Oh, this wasn’t an empty house, somehow she just knew it. This house was alive and breathing, watching her. She could almost see the gentle, respiratory movement of the walls. The wind, which was somehow finding its way in from outside, ruffled loose papers, stirred old cobwebs, chased dried leaves across the floors. The woodwork shifted and tensed, bracing itself, waiting for her next move. Reluctant to leave the relative safety of the room she’d entered by, Lacey knew she was committed. Having entered the house, she had to complete the search.
Police training told her to check and secure the ground floor first. Instinct screamed at her not to go down. Down meant no way out. Down was the equivalent of being trapped in a cellar.
Besides, the chute had led from the top floor of the house. Logically, anything happening in this house would be happening above her. Which meant there was no point checking this floor either. She had to go up.
Leaving the doorway to take to the stairs was like finding herself in the middle of a maze, in which danger could come from any direction. This was a huge house, with any number of rooms, corners and cupboards. Barney was small and agile. He could be anywhere. He could be watching her right now. If it came to it, could she fight an eleven-year-old boy? One who was desperate, and possibly armed?
Before she was halfway up the stairs, Lacey had the overwhelming feeling that she’d taken the wrong flight. The urge to turn, head down and then back up the left-hand stairs was so strong it was all she could do to force herself to carry on. Then a muffled but distinct yelling stopped her in her tracks. The sound a terrified child makes when his mouth is covered.
Stewart Roberts looked Dana straight in the eyes, but there was something rather defiant about his face now. He’d grown paler, the muscles in his jaw were twitching and his eyes were beginning to look damp.
‘I want to talk about the time you went to the boat to dry it out,’ she told him. ‘The second week in January, I understand.’
Wary, he inclined his head. ‘The locksmith I sent there said it looked damp,’ he replied. ‘Thought perhaps a hatch was leaking. I went a couple of days later and found he was right. There were small pools of water on the floor. And most of the soft furnishings were damp.’
‘Did you find a leak?’
He shook his head.
‘For the benefit—’
‘For the benefit of the tape,’ he interrupted, ‘I didn’t find a leak. None of the hatches had been left open, to my knowledge. The boat seemed completely sound. I had no idea, and still don’t, how the boat could have been wet.’
Dana pressed a key to take her to a different page.
‘Our crime-scene investigators have found traces of blood on your boat,’ she said. ‘At least two distinct types, neither originating from Mrs Green this time. Could either be yours?’
Slowly, reluctantly, he shook his head. ‘I keep a record if I cut myself,’ he said. ‘It happens very rarely. I’m extremely careful.’
‘What about Barney?’
His breathing was quickening. ‘Barney hasn’t been on the boat since last October. And when he cuts himself, the whole world knows about it.’
‘You do realize that if the blood we’ve found matches any of the victims, then they could only have been killed by someone with access to your boat?’ Dana said.
Stewart didn’t reply. For a few seconds she watched his chest rise and fall.
‘More than once now,’ she said, ‘you’ve referred to the keys to the houseboat going missing late last year. Mrs Green said the same thing. What can you tell us about that?’
‘The keys were missing over Christmas,’ Stewart told her. ‘I had the locks changed.’
‘Can you give us some dates?’
He sighed and pulled out his phone. He looked at the screen for several seconds, tapping various apps. ‘The last time I was at the boat before Christmas was the thirteenth of December,’ he said after a moment. ‘That was a Thursday. The following Tuesday, the eighteenth, Gilly and I met for a drink. I imagine the keys went missing some time over the weekend in between.’
Dana looked at her laptop calendar. Anderson leaned closer so he could see it too. Tyler King had disappeared on the twentieth of December, Ryan Jackson on the third of January. Both bodies had been found in or by the Creek.
‘When did you get the locks changed?’ asked Anderson.
Stewart had been anticipating the question. ‘The eleventh of January,’ he said. ‘Friday morning.’
