The Keeper

by Luke Delaney

  She looked over her shoulder before answering. ‘Tommy? This is about Tommy?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘Why would you ask me that? I haven’t seen Tommy since we were kids. Not since …’

  ‘We know about what happened back then,’ he assured her. ‘And we know he was harassing you—’

  She cut across him. ‘No – watching me, but not harassing me. My parents reported it, not me.’

  ‘You sound as though you still have a lot of affection for him,’ Sean almost accused her.

  ‘Tommy’s childhood was hell. I felt sorry for him – thought I could help him, that’s all. I didn’t want to make things worse for him, even after …’

  ‘Can we come in and talk about it?’ Sally asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Ian doesn’t know anything about it and I’d like to keep it that way.’

  ‘Have you seen Thomas Keller since?’ Sean persisted. ‘Since the assault and the harassment?’

  ‘No,’ she replied, and he believed her. ‘They took him out of my school and last I heard he was still in the children’s home. But I never saw him again and quite frankly, until now, I’d pretty much forgotten about him – which is exactly how I want it to be. Tommy’s not my problem any more.’

  ‘After what happened to you, when you were still a child – you’re telling me you forgot all about it, about him?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was a bad liar, but Sean decided to let it go. ‘The only thing I heard was from an old school friend I bumped into a few years ago. They said they’d seen Tommy and that he was a postman now. I was happy for him, you know. I thought maybe things had turned out all right for him, despite everything. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing else I can tell you.’

  ‘I understand,’ Sean said, eager to move the questioning on. ‘Just one more thing. Have you had any breakins in the last few months or maybe even longer ago? Anything unusual gone missing?’

  She looked truly concerned for the first time since she’d opened the door. ‘Is Tommy in trouble? Did he do something? Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘My question,’ he reminded her.

  ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I haven’t had any breakins and nothing’s gone missing.’

  ‘I need you to think really hard,’ he insisted. ‘Not necessarily an obvious burglary – maybe just small items that have gone missing?’ He saw a flicker of something in her eyes. ‘You can’t go on protecting him, Samantha. You’re not twelve any more, and neither is he. He’s dangerous now – more dangerous than you can imagine. I need you to answer my questions.’

  She sighed and shook her head. ‘OK. A few months ago I’d just had a bath and was in my bedroom. I went to use my body cream, but it wasn’t where I always left it, on my dressing table. I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find it. I asked Ian if he’d moved it and he said no. We’d just taken on a cleaner, because we both work, and I guess I thought she might have taken it.’

  ‘Did anything else go missing?’

  ‘A few silly things – a bottle of perfume.’

  ‘Black Orchid. And the body cream was from Elemis, wasn’t it?’

  She gawped at him, mouth hanging open, eyes clouding with suspicion. ‘How did you know? How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘Lucky guess,’ said Sean. ‘You said other things went missing too. What things?’

  ‘Some of my clothes: a skirt, blouse and a sweater, I think. But you know how it is, things go missing all the time, lost at the dry cleaner’s, left at work. It happens to us all.’

  Clothes. Of course, he thought, berating himself for having not seen it earlier. He dressed them in her clothes – that’s why the bodies had been naked or nearly so, because he was recycling her clothes, using them on victim after victim, taking them from one to give to the next as his belief that they were the real Samantha Shaw faded and died.

  ‘Did you report it to the police?’

  ‘Are you kidding? They would have thought I was mental.’

  ‘But did you think it could be Tommy? In your heart, did you think it could be him? Did you see him in your mind coming into your house, your bedroom, and taking the perfume – the cream?’

  ‘I … I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she faltered.

  ‘Yes you do,’ he said. ‘But burying the past mattered more to you than telling anyone the thing you feared – feared more than anything else.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ she asked calmly.

  ‘That he was back,’ said Sean. ‘That after all these years, Thomas Keller was back.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about my fears,’ she warned him, still icy calm.

  ‘I know more than you think.’

