The Keeper

by Luke Delaney

  Sean ignored her as he reached for Louise Russell’s other arm, the one that hung behind her back. As gently as he could, he took hold of her wrist and twisted it to reveal the underside of her forearm – the sight of the garish phoenix making him feel dizzy, exhilarated and confused all at the same time. He almost dropped her arm and toppled over, but managed to catch himself and lower the arm back to its previous position before standing bolt upright, his eyes never leaving the body.

  ‘What?’ Sally called, keeping her distance. ‘What have you found?’

  ‘The key,’ he told her. ‘The key to everything. Now I just need to find the lock it fits.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ she admitted as Sean walked back towards her, pulling his phone from his coat pocket, searching for the number he knew would be in his contacts. After a few rings he heard Donnelly’s voice answer.

  ‘Dave? Don’t say anything, just listen. This is important and I don’t have much time. That transfer I asked Paulo to look into – the phoenix – did anything come of it? Did he find anything?’

  ‘Oh God – that useless thing. Yeah, he gave me a report about it. Last I remember I put it on your desk, with the other information reports. I thought you would have put that through the shredder by now. How you getting on at the crime scene?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Sean, the tone of his voice pricking Donnelly’s ears, ‘Louise Russell has the same transfer in the same place as the one we found on Karen Green.’

  Donnelly thought for a second. ‘No way. It’s not possible. The only way they could have the same fake tattoo would be if … oh Jesus Christ,’ he blasphemed as the reality of the situation dawned over him.

  ‘And if he put the transfers on them, it must be important to him. Important because she had a tattoo of a phoenix – the woman he’s taking them to replace. Either he got lucky and found a transfer that matched her tattoo – which I doubt – or he had them made for him by some specialist company that produces custom-made transfers. Had them made specifically because it made the women seem more like her – like the one he’s coveted for months if not years. Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m in the office.’

  ‘Good. Go through my in-tray and find the report Zukov gave you – maybe it’s got the name of the company that made the transfers. They should be able to tell us who they made them for.’

  ‘This isn’t possible.’

  ‘Trust me,’ Sean pleaded, ‘it’s possible. Now dig out the report and read what it says to me.’

  ‘No, no,’ Donnelly replied, ‘you don’t understand. I’ve read Zukov’s report. The transfer on Karen Green was sixteen years old. They were mass-produced for some cereal company who gave them away in packets of cornflakes or Rice Krispies or fuck knows what.’ Sean listened in stunned silence. ‘That’s why I reckoned it was a dead end,’ Donnelly explained. ‘How the hell could a sixteen-year-old transfer from a cornflake packet be relevant to our case? But if you’re telling me it is, then the man we’re looking for has been keeping those transfers for the last sixteen years.’

  Sean stood wide-eyed, trembling with excitement and apprehension, terrified that the answer to the puzzle would slip from his mind before he could ensnare it and make it his permanent captive. ‘Get in front of a CRIS machine,’ he ordered.

  ‘One minute,’ said Donnelly, striding to the nearest computer and logging into CRIS. ‘OK, I’m in. What next?’

  ‘Run an inquiry for any allegations of harassment – female victim. The year I’m looking for is 1996 and the age of the victim will be between ten and twelve. D’you understand?’ he asked, his heart pounding in his chest as his belief that he was right, that he was close to finding the madman, grew within him.

  ‘I’m with you,’ Donnelly assured him as he punched the details into CRIS, waiting for the relevant screens to roll past.

  ‘The harassment would have been reported by the parents,’ Sean continued.

  After a few seconds Donnelly spoke: ‘OK, I have seven reports of young girls being harassed. What now?’

  ‘Our man has no convictions, remember? Which means he probably wasn’t charged, meaning the parents just wanted us to warn him off. Does that match anything you have?’

  The silence on the other end of the phone told him it did.

  ‘Victim’s name is Samantha Shaw,’ Donnelly said. ‘Suspect’s name is Thomas Keller, who was also twelve at the time of the offence. His address is shown as a children’s home in Penge, so he won’t be there any more.’

  ‘No, but she might still live with her parents.’

