Finders Keepers

pain in his right knee but kept going.

He staggered up to the road, half on his hands and knees.

It was empty apart from the bus and the unmistakeable smell of diesel fumes. He hobbled to the steps and hauled himself up on the handrails.

The girls were gone.

Or hiding! Please God they were hiding! He limped down the aisle, looking madly from side to side at the seats, at the floor, even at the overhead luggage racks.

‘Maisie! Kylie!’

This couldn’t be happening. Not to him. The cancer was nothing compared to this hollow horror in his heart. He wished he had cancer instead of two missing children. Cancer would be a blessing.

He ran up and down outside the bus, looking underneath, then shouted the girls’ names furiously from the top of the steps.

‘It’s not funny!’ he yelled. ‘You get back here! It’s not funny! I’ll leave you! I’ll bloody well leave you and you can walk home and tell your mothers why you’re late! You get back here right now!’ His voice cracked.

He limped up and down the aisle compulsively. He could have missed them. They might be sitting very still, or curled into balls on the back seat, winding him up. He was close to crying, he was so scared. He had to call Karen and tell her he loved her, whatever she did, and to please come back home and everything would be OK, just like it was when she was little. Please, please, please come back. Please.

Frank Tithecott pulled his Royal Mail van over behind the school bus and got out. There was a curious thumping from inside the bus, and it rocked ever so slightly from side to side.

The postman climbed the steps cautiously, and was met by the disturbing sight of Ken Beard lurching down the aisle towards him, babbling about two children and a diesel car, and with his limp penis bobbing from side to side through his open slacks.

Frank took charge. He got Ken Beard to zip up and sit down, then called the police to tell them that it seemed two children had gone missing from the school bus.

That the driver was mazed.

And that there was a square yellow note on the steering wheel that read: You don’t love them.

* * *

The postman who’d stopped behind the school bus had told Reynolds that Ken Beard had been exposing himself at the scene. What he’d actually said was, ‘Come at me pretty as you please, bawling and babbling and with his dongle out.’ So Reynolds had quizzed the driver until he cried so hard he was no longer coherent, whereupon the local doctor was called to give him a sedative, and his nephew – a small-town solicitor who was there at short notice to safeguard his Uncle Ken’s legal rights – hurriedly removed himself from the case and called a proper criminal lawyer from Bristol.

Reynolds would have loved it if having your dongle out was conclusive evidence of serial kidnap, but life just wasn’t that simple. As it was, he was not even suspicious enough of Ken Beard to hold him in custody overnight.

The Bristol lawyer was turned back on the M5 and still charged the family ?285.

A mobile incident room arrived from HQ – although this one was less grotty than the one they’d been assigned two winters back. Graham Nash allowed them to put it in the Red Lion car park, which was handy.

Reynolds now had twelve officers assigned specifically to the case, and could call on another dozen or so from the Exmoor team, in the form of men volunteering their days off, or beat officers like Holly and PC Walters, who could be seconded from regular duties as and when they were needed.

With most of Exmoor’s manpower concentrated on the abductions, other crimes on the moor took a back seat. Theft from garden sheds soared – doubling over the next two weeks from four to eight, and prompting one police-control-room officer to sigh without irony, ‘It’s all gone Chicago out there.’

Despite all the hustle and bustle and the new men and the new incident room and the new publicity and the new thermal-imaging search and the new Google maps Reynolds kept sticking on the whiteboard, in the hunt for five missing children there were no new leads.

25

KATE GULLIVER KNEW SHE’D done the wrong thing.

Even if it all turned out all right – which it surely would – nothing could change that.

Her conscience had wrestled with her instincts ever since she’d rubber-stamped Jonas Holly and cleared him for going back to work. While other clients were infinitely more troublesome by day, it was Jonas Holly who invaded her night-time thoughts and kept her from sleep.

A dozen times, lying in bed, she’d resolved to call him for a chat, and then failed to do so the next morning. And every day she put it off, she felt her initial knee-jerk decision swelling like a trick flower dropped in water, until she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think about anything other than Jonas Holly and that strange cold fear that had left her so weak that she’d sidestepped her own ethics.

Finally she called him.

The ring tone sounded old-fashioned. She’d never been to Exmoor but her imagination was not a bad facsimile of the reality of the little stone cottage where Jonas lived.

He picked up on the fifth ring and she found herself unprepared, even though she’d been thinking about what to say for weeks.

‘Hello Jonas, it’s Kate.’

There was a silence, so she added, ‘Gulliver.’

A tentative ‘Hello.’

‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ he said.

‘Good. That’s good. I just wanted to know … I just wondered how you’ve been. Back at work.’

There was another long pause. Christ! It was like pulling teeth!

‘Fine, thanks.’

His voice was flat. Kate wished she’d just got into her car and gone to see him; she was getting nothing from this. Worse than that, she felt that she was on the back foot. Instead of feeling like the professional – cool, calm and in control – she felt as if she was scrabbling for a foothold on the conversation, jostling for firm ground. She wished she hadn’t called, but it was too late now. She just needed to get this over with.

‘I’d like to see you for a follow-up session, Jonas.’

There. No beating about the bush. The moment the words were out of her mouth, Kate started to feel better. Braver.

‘Why?’

‘It’s standard practice,’ she said, although that wasn’t strictly true. ‘Just to help smooth the transition back into work. We don’t like to leave people high and dry.’

‘I’m not … high and dry,’ he said.

‘I’m glad, Jonas,’ she soothed. ‘But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t see you again. Shall we say next Thursday?’

This was much better. Now she had her pen poised over her diary, Kate felt she had the upper hand once more. This was how things were supposed to be. He’d agree to next Thursday and she’d write it in her diary with the gold Waterman fountain pen her father had given her upon her graduation from Cambridge. Then, next Thursday, Jonas Holly would come to her office and she could work on him some more. Be sure, this time. And if she wasn’t sure, she would then have the power to remove him from the duty roster once more, and her initial, panicky mistake would seem smaller and smaller every step of the way. Once that pen touched down, it was a done deal.

‘I’m busy next Thursday,’ he said. ‘I’m busy right now. And I’m fine.’