On the tenth of January, Ryan’s body had been found on the beach at Deptford. From the following day, the killer would have been unable to access the boat. He’d found somewhere new. Somewhere he didn’t dare risk keeping the boys for too long. So he’d started killing them faster. It was all starting to come together, except …
‘Any idea how the keys went missing?’ Anderson asked.
Stewart shook his head. ‘I kept them on a hook by the front door with all the house keys,’ he said.
‘I think you told us before you don’t have many visitors,’ said Anderson. ‘Barney doesn’t like people in his house. I think you said that’s the reason why you never used babysitters.’
Stewart seemed to shrink a little. He shook his head, but the conviction had gone.
‘Who, apart from you and Barney, could have taken those keys?’ asked Dana gently.
‘No one,’ said Stewart. ‘No one comes into our house. Just me and Barney and occasionally his mates. He can tolerate kids, you see, because he stays in charge. Other than a few kids, though, no one.’
Silence. The man across the desk remained perfectly still. Outwardly, he was unchanged. Inside, Dana knew, he was crumbling.
Knowing that if you’re going to attack, you do it fast and hard, Lacey ran up the last few steps. She burst through the one door on the upper landing and in the tangerine light of the street lamps had a moment to take in the huge, high-ceilinged room, the bloodstains festooning the walls and rafters like forgotten party-streamers, and the sickly, slaughterhouse stench of the place. Then she spotted the small, slim boy tied to the trestle table in the middle of the room. Eyes open. Body wriggling. Huck. Still alive, thank God. Duct tape had been tied across his mouth but he was making a hell of a noise from behind it. His hands were taped together and so were his feet, and tape had been wound round and round his body to secure him to the table. His head was jerking from left to right but his eyes never left hers.
Then they did. At the exact moment that Lacey heard the swish of air behind her, Huck’s eyes darted to the left. Without that second of warning, the blow might have been fatal. As it was, her right arm deflected the flying sledgehammer and it caught the side of her head. The next blow, coming only a split second later, was that of a body hurtling through space and flying directly into her. She fell to the ground, sickened and disorientated. As she went down, she spun to the left and caught sight of the second trestle table. Lying on it, trussed and gagged exactly like Huck, was Barney.
‘Ma’am.’ Tom Barrett was at the far side of the room. He had to raise his voice to be heard.
‘What is it, Tom?’
‘I’ve been running checks on all those kids Stewart Roberts told us were friends of Barney’s. I think you’re going to want to see this.’
Dana crossed the room to Barrett’s desk. He stood to let her sit down, but she shook her head, leaning on the desk instead. His screen showed the webpage of a CNN news-site.
‘Barney Roberts’s best mate is a kid called Harvey Soar,’ Barrett told her, as first Mizon, then Anderson, Richmond and Stenning gathered around the desk behind her. ‘Harvey has – or rather had – some famous parents.’
‘Abbie and Rob Soar,’ said Anderson. ‘The British journalists who got caught up in the Ivory Coast atrocities. Remind me when this was?’
‘Twelve years ago,’ replied Barrett. ‘Abbie must have been pregnant with Harvey at the time. There was a massacre in a school – over a dozen boys were killed, supposedly so they couldn’t grow
up and join the government-controlled army. The Soars were there, caught up in it, and they had their two-year-old son with them.’
‘They came across the school just as the rebels left,’ said Dana, who’d been reading ahead. ‘I remember this happening. Abbie took photographs – they went all round the world afterwards. They got away, but the rebels caught up with them. Rob Soar was killed in front of his wife and son.’
‘Rob Soar had his throat cut. He fell with his kid on his back and bled to death in the river,’ said Barrett. ‘And the boys in the school were killed in the same way. Over a dozen young lads, all with their throats cut.’
Dana scrolled up the page, back to the photograph at the top. It was of Abbie and Rob Soar at an awards dinner. She needed only a second to look at the slim, elfin woman with short fair hair.
‘That’s her,’ she said. ‘That’s the woman on the beach.’
