Like This, for Ever

11




‘IT’S THE BLOOD that I remember. Out of everything that happened that day, it’s the blood that won’t go away. There was this splash – spatter, I think you’d call it – on the windows and I remember I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Bright red. Like rose petals. Or rubies. Or balloons. Little red droplets. The colour they made in the sun was just incredible.’

‘Blood is a beautiful colour,’ agreed the psychiatrist.

‘And the way it moves in water. Have you seen that? It doesn’t mix, like a water-based paint, it hangs, suspended, twisting and turning like one of those lava lamps, forming its own shapes. Sometimes I think I’ll never get it out of my head. The blood.’





12




THE COLD, SOGGY light of a winter dawn seemed to be snaking its way up the Thames and settling over the city when Barney got back from the newsagent’s the next day. Strictly, he was too young to have a job, and there was no way his dad would have allowed him to have a paper round, but Mr Kapur had never been able to find a child he trusted to sort and organize the papers in the morning until Barney came along. Barney had the neatest, most logical mind he’d ever come across, he said at least weekly.

There had been nothing from Mum in his secret email account this morning. It was getting harder, somehow, to look at that empty in-box every day. Still, he’d only just sent off the latest ads. He had to give them time.

As Barney walked along the hall towards the kitchen, he heard the sounds of Daybreak on the kitchen TV and something else that was wrong.

The washing machine was on. They never did washing on Friday. Saturday was washing day. They did four loads every Saturday. A whites wash, a coloureds wash, bed linen and then towels. The washing was Barney’s job, because he quite liked the sorting into organized piles, and the idea of putting dirty stuff in and getting clean, sweet-smelling, damp clothes out. His dad did the ironing.

‘What’s going on?’ he said, as he walked into the kitchen, his eyes going straight to the washing machine. Yep, there it was, something pale and stripy sloshing about.

‘Breakfast’s ready,’ said his dad, who was sitting at the central island, a cereal spoon in his right hand. Barney didn’t move. His dad had used too much soap. There was too much froth in the machine.

‘I spilt a mug of tea in bed this morning,’ said his dad. ‘I didn’t want it staining. That’s OK, isn’t it? For once?’

‘’Course,’ said Barney, making himself look away from the washing machine. So did that mean they’d only do three loads the next day? Odd numbers had a way of making him feel twitchy inside.

‘Barney!’ His dad was reaching out across the island towards him, putting his own large hands over Barney’s small ones. ‘You’re doing it again.’

Barney shrugged and concentrated on making his hands relax. He couldn’t remember it, but he knew they’d been tracing patterns on the granite surface, his fingers moving in repetitive squared shapes, over and over, even when his hands started to hurt, either until someone stopped him or he was distracted by something else.

‘Raisins,’ said his dad.

The raisins were by his right hand. The bran flakes had already been poured into the bowl. Barney counted four raisins into his bowl as the 8am news came on, his dad adjusted the volume and a tall man in a suit told the world what most of it already knew – that the bodies of Jason and Joshua Barlow had been found the previous evening and that the police believed they’d been killed by the same person who’d previously abducted and murdered Ryan Jackson and Noah Moore. He reminded them that a fifth boy, Tyler King, was still missing.

The tall man, a senior police officer of some kind, was sitting behind a table with three other people. As the next four raisins landed on the bran flakes, the cameras moved along the table to the parents. The bones of the father’s skull seemed to be pressing themselves out through his skin as he asked the viewers to help find their sons’ killer. The mother didn’t manage to articulate a single word. She was crying too much.

At least Jason and Joshua had had a mother.

As the last four of his sixteen raisins went into his cereal bowl, a dark-skinned, dark-haired woman appeared on the screen. The name card on the desk in front of her said that she was Detective Inspector Dana Tulloch.

‘Someone knows who this killer is,’ she was saying. ‘This killer doesn’t appear from nowhere and then vanish again. He lives among us. If you have any information that you think could be helpful, however small, however unimportant it may seem, please get in touch.’

The news moved on to the next story and Barney’s dad turned the volume down again.

‘Toast?’ he said, getting up.

‘Please,’ said Barney. ‘Can I have maple syrup and honey?’

‘No, because that would be disgusting.’

‘I mean honey on one half and maple syrup on the other.’

With a heavy sigh and a resigned shake of the head, his dad reached up into the cupboard. ‘Barney, I’m not sure I want you going out in the mornings at the moment.’

Instant panic. Barney looked from the TV over towards his dad. ‘Why not?’

His dad turned to face him. ‘It’s too dark,’ he said. ‘Maybe when it gets lighter, in the summer.’

‘If I give my job up now, I won’t get it back again just because the working conditions become better,’ said Barney.

His dad almost smiled and then caught the look on Barney’s face.

‘I just don’t feel comfortable about you being out on your own right now.’

But he felt perfectly comfortable leaving him on his own two nights every week. OK, that was hardly fair. Barney was the one who refused ever to have babysitters in the house, who’d kicked up a massive fuss on the few occasions, now years ago, when his dad had arranged one. Babysitters just never understood how things needed to be done. Babysitters moved things. Babysitters came into his room when he was working and asked nosy questions. Babysitters … yeah, his dad had finally got the message, and for years Barney’s dad just hadn’t gone out at all. Only in the last few months had he started to trust Barney on his own.

‘Don’t glare at me, Barney.’

‘I’m not,’ Barney said, although he knew he had been. Then the toast popped up and his dad began the process of buttering and spreading. While his dad’s attention was elsewhere, Barney reached for the remote control, turned down the volume and switched the channel.

‘You wouldn’t answer the door, would you?’ his dad said, as he handed him the toast. ‘If anyone knocked when I’m not here. You’d phone me.’

‘’Course,’ said Barney through a mouthful. On the TV, three men in swimming trunks, yellow beanie hats and goggles were getting into three bath-tubs. One had been filled with chicken curry, the second with soy sauce and the third, blackcurrant juice. It was an experiment to find Britain’s stainiest food.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to organize someone to keep you company? We can find someone you like. Maybe an older boy? Jorge, perhaps?’

The men on the TV screen were sponging themselves down. Just gross!

‘Barney!’

‘What?’

‘Can we think again about a babysitter?’ said his dad in a voice that made it clear it wasn’t for the first time. ‘For Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I have to work late.’