The Detective's Daughter by Lesley Thomson Read Free Book Online Page A

intricate structures of viscous material were wind- and water-resistant so that although the web oscillates in difficult conditions it remains intact. If there were boys here, he could explain: ‘You let out a thread until it floats and finds a petal or a wall or this wood. It is sticky so it will catch and hold, then you run along the line giving out more thread to make it strong. Once you have your baseline, it’s easy.’
    He had lots of facts, he promised his audience: his birthday is on 15 March and he once had a hedgehog cake with lolly sticks for spikes. He has a train set with signals and a tunnel and his daddy builds bridges. His daddy was here but he has gone. This was not, Jonathan considered, strictly speaking a fact.
    Then he thought that perhaps it was.
    He scraped at the soil with a stick. A beetle made its way over the crinkly terrain of a leaf; tumbling, it tipped over, righted itself and scurried on. Jonathan captured it.
    ‘A spider can eat its own weight in food. This beetle is, as you see, nearly the size of the spider so will last it a long time. Fact: spiders can survive up to a year without eating.’
    He held the beetle in his loosely clenched fist. Some children could not bear this, girls especially, he informed the boys. They thought him particularly brave when he told them that the six beetle legs tickled inside his hand but he did not care. He flicked the beetle at the web. It was heavy and fell short. Jonathan had not expected this and the flow of his lecture faltered. He tried again, bringing it closer and watched with satisfaction when the black casing opened and the whirring wings caught on the last span. The beetle tried to break free and only became more entangled. Jonathan, hugged his knees and breathing deeply, commented: ‘If it had not panicked it might be alive. This behaviour is common in humans.’
    The spider moved inexorably towards its prey along the threads, landings and staircases, up-down-along-up-down-across. Jonathan’s new trousers were tight over his legs and made his skin prickle. His hand hurt only when he pressed the marks. The spider began work on the insect and soon its beetle-shape was lost in a silken bag like a well-disguised present. The spider crouched on top of the lump.
    ‘It’s sucking out the blood.’ Jonathan remarked airily.
    ‘He’s a nutcase, now he’s talking to himself.’
    Jonathan pitched face forward on to the soil. His glasses ground into his eye sockets and he was pulled over on to his back. Simon bounced on his stomach, thrashing the air with the thistle stalk as if he was a riding a horse. Strands of cobweb floated around them. The beetle lay amongst the mulch of rotting leaves. The spider was dead.
    Jonathan heard the whistle but did not obey the rule about being a statue; instead he limped away over the grass. The second whistle shrieked and he dreamed of flying over the hills and far away.
    ‘You are my prisoner.’
    Simon tied his arms behind the goalpost. Jonathan interlocked his fingers and thought of his mummy.
    ‘Hold tight. Look right and left and right again.’
    ‘You are going to burn to death on the stake. Stay there while I get matches.’ Simon banged Jonathan’s head against the post.
    ‘We have to go in,’ Jonathan gasped.
    ‘You will die.’
    A fact.
    A cold weather front was heading in from the English Channel and the sky darkened, colours muted to greys and greens. In the silence of the empty playground the little boy listened for his father’s car, positive he would know it because of what his father called the dodgy exhaust.
    Miss Thoroughgood was on the cusp of retirement. She had little appetite for exercising authority and had not counted in her charges, so she failed to see that the new boy was missing.
    The wind ballooned the goal netting and rattled the beech hedge; it stripped the last leaves off the horse-chestnut tree and sent them swirling across the pitch. A thickening blanket of cloud descended. A