Like This, for Ever (16 page)

‘Good,’ said Huck. ‘Worried about the vampire. He didn’t
mention it, but he had a copy of that book on his desk, the one that’s just gone into the top 50 on Amazon.’

‘So now even the Super is reading Bram Stoker,’ said Dana.

‘Did you give him my water?’ said Mark.

Huck gave his dad a withering look. ‘You didn’t want water,’ he said. ‘You wanted me out of the way so you could tell Dana what you thought of in the incident room.’

‘You see,’ Mark said to Dana. ‘Kid got my brains.’

LACEY’S TRAIN GOT
into King’s Cross just before eight o’clock. As she left the station she saw the late edition of the
Evening Standard
and stopped to take a copy. The masthead had caught her attention.
V
AMPIRE AT LARGE IN
L
ONDON.

The world had gone nuts.

It was a thirty-minute Underground trip home. The front page of the paper showed artist’s sketches of the four young boys who had died and the one still missing. Each looked paler and thinner than the photographs Lacey remembered seeing. Dwarfing all of them in size was a colour photograph of the psychologist who’d been in the news all day: Bartholomew Hunt, an attention-grabbing pillock, if ever she’d seen one.

Hunt was miffed at not being taken seriously and was happily accusing the Metropolitan Police of being narrow-minded and bigoted in their thinking. A spokesman for the MIT had told the paper that they were taking all new information seriously and were currently pursuing a number of lines of inquiry.

Lacey folded the paper on her lap. The team hadn’t a clue. Pursuing a number of lines of inquiry was as good as saying they had no idea where to turn next. She pulled out her iPhone and pressed the Twitter app. During the day, some wag had christened the murderer the Twilight Killer and #TwilightKiller had been attracting new posts at the rate of several a second. As was the
Missing Boys Facebook page. Lacey had also followed comment streams on MySpace and Mumsnet. Several wanted to know of any shops that hadn’t sold out of garlic. There were rumours of holy water and crucifixes being stolen from churches and Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
was predicted to hit the bestseller chart for the first time since its publication. It seemed safe to say hysteria was building.

At Stockwell, Lacey climbed up to street level realizing that old habits died hard. She’d wanted to know nothing about this investigation and here it was, churning around in her head as if she’d been right in amongst it from the start. Even the country’s incarcerated wanted in on the action. A focus group of some of the world’s most notorious female criminals, working directly for the Met and using her as their main channel of communication? It was almost funny.

Except, was it actually such a bad idea? Who better to get inside the head of a cold and calculating killer than several more of them with time on their hands?

Yep, the world had gone nuts.

BARNEY LOOKED ALONG
the embankment, and then down to the map. They were some distance from the nearest street lamp and he had to use his torch. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘This is where they found Noah.’

The six children lined up along the wall and peered over to look at the beach below. Long way down. Lloyd took a step back. ‘He went down these steps?’ he said. ‘Can’t have been easy with a body over his shoulder.’

Close to where the children were standing, a dozen concrete steps led from the embankment to the beach. All but the top two were covered in green algae. Threads of river-weed had knotted around bumps in the concrete and the metal handrail looked anything but secure.

‘He could have just tipped him over the wall,’ added Jorge. ‘No point making unnecessary work.’

Barney was looking at the opposite bank. ‘The thing about this site is that it’s almost directly across the river from the headquarters of the Marine Unit,’ he said.

‘What’s the Marine Unit?’ asked Harvey. He and the other boys were pressing closer, all trying to see the map at once.

‘The river police,’ said Barney, nodding to the large brown-brick Victorian building on the north bank with its industrial-length pier. ‘Part of the Metropolitan Police but in charge of the river. People at
the time said it was really cheeky of the killer, to dump the body here, right under their noses.’

‘That’s where they’re based, is it?’ said Jorge, who was also looking at the building. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Are you alright up there, Hatty?’ asked Barney. Hatty and Sam had climbed up on to the embankment wall. It was only about five feet high on this side, but a good fifteen-foot drop on the other.

‘Hatty’ll be fine,’ said Jorge. ‘Sam will probably tumble to his death though.’

‘Heard that,’ muttered Sam.

‘The police didn’t find him though, did they?’ asked Lloyd.

