Читаем Finders Keepers полностью

Every now and then Lettie focused on him with clear eyes, and then reached out and held him in arms that were so tight and desperate it made him itch to throw her off and skip away across the room to freedom. But – in the first consciously selfless act of his young life – Davey stayed put and allowed her to crush him to her breast as if she might re-absorb him straight through her skin.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t afraid. He was afraid.

He and Shane didn’t go to Springer Farm any more, or to the woods. Both now seemed like places where bad things had happened – and still might. Sometimes they went to the playing field and he watched Shane skate. That was all. He stopped bothering with homework or the fallout. Sometimes he didn’t go to school at all, but sat on the swings and shared a fag with Chantelle Cox, or swung himself so high and so fast that the world seemed easy to leave behind.

Gravity always dragged him back.

The Piper Parents came round for a meeting and pawed him like zombies. They asked him how he was and made sympathetic faces, but he knew they really wanted to grab him and shake him to make him tell them something – anything – that might help them to find their missing children.

He couldn’t. He had seen the kidnapper, heard his voice, been in his car, and yet his recollection was so patchy as to be useless. The only things he remembered for sure were the plan he and Shane had thought was so clever, and the way he’d shouted instead of shushed …

He went into Steven’s room and touched all the stuff he’d never been allowed to. He took down the Batman action figures, but found the fantasy of crime had been made dull by the reality. He looked through Steven’s school bag and read a story he’d written called ‘A Day in the Life of a Tree’, which sounded shit but was actually quite good, considering the tree never went anywhere or did anything. He searched for porn under the bed, but found only Steven’s name carved into the wall, and the crumpled receipt for the umbrella they had given Nan for her birthday.

£13.99.

It made him so angry he felt like crying.

If Steven ever came back, he’d tell everyone how Davey had lied about them running away together. Then, instead of a hero, he would be a baddie, who’d hit his own brother and left him behind.

Davey wanted his brother back – of course he did.

But only if he shushed, not shouted.

* * *

Through the bright-blue gap in the roof, Jonas could see a buzzard circling over the moor. Now and then it cried out – a strangely puny sound for such a big bird. He waved away a fly. They were always there, because of the meat. This one landed on his face again, and Jonas left it; took the decision that unless it was on his mouth, he no longer had the energy.

The children came back from the meadow with hands full of grass and dandelions, and Jonas’s stomach squealed in pathetic anticipation. This time, Steven had picked some too, and when Jonas thanked him, he said: ‘’s OK,’ and went immediately to his post at the back of his kennel, eye pressed to the chink in the wall. He had barely spoken since he’d broken down – not even to Jess.

Charlie touched Jonas’s arm. ‘Hello, Jonas. How do you do?’

‘How do you do, Charlie?’

‘Do you have some peanut butter?’

Jonas’s stomach wrenched at the mere words. ‘Sorry, Charlie.’

The boy screwed up his face. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said forlornly.

‘Why don’t you eat your meat?’ asked Jonas, pointing at the bones behind Charlie.

‘Why don’t you eat yours?’

‘I don’t eat meat,’ Jonas told him patiently for the fiftieth time.

‘I don’t eat meat too,’ said the boy. He kicked out at one of the bones, yelping at the pain in his toes. The bone drubbed across the floor and rattled the bottom of the gate.

Charlie sat down on the edge of his bed and sniffled. ‘Hurt my toe,’ he said in a tiny voice.

Steven turned away from the wall and nodded at Charlie. ‘I think he’s scared of eating it,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘ ’Cos of the meat. You know?’

‘No.’

Steven sighed. ‘When the helicopter came over. He put us in the meat. Hanging up in the little room. You know?’

Jonas looked so confused that Steven asked, ‘Where were you, then?’

Jonas frowned. Where was he?

The helicopter, the cold splash, the banging on his legs, the sharp pricks on his chest and Lucy floating above him …

‘He held me underwater.’

Steven blinked. ‘Why?’

Jonas shrugged. He had no idea.

But now that he’d remembered the shock of the water, Jonas also remembered other things. Not all of it, just bits. Being so small, his head swimming with that smell, his arm hurting from the huntsman’s grip, concrete grazing his knees. He remembered the sudden bitter darkness, the loop of chain pulling him upwards, and the heavy things touching his face … heavy, cold things …

It was obvious.

‘Cold!’ he said. ‘The flesh room is cold and so is the water.’

Steven still looked blank.

‘Thermal-imaging cameras. On the chopper.’