Free Finders Keepers by Belinda Bauer Page A

and he breathed a sigh of relief.
    He was almost past.
    Beyond Rose Cottage’s box hedge, the coarse lane hedge took over again and matched its opposite all the way up to Springer Farm and Old Barn Farm beyond that.
    But he had to stop, just for a moment – or his arms were going to drop off. He did, turning and leaning his backside against the back of the trailer to keep it from rolling, his legs braced against the road, trying to keep his panting as quiet as possible.
    The security light came back on again.
    ‘Hello, Steven.’
    His heart stopped.
    Silhouetted in the bright white light was Jonas Holly.
    Only the thought of the giant effort he’d already made kept Steven from just leaving the trailer and running.
    Jonas looked even taller than he’d remembered him being. So tall and thin within the bright white light that Steven wondered whether he was imagining him.
    ‘You want a hand with that?’
    It wasn’t what Steven had been expecting him to say. The last thing he wanted was to spend time in the company of Jonas Holly. Especially alone in the middle of the night.
    The silence unfolded smoothly between them, with a low whisper all of its own. He almost declined, but thought how weird it would look to say ‘No, thanks,’ then turn and continue his snail-like progress under the invisible eye of the silhouette.
    There was no option.
    ‘OK.’
    The man walked towards Steven with the light splayed behind him, as if he were emerging from a Tinseltown version of a diamanté heaven. The light clicked off and for a horrible second Steven lost sight of him completely.
    Then Mr Holly was beside him and bending to grip the edge of the trailer. Steven did the same and they started up the hill together.
    So much faster.
    Jonas didn’t speak to Steven at all. Once he muttered ‘Shit’ under his breath as they hit a pothole and they both hurt their wrists. Then they continued in silence broken only by bumping and panting and the occasional grunt of effort.
    They went past Springer Farm, with its B&B sign barely visible through the bindweed, until they reached Old Barn Farm’s shiny black gates.
    ‘Here,’ said Steven, and they steered the trailer off the road and straightened up.
    ‘New gates,’ said Jonas.
    ‘New people,’ said Steven.
    He went over to the intercom panel and shone his torch at it. Then he pressed in the code. 1204. Em’s birthday, she’d told him, so it was easy to remember.
    The gates opened almost silently.
    ‘They gave me the code so I could take them their paper,’ said Steven – and then remembered that he didn’t take a paper to Mr Holly’s house any more and wished he had just shut up. What would he say if Mr Holly asked him about it? Silence was the only form of lying he was even halfway good at. But Mr Holly said nothing about his paper, and together they pushed the trailer inside the gates and left it there.
    Steven closed the gates and they walked back down the hill in dark silence.
    Steven felt the questions that waited to be asked just under the surface, like the big gold and white fish in the Austins’ pond. The fish followed him from one end of the dark water to the other when he delivered the
Bugle
, and then did the same on his return journey down the path – hoping to be fed. Thus the unasked questions followed him and Jonas Holly down the hill from Old Barn Farm all the way back to Rose Cottage, hungry for answers.
    It was enough to make Steven shake with tension.
    But nothing was asked and nothing was told. Nothing of the mystery trailer, and nothing of the night when Lucy Holly had been murdered.
    Instead Jonas Holly murmured ‘Good night,’ and peeled off at Rose Cottage, while Steven muttered ‘Thanks,’ and jogged home in a world that had just got that little bit stranger.

11
     
    JONAS WOKE TO a dawn that promised everything.
    It was a week since Jess Took had disappeared, and May had become almost fictional in its brilliance – the kind of balmy weather that