Like This, for Ever

by Sharon Bolton

  The six children lined up along the wall and peered over to look at the beach below. Long way down. Lloyd took a step back. ‘He went down these steps?’ he said. ‘Can’t have been easy with a body over his shoulder.’

  Close to where the children were standing, a dozen concrete steps led from the embankment to the beach. All but the top two were covered in green algae. Threads of river-weed had knotted around bumps in the concrete and the metal handrail looked anything but secure.

  ‘He could have just tipped him over the wall,’ added Jorge. ‘No point making unnecessary work.’

  Barney was looking at the opposite bank. ‘The thing about this site is that it’s almost directly across the river from the headquarters of the Marine Unit,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the Marine Unit?’ asked Harvey. He and the other boys were pressing closer, all trying to see the map at once.

  ‘The river police,’ said Barney, nodding to the large brown-brick Victorian building on the north bank with its industrial-length pier. ‘Part of the Metropolitan Police but in charge of the river. People at the time said it was really cheeky of the killer, to dump the body here, right under their noses.’

  ‘That’s where they’re based, is it?’ said Jorge, who was also looking at the building. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Are you alright up there, Hatty?’ asked Barney. Hatty and Sam had climbed up on to the embankment wall. It was only about five feet high on this side, but a good fifteen-foot drop on the other.

  ‘Hatty’ll be fine,’ said Jorge. ‘Sam will probably tumble to his death though.’

  ‘Heard that,’ muttered Sam.

  ‘The police didn’t find him though, did they?’ asked Lloyd.

  ‘No, a couple on their way home from work,’ said Barney. ‘The point is, there was a lot of talk about whether the killer was taunting the police, you know, saying, “Look at me, look what I’ve left on your doorstep.”’

  ‘Maybe he just didn’t know,’ said Jorge, whose eyes were still fixed on the north bank.

  ‘One thing everyone is agreed on is that this bloke knows the river,’ said Barney. ‘If you know the river, you know where the Marine Unit are based.’

  ‘So where was the body?’ asked Sam.

  Barney shone his torch down on to the beach. ‘Hard to know for definite,’ he said. ‘There were sketches in some of the newspapers but they’d be based on guesswork. I think we have to work it out for ourselves.’

  ‘Go on then, Sherlock,’ said Jorge.

  ‘Well, he probably carried him down these steps,’ said Barney, ‘and we know he leaves them where the tide will cover them after a couple of hours. If we go down, we can probably figure it out.’

  ‘What’s the tide doing now?’ asked Lloyd, looking nervously at the black water.

  ‘It’s coming back in. In another couple of hours you won’t be able to get down there. It’ll be muddy even now. I did tell you lot to wear wellies.’

  Of the whole group, only he and Lloyd were wearing wellington boots.

  ‘Watch it,’ Barney said, realizing he was expected to lead the way down to the beach. ‘These steps will be slippy.’

  Shining the torch on the crumbling concrete steps, Barney made his way down to the beach. The first few yards of it were dry. The tide didn’t usually reach all the way back to the wall. After a few paces, though, the stones became damp, interspersed with patches of mud. Four yards away from the river’s edge, Barney stopped.

  ‘Somewhere round here,’ said Barney, looking down. ‘I can’t see any reason for him to have walked left or right. I imagine he wanted to get rid of it and get away from here as soon as possible.’

  Jorge had walked another pace further on. ‘Here, I reckon,’ he said.

  ‘How come?’ asked Harvey.

  ‘Had a good view of the river in both directions,’ said Jorge. ‘He could see if any traffic was coming. But that pier would provide a pretty good screen for what he was up to.’

  ‘Here then,’ said Barney, stepping closer to Jorge. One by one the other children joined them. They stood in a circle, looking at each other.

  ‘We should switch these torches off,’ said Jorge, doing exactly that with his own. ‘People up on the embankment might see us. And there’s still people on the pier. We should work in the dark. Like he did.’

  The three remaining torch beams disappeared and the children were left in darkness on the riverbank. Barney felt a twang of nerves. This close to the water’s edge, the sound of the river was surprisingly loud. It seemed to groan, somehow, as though with the effort of continual motion. Or as though there was something beneath it, pushing to be free.

