Like This, for Ever

day, we had:
There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part
.’
    ‘Yes, but—’
    ‘No, keep listening. Next day, this appeared:
No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be
. A few hours later:
Listen to them, the children of the night, what music they make!
Two days after that:
Take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous than you think in this country.
’
    ‘What are you saying, they’re not from the book?’
    ‘Of course they’re from the book, but Peter Sweep didn’t get them from the book, he got them from an internet search. He did exactly what I did. Typed “Bram Stoker Quotes” into Google and got a list of the most famous ones. They’re the ones he’s been using. He even used them in the same order. The vampire stuff has always been justsmoke and mirrors. Sort of like what I did, but not nearly as well thought through. Whereas someone who knows the book well – someone like your Stewart Roberts, who sounds like a pretty bright bloke – would be a bit more subtle, don’t you think? He’d find the more obscure references, the less obvious ones.’
    Shit, she was right. ‘Then I really hope we’re back to Peter Sweep not being directly involved at all,’ said Lacey. ‘And if Stewart is clean, then we have nothing.’
    ‘Yes, you do. Well, I do. And Peter Sweep is definitely your man. He just jumped on the vampire bandwagon to muddy the waters. Fair play, I’d probably have done the same thing given the chance.’
    ‘Ca—’ Lacey stopped just in time. She could not call the other woman that. Ever again. ‘Toc,’ she said, reverting to an old nickname. ‘We’re running out of time.’
    ‘OK, I’ve been going through all the references to the killings on social media, mainly those on Facebook, but I’ve kept an eye on the others as well and two things about the Missing Boys page stand out from the beginning. The first is that Peter Sweep had knowledge of what was happening in the case before it was officially made public, and the second is that there was a literary reference running through right from the very beginning. Not Bram Stoker, a different book altogether, and the references were very subtle and very cleverly woven in. No one would have had a chance of spotting them until there’d been at least three or four. And I doubt even I would have done if I hadn’t been reading and re-reading every book in the prison library over the past few months. Right, have you got a pen handy?’
    Lacey was at her desk, her computer switched on. She sat down, tucked the phone behind her ear and pulled her keyboard closer. ‘I can type,’ she said.
    ‘
Ryan Jackson’s body found at Deptford Creek earlier this evening. I imagine he was slightly damp when they pulled him out
.’
    Lacey typed it out, thought about it. Nothing.
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘
Noah Moore washed up at Cherry Garden Pier. Sorry end for His Nibs
. Anything striking you yet?’
    ‘Some old-fashioned language being used. Other than that …’
    ‘Oh, that’s my girl, you’re nearly there. Now, when you and your young friends found Tyler King at Deptford, there was a reference to whether his lovely curly hair had been eaten away by the fishes. But if you look at a picture of Tyler, his hair was straight as an arrow. Not a ringlet in sight. Then, when the Barlow boys were found by Tower Bridge, there were no fewer than six references to the fact that they were twins. So what have we got: Slightly. Curly. Nibs. Twins. Come on, you were always the reader.’
    ‘Oh my God!’
    A heavy sigh of satisfaction down the line. ‘And that, my friends, is the sound of the penny dropping.’
    ‘The Facebook page. The Missing Boys. Missing – lost. It was obvious from the start. Slightly, Curly, Nibs. The dead boys are the Lost Boys.’
    ‘And if you had time – which you don’t, so I’ll fill you in – you could look in a thesaurus and you’d find out that another word for the verb to sweep is to pan. Peter Sweep is Peter Pan.’
    Silence. A second of near overwhelming excitement and then the sharp realization. The other woman was almost certainly right, but how much further did it really take them?
    ‘Does it help?’ she asked now, as though thinking exactly the same thing.
    ‘In time it has to,’ said Lacey. ‘But we may not have time. And it doesn’t tell us who he is. No thoughts on that, I