Like This, for Ever

29




BARNEY LOOKED ALONG the embankment, and then down to the map. They were some distance from the nearest street lamp and he had to use his torch. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘This is where they found Noah.’

The six children lined up along the wall and peered over to look at the beach below. Long way down. Lloyd took a step back. ‘He went down these steps?’ he said. ‘Can’t have been easy with a body over his shoulder.’

Close to where the children were standing, a dozen concrete steps led from the embankment to the beach. All but the top two were covered in green algae. Threads of river-weed had knotted around bumps in the concrete and the metal handrail looked anything but secure.

‘He could have just tipped him over the wall,’ added Jorge. ‘No point making unnecessary work.’

Barney was looking at the opposite bank. ‘The thing about this site is that it’s almost directly across the river from the headquarters of the Marine Unit,’ he said.

‘What’s the Marine Unit?’ asked Harvey. He and the other boys were pressing closer, all trying to see the map at once.

‘The river police,’ said Barney, nodding to the large brown-brick Victorian building on the north bank with its industrial-length pier. ‘Part of the Metropolitan Police but in charge of the river. People at the time said it was really cheeky of the killer, to dump the body here, right under their noses.’

‘That’s where they’re based, is it?’ said Jorge, who was also looking at the building. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Are you alright up there, Hatty?’ asked Barney. Hatty and Sam had climbed up on to the embankment wall. It was only about five feet high on this side, but a good fifteen-foot drop on the other.

‘Hatty’ll be fine,’ said Jorge. ‘Sam will probably tumble to his death though.’

‘Heard that,’ muttered Sam.

‘The police didn’t find him though, did they?’ asked Lloyd.

‘No, a couple on their way home from work,’ said Barney. ‘The point is, there was a lot of talk about whether the killer was taunting the police, you know, saying, “Look at me, look what I’ve left on your doorstep.”’

‘Maybe he just didn’t know,’ said Jorge, whose eyes were still fixed on the north bank.

‘One thing everyone is agreed on is that this bloke knows the river,’ said Barney. ‘If you know the river, you know where the Marine Unit are based.’

‘So where was the body?’ asked Sam.

Barney shone his torch down on to the beach. ‘Hard to know for definite,’ he said. ‘There were sketches in some of the newspapers but they’d be based on guesswork. I think we have to work it out for ourselves.’

‘Go on then, Sherlock,’ said Jorge.

‘Well, he probably carried him down these steps,’ said Barney, ‘and we know he leaves them where the tide will cover them after a couple of hours. If we go down, we can probably figure it out.’

‘What’s the tide doing now?’ asked Lloyd, looking nervously at the black water.

‘It’s coming back in. In another couple of hours you won’t be able to get down there. It’ll be muddy even now. I did tell you lot to wear wellies.’

Of the whole group, only he and Lloyd were wearing wellington boots.

‘Watch it,’ Barney said, realizing he was expected to lead the way down to the beach. ‘These steps will be slippy.’

Shining the torch on the crumbling concrete steps, Barney made his way down to the beach. The first few yards of it were dry. The tide didn’t usually reach all the way back to the wall. After a few paces, though, the stones became damp, interspersed with patches of mud. Four yards away from the river’s edge, Barney stopped.

‘Somewhere round here,’ said Barney, looking down. ‘I can’t see any reason for him to have walked left or right. I imagine he wanted to get rid of it and get away from here as soon as possible.’

Jorge had walked another pace further on. ‘Here, I reckon,’ he said.

‘How come?’ asked Harvey.

‘Had a good view of the river in both directions,’ said Jorge. ‘He could see if any traffic was coming. But that pier would provide a pretty good screen for what he was up to.’

‘Here then,’ said Barney, stepping closer to Jorge. One by one the other children joined them. They stood in a circle, looking at each other.

‘We should switch these torches off,’ said Jorge, doing exactly that with his own. ‘People up on the embankment might see us. And there’s still people on the pier. We should work in the dark. Like he did.’

The three remaining torch beams disappeared and the children were left in darkness on the riverbank. Barney felt a twang of nerves. This close to the water’s edge, the sound of the river was surprisingly loud. It seemed to groan, somehow, as though with the effort of continual motion. Or as though there was something beneath it, pushing to be free.

‘This is freaky,’ giggled Hatty. In the dim light, Barney thought he saw Sam sneak his arm around Hatty’s waist. She stepped to one side, away from him.

