Like This, for Ever

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘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.

  59

  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.’

  ‘It was sent from a pay-as-you-go phone,’ said Stenning. ‘Cash transaction, impossible to trace.’

  ‘And the first you’ve heard of his suspicions about his father was tonight?’ asked Anderson.

  ‘Absolutely. I didn’t really take in what he was telling me at first. I felt too bad and too angry that he’d had to find out about his mother the way he did. I thought he was just hitting out. But then, after he disappeared, I started thinking. I know Stewart is out of the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays – I’ve noticed before now that Barney is on his own then. But the security bloke I spoke to at the university said he always leaves at six because he has a young kid. So, he’s telling work he’s leaving early to be with his son, and he’s telling his son he’s working late.’

  ‘So where is he going?’ said Stenning.

  ‘Exactly. And Barney insisted he was at Deptford Creek that Saturday night we found Tyler’s body.’

  ‘That boat was empty when we checked it,’ said Anderson. ‘At least, we assumed it was. Locked up, in darkness, people near by said it had been empty for months.’

  ‘I went to their house a few days later,’ said Stenning. ‘I remember it because it’s right next to where you live, Lacey. Mr Roberts told me they hadn’t been near the boat for months. Mind you, the kid said the same thing.’

  ‘He was protecting his father,’ said Lacey. ‘He also talked about bloodstained sheets from the boat. Blood-clotting drugs in the bathroom. And the glove.’

  She nodded at the small black glove that was now in an evidence bag in the middle of the desk. ‘Assuming it’s the same one – Barney said it wasn’t his,’ she reminded them. ‘Why would Stewart have a child’s glove that isn’t his son’s?’

  ‘Ah shit, I remember now, Sarge,’ said Stenning. ‘The kid mentioned that the boat was reported wet. By the locksmith, I think he said. The boat was damp inside and the boy’s dad had to take the day off to go and dry it out. Roberts himself neglected to mention that. Claimed he’d forgotten until his son reminded him.’

  ‘We need to bring him in,’ said Anderson. ‘And get a warrant to search his house and the boat. OK, thanks, Lacey.’

  ‘Sarge, you need to find Barney, too. I dread to think what’s going through his head right now. He’s in no state to be out on his own.’

  ‘We’ll get right on to it. Christ, the last thing we need right now is another missing kid.’ Anderson stood up, switched off the recording equipment and stretched to ease the muscles in his back.

  ‘What happens now?’ asked Lacey. ‘Can I leave?’

  Anderson nodded down at her. ‘Course you can. But stay close to a phone and answer it immediately if we call. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to stay in the area.’

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?’

  Anderson opened the door and allowed Lacey to precede him out. Stenning brought up the rear.

  ‘If I were you, love,’ he said, as the door slammed shut behind the three of them, ‘I’d go and find DI Joesbury. I’d say that’s where you can be most use right now.’

  60

  THE FLAT ON the top floor of the white stucco house in Pimlico was empty. Lacey was sure of it. She’d sat in her car looking up, waiting for lights to come on. After a while, she’d walked round to the rear of the properties. Nothing. Joesbury wasn’t home.

  There were police cars outside the Robertses’ house when she got back. The front door was open and a uniformed constable was standing guard. DS Anderson had wasted no time. There was no sign of Tulloch’s Mercedes, which was something to be thankful for. Lacey crossed the street, pulling her warrant card from her pocket. She was about to show it to the constable on duty when a familiar figure appeared in the hallway.

  ‘Pete, it’s me,’ she called.

  Stenning saw her and came outside. ‘Stewart Roberts is at Lewisham,�
�� he said in a low voice, once they reached the foot of the steps. ‘The DI’s talking to him, but he’s freaking out about his kid. Refusing to talk until we find him.’ Stenning kept glancing over her head, as though he was uncomfortable talking to her.

  ‘You haven’t found Barney then?’

  Stenning shook his head. ‘We’ve put a bulletin out, but we’re stretched pretty thin. Everyone we’ve got available is looking for Huck.’

  ‘Please let me help,’ said Lacey. ‘I can phone round his friends’ houses. He has to have gone somewhere.’ As she waited for Stenning to think about it, she realized the last thing she wanted was to get dragged into the search for Barney.

  Talk about being torn in two. All she wanted to do was find Joesbury and help him look for his son. Yet Barney, with no mother and a father in police custody, had no one to look out for him. And it was her fault he’d run off.

  ‘We’ve got it covered,’ Stenning replied after a moment. ‘Better you keep out of it all.’

  ‘Have you found anything in the house?’

  Stenning glanced behind, then lowered his voice even further. ‘You didn’t hear this from me,’ he said, ‘but we’ve got an expert taking his computer apart. Roberts had a Facebook account, but he was mainly keeping an eye on what his son was doing. Of more interest are numerous internet searches about vampires and blood-drinking. And some very dodgy-looking drugs in his bathroom cabinet. I imagine they’re the ones the kid told you about.’

  ‘So if the post-mortems of the murder victims show traces of the same drug, then …’

  Behind Stenning another detective appeared. Stenning practically jumped away from Lacey. ‘I’ll see you,’ he told her, before pushing past her, crossing the road and jumping into his car. He hadn’t promised to keep her informed or to get in touch with her again. Nor would he. She had no role in the investigation and Stenning, of all people, would toe the line.