Like This, for Ever

hospital.
    ‘That kid who went missing. I nearly had bloody heart failure when I heard about it last night. That’s why I was home early.’
    Oliver was alive? Barney could hardly believe what he was seeing and hearing. Alive and unhurt. He’d spent the night locked in a church? A church miles away from the boat at Deptford Creek that he’d heard his dad laughing on?
    ‘I tell you what, mate, until this guy’s caught, I’m going to have to give up working late. I know you’re sensible but I just can’t deal with the stress. What’s the matter? Barney? Buddy, why on earth are you crying?’

50
    ‘ HELLO, I’M LOOKING for Stewart Roberts. Can you tell me where I might find him, please?’
    For the first time in what felt like months, but was probably only just a few weeks, Lacey was wearing formal clothes. An off-the-peg suit that felt looser than when she’d worn it last, a plain white blouse and low-heeled court shoes. Her hair was twisted up at the nape of her neck. It was nothing special, just the clothes she wore when she had to look serious, like a proper detective. It was an outfit in which she never felt herself. Which was perhaps as well, because had she felt like herself, she might never have made it inside the main door.
    Stewart Roberts was a lecturer in English literature at King’s College, London, the fourth oldest university in England and one of the most highly regarded in the world. He worked from the daunting, pale-stone buildings on the Strand.
    Academia – just the thought of it made her shudder. At the start of the year, for only a few days, she’d been a student in the most prestigious university in the land. The experience had almost killed her.
    The woman in the office looked Lacey up and down and decided she was a sales rep. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ she asked.
    Lacey pulled her warrant card out of her inner pocket and held it up. ‘CID,’ she said. ‘If Mr Roberts isn’t here, please tell me where I can find him.’
    ‘I’ll just check.’
    A few moments later, Lacey knocked at a blue-painted door on the right-hand side of a long corridor. The office behind was large. She counted three untidy desks, two of them occupied. Stewart Roberts stood as she entered the room and she could see that he recognized her. He was an attractive man, she realized, if you went for bookish types. Mid forties, with thick grey hair and neat, regular features. Spectacles that looked trendy rather than otherwise. His clothes were better than you saw on most academics. His jeans looked designer, his sweater expensive. He was frowning at her now.
    ‘My secretary said the police wanted to see me. Did she mean you?’
    ‘
Our
secretary,’ mumbled the large, middle-aged woman at the other desk, without looking up.
    ‘Is there somewhere we can talk privately?’ Lacey asked.
    The woman visibly stiffened. There was no way she was moving.
    Stewart looked at his watch. ‘I have a lecture at three. What’s it about?’
    Lacey glanced at his colleague and raised her eyebrows. He got the message. ‘We’ll go to the chapel,’ he said. ‘No one’s ever in there.’
    ‘This is beautiful,’ said Lacey a few minutes later as they stepped inside a Victorian chapel filled with gold light and jewelled colours. To either side of the nave, crimson pillars supported elaborately panelled archways; beyond them were stained-glass windows. Above were more pillars, more arched windows and then crossbeams and an intricately decorated ceiling. Directly ahead were five more stained-glass windows above the altar, the central one a strikingly realistic depiction of the crucifixion.
    ‘Yes, it is quite something,’ said Stewart. ‘Restored in 2001.’
    ‘And no one uses it?’
    ‘Slight exaggeration on my part. There are services here most days. So what can I do for you, Lacey, isn’t it? I really do have a lecture at three.’
    ‘It’s about Barney.’
    Instant alarm on his face. ‘Has something happened to him?’
    ‘No, he’s fine. That is, I’m sure he’s safe and well, but I am worried about him.’
    She waited for the reaction. Upon being told their kids were in trouble, parents invariably went on the attack. It was usually difficult to predict in advance whether the object of their aggression would be the child, or the officers who’d come to report, but it was invariably one of the two.
    Stewart, though, surprised her. He walked slowly and deliberately to the front pew and removed the