‘Quiet,’ said Jorge. ‘Let’s just listen.’

A second of silence from the children, then another muffled giggle. Jesus, was Barney the only one who could hear the noise the river was making? It sounded like it was alive. With a start, Hatty turned to look out across the water. Had she too heard the low-pitched moaning, like half-dead creatures waking up? Then the spell was broken when Harvey pulled a plastic water bottle from his rucksack and started to walk round the others in a big circle. The children watched, increasingly mystified, as Harvey held the bottle out at arm’s length and let the water inside trickle down on to the stones. He drew a circle around them and stepped into it.

‘What you doing?’ asked Jorge.

‘Holy water,’ said Harvey. ‘I’ve just drawn a protective circle around us.’

The noise from the children bounced across the beach.

‘Daft pillock!’ ‘Prat!’ ‘Dickhead!’ Only Barney stayed quiet. They weren’t going to start talking about vampires and drinking blood again, were they?

‘Where the hell did you get holy water?’ demanded Jorge.

‘St Nicholas’s,’ said Harvey, looking defensive. ‘They have a bowl of it at the back by the door, I just waited till no one was looking. Everyone knows vampires hate holy water.’

‘So we’re perfectly safe from vampires as long as we stay in this circle all night,’ said Jorge. ‘Course we might drown, but at least our jugulars will be intact. OK, own up, who brought garlic?’

Sam and Lloyd laughed nervously.

‘Stakes?’ said Jorge.

With a grin on her face, Hatty reached inside the neck of her fleece and pulled out a small silver crucifix.

‘OK, guys, quieten down,’ said Lloyd. ‘We came here for a reason, not to piss about.’

‘So what do we do, look for clues?’

‘There won’t be any clues left,’ said Barney. ‘I think we just have to get a feel for the place. Any special reason for choosing here? Did he definitely come by road or is it too soon to rule out the river?’

‘He’s bringing them by road,’ said Lloyd. ‘At Tower Bridge, he could get a car right to the steps, then it would take just a couple of minutes to carry them up, through the alleyway and down again to the river. All he had to do here was park on the road, carry him a few yards down the steps and he was on the beach.’

‘Convenience then,’ said Jorge. ‘Does your map show all the steps with road access, Barney? We can try and predict where he might leave the next one.’

‘Glad you think there’s going to be a next one,’ said Barney.

‘Serial killers don’t stop unless they’re caught or die,’ said Jorge. ‘Course there’ll be a next one.’

‘It’s raining,’ said Hatty, stepping away from the circle, a step closer to the river. Barney followed, resisting the temptation to pull her back. ‘I keep forgetting,’ he said. ‘I found your earring.’ He opened his hand. The tiny gold leaf sat in the centre of his palm.

‘Cool,’ said Hatty. ‘Where was it?’

‘In the drain that runs round the edge of the community-centre yard,’ said Barney.

‘Yuck!’ She tucked it into her pocket.

‘I cleaned it. It was covered in something grotty, but I cleaned it with my dad’s white spirit.’

‘Thanks.’ She gave him that cute, shy smile of hers, the one that made her cheeks plump up like she had gobstoppers inside them. Although she was older than Barney, she was smaller. Sometimes, when you looked down at her, you couldn’t see her eyes, just long black lashes.

‘How deep is it?’ she asked, turning back to the river.

It made him feel good that there was stuff he knew that she didn’t. ‘Right now, about five metres in the middle,’ he said. ‘Gets deeper when the tide’s in, obviously.’

Five metres of cloudy, dark water. Barney had a sudden vision of himself stepping out and sinking down, through the silt and the oil, feeling the pull of friendly hands, only to realize it was weed clinging and that it wasn’t friendly at all, that it was taking him further down to the wrecked boats, the mud and rock at the bottom. To spend the last seconds of his life in an underwater city, peopled by corpses that had never managed to float free.

‘What?’ said Hatty, who’d seen him shiver. ‘Someone walk over your grave?’

‘Something like that,’ he admitted. ‘We should go, we can’t get into the Creek if the tide’s high.’

The others were reluctant to leave the riverbank. Sam and Harvey were trying to skim stones, Jorge seemed strangely fascinated by the river in the fading light and Lloyd had discovered shells among the rocks. A bit like a Collie dog with badly behaved sheep, Barney chivvied them along. He was careful not to overdo it, he never forgot he was the youngest. Even so, more than once he was told to chill out.

