Like This, for Ever (36 page)

She picked up the phone.

My dad is the murderer. The one they call the Twilight Killer.

Boy, she really didn’t want to be a fly on the wall when those two got together again.

He takes them to the boat. That one at Deptford Creek. He was there, that Saturday night I sent you the text.

He’d admitted it. Not only had Barney been involved in finding Tyler’s body, as she’d been pretty certain all along, but he’d lied to protect his father. He, too, had been at Deptford Creek that night.
But the police at the scene would have talked to everyone on the boats. If Stewart had been there, they’d know about it. There would have been no need for Barney to keep it a secret.

I found a glove. A kid’s glove that wasn’t mine. He took it from one of the boys he killed.

Stewart had dropped a child’s glove in the chapel the day she’d been to see him at work. She still had it in the flat somewhere.

He wants to kill me, but he can’t, so he kills them instead.

Good God above, it wasn’t possible. Was it?

‘Lacey, it’s not a great time.’

Pete Stenning’s voice was unusually low, as though he was whispering into the handset, maybe even had his hand wrapped around it to muffle the sound. It sounded as if he was at work, though.

‘Sorry, Pete. I can talk to someone else. I’ll try Gayle at home.’

‘Gayle’s here. We all are. But I don’t think anyone … Lacey, do you not know?’

‘Know what?’

‘Jeez, hang on.’

Footsteps. A door opening. Sounds fading. For the whole team to be at Lewisham at this time of night could only mean one thing. Another child had either disappeared or been found dead.

He’s never home on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Mr Roberts left at six, like he always does.

He brings sheets home to wash because they’ve got blood on them.

‘Lacey, there’s no easy way of telling you this, and I’m probably going to get murdered just for talking to you.’

Fear sliced into Lacey like a blade. And she’d thought nothing could really hurt her again. She was about to find out how wrong she’d been.

‘What?’

‘Mark Joesbury’s son went missing a couple of hours ago. No one has a clue where he is.’

‘MA’AM.’

Dana stopped at Gayle Mizon’s desk, grateful for the delay, even if it would only last a couple of minutes. In a glass-walled meeting room, Mark, his ex-wife Carrie and her new partner Alex were waiting for her. The last thing she wanted to do was go back in amongst them and admit, yet again, that there was no news.

‘Peter Sweep’s been on Facebook again,’ said Gayle. ‘Two minutes ago.’ Her eyes raised towards Huck’s family. ‘I haven’t said anything,’ she went on. ‘It’s not what they want to see.’

It wasn’t going to be what Dana wanted to see either. Nevertheless, she looked over Gayle’s shoulder.

Got my hook into a Huck. Slice and dice.

‘Same tactics as when Oliver went missing, I’m afraid, Ma’am. He’s posting from a smart phone, almost certainly bought secondhand, with a pay-as-you-go SIM card. He’s close to the same base station in Lambeth as last time.’

‘Have you seen this?’ Dana asked Anderson, who was at the next desk. He nodded.

‘We’ve had an absolute blackout on Huck’s disappearance,’ said Dana. ‘Peter Sweep must be the killer.’

‘We have, Boss,’ answered Anderson. ‘But his mum phoned everyone she could think of when he wasn’t waiting for her at the football ground. The news is out there and we can’t assume anything as far as Sweep is concerned.’

Behind Dana the door opened and Detective Superintendent Weaver came into the room.

‘What do we know?’ he asked her in a low voice, as though worried anything he might say at normal volume would carry to the meeting room.

‘Huck went to football practice as usual at six thirty this evening,’ Dana told him. ‘His mum dropped him off. She went to pick him up at eight and he wasn’t there. Whatever happened to him, he left quickly, because when the register was taken at six thirty-five, Huck didn’t answer to his name. Twenty-eight boys were at training tonight and we’re contacting them all to see if anyone knows anything. As they all live in roughly the same area and as they all appear to be at home, it isn’t taking too long. Trouble is, most of them didn’t notice Huck at all tonight. Three did, but only in the first few minutes after he’d arrived.’

‘Nobody could have taken him out of a crowded changing room without being seen,’ said Anderson. ‘So we have to assume he was one of the last to leave the changing room and that he was waylaid on his way from the pavilion to the all-weather pitch.’

‘We’re very keen to talk to the head coach, a Daniel Green,’ said Dana. ‘He was at training tonight, but had to leave ten minutes before the end and no one knows where he is now, not even his wife. She says he typically goes to the gym after training, but he isn’t there.’

