Like This, for Ever (42 page)

‘Hence the sense of urgency.’

Urgency? Jesus, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay in one place. She wondered how Gayle Mizon was getting on, sounding out the Peter Pan theory with the MIT.

‘Evi, a few minutes ago, you said you’d hoped I wasn’t involved in the South Bank murders. I was just asking you about seriously disturbed kids. How did you know what case I was calling about?’

Evi gave a heavy, sad sigh. ‘I’ve been keeping a watching brief on the South Bank case,’ she said. ‘Quite a few of us have, actually, because it’s been so completely atypical. No violence, no sexual motive. It’s all been about showing off, misdirections, fooling around. One of my colleagues spotted the Peter Pan quotations, and that got us thinking. Some of the references have come from the book, rather than the stage play, which isn’t so readily available. Others have come from the official sequel,
Peter Pan in Scarlet
. Quite a lot have even come from the 2003 film. Typically, who’s most familiar with the Peter Pan story? Kids.’

‘You didn’t say anything?’ Lacey knew she sounded judgemental, just couldn’t help it.

‘Lacey, what did we really have other than an idea? Possibly a completely daft one? Child killers are extremely rare. The few we have almost invariably come from a background of serious neglect and abuse. They’ve been brutalized from a very young age and they deal with it by passing the violence on. Are you with me?’

‘Of course.’

‘But the South Bank murders show no violence, which argues against them being the work of an abused kid. It was a feeling, a hunch. Nothing more. Only now it seems you have the same one.’

‘Except I was thinking of a child who identified with a character from literature. Someone who wanted to stay a child for ever and keep his buddies with him.’

Silence again, while Evi was thinking.
Come on, come on …

‘The victims didn’t know each other, though,’ she said. ‘They weren’t buddies. And the killer can’t have known them all even slightly well or there’d have been a connection you’d have spotted.’

Suddenly, it was hard to breathe. Lacey strode outside, almost panting with the effort of just moving forwards. ‘Shit, you’re right. I’ve just sent the investigation team off on another wild-goose chase and his little boy is going to be dead before the night’s out.’

‘Lacey, get a hold of yourself. You’re almost there. I do think your killer could be a child, and from what you’ve told me about this Barney, he seems a very likely candidate. I just don’t buy your afraid-of-growing-up theory. No, stay with me. As I understand it, murder is driven by compulsion. Sex, avarice, rage. Strong but very simple emotions. Fear of growing up? No, that’s too complex. I think the Peter Pan business is just an idea he’s been having fun with. He’s been playing with you. He has no intention of flying off to Neverland, he’s enjoying himself too much. His real motivation will be much simpler, much deeper. But for heaven’s sake, you can worry about what’s driving him when he’s caught.’

The rain had finally stopped. The garden looked like a tiny patch of rainforest after a tropical storm, like a dense, storybook jungle – like a painting she’d seen on a wall.

‘Flying off to Neverland,’ said Lacey.

‘Sometimes, Lacey, there is no reason. People kill and there is no neat, understandable motive. What did you say?’

‘Evi, thank you.’

‘What? Are you OK?’

‘I have to go now,’ said Lacey. ‘I know where he is.’

‘MY SON WOULDN’T
hurt anyone.’

‘Yes, thank you, Mr Roberts,’ said Anderson, taking the seat opposite Stewart. ‘We’ve taken note of everything you’ve told us about Barney’s inherent gentleness and his habit of nursing injured birds back to health when he was small. The fact remains, though, that both he and a younger boy are missing, and it is extremely important that we find them.’

‘Barney is terrified of blood. He goes apeshit if he cuts himself. I practically have to sedate him to get him to have a vaccination. There is no way on earth he could cut someone’s throat.’

Dana took the seat beside Anderson and flicked open the notes facility on her laptop.

‘Do you actually know what your son gets up to when you leave him alone two evenings a week?’ she asked.

Stewart’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean? He does his homework, watches TV, plays on his computer and goes to bed. He’s a sensible kid.’

‘He goes out, hangs around with a gang of older children and spends an inordinate amount of time looking for his dead mother. I’d say he’s a child with problems,’ replied Dana.