But it was difficult to chill when the sense of the river behind him was so strong, when the temptation to look back over his shoulder, like a nervous girl walking alone down a dark street, was close to irresistible. And when pictures were forming in his head of waves like tiny creatures, snapping at his ankles, getting ready to bring him down.

He was an idiot. It was just a river, black and mighty and relentless, but still nothing more than an urban watercourse.

‘Guys, it’s raining, come on,’ complained Hatty and finally they started to leave the beach. Barney was the last to climb the steps. As he put his foot on the first, he had a feeling that the river called out to him. That it told him it would always be here, and it would be waiting.

Riverside lanterns, round and pale like puffball mushrooms, were glowing softly when Dana arrived at the restaurant. Mark and Huck had gone on ahead; Helen, punctual to a fault, would have arrived fifteen minutes ago. They’d all be waiting for her.

The river, just yards away, was racing past, and had taken on the fuller, more urgent sound it made when the tide was heading in. By the time they left the restaurant, the water would be pushing against the embankment wall.

The restaurant was busy. She could almost feel the heat seeping out from the giant glass windows and doors. Most of them had steamed up already. Needing one last moment before she forced herself to be happy and upbeat – for Huck’s sake, at least, there was no fooling the other two – Dana walked to the railings and leaned out over the water.

To her left, on the beach where the two Barlow boys had been found, all was in darkness. Only the reflection of lights from Tower Bridge told her where the water ended and the rocks began. Someone walking around down there, wearing dark clothes and moving without light, would not be spotted.

On the other hand, the figure stepping out from the bridge’s shadow, wearing a light-coloured padded jacket, could be seen very clearly. He or she, it really wasn’t possible to tell, reached the concrete steps and began climbing. Slim, not too tall.

Dana ran, away from the river, heading for Shad Thames, knowing the chances of cutting off the figure in the padded jacket were slim. The streets around Butler’s Wharf were busy, even in February, and she had to dodge her way around more than one group idling along, looking for somewhere to eat.

Ahead, about thirty yards away, was the light-coloured jacket.

‘Hey!’

Several people turned, including the one she was fixated on. Definitely a woman, a little older than she, thin face, hair hidden beneath a dark woollen hat. The face turned away, a group came out of a building and got between them. Dana picked up her pace as much as she could but she was wearing heels and the street was cobbled. She reached the corner and turned.

No sign of the woman.

By the time they reached Deptford Creek, Barney had a sense that several of the group were starting to think this wasn’t such a good idea after all. It had rained persistently since they’d left Bermondsey and all the children had wet hair and damp clothes. On Creekside they chained their bikes to a railing and Barney led them to the tall iron gate.

‘Nobody should be here at this time, but we’ll be on private property so we still have to be careful,’ he said. ‘Jorge, can you give us all a leg over?’

One by one, the children stepped on Jorge’s clasped hands and scrambled over the railings. ‘What is this place?’ asked Jorge, when he’d joined them.

‘Creekside Educational Trust,’ said Barney. ‘They’re a sort of charity that look after the Creek. Be quiet – people live close by.’

The children made their way down the side of the Trust building, past rubbish that had been pulled from the Creek over the years, including several rusting shopping trolleys, and down a path that led through a roughly tended garden. Slowly, the twin towers of the old railway-lift loomed above them.

‘What’s that?’ asked Hatty, eyeing the massive iron structure nervously. In the darkness it looked far bigger than it ever did in daylight, like a mechanical monster leering over them.

‘The railway-lift,’ said Barney. ‘It’s not used any more. In the old days, it would lift train carriages from one track and put them down on the other. This way.’ He led them across the grass until they could see down to the Creek itself.

‘Down there?’ asked Sam, staring down at the narrow, steeply sloping beach that led to the black slick of water. All around them, granite-black buildings loomed.

‘Down here,’ confirmed Barney. As he led the way, he had a sense of the others hanging back. Not that he really blamed them. The Creek was freaky, especially at low tide, especially at night. As they neared the water he stopped.

‘It’s like the friggin’ Grand Canyon,’ said Lloyd. None of the others spoke. They were all staring round at the massive river walls that soared seven metres high in places. Their construction was completely random, adding to the bizarre effect. Originally, they’d been built from vertical timbers, but many of those had rotted away, to be replaced by steel piles, or concrete sheets. There were even patches of brickwork. Dark, dank vegetation sprang from wherever it could, as though, despite man’s best efforts to colonize this stretch of water, nature was determined to claim it back.