  ‘At the same address? It’s unlikely,’ Donnelly warned.

  ‘Even if they’ve moved, we have enough details to locate them,’ Sean reminded him. ‘See if you can’t find an address for this Thomas Keller, and track down the Shaws – we need to know where Samantha is now – right now.’

  ‘No problem. And while I’m doing that, what will you be doing?’

  ‘I’m going to meet our friendly supervisor from the sorting depot.’

  ‘On a Sunday?’ Donnelly queried.

  ‘I have his mobile number, remember,’ Sean reminded him. ‘He’ll meet me. Deborah Thomson’s still alive – I know she is. If necessary I’ll give him no choice. I won’t let there be a third murder – no matter what.’

  Superintendent Featherstone drove through the light mid-morning traffic towards Peckham police station, having decided that location offered the best chance of intercepting Sean and getting an update on the second body, as well as showing his face to the rank and file. After that he might yet make it home for the Sunday roast his wife was in the process of preparing. Anything else he was fairly confident he could deal with over the phone, at least until the real shit-storm got underway on Monday morning. Besides, Corrigan knew what he was doing, even if he was a little unconventional.

  The very phone he’d just been thinking of began to chirp and vibrate in the centre console. He grabbed it with his non-steering hand and checked the caller ID, but the number was withheld – never a good sign on a cop’s mobile phone. For a brief second he considered not answering, but decided he’d rather deal with whatever the call brought than fret about who it might have been for the rest of the morning.

  ‘Hello,’ he answered guardedly.

  ‘Good morning, Alan,’ said a voice he recognized. ‘Assistant Commissioner Addis here,’ he added unnecessarily.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ Featherstone forced himself to respond, inwardly cursing himself for answering the damn phone.

  ‘I hear your DI Corrigan has a second victim on his hands.’

  ‘Bad news travels fast.’

  ‘Like I told you, certain people have taken an interest in DI Corrigan. The progress of any case he’s involved in finds its way to my ears quicker than you might imagine.’

  ‘Indeed,’ was Featherstone’s only reply.

  ‘And what of our mutual friend?’ Addis continued. ‘Has she submitted her report to you yet, or informed you of any interesting observations she may have made?’

  ‘No,’ said Featherstone. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Uhhm, I was thinking – on reflection, it’s probably better if she reports to me directly. There’s no need to create unnecessary … bureaucracy. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good. One last thing …’ Addis said. ‘Does he suspect anything?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Addis. ‘Make sure it stays that way.’

  Featherstone heard the line go dead and found himself staring at his phone. For a second he considered calling Sean and warning him to tread carefully, but he knew he couldn’t trust his own phone not to betray him, not now Addis and his people were involved.

  With a shrug of his shoulders he tossed the phone on to the passenger seat. Maybe he’d still make it home in time for his Sunday roast.

  Sean and Sally drew closer to the sorting office in South Norwood where they had a
rranged to meet Leonard Trewsbury, the depot supervisor. They’d travelled in almost complete silence, Sally driving while Sean spent most of his time nervously cradling his phone, waiting for Donnelly to call back. It had rung several times during the journey, making them both jump, but he’d answered only once, when the caller ID showed it was DS Roddis from the forensic team. Sally wondered who the other calls were from.

  ‘Something bothering you?’ she asked. ‘Aside from the usual.’

  ‘That CRIS search I had Dave run,’ he told her. ‘I did the same search myself, several times, only I never thought about changing the dates of the offence by more than a couple of years. If I’d only changed the dates, moved them back further, then Louise Russell would be alive.’

  ‘Fuck sake, Sean – how could you possibly have known to move the date back sixteen years? How could anyone have known to do that?’

  ‘I should have,’ he snapped. ‘As soon as I saw that tattoo, as soon as we discovered it was only a transfer, I should have checked back further – much further.’

  ‘Hey, give yourself a break. We don’t even know if this guy Thomas Keller has got anything to do with these murders.’