  Sally had seen Sean in many guises, but this was a new one, even for her. ‘This isn’t getting us any closer to Keller,’ she said. ‘If you have no idea where he is, then you can’t help us any further. Thanks for your time. We’ll be in touch.’

  She turned to look at Sean, as if willing him to walk away, but he stood rooted, eyes locked with Samantha Shaw’s, convinced there was more information she could give, even if she didn’t know it herself. He let his eyes alone ask all the questions, until eventually she answered.

  ‘Listen, the only other thing I can think of is that Tommy always talked about getting himself a farm when he grew up. That’s all I can tell you.’

  Sean suddenly looked at the ground, his hand rising towards her face, fingers spread wide like a net, as if he was trying to catch her words before they escaped and were lost for ever. ‘What did you just say?’ he demanded.

  ‘I said Tommy wanted to live on a farm. I suppose he wanted to be away from people …’ She was still talking when he turned from her, not listening any more, walking away tugging his phone from his pocket and searching for Donnelly’s number. It was answered within a few ring tones.

  ‘Guv’nor.’

  ‘Are you still in the office?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Thomas Keller. I remember where I’ve seen his name,’ Sean told him. ‘It was on an information report. A uniform patrol checked out a farm – the man living there gave his name as Thomas Keller.’

  ‘You sure?’ Donnelly asked. ‘We must have checked out more than a hundred smallholdings, not to mention the hundreds of other information reports with name after name on them.’

  ‘Samantha Shaw just told me that Keller always wanted to live on a farm. As soon as she said it, I remembered – remembered seeing it. But I can’t remember the address. The report should still be in my office. I need you to search for it – go through every last scrap of paper till you find it.’

  ‘Fuck me, guv’nor – have you seen your office? That could take days.’

  ‘No,’ Sean insisted. ‘The information reports from property searches are in a separate pile, as are the ones from door-to-door, as are the ones from roadblocks, as are they all. The pile you’re looking for will be smaller than the others. I’ll stay on the line while you check.’

  Donnelly eased himself out of his chair and headed to Sean’s office. ‘On my way – hold on.’ He scanned the stacks of reports until he found the pile he was looking for. ‘Here we go,’ he said, sitting at the desk in front of the reports. He puffed out his cheeks and began to scan through them, checking the names while Sean waited silently, his hands shaking with anticipation, listening to Donnelly discounting each useless report. ‘No.’ A few seconds later. ‘No.’ More seconds later. ‘No,’ until finally Donnelly’s tone changed completely. ‘Fuck me,’ he declared. ‘How the hell did you remember seeing that?’

  Sean didn’t have to ask if Donnelly had found it. ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘It’s in Keston, Kent, off Shire Lane in what appears to be a disused poultry farm. He showed the uniform patrol his driving licence as ID, which by all accounts checked out. Do you want me to scramble TSG, or maybe a surveillance team – make sure he’s holding Debo
rah Thomson at the same place?’

  ‘No,’ Sean insisted. ‘For all we know it could be another part-time address. I’ll check it out first – quietly. Once I know he’s there, I’ll call you – then we’ll think about the TSG.’

  Donnelly didn’t believe a word of it. ‘OK, guv’nor. If that’s how you want to play it.’

  ‘It is,’ said Sean, and hung up. He sensed Sally by his side. ‘We’ve got his address.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll explain on the way,’ he promised and strode towards their car.

  ‘On the way to where?’

  ‘Where d’you think?’ he asked, oblivious to her fears. ‘To Keller’s home address, of course.’

  ‘Just the two of us? Shouldn’t we wait for the TSG or at least have some of the team meet us there? We know he has access to electrical weapons and he lives on a farm – God knows what else he’s got down there.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her, ‘we’re not going to arrest him. We’re checking out the address, that’s all.’