Above the walls, three- and four-storey warehouses and dockyard buildings stretched up even higher. The impression was of a dark and narrow tunnel between massive black cliffs.

‘It looks like this because the tide’s low,’ said Barney. ‘When it’s high the water will reach right up to where we’re standing. It can be seven metres deep. That’s why the walls have to be so high. When the tide’s completely out, there’s nothing but mud here. We can go a bit further, but be careful if you’re not in wellies.’

The children crept forward, mainly keeping to the stones and gravel that lined the sides of the beach, only Barney and Lloyd sensibly enough shod to walk through the mud. ‘Yuck,’ complained Hatty, as the mud seeped up over her trainers and into her socks.

‘This is well freaky,’ said Sam, when they had gone as close to the narrow stream as they could. To their left, through the arch of the railway bridge, they could see the last stretch of the Creek before it joined the Thames. The huge iron lift looked alien and predatory in the poor light.

‘We need to stay together now,’ said Barney, spotting the others starting to drift off and feeling increasingly nervous. He’d never been in the Creek without a supervising adult before, and it had always been impressed upon him how dangerous it could be.

The tall buildings around them kept out just about all light from the surrounding streets and the riverbed was black as pitch. Any of them could fall, get stuck. The tide was on its way back but tide was never the biggest danger in the Creek. Rain was. Heavy rainfall higher up the River Ravensbourne could wash down here at lightning speed, and once you were walking the high-walled channel, there weren’t many escape routes. It would be stupid to go any further.

‘So where was Ryan found?’ asked Lloyd.

Barney looked beneath the arch of the bridge, and then down at his feet.

‘Just about here,’ he said.

‘Aw, Christ,’ said Sam, shuffling backwards in the mud, further up the bank.

‘The thing about the Creek,’ said Barney, ‘is that there’s practically no public access to it. Where we’re standing is one of the few points where people can actually get into it without climbing down a ladder. This is the only beach on the Creek.’

‘This isn’t a beach, it’s a mud bath,’ said Sam.

‘So he must be bringing them by road,’ said Lloyd. ‘If he’d come up the Creek by boat, he could have left Ryan anywhere, couldn’t he? By road, it had to be here.’

‘Can you even get a boat up here?’ asked Harvey, looking at water that didn’t seem more than a foot or so deep.

‘When the tide’s in, yeah,’ said Barney. ‘All the boats where we’re going next sailed up the Creek. In a couple of hours, this spot will be under four metres of water. It’s deeper further in.’

There was a second’s silence, while all the children imagined the deep, narrow tunnel they were standing in filled to the brim with seawater.

‘I’m ready to go now,’ said Sam, who was looking nervously upriver.

‘It comes that way,’ said Barney, pointing under the bridge.

‘All the same.’

‘Thing is, though, even though Ryan was found here, he may not have been dumped here,’ said Barney. ‘Some newspaper reports said that the body was soaked in salt water, which it wouldn’t have been if it had been dumped at low tide. If it was soaked in salt water, that means it was dumped higher up and got washed down.’

‘But dumping bodies at low tide is what he does,’ said Harvey.

‘It’s what he does now,’ said Barney. ‘But what if, the first time, he just wanted to get rid of the body, but then when it was found and there was a huge fuss, he found he quite liked the attention?’

‘You’ve given this guy a lot of thought, haven’t you, young Barney?’ said Jorge.

‘This water is getting higher,’ said Sam. ‘Please can we go now?’

‘Right, we have to go over this gate and through the yard on the other side,’ said Barney. ‘Then we have to climb down a ladder to get to the boats.’

Just before Creekside met the main road, the properties on the river side of the street became working yards and lock-up areas. High walls, higher gates, barbed wire and forbidding signs told them that security was taken very seriously.

‘How do the owners get to the boats?’ asked Sam.

‘They have keys to the gate,’ said Barney. ‘I couldn’t find ours. I tried.’

‘What if there’s dogs?’ said Hatty nervously.

‘There weren’t last time I was here,’ said Barney. ‘Just vans – ice-cream vans, builders’ vans, fish-and-chip vans. Nothing worth having guard dogs for. But if there are, they’ll go for Sam first.’

‘Hey!’

‘Once we’re over the gate, no one can talk,’ said Barney. ‘People live on most of these boats, and they’re not keen on people just wandering through the yard to gawp at them, so we have to be quiet.’