  ‘It’s him,’ Sean assured her. ‘I know it’s him. He’s coveted her for sixteen years – planned this for sixteen years – and now at last, finally he’s making it all come true. When we meet Trewsbury, he’ll confirm that Keller works from the Norwood sorting office and then there’ll be no doubt he’s our man. Then this’ll be over.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Sally probed. ‘Something you’re not telling me.’

  ‘It’s that name – Thomas Keller. I’ve heard it before somewhere, or dealt with him in the past. Christ, I don’t know, maybe I nicked him when I was still in uniform or interviewed him someplace, sometime. Ever since Dave said his name it’s been driving me mad trying to remember – where have I heard that name?’

  ‘You’re knackered,’ Sally reminded him. ‘It’s probably just déjà-vu. By the time your tired brain processes a new piece of information your memory has already logged it, hence the information appears strangely familiar to you. It’s a case of the memory overtaking the conscious thought process.’

  Sean looked at her with eyebrows raised. ‘I know what déjà-vu is.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she apologized. ‘Of course you do.’

  Sean’s phone rang again. He checked the caller ID and answered. ‘Dave. What have you got for me?’

  ‘First off, we drew a blank on Thomas Keller. No address, no intelligence, no nothing. Anything created as a result of the sexual assault and subsequent stalking has been deleted from our intelligence records a long time ago and it appears he’s kept himself clean since. The Shaws still live at the same address, but Samantha flew the nest a few years back and now lives with her boyfriend at 16 Sangley Road, Catford. I’ll text you the address and her phone number, unless you want me to call her?’

  ‘No,’ Sean insisted. ‘No phone calls. I need to see her face to face. I have to know how she feels about him.’

  Donnelly didn’t argue. ‘Fair enough. Is there anything else you want me to do?’

  ‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘Hold fire with the team until I get an address for Keller. I’ll call as soon as I have it.’ He hung up.

  ‘You’re not going to call him are you?’ Sally said. ‘If we get an address for Keller – you’re not going to call anyone.’

  Sean ignored her and pointed to the side of the road next to the sorting office. ‘Pull over here. That’s our man.’ He almost jumped out of the car while it was still moving, desperate to quiz Leonard Trewsbury, desperate for confirmation.

  The two men had already shaken hands by the time Sally joined them. Sean didn’t bother introducing her. ‘Thanks for meeting us,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t give me much choice, Inspector,’ Trewsbury replied. ‘Another young woman found murdered – what could I say? I’ll probably lose my job and most of my pension too, but at least I’ll be able to look myself in the mirror.’

  ‘If there’d been any other way, I wouldn’t have asked,’ Sean assured him. ‘I had no alternative, not while there’s still a chance to save another.’

  ‘The third woman he took?’ Trewsbury asked, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘There’s no reason to believe he’ll treat her any differently,’ Sean warned him.

  ‘So what is it you want from me that you couldn’t ask over the phone?’

  ‘Thomas Keller – does that name mean anything to you?’

  Trewsbury’s lips went a strange shade of grey. ‘Tommy, yeah, sure, he works here, but he couldn’t be involved in this – he wouldn’t say boo to a goose. He’s a good kid, you know, hard worker, keeps himself to himself. He gets hassled by the other guys sometimes, but never caused me no trouble.’

  He was unaware he was describing exactly the sort of man Sean was looking for, causing his heart to flutter as all his theories began to fall into place. How the killer had been able to walk around residential areas without drawing attention to himself, dressed in the urban camouflage of his Post Office uniform, selecting his victims, intercepting their mail to learn about their lives, tricking them into opening their front doors and snatching them from their own homes – it was all coming true.

  ‘I need his address,’ he told Trewsbury without trying to justify why he suspected Thomas Keller.

  ‘I don’t have it,’ Trewsbury answered.

  ‘I know. That’s why I wanted to meet you here, so we can check the employment records. You said it yourself, Leonard, two young women already murdered and one missing, presumed alive – for the time being.’

  ‘But Tommy …’ Trewsbury struggled. ‘I don’t suppose you have a Production Order?’

  ‘No,’ said Sean. ‘By the time I get one, it’ll be too late for Deborah Thomson. I’m sorry, Leonard, but it’s him, I know it’s him and I need his address now.’

