Like This, for Ever (19 page)

Jorge was looking round now. ‘Everyone OK?’ he asked.

None of them looked OK. Sam and Hatty had both been crying.
Sam looked like he still was, although he was making some effort to hide it.

‘I’m OK,’ said Barney. He wasn’t, but he knew from experience that sometimes, if you pretended for long enough that you felt a certain way, sooner or later you did.

‘I’m OK,’ said Harvey, who looked close to tears but was holding it together.

‘Me too,’ agreed Lloyd. ‘But what the hell was that thing?’

‘Not what,’ said Jorge. ‘Who. I think it must have been Tyler King. You know, the first boy to go missing. I think we found him.’

‘Jorge, it jumped out of the bloody water,’ said Sam, unable to keep his voice from trembling. ‘It wasn’t dead.’

‘It
was
dead,’ said Hatty. ‘It didn’t have any eyes.’

‘And I saw it swimming,’ said Harvey. ‘I did, Jorge. It was swimming and then it jumped out of the water. What if it followed us?’

Hatty shuffled along the carpet, a little closer to Barney.

‘It didn’t.’ Jorge put his hands on his brother’s shoulders. ‘You need to get a grip. We all do. I know it was a massive shock but it was a dead body, not some sort of zombie. You didn’t see it swimming and it didn’t hurl itself out of the water.’

‘What happened, then?’

‘A wave,’ said Jorge. ‘It’s a river, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, and it’s tidal,’ said Barney. ‘The tide’s on its way back in.’

‘There you are then. A freak wave picked it up and dropped it on the bank.’

‘So who did I see swimming?’ insisted Harvey.

‘I still think we should call the police,’ said Sam. ‘We should have called them before we left Deptford.’

Barney sighed. Sam wasn’t going to let it go. But Barney could not let his dad know he’d been down at the boat this evening. ‘Lacey
is
the police,’ said Barney. ‘She’ll check it out herself, then she’ll call the others. If we own up to being there, we’re all in big trouble. Everyone thinks we’re at Lloyd’s house, remember?’

‘They might think we killed him,’ said Harvey.

‘They won’t think that,’ said Lloyd. ‘He’d obviously been dead a long time.’

‘What if they find out we sent the text?’

‘You can’t trace text messages from a pay-as-you-go phone,’ said Jorge. ‘I’ll just throw the SIM card away and that’s that.’

‘Why’ve you got one of those, anyway?’ asked Harvey.

The brothers looked at each other. ‘It’s not mine, it’s one of Mum’s old ones,’ said Jorge. ‘I borrowed it. Mine’s out of battery. She won’t notice. You know what she’s like.’

‘It’ll be on the news tomorrow,’ said Lloyd. ‘Everyone will be talking about it and no one will know we found him.’

‘They can’t know,’ said Barney. ‘We’ll never be trusted again. We’ll be grounded for months, if not years.’

Jorge, Hatty and Lloyd were nodding. Harvey would do what his brother told him. It was Sam he was worried about.

‘Is your dad out all night?’ asked Jorge.

‘No,’ said Barney, who had no idea at all. ‘He’ll be back before midnight.’

‘It’s not far off that now,’ said Jorge. ‘We should all go.’

‘Go where?’ asked Harvey.

‘Ours,’ said Jorge. ‘Mum won’t be back till morning and Gran will be away with the fairies by now. We just have to make sure we’re all up before Mum gets back. Barney, you coming?’

Barney shook his head. ‘I’ll just go to bed,’ he said. ‘Dad never checks on me.’

Barney watched his mates cycle to the end of the street and turn the corner, before closing the door. Back in the sitting-room, huddled close to the fire, he took out his own phone. No messages from his dad. Quickly he tapped out a text.

Bit hectic here. Not sure when we’ll get to sleep. You OK on your own?

Then he sat, waiting, bothered by the dirty mugs and discarded chocolate wrappers but not having the heart to do anything about them.

Beep. His dad had replied.

House is quiet without you. About to go to bed. Have fun.

‘NO! NO! GET
off me! I won’t.’

Dana sat up, struggling to understand why there was a frightened child in her house. Helen, always a good sleeper, didn’t stir. Of course. Huck and Mark were in the next room – Huck always liked to stay over when Helen was down. She heard Mark spring out of bed and cross the room.

