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Steven followed in Jonas Holly’s footsteps. He didn’t know what he was expecting. He didn’t know why he was doing it. Part of him – a big part – was embarrassed by the childish notion of keeping watch on Mr Holly. A teenaged boy keeping tabs on a policeman; it was silly and it was pointless and it was unsustainable. But still, he kept pace with the tall figure up ahead, never getting closer, stopping to tie his shoelace when Mr Holly lingered to read the notices in the window of Mr Jacoby’s shop, moving on again when he did.

The school was at the end of the village and Steven paused to tie his laces again while Mr Holly crossed the road and started back down the opposite pavement.

Now they were walking towards each other.

Steven didn’t know where to look. He didn’t want to have to say hello to Mr Holly but it seemed inevitable.

Steven turned his head to look into the windows of the houses he was passing. Some had nets, but many did not. Here were the dusty cacti in matching blue ceramic pots that lined the sill of Mr Peach, his PE teacher; here was the duck collection – including a plastic Donald – which Mrs Tithecott doted on and displayed proudly. Chris and Mark Tithecott had been getting into fights over those ducks ever since they’d started school – they made the twins a target just as surely as if they’d had red hair, glasses, or no-name trainers. Steven had witnessed them pleading with their mother to take the ducks out of the window on at least two occasions, but she’d been collecting them since she was a girl and was intransigent. Steven didn’t think the ducks were as bad as the twins did, but had some sympathy anyway, because of the years his nan had stood in their own front window, staring like a loon, watching for her dead son to come home from the shop, making targets of them all.

Steven realized that while he’d been remembering stuff, Mr Holly had passed by on the other side without having to be acknowledged.

Result.

Still, Steven knew that now Jonas Holly was back at work in Shipcott, he would never feel easy again.

13

THERE WAS A car in the woods. It idled deep in the dapple, on a spring sea of bluebells and starry white garlic. About three years ago, Ronnie Trewell had driven it there and, in a moment of panic, set fire to it. That was before he grew up a bit and learned that stealing a car and driving it fast was only the beginning of what could be a beautiful friendship.

After watching in misery as that first car burned, Ronnie had vowed never to waste another one. From then on, he kept the cars he stole. If the bodywork was shoddy, he’d mask off, refill and re-spray. If the engine ran rough he’d take it apart and work on it until it was hard to tell whether the ignition was on or off. If the performance fell short of what the internet told him it should be, Ronnie invested in air filters and new plugs and synthetic oil. In short, he stole good cars and made them better.

And each time Jonas Holly finally called at his door to ask him to open the garage and hand over his latest illicit prize, Ronnie got a lump in his throat the size of a locking wheel nut.

He didn’t blame Jonas; didn’t hate him. He knew that that was the way things were. People lost stuff; eventually they wanted it back. Jonas was just the middleman.

And he was a good middleman. He seemed to understand that Ronnie was more than just a thief. He seemed to understand that he cared.

Once, as Ronnie stood misty-eyed, watching a powder-blue Triumph Stag (with freshly re-chromed wire wheels) driven away on a low-loader, Jonas had patted his shoulder kindly. ‘This has got to stop, Ronnie,’ he’d sighed – and Ronnie had thought bitterly that Jonas was finally showing his true blue police colours. Then Jonas had added, ‘All this hard work going down the drain.’

He’d managed to get Ronnie on to a police-subsidized karting course, where his twin talents of mechanics and driving very fast led to him shining, instead of shaming his family.

The Stag was the last car Ronnie Trewell ever stole.

But this had been the first. This half-burned-out once-red Mazda MX5 convertible.

Ronnie had never gone back to the woods to see it, so it was left to Davey and Shane, among others, to find it and play in it. Although ‘play’ was not a word they would ever have used – even in their own heads.

Rally Crash was their favourite game – where one would sit behind the wheel, on a cushion stolen from Shane’s mother’s bedroom, and pretend to mow down the other, who was a hapless spectator at a hypothetical rally. This game involved much loud verbal gear-changing and last-minute shouts of warning from the driver, and cries of terror plus spectacular dives into the undergrowth from the victim. Then the driver would get out and pronounce the spectator dead, or the spectator would use his last breath to reach out and strangle the driver in the ferns.

Just depended how they felt.