Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

Meat.

That was what he’d become.

What they’d all become.

The kennels were empty. Reynolds saw that with his own eyes, and the little grey screen was proof. There were only two bright blobs of warmth below them, and one was in the shape of the man standing over a water trough in the yard, leaning on a pole and squinting up into the sunshine. The other was an intensely white star in a small building near by.

Unwilling to shout loudly enough to make himself heard, Reynolds leaned between the seats and jabbed a finger at the white point on the screen.

‘Incinerator!’ Lee hollered into his ear.

Reynolds nodded and sat back.

Slowly the man below them raised a hand in greeting, and Tuckshop returned a half-wave, half-salute, like a fighter pilot in a black-and-white war film.

As the helicopter tilted away from the Blacklands hunt kennels, Reynolds did the same – and felt like the guardian of the entire world.

IT’S TRUE , THOUGHT Lettie Lamb. We’re all cursed .

She had never believed in curses; curses were for old folk and stupid people. But here, lying in a fast-cooling bath, watching condensation drip off the peeling ceiling, she could find no more logical reason for the miseries visited on her family than that which the Sunday Mirror had proposed.

Steven was gone.

Lettie’s mouth distorted with sudden emotion and she squeezed her eyes shut to stop herself crying. Crying helped nobody. She’d learned that a long, long time ago.

She waited until her breathing was normal again, concentrating on her breasts, which sat like little islands on the water – the warm meniscus of the tide rising and falling on the beaches of pale skin, where faint blue rivers ran from the puckered peaks.

He’d been gone for a week and just today her mother had put down her knitting and walked to the front window. She’d stood in her old place – the one she’d worn bare over the twenty years when she’d waited for Billy to come home. Jude had replaced the carpet. Not all of it, but that piece in the window. It wasn’t a perfect match with the rest of the room but it was close enough. Now the thought of her mother wearing a new path to the window to wait for Steven made Lettie shiver. Would she follow in time, however hard she tried to resist? Would the pair of them wear out the carpet together, lumbering back and forth like buffalo at a watering hole? Would Davey suffer the way she had suffered when Billy had gone?

Was Steven suffering now? Or was he already dead?

This time her mouth would not obey her when she tried to pull it back into shape. This time her tears reheated the water around her temples.

She thought of all the times she’d snapped at him; all the times she’d been unfair; all the times she’d taken Davey’s side for no reason other than that Davey was adorable and ‘You’re the oldest. You should know better.’

She thought of the time she’d slapped his face.

I can’t , thought Lettie. I can’t do this. It hurts too much .

She had to stop thinking. Thinking of Steven was like having a head full of thorns.

I’m cursed .

And suddenly – the revelation: all of the bad things had happened on her watch. Maybe all that was needed was to take herself out of the equation. The ultimate horror required the ultimate sacrifice. If it didn’t actually help Steven, at least she wouldn’t be around to know about it. Stopping everything meant stopping the agony of thinking about him every second of the day. It all made sense. A kind of sense. Sense enough for now.

Lettie opened her eyes. Without turning her head, she thought about what was in the bathroom that she might use.

Not much.

The water itself was tempting – just a tilt of the head would cover her face – but she guessed it would be almost impossible without something to keep her under while she drowned. There was the razor she used to shave her legs when Jude stayed over. It was a white Bic safety razor, and the blades were firmly encased in plastic that defied removal. Jude used an electric one that pushed his skin about his face in stubbled wavelets.

Lettie had a sudden bright memory of the razor her father had used. A steel-headed Gillette that held a proper blade in a canopy so smooth and shiny that it tempted tiny hands to pick it up and gaze into it like a mirror. He’d had a brush too, with coarse bristles that were black at the bottom and white at the tips. She and Billy used to squabble for the right to stir the solid shaving soap into a thick cream of suds and paint it on their father’s face with ‘the badger’. That’s what they’d called it, she remembered now with a pang. Then they’d watch in awed silence as the Gillette left broad, smooth trails through the snowy lather on her father’s tanned face.

She could smell her father now – that clean soapy smell of his cheek and his chin, and the Old Spice she’d bought him relentlessly for every birthday and every Christmas until he’d died when she was ten.

Cursed .

Someone pounded on the door and Lettie jolted upright with a splash, gripping the side of the bath with both hands, ready to leap out of it, scared of why.

Was he found?

Was he dead?

Was this the moment when her life shattered into a million pieces or started slowly to mend? She could feel her heart beating against the cold plastic of the tub in excitement and terror.

‘ What is it? ’ she croaked.

‘Where are my socks?’ yelled Davey.

Lettie sat there, frozen, for a few seconds that stretched to fill her entire future. Then she hauled herself from the water and went on living for a bit longer so she could find her son’s socks.

JONAS KNEW THE huntsman’s name.

He wasn’t sure when he’d remembered it, just as he wasn’t sure where he’d got the bruises. Bruises down his arms, sharp black welts across his calves, ridges on his ribs that hurt to touch, and an odd raw abrasion on his chest.

He remembered Lucy in water – that was all.

Then he’d woken up just now, when a chunk of bone came over the gate with a soft thud.

Bob Coffin. That was his name.

He’d been the huntsman for years – even when Jonas was a boy, working for rides up at Springer Farm and galloping about the moors with his friends on a pony called Taffy. They’d seen him, walking the hounds or resplendent in scarlet. The huntsman had touched his cap at Jonas and led him to the Red Lion car park the day they’d all searched for Pete and Jess.

Jonas looked through the wire. There was Jess Took. Beyond her were Kylie Martin and Maisie Cook and – at the end of the row – Pete Knox. He’d seen their pictures in the Bugle .

Bob Coffin. Jonas’s skimpy memory was of a much younger man, treating hounds, horses and children with the same efficient confidence that he would be obeyed.

And these were the Blacklands hunt kennels – although the hunt was no more. Jonas hadn’t sought its demise, but some locals had – and even more incomers. Incomers resented the red coats; they admired the foxes; they could afford the chickens.

The kennels had been searched at least once – Jonas was sure of it.

How did we miss them?

‘I don’t eat meat,’ he said as a second slab slapped on to the concrete, but the man ignored him, as if the stocking mask he wore made him deaf as well as smooth.

‘He doesn’t listen,’ said Steven Lamb to himself. ‘He only talks.’

Jonas stood up, then winced as something tugged him back down. He put a hand to his throat and felt the collar.

Steven watched the way Jonas Holly touched the collar and chain; the bemused look on his face; the way he’d stood up as though he thought he could.