Like This, for Ever (24 page)

The detective was tall with dark, curly hair and a friendly, open face. On the doorstep, he’d introduced himself as Detective Constable Stenning and Barney’s dad, looking wary, had invited him inside.

‘You mean my late father-in-law’s yacht, I suppose,’ said his dad. ‘The
Laird of Lorntie,
moored at the Theatre Arm.’

‘Yes, that’s the one. You do still own it, then?’

‘I do, yes. I keep meaning to do it up a bit, put it on the market, but somehow never seem to get round to it.’

‘Can I ask when you were last there?’

Barney’s dad let his head fall to one side, as though he were thinking about it. ‘My son has a better memory than I,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Barney, can you remember when we were last at the boat?’

Barney had been curled up on the sofa in the kitchen, pretending to be absorbed in his DS.

‘October,’ he sighed, in his best impersonation of a bored teenager. ‘Maybe November. We had to clear leaves off the deck.’

‘Sounds about right to me,’ agreed his dad. ‘I can probably get you an exact date if I look through last year’s diary. I had a locksmith go earlier this year when the keys went missing, but he made his own way there.’

‘What about when you went to dry it out?’ added Barney.

Barney’s dad tapped his fingers against his temple, the classic
Lord, I’m so forgetful
gesture. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The locksmith called to tell me the boat was looking quite damp. Soggy bedsheets and upholstery, that kind of thing. I had to spend a day there drying
everything out. I took time off work. Do you want me to check my diary?’

‘Shouldn’t be necessary,’ replied DC Stenning. ‘You weren’t there on Saturday evening then?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ replied Barney’s dad. ‘This will be about the young boy, I suppose? The one we saw on the news.’

‘Tyler King,’ said DC Stenning. ‘We confirmed his identity earlier today. What about your son?’

‘I doubt Barney could find his way to Deptford Creek without me,’ said his dad. ‘He was at a sleepover on Saturday night.’

‘And you were … ?’

‘I was here. For an hour or two I enjoyed the unusual peace and quiet, then I got a bit lonely. I went to bed early.’

God, his dad was good. A singing sound told Barney he’d received a text message. He pulled out his phone. It was from Harvey.

Check out Facebook now!!!

Tricky one. He didn’t want to leave his dad while the detective was still in the house. On the other hand, Harvey sounded pretty desperate.

‘Dad, can I go upstairs?’

His dad nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, looking at the detective. ‘That’s unless …’

‘Oh, I’m done,’ said DC Stenning. ‘Thank you for your time.’

Barney got up, gave DC Stenning a shy smile and left the room. As he climbed the stairs, he heard the two men talking as his dad showed the detective out.

‘We’ll let you have the keys back as soon as we’ve completed the search of the marina. Shouldn’t be more than a few days.’

‘That’s fine,’ said his dad. ‘I’ve got a spare set. And I really should get there myself before too much longer.’

The door closed, his dad returned to the kitchen and Barney reached his own floor of the house. His computer was on, he was already logged on to Facebook. It took a couple of seconds to open up the Missing Boys page.

Peter Sweep had posted twenty minutes earlier.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, the killer will come out tomorrow. Take care, my pretty pale boys, watch out for Peter.

The comments stream was building rapidly.

Sick bastard.

Pervert. You don’t fool anyone.

Sick twat.

Barney had a vision of Peter, sitting at his keyboard, watching the fury unfold and smiling to himself at how easily people could be wound up. They were like fireworks – light the blue touch paper and retire.

His mobile was ringing. It was Harvey. ‘Have you seen it?’ he said, as soon as Barney answered. ‘Sam’s just been on the phone,’ he went on, when Barney had confirmed that he was looking at the Facebook page that moment. ‘He thinks we should get some kids together and patrol the streets tomorrow. You know, safety in numbers.’

‘I think they’ll all be safer at home,’ said Barney.

‘That’s what Jorge said when I rang him at the theatre. He said the best thing we can do is encourage everyone to go straight home from school and stay indoors till Wednesday morning.’

‘I agree with him,’ said Barney.

‘Yeah, but they’re not safe at home, are they? Home is where they’re disappearing from. Somehow he’s getting into homes. How is he doing that?’