Repeating the process that had got them over the fence at the Educational Trust building, the boys and Hatty clambered over into the yard.

‘Oh, well skanky,’ said Hatty, looking round. The quarter-acre-sized yard was little more than a car park for vehicles that owners didn’t feel comfortable leaving on the street overnight. Small Portakabins around the outside of the yard suggested that work of some kind went on here, but the general run-down feel of the place indicated that it probably wasn’t work you wanted to enquire too deeply into the nature of. Rubbish and discarded tools littering the ground made plain that no one ever gave a thought to clearing up.

‘I never said it was the Riviera,’ replied Barney.

‘I can’t see any boats,’ said Sam.

‘That’s because they’re still low in the water. Come on.’

The children followed Barney through the yard to the moorings. Like everything else in the yard, the two-foot-wide strip of concrete that edged the Creek bank was strewn with rubbish, discarded tools and scrap metal, and Barney remembered another reason why his dad was often reluctant to bring him. It’s too friggin’ dangerous for a kid.

Barney dropped to his knees, the others followed his example and they looked out across the eleven houseboats currently moored in this stretch of the Creek. Music was drifting from one of the boats. If they were lucky, it would mask the sound of them creeping across.

‘This isn’t part of the main channel of the Creek,’ said Barney. ‘This is an offshoot they call the Theatre Arm. Dad told me why once, but I wasn’t listening. Across the water is Lewisham College and there’s sometimes a nightwatchman, so we have to be extra careful.’

‘Which is your granddad’s boat?’ asked Hatty.

Barney pointed to the left. Three large houseboats, at one time fishing boats or dredgers, were moored to the bank. Tied up to them were four smaller boats and, in the third line along, five boats that were smaller still. To get to his granddad’s boat in the third row, the children would have to creep across the ones in between.

‘It’s the yellow one with two masts,’ Barney said. ‘We should go in two groups, tread quietly and not talk. I’ll go first. Who wants to come with me?’

Sam was looking nervously across the line of boats. Dim light shone from several of them. ‘Why can’t we all go together?’ he said.

‘Because you lot can’t keep from talking. All of us together will sound like a herd of elephants, someone will hear us and that’ll be the end of it,’ said Barney.

‘He’s right,’ said Jorge. ‘I’ll come last. Barney, you go with Sam and Harvey, Lloyd and Hatty will follow. If anyone comes, I’ll crow like a cockerel and you can all hide.’

A second, whilst what Jorge had just said sank in.

‘Crow like a cockerel?’ said Lloyd. ‘Won’t that be a bit obvious? I don’t see any chickens round here.’

‘Hoot like an owl then,’ said Jorge. ‘Whatever.’

Barney, Harvey and Sam climbed down the ladder on to the first houseboat. The rain was falling faster and the air was punctuated by thousands of plopping noises. As they made their way around the deck, which could hardly be seen beneath the pots and planters, the sound of a Saturday-evening quiz show drifted out towards them.

‘They have TV?’ whispered Sam, as he followed Barney over the guardrail and on to the next boat.

Barney had been looking carefully at the cabin windows of the middle boat. The curtains weren’t closed and no light shone from below. He nodded at Sam. ‘A lot of them have their own generators,’ he said. ‘No mains power, though.’

‘What about gas?’ asked Sam.

What was this? A lesson in domestic utilities?

‘Calor,’ he said, hoping that would be the end of it. ‘Comes in bottles.’

‘What’s with all the plants?’

Barney raised his eyes to the night sky. ‘They don’t have any gardens.’

A couple of seconds’ silence while Sam thought about that one. Then, ‘Neither do we, but we don’t cover our veranda with plants.’

‘Sssh!’

‘What?’

Barney put his finger to his lips. He dropped into a squat and peered into the water. It was about five or six feet deep, he judged, and getting deeper every second. It was also moving very fast, not smoothly the way it would in the main river, but sloshing backwards and forwards, swirling and slopping. It was noisy, and yet there’d been something that wasn’t quite …

‘What?’ Sam was looking left and right, and making rude gestures to the group still waiting up on the wall. For crying out loud!

‘Listen,’ Barney mouthed.

A few seconds of silence, then, ‘Can’t hear anything,’ said Sam.

Barney got to his feet. It had probably been nothing.

‘What?’ asked Harvey as they set off again, treading carefully around the front deck of the middle boat. ‘What did you hear?’

‘I thought there was something in the water. Probably just a bird feeding.’

