Like This, for Ever

6




THE HOUSE WAS a mess as usual. Barney looked round at the supper remains all over the granite worktop, the skewed window blind, his dad’s sweater abandoned on a stool, two drawers not quite shut, one cupboard door wide open. Somehow, the rule that said grown-ups were supposed to tidy up after their kids had skipped the Roberts’ house.

He turned on the hot tap and ran it over his hands. He hadn’t cut himself, he was pretty certain he hadn’t, but that icky stuff on his hands had looked, for a second, like blood. He soaped and rinsed them several times before getting to work on the kitchen. Tidiness had been important to his mum; it was one of the few things he could remember about her.

At the kitchen sink, Barney raised the blind to straighten it. Light in the garden next door told him that Lacey was in her conservatory at the back of her small flat.

Lacey could help him find his mum.

The dishes done, Barney let the water drain away. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t thought of it before. The police tracked down missing people all the time. But if he told anyone what he was doing, he’d jinx it and it would fail. Somehow he knew that. He couldn’t tell anyone. And what if she told his dad?

When everything had been put away and all the surfaces were clean again, Barney went up two flights of stairs to the top floor. On the way, he switched off the divert that sent all incoming calls to his mobile. He wasn’t supposed to go out when his dad wasn’t home.

On the second floor of their house were Barney’s bedroom, bathroom and his den. On one wall of his den was a giant poster of the solar system, on the other a large artist’s impression of a black hole. He wasn’t particularly interested in astronomy, the two posters had just been the biggest he could find on Amazon. He pulled out the eight map pins that held them to the wall and rolled them up. Underneath were his investigations. The first was about the boys who’d been killed. Their photographs, taken from news sites, ran along the top. Beneath them, he’d fastened a map of the river with tiny coloured stickers marking the spots where the bodies had been found. Barney didn’t think there was much chance of his dad finding his investigations, he hardly ever came into his den, but he had a plan just in case. He would say they were for a school project about the work of the Metropolitan Police.

He ran his finger along the course of the river, starting way downstream in Deptford where the first body had been found. The killer was working his way up-river, getting closer. Barney’s finger hovered near Tower Bridge.

On the wall opposite was another large map, this time of all the London boroughs. Right now, he was doing Haringey. The envelopes he’d posted earlier each contained a classified ad to go into the Haringey Independent and the Haringey Advertiser. BARNEY RUBBLE was the bold heading at the top, because that had been his mum’s name for him when he was little. Barney Rubble, after the Flintstones character. That was the attention-grabber. The message below he changed often, because he still hadn’t decided which would work the best. Sometimes it just said: MISSING YOU. Other times it was chatty, quite informal: WOULD LOVE TO CATCH UP SOME TIME. Once, he’d even tried: DIES A LITTLE EVERY DAY WITHOUT YOU, but he’d regretted that the moment he’d posted it. It just wasn’t the sort of thing you said in a newspaper, even if it was anonymous. Even if it was true.

The ads always ended with an email address, the one he’d set up in secret, which only he knew about. The one he checked every morning of his life because this could be the day his mum finally got in touch.

Next month he’d move on to Islington. By the time he was thirteen he’d have done the whole of Greater London and it would be time to move on to the Home Counties.

It didn’t matter really, if his dad found this map. He would never guess what it was all about. It was just important, somehow, to keep it to himself.

Replacing both astronomy posters, Barney crossed the room to his desktop computer. In his in-box were a couple of emails from friends at school, one from his PE teacher, Mr Green, about a fixture that weekend, and a long list of notifications telling him people had replied to a comment stream he’d contributed to on Facebook. Strictly, Barney wasn’t old enough to be on Facebook, but most of his class had their own pages. They just lied about their year of birth. He looked at the time; he had a few minutes before he was supposed to go to bed.

On Facebook he went straight to the Missing Boys page that had been set up a few weeks earlier, when Ryan Jackson had become the second South London boy to vanish. 5,673 people were now following the site and, as always, there was a huge number of posts, ranging from the sensible to the downright weird.

One guy thought the boys were being used for unorthodox medical experiments in a secret research facility somewhere along the riverbank.

Some comments appeared to be from genuine friends of the boys, others from strangers offering best wishes for their safety. Not all the comments were good-natured, and there were the usual people expressing outrage that a social media site should encourage this sort of ‘wallowing’ in others’ misery.

Finally, Barney neared the bottom of the thread. God, some people were weird. And this guy, Peter Sweep, was probably the weirdest of the lot. No profile picture, for one thing, just a photograph of some blood-red roses. No personal information either, although that wasn’t so unusual for kids on Facebook. He had nearly five hundred friends, but they all seemed to be others who’d ‘liked’ the Missing Boys page. It looked like a page set up purely to comment on the murders. Barney sat looking at Peter’s latest post, the last in the thread.

Very exciting – two dead already. Now maybe two more!

The thread updated itself and Barney read with interest. It was Peter Sweep again.

Update on the Barlow Twins case. Lewisham police have recovered two bodies from the bank of the Thames this evening. Announcement expected shortly. RIP Jason and Joshua, now to be known as the Heavenly Twins.

Peter Sweep was one of the most regular contributors to the Missing Boys site. His posts always started out factual, almost official sounding, and in the early days more than one person had speculated that Peter was connected to the police investigation in some way. Certainly everything he posted turned out to be right. But then he always added a sick little message at the end, which made it seem highly unlikely he was a police officer.

In the few seconds since Peter had posted, a flood of comments had followed. Barney spotted Lloyd joining in with the conversation and, a few seconds later, Harvey. As usual, people were eager for more information, including how Peter had come by his scoop. As usual, he didn’t respond.

A thought struck Barney from nowhere. If he went missing, if his face was on television every night, in newspapers, on posters and flysheets that were handed out at train and bus stations, would his mum see them? Would that be enough to bring her back? He could spend years steadily making his way through all the regional papers, spending every penny he had, and not get close. But if he went missing, in one fell swoop he’d get national coverage. That would have to work, wouldn’t it? She’d have to come back then.

Barney stood up, suddenly tired of the Facebook site and its contributors faking sympathy for emotions they’d never feel. How many of them had any idea what it felt like to love one person more than anything in the whole world, and have no idea where she was? He was getting it again, the feeling that made him want to break something, throw something fragile against the wall, or hurl a chair at the window. Pour ink over the carpet. Deep breaths. In for four, out for four. Where was the box? Barney’s breathing was getting away from him, he couldn’t control it. In for four, out for four. He left his den and went into his bedroom. The simple, square rosewood box was in the exact centre of his bedside table. Inside it were small, wizened, green pieces of foliage sitting on tissue paper. Seven of them in total, his four-leaf-clover collection.

He’d been just two when he’d found his first one. He and his mum had been in the park, with a group of other mums and toddlers. He couldn’t remember the occasion himself, but he remembered his mum telling him about it later. ‘I was talking to one of the other mums and you squeaked for my attention like you always did. Then you held your hand out to me and said, “Mummy four. Not free. Four.” And there it was in your chubby little hand, the first four-leaf clover I’d ever seen in my life.’

Over the next couple of years, he’d become obsessed with the idea of finding four-leaf clovers. He looked at the ground and saw the patterns among the grass and the clover. The ones with four leaves jumped out at him. ‘How do you do it?’ his mother would ask. At almost four, the age he’d been when his mother had left, he’d found his last one. He couldn’t remember whether she’d seen it or not.

Barney’s breathing had settled. He closed the box and put it back down beside the bed. Tears filled his eyes. He could find four-leaf clovers. He could find any number of things that were lost. Why couldn’t he find his mum?