Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

‘You don’t really think Jonas killed his wife and kidnapped all these children, do you?’ Rice asked him bluntly.

‘No, but life has taught me to consider all possibilities,’ said Reynolds.

But he was also a cautious man, and Rice was relieved when Reynolds told the search team that they were searching the home of a fellow officer who was more likely to have been a victim of a crime than the culprit. In that spirit they moved through Rose Cottage with a rare degree of consideration.

Even so, the search felt intrusive, and Rice was not inclined to turn the place upside down. As she went through the house she was struck by the curious mix of chaos and Spartan neatness – as if Jonas Holly never entered certain rooms any more, but lived in the others without thought of his surroundings. Rice didn’t do a meticulous search; she didn’t feel it was called for, or that Reynolds had meant her to. She went through the rooms upstairs with a careful hand and an experienced eye.

But she didn’t need an experienced eye to see Lucy Holly everywhere. Her make-up bag was still on the bedroom dresser; her clothes were still in the wardrobe. A woman’s bathrobe hung on the back of the door, her trainers were under the bed – a scruffy pair of pink Converse All Stars.

It was as if Lucy Holly had popped out to the shops and would be back any second, bearing pasta for dinner and maybe a bottle of red like the one Jonas had opened for her .

It was a little unsettling, but maybe that was how Jonas liked it. Maybe he liked to imagine that his wife was so close he could almost touch her. That she might walk into the bedroom one night and turn down the covers and climb in beside him as if she’d never been away.

Maybe that was how it was when you lost somebody you loved.

Rice didn’t know. She’d never loved someone like that. She realized that now for the first time, standing at the foot of the Hollys’ marital bed, and felt the lingering regret of breaking up with Eric leave her like a soft burp.

Staring at the old mascara gone dry on the dressing table, Rice was engulfed by a wave of sadness for Jonas, and another for herself.

Downstairs, the kitchen table was piled high with laundry and mail – most of it junk – while the sink was clean and bare and the draining board held only a single mug, bowl and spoon. A half-bottle of Spanish wine was going bad without a cork.

Reynolds opened the cupboards, which contained ingredients but barely a thing to eat. Herbs, condiments, flour, rice, dried lentils, noodles and split peas, old sauces with sticky lids, and cans of tomatoes.

The front room was dim and everything was covered in a film of grey dust, as if it was all made of television. A red tartan rug folded over the arm of the leather couch was the only touch of warmth.

Reynolds ran his eyes over the eclectic mix on the bookshelf: Stephen King, Philip K. Dick, sports biographies and psychology textbooks. He recognized university leftovers and wondered who had studied the subject. He tilted a copy of Civilization and its Discontents off the shelf but found no clue inside. On the mantelpiece was a clock stopped at 7.39, a blue vase without flowers in it, and a photo of Lucy Holly in a silver frame. She was kneeling beside a fresh flowerbed, smiling up into the sunlight with a trowel in one gloved hand.

Not lying at the foot of the stairs with blood bubbling out of her neck.

Reynolds met his own eyes through the mist of the over-mantel mirror. Hazy, and with the light from the window behind him, his hair looked great.

He sighed deeply. If it had only been Steven Lamb who had disappeared, he might have delayed the roadblocks and the immediate request for extra manpower. In the middle of a crisis there was always the chance that children – OK, boys – there was always a chance that boys would invent their own slice of the action. Pretend to fall down a well, pretend to be lost at sea, pretend to be kidnapped…

But with Jonas Holly apparently missing too, everything became even more serious. Either both of them had been abducted, which seemed bizarre, or Jonas had taken the boy and, by logical conclusion, the other children as well.

Which seemed bizarre.

Reynolds sighed again and stared gloomily into the mirror. Overhead the floorboards creaked as Rice searched Jonas’s bedroom.

The answerphone flashed and Reynolds hit Play on a robot message telling Jonas he had won a holiday in Florida and needed only to call this number to claim his prize.

He moved away, then back again – and played the outgoing message:

Hi, you’ve reached Jonas and Lucy…

Shit.

He’d forgotten what a bloody weirdo Jonas Holly was. For the first time, the idea that he might have murdered his wife and stolen a slew of local children didn’t even seem that far-fetched.

He ordered his team to go through the house and garden again. This time with far more rigour.

JESS TOOK WATCHED THE skin peel off a small brown pony like a flesh banana, and remembered the fruit bowl in her mother’s kitchen. The way her mother polished each apple before it was allowed to take its place among the peaches and grapes; the way Jess was only allowed to take a piece of fruit if she rearranged the display so it didn’t look unbalanced.

Nothing worse than lopsided fruit , her mother used to say.

Jess smiled wryly against the cold block wall. She wished her mother could see her now. See the straw she slept on, the cement she shat on and the filth she ate. See if her mother still thought there was nothing worse than a wonky apple.

Jess’s mouth filled suddenly with tangy saliva as her body remembered the fresh, sweet, juicy crunch of a Braeburn.

Her eyes overflowed.

In the past six weeks, her mouth had almost forgotten what freshness was. Her tongue tasted fetid and her teeth were jagged traps for tiny shards of bone and frayed strands of flesh that resisted her constant probing. She tried never to close her mouth now; tried to keep the air circulating. Sometimes she drooled because of it, but it was better than closing her lips on that dank cavern.

The ssssssssss sound rose like sticky tape coming off a roll; the pony’s carcass jerked as the last of its skin left it and skidded across the floor attached to the winch. The huntsman filled his arms with the hide and hoofs and head, and walked from the big shed to the incinerator to create more stench of burning hair.

He sang as he went, like a madman.

Of course he did. He was a madman.

Jess sighed and turned away.

In the kennel next to hers was the new boy. She didn’t know his name but she had seen him at school. He was in the sixth form. He wasn’t one of the cool kids; he was just an average kid.

Now he was just an average dog.

Hound . Her father always hated it when she called the foxhounds dogs.

The older boy stirred and Jess turned away from the breeze-block wall and hung her fingers through the chain link on the other side instead.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Hey, you with the ears.’

He blinked and frowned and then opened his eyes and looked at the corrugated plastic sheeting over his head.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’

He turned towards her.

‘I’m Jess.’

He closed his eyes again and ignored her. Jess let him. She’d done that plenty when she’d first woken up here: closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep so she could wake from this lunatic dream in her own bed.

After a few moments, he opened his eyes and looked at her again. She laughed – a short humourless sound.

‘Yeah, it’s real,’ she said. ‘Crap, right?’

He propped himself on his elbows. ‘Jess Took?’