Like This, for Ever

65




‘MY SON WOULDN’T hurt anyone.’

‘Yes, thank you, Mr Roberts,’ said Anderson, taking the seat opposite Stewart. ‘We’ve taken note of everything you’ve told us about Barney’s inherent gentleness and his habit of nursing injured birds back to health when he was small. The fact remains, though, that both he and a younger boy are missing, and it is extremely important that we find them.’

‘Barney is terrified of blood. He goes apeshit if he cuts himself. I practically have to sedate him to get him to have a vaccination. There is no way on earth he could cut someone’s throat.’

Dana took the seat beside Anderson and flicked open the notes facility on her laptop.

‘Do you actually know what your son gets up to when you leave him alone two evenings a week?’ she asked.

Stewart’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean? He does his homework, watches TV, plays on his computer and goes to bed. He’s a sensible kid.’

‘He goes out, hangs around with a gang of older children and spends an inordinate amount of time looking for his dead mother. I’d say he’s a child with problems,’ replied Dana.

‘You know nothing about my son.’

‘He also experiences episodes when his memory deserts him completely. Large chunks of time when he claims he has no recollection of where he’s been and what he’s been doing. I’m starting to wonder how much you know about your son.’

Lacey found a torch, latex gloves and a dry jacket. She was out of the house in less than a minute. At her destination in fewer than five.

Fly off and join them in Neverland.

How many times over the last few weeks had she lurked in the shadows and watched Barney and his mates speeding down the skateboard ramp at the community centre? You look like you’re flying, she’d told him. They hurled themselves down impossibly steep slopes at terrifying speeds with only balance and the force of gravity to keep them upright. The wind caught their hair and pulled at their clothes. When they spread their arms for balance they genuinely looked as though they were soaring through the sky.

And the illusion was made perfect by the mural painted on the brick wall behind them. A picture of a night sky, stars and the moon, plump, billowing clouds, and three children, the Darling children, flying for the very first time in their lives with the aid of happy thoughts and fairy dust. The community centre, the place where Barney and his mates hung out, was Neverland.

The grim Victorian exterior of the community centre had been softened and made child-friendly by extensive mural paintings. The pictures ran around the main building and inside the perimeter wall. One of the outbuildings, she was sure, showed a bay with mermaids on rocks. There was the enormous green crocodile with the alarm clock grasped between its teeth. A pirate ship in full sail. Wigwams to represent the Indian village.

At the gates, Lacey took Huck’s phone out of her pocket. Was she certain enough to call for back-up? Whilst the paintings could have given Barney the idea in the first place, was it feasible that children were being held and killed in a community facility that, every day, was swarming with people? She could not call the MIT here to find an empty building.

If they were taking her theory seriously – and if they still believed it to be Gayle Mizon’s they probably would be – they’d concentrate on finding the places that Barney had access to. The houseboat and the boatyard were obvious ones. Maybe the Roberts family owned a garage or lock-up somewhere. They’d be talking to his friends, trying to find out if there were any dens or meeting places in old, abandoned buildings. God knows there were enough of them around South London at the moment. That was the sort of ordered, logical search that would find Huck. Pulling them away from it to pursue yet another hare-brained idea could be dangerously irresponsible.

Thirty-five minutes before Joesbury was expecting to meet up with her again. She couldn’t phone him either. If there was even the remotest possibility that his son was being held in the community centre, he’d tear down every door in the place trying to find him. She couldn’t put him through that until she was sure.

Dana pushed open the door of the incident room, knowing she was going through the motions. She’d just about lost the ability to think. All she could do now was follow procedure and hope others on the team were functioning better than she was.

‘OK, we’ve spoken to the families of all Barney Roberts’s close friends,’ she told the team. ‘He was at the local community centre until nine o’clock, and then three of his friends – Jorge and Harvey Soar and Hatty Bennet – walked home with him. Harvey seems to be his best friend so we may have to talk to him again. None of them can think of anywhere he might be other than his own house or possibly the boat at Deptford Creek.’

‘I’ve just had a call from the uniformed team we sent down there,’ said Anderson. ‘There’s no sign of him, and it’s not that big an area. They really don’t think he’s gone there.’

‘We haven’t spoken to DC Flint again,’ said Dana, ‘but for now it looks as though hers was the last sighting we have of him.’

‘Neither DC Flint nor DI Joesbury are at their respective flats, Ma’am,’ called Stenning from across the room. ‘DI Joesbury’s still not answering his phone.’

Dana acknowledged Stenning with a nod. ‘I think we have to assume DC Flint and DI Joesbury are pursuing their own independent investigations,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope they’re together and at least stand a chance of keeping each other out of trouble. In the meantime, if Barney is the one we’re looking for, it seems safe to assume he’s gone to wherever he’s been keeping and killing the boys. If we find Barney, we find Huck.’

The entire complex was in darkness. But Lacey knew she’d often seen Barney and his mates in the yard after the centre had closed. In fact, hadn’t Jorge, less than an hour earlier, told her he’d just been inside?

The heavy gates were padlocked. The brick perimeter wall was around five feet high, but iron railings on top of it took it up well above her head.

If Barney and his mates could get inside, she could.

At the corner of the street, the railings gave way to the outside wall of the outbuildings. Round the corner, the street was both narrower and quieter. It was still difficult to see a way in. The outbuildings were single-storey, with steeply sloping tiled roofs and no obvious way over them. Lacey followed the wall to the end and turned the next corner.

This time she was in an alleyway between two streets. No one around. Plenty of shadows. Lacey found her breathing escalating. She’d spent weeks telling herself nothing could scare her any more. Was she about to find out that she was wrong?

