The Toy Taker

by Delaney, Luke

  The Bridgemans spoke first, keeping dutifully to the script he’d prepared for them, speaking directly into the cameras, explaining how much they loved and missed George – how much his sister missed him, that she was heartbroken without her little brother. Showing the gathered media photographs of the two playing together, telling the world what a wonderful and special child George was. ‘Good,’ Sean barely whispered. ‘Keep it personal – show George’s life with his family. Make George a person, not just a thing.’

  Next they spoke about how they understood mistakes could happen – how someone might think they were doing the right thing taking a child, but that George was loved by his family, and that they as a family forgave each other their mistakes, they were forgiving people, they never dwelled on accidents or cried over spilt milk – all coded messages to the man who’d taken George that they would forgive him and forget, if he would just let George go, even if in reality no such thing could ever happen.

  After they’d finished, Addis introduced Bailey Fellowes’ parents. They followed the same tack, only it was Mrs Fellowes who did nearly all the talking while her husband tried to control his sobbing. She stuttered and faltered as she tried to control her own emotions, almost crushing the family photographs she was supposed to show the cameras in her hand. ‘Talk,’ Sean whispered again. ‘Talk to him, damn it – talk to the man who has your child.’ Sally looked at him out of the corner of her eye, straining to hear what he was saying as Jessica Fellowes struggled onwards, her words barely audible through her sobs. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Sean said loudly enough for everyone to hear. ‘You have to be stronger than this. He won’t let your child go out of pity. You have to prove yourself to him. You have to show him you’re worth a second chance.’

  ‘I just want my baby back,’ Jessica cried into the cameras, the intensity of the flashbulbs reaching new levels. They had what they came for – the picture that would make all of tomorrow’s front pages.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Sean cursed. ‘You’d think they didn’t want to see their child again.’ He felt fingers curl around his forearm and give a slight squeeze. He looked at the hand first, his eyes rising to see it belonged to Sally.

  ‘They’re doing their best,’ she told him with sadly. ‘They don’t understand, Sean. They don’t understand like you do – not many people do.’

  He tried to think of a reply, but she was already walking back to her office. He waited a few minutes, watching the end of the press conference without listening, waiting for his anger and frustration to fade before heading after Sally to offer something akin to an apology. But when he reached her office she was sitting at her desk with her back towards the door, something no cop would ever do willingly. It was enough to tell Sean something was wrong.

  ‘You all right, Sally?’ he asked gingerly.

  ‘No,’ she answered without looking at him. ‘No I’m not.’ Her voice was shaking and he could tell she was crying. He crossed the small office and rested a hand on one shoulder while looking over the other. He felt her recoil slightly from his touch − the ghost of Sebastian Gibran still haunted her more than she allowed people to know.

  ‘Why did it have to be children?’ she asked.

  ‘We don’t get to pick and choose,’ Sean reminded her gently.

  ‘Christ, those poor parents. What must they be thinking?’

  ‘We can get the children back. We’ll find them.’

  ‘Do you really believe that? I mean really?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘But not Samuel Hargrave,’ Sally told him, her words like a knife in his chest. ‘We can’t bring him back.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed sadly. ‘No, we can’t do that.’

  ‘I thought I was ready,’ Sally admitted, ‘thought I was ready for just about anything, but I was wrong. I never thought we’d get something involving children. I don’t know why – it just never crossed my mind.’

  ‘You’re not feeling anything everybody else isn’t. This has nothing to do with what happened to you in the past. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘What about you?’ Sally asked. ‘It doesn’t seem to have affected you.’

  Sean breathed in a chestful of air before answering. ‘I don’t always react in … in …’ He struggled to find the words.

  ‘In the same way as everybody else?’ Sally asked.

  ‘I was going to say in the most appropriate way,’ Sean told her. ‘I can get obsessive at times – forget how the people around me might be feeling, how the victims’ families might be feeling. I see only the offender, the person I have to find and stop. I guess I can be a bit of a bull in a china shop.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Sally said, a rueful laugh cutting through her tears.

  ‘That’s why I need you: to give me the occasional kick up the arse and keep me from getting myself into trouble.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ she agreed, drying her eyes, her stuttering laughter replacing the crying.

  ‘Good, because I’m going to have to piss a few more people off before I catch this one. I don’t have time to tread softly if I’m going to catch him quickly. And that’s what I have to do, because this one is beginning to really worry me. He’s no Sebastian Gibran or Thomas Keller, but he’s just as dangerous. He’s living in some sort of fantasy world, and the moment that world starts to collapse around him, God only knows what he’ll do.’

