Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

and a little disappointed by SL’s weakness. He had thought of SL as an intellectual equal, but now he realized he was less than that—far less. To recklessly show his impatience like this was the mark of someone who had not thought things through properly.

    Avery got a pang as he remembered the day he’d waited for Mason Dingle to return with his car keys. If only he’d been patient. If only the second child had not skipped into the playground and clambered onto a swing right next to him. If only he could have mustered the control …

    Of all the thoughts he held about his career, these thoughts of Mason Dingle were the ones that plagued him like chicken pox scabs. They came unbidden and unwanted once, twice a week, and made him feel stupid and feeble.

    He was a different man now. Stuck in this echoing stone-andiron tomb he understood the meaning of patience. Polite conversation with Officer Finlay could only be achieved through the utmost patience. Standing in the line for food for almost an hour, just for a smirking ape to tell him that the only lasagne left was the burnt bits from the bottom of the pan, took patience and control.

    But it was all too late. The dagger twisting in his guts was that now, finally, when he had mastered patience and control, he had nothing over which to exercise his mastery.

    That was why this petulant, demanding letter gave him more pleasure than anything since SL’s first careful missive. It showed a chink in SL’s armor. A clumsy revelation of desire that gave Avery something he had not felt in a very long time.

    It gave him power.

Chapter 16

    A RNOLD A VERY HADN’T WRITTEN BACK AND S TEVEN FELT THE absence of a letter like something physical. Sometimes he got an itch in his ear—or in his throat. Between his ear and his throat. And it didn’t matter how far he stuck his finger in his ear, or how many times he made a coarse, rasping sound in his throat, neither could reach that point that made him want to cry with frustration. No reply from Avery was like that—an itch so deep inside him that he wanted to throw himself to the ground and roll and squirm like a fleabag dog in a senseless bid to scratch it.

    It had been more than four weeks, and the heather on the moor had already started to bud.

    Steven was a wiry boy, but those weeks had seen his features sharpen further, and little bruised hollows of insomnia darken under his tired brown eyes. The vertical frown-crease that had no place on the face of a child deepened on his forehead.

    He had stopped digging.

    The thought made him feel sick and weak every time he looked out of the bathroom window at the moor rising behind the houses. It crowded him, nudged him, stood over him in judgement at his puny efforts—and frowned at their cessation.

    He had felt close—so close—to finding out the truth from Arnold Avery that his own random scratchings on the moor seemed increasingly laughable.

    There was a man who knew where Uncle Billy was buried. Steven had made contact with that man.

    That man had understood the rules Steven had created for them to play by and had joined the game.

    And so Steven had given up his other game—a game that had no other players, no rules, and no realistic prospect of being won.

    His admission that, alone, his was a hopeless task was the most shocking and painful moment he could remember in his young life. It left him reeling and apathetic to the point where even Lettie had noticed.

    “Not off with Lewis today?” she’d finally asked, and he’d just shaken his head mournfully. Lettie didn’t ask any more. She hoped his newly pinched features were because he’d fought with Lewis, and not because he’d got her hypothetical slag up the duff.
Thank you for your great letter
. The words swirled uneasily about in Lettie’s mind—too disturbing to mention, too disturbing to forget.

    She hoped it was Lewis. Anything else, she didn’t have the time to care about.

    Now, while the rest of