On this side there was another door. Unlike the wide iron gates at the front of the yard, designed to allow vehicles to drive right inside, this one was a pedestrian access only. Lacey stretched out a gloved hand to try the handle. Locked, of course, but to the right of the door one of the railings had broken away, leaving a narrow gap.

Lacey jumped down into one of the darkest corners of the yard. All seemed still. No sound came from beyond the outer walls except the ordinary night-time percussion of London. OK, Barney could not be in the main building. It was used for twelve hours or so every day. People were constantly coming and going in every part of it. There was no way abducted children could be hidden in there.

What about the outbuildings?

Four doors faced on to the yard. Each shed had a small window, set high in the wall. Switching off her torch, relying only upon the light from the streets, Lacey made her way towards the first shed. And with every step, the fear she thought she’d left behind for ever was growing.

There were too many hiding places. Too many shadows. Beneath the skateboard ramps, around corners, even inside a collection of plastic Wendy houses by the main doors. Children could hide anywhere. They could squeeze their bodies into the smallest spaces.

The outbuildings were definitely the most likely place. In the young children’s play area Lacey found a plastic cube that would bear her weight. Balanced on it, she could see through the window that the first shed was packed to the roof with piles of chairs, stacked trestle tables, cardboard boxes. She’d struggle to open the door, never mind move around inside. Nevertheless, she tried. Locked.

The next was full of sports and games equipment, outdoor stuff that wouldn’t be needed until the spring. Locked like the first. The third shed looked like the overspill of a busy office. Two desks were piled high with books and files. Filing cabinets lined one wall. Paper littered the floor. Black bin-liners, close to bursting apart, were piled in one corner. The door was locked.

The fourth and last shed in the line had been used as a workshop. Against the far wall was a long Formica counter, interrupted only by an old-fashioned Belfast sink. An immersion heater was fixed to the wall. Empty paint tins lay along the counter. There were woodworking tools, saws, hammers fixed to the walls. Locked like the rest. And, like the rest, quite plainly no one was inside.

Lacey felt panic rising up again. Panic that would creep into her thoughts and throw them off kilter, stealing away her ability to think straight. She couldn’t give into it. Not yet. Victorian buildings nearly always had cellars.

She started to move again, looking down for the telltale ventilation grates or the reinforced opaque glass squares that allowed daylight to reach underground. Nothing around the outbuildings. Nor around the main factory building either. There was no way of getting inside to check. Time to face facts: there was nothing more she could do on her own.

Lacey pulled her borrowed mobile from her pocket. Unsure who to call first, Mizon or Joesbury, she hesitated as a flickering of light caught her eye. She looked up. There it was again. A light inside the building, in an upstairs window? Gone. Shit, had she seen it or not?

Lacey ran straight at the skateboard ramp and let the momentum take her up. At the top, from where Barney and his friends regularly launched themselves into the night, she could almost see through the upper windows. All seemed dark. Then the flickering began again – which was nothing, after all, just the reflection of a malfunctioning lamppost in the next street along, and time was running out.

The lamppost started flashing again, drawing her attention to the building immediately behind it. A derelict Victorian house, large and square, with ornate red brickwork, very similar in architectural style to the community centre. She’d walked past it many times, could even remember when it had housed local council offices. Once officialdom had moved out, it had become a hang-out for drug addicts and homeless people, until complaints from local residents had resulted in tighter security and regular police inspections. She’d even visited it herself once, back when she’d been in uniform.

It was taller than the houses in the adjacent streets, taller by a whole storey than the community centre, and the upper windows looked directly into the yard. Into Neverland.

Movement at Dana’s side made her glance up from the computer screen. Susan Richmond was approaching with two mugs.

‘May I?’ she asked, indicating the vacant seat.

‘Of course,’ replied Dana. ‘You know, I’m still not sure.’

‘About what? About the killer being a child?’

Dana shook her head. ‘Lacey’s a bright officer,’ she said, ‘but she’s impulsive. Gets an idea and has to act right away. She doesn’t necessarily think things through. If we’re looking for a child who doesn’t want to grow up, how do the multiple cuts fit in?’

Richmond thought for a second. ‘You mean if he wanted the kids dead, he’d just want to get it over with as soon as possible?’

‘Exactly. The multiple cuts suggest to me it’s about the cutting. The cutting is what he gets off on.’

‘The important thing is, he didn’t kill any of the other boys the first night. We still have time.’

‘Ma’am.’ Anderson had approached. ‘For what it’s worth, we know who our mole was.’

Dana had forgotten all about the mole, that someone had been feeding information to Bartholomew Hunt.

‘That was the pathologist, Mike Kaytes, on the phone,’ said Anderson. ‘He’s working late on another case and found a half-finished email his nerdy young assistant Troy was writing before he got called away. Guess who it was to?’

‘Hunt?’ tried Dana.

‘Bang on. Turns out Hunt is young Troy’s mother’s cousin. He admitted everything when Mike pressed him. He’ll be instigating disciplinary proceedings in the morning, he just wanted us to know.’

‘Thanks, Neil.’

‘Doesn’t really seem that important right now, does it?’

The windows on the ground floor of the house were boarded up with plywood. Lacey inspected each in turn, looking for loose nails, but there was no way in at the front that she could see. The huge double-door, beneath the carved sign that read MERCIER HOUSE, BOROUGH OF LAMBETH, PARKS AND AMENITIES DIVISION, didn’t budge an inch when she tried the handle.

Same at the side. Four large, rectangular windows, all boarded up. The rear of the property was enclosed by a tall brick wall with a wide gate. The gate swung open when she pushed it and Lacey walked through into the ghost of a garden.

