Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

‘Time’s running out,’ she said again.

He understood. The white plastic tape on the broken windows, the notes. The things they’d been holding back to trap a future suspect.

A suspect they didn’t have.

Reynolds sighed. He hated to undermine his own forensic foundations. But kidnap had become murder and it was time for that evidence to earn its keep. The notes would get them most publicity, he knew. But there was the danger that they’d also get them copycats. There were crazies out there who had the capacity to hurt or kill, but lacked originality. They might be only too eager to copy the Piper’s notes in an attempt to appear more prolific than they were – muddying already murky waters for the Exmoor team.

Plus, the notes reflected unfairly on the families of the missing children.

You don’t love them .

They passed judgement – even though that judgement was obviously made by someone with a screw loose, at the very least. Reynolds had no desire to expose the already suffering families to the torment of self-righteous blame from the same kind of idiots who wrote racist letters to the Sun , or launched hate-filled rants on MSN.

‘We need all the help we can get.’ Rice said it gently, as if she had read his mind.

She was right, of course.

Reynolds nodded. ‘OK. The notes and the tape.’

‘Shall I call the press?’

‘Would you mind?’ he said, as someone handed him a ringing phone.

It was Jos Reeves from the lab in Portishead.

Rice watched Reynolds’s face anxiously for clues. She saw the surprise in his eyes and itched to know what he knew. If he didn’t tell this time, she would ask.

After an eternity, Reynolds hung up. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

‘They found Jonas Holly’s thumbprint on Charlie’s collar.’

Rice’s heart leaped at the news. Jonas was alive!

‘In blood,’ Reynolds continued.

She caught her breath. Reynolds had more to say – and his sombre face told her she didn’t want to hear it.

‘The blood is Steven Lamb’s.’

CHARLIE’S DEATH WAS a turning point for the children.

They all cried. They all held hands through the fences. Steven shouted ‘Fucking pig!’ at Bob Coffin as he walked away from Jonas’s cage with the gun, and Jess Took threw her bones back over the gate into the walkway as he passed. She missed him, but made her point.

The beating left Jonas curled on the cement, bloodied and weak. But more than that, Steven could see that he was mentally emptied out by the news.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he insisted.

‘I promised him he’d be OK,’ said Jonas with brutal honesty.

‘The guy’s a nut, Jonas. It’s his fault, not yours .’

‘I promised him he’d be OK.’

It was the only response Steven got from Jonas, whatever truths he told. And Steven understood his misery, because that was true too – he had promised Charlie, and if Charlie hadn’t believed him and given in and gone with Bob Coffin, he might still be alive now.

He’d still be here , though.

Steven wondered what he’d do if the huntsman offered him freedom now. Take it, even if it meant he might die somehow before he reached his family, or remain where he was, in the same blue underpants he’d worn for a month.

‘At least you gave him a chance,’ he said finally.

Jonas gave no indication of having heard. He lay on his side and continued to scrape the link on the cement.

To Steven it now looked more like madness than hope.

The press conference was going to be well attended. As before, it was being held in the skittle alley at the Red Lion – a cold, cavernous place with the acoustics of a canyon, which made the twenty or so journalists sound like a factory floor.

Reynolds and Rice stood just outside the door – still arguing.

She’d never argued with him before.

She’d disagreed, which was her right, of course. He liked to engender a spirit of debate in his team. As long as they understood that he was best equipped to make the final decisions.

But this was different. This had started almost immediately after the phone call from Jos Reeves, with Reynolds saying he would be appealing for Jonas Holly to get in touch so he could be eliminated from the investigation.

Before he’d got any further, Rice had gone off on one.

‘Why?’ she demanded, close to rudely.

‘We’d be remiss in our duty not to consider the implications of this new evidence.’

‘The print is evidence that Jonas was with Charlie and Steven – not evidence that he took them.’

‘I know that.’

‘He might be trying to send us a message.’

‘A message in Steven’s blood?’ said Reynolds. ‘Look, I’m not suggesting we release the thumbprint right now – we don’t know enough about it, and it’s too emotive. I’m not even telling Steven’s family at this point.’

Rice nodded her grudging agreement.

Reynolds went on, ‘Saying that we want to speak to Jonas is not saying that we think he did it, but—’

‘That’s exactly what it’s saying.’

‘I beg to differ. What it will do is open the door for anyone who has… information about him which they might hitherto have felt unable to share, to come forward.’

Rice snorted. ‘You need a suspect and he’s the closest thing you’ve got. It’s a witch hunt.’

Bob Stripe from Points West came out of the Gents’ toilets. ‘Not interrupting, I hope?’ he said, when it was quite clear to all present that he fervently hoped he was .

‘Not at all,’ said Reynolds as he squeezed between them.

Reynolds waited until he’d closed the skittle-alley door behind him. ‘Steven Lamb raised a question—’

‘Which was bollocks. Even Kate Gulliver said so.’

‘Kate Gulliver’s changed her mind.’

Rice’s jaw dropped. ‘Is she allowed to do that?’

Reynolds turned his face away from her for a moment. He looked through the little square window in the skittle-alley door at the noisy throng.

Rice could tell he was wondering whether or not to share.

To her surprise, he did.

‘I spoke to her earlier. She told me that she was frightened by Jonas Holly during their final session. So frightened that she feels it might have influenced her decision to clear him for duty.’

Rice was stunned. She couldn’t imagine the super-confident Kate Gulliver being frightened or admitting she might have made a mistake – especially to a by-the-book man like Reynolds.

‘Jesus! What did he do?’

‘Nothing. Or at least, nothing that sounds like anything. She said he brought up the abduction of Jess Took. Then he said that people hurt children.’

People hurt children . Jonas had said the same thing to Steven Lamb, Rice remembered.

Reynolds continued, ‘She said she felt an overwhelming sense of threat and danger from him.’

‘A sense ?’ Rice struggled to stick to her guns. ‘Not much to base an accusation of kidnap and murder on, is it?’

‘She says it was just the way he said it.’

Rice felt the sands of reality shift under her feet. With sudden clarity she remembered Jonas saying he understood the Piper’s anger. What was it he’d said? That people left their children on display in their cars like old umbrellas. At the time it had sounded sane. Harmless.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

She bit her lip and turned her face to stare through the little window in the door. Framed like a Hogarth, Bob Stripe spooned one, two, three sugars into his teacup. Marcie Meyrick frowned up into the dark toe of her own empty shoe, while Mike Armstrong from the Bugle set up the skittles.