No Place Like Home Jane Renshaw (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📖

A long time. Ten years? More? Because Kirsty was right: he couldn’t argue self-defence. He’d bashed Finn’s head on that hose bracket how many times? And then they’d locked him in here while he was still alive. That was unforgivable. He’d get more than ten years for that, surely?

And Kirsty would go to prison too.

And then what would happen to the kids? Ma and Pap were too elderly to cope with Phoebe. David and Linda would have to take them in. Kirsty was adamant that that mustn’t happen – she’d gone on and on about it all night, sobbing that ‘the kids can’t go to Mum and Dad’ – presumably she didn’t trust David to look after them, after what had happened with Max and the fight in the Inverluie Hotel bar. And Phoebe – their vulnerable, fragile little Phoebe… How would she cope? How would she begin to get her head round Bram and Kirsty going to prison for…

Oh God oh God oh God!

Kirsty was right, as she always was. That couldn’t happen.

The hose bracket. He needed to clean it.

He used one of the now pale-pink clothes to wipe it down, shrinkingly, his gaze averted, and then he shoved all the cloths into one of the pails and put it under the workbench.

That would have to do until he had time to clean up properly.

Now for the holes in the ground in the wood. He shut the shed door and padlocked it and pocketed the key. First line of defence would be that he couldn’t find the key – but take a look in at the window – you can see there’s no one in there.

He ran to the wood. It looked different by daylight, but he knew that the biggest hole, their third attempt, was in the beechwood. That was the one it was vital to fill in. The others might be dismissed as the work of animals, but he’d used the spade in the third one to try to get through those roots.

‘Finn!’ he began to shout as he ran along the path. ‘Finn?’

He could hear voices, away off through the wood.

He needed to find that hole. They’d come along here with the barrow, after attempting to dig amongst the undergrowth under the birches. They’d passed this big tree with the twisted trunk…

There it was – the dip in the ground. With a mound of soil next to it!

Bram ran to it, trying to look around him to see if there was anyone about, but with all the trees it was hard to see. He had to just do it. He kicked at the pile of earth, swiping it into the hole with the side of his shoe. He hadn’t realised how much soil they’d managed to dig out.

When most of the soil was back in the hole, he stamped it down and kicked beech leaves over it.

Thank God.

It was done.

Now what? Should he go over to Benlervie and offer his assistance? But wasn’t that what murderers did? They ‘inserted themselves into the investigation’? Got a sick kick out of it?

Instead, after finding and filling in the other two holes, he sent Sylvia a text:

Any sign of him? Searching our wood now.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there, staring at his phone, when Andrew and another portly man appeared, coming along the path towards him. His phone still had blood on it! He shoved it into his pocket and walked down the path to meet them, assuming an expression that he hoped conveyed worry rather than guilt.

‘No sign of him?’ he called when he was near enough.

Andrew shook his head. ‘You’re sure you haven’t seen him?’ He was looking narrowly at Bram. Damn. Bram had never been a good liar. Ma always said his conscience gave him away in his body language before he’d even opened his mouth.

‘No, and Max hasn’t either. I’ve had a look around the house, in the shed… Well, I was working in the shed earlier this morning, so unless he was hiding in the cupboard in there or under the workbench –’ A high, awful sound halfway between a giggle and a yelp came out of his mouth. ‘– I already knew he wasn’t there.’

‘Okay,’ said Andrew, frowning at him.

‘Could he be with some of his mates? Was he out drinking?’

‘No,’ said Andrew shortly. ‘We think he went out for one of his night-time walks. He comes here sometimes. Through the woods. The police are going to do a proper search when they get here.’

‘Good, good!’

What had he just said?

Of course it wasn’t good!

He frowned. ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up safe and sound. Uh, I might just go back and speak to Max again. See if he has any ideas as to what might have happened – I mean, where he might be.’

What might have happened?

Shut up, Bram, just shut up!

He practically fled away from them down the path.

19

Kirsty had done her best with foundation and blusher and eye make-up, but she still looked terrible: her skin pasty and slack and dry, her eyes sunken into dark pits in her face so you could imagine what the skull underneath would look like.

God, where had that thought come from?

The four of them, Bram, Kirsty and the kids, were sitting at the kitchen table. Through the side window, Bram saw the two uniformed police officers walking off towards the paddock. They had come to the door ten minutes ago to say they were going to conduct a search of their grounds, and Bram had nodded and smiled and said to let them know if they needed anything. ‘Sylvia’s overreacting a bit, isn’t she?’ he’d added. ‘Finn’s a very, uh, sociable boy. He’s probably crashed at a friend’s place.’

The female officer had smiled back and made a non-committal ‘Mm’ sound.

‘Unless they’re thinking… We’ve had some trouble with, uh, youths recently. They shot my mother-in-law’s guide dog. Broke into the house… I hope Finn didn’t encounter them