A rose had rambled the entire length of one wall, its branches clambering into the trees overhead, twisting and fighting with a bramble for tendril-holds. Berries from the previous autumn, shrivelled and rotting, clung to thorn-strewn branches and littered the ground. Further in, old fruit trees, their limbs dried and splitting, seemed to rely on the brick walls and the memory of former days to stay upright. One of them still bore fruit. Lacey blinked – apples in February – but they were real enough. The tree had lost its leaves but kept its fruit. In the streetlight the apples shone rosy-red, gleaming on the bare branches like baubles on a Christmas tree. More apples lay at its foot, rotting, the red skins smeared across the ground like bloodstains. She really had to get a move on.

An echo of a path took her towards the house. Brown stalks lying prone across the gravel were all that was left of the summer’s weed growth. Lacey passed a stone bird-bath that lay crumbling on its side. Closer to the building was a skip, a quarter-filled with refuse. Running along half of the rear wall were the remains of an elaborate Victorian conservatory.

The glasshouse stretched up to a high, vaulted roof, much of which looked intact, but as Lacey drew closer she could see splinters of glass scattered around like diamonds on the ground. The door she pushed at, more out of habit than any real expectation, opened.

The exotic hot-house plants had long since shrivelled and died, but the raised beds of the original conservatory remained, as did the slim, rectangular pool that ran lengthwise down its centre. The interior still retained the smell of damp, warm vegetation that greenhouses never seem to lose, but the smell was deceptive. Even sheltered from the wind, the conservatory was freezing cold; the glass panes were starting to mist over at the touch of her breath. The wall between the conservatory and the interior of the house had two windows, both boarded up. The half-glass door that led into the building had been similarly secured. Lacey was on her way to check the door when she saw the bike.

Tucked against the house wall, it looked modern, designed for a woman, with a low crossbar and with a plastic-covered baby-trailer attached to the back. Before she was close enough to touch it, Lacey could see that the coloured plastic of the trailer’s roof was wet. Raindrops. And yet the bike was completely sheltered beneath the glass roof. Some time in the last hour, this bike had been out in the rain.

Crouching, Lacey peered inside the trailer, looking for any trace, even a scent, of Huck, but there was nothing. She tried the back door to the house. Locked and boarded. There was no easy way into this house and panic was rising up again, muddying her thinking and telling her it was hopeless.

Back in the garden, she pulled out Huck’s phone. Joesbury would come like a shot if she called, but apart from some vague thoughts about Neverland and a baby-trailer, what did she really have? She needed to get inside.

The windows on the next floor up were open to the elements, but reaching them would mean scaling the iron framework of the conservatory. Almost as an experiment, Lacey reached up, and the stabbing of a tiny shard of glass was a reminder of her own stupidity. No child, even a strong and agile one, could scale the conservatory with another child on his back.

She had to go, find Joesbury, tell him her hunch had come to nothing. He could probably organize a search of the house, just to be sure, but it would be little more than ticking the box. Lacey had almost turned away from the house when something caught her eye. At the corner of the building, strung from an upper window, was a collapsible rubble chute.

Conscious of her heart beating faster again, Lacey stepped over to it. It was black, or she might have noticed it sooner, a long, wide pipe stretching from the upper floor of the building, designed to allow sharp rubble to be thrown safely to the ground. It was constructed in sections: when not in use each piece could slip inside the next so it became a manageable size. At one point, it had probably been directed into the skip.

Suddenly, the hunch was alive again. This was the perfect way to get the body of a young boy in and out of the building. The lost boys had all been small, skinny ten-year-olds. Some sort of rope and pulley system could have lifted them to the top floor via the chute. Once they were dead, the chute would have got them back down again.

In the bike, she had the means of getting them around London; in the rubble chute, a way of getting them in and out of the house. The house gave the killer somewhere to work, but was too close to other people for him to risk keeping the boys alive for long. Was it enough? She looked at the phone. Still twenty minutes before Joesbury came looking for her. If she called him now, he’d tell her to wait for him. He’d alert Tulloch and the team, who would insist she wait outside. It was the only sensible thing to do. But how would she ever get Huck’s face out of her head, if she stood here doing nothing, while he …

Lacey tucked the phone back in her pocket, returned to the conservatory and started to climb.

The vertical ascent wasn’t difficult. Clambering across the arched roof, though, she had to avoid putting any weight on the glass. Her limbs were shaking by the time she reached the window, but one last effort and she was inside.

Just in time to hear a low-pitched whimper.

People around her were exhausted. Dana knew she had to send them home. She’d tried already and they’d ignored her. They were staying as long as she stayed, and she was staying until the end.

Across the room, the phone started ringing. It was a measure of how tired everyone was that no one rushed to answer it. After a couple of seconds, Anderson got up and crossed the room.

‘OK, listen up, guys, this is important.’

Heads lifted. Several people were blinking hard.

‘That was SOCOs down at the Creek,’ Anderson said. ‘They’ve found more blood on the houseboat. Tiny amounts. Someone’s done a pretty good job of cleaning up, but there’s no doubt. There are at least two distinct types, both definitely human. And before you ask, neither is Gilly Green’s.’

‘I’m not keeping up,’ said Mizon. ‘I thought we’d ruled out Stewart Roberts.’

‘We ruled him out,’ said Dana. ‘We didn’t rule out the boat.’

Lacey made herself keep still, ignore the urge to run from room to room, shouting out Huck’s name. There were procedures to be followed, the first of which was to understand the size and nature of the building to be searched.

The room she was standing in was large and high, with a carved ceiling-rose and picture rail. There was a cheap filing cabinet that no one had thought worth removing, a metal chair lying upturned on the linoleum floor and stacks of loose files to one side of the door. A door she had to open, slowly and silently.

The door opened on to a landing above a wide, ornate staircase. On either side of where Lacey was standing, two further flights of stairs gave her a choice of passage up to the next floor. In the hallway below her was the wide front door and – she counted quickly – at least five more rooms.

