Like This, for Ever

62




‘I HAVE NO idea how it got there,’ said Dan Green. ‘It doesn’t really matter how many times you ask me, I can’t give you a different answer.’

‘Your fingerprints are on it,’ Dana reminded him, which, strictly, was a moot point. A partial print had been found on the phone that appeared to be a match for Green’s right index finger. It would never hold up in court, but, so far, they hadn’t revealed how flimsy a piece of evidence it was.

‘I keep my keys in that pocket. It’s quite likely I touched the phone when I put them in or pulled them out. Look, my bag was on the touchline for over an hour while we were training. I didn’t have my eye on it the whole time. Anyone could have slipped something in it.’

Green was a good-looking man, but not, Dana had noticed with interest, at all similar to Stewart Roberts. Taller, younger, more muscular, with thick, dark hair, bright enough but hardly Brain of Britain. This man was an athlete, not an academic. When she’d first entered the interview room, she’d glanced down at his feet. Even in trainers they looked larger than average. Size eleven or twelve, at a guess. Bigger than the wellington boots that had left the prints on the beaches. And that was panic rearing its head again, wasn’t it? Because something about this just didn’t feel—

‘Who took the register tonight?’ asked Dana.

‘James did,’ said Green, referring to his assistant coach. ‘I was there when he did it.’

‘So you knew Huck hadn’t turned up?’

‘I knew he hadn’t answered the register.’

‘You didn’t see him?’

‘No, I don’t remember seeing him at all tonight.’

‘You didn’t think to phone his mother when he didn’t show up?’

Green sighed. ‘In hindsight, I really wish I had. But up to five kids don’t show most weeks. Usually because something unexpected has cropped up at home, or they just don’t feel up to it. I can’t chase ’em all up.’

‘Some of the children there tonight say they saw Huck at the beginning of the session.’

‘So I understand. I didn’t.’

‘How can a child be there one minute and not the next?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Did you talk to him at the beginning of training?’

‘No, I didn’t see him.’

‘Did you ask him to wait for you in your car for a few minutes?’

‘No, I didn’t see him.’

‘If Huck has been in your car recently, we’ll find evidence.’

‘Huck has never been in my car.’

‘Your wife believes you go to circuit training on Tuesday and Thursday evenings after football training. That isn’t strictly true, is it?’

‘I used to believe my wife stayed home and did her marking on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Turns out that’s not strictly true.’

‘What do you mean?’

Green shrugged. He wasn’t going to be shaken easily. Time to turn up the heat a bit.

‘Are you referring to the fact that your wife is having an affair with Stewart Roberts?’ said Dana.

Green exhaled loudly through his nose. ‘Is that who it is?’ He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I wondered why she always took such an interest in Barney.’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘I knew it was happening with someone. I guess the details aren’t that important.’

Green’s sallow skin had paled and his eyes had narrowed. He might be feigning nonchalance but she was getting to him. She reached down into her case and pulled out the silver-framed photograph Gayle had found in his house. His reaction was immediate.

‘How dare you touch that!’

Dana pretended to study the ten-year-old boy in the photograph. It had been taken at school and showed him wearing a maroon sweater and a maroon and black striped tie. Benjamin Green had looked a lot like his father.

‘I’d say the dead boys look very like your son, Mr Green,’ she said, knowing she was on dodgy ground. Benjamin had been darker haired and more sallow of skin than the victims. ‘Is that how you choose them?’

Green gave her a look of pure contempt and closed his eyes. She watched him breathe in and out three times.

‘For the benefit of the tape, the suspect is refusing to answer the question,’ said Anderson, after twenty seconds had gone by. Green’s eyes shot open.

‘For the benefit of the tape,’ he said, ‘the suspect thinks you are a bunch of incompetent halfwits.’

‘We can make your life very difficult if you don’t cooperate, Mr Green,’ said Dana.

‘Detective Inspector, my son is dead and my wife – who I still love, by the way – is about to leave me. Trust me when I say that you and your friends don’t even come on to my radar screen.’

‘We could always leave him in a cell with Mark for half an hour,’ said Anderson, when they left the interview room ten minutes later. ‘He’d be singing after five minutes.’

