It was years since he’d been to a horse show. Not since he was a boy. He couldn’t remember the name of the pony he’d borrowed from Springer Farm, but he remembered the sun beating down on his back, and the same smells of leather, hot grass and manure.
For some reason, they made him feel uneasy.
In a minute he’d have to make another circuit through the car park. The first two had been fraught with contact. Everyone wanted to say hello and shake his hand and ask how he was. Now Jonas was lingering over the dregs of his tea before venturing out into the open again.
The Exmoor foxhounds were in the showing ring. All tongues and tails, crowded around the huntsman with his red coat, white whip and gleaming britches. Children had been invited in to pet the big brown and white dogs, in a get-’em-early PR exercise for the hunt. There was even a boy in an electric wheelchair, flapping his crooked arms and looking at the sky, while a hound pissed on his wheel.
Now and then a hound would detach itself from the pack and lope across the ring after a scent. A sharp call of its name would bring it back in an instant. It had always amazed Jonas that the huntsman knew each of his forty or so dogs by name, when they all looked so similar.
‘Daisy!’
‘Dandy!’
‘Milo!’
And the errant dog would lope back to the pack and join the patchwork mayhem.
In the nearest ring a fat grey pony put in a dirty stop and launched a tiny child over a shin-high fence. The girl’s mother ducked under the nylon and hurried over. She stood the sobbing five-year-old on her feet, brushed her down, wiped her face and plonked her back on the grazing beast, with the usual instructions about heels and hands and showing him who was boss. The pigtailed tot sniffed, nodded fiercely and flapped her skinny peach legs up and down, before trotting a circle and performing a perfect action replay. The bell rang to say they’d been disqualified, and the judge in the caravan asked for a round of applause for a brave try. The mother picked up the pieces and left, leading the girl by one hand and the devious pony by the other – apparently far crosser with the former than the latter.
Astonishing, thought Jonas. People won’t let their kids cycle to school, but they’ll put them on half a ton of stupid muscle, then slap its arse to make it go faster.
Lucy would have loved this.
The thought came from nowhere and made his throat ache.
He put his tea down with a clatter of spoon and saucer, and headed for the car park.
The sun was already very warm but Charlie didn’t mind. He turned his face towards it and closed his eyes and felt the lids heat up like little blankets.
There was a big voice from somewhere – like Mr King at sports day – saying things that Charlie couldn’t quite catch, drifting in and out with the breeze. Whenever the voice stopped it was as quiet as bedtime.
He almost dozed.
There was a sharp, crunchy sound and he opened his eyes.
At first he saw nothing. Then, squinting into the sun, he saw a man between the parked cars draw back his hand with a stick in it, and hit a car window. Charlie jumped at the sound of glass breaking.
‘Oh!’ said Charlie. ‘Oh!’
Bad man! He broke the window! Bad bad man! Nicola Park had broken a window in the school greenhouse and Mrs Johnson had been sooooo cross!
As Charlie watched, the man moved a few rows away, peering into cars. Then – first glancing left and right – he stopped and did the same thing again.
Charlie looked up towards the tents.
‘Mr King!’ he shouted. ‘Mr King!’
The man looked up and saw him. Charlie shrank back against his seat.
The man turned and walked quickly towards the minibus. As he came closer, Charlie saw his big green gloves and strangely flattened, featureless face. The man looked like the Guy they’d made at the school last Bonfire Night – but alive and walking.
Charlie had never been so scared in his life. Worse than lights out.
‘MR KING!’ he squealed into his own chest as he tried to stop the man unbuckling his safety harness. ‘MR KING!’
But the big voice was talking and then people were clapping too.
Charlie Peach continued to shout for someone to come and save him, but his terrified cries were quickly muffled by a strong woollen hand that smelled of hospitals.
Jonas was stopped half a dozen times on his way to the cars.
People meant well. He knew that. So he was polite and pleasant – and resisted the urge to tell them all to just go away and leave him alone.
A man in sunglasses and shirtsleeves shouted something he didn’t catch and started jogging towards him, and even before the man reached him, something told Jonas that this was bad news…
16
SHUT THE GATE. Shut the gate shutthegate shutthegateshutthegate…
Jonas ran in time to the words in his head. Ran for the first time in over a year. Ran to the gate and swung it shut with a clang that reverberated like a giant bell. A BMW X5 turning in from the lane lurched to a halt to avoid being hit by all five bars.
‘What the shit!’ said the driver angrily, and then saw Jonas’s uniform and downgraded his protest to ‘What’s going on?’
‘We’ve got a missing child,’ panted Jonas, not even looking at him – already scanning the field for Charlie Peach. He raised his voice and said it again: ‘We’ve got a missing child!’
The words were like a fire alarm going off. People moved to him as if magnetized.
The gateman in a hi-vis vest was Graham Nash from the Red Lion.
‘Has anyone left?’ Jonas demanded.
‘A few.’
‘Who?’
Nash looked defensive. ‘I don’t know. I’m busy getting people in. People going out aren’t my job.’
‘You notice anyone in particular? Strangers?’
‘Shit, Jonas, I don’t bloody know. I can’t know everyone. The kid’s probably getting an ice cream.’
Jonas knew Charlie Peach – he lived in Shipcott – and he knew that was not the case. He put Graham Nash on the road to direct traffic away from the show.
‘But it’s not even lunchtime,’ Nash protested. ‘People are going to be very pissed off if they’ve paid their entries and I won’t let them in.’
‘This gate stays shut until we find the boy,’ said Jonas coldly, then he looked hopefully at his phone. Finding he was within range of a signal, he stood stock still so as not to lose it and called DI Reynolds.
Reynolds said he’d be right there and told him not to let anybody leave. Jonas didn’t waste time explaining that he’d already done that – just said ‘Yes’ and hung up.
He and Mike King jogged back to the judges’ caravan and commandeered the PA system. Through shards of feedback, Jonas asked all judges in all rings to halt their classes while they searched for Charlie Peach, then handed the microphone to the boy’s carer to give a description of him.
The moment the announcement was over, the mood of the show changed as if a switch had been thrown. The urgency and purpose were palpable. Horses were dismounted and hitched to horseboxes, people left their deckchairs and put down their cups of tea and swarmed through the tents and the cars, crawling underneath, opening boots, checking the Portaloos.
Horse people, thought Jonas. Good or bad, they really get things done.
Steven heard Jonas Holly’s voice on the PA system and flinched hard enough for Em to notice.