‘You’re in a show, aren’t you?’ said Lacey. ‘I saw your photograph in the local paper. You’re actually playing Peter Pan in the West End. God, you even look like him.’
Peter Pan? Peter Sweep? What was she talking about? If Jorge was Peter Sweep that made sense, it explained how Peter knew so much about Barney. And yes, everyone knew he was playing Peter Pan in the show, but what had that—?
‘Come away with me to Neverland,’ sang Jorge, still crouched on the window ledge. ‘Lacey, gonna teach you to fly.’
‘The police haven’t a clue,’ said Lacey. ‘They’re still chasing round looking for a vampire.’
Jorge actually sniggered at that.
‘Did you really do it by yourself ?’ Lacey was saying now, like she was some kid meeting a pop star for the first time. ‘Five boys, and now these two. It’s incredible. They’ll be writing books about you.’
A look of scorn washed over Jorge’s face. He didn’t mean it, though. Barney had seen the flash of hunger on his face.
Lacey stopped and coughed. She looked as though she was about to be sick. Then she seemed to make a massive effort. ‘I know what I’m talking about,’ she said. ‘I’ve studied real-life serial killers for years. The ones who really catch the public imagination are the women and the young ones.’
And the ones who never get caught, thought Barney. Don’t tell him that.
Lacey’s face seemed to darken, and for a second her eyes lost focus. Then she took a deep breath. ‘You know what you should do now,’ she said, still speaking directly to Jorge. ‘Go to the nearest police station and tell them to organize a press conference. They’ll do it, if you say it’s about the case. And they’ll have heard of you. I mean, you’re practically a celebrity. Then you can announce to the whole world it was you. You could say you knew the police were never going to catch you and you just got bored with it.’
Barney watched Jorge’s face for a reaction. If Lacey could just persuade him to leave the building, she could get herself free and call for help. Even if Jorge took her phone, she could untie him and Huck. She wouldn’t let Jorge catch her off guard again. Huck’s duct-tape gag was almost off. He’d be able to yell soon.
‘What will they do to me?’ asked Jorge, surprising Barney. It was the question of a child. Lacey obviously thought so too. She was giving him a reassuring smile.
‘You’re too young to go to prison,’ she said. ‘They’ll probably send you to a special facility, just for a few years, just till you’re eighteen. Then they’ll give you a new identity, maybe send you somewhere really cool like Australia and you can sell your story. I wouldn’t be surprised if they make a film about you.’
Jorge was nodding and Barney felt a rush of hope. It was going to work. There were plenty of sharp edges in the room – once they were left alone, Lacey could free herself in minutes. But then Jorge stood, tensed his whole body and leaped forward. The rope carried him into the centre of the room and he let go, landing lightly beside Lacey.
‘Or I could kill these two, and then you, and make it look like you did it before killing yourself out of remorse.’ Jorge smiled, and suddenly looked nothing like a child. ‘I wouldn’t even have the bother of getting rid of the bodies then. I know what I’m talking about, I’ve studied real-life serial killers for years.’
Barney closed his eyes, and gave up.
‘I don’t know anything,’ said Abbie. ‘Sylvia, have you any idea what time he went out?’
‘We always wonder, when there’s a killer amongst us,’ said Dana. ‘We ask ourselves, have I seen him, spoken to him, do I know him? I’ve been on the news saying “Someone knows him” over and over again. I wanted everyone in London to ask themselves that question.’
Abbie Soar hadn’t moved from her spot at the foot of the stairs.
‘But you had more reason than most, didn’t you?’ said Dana, trying to recall the conversation she and Susan Richmond had had on the way over. ‘After what you and Jorge went through when he was young. What happens to us in the first three years of life has a massive impact upon who we are as people.’
Huge pale-blue eyes couldn’t quite meet Dana’s. ‘I thought Jorge was dead too, that day,’ Abbie said. ‘When I pulled him out of the backpack, he was covered in his father’s blood.’
‘He doesn’t remember it,’ said his grandmother. ‘He was only a baby. We’ve never talked about it.’