  ‘This is freaky,’ giggled Hatty. In the dim light, Barney thought he saw Sam sneak his arm around Hatty’s waist. She stepped to one side, away from him.

  ‘Quiet,’ said Jorge. ‘Let’s just listen.’

  A second of silence from the children, then another muffled giggle. Jesus, was Barney the only one who could hear the noise the river was making? It sounded like it was alive. With a start, Hatty turned to look out across the water. Had she too heard the low-pitched moaning, like half-dead creatures waking up? Then the spell was broken when Harvey pulled a plastic water bottle from his rucksack and started to walk round the others in a big circle. The children watched, increasingly mystified, as Harvey held the bottle out at arm’s length and let the water inside trickle down on to the stones. He drew a circle around them and stepped into it.

  ‘What you doing?’ asked Jorge.

  ‘Holy water,’ said Harvey. ‘I’ve just drawn a protective circle around us.’

  The noise from the children bounced across the beach.

  ‘Daft pillock!’ ‘Prat!’ ‘Dickhead!’ Only Barney stayed quiet. They weren’t going to start talking about vampires and drinking blood again, were they?

  ‘Where the hell did you get holy water?’ demanded Jorge.

  ‘St Nicholas’s,’ said Harvey, looking defensive. ‘They have a bowl of it at the back by the door, I just waited till no one was looking. Everyone knows vampires hate holy water.’

  ‘So we’re perfectly safe from vampires as long as we stay in this circle all night,’ said Jorge. ‘Course we might drown, but at least our jugulars will be intact. OK, own up, who brought garlic?’

  Sam and Lloyd laughed nervously.

  ‘Stakes?’ said Jorge.

  With a grin on her face, Hatty reached inside the neck of her fleece and pulled out a small silver crucifix.

  ‘OK, guys, quieten down,’ said Lloyd. ‘We came here for a reason, not to piss about.’

  ‘So what do we do, look for clues?’

  ‘There won’t be any clues left,’ said Barney. ‘I think we just have to get a feel for the place. Any special reason for choosing here? Did he definitely come by road or is it too soon to rule out the river?’

  ‘He’s bringing them by road,’ said Lloyd. ‘At Tower Bridge, he could get a car right to the steps, then it would take just a couple of minutes to carry them up, through the alleyway and down again to the river. All he had to do here was park on the road, carry him a few yards down the steps and he was on the beach.’

  ‘Convenience then,’ said Jorge. ‘Does your map show all the steps with road access, Barney? We can try and predict where he might leave the next one.’

  ‘Glad you think there’s going to be a next one,’ said Barney.

  ‘Serial killers don’t stop unless they’re caught or die,’ said Jorge. ‘Course there’ll be a next one.’

  ‘It’s raining,’ said Hatty, stepping away from the circle, a step closer to the river. Barney followed, resisting the temptation to pull her back. ‘I keep forgetting,’ he said. ‘I found your earring.’ He opened his hand. The tiny gold leaf sat in the centre of his palm.

  ‘Cool,’ said Hatty. ‘Where was it?’

  ‘In the drain that runs round the edge of the community-centre yard,’ said Barney.

  ‘Yuck!’ She tucked it into her
pocket.

  ‘I cleaned it. It was covered in something grotty, but I cleaned it with my dad’s white spirit.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She gave him that cute, shy smile of hers, the one that made her cheeks plump up like she had gobstoppers inside them. Although she was older than Barney, she was smaller. Sometimes, when you looked down at her, you couldn’t see her eyes, just long black lashes.

  ‘How deep is it?’ she asked, turning back to the river.

  It made him feel good that there was stuff he knew that she didn’t. ‘Right now, about five metres in the middle,’ he said. ‘Gets deeper when the tide’s in, obviously.’

  Five metres of cloudy, dark water. Barney had a sudden vision of himself stepping out and sinking down, through the silt and the oil, feeling the pull of friendly hands, only to realize it was weed clinging and that it wasn’t friendly at all, that it was taking him further down to the wrecked boats, the mud and rock at the bottom. To spend the last seconds of his life in an underwater city, peopled by corpses that had never managed to float free.

