Like This, for Ever

49




Wednesday 20 February

‘MORNING, MA’AM.’ IT was Stenning. ‘I’ve got good news and bad news.’

‘Give me the bad.’ Dana was only half awake. Christ, they’d found him. Oliver Kennedy had been found on a grubby, oil-streaked beach somewhere.

‘Bartholomew Hunt has already been on TV this morning, announcing to the world that he seriously doubts we found the body of Oliver Kennedy last night. He says in his view it was a massive hoax, that the killer does not dispatch his victims so quickly, that Oliver is still alive somewhere and being fed upon and that the shambles that is this city’s law-enforcement agency (that’s us, by the way) has endangered his life by wasting time and resources on a wild-goose chase.’

‘Somebody’s tipped him off.’ Christ, she could count on the fingers of one hand how many people knew it wasn’t Oliver on the bridge last night. ‘OK, Pete, I appreciate the heads up. I’ll see you at the station.’

‘Hold your horses, DI Tulloch. I said good news and bad. I’ve only given you the bad.’

Suddenly, something was pulling the sides of Dana’s throat together.

‘What?’

‘We’ve found him.’

‘Say that again?’ Wide awake now, bolt upright, the only thing keeping her from jumping out of bed was the fear of missing Stenning’s next words.

‘We’ve got Oliver Kennedy. Safe and sound. Cold as an icicle and seriously frightened, but basically fine. I’m behind the ambulance now, following him to St Thomas’s. Even his parents don’t know yet.’

‘Christ, I can’t believe it.’ Dana was up, looking round the room for clothes. Anything would do.

‘Neither could we, to be honest, Ma’am. We got the call about half an hour ago. I was on my way in and just went straight there.’

‘OK, Pete, don’t tell me any more now. Do your absolute best to keep this quiet and don’t let reporters anywhere near Oliver or the medical staff treating him. I’ll get his parents and bring them to the hospital. If we can keep this under wraps, we might be able to use it.’

‘Will do, Ma’am. See you there.’

The living child was as pale as the dead ones had been and, frankly, not much more animated. There was a red bruise on his left cheek, and the skin on his right cheekbone had been scraped. Huge shadows under his eyes. But this one was sitting up, clutching his mother’s hand tightly, blinking his tears away.

‘Hi, Oliver,’ said Dana, letting the door of the private hospital room close softly behind her. ‘I’m Dana. I’m a detective. I need to ask you some questions, if that’s OK.’

Oliver’s mother, leaning out of her chair to be closer to her son, glared at Dana as though she might bite her if she got too close. ‘He needs to sleep,’ she said.

A few hours ago, she’d have promised Dana anything to have her son back again.

‘This won’t take long,’ said Dana, pulling up a chair and sitting down. ‘Well, Oliver, you’ve given us all a bit of a fright. Can you tell me what happened?’

It took longer than it should have. In spite of everything she could say to reassure him, Oliver was frightened of her. She suspected he’d be frightened of anything and everything unfamiliar for a long time to come. He was another victim, even if he was still alive and relatively unhurt.

Eventually, though, she’d heard everything he had to say. He told her that when Joe had gone running back to the tennis club, he’d hung around at the gate of the park, keeping Joe in sight and making sure he stayed beneath a streetlight. Oliver had just seen his friend reappear from the clubhouse when someone jumped him from behind. A large sack had been pulled over his head and then he’d been picked up and carried.

‘Were you put in a car or a van?’ Dana had asked.

Oliver had shaken his head. ‘He just carried me,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we went far.’

They hadn’t gone far. Oliver had been found in the choir stalls of a nearby church, less than five hundred yards from where he’d gone missing. Once inside the building, his abductor had flung Oliver down hard on his face, kneeling on his back to prevent him getting up. He’d tied his wrists and ankles and then put a gag around his mouth and a blindfold around his eyes.

‘I couldn’t really breathe,’ said the child. ‘It got worse if I struggled, so I had to stop. I thought I was going to suffocate.’

‘You’ve been very brave,’ said Dana. ‘Can you tell me anything about this person’s voice?’

Oliver shook his head. ‘He never spoke to me,’ he said.

He never spoke? So how could they be sure it was a he?

‘Not at all?’ asked Dana. ‘Not even to tell you what to do?’

‘No, he just pushed me and pulled me.’

‘Oliver, this is quite a difficult question, but can you tell me anything about how big this person was?’

Oliver looked puzzled, so she tried again. ‘I know you didn’t see him,’ she said, ‘but he carried you and got quite close to you. For example, did he seem as big as your dad?’

Alan Kennedy was around five foot eleven and strongly built. Oliver looked at his dad, standing silently in the corner of the room, and shook his head. ‘More like Martin,’ he said.

Martin, Oliver’s teenage brother, looked at his dad in alarm. ‘I was at home all night, wasn’t I, Dad?’

Dana smiled at the older boy. ‘I think Oliver just means whoever attacked him was about your size,’ she said. ‘Which is very useful to know.’

Martin Kennedy was about Dana’s own height, somewhere around five feet four inches tall. The height of an average-sized woman.

‘So if he didn’t speak to you, he didn’t threaten you at all?’ said Dana.

Oliver shook his head.

‘Can you tell me what happened next?’ asked Dana.

‘It all went quiet,’ replied Oliver. ‘I heard the door being closed and the key turned, so I figured he’d gone. I didn’t dare move for ages, but then my arms and legs started to hurt so much I had to.’

Oliver’s mother inched herself closer to her son. Her right arm was stretched over his pillow, her left hand clutched both of his together.

‘I realized I could move my wrists a bit,’ said Oliver. ‘I had quite a thick coat on and he’d taped my wrists together round the sleeves. When I twisted them around and rubbed them together, it got looser.’

