Finders Keepers Read Free

Steven felt like a boy among men.
    Feeling slightly sick, he took out the envelope stuffed with notes and – like Jack handing over his mother’s cow for a handful of magic beans – gave it to Gary.
    He wanted desperately to ask for a receipt, as his mother had insisted he must, but Gary had already stuffed the money into his back pocket and was picking up one of the boxes.
    ‘Give you a hand,’ he said, as if he wanted rid of the evidence as quickly as possible before anyone rumbled his scam.
    Lewis took the frame, which was the lightest thing on offer, Ronnie picked up the other box despite his limp, and Steven took a wheel in each hand.
    They loaded what Steven desperately hoped was a complete motorcycle into the trailer Ronnie had borrowed from somewhere, and got into the Fiesta. Lewis in the front, Steven squashed up behind with an old greyhound, which was obviously used to stretching out on the back seat – and which gave way only grudgingly, before flopping back down across his legs.
    They drove back to Ronnie’s home in Shipcott too fast, and with the dog’s bony elbows sticking into Steven’s thighs round every precarious turn.

4
     
    DETECTIVE INSPECTOR REYNOLDS was worried about his fringe. He was worried about the girl as well, of course, but his fringe was a constant and the girl was just a case, like those that had come before and many that would follow. She had probably run away. Most of them had. If not – if she
had
been abducted – then she would be found or she would not; she would live or she would die – or she would live the rest of her life in a way that would make her wish she
could
die.
    It sounded callous, but that was just the way things were with missing children. Naturally, Reynolds would do everything in his power to find her, but right now the girl’s fate was an open-ended question. His fringe, on the other hand, was here to stay.
    He hoped.
    He examined it in the mirror and pushed it first to one side and then the other. It was a chilly morning and so he’d chickened out and worn a woollen beanie in to work. But he couldn’t hide for ever. Somehow the plugs looked more obvious here under the cold fluorescents of the gents’ toilet at Taunton police station than they had in his bathroom at home.
    He pushed the fringe back the other way. It made no difference. He sighed. Maybe he shouldn’t have let them cut it so short, but the spectre of Elton John’s moptop had made him uncharacteristically macho.
    Fuck it.
    He’d spent almost four thousand pounds of his hard-earned savings on the bloody things – he couldn’t hide in the bogs all day.
    DI Reynolds took a deep breath and banged out of the toilets to take charge of the hunt for Jess Took.
     
    *
     
    You don’t love her
.
    Reynolds had the note with him in an evidence bag for safekeeping. He’d ordered its presence at the possible crime scene not to be made public. If Jess Took had been abducted, then it was a detail that could be useful in trapping her kidnapper in a lie. Alternatively it could weed out the weirdos who might like to claim the crime as their own.
    He’d looked at it a hundred times as they drove from Taunton to Exmoor. Jess Took had only been missing for thirty-six hours and the graphologist hadn’t wanted to commit himself without further investigation, but had told him that, due to the care taken with the lettering, the note was unlikely to have been written by a person who wrote every day. Very helpful. That really narrowed it down. Who the hell wrote every day – or
any
day – using a pen and paper? Reynolds himself couldn’t remember the last time he’d picked up a pen with any real purpose other than to jot a few notes or to click the end of it while he mused. It was all keyboards now. Words were created and disappeared into a box and then you switched them off and back on again and hoped that they were still there. Reynolds was all for the paperless office, but for some reason the Taunton