It makes you wonder what effect that might have on a child.’

‘What do you mean?’

Reynolds leaned back away from his croissant – torn, never sliced – and put his splayed fingers together under his nose.

He thinks he’s Sherlock bloody Holmes . Rice had to take a mouthful of bacon to keep from laughing.

‘I don’t know,’ said Reynolds slowly, but in a tone that said he did know – he just wasn’t telling you .

Rice was interested in the fact that Steven Lamb had almost been murdered. Who wouldn’t be interested in that? She wished now that she’d known that at the time. But right now she’d rather drop down dead with curiosity than give Reynolds the satisfaction of pleading for information he should be sharing as a matter of course.

So she took a piece of toast from the rack and mopped up her bean juice with it.

‘Maybe I’ll call Kate Gulliver,’ he said sharply. ‘Discuss it with her.’

Oh shut up , thought Rice.

JUNE THE SECOND – exactly four weeks after Jess Took had been stolen from her father’s horsebox – Nan’s birthday dawned early and bright, the chill night warming quickly as the sun cleared the top of the moor.

Steven and Davey still hadn’t made up. Steven had tried a few times but Davey was a grudge-bearer, and after a week of grunts and monosyllables, Lettie had told them they weren’t welcome on the birthday trip to Barnstaple.

‘They should go through a war together,’ Nan had decreed. ‘That’d sort them out.’ Her default position was that there was no problem so big that it could not be resolved by going through a war together. It was her solution for everything from family spats to inflation. Steven had once pointed out that the Israelis and Palestinians had been going through a war together for years and it didn’t seem to be sorting much out, and Nan had told him not to be cheeky.