Like This, for Ever

interrupted only by an old-fashioned Belfast sink. An immersion heater was fixed to the wall. Empty paint tins lay along the counter. There were woodworking tools, saws, hammers fixed to the walls. Locked like the rest. And, like the rest, quite plainly no one was inside.
    Lacey felt panic rising up again. Panic that would creep into her thoughts and throw them off kilter, stealing away her ability to think straight. She couldn’t give into it. Not yet. Victorian buildings nearly always had cellars.
    She started to move again, looking down for the telltale ventilation grates or the reinforced opaque glass squares that allowed daylight to reach underground. Nothing around the outbuildings. Nor around the main factory building either. There was no way of getting inside to check. Time to face facts: there was nothing more she could do on her own.
    Lacey pulled her borrowed mobile from her pocket. Unsure who to call first, Mizon or Joesbury, she hesitated as a flickering of lightcaught her eye. She looked up. There it was again. A light inside the building, in an upstairs window? Gone. Shit, had she seen it or not?
    Lacey ran straight at the skateboard ramp and let the momentum take her up. At the top, from where Barney and his friends regularly launched themselves into the night, she could almost see through the upper windows. All seemed dark. Then the flickering began again – which was nothing, after all, just the reflection of a malfunctioning lamppost in the next street along, and time was running out.
    The lamppost started flashing again, drawing her attention to the building immediately behind it. A derelict Victorian house, large and square, with ornate red brickwork, very similar in architectural style to the community centre. She’d walked past it many times, could even remember when it had housed local council offices. Once officialdom had moved out, it had become a hang-out for drug addicts and homeless people, until complaints from local residents had resulted in tighter security and regular police inspections. She’d even visited it herself once, back when she’d been in uniform.
    It was taller than the houses in the adjacent streets, taller by a whole storey than the community centre, and the upper windows looked directly into the yard. Into Neverland.
    Movement at Dana’s side made her glance up from the computer screen. Susan Richmond was approaching with two mugs.
    ‘May I?’ she asked, indicating the vacant seat.
    ‘Of course,’ replied Dana. ‘You know, I’m still not sure.’
    ‘About what? About the killer being a child?’
    Dana shook her head. ‘Lacey’s a bright officer,’ she said, ‘but she’s impulsive. Gets an idea and has to act right away. She doesn’t necessarily think things through. If we’re looking for a child who doesn’t want to grow up, how do the multiple cuts fit in?’
    Richmond thought for a second. ‘You mean if he wanted the kids dead, he’d just want to get it over with as soon as possible?’
    ‘Exactly. The multiple cuts suggest to me it’s about the cutting. The cutting is what he gets off on.’
    ‘The important thing is, he didn’t kill any of the other boys the first night. We still have time.’
    ‘Ma’am.’ Anderson had approached. ‘For what it’s worth, we know who our mole was.’
    Dana had forgotten all about the mole, that someone had been feeding information to Bartholomew Hunt.
    ‘That was the pathologist, Mike Kaytes, on the phone,’ said Anderson. ‘He’s working late on another case and found a half-finished email his nerdy young assistant Troy was writing before he got called away. Guess who it was to?’
    ‘Hunt?’ tried Dana.
    ‘Bang on. Turns out Hunt is young Troy’s mother’s cousin. He admitted everything when Mike pressed him. He’ll be instigating disciplinary proceedings in the morning, he just wanted us to know.’
    ‘Thanks, Neil.’
    ‘Doesn’t really seem that important right now, does it?’
    The windows on the ground floor of the house were boarded up with plywood. Lacey inspected each in turn, looking for loose nails, but there was no way in at the front that she could see. The huge double-door, beneath the carved sign that read M ERCIER H OUSE , B OROUGH OF L AMBETH , P ARKS AND A MENITIES D IVISION , didn’t budge an inch when she tried the handle.
    Same at the side. Four large, rectangular windows, all boarded up. The rear of the property was enclosed by a tall brick wall with a wide gate. The