‘If he left ten minutes before the end, he was still there for eighty minutes when Huck wasn’t. He can’t be involved.’

‘Exactly, Sir. He’s Huck’s PE teacher, and DI Joesbury plays rugby with him. We’re not worried about him, we just want to talk to him.’

They’d reached the meeting room and entered it together. Three pairs of eyes met Dana’s. Hope flickered for a second in each.

‘We’ve got the go-ahead for a TV appeal early tomorrow morning,’ said Weaver, after introducing himself to Carrie and
her partner. ‘You’ll be OK for that, won’t you, Mrs Joesbury?’

Carrie Joesbury, a tall, dark-haired woman in her late thirties who, over a decade ago, had asked Dana to be one of her bridesmaids, so determined had she been to appear relaxed around her fiancé’s female best friend, looked anything but OK. She straightened up in her chair and shook her head.

‘Now!’ she said. ‘We have to do it now.’

Two hands reached across the table towards her. At the last second, Mark pulled back, leaving Alex to cover Carrie’s hand with his own. Alex was younger than Carrie, prettily handsome and rich, having worked in fund management since he left university. He and Mark couldn’t be more different.

‘We’re too late for the main evening news.’ Weaver was using his soothing voice. Dana wondered, for a moment, if it ever worked; it certainly wasn’t about to with these three. ‘If we do it in the morning, it will go out three times or more on the main news programmes. We’ll get far more exposure.’

‘It’s the sensible thing to do, Carrie,’ said Dana. ‘I’ll do it with you, of course, and perhaps Alex?’

Carrie’s head shot round to her ex-husband. ‘Mark will do it,’ she said. ‘Won’t you?’

Mark’s face seemed to have lost all its colour. ‘I can’t,’ he told the tabletop.

For a second, Carrie looked as though she hadn’t quite heard him. Then, ‘You are kidding me!’

Mark flinched, his eyes stayed down.

‘Is this about cover? You’ll put your precious frigging cover over our son’s life?’

Weaver glanced round nervously. Beyond the glass partition, people were trying hard to look as though they weren’t listening, but Carrie’s voice was too loud.

‘This is all your fault,’ Carrie spat at the side of Mark’s head. He might not even have heard, for all the reaction she got. ‘You should have been with us. Looking after him. He’s your responsibility, but you could never get that, could you?’

Dana pulled out a chair and leaned across the table towards Carrie, trying to catch her eye.

‘Mark can’t appear on television,’ she told the terrified woman. ‘And that’s about protecting Huck – not himself or his job. If he’s recognized, if word gets out that Huck’s father is a senior police officer, especially one who’s been involved in the sort of operations Mark has, then whoever has Huck could panic. It will put him in more danger.’

‘We’ve got thirty officers conducting a search of the area,’ said Weaver, after a second. ‘And we’re about to make the news public. Officially. We’ll be asking householders to check their garages, garden sheds, anywhere they think a small boy could possibly be hidden away.’

Silence in the room, while everyone tried to think of something to say.

‘Carrie, you need to go home now,’ said Dana. ‘There’s nothing else you can do here and you need to be at home in case Huck manages to come back by himself. I’ll be sending someone with you.’

Carrie didn’t move. After a few seconds Alex got to his feet. ‘Come on, babe,’ he told her. ‘They’ll let us know the minute they hear anything.’ He looked at Dana for confirmation.

‘The second,’ she told him.

‘What about the boys who were with him at football training?’ said Mark, as Carrie and Alex moved towards the door. ‘I want to talk to them. Can you let me have a list?’

Dana took a deep breath. ‘Mark, you’re going home too.’

‘What?’

She couldn’t back down. ‘You know the score. You’re not capable of functioning properly, and your being here will jeopardize the work the rest of us have to do.’

How could her best friend look at her like he hated her? Didn’t he realize how much she was hurting too?

‘You are not sending me home.’

She stood up. ‘While you keep me here arguing, I’m not looking for Huck.’

For a second she thought he was going to hit her. Nor was she alone. Weaver took a step towards her. Then Mark stood up, pushing his chair back. He raised his fist and hit out. The glass wall of
the meeting room cracked around his hand but the pieces held. He pushed past Alex, pulled the door open and strode out through the incident room. If he saw the young woman standing just inside the door, he made no sign.