‘You know nothing about my son.’

‘He also experiences episodes when his memory deserts him completely. Large chunks of time when he claims he has no
recollection of where he’s been and what he’s been doing. I’m starting to wonder how much you know about your son.’

Lacey found a torch, latex gloves and a dry jacket. She was out of the house in less than a minute. At her destination in fewer than five.

Fly off and join them in Neverland.

How many times over the last few weeks had she lurked in the shadows and watched Barney and his mates speeding down the skateboard ramp at the community centre?
You look like you’re flying
, she’d told him. They hurled themselves down impossibly steep slopes at terrifying speeds with only balance and the force of gravity to keep them upright. The wind caught their hair and pulled at their clothes. When they spread their arms for balance they genuinely looked as though they were soaring through the sky.

And the illusion was made perfect by the mural painted on the brick wall behind them. A picture of a night sky, stars and the moon, plump, billowing clouds, and three children, the Darling children, flying for the very first time in their lives with the aid of happy thoughts and fairy dust. The community centre, the place where Barney and his mates hung out, was Neverland.

The grim Victorian exterior of the community centre had been softened and made child-friendly by extensive mural paintings. The pictures ran around the main building and inside the perimeter wall. One of the outbuildings, she was sure, showed a bay with mermaids on rocks. There was the enormous green crocodile with the alarm clock grasped between its teeth. A pirate ship in full sail. Wigwams to represent the Indian village.

At the gates, Lacey took Huck’s phone out of her pocket. Was she certain enough to call for back-up? Whilst the paintings could have given Barney the idea in the first place, was it feasible that children were being held and killed in a community facility that, every day, was swarming with people? She could not call the MIT here to find an empty building.

If they were taking her theory seriously – and if they still believed it to be Gayle Mizon’s they probably would be – they’d concentrate on finding the places that Barney had access to. The houseboat and
the boatyard were obvious ones. Maybe the Roberts family owned a garage or lock-up somewhere. They’d be talking to his friends, trying to find out if there were any dens or meeting places in old, abandoned buildings. God knows there were enough of them around South London at the moment. That was the sort of ordered, logical search that would find Huck. Pulling them away from it to pursue yet another hare-brained idea could be dangerously irresponsible.

Thirty-five minutes before Joesbury was expecting to meet up with her again. She couldn’t phone him either. If there was even the remotest possibility that his son was being held in the community centre, he’d tear down every door in the place trying to find him. She couldn’t put him through that until she was sure.

Dana pushed open the door of the incident room, knowing she was going through the motions. She’d just about lost the ability to think. All she could do now was follow procedure and hope others on the team were functioning better than she was.

‘OK, we’ve spoken to the families of all Barney Roberts’s close friends,’ she told the team. ‘He was at the local community centre until nine o’clock, and then three of his friends – Jorge and Harvey Soar and Hatty Bennet – walked home with him. Harvey seems to be his best friend so we may have to talk to him again. None of them can think of anywhere he might be other than his own house or possibly the boat at Deptford Creek.’

‘I’ve just had a call from the uniformed team we sent down there,’ said Anderson. ‘There’s no sign of him, and it’s not that big an area. They really don’t think he’s gone there.’

‘We haven’t spoken to DC Flint again,’ said Dana, ‘but for now it looks as though hers was the last sighting we have of him.’

‘Neither DC Flint nor DI Joesbury are at their respective flats, Ma’am,’ called Stenning from across the room. ‘DI Joesbury’s still not answering his phone.’

Dana acknowledged Stenning with a nod. ‘I think we have to assume DC Flint and DI Joesbury are pursuing their own independent investigations,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope they’re together and at least stand a chance of keeping each other out of trouble. In
the meantime, if Barney is the one we’re looking for, it seems safe to assume he’s gone to wherever he’s been keeping and killing the boys. If we find Barney, we find Huck.’

The entire complex was in darkness. But Lacey knew she’d often seen Barney and his mates in the yard after the centre had closed. In fact, hadn’t Jorge, less than an hour earlier, told her he’d just been inside?

