Like This, for Ever (25 page)

Someone was at the door.

Four loud knocks, the sound of someone determined to get a response. Delivery men always knocked that way. Friends and neighbours gave polite, rhythmic knocks, rat, tat-a-tat, tat. People wanting to sell you something were polite, too, but more formal, usually giving four crisp, business-like taps. Delivery men, though, didn’t bother with niceties. They had something to deliver,
they had a right to attention and they were determined to get it.

Four even louder knocks. Whoever was at the door wasn’t messing about. Delivery men didn’t come at eight in the evening. Ignore it.

On the other hand, wasn’t he the safest boy in London right now? What did he have to fear from a stranger on the doorstep?

He wanted to be wrong about that, though. More than anything, he wanted to be wrong.

Enough to want the real killer to be right outside?

Just go and look.
There were strong locks on the door. Barney ran down the stairs and to the window of the living room. A tall, thin man was on the doorstep, in a motorcycle helmet with the visor still down. He was staring straight at Barney.

Useless to pull back now, he’d been seen. Barney stared back at the man. His dad’s height, but thinner. His face was almost impossible to see but Barney had the impression he was young. He was holding up a thin, square, white box, pushing it towards the window, then pointing at the door. At the kerb was a motorcycle with a large storage box on the back. The box had a familiar name and logo on it.

He was a pizza-delivery man.

Barney went to the hallway and unlocked the door. He opened it the full four inches the chain would allow.

‘Pizza for Roberts,’ came the muffled voice from behind the visor.

‘Sorry, didn’t order one,’ said Barney. The face behind the visor looked white, surrounded by very dark hair.

A heavy sigh of impatience. ‘Your name Roberts?’

‘I didn’t order a pizza.’

‘Well, maybe someone else did, kid. Look, it’s been paid for so you might as well have it.’

‘My dad’s in the shower.’

‘Do I look like I care? You having this, or not?’

Take it, it could be a clue.
The man had taken off his heavy motorcycling gloves, there would be fingerprints on the box. Barney tentatively stuck his fingers out through the gap, ready to pull back at any time if the man looked as though he were going to grab him.

The man gave another exaggerated sigh. Was this how he did it
then? Made the children feel guilty that they were being difficult? ‘You have to sign for it,’ he said. ‘I can’t get my machine through that gap.’

There were voices in the street. A mother and two teenagers were walking along the opposite pavement. Witnesses. Nothing could happen while people were so close. Barney slipped the chain off the door and opened it. He took the pizza box, warm under his fingers, and tucked it beneath one arm. The man was holding out a small, rectangular box with a display screen on it. Barney had seen his dad sign them several times. He picked up the pen and scratched his name on the screen.

‘Thanks, mate,’ said the man, bending down to pick up his gloves. ‘Enjoy.’

Barney watched him walk the few yards across the pavement to his bike, check that the box on the back was locked, and then kick it into life. A second later, he was gone.

Pizza? His dad had made supper like he always did. He never ordered food to be delivered unless the two of them were at home together. What if the pizza-delivery man had been the killer, and that was how he got to the boys? Maybe he delivered the pizza and went away again to get their trust, then came back later saying something like he’d delivered the wrong one. OK, first things first, he had to phone his dad and make sure he hadn’t ordered it. He found his phone, but a text message came in before he could dial. From Harvey.

Facebook. Now!

‘I am knackered, starving and if I drink any more coffee I’ll be tap-dancing naked on the ceiling,’ complained Tom Barrett from the middle of the incident room. ‘What time can we go home, Sarge?’

‘When I say so,’ answered Anderson, who’d been trawling his way through the door-to-door statements collected after the Barlow brothers had been found on the South Bank.

Dana looked up from the corner desk where she and Susan Richmond had been re-reading witness statements. ‘If nothing’s
happened by ten o’clock we can assume it’s a hoax and call it a night,’ she said.

Barrett spun on the spot. ‘Sorry, Ma’am, didn’t see you there.’

‘Don’t mention it. I’d still like everyone to be ready for a call-out though. Staying off the booze might not be a bad idea.’

‘I can’t find anything, Boss,’ said Stenning, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. ‘Not a single official news website running with the story.’

‘Don’t tell me the media have actually had an attack of conscience,’ said Dana. ‘That will make me start thinking about Twilight Zones.’