He was gone, and the air of the room seemed thick with his pain.

MARK HADN’T SEEN
her. Lacey didb’think he’d seen anything much, his eyes had been full of tears. The hand that had reached up to push open the door had been bloodstained and twisted. He might even have broken it.

For a second, she almost turned and followed, with no idea of what she’d do or say when she caught up with him, only knowing that no one in his position should be alone.

Then she saw the slim, white-faced woman being led across the room by a tall man in an expensive suit. This was Huck’s mother – impossible to mistake the heart-shaped face and the tiny nose. She was trying to make eye contact with people as she left, holding back sobs as she did so. ‘Thank you,’ she kept repeating. ‘Thank you for your help. Please find him.’ As they reached the door, she looked up and met Lacey’s eyes. Her lips moved, she tried to smile, then they were gone and everyone in the incident room was looking at Lacey.

‘What are you doing here?’ Dana Tulloch’s voice was like an icy shower on a cold day. She was at the far side of the room, Detective Superintendent Weaver standing directly behind her.

Lacey moved further into the room. ‘I want to help,’ she said.

‘I’ve got no time for theatricals.’ Slowly, deliberately, her heels clicking on the tiled floor, Tulloch stepped towards her. ‘You’re not on full duties and you’re certainly not part of this investigation. You
need to go home.’ As she stopped talking, she stopped moving. She stood and stared.

‘I’m another pair of hands,’ said Lacey, conscious of every member of the team watching them. There were tears on Gayle Mizon’s face but she was holding it together. DS Anderson was red around the eyes. Even Stenning was the same off-white shade as the paint on the walls. She’d never seen them like this before. And she knew that there was no one she could rely on in the room to back her up. However well disposed towards her they might be privately, they’d support Tulloch when it came to it.

‘I can watch CCTV footage, I can trawl through witness statements, I can run HOLMES searches. I’ve got a good eye for detail, you can use me.’ Before the words were out, she knew it was no use.

Tulloch glanced at the detective closest to the door. ‘Tom, would you please take DC Flint to her car?’ she said.

A second’s pause, and then Tom Barrett stood up.

Lacey felt her temper rise like water coming to the boil. Tulloch had no right to put private antagonism before the search for a child. Especially that child. As Barrett stepped towards her, she put up a hand to stop him.

‘I have information,’ she said. ‘Directly relevant to the case. If you won’t let me help, then I have to make a statement.’

Around the room, detectives were sliding glances at each other, then flicking between her and the DI. Tulloch narrowed her eyes and moved closer. She couldn’t have looked more cynical if she’d been practising in front of a mirror. ‘What information?’

‘I can tell you who sent me the text about the body at Deptford Creek and I have the name of a possible suspect.’

The mood of the room changed then, subtly, but unmistakably. When she’d arrived, they’d been sympathetic, even if they hadn’t dared show it. Now, she could sense their allegiance changing as they registered the possibility that she’d been holding out on them.

‘Tom, take her downstairs. I’ll be down in five minutes.’

No, Tulloch was not going to have it all on her terms. ‘I want Sergeant Anderson to take my statement,’ said Lacey. ‘Gayle or Pete can accompany him.’

Tulloch was close to her now. Close enough to spit, close enough
to strike. Either looked decidedly possible. ‘You do not get to choose to whom you speak,’ she said.

‘With all due respect, Detective Inspector Tulloch, I believe you have a personal prejudice against me. If you insist on taking my statement, I want a solicitor with me. If the Sergeant does it, we can start straight away.’

It took a split second for Tulloch to realize that waiting for a duty solicitor could take an hour or more. Wearing heels, she was almost exactly Lacey’s height, and Lacey could feel her breath on her face as she spoke.

‘If anything happens to that child, I will hang you out to dry. Do I make myself clear?’

Lacey didn’t blink. ‘Likewise,’ she replied, then deliberately turned her head away. ‘Shall we start, Sergeant?’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this the night we found Tyler?’ asked Anderson, as she’d known he would.

‘I had no proof Barney sent me the text,’ Lacey replied. ‘It was nothing more than a hunch and the fact that very few people have my mobile number. I couldn’t turn a vulnerable child over to a murder investigation without something more than that. I thought I could make him confide in me, that he and I would come in together. I also thought you might be able to trace the text from my phone, but that doesn’t seem to have happened.’