Like This, for Ever

party-streamers, and the sickly, slaughterhouse stench of the place. Then she spotted the small, slim boy tied to the trestle table in the middle of the room. Eyes open. Body wriggling.
Huck
. Still alive, thank God. Duct tape had been tied across his mouth but he was making a hell of a noise from behind it. His hands were taped together and so were his feet, and tape had been wound round and round his body to secure him to the table. His head was jerking from left to right but his eyes never left hers.
    Then they did. At the exact moment that Lacey heard the swish of air behind her, Huck’s eyes darted to the left. Without that second of warning, the blow might have been fatal. As it was, her right arm deflected the flying sledgehammer and it caught the side of her head. The next blow, coming only a split second later, was that of a body hurtling through space and flying directly into her. She fell to the ground, sickened and disorientated. As she went down, she spun to the left and caught sight of the second trestle table. Lying on it, trussed and gagged exactly like Huck, was Barney.
    ‘Ma’am.’ Tom Barrett was at the far side of the room. He had to raise his voice to be heard.
    ‘What is it, Tom?’
    ‘I’ve been running checks on all those kids Stewart Roberts told us were friends of Barney’s. I think you’re going to want to see this.’
    Dana crossed the room to Barrett’s desk. He stood to let her sit down, but she shook her head, leaning on the desk instead. His screen showed the webpage of a CNN news-site.
    ‘Barney Roberts’s best mate is a kid called Harvey Soar,’ Barrett told her, as first Mizon, then Anderson, Richmond and Stenning gathered around the desk behind her. ‘Harvey has – or rather had – some famous parents.’
    ‘Abbie and Rob Soar,’ said Anderson. ‘The British journalists who got caught up in the Ivory Coast atrocities. Remind me when this was?’
    ‘Twelve years ago,’ replied Barrett. ‘Abbie must have been pregnant with Harvey at the time. There was a massacre in a school– over a dozen boys were killed, supposedly so they couldn’t grow up and join the government-controlled army. The Soars were there, caught up in it, and they had their two-year-old son with them.’
    ‘They came across the school just as the rebels left,’ said Dana, who’d been reading ahead. ‘I remember this happening. Abbie took photographs – they went all round the world afterwards. They got away, but the rebels caught up with them. Rob Soar was killed in front of his wife and son.’
    ‘Rob Soar had his throat cut. He fell with his kid on his back and bled to death in the river,’ said Barrett. ‘And the boys in the school were killed in the same way. Over a dozen young lads, all with their throats cut.’
    Dana scrolled up the page, back to the photograph at the top. It was of Abbie and Rob Soar at an awards dinner. She needed only a second to look at the slim, elfin woman with short fair hair.
    ‘That’s her,’ she said. ‘That’s the woman on the beach.’
    Lacey never actually lost consciousness. She was aware of shock rather than pain, then a crippling weakness in her limbs. She thought perhaps the hammer hit her again, this time between her shoulder blades. Then she wondered if someone was kneeling on her back. Her face was pressed against the rough wooden floorboards – boards that smelled of a terrified child’s blood. She knew that any second now she was going to vomit.
    Breathe in, breathe out, stay alive.
    Her hands were behind her back. Too late she realized they were being taped together. Whoever was kneeling on her bounced, pressing her chest against the floor and squeezing the air out of her body.
Don’t fight, take a breath
. When the weight lifted, she could kick, struggle to her feet. This was only a kid.
    But the kid was on the other table. Two trestle tables. Huck on one, Barney on the other. There was someone else here. Someone who was reaching for her legs, trying to tape her ankles together. She kicked, bucked, but whoever was sitting on her was too heavy.
Do something, he’s almost won.
    He had won, she couldn’t move. The darkness was changing, taking on deep shades of blue and purple, becoming more solid,wrapping itself around her. She had to rest, just for a minute.
    No, don’t pass out. Stay conscious. Get upright.
    Rocking on to one side, she drew her knees up towards her chest and pushed hard against the ground with her right