Like This, for Ever

Barney, after a last glance at the hatch of the boat, began making his way towards her. Once off the yellow boat he moved quickly, as though eager to reach her. She almost told him to take it easy.
    ‘I’m not trespassing,’ he announced, when he’d joined her on the wall. ‘That’s my granddad’s boat.’
    ‘And is Granddad at home?’ Lacey asked him, looking back at the yellow-painted yacht with the green trim and wooden deck. It looked old, but cared for. A well-loved classic.
    ‘He’s dead,’ said Barney. ‘The boat’s empty. No one goes there now.’
    The child stood next to her, looking awkward and uncomfortable. Lacey took a step back, further from the river, hoping he’d follow her. He did.
    ‘So you’re back again,’ said Lacey. ‘What keeps bringing you to Deptford Creek at this time of night?’
    ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
    She nodded towards the boat she’d found him on. ‘Is your dad with you?’
    ‘No!’
    Extraordinary reaction. She mentioned his father, he looked terrified. Why would the kid be scared of his dad?
    ‘Does he know you’re here?’
    Shake of the head. ‘He’s working. Miles from here. Are you going to tell him?’
    Definitely afraid of something. ‘Not necessarily,’ she said. ‘But I need you to come back with me now. It’s not safe for you to be here on your own this late.’
    Barney didn’t argue. If anything he seemed eager to get out of the yard. They collected their bikes and wheeled them back towards the main road.
    ‘What were you doing there?’ Lacey tried again, after a few seconds.
    Nothing for a while. Then, ‘I got curious,’ said Barney. ‘I saw on the news about how they’d found a body here and I just wanted to see the place for myself.’
    She watched him, waiting for him to make eye contact. When he did, he looked at her steadily, without flinching. Young as he was, he was pretty unflappable.
    ‘I saw on Facebook that another boy has gone missing,’ said Barney, after they’d walked in silence for some minutes. ‘Is it true?’
    Everywhere she went, people were determined to drag her into that case. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘If it is, it’ll be on the news when we get back.’
    They walked on, the only sound being that of the bike wheels on the wet road.
    ‘Why does he do it?’ said Barney, in a small voice. ‘Why does he kill kids?’
    The question the whole country was asking. Barney, still a child, would expect a grown-up, a detective, to know the answer. ‘There are lots of reasons why people kill,’ she said. ‘And usually those reasons make no sense to people like us.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    Lacey sighed. She was wet, cold, some way from home and this kid wanted a psychological profile. ‘There may be something wrong with his brain,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was injured in some way that stops him feeling compassion and pity. Or maybe he went through a terrible experience when he was a child, bad enough to damage him, even if not in a physical way.’
    Barney had been watching her face rather than where he was going. He pushed his bike a little too close and almost knocked her off balance.
    ‘Steady!’
    ‘Sorry.’
    They walked on, until, in a quiet voice, Barney asked, ‘Can he get better?’
    ‘Better, as in … ?’
    ‘Can he stop doing it? Is there a way of making him good again?’
    They had to cross the main road at this point. Lacey waited for a gap in the traffic. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, when they’d reached the other side. ‘I think when people are as damaged as he is, the only thing you can really do is stop them hurting anyone in the future.’
    ‘You mean send him to prison?’
    ‘Well, it might be to a secure hospital, but it would still seem very much like a prison.’
    ‘What if he’s got …’
    Lacey slowed down. Barney was no longer making eye contact. When she was looking straight ahead, his eyes never left her face, but the second she turned to him, he looked away. What was he hiding? ‘Got what?’ she asked him.
    ‘Nothing. Why does he kill kids, though? Why not grown-ups?’
    Wow, he wasn’t holding back with the tricky questions.
    ‘Well, that’s probably a question only he could answer, but usually when killers go for one particular type of victim, it’s because those victims remind them of a person in real life. Maybe someone who’s hurt them. They can’t kill the one they really want to, so they choose – do you know the word