Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

They knew.

‘Hi,’ he ventured.

‘Hello, Stevie.’ His mother’s voice was husky.

Nan looked up at him, her eyes watery with memories.

Steven loved his brother, but – shit – sometimes he wanted to punch him so hard!

Nan reached out faintly and, when Steven took her hand, she drew him to her and squeezed his waist.

‘Glad you’re home,’ she said, and then released him. Steven stayed by her side though, and rested a hand on her shoulder.

That night Steven and Davey watched Top Gear with the sound lower than usual, Nan frowned at her clues and Lettie laid what she called their ‘valuables’ out on the coffee table: an electroplated teapot and four mismatched candlesticks. She rubbed them all with Brasso until her fingers were black.

No one had asked him yet about the bike. That suited him fine. Nan had said she’d buy him a helmet as an early birthday gift. Steven didn’t think she knew how much they cost. He couldn’t in good conscience let her spend money on a helmet before he had a bike to ride. She’d expect to see him wearing it. Expect to see him in the helmet on the bike.

Which he didn’t have.

If anyone had asked, he’d have had to tell them that he’d bought two wheels and assorted ironmongery.

So, at the end of the day, the news of Jessica Took’s kidnap had saved him from an awkward situation.

Sick.

Because they knew Shipcott better than anywhere else on the moor, Rice had booked them rooms at the Red Lion.

It was a mistake on every level.

Cheap but noisy, and with mattresses that had been almost folded in half by years of heavy sleepers, and then turned upside down in a misguided attempt to redress the balance; it was like sleeping on the peak of a Toblerone. On the first morning, Reynolds rolled over, lost his grip – and slid down the west face to wakefulness.

They met in the deserted bar for breakfast – full English for Rice, croissant for Reynolds. None of it enough to disguise the country-pub whiff of stale beer, dogs and old crisps trodden into the carpet.

Reynolds wished they’d stayed somewhere else. He stood up before Rice could start mopping up baked beans with her fried bread. She was passably pretty and had many pretty habits, but that wasn’t one of them.

‘Meet you at the car,’ he said.

Outside, the sun was already squint-worthy. How different. Last time he was here it had been in the middle of winter – a bitter January when snow had started and then continued in a way that had made him think it might never stop. The skies had been white or charcoal or pale blue by turn – none of them any indicator of how the weather might be even half an hour later.

This fresh, brilliant scenery brought with it little pricks of guilt, like pins left in a new shirt.

The pub was where they’d bickered and clutched at straws, while the killer went about his work unmolested. Less than a hundred yards away was Sunset Lodge, where four people had died while the police had dithered. Reynolds could even see the first-floor window where the killer had forced the latch. There, beside that doorstep, the killer had washed his hands of blood in a pile of snow, and there he had hidden in the alleyway beside the shop.

The village was a mosaic of memories he’d rather forget. Nothing had gone right for them then. The team – led by DCI Marvel – were behind from the start and never caught up. The killer had come softly, slain silently, and disappeared, like a snowflake which had been unique as it fell but was now just part of the whole once again. The only evidence that he’d ever existed outside the bloody crime scenes had been the notes that he’d left Jonas Holly – taunting him over his inability to stop the killings. And he’d taken Jonas’s own wife as his final prize – a cruel punishment for the young policeman’s failure. Reynolds had never felt more lost or beaten by a case, by a crime, by a place.

His hair had come out in handfuls.

Now he touched his fringe almost unconsciously, seeking the reassurance of soft strands instead of patchy scalp.

Reynolds turned his back on Shipcott and looked instead at the moor, which rose behind the pub and beyond the stream where Jonas Holly had found a body held motionless in the ice. It all seemed like an empty stage where a murderous play had once been performed, because on a day like this it was almost impossible to imagine anything bad happening here. The azure sky, the dew glittering on the bright gorse and the sheer silence made it feel like the set of a film – one of those Jane Austen things that were always on BBC Four. Their scenery always seemed as fanciful to him as their plots, but Exmoor in early summer was just such a place, captured in time. A rock moved just below the close horizon, and Reynolds’s eyes adjusted to pick out the small group of deer grazing close to the skyline.

Calmed by the sight, Reynolds felt the jigsaw take shape in his mind. Now that he’d met Jess Took’s father, he was leaning towards the personal revenge motive, rather than the sexual. That was good. Really good. If Jess Took had been stolen for ransom or revenge, the chances of getting her back alive were vastly improved. And success instead of failure in a kidnapping case would look so much better on his record.

Yes, revenge was the most likely scenario and the one that was liable to have the most positive outcome. On a day like this, one couldn’t help being optimistic.

Rice walked across the car park towards him, and was opening her mouth to say something when her phone suddenly latched on to a passing signal and burst into life.

She took it from her pocket and frowned at the caller ID, then waited until it stopped ringing and put it back in her pocket.

Must be Eric.

Reynolds thought Rice had broken up with Eric. He wasn’t sure, but a few months back there’d been a time when he’d noticed she was often red-eyed in the mornings and she’d taken some personal days. This was not the first time since then that he’d seen her fail to answer her phone.

He was glad that signals on the moor were so appalling. The last thing he needed was Rice being weepy and distracted by boyfriend troubles while they were trying to find Jess Took.

The deer moved off over the rise, each silhouetted briefly against the sky before dropping out of sight. At the summit, the big male turned and looked over its shoulder, straight at him. Detective Inspector Reynolds felt himself unexpectedly moved. It felt like a benediction – like a promise of success.

This would be different. This was already different. A serial killer of the old and infirm was not a kidnapper of children. And he was in charge now – not some throwback who didn’t even have a degree.

He would work it out; Jess Took would be found; he would be a hero; he would lay to rest the hoodoo of the killer in the snow.

It turned out that John Took didn’t have any money after all. He was simply very good at spending other people’s. Of the nine people on the list he’d given them, eight were creditors – four of whom had made actual threats, ranging from ‘Watch your back’ to ‘I’ll burn your bloody house down.’

By Tuesday lunchtime, Reynolds and Rice had spoken to all four of those. Three had alibis that were easy to check. Early on Saturday mornings, even country folk were trying to lie in past 7am, and most had partners and/or children to prove it.

The fourth, Mike Haddon, was a local blacksmith. He was not tall, so his muscles had nowhere to go but outwards, giving him the appearance of a body-builder stretched to fit a widescreen TV.

He flicked through a filthy hardbacked diary with hands so huge and gnarled and ingrained with blackness that Reynolds almost admired them. They were Hulk hands, only not green.