  She watched him duck inside the car, leaving her with a sickness deep in the pit of her stomach – a feeling of dread that he was leading her towards places in her own soul and consciousness she wasn’t ready to go to yet. But she could see he had the taste for the hunt and his quarry was close. Like an out-of-control freight train, nothing could stop him now.

  The pain had been almost as unbearable as the humiliation – his stinking, sweet breath panting in her ear, her body too racked with exhaustion and pain to resist after he’d stabbed her with the cattle prod again and again until she’d finally succumbed. At last her torture was over and he crawled from the cage, dragging her filthy mattress with him and all of her clothes except her underwear. She reached down and pulled her knickers up as best she could with one hand, sobbing a tearless cry – his voice behind her, out of breath and merciless.

  ‘That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it, you little whore? Feel better now, don’t you? You fucking whore – you disgust me.’ He slammed the cage door shut and locked it with the padlock, gathering up the mattress and clothes. ‘I need to have a shower,’ he told her. ‘I need to wash your filth off my body. The smell of your cunt makes me feel sick.’ He headed for the stairs, stopping and looking back at her lying on the cold stone floor. ‘I thought you were different to the others,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I thought you were her, but you’re not. You lied to me – you tricked me. You’ll fucking pay for trying to make me look like a fool. You’ll all pay.’

  With that he tugged the cord, turning off the electric bulb, and slowly climbed the stairs walking through the streams of sunlight that flooded into the cellar, his body cutting a silhouette into the light.

  ‘Don’t get too close,’ Sean warned Sally as they drove along Shire Lane towards the outcrop of buildings they could see one hundred metres ahead. ‘I don’t want to spook him. Pull over here.’ Sally let the car roll silently to a standstill at the side of the dirt road, the surrounding trees and hedges camouflaging them well enough. ‘We’ll walk from this point,’ he said, ‘follow the treeline and double back around on ourselves. That’ll bring us right on top of the place – we’ll be able to see anything moving.’

  ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ Sally argued. ‘We should wait for assistance, or better still let someone else take him out. Once we know he’s secured we can search the place safely.’

  ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘I want some time alone with him first.’

  ‘You’ll have time with him when you interview him. You can ask him anything you want.’

  ‘What, when he’s surrounded by solicitors, appropriate adults and the Mental Health team? I can’t talk to him then – not properly. I need to be alone with him.’

  ‘I don’t under—’

  ‘I have to know why. Why he did it.’

  ‘You already know,’ Sally argued. ‘You know more about why he’s doing it than he probably knows himself.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Sean was adamant. ‘I can get close, but I can’t think like him. Not all the way. I need to know how he thinks.’

  ‘But what does it matt—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Sally, don’t you understand? It matters for the next time and the time after that and the time after that. I need to know what makes them feel alive – what they’ll do to feel alive – to feel something.’

  ‘What makes them feel alive?’ she queried. ‘Them, Sean?’

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he snapped, opening his door and trying to escape. Strong fingers around his forearm stopped him.

  ‘I’m scared, Sean,’ she admitted. ‘You think I’m ready for this, but I’m not. I’m scared of how I’ll react if we find him – if we find Deborah Thomson. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. And I’m scared for you, Sean. I’m scared what you might do.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘When Donnelly found you with Lawlor, on the railway bank, he told me Lawlor said you were trying to kill him.’

  Sean froze, icy fingers stretching into his mind and wrapping themselves around hundreds of dark memories he tried so hard to conceal from himself as much as anyone else. He said nothing, eyes unblinking and staring into Sally’s.

  ‘Well, Sean, is it true? Were you?’

  He managed to shake his head and even fake a slight smile. ‘Someone’s talking shit,’ he lied. ‘Canteen chatter, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you sure about that? Because, if there’s more to it, then maybe you should think about taking a break from … from this – the madmen and the carnage, the sadness they leave behind that only we and families of their victims see. If something happened out there, maybe you should step away.’