‘No, a couple on their way home from work,’ said Barney. ‘The point is, there was a lot of talk about whether the killer was taunting the police, you know, saying, “Look at me, look what I’ve left on your doorstep.”’

‘Maybe he just didn’t know,’ said Jorge, whose eyes were still fixed on the north bank.

‘One thing everyone is agreed on is that this bloke knows the river,’ said Barney. ‘If you know the river, you know where the Marine Unit are based.’

‘So where was the body?’ asked Sam.

Barney shone his torch down on to the beach. ‘Hard to know for definite,’ he said. ‘There were sketches in some of the newspapers but they’d be based on guesswork. I think we have to work it out for ourselves.’

‘Go on then, Sherlock,’ said Jorge.

‘Well, he probably carried him down these steps,’ said Barney, ‘and we know he leaves them where the tide will cover them after a couple of hours. If we go down, we can probably figure it out.’

‘What’s the tide doing now?’ asked Lloyd, looking nervously at the black water.

‘It’s coming back in. In another couple of hours you won’t be able to get down there. It’ll be muddy even now. I did tell you lot to wear wellies.’

Of the whole group, only he and Lloyd were wearing wellington boots.

‘Watch it,’ Barney said, realizing he was expected to lead the way down to the beach. ‘These steps will be slippy.’

Shining the torch on the crumbling concrete steps, Barney made his way down to the beach. The first few yards of it were dry. The tide didn’t usually reach all the way back to the wall. After a few paces, though, the stones became damp, interspersed with patches of mud. Four yards away from the river’s edge, Barney stopped.

‘Somewhere round here,’ said Barney, looking down. ‘I can’t see any reason for him to have walked left or right. I imagine he wanted to get rid of it and get away from here as soon as possible.’

Jorge had walked another pace further on. ‘Here, I reckon,’ he said.

‘How come?’ asked Harvey.

‘Had a good view of the river in both directions,’ said Jorge. ‘He could see if any traffic was coming. But that pier would provide a pretty good screen for what he was up to.’

‘Here then,’ said Barney, stepping closer to Jorge. One by one the other children joined them. They stood in a circle, looking at each other.

‘We should switch these torches off,’ said Jorge, doing exactly that with his own. ‘People up on the embankment might see us. And there’s still people on the pier. We should work in the dark. Like he did.’

The three remaining torch beams disappeared and the children were left in darkness on the riverbank. Barney felt a twang of nerves. This close to the water’s edge, the sound of the river was surprisingly loud. It seemed to groan, somehow, as though with the effort of continual motion. Or as though there was something beneath it, pushing to be free.

‘This is freaky,’ giggled Hatty. In the dim light, Barney thought he saw Sam sneak his arm around Hatty’s waist. She stepped to one side, away from him.

‘Quiet,’ said Jorge. ‘Let’s just listen.’

A second of silence from the children, then another muffled giggle. Jesus, was Barney the only one who could hear the noise the river was making? It sounded like it was alive. With a start, Hatty turned to look out across the water. Had she too heard the low-pitched moaning, like half-dead creatures waking up? Then the
spell was broken when Harvey pulled a plastic water bottle from his rucksack and started to walk round the others in a big circle. The children watched, increasingly mystified, as Harvey held the bottle out at arm’s length and let the water inside trickle down on to the stones. He drew a circle around them and stepped into it.

‘What you doing?’ asked Jorge.

‘Holy water,’ said Harvey. ‘I’ve just drawn a protective circle around us.’

The noise from the children bounced across the beach.

‘Daft pillock!’ ‘Prat!’ ‘Dickhead!’ Only Barney stayed quiet. They weren’t going to start talking about vampires and drinking blood again, were they?

‘Where the hell did you get holy water?’ demanded Jorge.

‘St Nicholas’s,’ said Harvey, looking defensive. ‘They have a bowl of it at the back by the door, I just waited till no one was looking. Everyone knows vampires hate holy water.’

‘So we’re perfectly safe from vampires as long as we stay in this circle all night,’ said Jorge. ‘Course we might drown, but at least our jugulars will be intact. OK, own up, who brought garlic?’

Sam and Lloyd laughed nervously.

‘Stakes?’ said Jorge.