The heavy gates were padlocked. The brick perimeter wall was around five feet high, but iron railings on top of it took it up well above her head.

If Barney and his mates could get inside, she could.

At the corner of the street, the railings gave way to the outside wall of the outbuildings. Round the corner, the street was both narrower and quieter. It was still difficult to see a way in. The outbuildings were single-storey, with steeply sloping tiled roofs and no obvious way over them. Lacey followed the wall to the end and turned the next corner.

This time she was in an alleyway between two streets. No one around. Plenty of shadows. Lacey found her breathing escalating. She’d spent weeks telling herself nothing could scare her any more. Was she about to find out that she was wrong?

On this side there was another door. Unlike the wide iron gates at the front of the yard, designed to allow vehicles to drive right inside, this one was a pedestrian access only. Lacey stretched out a gloved hand to try the handle. Locked, of course, but to the right of the door one of the railings had broken away, leaving a narrow gap.

Lacey jumped down into one of the darkest corners of the yard. All seemed still. No sound came from beyond the outer walls except the ordinary night-time percussion of London. OK, Barney could not be in the main building. It was used for twelve hours or so every day. People were constantly coming and going in every part of it. There was no way abducted children could be hidden in there.

What about the outbuildings?

Four doors faced on to the yard. Each shed had a small window, set high in the wall. Switching off her torch, relying only upon the light from the streets, Lacey made her way towards the first shed.
And with every step, the fear she thought she’d left behind for ever was growing.

There were too many hiding places. Too many shadows. Beneath the skateboard ramps, around corners, even inside a collection of plastic Wendy houses by the main doors. Children could hide anywhere. They could squeeze their bodies into the smallest spaces.

The outbuildings were definitely the most likely place. In the young children’s play area Lacey found a plastic cube that would bear her weight. Balanced on it, she could see through the window that the first shed was packed to the roof with piles of chairs, stacked trestle tables, cardboard boxes. She’d struggle to open the door, never mind move around inside. Nevertheless, she tried. Locked.

The next was full of sports and games equipment, outdoor stuff that wouldn’t be needed until the spring. Locked like the first. The third shed looked like the overspill of a busy office. Two desks were piled high with books and files. Filing cabinets lined one wall. Paper littered the floor. Black bin-liners, close to bursting apart, were piled in one corner. The door was locked.

The fourth and last shed in the line had been used as a workshop. Against the far wall was a long Formica counter, interrupted only by an old-fashioned Belfast sink. An immersion heater was fixed to the wall. Empty paint tins lay along the counter. There were woodworking tools, saws, hammers fixed to the walls. Locked like the rest. And, like the rest, quite plainly no one was inside.

Lacey felt panic rising up again. Panic that would creep into her thoughts and throw them off kilter, stealing away her ability to think straight. She couldn’t give into it. Not yet. Victorian buildings nearly always had cellars.

She started to move again, looking down for the telltale ventilation grates or the reinforced opaque glass squares that allowed daylight to reach underground. Nothing around the outbuildings. Nor around the main factory building either. There was no way of getting inside to check. Time to face facts: there was nothing more she could do on her own.

Lacey pulled her borrowed mobile from her pocket. Unsure who to call first, Mizon or Joesbury, she hesitated as a flickering of light
caught her eye. She looked up. There it was again. A light inside the building, in an upstairs window? Gone. Shit, had she seen it or not?

Lacey ran straight at the skateboard ramp and let the momentum take her up. At the top, from where Barney and his friends regularly launched themselves into the night, she could almost see through the upper windows. All seemed dark. Then the flickering began again – which was nothing, after all, just the reflection of a malfunctioning lamppost in the next street along, and time was running out.

The lamppost started flashing again, drawing her attention to the building immediately behind it. A derelict Victorian house, large and square, with ornate red brickwork, very similar in architectural style to the community centre. She’d walked past it many times, could even remember when it had housed local council offices. Once officialdom had moved out, it had become a hang-out for drug addicts and homeless people, until complaints from local residents had resulted in tighter security and regular police inspections. She’d even visited it herself once, back when she’d been in uniform.