Finders Keepers (25 page)

‘Not really,’ he said finally.

‘And what reason do you have to think he might have taken the children?’

‘Just … I don’t know.’ That was never going to be enough, he knew. ‘Just a feeling really.’

DS Rice looked at her watch quite openly this time. ‘OK, Steven. Is there anything else?’

He shook his head. He knew he’d failed. She’d already lost interest.

‘Well, thanks for coming in to speak to us, all right?’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘But I’m not making it up.’

‘I didn’t say you were.’

He thought she kind of
had
, but let it go.

Then she glanced down at his scuffed school bag. ‘You off to school now?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Anything else you want to tell us, you just come to the mobile unit in the car park, all right? Anything you think could help with finding the children. OK? After nine.’

‘OK,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Steven.’

Elizabeth Rice watched Steven Lamb leave the bar, hoisting his backpack on to his shoulders as he went. She didn’t remember what it was to be a child, but one thing he’d said
had
made her remember something.

It was just the WAY he said it
.

It made her think of being sixteen and telling her mother that
a
neighbour, Mr Craddock, had made suggestive remarks to her at the bus stop on her way to school one day. She’d known Mr Craddock since she was small, and always thought he was a nice man. In the summer he would let Elizabeth walk his dog, Fuzzy, because her parents wouldn’t let her have one. Once he’d shouted at some boys who’d been teasing her. He always waved and smiled, and his wife did too.

And then that day at the bus stop – when she was sixteen years old – he’d asked her if they spanked her at school.

‘No!’ She’d laughed. The idea was silly. Nobody got spanked at school any more. Even the word was laughable. ‘They just give us detention.’

‘What about at home?’ Mr Craddock had said. ‘Does your daddy spank you?’

‘No,’ said Elizabeth, and hadn’t laughed, because suddenly this was making her feel uncomfortable.

They’d got on the bus together and she remembered how she’d hated the fact that he’d come up the steps behind her, knowing that he must be looking at her bare legs under the school skirt she’d always insisted on wearing just a little too short. Feeling that Mr Craddock had moved from the column marked ‘Nice Man’ to the one marked ‘Pervert’ in the mental list she kept. A list that seemed to be growing in direct proportion to her breasts.

It had been a week before she’d told her mother about it.

‘I’m sure he was just joking,’ her mother had said.

‘He wasn’t,’ Rice could hear herself saying now. ‘It was the
way
he said it.’

Now the grown-up Elizabeth Rice watched the boy pass the small leaded window, head down, frowning.

She went upstairs and dried her hair – which
was
shit – and mentioned the conversation to Reynolds over breakfast.

‘Steven Lamb?’ he said, prissily rubbing his fingers and thumb together to dislodge crumbs.

‘Yes,’ said Rice. She thought that Reynolds might be a lot more attractive if he didn’t always have the continental breakfast. Croissants weren’t manly.

‘He’s that kid who nearly got killed by Arnold Avery.’

‘I
thought
it rang a bell.’

‘Interesting,’ mused Reynolds, raising a Roger Moore eyebrow.

Rice didn’t ask why. That was what Reynolds wanted and she hated playing silly games, in or out of a relationship. If it really
was
interesting she had no doubt that he would tell her anyway. His ego wouldn’t be able to resist it.

It only took a moment …

‘It makes you wonder what effect that might have on a child.’

‘What do you mean?’

Reynolds leaned back away from his croissant – torn, never sliced – and put his splayed fingers together under his nose.

He thinks he’s Sherlock bloody Holmes
. Rice had to take a mouthful of bacon to keep from laughing.

‘I don’t know,’ said Reynolds slowly, but in a tone that said he
did
know – he just wasn’t telling
you
.

Rice
was
interested in the fact that Steven Lamb had almost been murdered. Who wouldn’t be interested in that? She wished now that she’d known that at the time. But right now she’d rather drop down dead with curiosity than give Reynolds the satisfaction of pleading for information he should be sharing as a matter of course.

So she took a piece of toast from the rack and mopped up her bean juice with it.

‘Maybe I’ll call Kate Gulliver,’ he said sharply. ‘Discuss it with her.’

Oh shut up
, thought Rice.

JUNE THE SECOND
– exactly four weeks after Jess Took had been stolen from her father’s horsebox – Nan’s birthday dawned early and bright, the chill night warming quickly as the sun cleared the top of the moor.

Steven and Davey still hadn’t made up. Steven had tried a few times but Davey was a grudge-bearer, and after a week of grunts and monosyllables, Lettie had told them they weren’t welcome on the birthday trip to Barnstaple.

‘They should go through a war together,’ Nan had decreed. ‘That’d sort them out.’ Her default position was that there was no problem so big that it could not be resolved by going through a war together. It was her solution for everything from family spats to inflation. Steven had once pointed out that the Israelis and Palestinians had been going through a war together for years and it didn’t seem to be sorting much out, and Nan had told him not to be cheeky.

Steven was slightly disappointed with the weather, because he had bought his nan an umbrella. It sounded boring as hell,
but
it was so small and light that it could be carried in her pocket, let alone her handbag. And the best thing about it – the absolute best – was that when raised, the canopy was covered with old family photos.

Once he’d accepted the truth about the porn channel, Steven had put his Friday evenings at Chantelle Cox’s to good use. He didn’t have a computer of his own, so he’d used hers – scanning old pictures and emailing them to the company he’d found online that would print photos on to almost any object he cared to pay over the odds for.

Steven had used the box of photos from the cupboard under the stairs and had picked a dozen of the best. They were all old; he couldn’t remember the last time family photos had been taken, or who had taken most of these. He and Davey under Weston pier with ice creams; a young Lettie with her hair up, looking sparkly; Nan squinting, with Davey in a buggy.