‘What happened to you and your family was on the news all over the world,’ said Dana, ignoring the older woman. ‘There’s a huge amount of coverage on the internet even now. We found it in seconds. Have you never wondered if Jorge has done the same thing? He might even have convinced himself that he remembers it all.’
‘She wasn’t even allowed to wash him,’ said Sylvia. ‘The two of them were put straight in the truck and taken to the capital. Four hours in that hot, stinking truck, and all the time that poor baby covered in blood.’
‘It was the blood that made you suspicious, wasn’t it?’ said Dana, still talking to Abbie. ‘Blood on his clothes?’
‘Jorge washes his own clothes,’ said the grandmother, still at the top of the stairs. ‘He insists on that. I did spot some blood one time, but it was fake blood, from that show he’s in. I know he was telling the truth. He has a bottle of it in his room.’
Abbie’s blue eyes were still fixed just a few inches over Dana’s shoulder.
‘And he was always out when a boy disappeared or when a body turned up,’ Dana went on. ‘Always at football or at the youth club or whatever it is that he does in the evenings. He’s always out, isn’t he? On Tuesday and Thursday evenings?’
‘That’s when he rehearses,’ said Sylvia. ‘He’s in a show in the West End. He’s playing Peter Pan.’
Behind Dana, Gayle Mizon gave a small whimper.
Abbie came to life then. She made a move to push past Dana and the others. ‘I need to find my son,’ she told them.
Dana stood her ground. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You need to sit down and tell us where we can find him.’
Huck, Barney, now Jorge. How many more boys would be lost before the night was done?
‘You wouldn’t have a chance,’ Lacey told the silver-haired child with the dead eyes, knowing that, the way Tulloch felt about her, he actually stood a very good chance of convincing the police she was the killer. It would be a nice, neat ending for the case. Overly disturbed police officer going on a murderous rampage, misdirecting her colleagues to cover her own tracks, until she couldn’t live with the guilt any more. Except—
‘Take that gag off Barney and he’ll tell you I wasn’t in London for the first three weeks of this year,’ she said. ‘There’s no way I could have killed Tyler or Ryan.’
Jorge glanced over at Barney. ‘Then it’ll have to be Barney who did it,’ he said.
Shit, that would work. The MIT would certainly believe Barney was the killer. She had done so herself until a few minutes ago.
Jorge reached into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Which means you’re next,’ he said to her.
She’d lost track of time. Joesbury had said he’d come looking after an hour. The hour was definitely up, but by how much? Probably not enough.
‘Which bit do you enjoy the most?’ she asked Jorge, as he took a step closer. He was holding something in his right hand. Within the cup of his fingers, she could see the gleam of a blade. Behind him, Huck was straining to lift his head from the table. His wide blue eyes were watching in horror. Barney, on the other hand, had his eyes fixed to the ceiling. The fingers on both his hands were flexing and pointing, like claws going into spasms. ‘Do you enjoy the moment the knife breaks the flesh? Or when you see the light leaving their eyes?’
Jorge stopped moving. His eyes were staring, his mouth twisted. He looked like a child who’d been unjustly told off. He looked as if he was about to moan that it wasn’t fair.
‘Are you sexually excited by young boys?’ asked Lacey.
For a second she though
t she’d gone too far, that he’d launch himself at her.
‘I’m not a pervert,’ he told her. ‘I don’t do it for pleasure.’
‘Why, then? Why do you do it?’
‘Honestly?’ he asked her.
She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Tell me honestly.’
‘Honestly,’ he repeated. ‘I just don’t know.’
Sometimes, there was no reason. Except …
‘I do,’ she said. ‘I know why you do it.’
Jorge turned from her then, walked back to the two trestle tables, right up to where he could look down at Huck on one side and Barney on the other. The Barlow twins had died in this room. The bloodstain down the table leg closest to Lacey was unmistakable. Jason and Joshua had bled to death here. Probably others as well. Terrified young boys had lain in this room and felt their blood seeping out as their bodies got colder and the darkness grew at the edge of their vision. Jorge was looking from Barney to Huck, at the point of their necks just below their chins, as though deciding which one to cut first.