Lacey never actually lost consciousness. She was aware of shock rather than pain, then a crippling weakness in her limbs. She thought perhaps the hammer hit her again, this time between her shoulder blades. Then she wondered if someone was kneeling on her back. Her face was pressed against the rough wooden floorboards – boards that smelled of a terrified child’s blood. She knew that any second now she was going to vomit.
Breathe in, breathe out, stay alive.
Her hands were behind her back. Too late she realized they were being taped together. Whoever was kneeling on her bounced, pressing her chest against the floor and squeezing the air out of her body. Don’t fight, take a breath. When the weight lifted, she could kick, struggle to her feet. This was only a kid.
But the kid was on the other table. Two trestle tables. Huck on one, Barney on the other. There was someone else here. Someone who was reaching for her legs, trying to tape her ankles together. She kicked, bucked, but whoever was sitting on her was too heavy. Do something, he’s almost won.
He had won, she couldn’t move. The darkness was changing, taking on deep shades of blue and purple, becoming more solid, wrapping itself around her. She had to rest, just for a minute.
No, don’t pass out. Stay conscious. Get upright.
Rocking on to one side, she drew her knees up towards her chest and pushed hard against the ground with her right shoulder. The pain across her collarbone almost made her give in to the darkness but she told herself to hold on, keep breathing, think about Huck, think about Barney.
She was in a large, rectangular room at the back of the upper floor. A room that could have been the studio of an insane painter with access to only one bright colour. A room with so much blood it was making her head spin. The high, peaked ceiling had several areas where the arterial spray was concentrated. The boys who had died in here hadn’t been killed in the same spot. They’d been moved around, as though the killer wanted an individual and permanent memento of each on the walls. Nor had the boys’ killer bothered getting rid of the blood. The blood was all still here, she could smell it. The boards beneath her were slick with it. Lacey felt her ears start to buzz, her head to grow thick. She couldn’t faint.
Only one door, the one she’d come in by. Three windows high in the rear wall looked out on to the night. Too high for jumping to be a safe escape option.
As the dizziness faded, Lacey became aware that three pairs of eyes were watching her. Two belonged to the forms prone on the trestle tables, the third to the elf-like figure squatting on the ledge of the far window, clinging to a rope. The rope was attached to a pulley in the ceiling and secured to a cleat beneath the window, and the elfin creature had knocked her to the ground by swinging at her. It was poised to swing again if she moved.
The killer was slim and strong, dressed in green. With spiked fair hair and eyes of an odd intensity. A malevolent sprite. Peter Pan.
‘My daughter-in-law’s out. She’s working.’
‘We’d like to talk to the boys, please. Jorge and Harvey.’
‘They’re both asleep.’
Dana, Gayle Mizon and Susan Richmond stood at the door of the tall terraced house and faced the faded, elderly woman on the threshold. She smelled of gin, exotic cigarettes and cheap perfume.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Dana. ‘We wouldn’t dream of disturbing you at this hour if it wasn’t urgent.’
‘I don’t want them upsetting any more. Jorge’s already been out this evening, looking for Barney. Harvey cried himself to sleep.’
‘Mrs Soar, two children are missing and your grandsons know one of them very well. They may be able to give us some clue as to where they might be.’
‘You’d better come in. I’ll see if I can wake them up,’ the woman said.
Dana and her two companions stepped into the hallway and closed the front door behind them. The elderly woman turned to walk away from them. The hallway was tall and narrow, in the manner of old houses. The cream walls were lined with photographs. Just ahead, Gayle Mizon stopped and nodded at one particular shot. Dana stepped closer. It was the original of the photograph they’d seen minutes earlier on the CNN website: Abbie and Rob Soar, receiving an award for news coverage in the Congo.
The sound of a key turning in the lock made all three women start. They turned to see the front door open and the woman they’d just been discussing walk through.
Slim, fair-haired, around thirteen or fourteen years old, Lacey figured, looking at the figure in green poised to swing down at her again. Just a kid. She’d been right about the kid. Just chosen the wrong one. And thanks to her, the MIT was following the wrong lead again. Thanks to her, Dana Tulloch and her team would be looking for Barney, tracking down places he might be hiding. They wouldn’t be looking for the older brother of his best friend. And yet, in spite of her growing despair, there was some element of relief in finally being able to give the killer a name.
