Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

Maybe he could have handled that better.

After he’d thought of Will Bishop, the floodgates had opened.

Over the next few days, John Took was first surprised, then shocked, then ashamed by the sheer number of people he’d wronged, offended or simply hurt. The clues were in the looks, the mutterings, the silences when he approached a group of people in the pub or at a show. All those things he’d declined to notice, or had interpreted as respect, suddenly sprang up in his mind like tin ducks he’d missed on a fairground rifle range.

Charles Stourbridge – for telling him his new horse wasn’t worth a quarter of what he’d paid, when it plainly was; Mr Jacoby – for pointing out his man-boobs to Rachel; Linda Cobb – for telling her to keep her fucking dog under control when Blue Boy had just stepped on its paw during an ill-advised gallop across the playing field…

If DI Reynolds asked him for another list now, he’d be forced to create a database. Or get Rachel to, because he could never be bothered with the computer and she typed with more than one finger…

Did he have to add her to the list for that?

Or did she already hate him for something he had yet to remember?

How many others hated him? That was the question he always came back to.

Now Took sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the stars. He wondered whether Jess could see them from wherever she was now.

Wherever she was… was it because of him?

Steven watched the huntsman through the crack in the wall. It had become an obsession. It was a strange comfort to know that he was still there – that he had not drifted away from this madness and into a new one which would see him forget all about them and leave them to die of thirst in their kennels. They hated him, but he was all they had – and they feared his absence even more than they feared his crazy presence.

Even so, staying alive was becoming increasingly difficult. Although the days were still hot and dry, the nights had turned suddenly from chilly to cold. Steven woke every morning aching and stiff as an old man, despite the straw on his bed. He felt sorry for Jonas – out there on the bare cement – and wondered how long someone could survive with only his own chemistry to keep him warm.

The meat that the huntsman tossed into their cages every day was no good. The pieces were smaller and some bones had barely any meat on them at all – just fat or gristle, and some of it tasted as if it was already going bad.

All the children now started to eat flowers and leaves when they went out for exercise, and always brought some back for Jonas. But it was not enough to sustain them, and they had to eat what they could off the bones.

Charlie got sick. He spent forty-eight hours writhing and moaning over the drain in the floor of his kennel, while the bad meat rushed to evacuate his shaking body.

After every violent expulsion he crawled across the cement and – instead of making for his straw bed – lay curled up against the fence beside Jonas, who stroked his hair and held the hand that Charlie wormed through the chain link to reach him. Jonas murmured soothing sounds and sang ‘One Man Went to Mow’ in a low, hypnotic loop.

Dog. Spot. Bottle of pop…

Bob Coffin came often – to clean up the mess and to try to feed Charlie chicken and rice, although the boy turned away from him and shook his cold, sweaty head.

‘He’s not a dog,’ said Jonas. ‘You know that, right? He needs a doctor, not chicken and rice.’

The huntsman ignored him. Of course.

He came back later with a bucket and a bundle under his arm, and pulled Charlie’s stained underwear down and off his legs.

‘What are you doing?’ Jonas’s voice was so tight with tension that he could hardly hear it himself. He squeezed Charlie’s hand so hard that the boy squeaked.

Coffin said nothing. Using a sponge and a bottle of Hibiscrub, he washed Charlie down with the efficiency of a mortician, then opened a new pack of briefs and tugged a pair on to the sick boy. He flapped open an old blanket flecked with straw and tucked it around him.

Jonas watched his every movement like a hawk.

‘Can I have a blanket?’ asked Jess, but Coffin ignored her.

‘Good bay, Charlie,’ Coffin said, and Jonas felt tearful with relief as the huntsman patted the boy’s bony shoulder and locked the gate behind him.

Coffin started to clean Jonas’s kennel next; the now familiar sounds filled Jonas’s ears of the shovel scraping the floor, the slosh of the disinfectant, the hose in the water bucket.

‘You should let Charlie go,’ he said quietly.

Bob Coffin gave no indication of having heard him, but he picked up the broom that had pressed stippled bruises into Jonas’s chest and made an angry swishing noise with it on the wet cement beside him.

‘He shouldn’t be here.’

Jonas moved his legs but the broom banged his knee anyway. And again. It was rare for Bob Coffin to get close enough to touch him.

‘He won’t tell, if that’s what you’re worried about. He doesn’t even know where he is.’

Swissh! SWISSH!

Jonas hoped the silence meant the huntsman must be hearing him, taking it in, digesting his words. Maybe his conscience was finally being pricked.

‘Charlie needs to be at home with his dad.’

The broom swung through a short arc and smashed into Jonas’s face. It knocked him sideways so fast that his head bounced off the fence with a rattle. Bob Coffin loomed over him.

‘He don’t love him!’ he spat. Then he clanged out of the run and stormed up the walkway.

Jonas sat up and touched his jaw cautiously. The side of his face was numb and blood dripped slowly over his lower lip.

Charlie looked scared, so Jonas said, ‘Don’t worry, Charlie,’ and held his hand again.

The other children had been stunned into silence by the outburst.

All except Steven.

He rattled the fence, his eyes wide with excitement.

‘He heard you!’ he hissed at Jonas. ‘He heard you!’

DAVEY STOPPED HANGING out with Shane and now spent most of his days holding his PS2 console loosely in his hand, while pimps crashed their cars pointlessly into whores without any help from him. Uncle Jude tried to get him to help in the garden but he was already exhausted. He slept a lot, although not at night when he was supposed to; then he lay and stared into the darkness and thought of the way his mother would look at him when Steven came home. When she knew what a coward he was. What a liar.

Em called him downstairs for tea. She only came after school now and always cooked for them. It was spaghetti hoops on toast, his favourite, but his mum and his nan didn’t eat it, and that made everything taste crap.

‘I don’t like this,’ he told Em.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought you did.’

He dropped his fork with a clatter. ‘Why do you keep coming here?’

Everyone looked at Davey.

‘Well, why does she?’ he demanded. ‘Is she going to keep coming for ever?’

There was a short silence before Nan covered Em’s hand with hers. ‘She’s here because she loves Steven. Like we all do.’

‘I don’t!’ said Davey.

‘Of course you do,’ said Lettie. ‘Don’t be silly.’

Davey stood up sharply, with a loud scrape of his chair. ‘I don’t! I hate him! I hope he never comes home!’

Em bit her lip and Nan looked down at her toast.

Davey waited for his mother to get up and slap him hard. He didn’t care. Let her! She’d slap him and he’d cry and then s he ’d feel bad instead of him .

Instead Lettie reached for his hand. He tried to pull it away from her but she held on to it.