Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [113]
On my wax.
If that wasn't enough to drive anyone crazy, Jonas didn't know what was.
Or maybe it was even before that. Maybe he'd always been crazy. Who the hell knew? Right now he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt completely sane.
Jonas picked up his hand to watch it shake.
Then his eyes refocused on the kitchen counter beyond it.
Between the kettle and the toaster were two mugs. Wisps of steam still rose from them and the tea bags floated just under the surface of the dark liquid like two little drowning victims.
The killer had been making tea.
One for himself and one for Lucy.
That made no sense.
No sense at all.
Why would a killer--
With a hollow jolt, Jonas realized the man he'd chased from his home could not have been the killer.
Then who the fuck was he?
*
Steven Lamb liked delivering newspapers. He'd had this job for almost three years now - ever since Skew Ronnie Trewell had got his driver's licence and lost interest in the Exmoor Bugle and the Daily Mail as a means to an end.
Steven liked the early mornings in the summer, and bore them in the winter. He liked the smell of the newspapers as Mr Jacoby cut the plastic tape that bound the quires, and he liked the fleeting snapshots of world news he glimpsed as he helped Mr Jacoby stuff each paper with shiny brochures advertising debt consolidation and credit cards.
Most of all he liked the PS11.50 he got every week.
That was the reason he'd wanted the job in the first place, of course. What boy doesn't want to earn money and start buying? He'd had to fight for it though. Not other applicants, because Mr Jacoby had told him the job was his if he wanted it. No, Steven had had to fight his mother and grandmother to be allowed to do the job. They didn't want him getting up and walking to Mr Jacoby's shop in the dark; they didn't want him knocking on doors of a winter's evening and asking for payment; they didn't want him outside at all really - day or night.
They said it was dangerous.
Most boys his age would have scoffed and whined and dismissed them both as fussy old hens, but Steven understood that it was dangerous. That he knew as well as anyone and better than most.
He also knew in his secret heart that if he didn't have to go out into the world every day, he might never leave the house again; might cringe indoors and think too much about what might have been and what very nearly was.
His mum and nan had finally bowed to the sheer weight of his persistence and Steven had lain awake all night before his first day, shaking with apprehension.
He'd had therapy. He didn't know who had paid for it, but he suspected it was not his mum or his nan, because they encouraged him to go as often as possible.
But Steven Lamb still knew what fear was.
He recognized it when it whispered from the high hedges that hemmed the narrow lanes; when it made him shudder alone on the moor on a warm summer's evening; when it visited his dreams and settled over his sleep in a visceral veil. But he'd also grown adept at throwing it off, at staring it down - and at turning his back on it and daring it to do its worst. Every time he hoisted the weighty DayGlo sack over his shoulder, and every furled newspaper he pushed through springy letter boxes helped him to thumb his nose at fear.
As did the Fracture Snub skateboard he'd bought with the first