‘I know,’ she repeated.
She could see the dilemma in his face. Half of him wanted to shut her up, the other half to hear what she had to say.
‘It’s like a tension inside you,’ she said. ‘It grows all the time. You feel it in your head, your stomach, even your fingers and toes, and it gets stronger and tighter, and with every hour that goes by it gets a firmer hold on you, until it feels like your entire body is screaming. And then that cut. That moment the knife slides across the skin and it falls apart, there’s something almost magical about it. Then the blood comes fizzing up and flows out and it’s like all that noise in your head just goes away.’
He was shaking his head slowly, his eyes never leaving hers.
‘The blood makes all the noise, all the pain, just slide away,’ said Lacey.
His head was saying one thing, his eyes another entirely. How much time had gone by? Enough?
‘You’re wondering how I know, aren’t you? I know because I do it too. Only I cut myself. I’ve never been quite as brave as you. Don’t you believe me? Untie my wrists and I’ll show you the scars.’
His mouth twisted – he wasn’t going to fall for that one. But at least he wasn’t looking at the boys any more.
‘You’ll have to cut Barney’s wrists, you know,’ she said. ‘If he’s the one you’re planning to pin the blame on, you can’t cut his throat. They’ll never believe an eleven-year-old would cut his own throat. You’ll have to cut his left wrist first, because that’s what right-handed suicides always do. And you’ll have to get the angle right, or they’ll know. Will you remember all this?’
‘Shut up.’
‘And another thing you should know is that it takes a lot longer for people to die when you cut their wrists than when you do their throats,’ Lacey called out. ‘It takes longer to bleed out. And the wounds will start to heal themselves. The blood will coagulate. You may have to make more than one cut. It will take time. Won’t be pleasant.’
‘Shut up!’
‘You’ve never killed a friend before, have you? You hardly knew the other boys. Are you sure you can do this to someone you like?’
Jorge looked from her to Barney, then to Huck. He stepped closer to Huck.
‘One last thing,’ Lacey called out. ‘It’s really important I tell you this.’
‘What?’
‘I have Huck Joesbury’s new mobile phone in my pocket.’
As Jorge’s eyes opened wide in surprise, she turned quickly to Huck. ‘Your dad bought you a new iPhone,’ she said. ‘He lent it to me because the police have mine, but it’s yours. He hasn’t given it to you yet because your mum thinks you’re a bit young for it, but he’s got it all set up for you. The numbers of all the people you know are in it – your mum, your dad, DI Tulloch, your godmother.’
‘If this is about trying to make me think you’ve made a call, forget it,’ said Jorge. He dug his hand into his jacket pocket and held something out towards her. ‘It fell out of your pocket when I hit you.’
‘Is it damaged?’
Unable to stop himself, Jorge glanced down at the screen and pressed the small round button that would activate the home page. Lacey saw the gleam of light and colour. The phone wasn’t damaged.
‘The reason it’s important,’ she said, ‘is that there’s a very useful app on that particular phone – you might have heard of it, it’s called Find My Phone. If two iPhones are connected by the same computer, then one phone always knows where its partner is. It’s done by GPS. So all Huck’s dad has to do to find us – and can I just say, he is one mean son-of-a-bitch when he’s mad, isn’t he, Huck? – all he has to do is open up the app, put in a password and his phone will tell him exactly where this one is.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘No, I’m not. I saw Huck’s dad just over an hour ago. That’s when he gave me the phone. He’s been tracking me ever since. It’s what he does. It’s his job. He knows exactly where I am.’
‘Liar!’
‘I’ll prove it. Activate the app. Take Huck’s gag off – oh, clever boy, he’s done it himself – and get him to give you the password. And I’ll bet you anything you like that it tells you Detective Inspector Joesbury’s iPhone is right outside that door.’
‘Dad!’ screamed Huck.