Oh, this wasn’t an empty house, somehow she just knew it. This house was alive and breathing, watching her. She could almost see the gentle, respiratory movement of the walls. The wind, which was somehow finding its way in from outside, ruffled loose papers, stirred old cobwebs, chased dried leaves across the floors. The woodwork shifted and tensed, bracing itself, waiting for her next move. Reluctant to leave the relative safety of the room she’d entered by, Lacey knew she was committed. Having entered the house, she had to complete the search.

Police training told her to check and secure the ground floor first. Instinct screamed at her not to go down. Down meant no way out. Down was the equivalent of being trapped in a cellar.

Besides, the chute had led from the top floor of the house. Logically, anything happening in this house would be happening above her. Which meant there was no point checking this floor either. She had to go up.

Leaving the doorway to take to the stairs was like finding herself in the middle of a maze, in which danger could come from any direction. This was a huge house, with any number of rooms, corners and cupboards. Barney was small and agile. He could be anywhere. He could be watching her right now. If it came to it, could she fight an eleven-year-old boy? One who was desperate, and possibly armed?

Before she was halfway up the stairs, Lacey had the overwhelming feeling that she’d taken the wrong flight. The urge to turn, head down and then back up the left-hand stairs was so strong it was all she could do to force herself to carry on. Then a muffled but distinct yelling stopped her in her tracks. The sound a terrified child makes when his mouth is covered.

Stewart Roberts looked Dana straight in the eyes, but there was something rather defiant about his face now. He’d grown paler, the muscles in his jaw were twitching and his eyes were beginning to look damp.

‘I want to talk about the time you went to the boat to dry it out,’ she told him. ‘The second week in January, I understand.’

Wary, he inclined his head. ‘The locksmith I sent there said it looked damp,’ he replied. ‘Thought perhaps a hatch was leaking. I went a couple of days later and found he was right. There were small pools of water on the floor. And most of the soft furnishings were damp.’

‘Did you find a leak?’

He shook his head.

‘For the benefit—’

‘For the benefit of the tape,’ he interrupted, ‘I didn’t find a leak. None of the hatches had been left open, to my knowledge. The boat seemed completely sound. I had no idea, and still don’t, how the boat could have been wet.’

Dana pressed a key to take her to a different page.

‘Our crime-scene investigators have found traces of blood on your boat,’ she said. ‘At least two distinct types, neither originating from Mrs Green this time. Could either be yours?’

Slowly, reluctantly, he shook his head. ‘I keep a record if I cut myself,’ he said. ‘It happens very rarely. I’m extremely careful.’

‘What about Barney?’

His breathing was quickening. ‘Barney hasn’t been on the boat since last October. And when he cuts himself, the whole world knows about it.’

‘You do realize that if the blood we’ve found matches any of the victims, then they could only have been killed by someone with access to your boat?’ Dana said.

Stewart didn’t reply. For a few seconds she watched his chest rise and fall.

‘More than once now,’ she said, ‘you’ve referred to the keys to the houseboat going missing late last year. Mrs Green said the same thing. What can you tell us about that?’

‘The keys were missing over Christmas,’ Stewart told her. ‘I had the locks changed.’

‘Can you give us some dates?’

He sighed and pulled out his phone. He looked at the screen for several seconds, tapping various apps. ‘The last time I was at the boat before Christmas was the thirteenth of December,’ he said after a moment. ‘That was a Thursday. The following Tuesday, the eighteenth, Gilly and I met for a drink. I imagine the keys went missing some time over the weekend in between.’

Dana looked at her laptop calendar. Anderson leaned closer so he could see it too. Tyler King had disappeared on the twentieth of December, Ryan Jackson on the third of January. Both bodies had been found in or by the Creek.

‘When did you get the locks changed?’ asked Anderson.

Stewart had been anticipating the question. ‘The eleventh of January,’ he said. ‘Friday morning.’

On the tenth of January, Ryan’s body had been found on the beach at Deptford. From the following day, the killer would have been unable to access the boat. He’d found somewhere new. Somewhere he didn’t dare risk keeping the boys for too long. So he’d started killing them faster. It was all starting to come together, except …

‘Any idea how the keys went missing?’ Anderson asked.

Stewart shook his head. ‘I kept them on a hook by the front door with all the house keys,’ he said.

‘I think you told us before you don’t have many visitors,’ said Anderson. ‘Barney doesn’t like people in his house. I think you said that’s the reason why you never used babysitters.’

Stewart seemed to shrink a little. He shook his head, but the conviction had gone.

‘Who, apart from you and Barney, could have taken those keys?’ asked Dana gently.

‘No one,’ said Stewart. ‘No one comes into our house. Just me and Barney and occasionally his mates. He can tolerate kids, you see, because he stays in charge. Other than a few kids, though, no one.’

Silence. The man across the desk remained perfectly still. Outwardly, he was unchanged. Inside, Dana knew, he was crumbling.

Knowing that if you’re going to attack, you do it fast and hard, Lacey ran up the last few steps. She burst through the one door on the upper landing and in the tangerine light of the street lamps had a moment to take in the huge, high-ceilinged room, the bloodstains festooning the walls and rafters like forgotten party-streamers, and the sickly, slaughterhouse stench of the place. Then she spotted the small, slim boy tied to the trestle table in the middle of the room. Eyes open. Body wriggling. Huck. Still alive, thank God. Duct tape had been tied across his mouth but he was making a hell of a noise from behind it. His hands were taped together and so were his feet, and tape had been wound round and round his body to secure him to the table. His head was jerking from left to right but his eyes never left hers.