With a grin on her face, Hatty reached inside the neck of her fleece and pulled out a small silver crucifix.

‘OK, guys, quieten down,’ said Lloyd. ‘We came here for a reason, not to piss about.’

‘So what do we do, look for clues?’

‘There won’t be any clues left,’ said Barney. ‘I think we just have to get a feel for the place. Any special reason for choosing here? Did he definitely come by road or is it too soon to rule out the river?’

‘He’s bringing them by road,’ said Lloyd. ‘At Tower Bridge, he could get a car right to the steps, then it would take just a couple of minutes to carry them up, through the alleyway and down again to the river. All he had to do here was park on the road, carry him a few yards down the steps and he was on the beach.’

‘Convenience then,’ said Jorge. ‘Does your map show all the steps with road access, Barney? We can try and predict where he might leave the next one.’

‘Glad you think there’s going to be a next one,’ said Barney.

‘Serial killers don’t stop unless they’re caught or die,’ said Jorge. ‘Course there’ll be a next one.’

‘It’s raining,’ said Hatty, stepping away from the circle, a step closer to the river. Barney followed, resisting the temptation to pull her back. ‘I keep forgetting,’ he said. ‘I found your earring.’ He opened his hand. The tiny gold leaf sat in the centre of his palm.

‘Cool,’ said Hatty. ‘Where was it?’

‘In the drain that runs round the edge of the community-centre yard,’ said Barney.

‘Yuck!’ She tucked it into her pocket.

‘I cleaned it. It was covered in something grotty, but I cleaned it with my dad’s white spirit.’

‘Thanks.’ She gave him that cute, shy smile of hers, the one that made her cheeks plump up like she had gobstoppers inside them. Although she was older than Barney, she was smaller. Sometimes, when you looked down at her, you couldn’t see her eyes, just long black lashes.

‘How deep is it?’ she asked, turning back to the river.

It made him feel good that there was stuff he knew that she didn’t. ‘Right now, about five metres in the middle,’ he said. ‘Gets deeper when the tide’s in, obviously.’

Five metres of cloudy, dark water. Barney had a sudden vision of himself stepping out and sinking down, through the silt and the oil, feeling the pull of friendly hands, only to realize it was weed clinging and that it wasn’t friendly at all, that it was taking him further down to the wrecked boats, the mud and rock at the bottom. To spend the last seconds of his life in an underwater city, peopled by corpses that had never managed to float free.

‘What?’ said Hatty, who’d seen him shiver. ‘Someone walk over your grave?’

‘Something like that,’ he admitted. ‘We should go, we can’t get into the Creek if the tide’s high.’

The others were reluctant to leave the riverbank. Sam and Harvey were trying to skim stones, Jorge seemed strangely fascinated by the river in the fading light and Lloyd had discovered shells among the rocks. A bit like a Collie dog with badly behaved
sheep, Barney chivvied them along. He was careful not to overdo it, he never forgot he was the youngest. Even so, more than once he was told to chill out.

But it was difficult to chill when the sense of the river behind him was so strong, when the temptation to look back over his shoulder, like a nervous girl walking alone down a dark street, was close to irresistible. And when pictures were forming in his head of waves like tiny creatures, snapping at his ankles, getting ready to bring him down.

He was an idiot. It was just a river, black and mighty and relentless, but still nothing more than an urban watercourse.

‘Guys, it’s raining, come on,’ complained Hatty and finally they started to leave the beach. Barney was the last to climb the steps. As he put his foot on the first, he had a feeling that the river called out to him. That it told him it would always be here, and it would be waiting.

Riverside lanterns, round and pale like puffball mushrooms, were glowing softly when Dana arrived at the restaurant. Mark and Huck had gone on ahead; Helen, punctual to a fault, would have arrived fifteen minutes ago. They’d all be waiting for her.

The river, just yards away, was racing past, and had taken on the fuller, more urgent sound it made when the tide was heading in. By the time they left the restaurant, the water would be pushing against the embankment wall.

The restaurant was busy. She could almost feel the heat seeping out from the giant glass windows and doors. Most of them had steamed up already. Needing one last moment before she forced herself to be happy and upbeat – for Huck’s sake, at least, there was no fooling the other two – Dana walked to the railings and leaned out over the water.