Finders Keepers

she found them hard to believe herself, and she relayed them almost apologetically to Detective Inspector Reynolds. Em was quick to notice the glances he exchanged with his colleague as she spoke, and she got the feeling that if Shane had not been both beside her and beside himself, DI Reynolds might have told her to run along and stop wasting his time. It seemed they were far more impressed by a blubbering, panic-stricken eleven-year-old than they were by her careful re-telling of events.

When she’d finished, Reynolds and Rice drove all three of them back to the woods and followed them first to the burned-out car and then to the little birch where the yellow note still lay.

‘Did you write this?’ said the Detective Inspector so sharply to Em that she flinched.

‘Of course not!’ she snapped back. ‘Steven thought it was his brother having a joke, but then the policeman said it wasn’t. Then he told us to stay here and he ran into the trees.’

Reynolds stared in the direction her finger indicated.

But he didn’t move. Didn’t run into the trees. Why wasn’t he running into the trees?

Em was a girl who respected authority. Why shouldn’t she? Authority had always respected her. Until now. Now she saw only suspicion in DI Reynolds’s sharp eyes – a suspicion that was making everything proceed too slowly. The little jet of anger that shot through her took her by surprise.

‘You think I’m lying!’

‘I didn’t—’

‘You do. You think I’m lying. I’m not. You need to stop wasting time and go and find them!’

‘Now, now,’ said DI Reynolds. ‘We need to do this the right way.’

‘You need to do it the fast way!

‘Listen, Emma—’

‘Emily.’

Reynolds pursed his lips disapprovingly and glanced at Rice, but Rice pretended to be looking into the woods.

And then she really was looking into the woods.

‘Somebody’s there,’ she said softly.

They all turned to follow her gaze. In the straining silence that followed, they heard something moving quickly through the undergrowth. Getting louder.

‘It’s coming this way,’ whispered Rice, and her hushed words in the cathedral of trees made life suddenly seem like an evil fairy tale.

‘There!’ hissed Em, at a brief flash of red.

‘Davey!’ shouted Shane.

Reynolds felt a rush of relief.

‘See?’ he couldn’t resist saying to the girl, and had to make a conscious effort not to add ‘I told you so.’

Davey Lamb stumbled out of the trees at an angle to them, as if he had only arrived by accident.

‘Davey!’ Shane said again, but in a more faltering voice. Reynolds could see why. The boy moved as if drunk, his legs stiff and rubbery by turn, and his arms loose and flapping by his sides, the elbows jerking this way and that. He turned his head at the sound of Shane’s voice, but it was with the wobbly neck and the vacant eyes of an unstrung puppet.

Nobody moved; nobody ran to Davey and helped him. That alone made the scene even more disturbing. Instead the boy swung himself around in a doddering arc and came to them. Rice finally closed the few paces between them. ‘Are you OK, Davey?’ she said.

‘What?’ he said, screwing up his face in confusion. ‘What?’

Drugs. Reynolds had seen enough of them to know. These rural communities were rife with them. An edge of anger made him want to slap the boy for wasting their time. Except, as he got closer he could see that Davey Lamb was also streaked with what looked like coal or grease.

‘Where’s Steven?’ said Emily Carver urgently.

‘Back there,’ said Davey, waving a vague arm behind him. ‘They tried to kill me, but I got away.’

‘Who tried to kill you, Davey?’ Rice had bent down a little now to get on to the same level as the boy. She spoke in her soothe-the-victim voice.

Davey stared at her, then turned and stared at the woods behind him, frowning deeply. ‘I dunno,’ he said. Vomit followed the last word out of his mouth and fell down his shirt in a lumpy coconut stream.

‘Gross!’ said Shane.

Reynolds looked soberly at Rice.

Davey sat down heavily on the forest floor, cross-legged, and with long strings of snotty fluid hanging from his nose. He started to cry.

‘Davey, where’s Steven?’ the girl insisted, but Davey Lamb could only shake his head and sob.

PART TWO

LAST WINTER

34

THE HOCKS, THE hoofs, the hide, the head.

The hocks, the hoofs, the hide, the head …

Funny, I never do this without singing that old song. In my head, mostly, but sometimes out loud, as my knife slips easy through the skin. No accident, that. Old Murton taught me well about knives. Meat likes a fresh blade, old Murton used to say – no point in sharpening a knife and then not using it. I sharpen my knives right before I use them, see? Right before I take the legs off at the hock, like so. They come off so clean and I pick them up. This is a calf, so it’s easy to hold all four feet in one hand. Place them off to one side. Now a little slit here and here, a long slit there and all round the throat.

Now the chain goes round the head like that, to hold him in place, see? And the hook for the winch goes in the collar like so. When I started there weren’t no electric up here and it were my job to turn the winch by hand. All right for a calf, but you try winding the hide off a bloody carthorse! It’s different now. Press the button and away we go. The hide comes off lovely with a crackle and quiet little ssssssssss and leaves neat pink muscles and tendons in the shape of a calf.

Taking off the head dulls the knife but I won’t sharpen it until the next job – whether that’s five minutes from now or five days. Old Murton taught me well. Old! Listen to me calling him old when he was likely younger than I am now. Just seemed old to me ’cos I was just a bay, see? Fourteen when I started here, and it took me a right good sweat to line out my first sheep. Up to my elbows in blood and shit and I still couldn’t get the head off!

Not like now. One, two, three and it’s gone. That’s the only place that bleeds. Just drops out of the throat on to the concrete. Dark red and shiny but not much of it. Put the head beside the legs, with the fat pink tongue poking out all comical.

Hang the calf at the back of the flesh room and spray it blue so it can’t go for people to eat. There’s a dozen carcasses in here but we’ll get through all those before they go bad. Easy. Cold, see? Even in midsummer it’s always cold in the flesh room ’cos of the thick walls and turf roof.

Mostly it’s horses this year. Been a bad winter and feeding an old horse is no way to spend money. There’s a couple of late calves too small to make it by the time the snow come, a few ponies off the moor and Jack Biggins’s best old milker, Bubbles. Brought her in himself, he did, and said she’d always liked to watch the hunt go by. Daft old bugger! But he didn’t want her going off to Brown’s, see, where they treat ’em so bad. Likely old Bubbles thought her was coming in to be milked! Down the concrete slope, a pat between the eyes, a kind word. No bother.

I go back into the big shed and collect the leftovers of the calf – the hocks, the hoofs, the hide, the head – and put ’em in the incinerator. Time was we’d sell the hides to the tanneries at Porlock or