Sharon Bolton - Like This, for Ever

Barney sat and looked at the map, letting his focus slip and waiting for the patterns to emerge. After a couple of minutes he knew it wasn’t going to work. Three sites just didn’t give enough data for any sort of pattern to stand out. All the locations of the sites told him was that the boys had probably been taken by someone who knew that part of the river.

On the other hand, it might be possible to learn something from the roads. The killer must have brought the boys by car, and there were only a certain number of roads he could have travelled along. So if he plotted where the boys had disappeared from, then marked the most likely route to the dump sites, if those lines crossed anywhere, wouldn’t that indicate where he might live?

Movement outside caught his attention. Lacey was leaving the shed at the bottom of her garden. As usual she was in gym clothes. Her face was red and the hair around it damp. Would he tell her that he knew the name of her stalker? That he was one of the dads at his school? Whatever she might say, it wasn’t normal behaviour, was it? To hang around outside someone’s house at night?

Then Barney forgot about Huck’s dad when his own appeared carrying the laundry basket. As Barney watched, he took a sheet and hung it up. Then another. Sheets from his bed, he’d explained that morning, which needed washing early because he’d spilled tea on them. Except, to Barney’s certain knowledge, there were no striped sheets anywhere in the house. His dad had washed sheets that didn’t belong to them.

‘Just had a text from Lloyd’s mum,’ his dad said when Barney walked through the kitchen door. Luckily, because Barney hadn’t had much practice lying to his dad, his back was turned. He was at the worktop by the sink, preparing vegetables in the food slicer.

‘What’s she want?’ said Barney, trying to sound uninterested.

His dad lifted a saucepan down and scraped the vegetables into it. ‘Inviting you to a sleepover tomorrow night. Want to go?’

As the delicious smell of frying garlic came sneaking up towards Barney’s nostrils, he told himself to be careful, not to sound too eager.

‘Suppose so.’

‘Why they call them sleepovers is beyond me. Overnight rampages might be more to the point.’

‘So can I go?’

His dad paused in the act of stirring and looked at him. ‘What’s the homework situation?’

‘French vocabulary test on Monday, two sheets of long division and a book review. I can do it all after football tomorrow.’

‘If I say yes, what are the chances of you getting any sleep?’

Barney’s eyes started to sting. That would be the ginger his dad was using, possibly chilli. He loved Friday-night dinner. ‘I can sleep on Sunday,’ he suggested.

‘Well, that’s going to be a fun weekend for me. On my own on Saturday night and you in bed all Sunday.’

‘I won’t go if you don’t want me to,’ offered Barney, surprised to find that he meant it.

His dad smiled. ‘I’m kidding, course you can go. I’ll give Lloyd’s mum a call now.’

Not good! Lloyd would have borrowed his mum’s phone to text his mates. If parents started phoning her, the game would be up. Barney picked up the morning’s newspaper and turned it round as though he were reading the heading. ‘She keeps her phone on silent when she’s in the house,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I’d text her.’

His dad glanced round. ‘You’d better do it,’ he said. ‘Tell her I’ll drop you off at five.’

Oh, this wasn’t going well.

Barney picked his dad’s phone up off the counter. ‘They’re only ten minutes away,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to take me. I’ll tell her I’ll arrive about five.’

‘No you won’t,’ said his dad. ‘I’ll drive you and I’ll pick you up.’

‘Dad!’

The two of them made eye contact. ‘Deal-breaker, Barney.’

When his dad said that, there was no point arguing. OK, all wasn’t lost. Lloyd could tell his mum, who thought they were having a sleepover at Sam’s, that Barney would be picking him up on the way. His dad would drop him off, watch him disappear inside Lloyd’s house, then five minutes later the two of them would set off, supposedly for Sam’s. He quickly tapped out the message to Lloyd’s mum’s phone, which was temporarily in Lloyd’s possession, and sent it. Then he deleted it. Finally, he tapped out the one his dad would see if he checked Sent messages. Sneaking around and covering tracks was hard work.

‘Dad, do we still have Granddad’s boat?’

His dad spun on the spot, wooden spoon still in hand. ‘What on earth made you ask about that?’ he asked.

Barney shrugged. ‘Some kids were talking about boats today. I just remembered. We haven’t been for a while, have we?’

His dad turned back to the hob. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s not much fun in winter, is it?’

‘We should go and check, though,’ said Barney. ‘Just to make sure it’s alright and not leaking again or anything.’

‘I’m sure it’s fine.’

‘How do you know?’

His dad spoke slowly, as though explaining something difficult. ‘One or other of the neighbours would have let me know if there’d been any trouble.’

‘Do you keep the key safe?’

‘Yes, thank you. It’s on my keyring with my car and house keys.’

No, this was not going well at all. And since when had his dad got so blinking organized?

‘By the way,’ said his dad, over his shoulder again, ‘the kitchen knives are getting blunt again. Want to sharpen them for me?’

19

LACEY SPENT A long time in the shower. Only when the water was starting to cool did she step out. Seven o’clock on a Friday evening. Less than a year ago, Fridays were the nights she went out, when she dressed carefully, drove across London and spent the evening around the Camden Stables Market. She’d liked to think of it as her hunting ground. A place where no one knew her, where so many people gathered you never saw the same faces from one week to the next. She’d take her time, spot her target, make sure he was alone before moving in. She’d had her stock-lines, some funny, some a bit weird; getting the initial conversation going was always the hard part. After that, no problem. Only rarely did she have to cut her losses and move on.

A few months ago, her life had consisted of hard work during the day, and casual, uncomplicated sex on Friday evenings. Now, she couldn’t work and the very thought of sex was revolting. She hadn’t had much in her life, and now she’d lost what little there’d been. How on earth was she going to get through the next—

No, don’t think about the future. Just concentrate on getting through another Friday evening.

She pulled on her robe and walked through into the living space with its small galley kitchen. For the first time, it struck her that her flat was too plain, too white, too cold. The minimum of furniture, nothing decorative, nothing that was really hers. Nothing in the fridge either – a perfectly normal state of affairs these days. Somehow supermarkets were just too much of an effort.

The Wandsworth Road was busy, people in cars driving home from work, buses offloading, early-evening drinkers making their way to and from the pubs and bars. The Chinese restaurant was quiet, though, she could see through the glass. It was the sort of place that didn’t normally fill till later. The door made a chinging sound and Trevor, the middle-aged Chinese owner with the northern accent, appeared a second later.

‘Alright, Lacey?’ Over the last few months she’d become something of a regular.

‘How you doing, Trev?’

‘Not so bad. Usual?’

‘Please.’

The restaurant was almost empty. A table of students. A couple of men eating alone. In the furthest booth, half hidden by the intricately carved screen, sat a man with his back to Lacey, a man she knew immediately, with broad shoulders and short dark hair. Joesbury.