Then they did. At the exact moment that Lacey heard the swish of air behind her, Huck’s eyes darted to the left. Without that second of warning, the blow might have been fatal. As it was, her right arm deflected the flying sledgehammer and it caught the side of her head. The next blow, coming only a split second later, was that of a body hurtling through space and flying directly into her. She fell to the ground, sickened and disorientated. As she went down, she spun to the left and caught sight of the second trestle table. Lying on it, trussed and gagged exactly like Huck, was Barney.

‘Ma’am.’ Tom Barrett was at the far side of the room. He had to raise his voice to be heard.

‘What is it, Tom?’

‘I’ve been running checks on all those kids Stewart Roberts told us were friends of Barney’s. I think you’re going to want to see this.’

Dana crossed the room to Barrett’s desk. He stood to let her sit down, but she shook her head, leaning on the desk instead. His screen showed the webpage of a CNN news-site.

‘Barney Roberts’s best mate is a kid called Harvey Soar,’ Barrett told her, as first Mizon, then Anderson, Richmond and Stenning gathered around the desk behind her. ‘Harvey has – or rather had – some famous parents.’

‘Abbie and Rob Soar,’ said Anderson. ‘The British journalists who got caught up in the Ivory Coast atrocities. Remind me when this was?’

‘Twelve years ago,’ replied Barrett. ‘Abbie must have been pregnant with Harvey at the time. There was a massacre in a school – over a dozen boys were killed, supposedly so they couldn’t grow up and join the government-controlled army. The Soars were there, caught up in it, and they had their two-year-old son with them.’

‘They came across the school just as the rebels left,’ said Dana, who’d been reading ahead. ‘I remember this happening. Abbie took photographs – they went all round the world afterwards. They got away, but the rebels caught up with them. Rob Soar was killed in front of his wife and son.’

‘Rob Soar had his throat cut. He fell with his kid on his back and bled to death in the river,’ said Barrett. ‘And the boys in the school were killed in the same way. Over a dozen young lads, all with their throats cut.’

Dana scrolled up the page, back to the photograph at the top. It was of Abbie and Rob Soar at an awards dinner. She needed only a second to look at the slim, elfin woman with short fair hair.

‘That’s her,’ she said. ‘That’s the woman on the beach.’

Lacey never actually lost consciousness. She was aware of shock rather than pain, then a crippling weakness in her limbs. She thought perhaps the hammer hit her again, this time between her shoulder blades. Then she wondered if someone was kneeling on her back. Her face was pressed against the rough wooden floorboards – boards that smelled of a terrified child’s blood. She knew that any second now she was going to vomit.

Breathe in, breathe out, stay alive.

Her hands were behind her back. Too late she realized they were being taped together. Whoever was kneeling on her bounced, pressing her chest against the floor and squeezing the air out of her body. Don’t fight, take a breath. When the weight lifted, she could kick, struggle to her feet. This was only a kid.

But the kid was on the other table. Two trestle tables. Huck on one, Barney on the other. There was someone else here. Someone who was reaching for her legs, trying to tape her ankles together. She kicked, bucked, but whoever was sitting on her was too heavy. Do something, he’s almost won.

He had won, she couldn’t move. The darkness was changing, taking on deep shades of blue and purple, becoming more solid, wrapping itself around her. She had to rest, just for a minute.

No, don’t pass out. Stay conscious. Get upright.

Rocking on to one side, she drew her knees up towards her chest and pushed hard against the ground with her right shoulder. The pain across her collarbone almost made her give in to the darkness but she told herself to hold on, keep breathing, think about Huck, think about Barney.

She was in a large, rectangular room at the back of the upper floor. A room that could have been the studio of an insane painter with access to only one bright colour. A room with so much blood it was making her head spin. The high, peaked ceiling had several areas where the arterial spray was concentrated. The boys who had died in here hadn’t been killed in the same spot. They’d been moved around, as though the killer wanted an individual and permanent memento of each on the walls. Nor had the boys’ killer bothered getting rid of the blood. The blood was all still here, she could smell it. The boards beneath her were slick with it. Lacey felt her ears start to buzz, her head to grow thick. She couldn’t faint.

Only one door, the one she’d come in by. Three windows high in the rear wall looked out on to the night. Too high for jumping to be a safe escape option.

As the dizziness faded, Lacey became aware that three pairs of eyes were watching her. Two belonged to the forms prone on the trestle tables, the third to the elf-like figure squatting on the ledge of the far window, clinging to a rope. The rope was attached to a pulley in the ceiling and secured to a cleat beneath the window, and the elfin creature had knocked her to the ground by swinging at her. It was poised to swing again if she moved.

The killer was slim and strong, dressed in green. With spiked fair hair and eyes of an odd intensity. A malevolent sprite. Peter Pan.

‘My daughter-in-law’s out. She’s working.’

‘We’d like to talk to the boys, please. Jorge and Harvey.’

‘They’re both asleep.’

Dana, Gayle Mizon and Susan Richmond stood at the door of the tall terraced house and faced the faded, elderly woman on the threshold. She smelled of gin, exotic cigarettes and cheap perfume.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Dana. ‘We wouldn’t dream of disturbing you at this hour if it wasn’t urgent.’

‘I don’t want them upsetting any more. Jorge’s already been out this evening, looking for Barney. Harvey cried himself to sleep.’

‘Mrs Soar, two children are missing and your grandsons know one of them very well. They may be able to give us some clue as to where they might be.’

‘You’d better come in. I’ll see if I can wake them up,’ the woman said.

Dana and her two companions stepped into the hallway and closed the front door behind them. The elderly woman turned to walk away from them. The hallway was tall and narrow, in the manner of old houses. The cream walls were lined with photographs. Just ahead, Gayle Mizon stopped and nodded at one particular shot. Dana stepped closer. It was the original of the photograph they’d seen minutes earlier on the CNN website: Abbie and Rob Soar, receiving an award for news coverage in the Congo.