‘Hello, Jorge,’ she said.
‘What’s going on? Are the boys alright?’ The woman with short blonde hair looked from one police officer to the next, then to the top of the stairs. ‘Sylvia, what’s happening?’
The elderly woman seemed to sway. Both Richmond and Mizon took a step towards her. Dana fixed her attention on the new arrival. ‘These people want to talk to the boys,’ she heard the grandmother say. ‘One of their friends is missing. I was just going to wake them up.’
‘I don’t want them disturbed.’ The younger woman’s eyes were darting around the hallway, doing anything other than meet Dana’s.
‘You recognized me the other night, didn’t you?’ Dana said. ‘You’re a reporter. I’ve seen you at press conferences.’
The boys’ mother made a move to get past Dana. ‘I’m a photographer,’ she muttered to the tiled floor.
Dana stepped forward, blocking her route to the stairs. ‘I called out to you, but you ran away. Why did you do that?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’d like to check on my sons.’
The stairs were empty. The grandmother had gone.
‘You were on the beach beneath Tower Bridge,’ said Dana. ‘Why would you go there on such a bad night?’
‘It was a crime scene. I was taking photographs.’
‘You weren’t carrying a camera.’
Another step forward. The two women were almost nose to nose. ‘It was in my bag.’
‘You weren’t carrying a bag.’
‘Abbie!’ The grandmother was calling from the top of the stairs. ‘Jorge isn’t in his room. He’s not with Harvey either. I think he’s gone out again.’
Abbie seemed to droop.
‘Abbie,’ said Dana. ‘How long have you known about Jorge?’
When Lacey fell, the reality for Barney finally hit home. Until that moment, he’d been half waiting for Jorge to burst out laughing, to cut him and Huck loose, to say, ‘Got you!’ and admit it had all been the biggest possible wind-up.
He’d bumped into Jorge after he’d fled Lacey’s flat and, in his misery, had confided his fears about his dad yet again. Jorge had been completely underst
anding, seeing exactly where he was coming from, but assuring him he was wrong. In urgent whispers that had been so convincing, he’d told Barney he had a feeling he knew who the killer was, that he didn’t want to say more now, but that it was someone they both knew and that it would be a massive shock for everyone. If Barney would come to the old house with him, he’d said, they could break in and get proof.
Half drunk on the knowledge that his father might be innocent after all, Barney had followed Jorge to the house, up the framework of the conservatory and then to the top floor of the house. He’d been scared, of course, close to petrified, but Jorge had given him courage somehow and when they’d heard Huck whimpering, Jorge had gone straight in. Barney had actually been having fantasies about the two of them being heroes when Jorge had jumped him. Even then, he hadn’t quite taken it in.
Not until he’d seen the look on Jorge’s face as he’d flown through the air and swung the huge hammer at Lacey’s head had he even begun to believe that his best mate’s older brother, the coolest guy he knew, was a killer.
Even when Lacey sat up, blinking, her eyes unable to focus on anything, Barney had a second of hope that it was the ‘Surprise!’ moment at a party, when suddenly all the mystery was laid open.
‘Who knows you’re here?’ Jorge was asking Lacey.
Tell him you’re the first, willed Barney. Tell him half the Metropolitan Police will be bursting their way through the door any second. Scare him. Panic him. Make him run.
‘No one,’ gasped Lacey, giving first Barney and then Huck a strange, intense stare. ‘I came on my own. I love what you did on Facebook, by the way. Peter Sweep, the Missing Boys. Really clever.’
What was she doing? Even Jorge wasn’t sure. His eyes narrowed, searching for sarcasm in the detective’s face. A movement to the left caught Barney’s eye and he glanced at Huck. The kid was no wimp, you had to give him that. He’d been bucking and pulling and wriggling since Barney had been thrown into the room. Now he was rubbing his face against the wood of the trestle table, trying to get the tape off his mouth.
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