Sharon Bolton - Like This, for Ever

‘If I give my job up now, I won’t get it back again just because the working conditions become better,’ said Barney.

His dad almost smiled and then caught the look on Barney’s face.

‘I just don’t feel comfortable about you being out on your own right now.’

But he felt perfectly comfortable leaving him on his own two nights every week. OK, that was hardly fair. Barney was the one who refused ever to have babysitters in the house, who’d kicked up a massive fuss on the few occasions, now years ago, when his dad had arranged one. Babysitters just never understood how things needed to be done. Babysitters moved things. Babysitters came into his room when he was working and asked nosy questions. Babysitters … yeah, his dad had finally got the message, and for years Barney’s dad just hadn’t gone out at all. Only in the last few months had he started to trust Barney on his own.

‘Don’t glare at me, Barney.’

‘I’m not,’ Barney said, although he knew he had been. Then the toast popped up and his dad began the process of buttering and spreading. While his dad’s attention was elsewhere, Barney reached for the remote control, turned down the volume and switched the channel.

‘You wouldn’t answer the door, would you?’ his dad said, as he handed him the toast. ‘If anyone knocked when I’m not here. You’d phone me.’

‘’Course,’ said Barney through a mouthful. On the TV, three men in swimming trunks, yellow beanie hats and goggles were getting into three bath-tubs. One had been filled with chicken curry, the second with soy sauce and the third, blackcurrant juice. It was an experiment to find Britain’s stainiest food.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to organize someone to keep you company? We can find someone you like. Maybe an older boy? Jorge, perhaps?’

The men on the TV screen were sponging themselves down. Just gross!

‘Barney!’

‘What?’

‘Can we think again about a babysitter?’ said his dad in a voice that made it clear it wasn’t for the first time. ‘For Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I have to work late.’

13

‘MIKE, PLEASE.’

The pathologist, Dr Michael Kaytes, turned round in surprise. He’d been about to switch on the iPlayer in the corner of the mortuary examination room. Whilst cutting open bodies and removing internal organs, Kaytes liked to listen to Beethoven. Dana was convinced he did it for effect. Usually it didn’t bother her. Usually.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Dana, knowing she looked anything but apologetic, and not caring. ‘I’m just not sure I can cope with the music. Not this time.’

Kaytes nodded slowly. ‘As you wish.’ He walked back to the two gurneys in the centre of the room where Jason and Joshua Barlow’s bodies lay under blue plastic. Dana knew Stenning and Anderson were exchanging uncomfortable glances behind her back. Well, it was just tough. These were ten-year-old boys they were dealing with and if anyone could be blasé about that, she wasn’t sure she wanted them on her team.

Jesus, she had to calm down.

She watched, teeth clenched, as Kaytes and his young technician, Troy, peeled back the sheets. Kaytes was a tall man, barrel-chested and with a thatch of thick grey hair. His eyes were bright blue. Beside him, thin, small, colourless Troy looked like an undernourished teenager.

The gurneys had been labelled, to make it obvious which twin was which. Those little faces would have been so cute, so cheeky in life.

‘We got straight on to it,’ said Kaytes. ‘I thought you’d want the facts as soon as possible.’

‘Thank you,’ said Dana. ‘Is it the same killer?’

Kaytes nodded. ‘Almost certainly,’ he said. ‘Same cause of death: extensive bleeding following the severance of the carotid artery. Neither boy was sexually abused, no evidence of prolonged physical brutality of any sort.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Anderson.

Kaytes nodded. ‘Hair missing around the wrists and ankles, consistent with strong packaging tape being wrapped around them,’ he went on. ‘Some bruises that would indicate struggling, the most recent of these along the left side of Joshua’s body.’

Kaytes positioned himself on the far side of the gurney from the three police officers and reached over the body. He towered over the small, thin child. ‘Can you see?’ he said. ‘One on the left thigh, a couple of smaller ones on the calf. Then this one on the shoulder. None of them much more than a day or so old. If I were hazarding a guess at what happened to him, I’d say some time yesterday, he fell on to his left side.’

Dana nodded. Yesterday, Joshua had been a prisoner for almost two days. He’d have been scared, but the will to live, to escape if possible, would have been strong.

‘Like our previous two victims,’ continued Kaytes, ‘these both have a scattering of wooden splinters on the back of their shoulders and upper arms, consistent with their being held immobile on some sort of wooden bench or trestle table.’

These children had been strapped down for two days. They’d squirmed and wriggled to get free, and at some point Joshua had probably tipped the table over and landed heavily on his left side.

‘Their last meal was crisps and some sort of chocolate candy bar,’ said Kaytes. ‘They ate about two hours before they died. Again similar to the stomach contents of the previous two victims. Whoever’s holding them, he’s not big on healthy eating.’

A woman would make them eat properly, wouldn’t she? Dana felt her conviction wavering. On the other hand, would you worry about vitamins if you knew you were going to cut the kid’s throat days down the line?

‘Same murder weapon?’ asked Anderson.

‘Like the previous two victims, these two chaps were killed by a straight-edged, sharp blade, seven to ten inches long. Difficult to say, beyond that. But I am glad you brought that up. Because in one respect, Jason at least does differ from the previous two. Come and look.’

He stepped closer, extended a gloved hand and laid it on Jason’s forehead. As he tilted the boy’s head back, Troy shone a lamp directly at the wound on the throat.

‘We’re going to get this photographed and blown up to make it clearer, but for now, can you see?’ Kaytes ran his gloved index finger close to the edge of the wound. A millimetre or so beneath the cut was a thin, pink line.

‘Is that another cut?’ asked Dana.

Kaytes nodded. ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ he said. ‘And whilst it’s very indistinct, we’re pretty certain there’s a third cut here as well.’

‘Hesitation wounds?’ asked Dana.

Kaytes shook his head. ‘No. The previous two were made earlier – sorry to sound a bit Blue Peter . They had chance to start healing.’

Dana straightened up, looked at Anderson and then Stenning.

‘What the hell’s he doing? Practising?’ said Anderson.

‘To be absolutely honest with you, we saw something on Ryan’s corpse that made us wonder,’ said Kaytes. ‘It just wasn’t clear enough to draw any conclusions from. But what seems to be happening is that your perpetrator starts making cuts on his victims’ throats some time before he kills them. They’ll be much smaller cuts, of course, or else they’d bleed out. He cuts them, and lets them heal.’

‘And then he cuts them again,’ said Dana.

Silence for a moment, as each person in the room seemed to be mulling over what that could possibly mean.

‘Anything else, Mike?’ asked Dana after a while. She watched the pathologist glance at his assistant then nod his head fractionally.

‘I’ll let Troy tell you,’ he said.

The younger man’s vowels were straight out of Southend. ‘I noticed some bruising I thought was interesting,’ he said. ‘I spotted it on Joshua, but there’s some marks on Jason too, although fainter. Come a bit closer.’