The sound of a key turning in the lock made all three women start. They turned to see the front door open and the woman they’d just been discussing walk through.

Slim, fair-haired, around thirteen or fourteen years old, Lacey figured, looking at the figure in green poised to swing down at her again. Just a kid. She’d been right about the kid. Just chosen the wrong one. And thanks to her, the MIT was following the wrong lead again. Thanks to her, Dana Tulloch and her team would be looking for Barney, tracking down places he might be hiding. They wouldn’t be looking for the older brother of his best friend. And yet, in spite of her growing despair, there was some element of relief in finally being able to give the killer a name.

‘Hello, Jorge,’ she said.

‘What’s going on? Are the boys alright?’ The woman with short blonde hair looked from one police officer to the next, then to the top of the stairs. ‘Sylvia, what’s happening?’

The elderly woman seemed to sway. Both Richmond and Mizon took a step towards her. Dana fixed her attention on the new arrival. ‘These people want to talk to the boys,’ she heard the grandmother say. ‘One of their friends is missing. I was just going to wake them up.’

‘I don’t want them disturbed.’ The younger woman’s eyes were darting around the hallway, doing anything other than meet Dana’s.

‘You recognized me the other night, didn’t you?’ Dana said. ‘You’re a reporter. I’ve seen you at press conferences.’

The boys’ mother made a move to get past Dana. ‘I’m a photographer,’ she muttered to the tiled floor.

Dana stepped forward, blocking her route to the stairs. ‘I called out to you, but you ran away. Why did you do that?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’d like to check on my sons.’

The stairs were empty. The grandmother had gone.

‘You were on the beach beneath Tower Bridge,’ said Dana. ‘Why would you go there on such a bad night?’

‘It was a crime scene. I was taking photographs.’

‘You weren’t carrying a camera.’

Another step forward. The two women were almost nose to nose. ‘It was in my bag.’

‘You weren’t carrying a bag.’

‘Abbie!’ The grandmother was calling from the top of the stairs. ‘Jorge isn’t in his room. He’s not with Harvey either. I think he’s gone out again.’

Abbie seemed to droop.

‘Abbie,’ said Dana. ‘How long have you known about Jorge?’

When Lacey fell, the reality for Barney finally hit home. Until that moment, he’d been half waiting for Jorge to burst out laughing, to cut him and Huck loose, to say, ‘Got you!’ and admit it had all been the biggest possible wind-up.

He’d bumped into Jorge after he’d fled Lacey’s flat and, in his misery, had confided his fears about his dad yet again. Jorge had been completely understanding, seeing exactly where he was coming from, but assuring him he was wrong. In urgent whispers that had been so convincing, he’d told Barney he had a feeling he knew who the killer was, that he didn’t want to say more now, but that it was someone they both knew and that it would be a massive shock for everyone. If Barney would come to the old house with him, he’d said, they could break in and get proof.

Half drunk on the knowledge that his father might be innocent after all, Barney had followed Jorge to the house, up the framework of the conservatory and then to the top floor of the house. He’d been scared, of course, close to petrified, but Jorge had given him courage somehow and when they’d heard Huck whimpering, Jorge had gone straight in. Barney had actually been having fantasies about the two of them being heroes when Jorge had jumped him. Even then, he hadn’t quite taken it in.

Not until he’d seen the look on Jorge’s face as he’d flown through the air and swung the huge hammer at Lacey’s head had he even begun to believe that his best mate’s older brother, the coolest guy he knew, was a killer.

Even when Lacey sat up, blinking, her eyes unable to focus on anything, Barney had a second of hope that it was the ‘Surprise!’ moment at a party, when suddenly all the mystery was laid open.

‘Who knows you’re here?’ Jorge was asking Lacey.

Tell him you’re the first, willed Barney. Tell him half the Metropolitan Police will be bursting their way through the door any second. Scare him. Panic him. Make him run.

‘No one,’ gasped Lacey, giving first Barney and then Huck a strange, intense stare. ‘I came on my own. I love what you did on Facebook, by the way. Peter Sweep, the Missing Boys. Really clever.’

What was she doing? Even Jorge wasn’t sure. His eyes narrowed, searching for sarcasm in the detective’s face. A movement to the left caught Barney’s eye and he glanced at Huck. The kid was no wimp, you had to give him that. He’d been bucking and pulling and wriggling since Barney had been thrown into the room. Now he was rubbing his face against the wood of the trestle table, trying to get the tape off his mouth.

‘You’re in a show, aren’t you?’ said Lacey. ‘I saw your photograph in the local paper. You’re actually playing Peter Pan in the West End. God, you even look like him.’

Peter Pan? Peter Sweep? What was she talking about? If Jorge was Peter Sweep that made sense, it explained how Peter knew so much about Barney. And yes, everyone knew he was playing Peter Pan in the show, but what had that—?

‘Come away with me to Neverland,’ sang Jorge, still crouched on the window ledge. ‘Lacey, gonna teach you to fly.’

‘The police haven’t a clue,’ said Lacey. ‘They’re still chasing round looking for a vampire.’

Jorge actually sniggered at that.

‘Did you really do it by yourself ?’ Lacey was saying now, like she was some kid meeting a pop star for the first time. ‘Five boys, and now these two. It’s incredible. They’ll be writing books about you.’

A look of scorn washed over Jorge’s face. He didn’t mean it, though. Barney had seen the flash of hunger on his face.

Lacey stopped and coughed. She looked as though she was about to be sick. Then she seemed to make a massive effort. ‘I know what I’m talking about,’ she said. ‘I’ve studied real-life serial killers for years. The ones who really catch the public imagination are the women and the young ones.’

And the ones who never get caught, thought Barney. Don’t tell him that.