‘He knows them,’ said Barney, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before. ‘When kids go missing, it’s nearly always someone they know. Someone they don’t think will hurt them. Like the school caretaker, or the man at the chip shop.’ Or the parent of a— No, he wasn’t going there!

‘So we can’t trust anyone?’ said Harvey.

‘Dad, if you knew who the killer was, would you tell the police?’ asked Barney from the doorway of his father’s study.

His dad didn’t even look up. ‘Of course.’ He did though, Barney noticed, close down the screen he’d been working on. Barney stepped a little further into the room.

‘What if it was someone you cared about?’

Now his dad looked up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What if it was me?’

His dad half smiled, then looked nervous. ‘Barney, what are you talking about?’

‘What if you found out the killer was me? Would you tell the police?’

‘Oh you funny kid, come here.’

Barney didn’t move, so his dad did, standing up, pushing back his chair and wrapping his arms around his son. Pressed against his dad’s chest, smelling the warm, male scent that was possibly his real earliest memory, Barney felt himself relaxing. He was being stupid. There was an explanation, there was always an explanation.

‘The answer to your ridiculous question is that I would not give you up to the police, no matter what you’d done, because you are the one thing in my life I absolutely could not live without. Do you believe me?’

‘Yes,’ said Barney, amazed. Had he really not realized until now that his dad loved him? Really, deeply loved him. The one thing in life he could not live without? You couldn’t feel like that about one child and … God, he was an idiot. Downstairs, in the kitchen, something pinged.

‘And that’s dinner,’ said his dad. ‘Downstairs in five, young man.’

His dad left the room. Barney turned to follow him and had a sudden thought. His dad had left his computer switched on, which he hardly ever did. Twenty minutes ago, maybe a bit longer, Peter Sweep had posted on Facebook. Twenty minutes ago, his dad had been at his computer. Barney could settle it, once and for all. He moved the mouse to the menu bar at the top of the screen and clicked on History. The menu box dropped down and Barney could see the internet sites his dad had visited since he’d got home from
work. He stared, read through the list, counted the sites and then closed the box again.

There was an explanation. There was always an explanation.

Barney left the room and made his way slowly downstairs. In the kitchen he could hear cutlery being placed on the table, water being run into glasses. He sat down at the table, thinking that the hardest thing he might ever be asked to do was to put food in his mouth right now. Because if there was an explanation why his dad had spent the entire evening researching Dracula, vampires and blood lust, he really couldn’t think what it might be.

AFTER THE FRONT
door has closed and his dad’s footsteps faded away down the street, Barney made his way upstairs to put into practice what he’d just learned how to do on the internet. He was planning to conduct a systematic search of his father’s bedroom, study and bathroom.

The study would be the hardest, what with all those books and cupboards, so he was starting with the bedroom. Besides, if his dad was hiding anything, it was more likely to be in here. He and his dad respected each other’s privacy. They rarely went into each other’s bedrooms. He paused on the threshold, pushed open the door and looked in.

He wasn’t going to find anything, there was nothing to find, but sometimes you just had to be able to close a door and bolt it. And leave the bolt to rust. He was going to settle it, then he was going to take down all the stuff in his room about the murdered boys and throw it away. He’d become too involved, his imagination was starting to play tricks on him.

He was going to use the grid method. Start in the corner, make his way down the wall, then turn back. He’d search a strip of the room twelve inches wide with each pacing of the room. He was the boy who found four-leaf clovers in meadows that had millions
of leaves all the exact same shape and colour. This was going to be easy.

He started walking, letting his eyes lose their focus and the patterns form. Near the head of the bed, he spotted a toenail clipping. At the foot of the bed he knelt on the carpet and peered beneath. Dust balls. A feather or two. A safety pin and a dry-cleaning label. Something else he didn’t immediately recognize. Barney pulled it out and held it up to the light. It looked like something he couldn’t remember ever seeing in the house – the pump from a hypodermic syringe.

He sat back on his heels, thinking. There was no reason to have a hypodermic syringe in the house, and plenty of reasons not to. Injections were one of the few things that put the wind up Barney. He couldn’t explain it, he understood perfectly that the pain was small and short-lived, it was just the suspense of waiting, of knowing something sharp and insistent was going to puncture his skin.