‘It’s OK,’ she heard him say. ‘Just a nightmare. I’m here.’

‘He’s at the window. Dad, he’s trying to get in.’

Dana got out of bed and left the room. She knocked gently on the door of the guest room and pushed it open.

Mark, wearing nothing but checked pyjama bottoms, was sitting on Huck’s bed. He’d pulled his son’s small body on to his lap and his arms were tight around him. ‘There’s no one at the window,’ he was saying. ‘You had a bad dream, that’s all.’

‘Mark?’ asked Dana from the doorway. ‘Is Huck OK?’

‘He’s fine. Bad dream. Want to tell me about it, buddy?’

Huck pressed his face against his father’s bare shoulder and shook his head.

‘Wouldn’t be vampires by any chance, would it?’

The small head clamped against his father didn’t move. Mark looked up and caught Dana’s eye. Then Huck’s head was up, alert again. ‘There is something at the window! It’s a bat!’

‘Huck, it’ll be a pigeon.’ Dana crossed to the window and pulled
back the curtain. ‘They nest on all the roofs round here. They’re a darned nuisance but we can’t seem to get rid of them. Look, there are three of them on the window ledge across the back. Want to see?’

Huck shook his head, but he wasn’t clinging quite so tightly.

‘There are no bats in London,’ said Mark.

Dana opened her mouth to correct him and thought better of it. After all, it was February, the bats that regularly flew around the trees in the gardens were all hibernating. She watched Huck raise his head and look at his dad. ‘They can get under doors,’ he said.

‘What? Vampires?’

Huck nodded. ‘They turn into mist and sneak under doors. Some boys at school were talking and it’s on this Facebook page as well. They come into your room at night and drink your blood and after a few days you die because you’ve got no blood left, just like those boys Auntie Dana found, and if you’ve drunk the vampire’s blood, you become one of them and then you have to kill everyone in your family.’

‘I have never heard such bollocks in all my life,’ said Mark.

‘Actually, as a summary of the vampire legends, it’s pretty accurate,’ said Dana. ‘But Huck, they’re stories. They’re no more true than Harry Potter.’

‘And by the way, Huck, since when have you been going on Facebook? You’re not old enough.’

Huck’s scared look became half defiant. ‘I use Mum’s page,’ he admitted.

‘I’ll be having a word with your mother.’

‘So, who is killing these boys then?’ Huck asked, deftly moving the conversation on.

‘A man,’ said his father. ‘Very bad, but otherwise very ordinary. And your godmother will catch him.’

Downstairs, Dana put the kettle on and immediately wondered why she’d bothered. She didn’t want tea or coffee. In the cupboard by the fridge she found the single Highland malt that Helen had brought down.

She’d been waiting ten minutes when Mark appeared. He’d
pulled a sweatshirt on and she was glad. Normally, male nudity held no more interest for her than a well-executed painting, but just lately, it seemed, she never felt entirely comfortable close to Mark.

‘Is he asleep?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘You’ve got to get this guy soon, Dana,’ he said. ‘Kids are terrified. They think there’s a monster out there and he’s after little boys.’

‘Trouble is, they’re right.’

‘This frigging Facebook business is a menace. Can you not get this site they’re all obsessing with closed down?’

Dana pulled a face. ‘Possibly. But we’ve been monitoring it quite closely. A lot of the contributors knew the victims.’

‘You think the killer could be using it?’

‘Quite likely he is.’

‘Can we have a look?’

Dana led the way to her study and switched on her desktop computer. The page was saved under Favourites.

But just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock and by its light I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were a hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them than even when they howled.

Yeah, I love that quote. One of my favourites. Wolves or vampires – which does it for you?

Wolves every time. The ripping apart of flesh. Something well savage about a wolf.

‘Christ,’ said Mark, after flicking through the latest postings. ‘I’m going to have to talk to Carrie. I don’t want Huck reading this crap, let alone getting involved.’

‘There’s a chap called Peter we’re particularly interested in,’ said Dana. ‘He’s quite often ahead of the game when it comes to talking
about the case. He announced we’d found the Barlow twins a couple of hours before we made it public.’

Mark was flicking down the postings. ‘This one?’ he asked, the cursor hovering over a quote from the book that Peter Sweep had posted.

