Finders Keepers

Which seemed bizarre.

Reynolds sighed again and stared gloomily into the mirror. Overhead the floorboards creaked as Rice searched Jonas’s bedroom.

The answerphone flashed and Reynolds hit Play on a robot message telling Jonas he had won a holiday in Florida and needed only to call this number to claim his prize.

He moved away, then back again – and played the outgoing message:

Hi, you’ve reached Jonas and Lucy …

Shit.

He’d forgotten what a bloody weirdo Jonas Holly was. For the first time, the idea that he might have murdered his wife and stolen a slew of local children didn’t even seem that far-fetched.

He ordered his team to go through the house and garden again. This time with far more rigour.

36

JESS TOOK WATCHED THE skin peel off a small brown pony like a flesh banana, and remembered the fruit bowl in her mother’s kitchen. The way her mother polished each apple before it was allowed to take its place among the peaches and grapes; the way Jess was only allowed to take a piece of fruit if she rearranged the display so it didn’t look unbalanced.

Nothing worse than lopsided fruit, her mother used to say.

Jess smiled wryly against the cold block wall. She wished her mother could see her now. See the straw she slept on, the cement she shat on and the filth she ate. See if her mother still thought there was nothing worse than a wonky apple.

Jess’s mouth filled suddenly with tangy saliva as her body remembered the fresh, sweet, juicy crunch of a Braeburn.

Her eyes overflowed.

In the past six weeks, her mouth had almost forgotten what freshness was. Her tongue tasted fetid and her teeth were jagged traps for tiny shards of bone and frayed strands of flesh that resisted her constant probing. She tried never to close her mouth now; tried to keep the air circulating. Sometimes she drooled because of it, but it was better than closing her lips on that dank cavern.

The ssssssssss sound rose like sticky tape coming off a roll; the pony’s carcass jerked as the last of its skin left it and skidded across the floor attached to the winch. The huntsman filled his arms with the hide and hoofs and head, and walked from the big shed to the incinerator to create more stench of burning hair.

He sang as he went, like a madman.

Of course he did. He was a madman.

Jess sighed and turned away.

In the kennel next to hers was the new boy. She didn’t know his name but she had seen him at school. He was in the sixth form. He wasn’t one of the cool kids; he was just an average kid.

Now he was just an average dog.

Hound. Her father always hated it when she called the foxhounds dogs.

The older boy stirred and Jess turned away from the breeze-block wall and hung her fingers through the chain link on the other side instead.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Hey, you with the ears.’

He blinked and frowned and then opened his eyes and looked at the corrugated plastic sheeting over his head.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’

He turned towards her.

‘I’m Jess.’

He closed his eyes again and ignored her. Jess let him. She’d done that plenty when she’d first woken up here: closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep so she could wake from this lunatic dream in her own bed.

After a few moments, he opened his eyes and looked at her again. She laughed – a short humourless sound.

‘Yeah, it’s real,’ she said. ‘Crap, right?’

He propped himself on his elbows. ‘Jess Took?’

‘Yep.’

‘You’re alive.’

‘You’re a genius.’

He got slowly to his feet and stared stupidly down at his dark-blue briefs. ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘He took them. Don’t worry about it. He takes all our clothes.’

‘Who does?’

‘The huntsman. I can’t remember his name. But I know he’s the huntsman. Don’t worry, he’s not a perv. Not yet, anyway.’

Steven looked at her as if for the first time, taking in her grubby bra and matching knickers. It was only the second time he’d ever seen a girl in a bra, but this was nothing like the first.

‘I feel sick,’ he said.

‘It’s just the drugs,’ Jess told him. ‘Everyone feels sick when they first get here.’

Everyone.

Steven peered through the chain link beyond Jess Took and saw a little blonde girl, staring at him with solemn eyes; beyond her was a brown-haired child of about the same size. Kylie someone, and the other girl whose name he couldn’t remember – they’d been taken from the bus. In the furthest kennel of all was a thin, freckled boy with red hair. All the wire between them made the child he guessed must be Pete Knox indistinct and hazy in a block pattern, like a bad digital signal.

‘Hi,’ Pete said, and waved sombrely. Steven raised a slow hand.

‘What’s your name?’ said the blonde girl.

‘Steven,’ he said.

‘She’s Kylie,’ said Jess. ‘And that’s Maisie and Pete.’ She flicked her filthy hair and Steven noticed her collar for the first time. Almost simultaneously he put his hand to his own throat and felt the thick, soft leather collar there. His fingers worked at the buckle.

‘You can’t take it off. It’s locked on.’

His fingers found the little padlock. ‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘’Cos he’s a loony, that’s why.’

A loony. The childish tag was not enough to describe anyone who would do this.

‘Hey!’ The shout and a metallic rattle behind him made Steven spin round, heart in his mouth. Two kennels down a youngster with bright-yellow hair slapped the chain link with the flats of both palms, and grinned happily.

‘Hey! Hello!’

‘Hi,’ said Steven cautiously.

‘Are we going home? Are we going home for tea? Can I have biscuits when we get home?’

Charlie Peach.

Steven had seen him occasionally, trailing behind his father into Mr Jacoby’s shop; once waiting for Mr Peach inside the secretary’s office after school. But mostly Charlie lived in a separate world, away from the normality of Shipcott. An indoors world where it was safe, or at the special school he went to. Steven had seen a Sunshine coach parked outside Mr Peach’s house on more than one occasion, waiting to take Charlie out for the day with the other vacant, smiling children packed inside.

Although once he’d met the eyes of a boy in that coach.

Above the boy’s crooked hands and shiny, wagging chin, he’d met a pair of eyes that had glared at him as if it was all his fault. Steven had looked away and never looked into the coach again. It was a different world in that coach.