Like This, for Ever

tonight. Look, I’ve got to go. Thanks, Mark.’
    Dana disconnected the line and heard a lapping sound at her feet. In the minute or so that she’d been talking, the water had crept closer. She took a step back and stumbled, then turned round and found herself walking faster than was sensible. The lights had been taken away, most of the people had gone from the beach and from the bridge, and she really needed to watch her step. Miss your footing on one of these beaches at night, hit your head as the tide crept its way in, and it could be the end of you.
    Only when she’d reached the first step that wasn’t encrusted with river-weed did Dana feel her heartbeat begin to slow down. She turned back, one last time. By this time, it was impossible to tell where the beach ended and the water began. She could still hear it though, the soft, whispering sound it made as it crept towards her.

5
    ‘ WILL YOU BE working on the murders when you go back?’ Barney asked Lacey, as they turned into the road where they both lived. Lacey looked down at the boy, only a few years away from becoming a man, and yet whose face was so fresh, whose skin so clear and whose thought processes so blindingly obvious. He was thinking that his stock with his gang of mates would soar if he had an inside track on a murder investigation. Especially one involving kids. People were invariably most interested in murders when they were potential victims themselves.
    She was almost sorry to disappoint him. ‘No, I don’t work on murders,’ she said. ‘My job isn’t anything like that exciting.’
    She could see him watching, waiting for her to tell him what her job was, hoping it would be something like Drugs, Vice or the Flying Squad. But how could she explain to a boy she barely knew that she didn’t think she would ever work as a police officer again?
    ‘You and your mates are good,’ she said. ‘I’ve watched you a couple of times now. If the light catches you the right way, especially against the mural with stars on it, you look like you’re flying.’
    ‘My mates are scared of you,’ he said.
    The words seemed to take them both by surprise. Barney’s lips were clenched tight and he had an
oh shit
look in his eyes.
    ‘Are you?’ she asked him.
    ‘No,’ he said after a second. ‘But then, I knew you before.’
    Before. This child, whom she’d spoken to less than a dozen times, could remember what she’d been like before. Jesus, even
she
couldn’t remember that any more.
    Barney had stopped moving. ‘He’s here again.’ His voice had lowered, giving a hint of the man’s that was to come in a few years, and something about its tone put her on full alert. She stopped, too.
    ‘Who’s here?’ she asked. Two middle-aged women were walking away from them further up the street. There was no one at Barney’s front door.
    ‘The man that watches you.’
    Lacey wondered at the complexity of the human heart that could feel fear, misery and joy, all at the same time. All with the same root cause. ‘What man?’ she asked, although she knew perfectly well.
    ‘The one who sits in his car outside your house,’ the boy replied. ‘Who knocks on your door a lot.’
    ‘Where is he?’ she asked him. ‘Don’t point or look, just tell me.’
    The kid was bright, he did exactly that. ‘He’s in a green car on the left-hand side of the road about six – no, seven – cars away from us.’
    So strong, the temptation to look for the car, to make sure he was right. ‘How on earth did you spot that?’
    Barney shrugged, looked uncomfortable. ‘I just see things,’ he said.
    ‘What do you mean, you just see things? I wouldn’t even have known there was a green car that far down the street, but you not only see the car, you see a man sitting inside it, in the dark.’
    He sighed. ‘The colours of the cars are reflected in the water on the road,’ he said. ‘There’s a silver one, a black one, red, two more silver, white van, then his green one.’
    He couldn’t see the line of parked cars any more. She was blocking his view. If he was right, it was extraordinary. Incredible powers of observation and recall.
    ‘The streetlights are shining through the cars,’ he went on. ‘The light comes straight through most of them, but in the green one there’s something that gets in its way. A dark, solid shape, which can only be a largeish head and shoulders. A man, sitting inside a green car. It’s obvious.’
    ‘I think we need to