Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers

Mrs Paddon snorted. ‘I’m not! I certainly did wish him harm. Wished he’d fall off his horse into a pond, the fat buffoon.’

‘But not any more?’ Rice asked.

Mrs Paddon waved the very notion away with a flap of her string bag. ‘The Blacklands hunt’s gone. That was all I wanted. Of course, there’s another one, and another one, and another one after that, but we did what we set out to do, and I’m too old to start sabbing all across Britain.’

‘Sabbing?’ asked Reynolds.

‘Sabotaging. Being a hunt saboteur. You know,’ said Mrs Paddon. ‘Waving banners, blowing whistles, laying false trails.’

‘Damaging property, personal injury,’ added Reynolds dryly.

The string bag flapped again. ‘Oh, I did nothing like that. That’s for young folk and strangers. I just made life difficult for them, that’s all. Made life difficult for him . And it worked, and the hunt’s gone and I tell you what, being on that list is a badge of honour, far as I’m concerned.’

She winked one pale-blue eye at Reynolds, leaving him momentarily discombobulated.

‘I can’t wait to hear who else is on it,’ she continued.

‘I’m afraid that’s confidential information,’ said Rice.

Mrs Paddon snorted again. ‘Rubbish! Nothing’s confidential on the moor! Let’s see. Mike Haddon the blacksmith. Bill Merchant at the farm shop, Andy Coutt at the Star in Simonsbath, that timber fella – Cooper, is it? I bet he’s on there. Am I right so far?’

Reynolds shifted and cleared his throat.

‘And however many are on there, they’re just the ones John Took knows about.’ She laughed again. ‘Arrogant people are always surprised by how much they’re hated, don’t you find?’

Reynolds certainly did find. But he was reluctant to agree with Mrs Paddon when she’d hijacked his interview so completely. John Took’s list was being reduced to garden-fence gossip before his very eyes.

‘Well, thank you for your help, Mrs Paddon,’ he said stiffly.

‘Oh, don’t take it personally,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to ruin your day, Mr Reynolds. I’m just saying that if someone has taken that poor girl to get back at her father, it’s probably someone John Took can’t even remember offending, that’s all.’

‘Do you have anyone particular in mind?’

The old lady seemed to give it a good deal of thought before shaking her head.

‘I wish I could help,’ she sighed. ‘But who knows what goes on in people’s heads?’

‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Rice as they got into the unmarked Peugeot they’d swapped the van for.

‘Indeed,’ said Reynolds.

They sat in silence for a minute or two, outside the twin cottages where eighteen months earlier their investigation had ended in abject failure.

‘She seemed almost relieved we were only there about Jess Took,’ mused Rice.

Reynolds nodded. ‘Must have thought we were there about the murder. She probably feels protective towards Holly.’

‘Can’t blame her after what happened, I suppose.’

Reynolds nodded, then sighed. ‘At least we know now that John Took seems to be universally hated – by more people than are on his list. That’s good news for us. It means it’s looking less and less like a random psycho, and more and more as if Jess was taken by someone in revenge.’

Rice nodded. ‘And that means there’s a good chance of us getting her back alive.’

Reynolds smiled at Rice and she smiled back. On a case like this, such sparks of optimism were few and far between, and to be enjoyed whenever they appeared.

Rice switched the engine on and put the car into gear. Reynolds’s phone rang.

It was the desk sergeant at Taunton.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I think we’ve got another one.

TARR STEPS WAS BEAUTIFUL at any time of the year. Early on a May morning, it was magical. The wide stone slabs that crossed the river at this point looked as if they’d been placed there by storybook giants. Under a tunnel of trees, the sunlight dappling through the broad expanse of dark water made the pebbled riverbed glow like Tiffany glass.

The only sounds were the river and the songs of a thousand birds.

And the faint wailing of Mrs Knox up at the car park.

She’d been wailing when they’d arrived and was still wailing now, almost half an hour later. From his time with Homicide, Reynolds knew she might keep wailing for a good while yet. Quite possibly a lifetime, on and off.

Very annoying, when he was trying to think.

PC Colin Walters, the local officer who’d been first on the scene, stood silently beside him as if waiting for instructions, his already weathered complexion further lined with concern.

Reynolds sighed and turned away from the river, and they both trudged back up the hill to the car park where nine-year-old Pete Knox had vanished from the family car and been replaced – as if by some slick, sick magic – by a square yellow note on the steering wheel.

You don’t love him .

‘But we do . We do love him! What does it mean ?’ sobbed Mrs Knox, whose husband was trying to wrap his arms around her – trying to smother her grief and his own – while she was floppy and frantic by turn. Suddenly she thrashed out of his arms and turned back on him with her teeth bared. ‘It’s your fault!’ she screamed, making him wince in shock. ‘ Your fault! You sent him back to the car. How could you do that? He’s nine years old! He’s a baby! You stupid. Stupid. Bastard! ’

She rushed her stricken husband and started flailing at him – beating him about the face and head, before Reynolds and Walters prised her away. She collapsed face-down beside the six-year-old Golf in which her family had driven from Swindon to spend a week communing with nature. Reynolds and Walters both looked instinctively to Elizabeth Rice for help, and she rolled her eyes, but crouched beside Mrs Knox. The woman had deflated like an old lilo on the dusty tarmac, weeping herself out for a little while. Rice patted her back three times before Mrs Knox stopped throwing her hand off, and then settled down to talking to her as if she were a hurt child – soft words of calm and hope that Reynolds couldn’t have managed if his life had depended on it, and which he was almost as surprised to hear coming from Rice.

At least it was quiet enough now to think.

‘She doesn’t mean it,’ he told Mr Knox. ‘She’s upset, that’s all. It’s understandable.’

Jeff Knox nodded dumbly, but looked unconvinced – as if his wife’s words would never leave him now, whether they found their son or not.

‘I did send him back to the car,’ he said miserably. ‘For a towel. He fell in the water. Just one foot up to his knee. Mucking about on the stepping stones, you know?’

Reynolds nodded and Mr Knox looked down at his slack wife again before going on – staring at the opposite side of the valley as if he might yet spot his son. As if there still might be a happy ending.

‘It’s only a couple of hundred yards and he’s a sensible boy. I thought he would be safe. There were other cars here. Other people. We were only five minutes behind him. It’s nine o’clock in the morning, for God’s sake!’

He halted angrily, and Reynolds knew that if God were here right now, Mr Knox would flail at him with the same hopeless, helpless terror as his wife had done.

‘I’ve got all the other car numbers, sir,’ said Walters. ‘A couple of them look to have been vandalized.’

Reynolds turned to him in interest.

‘Not much. Just a couple of windows broken.’

‘Anything taken?’