  ‘Look,’ he tried to reassure her, ‘Lawlor is scum. He pissed me off and I wanted to scare the shit out of him – that’s all, I promise.’ She watched him for a while, reading him as she had a thousand suspects before – judging him. ‘Come on, Sally,’ he said. ‘I need you to do this with me. All we’re going to do is follow the treeline until we can see the buildings better – then we watch and wait. No more, I promise.’

  In the end she agreed, even though she knew he would never be able to just watch and wait, not with his prey so close. She released his forearm and they climbed from the car together, easing the doors shut. Sally followed Sean, occasionally shaking her head in disbelief at what she was doing and where she was. When Sean found a natural break in the trees they headed deeper into the woods that surrounded the ramshackle collection of ugly buildings until they came to a low wooden fence that formed a perimeter. Like the buildings below it had been neglected and was rotting in several places. The panels would be easy to pry away from the holding frames. On the other side there was another line of trees, but smaller and younger than those in the woods behind them. Beyond was a grassy bank leading to the buildings, which were arranged in a circular valley. Sean prised one of the panels away and peered down. He saw nothing moving, but his view was partially restricted. He looked through the gap to his right and saw a better position to spy from.

  ‘We need to keep moving,’ he told Sally. ‘About fifty metres further round there’s a better place. We can watch from there – anything moves, we’ll see it.’

  ‘OK,’ Sally whispered. ‘Lead the way.’

  He nodded once and headed off. The sharp fallen branches breaking under his feet and the whip-like limbs of the saplings reaching out for his face made him think of the madman’s victims being marched barefoot into the woods in the middle of the night, their feet cut to ribbons, their soft skin scratched and slashed at. And always the faceless, hooded man walking behind them, protected from the elements and the fury of the woods by his shapeless clothing. Soon the madman would have a face and Sean would be staring straight into it. He felt a surge of excitement and adrenalin surge through his body. It was all he could do not to smash through the wooden fence, charge down the grassy hill and flush out Thomas Keller – the
hunter becoming the hunted as he finally cornered him and then …

  He reached a place he guessed would be near enough the vantage point and began to ease another panel from the frame, the rusty nails pulling free from the damp wood easily. He propped the panel against the fence and looked through, a satisfied smile spreading across his face as he realized he’d stopped at almost exactly the place he’d intended to, the buildings below being no more than forty metres away and washed in spring sunshine. He could see pretty much everything.

  ‘Take a look,’ he whispered, moving aside to let Sally peer through. She took a quick glance then handed the vigil back to him. ‘This is our man,’ he added, never taking his eyes off his quarry. ‘This place is perfect for him – the woods, the isolation. He keeps them here too – close at hand for when he needs …’ Just in time he remembered Sally was standing next to him … ‘to go to them. He doesn’t want to keep them miles away, having to get into his car and drive to see them – he covets his collection too much. He needs to be able to see them instantly, as soon as he wants to.’

  ‘His collection?’ Sally queried.

  He was about to answer until a movement caught his eyes, a change in the shadows of an open door leading into a small brick building.

  ‘Someone’s moving,’ he whispered. As he looked on, the shadow in the doorway stepped into the light and turned into a man. ‘He’s carrying something …’

  ‘What?’ Sally managed to ask, her heart pounding, wanting to be anywhere but there.

  ‘… a mattress and … and clothes – some sort of clothing. Here,’ he said, his excitement matching her anxiety.

  Sally took a peep. ‘Looks like an outside toilet to me.’

  Sean peered back through the gap in time to see the man place the items on the ground and lock the door with a padlock before recovering the clothing and mattress and heading off across the forecourt towards a dilapidated bungalow he guessed was his living quarters. ‘That’s no outside toilet,’ he said. ‘You don’t padlock an outside toilet. And the mattress and the clothes – it must be the entrance to an old bomb shelter or cellar.’ He filled his lungs and pushed himself away from the fence. ‘He keeps them in there,’ he told himself as much as Sally. ‘Deborah Thomson’s down there.’