There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.

Dana leaned closer. It was funny, how different to women men smelled close up.

‘Yeah, that’s him. He’s been quoting from the Bram Stoker book ad nauseam since Bart Hunt put the idea into his head. He’s clever, though. Sweep, I mean, not Hunt. Uses public computers, never the same place twice. He’s hiding something.’

‘What’s with the red roses?’ asked Mark, indicating Peter’s profile picture. ‘If they’re supposed to be symbolic, you’d think a dagger dripping blood would be more to the point.’

‘Do roses seem a little on the feminine side to you?’ said Dana.

‘How is your killer-wears-a-dress theory shaping up?’

‘I did what you suggested and pulled up a list of boys aged eight to twelve who died in Greater London in the last five years. Not a long list, thankfully. Some road traffic accidents, a few natural causes. Nothing struck me. Neil’s going through it too, but I’m not hopeful.’

He nodded. ‘Worth a try.’

Dana thought for a second. Made her mind up. ‘I saw a woman on that beach tonight,’ she said. ‘You know, the one under Tower Bridge where the twins were found?’

‘In the dark?’

‘That’s what I thought. The tide was coming in fast, so there couldn’t have been more than a yard or so of shore left. She ran when I called to her.’

‘Would you recognize her again?’

‘Almost certainly. I’ve seen her before.’

Mark waited. She gave her temple a little slap, as though trying to shake a memory loose. ‘It won’t come,’ she said. ‘I can’t think how I know her. Just that, when she turned round, I knew I wasn’t looking at that face for the first time.’

‘Worth looking through WADS?’

WADS stood for Witness Album Display System, an online database of mugshots. If the woman she’d seen on the beach had been charged or arrested anywhere in the UK in recent years, her photograph would be stored on the system.

Dana nodded her agreement. ‘Huck’s worried about you,’ she said.

His brow creased. ‘Did he tell you?’

She nodded. ‘He thinks you need a girlfriend.’

‘He’s probably right, but you’re spoken for.’

Suddenly horribly self-conscious, Dana stepped back. He’d said that a dozen times before. There’d been a time when he’d simply refused to accept that she was gay. Why was it bothering her now, knowing he didn’t mean it any more? She risked looking up again. There were lines around his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before. And his skin was coarser than it had been fifteen years ago when they’d met. He’d aged, of course, and so had she, it just wasn’t a process you really associated with people you were close to.

‘It’s not easy, is it?’ she said. ‘Wanting something you can’t have.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘What is it you want?’

He was her best friend, one of the few people in the world she completely trusted. If she couldn’t tell him, who could she tell?

‘I think I want a baby,’ she replied, knowing in that instant that she had never properly thought about it before, and also that it was completely and undeniably true.

He leaned back in his chair, increasing the distance between them, and pursed his lips into a long, slow whistle. ‘I have a huge amount of time for Helen,’ he said. ‘But I think she’s going to struggle with that one.’

Dana couldn’t help the smile, couldn’t stop the tears.

‘Come here,’ he said, holding out his arms. She stepped forward, had felt the brush of his hands on her upper arms when her phone started to ring. She turned to look at it, as though to check it really
was a phone and it really was ringing. Well past midnight. A phone call at this hour couldn’t be good. She walked over, checked the display screen and turned back to Mark in surprise.

‘It’s Lacey,’ she said.

LACEY WAS AT
the lock-up yard getting increasingly cold. Standing ten yards from the corpse, she could just about make out the waxy pale flesh of a body that had spent weeks in fast-moving water. It was badly damaged, most of the skin and hair gone. Identifying it would be almost impossible without dental records or DNA testing.

By attaching police tape to moored boats and to vans in the yard, Lacey had managed to cordon off the scene. Now she just had to wait.

A flicker of blue lights in the road outside told her that uniform had arrived. After a few seconds a police officer appeared over the gate. He dropped down into the yard and was quickly followed by another. Coat collars tucked up around their ears and hats pulled down, they made their way through the debris towards her.

With the human instinct to sense the presence of law enforcement, someone else was watching the two constables through a hatch on one of the boats.

‘Detective Constable Lacey Flint, Southwark.’ She held up her warrant card. The taller of the two officers shone a torch on it. When he seemed satisfied, she directed her own torch towards the corpse.