Like This, for Ever

response.
    ‘’Lo?’
    ‘I’m trying to find Stewart Roberts. He’s one of the lecturers in the English department. It’s a family matter.’
    ‘Yeah, I know Mr Roberts. He’s not here though.’
    ‘Are you sure? It’s really important I find him. I understood he had lectures or tutorials on Thursday evenings.’
    ‘Lectures finish at five o’clock. There are one or two late tutorials,but none on a regular basis. In any case, Mr Roberts left at six, like he always does. Has a young kid, from what I understand, doesn’t like to leave him on his own too much.’
    ‘Thank you. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
    Just a few minutes outdoors had soaked Lacey to the skin, and she was freezing. Could she just leave it now? Trust in Barney’s common sense, hope he’d calm down and bring himself home? It really wasn’t her problem. She barely knew the boy or his father, had certainly never asked to be dragged into their affairs.
    The file on Barney’s mother was on the conservatory floor in a puddle of rainwater. She bent to retrieve it, to tuck the loose papers back inside. The poor kid, to find out like this. And he’d be freezing, too – as wet and cold as she was. Only he was still outside.
    Nothing she could do. She had her own problems. Other people’s pain couldn’t drown out her own, all it could do was distract her for a short while. Her own soon came flooding back. And the knife was where she’d left it on the desk.
    Too cold now to go back outside, Lacey picked up the knife. In the bathroom, white porcelain gleamed at her.
Scarlet drops on white, like blood on snow
. She gripped the knife more tightly and held her arm out over the bath.
    Damn it, Barney had to be found. Lacey dropped the knife into the washbasin and went back to her desk. She had no way of contacting Stewart other than at the university. She’d have to talk to her colleagues at Southwark. If she explained, they’d probably keep the search for Barney low-key, but somebody had to be out looking for him.
    She picked up the phone.
    My dad is the murderer. The one they call the Twilight Killer.
    Boy, she really didn’t want to be a fly on the wall when those two got together again.
    He takes them to the boat. That one at Deptford Creek. He was there, that Saturday night I sent you the text.
    He’d admitted it. Not only had Barney been involved in finding Tyler’s body, as she’d been pretty certain all along, but he’d lied to protect his father. He, too, had been at Deptford Creek that night.But the police at the scene would have talked to everyone on the boats. If Stewart had been there, they’d know about it. There would have been no need for Barney to keep it a secret.
    I found a glove. A kid’s glove that wasn’t mine. He took it from one of the boys he killed.
    Stewart had dropped a child’s glove in the chapel the day she’d been to see him at work. She still had it in the flat somewhere.
    He wants to kill me, but he can’t, so he kills them instead.
    Good God above, it wasn’t possible. Was it?
    ‘Lacey, it’s not a great time.’
    Pete Stenning’s voice was unusually low, as though he was whispering into the handset, maybe even had his hand wrapped around it to muffle the sound. It sounded as if he was at work, though.
    ‘Sorry, Pete. I can talk to someone else. I’ll try Gayle at home.’
    ‘Gayle’s here. We all are. But I don’t think anyone … Lacey, do you not know?’
    ‘Know what?’
    ‘Jeez, hang on.’
    Footsteps. A door opening. Sounds fading. For the whole team to be at Lewisham at this time of night could only mean one thing. Another child had either disappeared or been found dead.
    He’s never home on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
    Mr Roberts left at six, like he always does.
    He brings sheets home to wash because they’ve got blood on them.
    ‘Lacey, there’s no easy way of telling you this, and I’m probably going to get murdered just for talking to you.’
    Fear sliced into Lacey like a blade. And she’d thought nothing could really hurt her again. She was about to find out how wrong she’d been.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Mark Joesbury’s son went missing a couple of hours ago. No one has a clue where he is.’

58
    ‘MA’AM.’
    Dana stopped at Gayle Mizon’s desk, grateful for the delay, even if it would only last a couple of minutes. In a glass-walled meeting room, Mark, his ex-wife Carrie and her new partner Alex were waiting for her. The last thing she wanted to do was go back