Like This, for Ever

is.’
    ‘Can we have a look?’
    Dana led the way to her study and switched on her desktop computer. The page was saved under Favourites.
    But just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock and by its light I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were a hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them than even when they howled.
    Yeah, I love that quote. One of my favourites. Wolves or vampires – which does it for you?
    Wolves every time. The ripping apart of flesh. Something well savage about a wolf.
    ‘Christ,’ said Mark, after flicking through the latest postings. ‘I’m going to have to talk to Carrie. I don’t want Huck reading this crap, let alone getting involved.’
    ‘There’s a chap called Peter we’re particularly interested in,’ said Dana. ‘He’s quite often ahead of the game when it comes to talkingabout the case. He announced we’d found the Barlow twins a couple of hours before we made it public.’
    Mark was flicking down the postings. ‘This one?’ he asked, the cursor hovering over a quote from the book that Peter Sweep had posted.
    There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.
    Dana leaned closer. It was funny, how different to women men smelled close up.
    ‘Yeah, that’s him. He’s been quoting from the Bram Stoker book ad nauseam since Bart Hunt put the idea into his head. He’s clever, though. Sweep, I mean, not Hunt. Uses public computers, never the same place twice. He’s hiding something.’
    ‘What’s with the red roses?’ asked Mark, indicating Peter’s profile picture. ‘If they’re supposed to be symbolic, you’d think a dagger dripping blood would be more to the point.’
    ‘Do roses seem a little on the feminine side to you?’ said Dana.
    ‘How is your killer-wears-a-dress theory shaping up?’
    ‘I did what you suggested and pulled up a list of boys aged eight to twelve who died in Greater London in the last five years. Not a long list, thankfully. Some road traffic accidents, a few natural causes. Nothing struck me. Neil’s going through it too, but I’m not hopeful.’
    He nodded. ‘Worth a try.’
    Dana thought for a second. Made her mind up. ‘I saw a woman on that beach tonight,’ she said. ‘You know, the one under Tower Bridge where the twins were found?’
    ‘In the dark?’
    ‘That’s what I thought. The tide was coming in fast, so there couldn’t have been more than a yard or so of shore left. She ran when I called to her.’
    ‘Would you recognize her again?’
    ‘Almost certainly. I’ve seen her before.’
    Mark waited. She gave her temple a little slap, as though trying to shake a memory loose. ‘It won’t come,’ she said. ‘I can’t think how I know her. Just that, when she turned round, I knew I wasn’t looking at that face for the first time.’
    ‘Worth looking through WADS?’
    WADS stood for Witness Album Display System, an online database of mugshots. If the woman she’d seen on the beach had been charged or arrested anywhere in the UK in recent years, her photograph would be stored on the system.
    Dana nodded her agreement. ‘Huck’s worried about you,’ she said.
    His brow creased. ‘Did he tell you?’
    She nodded. ‘He thinks you need a girlfriend.’
    ‘He’s probably right, but you’re spoken for.’
    Suddenly horribly self-conscious, Dana stepped back. He’d said that a dozen times before. There’d been a time when he’d simply refused to accept that she was gay. Why was it bothering her now, knowing he didn’t mean it any more? She risked looking up again. There were lines around his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before. And his skin was coarser than it had been fifteen years ago when they’d met. He’d aged, of course, and so had she, it just wasn’t a process you really associated with people you were close to.
    ‘It’s not easy, is it?’ she said. ‘Wanting something you can’t have.’
    His eyes narrowed. ‘What is it you want?’
    He was her best friend, one of the few people in the world she completely trusted. If she couldn’t tell him, who could she tell?
    ‘I think I want a baby,’ she replied, knowing in that instant that she had never