‘He’s got tiny wrists,’ said his mother, reaching out one finger and gently stroking the back of her son’s wrist. They looked pink, a bit sore.

‘Go on, Oliver,’ said Dana.

‘I managed to get my hand free,’ said Oliver. ‘It took ages and it hurt, but I kept on going because I knew once he came back he would …’

‘Your son is an extremely brave young man,’ said Dana, turning to the boy’s father, giving Oliver a chance to take a breath and his mother time to wipe away the tears. When she could hear that his breathing had calmed, she turned back. ‘Once you had a hand free, were you able to get the rest of the tape off?’

He nodded. ‘Off my eyes and mouth first. Then my legs. I was in some sort of room. It was really dark. I couldn’t see much but I could hear buzzing, like machines. It was like the boiler room at school. But I couldn’t get out. He’d locked the door. I banged on it for ages but nobody came.’

Jesus, the search must have passed within yards of the church.

‘So what happened?’

‘In the end I gave up. There was another door and when I opened it I was in the church. I knew where I was then, but I still couldn’t get out. I couldn’t even find a phone. I thought there might be one in the vestry but it was locked.’

‘So you just had to wait?’

Oliver nodded. ‘There was a bolt on the boiler-room door. On the church side, I mean, so I locked it. So if he came back, he wouldn’t be able to get to me. Then I went and hid in the choir stalls. I don’t know if he came back. If he did, I didn’t hear him.’

‘You brave, clever boy,’ said Dana, as, across the room, the door opened fractionally. Neil Anderson looked in.

‘This is Sergeant Anderson, he’s a detective too,’ said Dana, noticing how alarmed the child became suddenly. ‘Will you excuse me for a second?’

She got up and followed Neil outside. ‘SOCOs are still in the church, but they’ve finished with the boiler room, where Oliver was left,’ he said.

‘Anything?’ asked Dana.

‘They say they’re pretty certain the boiler room isn’t where the other boys were killed. They say you can’t spill that much blood and not leave a trace. Especially as neither the floor nor the walls lend themselves to thorough cleaning. And there’s no drain of any description.’

‘Did they find anything we can rely on?’

‘Some footprints that are too big to be Oliver’s but not as big as most men’s. They’ve taken photographs, obviously. Also there were some fibres on Oliver’s jacket. Black, look like some sort of wool mix. They could be important, especially if they match nothing at the Kennedy house.’

Dana stopped, turned and leaned against the corridor wall. Anderson did the same.

‘How’s the kid?’ he asked, after a second.

‘Good as you could expect,’ said Dana. She looked at her watch. ‘I have to be at the Yard in less than an hour,’ she said.

‘Have you decided what our official line is on Sweep yet?’

‘We’re going to announce that we no longer believe him to be the killer, simply a malicious prankster. He will be found and brought to justice, but he’s no longer a major focus of our inquiries. We’ve asked Facebook to block the Missing Boys site. From now on, we’re going to ignore him.’

Anderson pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

‘You think we’re being rash?’

‘Boss, what if he did take Oliver last night, but something prevented him from going back to finish him off ? All the shenanigans on Facebook could just have been the real killer venting his frustration.’

‘Possible.’

‘In which case, taking away his soapbox and announcing to the world we’re not taking him seriously any more could just make him do something stupid.’

Dana straightened up. ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Because until she does, we won’t catch her.’

Barney’s dad was in the kitchen, eating breakfast, when Barney came down. He looked up and his face creased with concern. ‘What time did you get to sleep?’ he asked. ‘Or did it not actually happen at all?’

‘I think I heard you come in,’ replied Barney, who didn’t think he’d ever felt this tired or ill in his life before. It had been impossible to sleep after Peter’s Facebook message. Peter was someone he knew. How else would he be able to order Barney’s favourite pizza? He knew who he was, where he lived and what his favourite pizza toppings were. Jeez, fewer than half a dozen people probably knew all three of those things about him.

He sat down and stared at his dad. Did you order me a pizza last night, Dad? Did you?

‘What?’ said his dad, cereal spoon hovering.

If he said nothing, if he didn’t mention it, then his dad might. His dad might give himself away. Last night, someone calling himself Peter Sweep had abducted and murdered a ten-year-old boy. He’d tied him up, put his photograph on Facebook, and then kept the world informed when he’d cut open his throat and fed off his blood. Last night, once again, his dad had been on the boat.

‘… Usually when killers go for one particular type of victim, it’s because those victims remind them of a person in real life … They can’t kill the one they really want to, so they choose – do you know the word surrogate?’

Barney looked at his father’s hands, at the skin around his mouth, as if there might be some traces of Oliver Kennedy’s blood. Is it my throat you want to cut, Dad? My blood you want to drink? Do I have to die to stop you?

His dad was looking at the TV screen behind Barney’s head. The volume was still low. Now he was looking round for the remote.

Shall we just end this now? I’ll get the sharpest knife I can from the drawer, I’ll lie down on the table and you won’t even have to tie me down because if Mum’s gone for good and you’re a murderer, then I really don’t want to live any more.

‘They’ve found him,’ said his dad, cranking up the volume. ‘Thank God for that.’

‘Found who?’ Barney managed, before turning to look at the screen. A reporter in a green coat was standing outside St Thomas’s hospital.

‘That kid who went missing. I nearly had bloody heart failure when I heard about it last night. That’s why I was home early.’

Oliver was alive? Barney could hardly believe what he was seeing and hearing. Alive and unhurt. He’d spent the night locked in a church? A church miles away from the boat at Deptford Creek that he’d heard his dad laughing on?

‘I tell you what, mate, until this guy’s caught, I’m going to have to give up working late. I know you’re sensible but I just can’t deal with the stress. What’s the matter? Barney? Buddy, why on earth are you crying?’