Taking his keys from the hook neatly labelled ‘KEYS’, Mr Trent led Casper through the shop and to the main door. As he selected a key and held it up to the moonlight, Mr Trent turned to Casper “It’s not a good idea for you to be walking the streets after dark; we don’t want something happening to you too, now do we?” “No Sir.” The two walked around the corner and into the back alley where Mr Trent maintained his garage. On the way, he tripped over something in the dark and stopped. “Damn neighbours leaving their rubbish all over.” But then he saw what it was he had tripped over. “Good God.” It was a body. It was a body for sure because people don’t generally sleep with their face in a dog turd. Or with the handle of a hammer protruding from their skull. While Casper, pale-faced and wide-eyed stayed back, Mr Trent squatted down and leaned over the body. More out of habit than with any expectation of finding one, he checked for a pulse. The he gently rolled the corpse over so that he could look at the face. He didn’t recognise it from any of the other teenage youths he ignored daily but a small gasp from Casper made him look round. “You know him?” In typical Casperishness, Casper was wringing his hands while fidgeting from foot to foot. Although he was on the verge of fleeing, Casper fought his natural inclination and nodded. “It’s Booger. Booger Satsuma. He’s one of, um,” Casper fought a quick inner battle over the possible of telling a stranger anything of Joe’s business. But the likely link that this body msy have to whatever danger Finny might be in won out. “He’s one of Joe’s ones who look out for Finny outside the orphanage.” Mr Trent lowered the body back into its former position and stood up. Another link to Joe Spivey then. The uncomfortable fact that not only was Joe a favoured customer but also a well known criminal inclined the bookseller to return to his own business – both figuratively and literally. If it wasn’t for the safety of young Finny… They both looked at the lifeless Booger Satsuma for two very long seconds before Mr Trent spoke. “Interesting name.” Casper was nodding while not taking his eyes off the corpse. Mr Trent noticed and thought it best to distance the boy from the… from that. “Come on, let’s get going. After I drop you off I’ll inform the NFPD.” A minute into the drive along the barely lit streets Casper broke the silence. “He used to live in the orphanage. He’s called Booger cos when he was little he always had a snot-drop hanging from his nose.” Mr Trent glanced over to the passenger seat. Casper was sitting and just staring ahead… a ‘thousand yard stare’ that Mr Trent recognised from his own ‘interesting’ past. Casper was talking just to distract himself from the image in his head. Mr Trent would help him. “And ‘Satsuma’?” “That’s the box he was in.” “Box?” Casper’s head turned towards Mr Trent and the shopkeeper saw the eyes change focus, bringing him back to the here and now. “A satsuma box. Outside the doors, when he was a baby.” “Oh, I see.” They completed the journey in more silence. Mr Trent pulled up outside Joe’s house on Tombstone Avenue and Casper stepped out onto the well lit and permanantly patrolled pavement typical of this part of town. The shopkeeper leaned over onto the just vacated passenger seat. “I’m sorry about your friend.” Casper nodded, then shrugged; people died. “Okay.” There was a couple of seconds of awkward silence before Mr Trent ended it with a perfunctory “Good luck.” Casper turned towards the steps leading up to Joe’s shiny black front door. The sound of Mr Trent’s car disappeared behind him as it turned the corner. Casper sighed, braced himself and walked resolutely up the sandstone steps. He paused, then knocked on the front door hard enough to hurt his knuckles. He was still shaking his hand when, moments later the door was opened and Casper was face to watch fob with an annoyed looking Joe Spivey - known gangster and, as legend would have it, drowner kids in sacks before feeding the bodies to the giant hermit crabs that guarded the city’s wind turbines. Casper, by being in daily close contact with Joe via The Reading Group now knew that the ‘kid-drowning’ stories had been invented by Joe himself… but still, Joe was a scary man. Joe looked down at the familiar permanently anxious face. This was the second time in over a year that one of his bullet monkeys had turned up at his gaff uninvited. Two too many as far as he was concerned. “What?” Casper swallowed. Deja vu. “Finny’s gone.” Joe looked up and down the street then unceremoniously hauled the boy across the doorstep and closed the door. “Who is it Joe?” The melodiously female voice came from the far end of the hallway, behind the door to what Kirsten insisted on calling the ‘parlour’. “Just Casper, my love… from the factory.” “Is he clean?” Joe looked Casper up and down. “Not particularly.” “Well keep him off the furniture.” “Yes sweetheart.” While this domestic insight into Joe’s relationship with the golden-skinned mother of their daughter Anneka was being played out, Casper was soaking in the warmth and comfortable sense of safety that always filled Casper’s soul during The Reading Group’s rare visits to this house. A marked difference from the cold and stark sense of imminent danger that usually possessed him. Joe opened the door on his left and pushed Casper through into his study, his own place of safety from the female dominance of Kirsten’s household. Once inside and among the smell of leather, books and polished wood Joe put his hands on his hips. “What do you mean ‘gone’?” Despite Casper’s permanently deer-caught-in-headlights demeanour, Joe knew the boy had one of those brains that would not only calculate every possible danger within sight, but come up with a list of solutions or escape routes pretty much instantly. Cowardice is a superpower if caught early and honed like Casper had had to do to stay alive. That was the main reason why the boy had made it into Joe’s Reading Group. The other three members… sorry only two now until Onetooth decided on a replacement for Worms. The other two had their own little perks that had also gained them entrance into his little experiment. But, first things first, Joe had begun by teaching them to read and write. “She din’t come to dinner, an’ she din’t go to Mr Trent’s even though its Thursday an’ now Booger’s dead.” It took Joe a second or two to follow Casper’s nine-year-old’s logic... right up until the bit about Booger being dead. “What?!” The Finny Stories In chronological order: 000 Finny Intro 001 The Locket 002 Rats 003 A Christmas Finny 004 The Secret Adventurer’s Club 005 The Secret Adventurer’s Club: Second Adventure 006 Finny’s Birthday 007 Union Candy 008 Then There Were Three 009 Then There Were Four Again – Sort Of (WIP)