The Keeper dsc-2

by Luke Delaney

  ‘You shouldn’t smoke at all — you’re a bloody surgeon,’ she reminded him. He merely shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I must say, you seem quite smitten with your little police buddies. Something must have pricked your interest to have you running off to Peckham, of all places, on a Sunday morning.’

  ‘I’m working, remember?’ she reminded him.

  ‘Really?’ he asked with mock suspicion.

  ‘Yes, really. What is it you’re implying?’

  ‘Just thought you might’ve fallen for this DI’s animalistic charms. A bit of rough, and all that.’

  ‘His name’s Sean Corrigan and he’s neither rough or charming.’

  ‘Like him, though, don’t you?’

  ‘No really,’ she laughed. ‘Besides, he’s work. Or rather, it’s work.’

  Bored with his little game, he gave a dismissive wave of his cigarette. ‘Whatever. Just hurry up and help the cops catch this sicko so we can return to a normal life.’

  ‘Is that what you think I’m there to do?’ she demanded, suddenly serious, annoyed by his ignorance as much as she was by her own feelings of deceit and treachery. ‘You think I’m there to help the police find this offender?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ he questioned, puzzled.

  ‘Partly,’ she admitted, ‘but it’s not as simple as that. Never mind. I need to get going.’

  ‘Try not to let it get to you,’ he warned her, without really caring. ‘Be like the cops, blank it all out.’

  ‘You think it has no effect on them — seeing young lives torn away, dealing with the families of the victims? You think they just carry on, business as usual, and forget about it? Forget about everything?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going native on me, Detective Chief Inspector Ravenni-Ceron.’

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I could never be one of them. Even if I worked with them for ten years, I’d never be one of them. For that to happen I’d have to become a police officer. They’re a closed shop to outsiders, it’s just the way they operate.’

  ‘But you admire them, don’t you?’ he seemed to accuse her, as if admiration was a betrayal of their own preconceived self-importance.

  ‘Of course I do,’ she snapped back. ‘If you saw what they had to do and how they had to do it, the hours they have to work, the lack of sleep or rest — and still they keep going, never asking for or expecting anyone’s gratitude, always expecting to be kicked when they’re down and blamed for everything that goes wrong in the world, but doing what they have to do anyway — if you saw that the way I’ve seen it, you’d admire them too.’

  ‘Don’t get too hooked on your new friends, Anna,’ he warned. ‘They’re only temporary, remember? It’s like you said, you can never be one of them.’

  ‘If you think I’m hooked, you must be delusional,’ she told him. ‘I want this over as much as you do, but not until I find out what I’m there to find out.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she answered as she pulled her suit jacket on. ‘Not any more.’

  Sean pushed through the swing doors into the main incident room and found it deserted. He checked his watch — just gone half-past six in the morning. The office looked like a tip: dirty plates left on desks, mugs stained with half-drunk coffee dumped on every conceivable surface, rubbish bins overflowing with polystyrene cups, plastic sandwich boxes and screwed-up balls of paper that should have been shredded and placed in the confidential waste sacks, but people were getting too tired to care. He remembered it was Sunday, so the cleaners wouldn’t be through the office until the following morning. Things would get a lot worse before they got better. He couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the state of the office and the state of the investigation. Sundays — he always felt something bad was about to happen on Sunday and this was no different. Sundays as a child meant his father would be around more than usual, drinking, leading him by the hand to the upstairs bedroom, away from the rest of his family and his mother. Blind eyes turned.

  He pushed the memories aside as he crossed the room and slunk into his office, throwing the contents of his pockets across his cluttered desk and hanging his raincoat on one of the metal hooks on the back of his door that served as a coat-rack. He considered sitting on the uncomfortable chair waiting for him behind his desk, but knew he needed to keep moving for a while, or at least standing. The few hours’ sleep and a hot shower had revived him somewhat, but if he sat in the chair now, as uncomfortable as it was, the tiredness would sweep back over him and beg him to allow his body and mind to sleep. He couldn’t let that happen. He was already feeling guilty about going home when the killer was still out there, the lives of two women Sean had never met hanging on his ability to find them.

  It was too early for the local cafés, or even the station canteen, to be open, so the caffeine he both craved and needed would have to come from something other than his usual black coffee. Still standing he rummaged through the desk drawers for his caffeine tablets, pushing aside packets of ibuprofen, paracetamol and indigestion tablets until he found what he was looking for, popping two from the silver foil and swallowing them without water, then taking another without checking the dosage instructions. ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ he muttered to himself as he began to push papers around his desk, waiting for the tablets to stimulate his brain enough for him to begin reading through the seemingly endless reports, the memory of last night’s fitful sleep fading to nothing — the dreams of trees in the dark, the constant hissing of the leaves in the breeze, the faceless man in the hooded top standing over a semi-naked Louise Russell giving way to the images that would plague him during the day to come.

  As he looked around his office his attention was drawn to an enlarged photograph of Louise Russell’s face stuck to his whiteboard, her green eyes staring at him, pleading with him to find her — to save her. Involuntarily his hand came from his side and reached out to her, his index finger tracing the outline of her face. He stepped back with a jolt as an image of her yet-to-be crime-scene photographs flashed in his mind. The green eyes were still staring out at him, only now they were lifeless, no longer pleading but accusing — damning him.