  Donnelly watched the end of the press conference and then headed for the exit. He stepped between a couple of detectives who were blocking the way. ‘Must visit the little boys room and point the python at Percy.’ He walked the rest of the way along the corridor to the toilet, whistling all the way, swinging the door to the bathroom open as if he was entering a saloon. He kept the whistling going until he was sure the room was empty, then entered a cubicle and silently locked it behind him, sitting his considerable frame on the toilet with the seat still down. He was fighting hard to push the images of the parents during the press conference away, but even as their anguished faces faded slightly, the face of Samuel Hargrave in the cemetery continued to haunt him, the boy’s image burnt on to his mind. He pulled his warrant card from his jacket pocket and slipped a small photograph he carried of his family from inside. It had been taken a few years ago when the twins were only eight and his youngest, Joshua, only three. He tried to picture him alive, playing at home with his brothers and sisters, but the image of his son lying on the stone in the cemetery wouldn’t leave his consciousness – his own boy’s lips blue and his skin pale.

  He felt his throat constricting with grief and squeezed a large palm tightly over his own mouth to stem any betraying noise as his vision became blurred by the gathering tears – tears that somehow he managed to stop from flooding his eyes. Dabbing at the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand, he struggled to bring his breathing under control, filling his lungs and holding his breath until the involuntary convulsions began to fade. He kissed the photograph of his family and carefully tucked it back into his warrant card before slipping it back into his jacket. He sniffed the mucus from his nose and cleared his throat before standing. If anyone asked about his red eyes, he’d say what he always said: ‘Work hard, play hard. Life’s not a bloody dress rehearsal.’ It was what people expected from him and he saw no reason to challenge the image they were comfortable with. He flicked the cubicle lock open and stepped into the empty toilet, checking himself in the mirror before heading back to the main office, straightening his tie and smoothing his moustache. ‘Kids. Why did it have to be bloody kids?’

  11

  It was late afternoon and already growing dark by the time Sean pulled up outside the tall, slim Georgian terrace in Primrose Hill, the scene of the latest and vilest crime committed by the man he needed to try and become if he was going to catch him. Sean knew the sooner he could start thinking like this one, the sooner he could catch him – no matter how uncomfortable it might be. He parked in one of the residents-only parking bays that unusually ran at ninety-degree angles to
the pavement, rather than adjacent to it: a neat way of doubling the amount of parking spaces for the City bankers and their wives who dominated this area. The street seemed unnaturally quiet as Sean hauled his tired body from his out-of-place-looking Ford; a lull before the storm, he decided. The school runs were complete, but the husbands were still at work. He rolled the stiffness out of his neck, jerking it to release a series of cracks as he looked up at the empty, dark house.

  The family had been moved away while their house was examined and the forensic team had packed up and gone home, as per Sean’s instructions. They’d been working as covertly as they could for most of the day, doing everything within their power to avoid drawing attention. Even the usual uniformed guards had been dispensed with, replaced by surveillance units who watched from unseen positions close by. As well as keeping the scene nice and quiet, they’d also been briefed by Sean to watch for anybody who appeared to be taking an unnatural interest in the house, even if they just lingered outside for a few seconds. There was always the chance the offender would return to the scene. Sean didn’t believe he would – this one didn’t feel like that – but the possibility had to be taken into consideration. If there’d been an obvious sexual element to his crimes then the pull of revisiting the scene would have been much stronger.

  Sean looked up the number of one of the surveillance team members who he knew would be looking at him right now and pressed call.

  ‘Hello,’ a female voice answered.

  ‘DI Corrigan – about to enter the address,’ was all he said.

  ‘We have you,’ the voice told him and hung up.

  Sean pulled the house keys he’d borrowed from the forensic team from his coat pocket, rhythmically clenching and releasing his fist around them, feeling self-conscious, knowing the eyes of the surveillance team would be on him, watching his every move. Quickly he slid the key into the centre deadlock before suddenly freezing, looking down at the hand that held it – some instinct or some connection with the man who’d come in the night telling him his actions were wrong – out of sequence. In that second he forgot the surveillance team were watching and began to slip into his own dark world – the world he shared with only one other.

  He pulled the key out without turning it and stepped back from the door, looking it slowly up and down. He noted that it had the same type of deadbolt security locks top and bottom, then a different type in the centre – the one he’d almost unlocked − with a Yale lock just below it for when the family needed to leave the door on the latch. Sean considered the report on possible points of entry. This scene was exactly same as the others – there was no possible way the suspect could have entered through anything other than the front door. All windows and rear doors of the three houses were fitted with security locks that could only be unfastened from the inside. As impenetrable as the front door looked, it was the only way he could have entered.

  ‘Did it look daunting?’ Sean found himself whispering. ‘Standing here in the middle of the night, looking up at this door, all these locks − or didn’t it bother you? No, you weren’t afraid – you knew these locks would be child’s play to you. You didn’t stand here fumbling in the darkness – you came straight to this door, prepared your tools and opened the locks. But you didn’t start in the centre of the door, did you? You wanted to control the movement of the door – you couldn’t afford for it to pop open unexpectedly.’ He scanned the door once more before sliding a different key into the top lock, one of a pair of identical deadlocks fitted top and bottom, opened by the same key, smoothly turning it to open. ‘You did the top lock first,’ Sean told the darkness, crouching down to slide the same key into the bottom lock, ‘and then you did the bottom lock – the same type of lock, so you opened them one after the other using the same technique, the same tools.’ After releasing the lower lock he stood and stared at the two remaining locks halfway up the door. ‘Then you did the central deadlock,’ he continued, again slipping the key into the hole, imitating the events of the night before. ‘Did the excitement begin to rise – threaten to overtake you when you realized there was only one simple lock between you and the inside of the house? The family? The boy? … No,’ he eventually decided. ‘No, you didn’t come here for excitement, did you? Your cause is more serious – something you believe you have to do, even if sometimes you don’t want to.’

