Finders Keepers

the egg.

Once, when they were seeing how far up the chimney they could climb before getting stuck, Shane’s foot dislodged an old biscuit tin that had been wedged there. Disappointingly, it contained nothing but a few dozen fuzzy and faded snapshots of boys and ponies. Davey said it was Shane’s turn to keep the treasure, but Shane resisted; he didn’t want to waste his turn on gay junk. So they just jammed the tin back where they’d found it.

Davey got furthest up the chimney – over twelve feet, according to the twine tied to his ankle, which was their judge and jury. He came down looking Victorian, and spent that night marvelling at the additional treasure of black snot that he discovered in his nose.

Of course, the boys weren’t supposed to be at Springer Farm at all – or anywhere vaguely interesting. Davey blamed Steven, who’d ruined it for everybody by almost getting killed a while back. Davey was hazy on the details – he just knew that his nan loved Steven better than she loved him, and that that was why. Now he had to pay the price of his mother only working in the mornings so that she was there when they got home from school. Luckily, both Davey and Shane felt that lying to their mothers in order to be able to play properly was hardly lying at all, and so did it routinely. Davey’s mother was told they were in Shane’s back garden, and Shane’s was told they were at Davey’s. Once that lie had been told and believed, it was a simple matter to go anywhere they pleased for as long as they liked. And, more often than not, they pleased to walk up the hill until they reached Rose and Honeysuckle cottages. Then they always ran, because everyone knew that a woman had been murdered in one cottage and that a witch lived in the other. Once she had been at the gate and had asked them if their parents knew where they were. They’d run past her, laughing with self-imposed fear, and Shane had turned and – from a safe distance – had given her a V sign. They weren’t sure she’d seen it – and Davey secretly hoped she hadn’t – but it was exhilarating none the less.

Today they’d found nothing at Springer Farm, despite hours spent sifting the ashes looking for treasures and the bodies of the kidnapped children. Davey was adamant that it was the coolest place to hide a body, but their search had run them a merry dance through the gamut of anticipation, excitement and boredom – all in the space of about three hours. The sun had gone, although it would remain light for a good while yet.

They ran downhill past the cottages, then slowed to an amble, talking – as they always did – about nothing at all. Both had hazel sticks with which they whipped the heads off the cow parsley that lined the ditch along the base of the hedge. They were merciless, but the cow parsley seemed to come back as fast as they destroyed it. Before this it had been dandelions; later would come docks.

Davey sliced through several fronds at once and Shane chortled his approval. The foamy heads fell into the road in a pile.

‘Nice one!’ Shane took a penalty with the little pile of green-white flowers, which fountained off his toe, then plopped to the ground a few feet away.

‘And Collins scores the winner for England!’ He raised his arms and made a rushing sound that was supposed to be the roar of the crowd.

Davey didn’t answer.

He was standing over a slip of paper revealed by the dispersal of the clump of cow parsley.

Not a slip of paper at all. He bent to pick it up.

‘What’s that?’ said Shane.

Open-mouthed, Davey straightened up and showed him a twenty-pound note.

‘You. Are. Fucking. Joking!’ Shane hurried back up to where Davey stood. The note was grubby and faded, but undoubtedly a twenty. More money than either of them had ever had at one time in their lives. Combined.

They stared at the note, and then at each other, then laughed, then stared at the note again.

‘It must have been in the hedge,’ said Davey.

‘Maybe there’s more!’ said Shane.

The boys set about the cow parsley like Dickensian schoolmasters – whipping, slashing and beating the vegetation into green and white hay on the tarmac.

‘There’s another!’ Shane reached in this time and retrieved a twenty.

‘Fuuuuuuck!’

They laughed like drunks and then went back to their destruction of the hedgerow.

Three more notes came to light before the witch leaned over her garden gate and shouted, ‘You boys leave that hedge alone!’

Giggling and giddy with wealth, Davey and Shane ran down the hill to home.

* * *

The thought of seeing the pile of crap that he’d spent his life savings on made Steven’s heart sink. But, because of Em’s trailer, he walked up to Ronnie’s house after tea.

Ronnie Trewell – popularly known as Skew Ronnie, because of his lifestyle as much as his limp – lived in a scruffy bungalow at the end of a cul-de-sac that clung to the side of the moor. There was a garage almost the size of the house, where Ronnie hid his stolen cars.

Used to hide them.

Ronnie had been rehabilitated, apparently, by attending a course in Tiverton where young car thieves were allowed to tinker with karts and then race them. Steven would have given his right arm to race karts, but it seemed he’d have to be pretty dedicated to a life of crime before he could hope for that kind of reward.

He knocked and Dougie opened the door. Dougie was Steven’s age. They skated together.

‘All right, mate?’

‘Yeah. All right? Ronnie in?’

‘Hold on.’

Dougie yelled for his brother while Steven stood in the dank hallway that smelled of old dog and chip fat.

Ronnie appeared in trackies and bedroom slippers, and the three of them went out to the garage.

The trailer was still there.

‘You want a hand taking that back?’ Steven said casually.

Ronnie shrugged. ‘They got plenty. They won’t miss it.’

The bike was still there too – in bits. But Ronnie’s enthusiasm for all things mechanical was infectious, and Steven was soon imbued with a sense of complete optimism about the task of reconstruction. Ronnie pointed out that the engine was largely intact, the tyres not perished, and the tank almost rust-free. The much-mentally- maligned Gary had, in fact, put all the smaller parts into plastic boxes and labelled them, and with Ronnie’s experienced eye for what went where, the three of them were soon making a bit of progress.

As night approached, the greyhound wandered in and out and peered knowledgeably at parts with its soulful marble eyes, and Ronnie passed round a can of Carlsberg. Although he knew it was nothing really, Steven felt it was a night he’d always remember – the harsh fluorescent lighting, the blue-green dusk framed by the black garage door, the machined metal between his oil-stained fingers, and the bitter bubbles on his tongue that tasted like the future.

At nine he stood up reluctantly and said he should be getting home before it got too dark.

Ronnie and Dougie spent a few minutes ripping the piss out of him for being a mummy’s boy, but he just smiled and rolled his eyes and brushed the garage dirt off the seat of his jeans.

‘Thanks,’ he told Ronnie.

‘Come up any time you want to work on it. You know where the key is.’

‘Cheers.’

‘Get home safe now!’ Ronnie and Dougie had a final laugh at his expense and then went inside and whistled for the dog.

Steven waited until everyone was asleep. Just after midnight he dressed quietly, took the torch from under the kitchen sink where his mother kept it for when the electric went out, and walked back through the silent village to Ronnie Trewell’s house.

The garage key was where Ronnie had told him it would be; the up-and-over door opened with barely a squeak, and the trailer rolled easily out on to the driveway.

So far, so good, thought Steven, as he closed the door and put the key back in the hanging basket that contained a bouquet of dead weeds.