  ‘What?’ said Hatty, who’d seen him shiver. ‘Someone walk over your grave?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he admitted. ‘We should go, we can’t get into the Creek if the tide’s high.’

  The others were reluctant to leave the riverbank. Sam and Harvey were trying to skim stones, Jorge seemed strangely fascinated by the river in the fading light and Lloyd had discovered shells among the rocks. A bit like a Collie dog with badly behaved sheep, Barney chivvied them along. He was careful not to overdo it, he never forgot he was the youngest. Even so, more than once he was told to chill out.

  But it was difficult to chill when the sense of the river behind him was so strong, when the temptation to look back over his shoulder, like a nervous girl walking alone down a dark street, was close to irresistible. And when pictures were forming in his head of waves like tiny creatures, snapping at his ankles, getting ready to bring him down.

  He was an idiot. It was just a river, black and mighty and relentless, but still nothing more than an urban watercourse.

  ‘Guys, it’s raining, come on,’ complained Hatty and finally they started to leave the beach. Barney was the last to climb the steps. As he put his foot on the first, he had a feeling that the river called out to him. That it told him it would always be here, and it would be waiting.

  Riverside lanterns, round and pale like puffball mushrooms, were glowing softly when Dana arrived at the restaurant. Mark and Huck had gone on ahead; Helen, punctual to a fault, would have arrived fifteen minutes ago. They’d all be waiting for her.

  The river, just yards away, was racing past, and had taken on the fuller, more urgent sound it made when the tide was heading in. By the time they left the restaurant, the water would be pushing against the embankment wall.

  The restaurant was busy. She could almost feel the heat seeping out from the giant glass windows and doors. Most of them had steamed up already. Needing one last moment before she forced herself to be happy and upbeat – for Huck’s sake, at least, there was no fooling the other two – Dana walked to the railings and leaned out over the water.

  To her left, on the beach where the two Barlow boys had been found, all was in darkness. Only the reflection of lights from Tower Bridge told her where the water ended and the rocks began. Someone walking around down there, wearing dark clothes and moving without light, would not be spotted.

  On the other hand, the figure stepping out from the bridge’s shadow, wearing a light-coloured padded jacket, could be seen very clearly. He or she, it really wasn’t possible to tell, reached the concrete steps and began climbing. Slim, not too tall.

  Dana ran, away from the river, heading for Shad Thames, knowing the chances of cutting off the figure in the padded jacket were slim. The streets around Butler’s Wharf were busy, even in February, and she had to dodge her way around more than one group idling along, looking for somewhere to eat.

  Ahead, about thirty yards away, was the light-coloured jacket.

  ‘Hey!’

  Several people turned, including the one she was fixated on. Definitely a woman, a little older than she, thin face, hair hidden beneath a dark woollen hat. The face turned away, a group came out of a building and got between them. Dana picked up her pace as much as she could but she was wearing heels and the street was cobbled. She reached the corner and turned.

  No sign of the woman.

  By the time they reached Deptford Creek, Barney had a sense that several of the group were starting to think this wasn’t such a good idea after all. It had rained persistently since they’d left Bermondsey and all the children had wet hair and damp clothes. On Creekside they chained their bikes to a railing and Barney led them to the tall iron gate.

  ‘Nobody should be here at this time, but we’ll be on private property so we still have to be careful,’ he said. ‘Jorge, can you give us all a leg over?’

  One by one, the children stepped on Jorge’s clasped hands and scrambled over the railings. ‘What is this place?’ asked Jorge, when he’d joined them.

  ‘Creekside Educational Trust,’ said Barney. ‘They’re a sort of charity that look after the Creek. Be quiet – people live close by.’

  The children made their way down the side of the Trust building, past rubbish that had been pulled from the Creek over the years, including several rusting shopping trolleys, and down a path that led through a roughly tended garden. Slowly, the twin towers of the old railway-lift loomed above them.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Hatty, eyeing the massive iron structure nervously. In the darkness it looked far bigger than it ever did in daylight, like a mechanical monster leering over them.