The light grew fainter and the streets of Deptford began to feel a long way away. Barney tried to ignore the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. The splashing sound he’d heard had been too loud to be a bird, even supposing they were still feeding in the dark.

When they reached the side deck, they could look down on to the yellow yacht in front of them, which seemed smaller and at the same time neater than Barney remembered. He turned back to signal to the others. He had to hope that Lloyd and Hatty would be quieter than he, Harvey and Sam had been. The next two children climbed down the ladder and began making their way towards them.

‘What a pair of dorks,’ muttered Sam.

Lloyd and Hatty were scuttling along the deck of the first boat at a slow run, bent double, glancing to left and right like commandos. At least they were moving quietly, though, and they weren’t stopping to talk. Lightly, they jumped on to the middle boat and ran round to join Barney and the others.

‘This place is freaking me out,’ said Hatty in a low whisper when they were close enough. ‘Why’s it have to be so dark?’

‘It’s private land, so the Council don’t put in streetlights,’ said Barney. ‘And we’re a long way from the road. Just watch what you’re doing. If you fall in here we might not be able to get you out again.’

Sam responded to that sensible piece of advice by leaning out over the guardrail and looking down.

‘Now what?’ said Harvey, as Jorge arrived.

‘Now we climb aboard and break a window,’ said Jorge. ‘I’ll do it, then I’ll help Hatty climb through. Only the two of us should go on board because if we make a noise, it’ll be easier for us to hide. You lot stay here till we’re in.’

‘This boat’s empty,’ said Barney, indicating the one they were standing on. ‘Let’s get down into the cockpit. And I’m coming with you. We may not have to break a window. I’ll try the hatches.’

As Harvey, Sam and Lloyd stepped into the cockpit of the larger boat, Hatty took hold of the boat rail and swung herself up. The yellow boat didn’t register the extra weight. Jorge followed and the boat rocked gently. Then Barney was on board, following Hatty across the cabin roof towards one of the main hatches. She dropped on to all fours on one side of it, he did the same on the other.

In spite of his misgivings, Barney had to admire the way she could move so lightly, making no sound at all. Following her lead, he slid his fingers under the edge of the hatch and pulled gently. The hatch moved two inches and they heard music from below. Hatty peered inside and froze. Barney looked, too. And didn’t believe what he was seeing. A sharp nudge on his shoulder brought his attention back to Hatty. She was frowning at him, signalling urgently with her eyes. She wanted him to help her lower the hatch.

But, I mean, what … ?

Sharp gesticulation on Hatty’s part and Barney pulled himself together. Between them, they lowered the hatch, just as gently as they’d lifted it. Signalling to Jorge to follow, Hatty stepped off the roof, over the rail and back on to the middle boat. Barney followed slowly.

‘What?’ hissed Harvey.

‘There was someone on board,’ replied Hatty.

Everyone looked at Barney, who could do nothing but shake his head.

‘What did you see?’ asked Jorge.

‘A bloke,’ said Hatty. ‘Just the back of him. Couldn’t see his face, not even his head. Just a blue and yellow sweatshirt.’

A blue and yellow sweatshirt that Barney knew well.

‘Did he see you?’ Jorge asked.

‘No, I don’t think he even heard us, there was music playing. And he was leaning into some sort of cupboard.’

‘You sure that’s your boat?’ asked Lloyd.

Barney nodded. Of course he was sure, he’d discussed it with his dad just that afternoon.

‘What if it’s … you know … him?’ said Sam.

‘Who?’ said Lloyd.

‘The vampire,’ hissed Sam, hardly audible.

The vampire was the killer. Sam thought the man on the boat was the killer.

‘In a blue and yellow sweatshirt?’ said Jorge.

‘What was that?’ asked Hatty, looking round.

‘I heard it too,’ said Lloyd.

‘Someone threw a stone in the water,’ said Jorge, looking round the group. ‘Come on, own up.’

‘We heard something before,’ said Sam, who seemed to have forgotten he’d been talking too much to hear anything. ‘Me and Barney and Harvey. Like a bird or an animal in the water.’

‘Shush!’

Splash, splash.

The children fell silent. No one seemed to know what to do next. Then Harvey stepped a little closer to the boat’s edge. Leaning forward, he raised the torch and shone it down. A second later, he gave a strangled scream, the torch fell to the deck and he was running away from the others, round the front of the boat, slipping on the damp deck.

‘Harvey!’ yelled Jorge, giving chase.

