Like This, for Ever

note of everything you’ve told us about Barney’s inherent gentleness and his habit of nursing injured birds back to health when he was small. The fact remains, though, that both he and a younger boy are missing, and it is extremely important that we find them.’
    ‘Barney is terrified of blood. He goes apeshit if he cuts himself. I practically have to sedate him to get him to have a vaccination. There is no way on earth he could cut someone’s throat.’
    Dana took the seat beside Anderson and flicked open the notes facility on her laptop.
    ‘Do you actually know what your son gets up to when you leave him alone two evenings a week?’ she asked.
    Stewart’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean? He does his homework, watches TV, plays on his computer and goes to bed. He’s a sensible kid.’
    ‘He goes out, hangs around with a gang of older children and spends an inordinate amount of time looking for his dead mother. I’d say he’s a child with problems,’ replied Dana.
    ‘You know nothing about my son.’
    ‘He also experiences episodes when his memory deserts him completely. Large chunks of time when he claims he has norecollection of where he’s been and what he’s been doing. I’m starting to wonder how much you know about your son.’
    Lacey found a torch, latex gloves and a dry jacket. She was out of the house in less than a minute. At her destination in fewer than five.
    Fly off and join them in Neverland.
    How many times over the last few weeks had she lurked in the shadows and watched Barney and his mates speeding down the skateboard ramp at the community centre?
You look like you’re flying
, she’d told him. They hurled themselves down impossibly steep slopes at terrifying speeds with only balance and the force of gravity to keep them upright. The wind caught their hair and pulled at their clothes. When they spread their arms for balance they genuinely looked as though they were soaring through the sky.
    And the illusion was made perfect by the mural painted on the brick wall behind them. A picture of a night sky, stars and the moon, plump, billowing clouds, and three children, the Darling children, flying for the very first time in their lives with the aid of happy thoughts and fairy dust. The community centre, the place where Barney and his mates hung out, was Neverland.
    The grim Victorian exterior of the community centre had been softened and made child-friendly by extensive mural paintings. The pictures ran around the main building and inside the perimeter wall. One of the outbuildings, she was sure, showed a bay with mermaids on rocks. There was the enormous green crocodile with the alarm clock grasped between its teeth. A pirate ship in full sail. Wigwams to represent the Indian village.
    At the gates, Lacey took Huck’s phone out of her pocket. Was she certain enough to call for back-up? Whilst the paintings could have given Barney the idea in the first place, was it feasible that children were being held and killed in a community facility that, every day, was swarming with people? She could not call the MIT here to find an empty building.
    If they were taking her theory seriously – and if they still believed it to be Gayle Mizon’s they probably would be – they’d concentrate on finding the places that Barney had access to. The houseboat andthe boatyard were obvious ones. Maybe the Roberts family owned a garage or lock-up somewhere. They’d be talking to his friends, trying to find out if there were any dens or meeting places in old, abandoned buildings. God knows there were enough of them around South London at the moment. That was the sort of ordered, logical search that would find Huck. Pulling them away from it to pursue yet another hare-brained idea could be dangerously irresponsible.
    Thirty-five minutes before Joesbury was expecting to meet up with her again. She couldn’t phone him either. If there was even the remotest possibility that his son was being held in the community centre, he’d tear down every door in the place trying to find him. She couldn’t put him through that until she was sure.
    Dana pushed open the door of the incident room, knowing she was going through the motions. She’d just about lost the ability to think. All she could do now was follow procedure and hope others on the team were functioning better than she was.
    ‘OK, we’ve spoken to the families of all Barney Roberts’s close friends,’ she told the team. ‘He was at the local