A dozen times since it had arrived, Steven had opened the umbrella in his room to admire it. He was sure Nan would love it, combining as it did the two things she was most interested in – the past and the weather.

Steven folded the umbrella carefully down to its smallest size, clipped it tightly in place and pulled on the little cover it was supplied with. Then he wrapped it in a sheet of flowered paper he’d bought specially from Mr Jacoby’s shop. The paper came with two little tags in matching colours. He wrote ‘To Nan, with love from Steven’ on one, and taped it to the parcel.

Despite the lack of rain, his good mood had returned. Friday at school had seen to that. Em hadn’t changed her mind; she still loved him. The relief had been tremendous. His fledgling self-confidence – shaken by the encounter with Jonas Holly – had been quickly rebuilt by Em’s smile as he’d walked into the classroom. He could tell she’d been watching the door for him.

‘Have you had sex?’ Lewis had said suspiciously.

‘No.’ Steven had smiled, because that no longer mattered.

‘Didn’t think so,’ Lewis had snorted, when he so obviously
had
thought so that it made Steven laugh.

‘Breakfast!’ Lettie yelled up the stairs. It was early today, because of her and Nan getting the bus to Barnstaple. Even so, Steven heard Davey thundering down the stairs as if he hadn’t eaten for a week.

Davey had had no money to buy Nan a gift with. He’d revealed this with a meaningful glare in Steven’s direction, which was wasted on Lettie.

‘Then make her something,’ she’d shrugged.

Davey had screwed up his face. ‘
Make
something?! I’m not a Chinese, you know!’

‘I can see that, thank you, Mr Smartypants.’

‘Make
what
? All the stuff I make falls apart.’

That was true; he was a craftwork dunce.

‘Then try harder,’ Lettie said unsympathetically. ‘It’s not like you don’t know your nan’s birthday. It’s the same date every year, you know.’

So Davey had made Nan a bird out of a cereal packet and assorted feathers he’d found up in the woods. It looked like cardboard roadkill and – true to Davey’s skill level – was already starting to moult.

Now Steven stopped with his hand on his bedroom door handle. He felt bad for Davey. Even though the little shit had ruined his skateboard, he felt bad that his brother only had a sticky clump of kindergarten crap to give to Nan for her birthday. Felt bad for Davey
and
Nan.

‘Steven! Breakfast! I’m not saying again!’

Quickly, he picked up a pen and added ‘and Davey’ to the tag, then ran downstairs.

Nan made a fuss of the cardboard bird, although a couple of feathers fell out of it before she’d even finished hugging Davey. Lettie had bought her the
Bumper Book of Daily Mail Crosswords
, which Nan loved, of course. Then she
turned
to Steven’s present and admired the wrapping paper.

‘I’ll save that,’ she said, and he knew she would. Nan had quite the collection of carefully folded wrapping paper and a similar stash of used paper bags. She didn’t exactly iron them, but it was close.

‘With love from Steven and Davey,’ she read over the top of her glasses.

Davey gave Steven a puzzled look.

Nan opened the gift. ‘Oooh, a lovely umbrella.’

‘Open it, Nan,’ said Steven.

‘Not indoors! Bad luck to open a brolly indoors.’

Steven didn’t tell her that he’d already extended repeated invitations to bad luck while admiring the umbrella in his room. Instead he left his fake Weetabix to go soggy and took the umbrella from Nan. He stepped outside the back door and opened it so she could see the canopy.

‘Well!’ she said. ‘Well, do you see that? Pictures of everyone! Look at that! Isn’t that clever! Me squinting away, and you boys on the beach. I remember that day. Both got covered in tar off the pier. Charming. And Lettie! All pretty! Turn it round a bit, Steven. Did you make it?’

‘Got it online.’

Nan leaned in to Lettie, looking confused. ‘He got it where?’

‘Online, Mum. On the computer.’

Nan flapped a hand at technology, but couldn’t hide her pleasure. ‘Well, you boys are chocolate. Thank you.’

She hugged them both.

‘Welcome,’ said Steven.

‘Welcome,’ said Davey.

But Steven noticed that for some reason Davey still didn’t look happy.

Lettie ran through the rules of non-engagement one last time: no fighting; no leaving the house; no mess; no touching the stove until Uncle Jude had had a chance to fix it. There was
bread
, and they knew where the toaster was. Then she and Nan left at 9.25 to catch the 9.32 bus to Barnstaple. Nan made a show of taking the umbrella, even though the sun was already scorching the sky.

Twenty minutes after they left, Shane arrived with a bag of coconut mushrooms, and he and Davey switched on the TV and hooked up the PS2.

Steven took up his nan’s old station at the window, but for a very different purpose. His heart recognized the shape of Em while she was still a blur, and he smiled. As she got closer he saw she was wearing cut-off jeans with a white vest top and her favourite shoes. Flip-flops, his nan would have called them, but they went far beyond seaside plastic. They were soft leather and had turquoise beads and little shells sewn on to them. She’d got them on holiday in Spain. Steven had never been on holiday anywhere, let alone somewhere foreign. Weston-super-Mare was the furthest from home he’d ever been and that had only been day trips. When he’d told Em that, she’d laughed and hadn’t believed him. She lived in a different world half a mile away.

Em looked up and saw him, and smiled and raised a hand in brief greeting.

He grinned and hurdled the PS2 control cables on his way to the front door.

‘What’s with him?’ Shane said.

‘He thinks someone loves him,’ he heard Davey say.

The words sliced a cruel edge off his happiness, so that by the time he opened the door, his smile had faded.

‘What’s up?’ said Em.

‘Nothing. Hi. Come in,’ he said, and stood aside, wondering if he should be kissing Em hello. It seemed a bit …
familiar
, so he didn’t.