Like This, for Ever

she’d be on her way to tell his parents. Dana told herself to take it easy. Black humour was stock in trade for police officers. It was how they detached.
    The launch reached the embankment, where another, smaller police launch was tied up. Waiting for them at the foot of the steps was a very tall, very thin man in his late twenties.
    Mark had already left the flybridge. Dana watched him throw a line to a constable on the other launch and slide a fender along the hull a few inches so that the two boats could moor up together without one damaging the other. The tall constable, followed by a squatter, older man similarly dressed, stepped on to the first launch and strode across to board theirs.
    In the dim cabin light, Spiderman’s hair looked black as soot and his face would have been stunningly handsome had it not been just a fraction too thin. His hands were thin too and looked twice as long as Dana’s. He blinked hard as though to drive away the lastvestiges of sleep. He towered above everyone else on the boat. He had to be six foot five.
    ‘Have you had a look, Finn?’ asked Cook.
    The young officer hitched his harness a little higher around his waist and was prevented from replying by an enormous yawn. The older man had followed him into the cabin.
    ‘We’ve got a line down from the ledge above,’ the older man explained to Cook, while everyone in the cabin tried not to copy the yawn. ‘We’ll fasten that to Finn before he sets off and I’ll guide it up. That’s our last resort. He’ll run a safety line up himself so that if he slips he won’t go far and should be able to sort himself out.’
    ‘Why would I slip, Sarge?’ asked Spiderman. ‘Did you grease it to make it extra interesting?’
    Dana waited for Cook to give the young prat the dressing-down he deserved. Instead, like an indulgent uncle, Cook gave him a pat on the shoulder. ‘This is DI Tulloch,’ he said. ‘She’s in charge of the South Bank Murders investigation. Dana, Constable Finn Turner.’
    ‘Ma’am,’ said Turner respectfully. His eyes were a warm chestnut brown and the look he gave her was anything but respectful.
    ‘We need to do this as discreetly as possible,’ she said. ‘While you’re climbing, can you keep radio transmissions to an absolute minimum? Assume that everybody out there, including all the news crews, can hear you. Obviously, if you need help, or you’re stuck, then of course you have to talk to us.’
    He nodded quickly in agreement. The look in his eyes said,
You are kidding me, Ma’am.
    ‘But try not to comment at all on what you find up there. If it is Oliver Kennedy, I want his parents to know first and I want them to know from me.’
    ‘Of course,’ he said and she couldn’t help feeling she amused him.
    ‘I think we’re all set,’ said the line-access sergeant from the doorway. ‘Jim will take you across on the other boat, Finn. Give me a minute to get up top.’
    Turner yawned again, raising his arms above his head. The roof wasn’t nearly high enough for him to stretch out fully. ‘Showtime,’ he said, and followed his sergeant from the cabin.
    Dana, Mark, Cook, Anderson and Richmond went on deck too and watched the two members of the line-access team cross back to the neighbouring launch. If anything the crowd on the embankment had grown. A line of constables was trying to keep the press at bay, but they started calling out questions as the line-access sergeant climbed ashore and the two launches released their lines. As Uncle Fred steered them away from the embankment, all five passengers stayed on deck.
    Southwark Bridge carries the A300 across the Thames and links the City of London on the north bank with Southwark on the south. Nearly eight hundred feet long, it is constructed of stone and iron, with four wide arches spanning the river. Constable Finn Turner would have to step off the bow of the other boat on to the third stone pier from the south bank, somehow scale the ten feet or so of pillar and then climb up and across the ironwork that formed the arch. It would be damp. The stone would be slippery, the iron very cold.
    Lights shone from the base of the piers, Victorian-style lanterns ran along the edge of the bridge and the apex of each arch had amber-coloured navigation lights, but Dana felt a twist of nerves all the same. The lights weren’t nearly bright enough for any of them to be confident about the climb.
    When Fred judged he’d reached the middle of the