‘Thought you said it wasn’t hard?’
‘Shut up.’
Seeing Shane fail on the board made Davey feel better disposed towards him, and he helped him to his feet, hoping that was the end of it. But Shane simply retrieved the board and tried again.
Davey sighed and went to sit on a swing to watch Shane. He hadn’t been on the swings for years. The last time, his feet hadn’t even reached the ground. Now the toes of his trainers dragged through the dust as he pushed himself gently to and fro.
The toddler in the baby swing beside him kept looking at him and saying something he didn’t understand.
‘He likes you,’ said Chantelle Cox.
‘Yeah?’ Davey didn’t care for babies, but hearing that this one liked him still made him feel good.
‘His name’s Jake,’ she offered, although he hadn’t asked.
Jake reached out a chubby hand towards him and pitched forward in the rubber-coated cradle.
‘Hold on, mate,’ Davey advised, and took the child’s hand and replaced it on the chain. Jake laughed and Davey couldn’t help smiling back.
There was a rattle and a thump and a yelp of pain and Davey turned to see Shane lying face up, back arched, rubbing his backside.
‘Nice one!’ he called.
‘Piss off,’ Shane groaned back.
‘Only place to play now,’ said Chantelle, waving her cigarette vaguely at the field behind Davey.
‘Why?’ He didn’t understand.
‘’Cos of the kidnapper, of course! Got to stay near people and places, see? Can’t go off on the moor or anything now.’
‘We do,’ said Davey with a shrug. ‘We go everywhere.’
‘Well, you be careful,’ she said, ‘or he’ll have you too.’
‘Nah, there’s two of us. We’d kick his butt.’
‘Took those two girls off the bus, didn’t he?’
‘Two girls,’ Davey pointed out.
‘I’m just saying, that’s all.’
He only grunted a reply. Chantelle Cox was OK, but she was only as old as Steven and she was acting like she was his mother or something.
Chantelle hauled Jake out of the swing, which was his cue to turn from a happy, chuckling toddler into a screaming red ball of fury. Davey actually winced at the volume, but Chantelle didn’t seem to notice, even though it was happening right next to her face as she bundled the baby into his pushchair.
She straightened up. ‘Going now,’ she said.
‘Right then.’
She shook another cigarette out of the pack and lit it. She took a long drag, then impulsively handed it to a surprised Davey.
‘Bye then,’ she said.
‘See ya,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
He didn’t even know how to hold it. He touched it to his lips and was surprised to feel the little core of heat at the filter tip. He sucked tentatively and blew the smoke out of his mouth without inhaling. It tasted rubbish. Still, it was a lit cigarette and it made him feel ten years older. He swung lazily, puffing the smoke out of his mouth almost before it had got in there.
He could still hear the baby wailing as Chantelle Cox disappeared. He thought about the kidnapper stealing Jake and having to put up with that terrible noise. If he was the kidnapper he’d bring him back in a heartbeat. Chantelle Cox sometimes probably wished Jake would be kidnapped when he was making that noise.
The notion hit him like lightning.
‘Hey!’ he said. He threw the cigarette into the dust at his feet, hopped off the swing and hurried over to the ramp.
‘What?’ said Shane, stumbling off the deck and pretending he’d meant to. He turned to Davey, who was wide-eyed with his own sudden genius.
‘What?’ said Shane again – more excited this time.
‘I know where we can get all the money we’ll ever need.’
‘Bloody brilliant!’ said Shane. ‘Where?’
‘The reward money, idiot! Ten thousand pounds for finding those kids!’
Shane’s mouth dropped open in excitement, then snapped shut again in a reality check. His rolling eyes said this plan was too speculative, even for him. He picked his deck up. ‘But everyone’s looking for them. How are we gonna find them?’
‘We catch the kidnapper!’
‘How?’ said Shane.
Davey could hardly bear to tell. His idea was so simple and yet so outrageous that he didn’t want to say it out loud. He kept running through it in his head in case he had missed anything. He didn’t want Shane poking a big hole in his plan the moment he told him. But at the same time, he was bursting to tell his friend.
‘How can we catch him?’ Shane asked insistently.
Davey grinned and mimed an angler reeling in a catch.
‘Like a fish.’
28
THE MOMENT DAVEY had told him the truth about where they’d found the money, Steven had known who it belonged to.
Strictly speaking, he supposed it belonged to him.
But really it still belonged to Lucy Holly.
She had given it to him the night she’d died. With the split on her lip still fresh and her eyes still red from crying, she’d fetched a tin from the back of the cupboard and taken out a wodge of bound notes. She’d handed them to him as if she would never need money again.
Then she’d hugged him goodbye.
As he’d walked home in the blizzard he’d thrown the money into the wind. No doubt the rest of it – around £500, he’d guessed – was still in the hedges and fields close to the joined cottages of Mr Holly and Mrs Paddon.
Steven had never once thought of going back to retrieve it – even when he’d wanted the motorbike – and the thought of Mark Trumbull spending it now on cider and Beaver Patrol had made him shake with anger.
Maybe he should have explained these things to Davey. But how could he open that can of worms? So instead Steven had lain on his bed and listened to his mother lay into Davey for breaking the door and saying ‘Fuck’ in the house. He’d felt bad about it, but he’d had no option.
So when Steven came home from school and found his skateboard was missing, there was no doubt in his mind who had taken it.
‘DAVEY!’
He banged through his brother’s bedroom door. Davey wasn’t there, so Steven searched the room. It was in its usual chaotic state, and looked no worse after he’d spent fifteen minutes turning it upside down and inside out, but at least he was sure his skateboard was not there.
He searched the back garden, making threats inside his head to kill Davey if he had left it out to be warped by dew or rain. Inside the coal bunker, behind the bins, under the wigwams of beans that he and Uncle Jude planted each spring. He even took a careful garden fork to the compost heap, just in case Davey had buried it there among the dirt and weeds and potato peelings. He’d kill him if he had. The skateboard had Bones Swiss bearings and had cost him £95 – and he only earned twelve quid a week.
Nothing.
‘Little shit!’ he shouted, and didn’t even say sorry to Mr Randall when his head popped up over the garden fence.
Steven ran back through the house, yelling for his brother.
‘What’s wrong?’ shouted his mother from upstairs. ‘He’s at Shane’s house!’
Steven knew that wasn’t true.
He slammed the front door behind him.
Davey saw Steven coming at the exact same moment that Shane managed to perform his first turn at the lip of the ramp without falling.
‘Yes!’ shouted Shane, with his fists in the air, and promptly fell off.