  He let the ideas fire around his mind for a while before finally slipping the Yale key into the last lock and turning it, the door immediately opening inwards with a click, the warm air from inside being sucked out into the cold evening, rushing past Sean and making him quickly close the door. ‘No. You wouldn’t have let the door open like that. You wouldn’t have risked the noise, wouldn’t have risked a breeze catching it and blowing it wide open.’ He took hold of the door handle and pulled the door towards him, once again turning the key as he did so. This time the lock clicked open, but the door remained secure until he gently pushed in inwards and open, quickly and quietly stepping inside, closing the door behind him with another click as he leaned with his back to it, looking into the darkness of the house, listening for sounds of life. ‘Did you wait here long, enjoying the warmth of the house after the cold of outside? Did you wait until the numbness in your hands and feet had gone before heading for the stairs?’ Again Sean waited a few moments for the answers to come before daring to move. ‘No, you didn’t want to waste any time. You’re no voyeur. You didn’t want to spend time amongst the family’s things – you didn’t want to be a part of their lives. At the other two scenes you locked the doors behind you when you left because you didn’t want to leave the families in any danger, exposed. You took no pleasure in the suffering you knew you were about to cause. You just came, took the child and tried to leave. Only this time something went wrong and you had to run and the boy died. But why are you taking these children in the first place? Why are you risking everything to take them?’ No answer came.

  He pushed himself off the front door and began to slowly walk along the hallway towards the stairs, the luminous light from the alarm system’s control panel drawing his attention and reminding him of the other houses – the other scenes. ‘All the houses have alarms, but somehow you know they’re not working. How do you know that? Of all the houses in London, you pick three where the alarm isn’t working – that can’t possibly be by chance. You knew. You knew, but how? We need to check back further – check the … check the alarm-monitoring companies, the key-holders, the families who used to live in the houses. Were they once monitored by the police? Is it something about these alarms that somehow connects these families?’ He froze for a second as he considered the dozens of lines of inquiry that such checks would throw up, but if they had to be done – so be it.

  He left the alarm and headed for the stairs, climbing them steadily, his hand hovering above the bannister but careful not to touch it, talking to himself as he moved ever upwards, the street lamp outside providing the only light, just as he was sure it had the previous night. ‘You’re so damn comfortable in this house and the others, finding your way to the boy’s bedroom in the dark – no accidental wandering into the wrong room. Damn it – I know you know these houses, but how? We’ve checked the estate agents, the removal companies, the alarm companies and everything else − nothing links the families, but you’ve been in these houses before – before you took the children, but when? What the fuck am I missing? What?’

  He continued his climb to the third floor, briefly pausing outside the room he guessed the parents used as their bedroom, remembering the initial scene report: parents on the second floor, children on the third. The door was only slightly open, but he needed to see inside. He placed the knuckle of his index finger high on the door and pushed, acutely aware he wasn’t wearing gloves of any kind. Touching the front door hadn’t been a problem – he knew Forensics had completed their work there, but he couldn’t be sure about the parents’ room. Forensics would kill him if they knew he’d been in the scene without
a full forensic suit, never mind without gloves, but he dare not put any type of barrier between himself and the house – between himself and the man who’d killed Samuel Hargrave. Not even a thin skin of latex.

  As the door swung slowly open it made a slight creaking noise – the sort of noise that would go unnoticed during the daytime in a busy house full of noisy children. But in the dead of night the sound would have seemed a hundred times louder – potentially mysterious and terrifying. Sean quickly looked around the room before returning to the hallway, satisfied the room held nothing for him. As he climbed to the third floor and the children’s bedrooms he noticed the creak of a stair, his heart beating faster and faster. Knowing an idea was about to reveal itself, he tried to clear his mind, to provide his thoughts with a blank canvas to paint their picture on – sure he was at last close to something, something case-changing.

  He stepped on to the third-floor hallway and froze, every minute sound of the house echoing like church bells in his head until finally the idea showed itself. ‘Fuck. Fuck. You know these houses in the night. You’ve been here before in the night. That’s how you were able to enter and leave without a sound, wasn’t it? Because you knew every sound the house could make to betray you.’ But his elation was short-lived as a wave of other questions and doubts crashed over him, making his head begin to thump. ‘You’re good with locks, so you came in the same way – through the front doors. You looked around the houses, carefully noting everything – where the children slept, where the parents slept, which floorboards would creak − so when you came back for the children you would know everything you needed to. But … but why would you let yourself in, learn everything you needed to know and then leave without the child?’