  ‘The railway-lift,’ said Barney. ‘It’s not used any more. In the old days, it would lift train carriages from one track and put them down on the other. This way.’ He led them across the grass until they could see down to the Creek itself.

  ‘Down there?’ asked Sam, staring down at the narrow, steeply sloping beach that led to the black slick of water. All around them, granite-black buildings loomed.

  ‘Down here,’ confirmed Barney. As he led the way, he had a sense of the others hanging back. Not that he really blamed them. The Creek was freaky, especially at low tide, especially at night. As they neared the water he stopped.

  ‘It’s like the friggin’ Grand Canyon,’ said Lloyd. None of the others spoke. They were all staring round at the massive river walls that soared seven metres high in places. Their construction was completely random, adding to the bizarre effect. Originally, they’d been built from vertical timbers, but many of those had rotted away, to be replaced by steel piles, or concrete sheets. There were even patches of brickwork. Dark, dank vegetation sprang from wherever it could, as though, despite man’s best efforts to colonize this stretch of water, nature was determined to claim it back.

  Above the walls, three- and four-storey warehouses and dockyard buildings stretched up even higher. The impression was of a dark and narrow tunnel between massive black cliffs.

  ‘It looks like this because the tide’s low,’ said Barney. ‘When it’s high the water will reach right up to where we’re standing. It can be seven metres deep. That’s why the walls have to be so high. When the tide’s completely out, there’s nothing but mud here. We can go a bit further, but be careful if you’re not in wellies.’

  The children crept forward, mainly keeping to the stones and gravel that lined the sides of the beach, only Barney and Lloyd sensibly enough shod to walk through the mud. ‘Yuck,’ complained Hatty, as the mud seeped up over her trainers and into her socks.

  ‘This is well freaky,’ said Sam, when they had gone as close to the narrow stream as they could. To their left, through the arch of the railway bridge, they could see the last stretch of the Creek before it joined the Thames. The huge iron lift looked alien and predatory in the poor light.

  ‘We need to stay together now,’ said Barney, spotting the others starting to drift off and fee
ling increasingly nervous. He’d never been in the Creek without a supervising adult before, and it had always been impressed upon him how dangerous it could be.

  The tall buildings around them kept out just about all light from the surrounding streets and the riverbed was black as pitch. Any of them could fall, get stuck. The tide was on its way back but tide was never the biggest danger in the Creek. Rain was. Heavy rainfall higher up the River Ravensbourne could wash down here at lightning speed, and once you were walking the high-walled channel, there weren’t many escape routes. It would be stupid to go any further.

  ‘So where was Ryan found?’ asked Lloyd.

  Barney looked beneath the arch of the bridge, and then down at his feet.

  ‘Just about here,’ he said.

  ‘Aw, Christ,’ said Sam, shuffling backwards in the mud, further up the bank.

  ‘The thing about the Creek,’ said Barney, ‘is that there’s practically no public access to it. Where we’re standing is one of the few points where people can actually get into it without climbing down a ladder. This is the only beach on the Creek.’

  ‘This isn’t a beach, it’s a mud bath,’ said Sam.

  ‘So he must be bringing them by road,’ said Lloyd. ‘If he’d come up the Creek by boat, he could have left Ryan anywhere, couldn’t he? By road, it had to be here.’

  ‘Can you even get a boat up here?’ asked Harvey, looking at water that didn’t seem more than a foot or so deep.

  ‘When the tide’s in, yeah,’ said Barney. ‘All the boats where we’re going next sailed up the Creek. In a couple of hours, this spot will be under four metres of water. It’s deeper further in.’

  There was a second’s silence, while all the children imagined the deep, narrow tunnel they were standing in filled to the brim with seawater.

  ‘I’m ready to go now,’ said Sam, who was looking nervously upriver.

  ‘It comes that way,’ said Barney, pointing under the bridge.

  ‘All the same.’

  ‘Thing is, though, even though Ryan was found here, he may not have been dumped here,’ said Barney. ‘Some newspaper reports said that the body was soaked in salt water, which it wouldn’t have been if it had been dumped at low tide. If it was soaked in salt water, that means it was dumped higher up and got washed down.’