Читаем Finders Keepers полностью

They couldn’t understand him at first. He was so hysterical and breathless and they were so flustered and cross. Even as Shane babbled and tugged at the length of green twine knotted around his wrist, Steven was aware of Em putting her feet back into her turquoise sandals, her perfect breasts hidden once more under her top. Under her top where his hands had just been …

But once they did understand what he was saying, Steven didn’t think he’d ever moved so fast. He was running before he’d finished stamping his feet back into his still-laced trainers. Em’s hand was in his so she could keep up, but he could have towed her trailer up the hill and not been slowed. Every time Shane flagged, Steven shoved him between the shoulder blades or pushed the back of his head.

‘Run!’ he yelled. ‘Keep running!’

At Rose Cottage, Em stopped dead and their hands tore apart.

‘The police!’ she panted.

‘No!’ Steven yelled.

‘Steven! Don’t be so stupid!’ Em ran up the little stone steps before he could stop her.

He heard her hammer on the door and shout.

He didn’t want Mr Holly there. Pretending to help. Pretending to care. Taking charge.

Leading them away from where Davey might be?

He would have run on alone, but he couldn’t leave Em here with him.

Torn between his brother and the girl he loved, Steven Lamb dithered on the narrow lane, to the sound of Shane’s doubled-over wheezing.

Em came down the steps with Mr Holly behind her, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and thick green gardening gloves.

Steven yanked the protesting Shane upright and started to push him onwards up the hill.

When they finally stopped beside the burned-out Mazda, the silent heat of the woods was oppressive.

‘I was in here,’ Shane panted. ‘He was over there.’

They followed him through the ferns and between the trees to the little silver birch and the yellow note.

Steven picked it off the forest floor.

‘You don’t love him.’ The relief left him wobbly.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘He’s just messing about! I’m gonna kill him! We had a fight and—’

‘No,’ said Jonas Holly harshly. ‘It’s not a joke.’

They were surprised into silence by his words. Now they all watched as he frowned at the trees to the north, as if trying to remember something – or to see something that nobody else could.

‘Wait here,’ he said calmly. ‘Stay together. If I’m not back in ten minutes, go for help.’

And with that he ran into the woods.

‘Shit!’ Steven felt his little brother disappearing from him as fast and as surely as if he was falling down a well. If Mr Holly thought he knew where he was, then Steven needed to know too. And if the policeman was somehow involved, then what the hell was he doing letting him get away?

Doing nothing was not an option.

Steven grabbed Em’s hands. ‘You two go for help right now,’ he said urgently. ‘I have to go after him.’

‘But Stevie, he said—’

‘I don’t care, Em! He murdered his wife. He might have killed those children too. Tell the police. I have to go after him. I have to find Davey!’

Em’s open mouth held a million questions, but Steven let go of her and ran after Jonas Holly.

‘Steven!’ she shouted, but he never looked back and was soon swallowed up by the trees.

* * *

Davey Lamb wasn’t a girl, he wasn’t nine years old, and he wasn’t special like Charlie Peach. Davey Lamb was fit and strong and tried to fight every bit as hard as he’d once boasted to Chantelle Cox that he would. Twice he’d even broken away and reeled into the woods – trying to outrun his attacker on rubbery legs that let him down and tripped him up. The trees spun around him and the floor of the forest was cool and rough against his cheek. And the arms that pulled him upwards once more were strong and relentless.

Davey tried to see a face, but it always eluded him, like something seen from the corner of his eye. Smooth and featureless and glimpsed only in snatches. His kidnapper seemed neither tall nor short, nor fat nor thin. He wore a big coat, but other than that, he was just a being with hands that gripped and legs that moved faster than Davey’s own could. A dark voice muttered threats beside his ear, and Davey’s T-shirt – a red one with a pointing finger over the words HE MADE ME DO IT – bunched up under his arms as he was propelled staggering through the trees.

Davey wondered whether Shane was still sitting in the Mazda, waiting to be captured by the same person who now held him hard by the arm and the scruff, and who occasionally helped him along with a knee under his buttocks.

Davey laughed at that idea, and immediately felt sick. He was drunk. He hadn’t been drinking, but this was definitely what being drunk felt like. Last winter he and Shane had finished a bottle of Advocaat they’d found in Shane’s mother’s kitchen cupboard. They’d downed it like cough mixture, then had laughed until they’d cried at the sight of Shane’s hamster, Anakin, quivering under his shavings.