Then everything happened at once, in a blizzard of noise and movement. Jorge ran for the door. He’d almost made it when the door fell off its hinges and crashed into the room. As Joesbury stepped inside, Jorge backed up and ran to the window, taking the rope with him. Joesbury ran after him. Jorge leaped. They heard a sharp cry, a loud clatter and then nothing. Joesbury had reached the window. He pulled out his radio. Lacey didn’t catch the words as he briefly spoke into it. She must have closed her eyes for a second, because when she opened them again Joesbury was leaning over his son’s prone body. He got Huck free and picked him up. With his son in his arms, he staggered across the room before collapsing beside her. She could feel the cold dampness of rain, the warmth of perspiration, the stickiness of tears. She felt as though their three bodies had merged into one clinging, shaking heap.
It seemed a long time before Huck’s voice broke the silence. ‘Dad,’ he said. ‘What about Barney?’
66
‘FOUR OF US went into the school that day. My mum and dad, a local man who was our guide, and me. His name was Billy, I think, the guide. I remember him being really worried about Mum taking pictures and Dad filming. He kept trying to hurry us out, get us moving. There were lots of people around, the ones the rebel soldiers hadn’t killed. The women and the older people.
‘So not everyone was killed?’ asked the psychiatrist, Dr Evi Oliver.
‘It was the boys they wanted. They didn’t want the boys growing up and becoming government soldiers, so they killed them all, in the school, where they were probably having a maths lesson or a spelling test or something.’
‘And your parents took you into the school too?’
‘I think they forgot I was with them. They did that a lot. They had this rucksack-type thing that they put me in, and I’d be on Dad’s back or Mum’s back and they just used to get on with everything. I was on Dad’s back that day. I remember seeing Mum taking pictures of the dead boys.’
Silence. Jorge’s eyes closed. Evi waited, gave him time. Then they snapped open. ‘People have been trying to tell me that these memories I have aren’t real,’ he said. ‘That I’m making it up.’
‘I don’t think anyone believes you’re making it up,’ replied Evi. ‘What you went through is a matter of record. I think the difficulty they have is that you were very young.’
‘I’m not making it up.’
‘Of course not. Somewhere, everything you went through that day is still with you. But you describe it all in such detail. For such a small child to take all that in and retain it would be quite remarkable.’
‘I was there. I saw it. I was there.’
‘Of course you were. I think what people are suggesting is that in addition to your own memories, you’ve heard other people talking about what happened that day, maybe you’ve read about it in newspapers or on the internet. It’s possible that real memories and newspaper coverage and speculation have become—’
‘What? Mixed up?’
He was getting agitated again, rocking backwards and forwards in his chair. Evi glanced to one side to check the handset with the panic button was on the desk.
‘No,’ she said. ‘More like interwoven. But you know, it doesn’t really matter how much of what’s in your head is from actual memory and how much is acquired. What’s important is how real it is to you. Why don’t you tell me what happened after you left the school?’
Jorge reached out and drank from the plastic beaker of water on the desk in front of him. ‘We knew we had to get out of there,’ he said. ‘People started talking about how more rebels were coming, how we had to get away. Most of the villagers were leaving. There were some women – mums, I guess – who were crying over the dead boys, but everyone else was just trying to get away. They all went into the forest, but Billy said we had to follow the river to try and meet up with the government forces, so we did.’
‘And what happened then?’
‘We walked for a long time. It was hot and I was thirsty. I think I cried a lot. Maybe I fell asleep. Then I remember more soldiers. They all looked very young, not much older than the dead boys we’d seen in the school, and their uniforms were torn and dirty. They didn’t look like proper soldiers, just like kids pretending, and I think I was waiting for my dad to tell them off, to make them get out of our way, when they cut his throat.’
‘That must have been terrible.’
‘This boy, this kid, came up to him, like he was just going to have a chat, but he didn’t stop walking, he just went really close to Dad, then he lifted his hand up and there was a knife in it. Swish. My dad’s blood was flying into the air like a firework.’
‘And you were still strapped to his back?’
Like This, for Ever Page 36