Making far too much noise, but hardly knowing what else to do, the others followed, on to the big houseboat and then over to the ladder. Jorge and Harvey were already up and out of sight. Hatty put her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder.

‘He’s pissing about,’ said Sam, who didn’t look sure.

‘You lot! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ On the next boat along, a man on deck was shining a torch towards them. ‘Get back here, now!’

The children scrambled up the ladder, Barney the last to leave the boat. Halfway up, he turned back. Two men were visible now, shining torches around, checking to make sure their boats hadn’t been damaged, angry, but not enough to give chase along wet decks in the dark.

Then there was movement on Barney’s boat and in the light from the cabin he could see the man in the companionway, watching the commotion but staying out of sight of just about everyone but him. The man in the familiar blue and yellow sweatshirt who’d scared Hatty away. It hadn’t been a mistake, a cruel trick of the light. The man on the boat was his father.

‘Barney, come on!’

The others had run in the wrong direction, not back to the large yard gates, but towards the very tip of the Creek’s backwater. They were huddled in the shelter of the massive steel pilings that supported the A2009. Jorge, unusually protective, had his arm round his younger brother. They were very close to the water and the tide was coming in fast now.

Had anyone else seen his dad?

Barney reached the group and turned back to the boats. The men who’d come up to investigate had gone back below. The yellow yacht was in darkness once more.

‘What happened, Harvey?’ asked Lloyd.

‘There was someone in the water.’

The children pressed closer together, turning instinctively to face the black river.

‘I think we should go home now,’ said Jorge.

‘What sort of someone?’ asked Sam.

Harvey shook his head. ‘Too dark,’ he said. ‘I just saw, like, an arm coming out of the water.’ He raised his right arm in a swimming motion. ‘You know, like when you’re doing the crawl. And then I saw eyes looking at me. Big eyes like a fish, only a massive fish.’

‘I’m out of here,’ said Sam, not moving.

‘Harvey, it was probably just an animal,’ said Lloyd. ‘An otter or something.’

‘A bloody otter,’ said Jorge. ‘Since when did you get otters in the middle of London?’

Barney had never seen Jorge scared before. He was trying hard to hide it, but couldn’t quite keep his eyes from staring, his mouth from clenching up tight. The hand still round his younger brother’s shoulders was trembling.

‘I’m just saying,’ said Lloyd.

They couldn’t have recognized, even noticed, his dad. One of them would have said something. ‘It could have been someone swimming,’ said Barney. ‘People do, in summer. My dad won’t let me, he says it’s too dirty, but some people do.’

Just talking about his dad felt wrong, as though the others might make the connection between the words coming out of his mouth and the man on the boat.

‘It’s nearly ten o’clock at night,’ said Lloyd. ‘Who’d be swimming at ten o’clock? In February?’

‘In the rain,’ added Hatty. ‘I’d really like to get away from the river.’

Barney only had to look at everyone’s faces to know they all agreed with Hatty.

‘I’m going to ring my dad,’ said Sam.

‘If you ring your dad, we’ll all get murdered,’ said Jorge. ‘Come on. Lloyd was probably right, it probably was just an otter. Or a badger. Or a walrus.’

‘Or a hippo,’ said Hatty, who was starting to smile again.

The group made their way back to the yard, heading for the gates.

‘A hippo called Hatty.’ Jorge gave Hatty a tiny nudge on the shoulder.

‘What you sayin’?’ She pushed him back, a bit harder.

‘Or a crocodile,’ said Lloyd.

‘Or a mermaid,’ said Hatty.

Splash, splash.

‘Oh God, no,’ whimpered Sam, as the children stopped in their tracks. Jorge raised his torch and directed it on to the river. Oily blackness, the slow flow of water coming in from the Thames, gentle ripples, as though something had disturbed the surface not seconds earlier. Then, just out of reach of the torch beam, movement that they all saw.

‘There!’

‘Jorge, there!’

Four torch beams fixed on one point. Nothing in the black water. Stillness. Tension that Barney thought would make one of them scream any second. Then all five screamed as the creature hurled itself out of the water at them. A child, like them, but nothing like them. This child was dead. This child was covered in a waxy, sticky substance that looked as though it had leaked out of him. His body had been half eaten by river creatures. His eye sockets stared black and empty and his tongue-less mouth gaped open as if he was screaming too. He rose out of the river, lurched towards them and then collapsed face-down on the bank.

Barney didn’t think he would ever stop running.