  When the image cleared he stepped forward and studied her picture again. ‘Are you still alive?’ he asked her. ‘Am I too late?’

  The sound of Sally barging through the swing doors helped him look away from the photograph. They nodded hellos at a distance as he watched her go through the same routine of emptying her coat pockets on to her desk as he had just minutes earlier. He moved to the door frame of his office entrance. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked without enthusiasm.

  ‘Well, it’s barely seven o’clock in the morning, my eyes are sore and so are my feet, it’s Sunday and I’m at work … Other than that, I’m great. How about you?’

  ‘The same,’ he answered without smiling.

  ‘Any news on Louise Russell?’

  Sean knew what she meant — had a body been discovered overnight or was there still a chance? ‘No one’s called me, so I’m assuming things remain the same.’

  ‘It’s Sunday, remember,’ she warned him. ‘People walk their dogs later on a Sunday morning. My guess is we won’t be in the clear until about nine-ish.’

  ‘We should have one more day,’ he argued, ‘provided he keeps to his seven-day cycle.’ He spoke more in hope than belief, the fear that the killer was spiralling towards an end game — an orgy of unrelenting violence — marred his faint optimism.

  ‘Let’s hope he does,’ Sally muttered, looking away distractedly, searching through the notes and memos on her desk, mumbling to herself more than to him. ‘What time’s that bloody canteen open on a Sunday? Their coffee’s foul, but it’s better than nothing.’

  Sean didn’t answer, sliding back into his office and shuffling paper around on his desk only to look up and see the big, white-faced clock hanging on his wall. Sally was right — they had to survive past nine o’clock. L
ouise Russell had to survive past nine o’clock. If her body hadn’t been found by then, she might still be alive and maybe he had as much as another twenty-four hours to find her before … But even that wouldn’t give him enough time to get a Production Order, serve it and then gain access to the employee records at the sorting office. He needed something to break today — something to fall into place — something that would tear down the brick wall between the madman and him.

  In sudden desperation he grabbed a chair and pulled it up to his computer desk, sitting astride it as his fingers began to nimbly type on the keyboard. He called up the CRIS system and punched in the instructions for the same search he’d already carried out with a negative result. ‘I know you stalked the woman they’re replacements for, you must have. You must have watched her and you must have known her and she you. She couldn’t have been some stranger you obsessed over — she accepted you, but then something happened and she was taken away from you, but what and how? I know I’m right,’ he reassured himself. ‘I have to be.’

  He typed in the details of the crime he was searching for, the description of a young woman matching that of the three women he’d taken. He pressed the key to run the search and pushed himself away from the desk while he waited for the result, his heart hammering inside his ribcage. ‘I have to be right,’ he told himself, ‘I must have missed something.’ After a few seconds the screen blinked and changed to the results page. The search had returned no results. ‘Fuck,’ he called out loudly enough to make Sally look up. Last night’s conversation with Kate began to play over and over in his mind.

  … I would assume I’d missed something. I’d go back over everything I’d done and double-check I hadn’t missed anything.

  And if you hadn’t? What then?

  Then the patient would die …

  He pulled himself and the chair back to the computer and began again, this time expanding the age group of the victim by a few years either way — no results. He tried changing the length of the victim’s hair; maybe she’d had it cut since he knew her — no results. He tried changing the height of the victim a few inches either way — no results. He tried removing the specific eye colour — no results. Over and over he tried, but it was always the same — no results.

  The sound of a phone ringing in the main office somehow cut through his concentration when other distractions had not. His head spun to look at the big clock — it was almost eight o’clock. Christ, he’d been fruitlessly searching the CRIS database for more than an hour without even noticing the detectives who’d been slowly arriving and filling the office with chatter and noise, including Donnelly — but the phone ringing, its shrill electronic chirping, was something he’d been unable to block out. Why? Once again his heart started kicking and punching his chest walls. He felt his throat grow tight as he watched Sally lift the corded phone from its receiver and hold it to the side of her face as if everything was happening in slow motion, but only to him. He watched her listen to the caller, lip-reading as she responded, Where? She wrote something on a piece of paper, hung up and got to her feet, turning towards his office, head down, eyes cast to the floor.

  Silently he cursed her for walking towards him with the piece of paper in her hand. He cursed her for answering the damn phone and he cursed her for what she was about to tell him. She reached his door and looked up into his eyes without stepping inside. ‘I’m sorry,’ was all she said.

  He felt the life force flowing out of him, as if he’d been shot in the chest at point-blank range, the realization of what he was being told stabbing at his fragile self-belief. He’d failed — failed to solve the puzzle in time — and now she was dead. The madman had killed Louise Russell, but her blood would be for ever on Sean’s hands. Her lifeless staring green eyes would for ever haunt his dreams.

  It had been a long night and he hadn’t got to bed until the early hours of the morning, the night’s events leaving him excited but calm, for the time being at any rate. But as the light penetrated through the thin sheets tacked over the windows of his home, his sleep grew increasingly restless — the deep sleep of oblivion replaced by the shallow sleep that allowed the nightmares to come.