Forgetting about his carefully planned grid, Barney stood and walked into his father’s bathroom. It was a small room, with no natural daylight. Washbasin, shower cubicle, toilet and wall-mounted cabinet. The towels and the shower mat were cobalt blue. The tiles were white with a blue trim. It smelled of antiseptic and spicy old wood and was surprisingly clean and tidy for a room his dad had sole charge of. The cabinet was above the basin, fixed quite high on the wall. It was locked.

Why would anyone lock their bathroom cabinet?

Barney sat on the loo seat to think. Locking your bathroom cabinet was one thing, but keeping the key any distance away was another. Who wanted to hunt down a key every time they cleaned their teeth? It would be in here somewhere. He jumped up on to the loo seat so that he could see on top of the cabinet. Nope. He turned to look at the rim of the door-frame. There it was. Jeez, what sort of moron did his dad think he was?

A second later, the cabinet door was open and Barney stretched up to see inside. Toothpaste, shaving soap, razors, dental floss, ear drops, Clinique for Men aftershave, Night Nurse, headache pills. Syringes. Lots of them in little sterile packs. And six small, plastic, colourless vials of liquid. Barney had never seen them
before. He turned the first to read the label properly. Octocog Alfa.

Upstairs at his own computer, Barney typed Octocog Alfa into Google and, a few seconds later, had his answer. Locked in his bathroom cabinet, his dad kept a drug, and the means to administer it, that had a primary purpose of making blood clot.

Barney felt like there was a wild animal in his head. One that was scratching and clawing and tearing, desperate to be out. He couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t watch television. Reading was impossible. Every few minutes he checked Facebook and the twenty-four-hour news websites. The rest of the time he spent walking the house.

His dad was obsessed with Dracula and all things to do with vampires. How else to explain the endless websites he’d been trawling through on his computer. He kept supplies of a drug that made blood clot. He was out of the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays when the killer struck. He had a boat at Deptford Creek where two bodies had been found, a boat he visited but lied about. Lied to the police as well as to his son. He’d brought sheets home to wash, the same night the Barlow boys had been found beneath Tower Bridge. One of their gloves was, even now, in his coat pocket. Jeez, how much more proof did he want?

The phone was ringing. Barney looked at his watch. His dad had promised to phone every half-hour but he hadn’t been gone that long. He didn’t want to talk to his dad right now, but if he didn’t answer, he’d probably come rushing home.

‘Hello?’

‘Barney, it’s me.’ Harvey. ‘Nothing’s happened yet.’

‘It might not happen at all,’ said Barney. When his dad phoned, he’d say he was ill. That he had serious stomach cramps. His dad would come straight home then, surely? He’d put Barney first, wouldn’t he, before anything else he might have planned for that night? ‘You’re not out patrolling then?’ he asked.

‘Jorge told Mum and she said not in a million years was I leaving the house tonight.’

‘No. Don’t.’

‘Yeah, but Jorge gets to go out. He’s gone with a couple of his
mates to football training. I don’t see why he gets to go and I don’t.’

‘He’s older. Whoever’s doing this doesn’t seem interested in teenagers.’

‘That’s what he said. I don’t see why I couldn’t have gone with him.’

‘What about Lloyd and Sam?’

‘They’re both at home too. Makes no bloody sense to me. Every kid that’s gone missing has been taken from home. It’s like, let’s put our children where they’re going to be in most danger. Hang on, someone’s at the door.’

Christ no, Harvey!

The line went dead. On the Missing Boys page, people were actually taunting Peter now.

Come on then, put your money where your mouth is.

We knew you were all talk, weirdo!

Harvey was back, thank God. ‘Sorry, had to let Jorge in. Daft sod twisted his ankle, Mr Green had to bring him home. He’s well pissed off. I’d better go. Call me if anything happens.’

Barney put the phone down.

His dad loved him. Barney believed that completely. Could you love one boy and want to kill others? Could you stalk, capture and kill boys who were so similar, in so many ways, to the one you did your best to protect?

Right, he couldn’t stand this. He was getting his dad home. He’d phone an ambulance if necessary, fake a burst appendix. By the time they found out he was fine, the danger would be over. It would be too late.