Sharon Bolton - Like This, for Ever

It could happen. There had been snow in the Chiltern Hills. It would be melting, the thaw water making its way down through the smaller tributaries, reaching the Thames, which would be getting fuller and faster as it neared the capital city. Barney picked up speed, wondering how fast he’d have to skate to outrun floodwater.

When Barney reached the community centre the building looked deserted. No lights, so even the caretaker had gone, which meant it had to be after nine o’clock. With a familiar feeling of dread, he looked at his watch. He’d said goodnight to Mr Kapur just after eight o’clock. The newsagent’s was a ten-minute skate away. It had happened again. Time, inexplicably, had been lost.

A voice from beyond the wall, the sound of wheels on iron. The others were waiting for him in the yard, but suddenly Barney wanted nothing so much as to go straight home. Sooner or later – sooner if he was smart, and he was, wasn’t he? Everyone agreed that Barney was clever, a bit weird sometimes, but bright – he would have to tell someone about these missing hours of his.

A low laugh. He thought he heard his own name. Barney pushed the worry to the back of his mind and carried on round the corner. The community centre had once been a small Victorian factory. Surrounding it were various outbuildings and a tarmac yard, all encased within a high brick wall topped with iron railings. Inside the main building were a library, a crèche for pre-school children, an after-school club and a youth club. Barney and his friends hung out at the youth club several nights a week, but it was after the centre closed that the place became their own.

In the alleyway at the back, Barney reached for the loose railing and got ready to pull himself up.

In this city, someone is always watching.

What was that doing in his head right now? Why, now, should he remember the talk they’d had at school from the local community police officer? She’d been talking about how every Londoner could expect to be caught on CCTV several hundred times a day. But Barney knew for a fact there were no cameras in the alley and the surrounding streets, or overlooking the centre. It was one of the reasons his gang hung out here.

He ran his eyes along the row of houses opposite, looking for the light in the window, the undrawn curtains, the gleam of eyes that would confirm what he knew – that someone was watching. Nothing.

Except they were, and with that certain knowledge came a knocking in his chest as if his heart had suddenly moved up a gear. OK, here he was, in the city where five boys his age had disappeared in as many weeks, on his own in the exact part of London where they had all lived, and someone he couldn’t see was watching him.

Barney scrambled through the gap in the railings, skates still on his feet, knowing it was a stupid thing to do, but adrenaline and determination just about kept him the right way up. He rolled forward. Right, which side of the wall were the eyes? Street side or factory side? Cut off from him by nine feet of solid Victorian brickwork and iron railing, or trapped inside with him? The contents of his stomach turned to something like cold lead as he realized he might just have made the biggest mistake of what was going to be a very short life.

He could no longer hear the others. For now it was just an eleven-year-old boy, a very high wall, and an unseen pair of eyes.

Directly ahead, between Barney and the main yard, was the Indian village: five small wigwams in which the younger kids played during the day. Even on a normal night, Barney couldn’t look at them without imagining someone – maybe a toddler left behind by an absent-minded parent – peeping out at him from the blackness. He never liked being near the Indian village at night, even without … he checked each dark interior in turn before moving on. Nothing.

Nothing that he could see.

Just beyond the wigwams was one of the murals that had been painted on the inside of the perimeter walls. Scarlet-clad pirates, their sights on distant treasure, clung to the rails of a galleon on a troubled sea. In the daytime, the murals were faded, the paint peeling in places. During the hours of darkness, the tangerine glow of the streetlights brought them to life. The green forests around the gates had depth and a sense of secrets lurking behind giant trees, the starry night sky beyond the skateboard ramp seemed endless. Without the sun’s harsh scrutiny, even the pirates seemed to be watching him.

At last, from the corner of the factory building, he could peer round into the quadrangle that was the main part of the yard. The relief almost hurt. At the top of the skateboard ramp sat four still figures. His best mate, Harvey, then Sam and Hatty, two kids in Harvey’s class, and finally Lloyd, who was a couple of years older. Against the streetlamp light they seemed entirely clad in black. Barney caught a gleam of eyes as one of them looked round. He could also see the tiny red glow of a couple of cigarettes. At the sight of his gang, doing what they always did, looking completely relaxed, Barney started to calm down too. For once, his instincts had cried wolf.

A sudden noise, loud and shrill, blared directly above his head. Then someone jumped down, grabbing him around the throat.

2

THE CHILDREN WERE beautiful. They lay curled on their sides, spooned together. The fingers of the boy in front looked as though they were about to twitch and stretch, as sunlight and his internal body clock told him it was time to wake. Even in the flat light of the tent, he didn’t look dead. Neither did his brother, snuggled up behind him, one arm slung carelessly across his sibling’s chest.

‘Boss!’

Dana started. Her gloved hand was reaching out towards the closest boy’s forehead, where a damp lock of hair had fallen forward. She’d been about to brush it out of his eyes, the way a mother would. She still wanted to – to smooth it back over his head, pull covers up over their shoulders and keep the night air from their skin, bend and brush her lips over the soft cheeks.

Stupid. She didn’t have children, had never known maternal feelings in her life. That they should kick in now, that a couple of dead, ten-year-old boys should be the ones to awaken them.

‘Boss,’ repeated the other living occupant of the tent, a heavy-set man with thinning red hair and an indistinct chin-line. ‘Tide’s coming in fast. We need to get them out of here.’

Detective Inspector Dana Tulloch, of Lewisham’s Major Investigation Team, let Detective Sergeant Neil Anderson help her to her feet. They moved out of the police tent and into the smell of salt, rotting vegetation and petrol fumes that was the night air by the tidal Thames. The waiting crowd on Tower Bridge wriggled in anticipation. Light flashed as someone took their photograph.

As she and Anderson stepped away, others took their place, moving quickly. In a little over thirty minutes, the area would be under several feet of water. The two detectives walked up the beach towards the embankment wall.

‘Right under Tower Bridge,’ said Dana, looking up at the massive steel structure. ‘One of the most iconic landmarks in London, not to mention one of the busiest spots. What is he thinking of ?’

‘He’s a cheeky bastard,’ agreed Anderson.

Dana sighed. ‘Who was first on the scene?’ she asked.

‘Pete,’ Anderson replied, looking around. ‘He was here a minute ago.’

Dana watched as more SOCOs made their way gingerly down Horselydown Old Stairs, the slimy concrete steps that offered the only access point to this stretch of the riverbank.

‘He’s killing them faster, Neil,’ she said. ‘We’ve never found them this quickly before.’

‘I know, Boss. Here’s Pete.’