Lacey’s face seemed to darken, and for a second her eyes lost focus. Then she took a deep breath. ‘You know what you should do now,’ she said, still speaking directly to Jorge. ‘Go to the nearest police station and tell them to organize a press conference. They’ll do it, if you say it’s about the case. And they’ll have heard of you. I mean, you’re practically a celebrity. Then you can announce to the whole world it was you. You could say you knew the police were never going to catch you and you just got bored with it.’

Barney watched Jorge’s face for a reaction. If Lacey could just persuade him to leave the building, she could get herself free and call for help. Even if Jorge took her phone, she could untie him and Huck. She wouldn’t let Jorge catch her off guard again. Huck’s duct-tape gag was almost off. He’d be able to yell soon.

‘What will they do to me?’ asked Jorge, surprising Barney. It was the question of a child. Lacey obviously thought so too. She was giving him a reassuring smile.

‘You’re too young to go to prison,’ she said. ‘They’ll probably send you to a special facility, just for a few years, just till you’re eighteen. Then they’ll give you a new identity, maybe send you somewhere really cool like Australia and you can sell your story. I wouldn’t be surprised if they make a film about you.’

Jorge was nodding and Barney felt a rush of hope. It was going to work. There were plenty of sharp edges in the room – once they were left alone, Lacey could free herself in minutes. But then Jorge stood, tensed his whole body and leaped forward. The rope carried him into the centre of the room and he let go, landing lightly beside Lacey.

‘Or I could kill these two, and then you, and make it look like you did it before killing yourself out of remorse.’ Jorge smiled, and suddenly looked nothing like a child. ‘I wouldn’t even have the bother of getting rid of the bodies then. I know what I’m talking about, I’ve studied real-life serial killers for years.’

Barney closed his eyes, and gave up.

‘I don’t know anything,’ said Abbie. ‘Sylvia, have you any idea what time he went out?’

‘We always wonder, when there’s a killer amongst us,’ said Dana. ‘We ask ourselves, have I seen him, spoken to him, do I know him? I’ve been on the news saying “Someone knows him” over and over again. I wanted everyone in London to ask themselves that question.’

Abbie Soar hadn’t moved from her spot at the foot of the stairs.

‘But you had more reason than most, didn’t you?’ said Dana, trying to recall the conversation she and Susan Richmond had had on the way over. ‘After what you and Jorge went through when he was young. What happens to us in the first three years of life has a massive impact upon who we are as people.’

Huge pale-blue eyes couldn’t quite meet Dana’s. ‘I thought Jorge was dead too, that day,’ Abbie said. ‘When I pulled him out of the backpack, he was covered in his father’s blood.’

‘He doesn’t remember it,’ said his grandmother. ‘He was only a baby. We’ve never talked about it.’

‘What happened to you and your family was on the news all over the world,’ said Dana, ignoring the older woman. ‘There’s a huge amount of coverage on the internet even now. We found it in seconds. Have you never wondered if Jorge has done the same thing? He might even have convinced himself that he remembers it all.’

‘She wasn’t even allowed to wash him,’ said Sylvia. ‘The two of them were put straight in the truck and taken to the capital. Four hours in that hot, stinking truck, and all the time that poor baby covered in blood.’

‘It was the blood that made you suspicious, wasn’t it?’ said Dana, still talking to Abbie. ‘Blood on his clothes?’

‘Jorge washes his own clothes,’ said the grandmother, still at the top of the stairs. ‘He insists on that. I did spot some blood one time, but it was fake blood, from that show he’s in. I know he was telling the truth. He has a bottle of it in his room.’

Abbie’s blue eyes were still fixed just a few inches over Dana’s shoulder.

‘And he was always out when a boy disappeared or when a body turned up,’ Dana went on. ‘Always at football or at the youth club or whatever it is that he does in the evenings. He’s always out, isn’t he? On Tuesday and Thursday evenings?’

‘That’s when he rehearses,’ said Sylvia. ‘He’s in a show in the West End. He’s playing Peter Pan.’

Behind Dana, Gayle Mizon gave a small whimper.

Abbie came to life then. She made a move to push past Dana and the others. ‘I need to find my son,’ she told them.

Dana stood her ground. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You need to sit down and tell us where we can find him.’

Huck, Barney, now Jorge. How many more boys would be lost before the night was done?

‘You wouldn’t have a chance,’ Lacey told the silver-haired child with the dead eyes, knowing that, the way Tulloch felt about her, he actually stood a very good chance of convincing the police she was the killer. It would be a nice, neat ending for the case. Overly disturbed police officer going on a murderous rampage, misdirecting her colleagues to cover her own tracks, until she couldn’t live with the guilt any more. Except—

‘Take that gag off Barney and he’ll tell you I wasn’t in London for the first three weeks of this year,’ she said. ‘There’s no way I could have killed Tyler or Ryan.’

Jorge glanced over at Barney. ‘Then it’ll have to be Barney who did it,’ he said.

Shit, that would work. The MIT would certainly believe Barney was the killer. She had done so herself until a few minutes ago.

Jorge reached into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Which means you’re next,’ he said to her.

She’d lost track of time. Joesbury had said he’d come looking after an hour. The hour was definitely up, but by how much? Probably not enough.

‘Which bit do you enjoy the most?’ she asked Jorge, as he took a step closer. He was holding something in his right hand. Within the cup of his fingers, she could see the gleam of a blade. Behind him, Huck was straining to lift his head from the table. His wide blue eyes were watching in horror. Barney, on the other hand, had his eyes fixed to the ceiling. The fingers on both his hands were flexing and pointing, like claws going into spasms. ‘Do you enjoy the moment the knife breaks the flesh? Or when you see the light leaving their eyes?’