‘I don’t doubt it, but he still couldn’t tell us anything. It isn’t him, Neil.’

Anderson gave a heavy sigh. ‘Boss, Huck’s phone was in his bag. Fingerprints. Black fleece.’

‘Did you see his feet? Bloody enormous. There’s no way he could squeeze into size-ten wellingtons. Or leave shallow, slightly wobbly prints in the mud. And would a killer as careful as we’ve continually told ourselves this one is leave his latest victim’s phone in his bag for anyone to find? If Green were guilty, he’d have been expecting us to talk to him. He would have got rid of the phone.’

‘So how did it get in his bag?’

‘My best guess? Huck dropped it in the changing room – he’s always leaving it lying around – and one of the other boys picked it up and dropped it in the coach’s bag for safe-keeping.’

‘So what – are we back to Mrs Green and her shag bunny? Because I can’t believe none of the three are involved.’

‘Mrs Green and her shag bunny, as you so charmingly call him, alibi each other. We need actual evidence on the boat or in one of their houses to pin it on them. And while we’re looking for it, Huck is out there.’

Suddenly, Dana could no longer summon up the energy to put one foot in front of the other. She stopped and leaned back against the wall, almost setting off the panic alarm. She couldn’t look at Anderson. He waited, gave her time. Huck didn’t have time. No choice – she had to hold it together. She stood upright again.

‘Hold the fort upstairs for a bit?’ she asked him.

‘Going somewhere, Ma’am?’

‘I need to talk to Huck’s mum.’

‘What will you tell her?’

‘God knows. But I promised.’

Lacey saw the boy by the gates of the community centre and called to him. He turned and watched nervously as she ran towards him. She pulled her warrant card from her jacket as she struggled to get her breath back. It was only midnight but she felt as though she’d been up all night. Or been drinking heavily. Something was slowing her down and it was starting to feel a lot like despair.

‘You’re a friend of Barney’s, aren’t you?’ she said.

The boy was about her height, very slim, with fair skin and hair. A beautiful child, on the verge of turning into a man. Around fourteen years old, wearing a mud-spattered tracksuit and trainers. ‘Someone from the police phoned our house about him. Have you found him?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘I wanted to ask if you could think of anywhere he might have gone,’ she said. ‘The police will have checked the houses of all his friends. I was thinking maybe of a den or a place you like to hang out. I’m Lacey, by the way. I live next door to Barney, but I’m also a detective.’

‘I know,’ the boy said. ‘He’s mentioned you. I’m Jorge Soar.’

‘Can you think of anything, Jorge?’

‘We mainly meet here,’ said Jorge, nodding his head back towards the community centre. ‘I’ve just been in there now, checking it out.’

Lacey turned to look at the old factory building with its high perimeter wall. Through the iron bars of the gates she could see the murals glowing in the lamplight. A forest gleaming green and silver. Shadowy figures that might have been Red Indians hiding behind trees.

‘It looks closed up to me,’ said Lacey.

‘It gets locked at nine,’ Jorge told her. ‘That’s when the caretaker leaves. But there’s a way in at the back. Can you believe Barney and Huck are both missing?’

Barney and Huck. Lost boys.

‘Do you think they’re together?’ asked the boy, surprising her. She shook her head.

‘I hope they are,’ he said. ‘Barney’s sensible. He’ll look after Huck.’

‘You should go home,’ said Lacey. ‘I know you want to help, but it’s not a good idea for you to be out this late.’

‘I sneaked out,’ confessed Jorge. ‘Mum’ll kill me if she finds out. But Barney’s my brother’s best friend. He wanted to come too, I just didn’t think it would be safe for him.’

‘It isn’t. Not for you either. Do you want me to walk with you?’

He shook his head. ‘We’re only five minutes away. You’re right, though, Gran’ll freak if she looks in my room and sees I’m not there. I hope you find him, Lacey. Huck, too.’

At the corner of the street, when Jorge would have faded out of sight had it not been for his hair shining silver in the streetlights, he turned and waved. Then he was gone.