‘What do you think about this Sweep character, Susan?’ asked Anderson. ‘Is he our man?’

Richmond shook her head, but in a
who knows?
kind of way. ‘There’s a lot that doesn’t ring true,’ she said. ‘If you look back at his early posts, there’s nothing about vampires until that bright spark Hunt starts talking about Renfield’s Syndrome. Now it looks like this Peter’s trying to quote the entire novel at us.’

‘Jumping on the bandwagon,’ said Anderson.

‘Exactly. The real killer, to my mind, would be livid we’d misunderstood him. He’d be more likely to be trying to put us right.’

‘Or it’s a blind alley he’s very happy for us to go down,’ said Dana. ‘Don’t killers enjoy feeling the police are stupid?’

‘I think it’s safe to say he’s in a pretty good mood right now,’ said Anderson. ‘How you getting on, Gayle? Can you give us a status update?’

‘Yeah, very funny, Sarge.’ Mizon was as pale-faced and sore-eyed as anyone. She’d spent the day monitoring the social media sites but, as she complained, given how quickly they were updated at times it was quite easy to miss something. ‘Nothing yet. Except the usual load of nonsense. Uh-oh!’

‘What?’

‘Peter Sweep has just posted.’

Everyone in the room made their way over to Mizon’s terminal. Dana arrived last, determined not to be seen panicking.

Oliver Kennedy will not be going home tonight. Oliver Kennedy is going on an awfully big adventure.

For a moment, no one spoke.

‘Could be a wind-up,’ said Anderson.

Silence, all eyes fixed on the screen.

‘He’s never given us a heads up before,’ said Stenning.

They waited for the comment thread to build. It was slow. The rest of the world seemed as stunned as they were.

‘OK, we need a list of Kennedy families in South London,’ said Anderson. ‘Pete, you up to that?’

Stenning nodded and sat back down at his desk.

‘When you have the list, we’re looking for sons aged eight to eleven,’ Anderson went on.

‘If he really has taken someone, they’ll be in touch with us before we can track them down,’ said Mizon. ‘People won’t delay reporting a missing ten-year-old at the moment.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Anderson. ‘Kids can be missing for some time before they’re missed, if you get my drift. Quick as you can, Pete. Tom, give him a hand.’

‘Sarge, do you want me to get on to Facebook?’ asked Mizon. ‘See if we pin him down?’

Anderson nodded. ‘Has to be worth a try. Tell ’em it’s urgent this time.’

‘How difficult is it to keep an eye on your kids?’ said Dana. ‘What is this Oliver Kennedy doing out on his own? Do his parents not love him?’

The door opened. ‘Is it true?’ Weaver was in the doorway.

‘It’s true our Peter Sweep friend is claiming he has another victim,’ said Richmond. ‘Could still be a sick hoax. To be honest, I’ve been half expecting something like this.’

‘No reports of missing children?’ asked Weaver.

‘None yet,’ Anderson told him. ‘We’ve started looking for kids called Oliver Kennedy, but there’s going to be a few.’

A phone rang. Barrett answered it. After a few seconds, he hung up and crossed to the TV in the corner.

‘There’s about to be a news bulletin,’ he said. ‘They’re going to interrupt the programming.’

A collective groan murmured around the room. Weaver walked over to the TV screen. Dana stayed where she was.

‘Keep going, Pete,’ said Anderson. ‘We need to find that kid.’

‘We interrupt this programme with a news bulletin,’ said the presenter, a dark-haired, blandly handsome man in his forties. ‘A contributor to the social-media site Facebook, who has, in recent days, claimed to be the Twilight Killer, is believed to have abducted his sixth victim. Scotland Yard press office tell us they have received no reports of missing children yet, so we are appealing to the parents of Oliver Kennedy, believed to be between eight and eleven years old, to get in touch with us by contacting the number below.’

‘Good God above,’ said Weaver, running a hand over his face.

‘They’re interfering directly with the investigation,’ said Richmond. ‘Can they do this?’

‘No law to stop them,’ said Dana.

‘Joining me in the studio is forensic psychologist Dr Bartholomew Hunt,’ the presenter continued, as the camera angle widened to show the man sitting further along the desk. ‘Dr Hunt, you believe this latest abduction was predictable?’

