Finders Keepers

He came back later with a bucket and a bundle under his arm, and pulled Charlie’s stained underwear down and off his legs.

‘What are you doing?’ Jonas’s voice was so tight with tension that he could hardly hear it himself. He squeezed Charlie’s hand so hard that the boy squeaked.

Coffin said nothing. Using a sponge and a bottle of Hibiscrub, he washed Charlie down with the efficiency of a mortician, then opened a new pack of briefs and tugged a pair on to the sick boy. He flapped open an old blanket flecked with straw and tucked it around him.

Jonas watched his every movement like a hawk.

‘Can I have a blanket?’ asked Jess, but Coffin ignored her.

‘Good bay, Charlie,’ Coffin said, and Jonas felt tearful with relief as the huntsman patted the boy’s bony shoulder and locked the gate behind him.

Coffin started to clean Jonas’s kennel next; the now familiar sounds filled Jonas’s ears of the shovel scraping the floor, the slosh of the disinfectant, the hose in the water bucket.

‘You should let Charlie go,’ he said quietly.

Bob Coffin gave no indication of having heard him, but he picked up the broom that had pressed stippled bruises into Jonas’s chest and made an angry swishing noise with it on the wet cement beside him.

‘He shouldn’t be here.’

Jonas moved his legs but the broom banged his knee anyway. And again. It was rare for Bob Coffin to get close enough to touch him.

‘He won’t tell, if that’s what you’re worried about. He doesn’t even know where he is.’

Swissh! SWISSH!

Jonas hoped the silence meant the huntsman must be hearing him, taking it in, digesting his words. Maybe his conscience was finally being pricked.

‘Charlie needs to be at home with his dad.’

The broom swung through a short arc and smashed into Jonas’s face. It knocked him sideways so fast that his head bounced off the fence with a rattle. Bob Coffin loomed over him.

‘He don’t love him!’ he spat. Then he clanged out of the run and stormed up the walkway.

Jonas sat up and touched his jaw cautiously. The side of his face was numb and blood dripped slowly over his lower lip.

Charlie looked scared, so Jonas said, ‘Don’t worry, Charlie,’ and held his hand again.

The other children had been stunned into silence by the outburst.

All except Steven.

He rattled the fence, his eyes wide with excitement.

‘He heard you!’ he hissed at Jonas. ‘He heard you!’

51

DAVEY STOPPED HANGING out with Shane and now spent most of his days holding his PS2 console loosely in his hand, while pimps crashed their cars pointlessly into whores without any help from him. Uncle Jude tried to get him to help in the garden but he was already exhausted. He slept a lot, although not at night when he was supposed to; then he lay and stared into the darkness and thought of the way his mother would look at him when Steven came home. When she knew what a coward he was. What a liar.

Em called him downstairs for tea. She only came after school now and always cooked for them. It was spaghetti hoops on toast, his favourite, but his mum and his nan didn’t eat it, and that made everything taste crap.

‘I don’t like this,’ he told Em.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought you did.’

He dropped his fork with a clatter. ‘Why do you keep coming here?’

Everyone looked at Davey.

‘Well, why does she?’ he demanded. ‘Is she going to keep coming for ever?’

There was a short silence before Nan covered Em’s hand with hers. ‘She’s here because she loves Steven. Like we all do.’

‘I don’t!’ said Davey.

‘Of course you do,’ said Lettie. ‘Don’t be silly.’

Davey stood up sharply, with a loud scrape of his chair. ‘I don’t! I hate him! I hope he never comes home!’

Em bit her lip and Nan looked down at her toast.

Davey waited for his mother to get up and slap him hard. He didn’t care. Let her! She’d slap him and he’d cry and then she’d feel bad instead of him.

Instead Lettie reached for his hand. He tried to pull it away from her but she held on to it.

‘Leave me!’

She didn’t. She tugged him gently towards her. With every grudging step he felt his shell of brittle anger crack and flake.

‘Leave me!’

Lettie didn’t again. Instead she turned him and eased him on to her lap, and started to rub his back in warm circles, as if he were a small child.

‘Just leave me alone!’ he shouted.

Then he put his face in her neck so no one could see him cry.

After tea, Lettie took Davey to the Red Lion to see DI Reynolds.

‘I lied,’ Davey muttered, examining his own trainers as if he’d never seen them before.

‘I know,’ said DI Reynolds.

Davey was confused. DI Reynolds didn’t seem angry – or even surprised. In fact, he then answered the question Davey hadn’t asked. ‘We do come across our fair share of liars, you know.’

‘He’s not a liar,’ said Lettie firmly. ‘He just lied about this because he felt so bad about leaving Steven.’

‘Of course,’ said DI Reynolds.

Davey bit his lip and – to his amazement – DI Reynolds winked at him. Or maybe he just twitched. Davey looked away, uncertain of how he should respond and hoping his mother hadn’t seen it.

They sat down in the lounge bar where children were allowed, and Detective Sergeant Rice agreed with DI Reynolds that she didn’t mind buying Davey a Coke and his mother a white wine. Davey guessed she was DI Reynolds’s secretary.

DI Reynolds got out the same notebook he’d used before and they went through everything again. This time Davey did his best, however annoying it was, and told him even those details he wasn’t sure were real – those dreamlike snatches that had seemed too small and uncertain to bother with. A paper sack with a torn picture of a dog’s back legs and tail on it; black boots; zig-zag tyres. DI Reynolds made careful notes of everything and asked him all the same questions over and over again and even made his little train noise, and suddenly – out of nowhere – Davey remembered that the car was navy blue!

DI Reynolds wrote it down and Davey grinned in delight.

‘And he wore gloves!’ he shocked himself by saying.

‘What kind of gloves?’

‘Green woolly ones. That’s what smelled like medicine.’

DI Reynolds hissed something that sounded like ‘Shit’ to Davey. He got up abruptly and walked to the fireplace and back, and then walked there again and stared up at the shiny dead eyes of the big stuffed stag. DS Rice watched him eagerly and when he turned round they exchanged meaningful nods.

‘Does that help?’ said Davey.

‘Tons,’ said DS Rice.

Lettie gently twisted the little hairs at the back of Davey’s neck, and he didn’t even mind that people were watching.

DI Reynolds came back and they went through things again, but Davey had nothing more to offer. Even so, when the officer finally snapped a strip of black elastic around his notebook, it was with a satisfied air.