Jorge stopped moving. His eyes were staring, his mouth twisted. He looked like a child who’d been unjustly told off. He looked as if he was about to moan that it wasn’t fair.

‘Are you sexually excited by young boys?’ asked Lacey.

For a second she thought she’d gone too far, that he’d launch himself at her.

‘I’m not a pervert,’ he told her. ‘I don’t do it for pleasure.’

‘Why, then? Why do you do it?’

‘Honestly?’ he asked her.

She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Tell me honestly.’

‘Honestly,’ he repeated. ‘I just don’t know.’

Sometimes, there was no reason. Except …

‘I do,’ she said. ‘I know why you do it.’

Jorge turned from her then, walked back to the two trestle tables, right up to where he could look down at Huck on one side and Barney on the other. The Barlow twins had died in this room. The bloodstain down the table leg closest to Lacey was unmistakable. Jason and Joshua had bled to death here. Probably others as well. Terrified young boys had lain in this room and felt their blood seeping out as their bodies got colder and the darkness grew at the edge of their vision. Jorge was looking from Barney to Huck, at the point of their necks just below their chins, as though deciding which one to cut first.

‘I know,’ she repeated.

She could see the dilemma in his face. Half of him wanted to shut her up, the other half to hear what she had to say.

‘It’s like a tension inside you,’ she said. ‘It grows all the time. You feel it in your head, your stomach, even your fingers and toes, and it gets stronger and tighter, and with every hour that goes by it gets a firmer hold on you, until it feels like your entire body is screaming. And then that cut. That moment the knife slides across the skin and it falls apart, there’s something almost magical about it. Then the blood comes fizzing up and flows out and it’s like all that noise in your head just goes away.’

He was shaking his head slowly, his eyes never leaving hers.

‘The blood makes all the noise, all the pain, just slide away,’ said Lacey.

His head was saying one thing, his eyes another entirely. How much time had gone by? Enough?

‘You’re wondering how I know, aren’t you? I know because I do it too. Only I cut myself. I’ve never been quite as brave as you. Don’t you believe me? Untie my wrists and I’ll show you the scars.’

His mouth twisted – he wasn’t going to fall for that one. But at least he wasn’t looking at the boys any more.

‘You’ll have to cut Barney’s wrists, you know,’ she said. ‘If he’s the one you’re planning to pin the blame on, you can’t cut his throat. They’ll never believe an eleven-year-old would cut his own throat. You’ll have to cut his left wrist first, because that’s what right-handed suicides always do. And you’ll have to get the angle right, or they’ll know. Will you remember all this?’

‘Shut up.’

‘And another thing you should know is that it takes a lot longer for people to die when you cut their wrists than when you do their throats,’ Lacey called out. ‘It takes longer to bleed out. And the wounds will start to heal themselves. The blood will coagulate. You may have to make more than one cut. It will take time. Won’t be pleasant.’

‘Shut up!’

‘You’ve never killed a friend before, have you? You hardly knew the other boys. Are you sure you can do this to someone you like?’

Jorge looked from her to Barney, then to Huck. He stepped closer to Huck.

‘One last thing,’ Lacey called out. ‘It’s really important I tell you this.’

‘What?’

‘I have Huck Joesbury’s new mobile phone in my pocket.’

As Jorge’s eyes opened wide in surprise, she turned quickly to Huck. ‘Your dad bought you a new iPhone,’ she said. ‘He lent it to me because the police have mine, but it’s yours. He hasn’t given it to you yet because your mum thinks you’re a bit young for it, but he’s got it all set up for you. The numbers of all the people you know are in it – your mum, your dad, DI Tulloch, your godmother.’

‘If this is about trying to make me think you’ve made a call, forget it,’ said Jorge. He dug his hand into his jacket pocket and held something out towards her. ‘It fell out of your pocket when I hit you.’

‘Is it damaged?’

Unable to stop himself, Jorge glanced down at the screen and pressed the small round button that would activate the home page. Lacey saw the gleam of light and colour. The phone wasn’t damaged.

‘The reason it’s important,’ she said, ‘is that there’s a very useful app on that particular phone – you might have heard of it, it’s called Find My Phone. If two iPhones are connected by the same computer, then one phone always knows where its partner is. It’s done by GPS. So all Huck’s dad has to do to find us – and can I just say, he is one mean son-of-a-bitch when he’s mad, isn’t he, Huck? – all he has to do is open up the app, put in a password and his phone will tell him exactly where this one is.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No, I’m not. I saw Huck’s dad just over an hour ago. That’s when he gave me the phone. He’s been tracking me ever since. It’s what he does. It’s his job. He knows exactly where I am.’

‘Liar!’

‘I’ll prove it. Activate the app. Take Huck’s gag off – oh, clever boy, he’s done it himself – and get him to give you the password. And I’ll bet you anything you like that it tells you Detective Inspector Joesbury’s iPhone is right outside that door.’

‘Dad!’ screamed Huck.

Then everything happened at once, in a blizzard of noise and movement. Jorge ran for the door. He’d almost made it when the door fell off its hinges and crashed into the room. As Joesbury stepped inside, Jorge backed up and ran to the window, taking the rope with him. Joesbury ran after him. Jorge leaped. They heard a sharp cry, a loud clatter and then nothing. Joesbury had reached the window. He pulled out his radio. Lacey didn’t catch the words as he briefly spoke into it. She must have closed her eyes for a second, because when she opened them again Joesbury was leaning over his son’s prone body. He got Huck free and picked him up. With his son in his arms, he staggered across the room before collapsing beside her. She could feel the cold dampness of rain, the warmth of perspiration, the stickiness of tears. She felt as though their three bodies had merged into one clinging, shaking heap.

It seemed a long time before Huck’s voice broke the silence. ‘Dad,’ he said. ‘What about Barney?’