Like This, for Ever

suppose?’
    ‘Hey, I’ve done my bit. It’s up to you now. I’ve really got to go this time. Love you. Trust you. Go find him.’
    The line went dead. The call would have cost the other woman a small fortune in prison currency. With everything screaming at her to get up and get moving, Lacey took a few moments to look back through the Facebook postings. The prisoner had quoted them absolutely correctly. Was there really any doubt? None that she could see. OK, this was no time to play the Lone Ranger.
    ‘Gayle, it’s Lacey,’ she said, when her call was answered. ‘I need to run something past you.’

61
    ‘HAVE YOU FOUND my son yet?’
    Each time Dana had seen Stewart Roberts this evening, he’d changed, and not for the better. The crisp, steel-grey of his hair seemed to have seeped down and stained his skin. His forehead and cheeks were more lined than before. His hands were shaking and, in spite of the heating in the room, he shivered continually. He might be a guilty man about to crack. Equally, he could be a normal parent terrified for the safety of his son.
    Wreck or not, they hadn’t been able to break him yet. They’d talked to him twice. Both times he’d denied being at the boat at any time since the one-off day in January when he’d gone to deal with water damage.
    ‘We’re looking,’ she told him. ‘Sergeant, can I have a word?’
    ‘I don’t believe you,’ Stewart called after her as Anderson rose to follow Dana from the room. ‘You’re looking for that other kid. You’re not interested in mine.’
    As Dana and Anderson left the room, Stewart’s solicitor put a hand on his client’s arm and spoke to him in a low voice. The door clanged shut.
    ‘How’s it going, Ma’am?’ asked Anderson, rubbing his eyes.
    ‘We’ve had the coroner’s report into the death of Karen Roberts, Stewart’s wife,’ she told him. ‘He’s off the hook for that, at any rate.She spoke to a relative on the phone after Stewart and Barney left the house, and she’d been dead at least an hour by the time they got back. He couldn’t have killed her.’
    Anderson nodded, then shrugged. ‘We’re getting nowhere in there,’ he said, indicating the interview room. ‘He claims the internet research he’s been doing is background work for a lecture he’s got coming up. All the renewed interest in vampires gave him the idea, apparently. And Gothic literature is his specialist subject, so naturally he’s going to have all sorts of spooky books. He’s hiding something, but until he starts talking, we’ve got nothing other than the word of an hysterical – and missing – kid.’
    ‘Oh, we’ve got a bit more than that,’ said Dana, letting a small smile creep on to her face. ‘We’ve got a cabinet full of blood-clotting drugs and hypodermics, which don’t strike me as everyday toiletries, and we’ve got traces of blood on the houseboat.’
    Anderson looked instantly awake again. ‘You’re kidding me?’
    ‘Too soon to say whose, of course. We’ve also got a magazine dated the first week in February. A woman’s magazine, interestingly, but it still puts the nail on his story about not being there recently. What do you say we have another word?’
    ‘After you, Ma’am.’
    Dana picked up her case. This time, when they opened the door, the eyes of the solicitor met them. ‘Mr Roberts is ready to make a statement,’ he told them. ‘In return, he wants an assurance that you are doing everything possible to find his son.’
    ‘Of course,’ said Dana. She picked up the phone and requested that someone bring a progress report down to the interview room. If Stewart was about to tell them something valuable, she didn’t want it compromised down the line when he claimed undue stress as a result of worrying about his son. She took her seat and Anderson dropped heavily into the chair beside her.
    ‘What would you like to tell us, Mr Roberts?’ she said.
    Stewart looked her straight in the eye. It was the first time he’d done so except when he’d been asking about his son. ‘I was at Deptford Creek on Saturday the sixteenth of February,’ he told her. ‘On my father-in-law’s old boat. I arrived at around seven in theevening. I left just after one in the morning, when I judged the police had finally left the site.’
    Dana told herself to stay calm, not to react with anything more than polite interest.
    ‘I’ve also been going to the boat most Tuesday and Thursday evenings,’ he