  14

  Thomas Keller awoke from his nightmares shortly before 11 a.m., his clothes and bedding soaked with sweat, his eyes instantly wide open and bloodshot. He rolled out of bed as if he was escaping a torture rack and landed hard on the floor, scrambling and crawling to the corner of the littered room, eyes darting from side to side looking for danger – children from the home, colleagues from work, the police. Finally he remembered where he was, in time and place, and allowed his tensed body to relax, his shoulders falling away from his neck as he slowly exhaled, the bright sunlight pouring through his improvised curtains and making him blink repeatedly. He stayed sitting in the corner for almost fifteen minutes, trying to fully orientate himself with the world around him, a million confused messages and ideas swirling inside his head, each telling him to do a different thing – kill the woman in his cellar and then himself. Kill himself and spare the woman. Find his mother and kill her. Kill his mother and run. Kill his work colleagues and himself. Go to the children’s home and kill everyone there – his old school, all the potential adoptive parents who’d rejected him, everyone who’d ever rejected him – not accepted him. Kill as many as he could – kill them all.

  ‘No!’ he screamed at himself, at the ugly thoughts taking over his mind – the thoughts that reminded him of last night – how good it felt to squeeze the life from the whore’s neck. ‘That was different,’ he yelled. ‘She betrayed me.’

  He jumped to his feet and stumbled to the drawer where he kept his precious letters, pulling it open and searching frantically through the bundles until he found the one he was looking for – a thick roll of envelopes addressed to Hannah O’Brien. Yanking the elastic band away, he let the letters fall over the surface of the chest of drawers and began to spread them around so he could see as many of them as possible at the same time. Without even realizing it, his hand had slipped inside his tracksuit bottoms and gripped himself. Yes, he told himself, the others had all been mistakes, but at last he’d found the real Sam. He would rescue her and then she would save him from the ugly thoughts. It was ho
w it was meant to be. Once he’d rescued her, he’d pile the other letters into one of the oil drums and burn them and with them all the ugly thoughts. But what if she didn’t understand what he’d had to do – the sacrifices he’d had to make? No, no, he reassured himself – she’d understand, she wouldn’t judge him – she never had.

  First, however, there was still one more mistake he had to deal with. He took his hand away from the letters and headed slowly towards his bathroom.

  Sally parked their car a good fifty metres from the address that Trewsbury had illegally given them. If Keller was at home, they didn’t want to spook him by screeching up outside his front door. They climbed from the car and began to walk along the neglected street of three-storey Victorian terraced houses, most of which had been converted into flats. Sean was already beginning to suspect that Keller had given the Post Office a false address or, more likely, had moved and not bothered to tell them. He was a Post Office employee, so discreetly having his mail redirected wouldn’t have been too difficult.

  As they closed on the address Sally became increasingly concerned about their course of action.

  ‘Maybe we should get TSG to hit the address? Go in hard and shake him up,’ she suggested.

  ‘No,’ said Sean, assessing the house. Even if Keller was still here, it was clear that Deborah Thomson would not be. ‘Let’s check it out first, see how the land lies, then we can consider using the TSG.’

  ‘Perhaps we should put him under surveillance,’ suggested Sally, ‘see if he leads us to Deborah Thomson. If we grab him now he may never talk. He could leave her to starve to death in some hole in the ground.’

  ‘Time,’ he reminded her, ‘it’s all about time we don’t have. Karen Green abducted – found dead seven days later. Louise Russell abducted – found dead five days later.’ He stopped and turned to face her. ‘He’s speeding up, Sally. The interval between the abduction and the killing is shrinking. How many days does Deborah Thomson have? Four? Three? Less?’

  He started walking again, Sally trailing behind, almost breaking into a run to keep up until they reached the three shallow steps that led to the front door and a panel of doorbells mounted on the side of the door frame. Six bells meant six separate flats. The peeling paint on the front door and lack of names next to the intercom buttons told Sean the flats were probably occupied by the transient – London’s throngs of the unsettled and unwanted. He rang the only buzzer that had a readable name beside it and waited. After a few seconds that felt like minutes the intercom crackled and a voice leaked out of it.