‘Entirely so,’ said Hunt. ‘Twenty-four hours ago, the killer himself warned that he would take another victim. In my opinion, the Metropolitan Police have to explain why the families of London weren’t warned.’

‘Switch that crap off,’ said Dana.

‘Boss, we need to keep a handle on what’s being said,’ said Anderson.

‘I am not having this investigation hijacked by a bunch of moral delinquents who would probably prefer Oliver Kennedy to be found dead by morning because it would increase their viewing figures.
We
are running this investigation and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Unless you have a problem with that, Sir?’

Weaver looked troubled but he shook his head. Reluctantly, Mizon switched off the TV and returned to her desk.

‘Any luck yet, Pete?’ asked Dana.

Stenning was still hunched over his computer. ‘Working our way
through the list of Kennedys,’ he said. ‘Found one possibility. Family in Blackheath.’

‘Ring them,’ said Dana. ‘Make sure they know where Oliver is. If they can’t see and touch him right this minute, we get local uniform out to them.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Weaver, crossing the room and perching on Stenning’s desk. ‘You just keep finding me numbers.’

‘I guess by the end of the evening we’ll know whether this Peter is our killer or not,’ said Anderson. ‘If all Oliver Kennedys are accounted for, we know he’s been pulling our collective plonker.’

The phone rang. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at it. Somehow they all knew. Anderson stood up.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Dana.

Wherever she sat in the living room, Lacey could see the knife drawer. Plain white melamine, it hovered at the edge of her vision like her nemesis. If she left the room she could still see it. It had been tormenting her all day, like the bottle of Scotch in the cupboard of an alcoholic.

She could not do it again. Once was forgivable, understandable even. Once could be considered an experiment. Twice meant she had a problem. Twice meant that, far from making a recovery, she was actually sinking fast.

But she’d felt so much better. All day Sunday, and most of Monday, she’d felt as though she’d taken a miracle drug. That feeling inside her, like a coiled spring, had gone. It had felt like the first warm day after winter. Lacey stood and walked across the room, trying to think about something else.

The MIT still had her mobile phone. Presumably they hadn’t yet managed to trace where Saturday evening’s text had come from. But if the Met couldn’t prove Barney had sent her the text, how on earth could she? And what did he have to hide, anyway? He was eleven years old. How could he be involved?

She was in the kitchen again, dangerously close to the knife drawer. Impossible to stay indoors. She grabbed a jacket and her helmet and went outside. The night was dark and cold, the wind coming directly from the river.

On the embankment, the police presence seemed unusually heavy. Uniformed officers were making their way along the pathway, chatting to groups of teenagers who’d braved the cold. Tuesday evening. They were expecting the killer to strike again.

Maybe they’d even been given her description, told to look out for a thin, pale woman who haunted the riverbank once night had fallen.

Suddenly self-conscious, Lacey left the river and set off east, avoiding the main roads, pedalling as fast as she dared in London traffic. Only when she got as far as Bermondsey did she risk heading back to the water. When she reached a stretch of the embankment that seemed quiet, she got off and pushed her bike towards the embankment wall.

The river was lively tonight, the tide coming in fast and the wind blowing hard in the opposite direction. Choppy little waves were dancing across its surface and the long, smooth blackness was continually broken by tiny fountains of white spray.

A police launch was heading downstream, in the exact centre of the river. It was too far away for Lacey to be sure, but it looked exactly the same as the one Joesbury had forced her on to the previous autumn, after a ducking had given her a temporary fear of fast-moving water. He’d introduced her to his Uncle Fred, a sergeant in the Marine Unit, and the launch they’d been travelling on had been called out to intercept a dinghy of illegal immigrants. The dinghy had overturned, Lacey had jumped into the water to rescue a young girl, and bloody hell, had she been in trouble, with both Uncle Fred and Joesbury. But her fear of rivers had gone as quickly as it had come.

There was just something mesmerizing about large, powerful watercourses: about the never-ending motion, the way they were continually moving and changing but always constant, always there. As the song said, they just kept on rolling, and somehow this river in particular always managed to calm her. If she could live close to it, if by some miracle she could afford one of these riverside properties, if she could fall asleep to the sound of its journey, she wouldn’t need to—