  He was young, only seven or eight, and already a veteran of the children’s home in Penge, south-east London. Other children had come and gone, but he remained. It was Sunday — the day when the grown-ups came to look at them, to talk to them and take them out for the day and buy them sweets and ice cream, maybe even take them home — just for a day visit at first, then for a night or two, and then, who knows, maybe take them home for ever. The youngest children were usually snapped up quite quickly, especially if they didn’t have siblings, but the older children, the teenagers, rarely left. They used to tell him that if you were still there when you were ten, then you’d stay there for ever.

  There had been no day trips for Thomas Keller for a while, no ice cream or visits to normal homes — not since his last trip. There had been suspicions even before that — incidents. At first nobody could be certain he was responsible. Nobody wanted to consider the consequences if he had been responsible — what that would signify, what that would mean he was. At first it was a case of things going missing, toys belonging to the other children in the family he was visiting. Nobody wanted to make a fuss, after all it was understandable, the other children had so much and he had so little. Nobody wanted him to get into trouble, but they didn’t want him to visit again either, if that was OK with the staff at the children’s home. But then it wasn’t just any toys, it was the special toys — the treasured teddy bears and dollies the children of the host family had had since they were babies. Some turned up, some didn’t, but the ones they found were always the same — slashed open with something sharp, the stuffing pulled out and the limbs removed. Still nobody wanted to make a fuss; he was angry and jealous, it was understandable given what had happened to him — they just didn’t want him to visit again. But it didn’t stop there.

  As he grew older and bolder, the family pets became his targets: the tropical fish killed by someone pouring bleach into their tank; the mice and hamsters and gerbils that went missing from their cages and were later found buried in the garden. Again, nobody could be a hundred per cent certain he was responsible. But suspicions had grown stronger when a family’s cat disappeared, only to be found hanging from a tree with a wire cord bound around its neck, swinging gently in the wind, eyes bulging, tongue protruding. They’d gone in search of Thomas then and discovered him, alone in a neighbour’s garden, withdrawn and silent, eyes staring madly with telltale scratches covering his hands and wrists — the cat had marked its killer.

  Some at the children’s home had said enough was enough, he should never be placed with a family again. Others argued that they had a duty to try, but that families who had animals, any animals, must be avoided — at least until they could overcome his cruelty towards them. Reluctantly, the doubters agreed.

  A few weeks later he had gone on a day visit to the home of a Christian family who believed that between God and themselves any child could be saved. They’d been watching him closely, as they’d been warned to do, but somehow he’d managed to sneak away. There was concern, but no panic — or at least there wasn’t until they realized their five-year-old daughter was also missing. She’d been playing alone in her bedroom with her dolls, and now she was missing. The mother had been hysterical and wanted to call the police immediately, but the father had urged her to wait, saying he would go and find them. There was no sign of them in the house, nor in the garden, nor the garage. So he began to search the alley that ran behind the back gardens. And that was where he found them — in a shed in a neighbour’s back garden, his five-year-old daughter standing naked, tears rolling down her face as Thomas Keller stood in front of her, his trousers and underpants pulled to his knees, a tiny erection gripped between the fingers and thumb of one hand while the other pointed the blade of a penknife at the stricken girl.

  The Christian father charge
d in and swatted Thomas to the floor with an open hand. ‘You sick little bastard! I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget,’ he told him. Then he proceeded to slip the leather belt from his waistband, gripping the buckle and letting the rest uncoil like a whip. Thomas had watched as the man’s big hand eased the shed door closed, raising the belt above his head.

  What followed had indeed taught him a lesson, one he never would forget — he was alone and always would be. Totally alone.

  After that day there were no more visits for Thomas Keller.

  Sean and Sally bumped along the dirt road through Elmstead Woods on the Kent-London border. They’d hardly spoken the entire length of the journey from Peckham. Sean saw two marked police cars and knew they were in the right place. A long strip of blue-and-white police tape closed off the road ahead of where the cars were parked. Sean pulled in behind them and he and Sally climbed from the car in what looked a synchronized movement. One of the uniformed cops who’d been sheltering from the morning chill jumped out of his car and approached them.

  Sean held up his warrant card: ‘DI Corrigan’ — he nodded towards Sally — ‘and DS Jones. Why have you taped the road off?’ The woods to his side he expected to be cordoned off, but not necessarily the road.

  ‘Tyre tracks,’ explained the uniform. ‘Looks like he pulled up on the side of the road, where the ground’s softer. Left some pretty good tyre marks — and footprints too. Two people, by the look of it, one wearing trainers, the other-’

  Sean cut him off: ‘The other barefoot.’ He saw the confusion in the officer’s face. ‘The last victim — she was barefoot too.’

  The uniform didn’t speak, but his face said everything.

  As Sean looked around, breathing in the atmosphere of the woods — he felt the madman’s presence. The place stank of him. They could have been back in the woods where they’d found Karen Green; the two places were so similar he could hardly tell one from the other. ‘Who found her?’ he asked. ‘A dog walker?’