Like This, for Ever

50




‘HELLO, I’M LOOKING for Stewart Roberts. Can you tell me where I might find him, please?’

For the first time in what felt like months, but was probably only just a few weeks, Lacey was wearing formal clothes. An off-the-peg suit that felt looser than when she’d worn it last, a plain white blouse and low-heeled court shoes. Her hair was twisted up at the nape of her neck. It was nothing special, just the clothes she wore when she had to look serious, like a proper detective. It was an outfit in which she never felt herself. Which was perhaps as well, because had she felt like herself, she might never have made it inside the main door.

Stewart Roberts was a lecturer in English literature at King’s College, London, the fourth oldest university in England and one of the most highly regarded in the world. He worked from the daunting, pale-stone buildings on the Strand.

Academia – just the thought of it made her shudder. At the start of the year, for only a few days, she’d been a student in the most prestigious university in the land. The experience had almost killed her.

The woman in the office looked Lacey up and down and decided she was a sales rep. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ she asked.

Lacey pulled her warrant card out of her inner pocket and held it up. ‘CID,’ she said. ‘If Mr Roberts isn’t here, please tell me where I can find him.’

‘I’ll just check.’

A few moments later, Lacey knocked at a blue-painted door on the right-hand side of a long corridor. The office behind was large. She counted three untidy desks, two of them occupied. Stewart Roberts stood as she entered the room and she could see that he recognized her. He was an attractive man, she realized, if you went for bookish types. Mid forties, with thick grey hair and neat, regular features. Spectacles that looked trendy rather than otherwise. His clothes were better than you saw on most academics. His jeans looked designer, his sweater expensive. He was frowning at her now.

‘My secretary said the police wanted to see me. Did she mean you?’

‘Our secretary,’ mumbled the large, middle-aged woman at the other desk, without looking up.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk privately?’ Lacey asked.

The woman visibly stiffened. There was no way she was moving.

Stewart looked at his watch. ‘I have a lecture at three. What’s it about?’

Lacey glanced at his colleague and raised her eyebrows. He got the message. ‘We’ll go to the chapel,’ he said. ‘No one’s ever in there.’

‘This is beautiful,’ said Lacey a few minutes later as they stepped inside a Victorian chapel filled with gold light and jewelled colours. To either side of the nave, crimson pillars supported elaborately panelled archways; beyond them were stained-glass windows. Above were more pillars, more arched windows and then crossbeams and an intricately decorated ceiling. Directly ahead were five more stained-glass windows above the altar, the central one a strikingly realistic depiction of the crucifixion.

‘Yes, it is quite something,’ said Stewart. ‘Restored in 2001.’

‘And no one uses it?’

‘Slight exaggeration on my part. There are services here most days. So what can I do for you, Lacey, isn’t it? I really do have a lecture at three.’

‘It’s about Barney.’

Instant alarm on his face. ‘Has something happened to him?’

‘No, he’s fine. That is, I’m sure he’s safe and well, but I am worried about him.’

She waited for the reaction. Upon being told their kids were in trouble, parents invariably went on the attack. It was usually difficult to predict in advance whether the object of their aggression would be the child, or the officers who’d come to report, but it was invariably one of the two.

Stewart, though, surprised her. He walked slowly and deliberately to the front pew and removed the coat he’d thrown over his shoulders as they’d left his office. He sat down, leaving room for her to sit beside him without feeling crowded. Then he waited for her to tell him more.

‘I thought you should know that Barney has been looking for his mother,’ she began. ‘For the better part of a year now. He’s been placing ads in the classified sections of local papers. He has a plan to hit all the papers in Greater London and then gradually spread out over the south-east. Every penny he earns at the newsagent’s he spends on advertising. He wants me to help him now. He wants me to get her put on the missing-persons list, to launch a proper police inquiry.’

When she glanced over, the man beside her had visibly paled. He’d wrapped his jacket around his lower arms like a muff, or a comforter. ‘Barney’s mother is dead,’ he told her.

‘I know that. I did an online search for her after I spoke to him.’

Stewart shook his head slowly. ‘I had no idea he still thought about her,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t mentioned her in years.’

‘I’m afraid she’s on his mind a great deal. Do you never talk about her at all?’

He was fiddling with something on the coat, twisting it, worrying it. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for him to ask. I should have known the fact that he didn’t was a problem in itself.’

Both afraid of being the first to raise the forbidden subject, each waiting for the other to bring it up.

‘He found her, did you know that?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Lacey.

‘He and I had been out for the day. He wasn’t an easy baby. Completely adorable in many ways, but demanding. Needed constant attention and entertainment. Even I found him exhausting and I wasn’t with him most of the day. Karen just couldn’t deal with it and I was trying to give her a break. I thought a bit of peace and quiet for a few hours might help. When we got back, he went running round the house looking for her. He’d climbed up the stairs before I even knew where he was and pushed open the bathroom door. By the time I got up there, he’d climbed in himself. I think he was trying to get her out … God, the two of them, the water had splashed everywhere. It looked like the whole room was covered in blood.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Lacey. ‘How terrible for him. For you both.’

‘For the first few weeks, he asked for her a lot. Just Mummy, Mummy, over and over again. And he had very bad nightmares – it wasn’t difficult to imagine what they were about. After a while, he just stopped asking and I suppose I was relieved. It seemed so much easier just to pretend he’d never had a mother. Jeez, I really screwed up, didn’t I?’

Yes, thought Lacey. It’s what we do. We screw up, and those we’re supposed to protect are the ones who get damaged.

Stewart was looking at his watch. ‘I really have to go,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I’ll take care of it.’

Lacey watched him pull his coat back on and walk down the central aisle. Only when the heavy oak door had closed behind him did she realize he’d left something on the pew, something that must have fallen from the pocket of his coat while he’d been fidgeting with it. A small, black glove.