The Toy Taker

by Delaney, Luke

  ‘No,’ Allen told him, feeling the beginnings of another raging headache. ‘No school today. We shall study together later, after I’ve finished work. Now eat your breakfast.’ He closed his eyes tight against the gathering storms of pain and pressed hard at his temples, fighting the nausea and dizziness.

  ‘When will we be going back to school?’ George innocently asked, but his words ripped the hidden anger from Allen’s heart.

  ‘For the love of God,’ he roared, ‘I’ve told you, forget about school – forget about your cursed families. They’re nothing to us now. It’s God’s will. How dare you question the will of God? How dare you question his judgment?’ He fell backwards as he spoke, on to the nearby work-surface. The pain made him call out in anger before he steadied himself and forced his eyes open. The two children were cowering at the table, weeping uncontrollably, fear and loathing etched into their faces. ‘I’m sorry,’ he managed to say between painful swallows. ‘Please forgive me.’ Another shot of pain forced his eyes closed once more. ‘God forgive me. Dear God, forgive me for what I’ve done.’ He staggered across the kitchen looking for the doorway like a blind man in unfamiliar surroundings. ‘I must leave you now,’ he managed to say. ‘I have to get ready for work. Finish your breakfast and return to your bedroom. We must forget what happened here and never talk about this morning ever again. Never again, you understand? Never again.’

  Sean pushed open the large flexible rubber flaps that served as swing doors leading to the main body of the mortuary at Guy’s Hospital in south-east London. Dr Canning was using an electrical surgical saw to cut through the sternum of an ancient-looking female body lying on the metal table in front of him. Sean waited for the noise of the sawing to relent before coughing to get the pathologist’s attention. Canning looked up, smiled and pulled off his protective goggles, holding them up for Sean to inspect as he walked closer.

  ‘Bloody useful bit of kit,’ the pathologist told him. ‘Bought them at my local hardware shop.’ He indicated the body with a nod of his head. ‘Sawing through old people’s bones is always a bit of a hazard – so brittle, you see, splinter easy. Wouldn’t want one in the eye.’

  ‘No,’ Sean agreed, looking around the mortuary at three other bodies, all covered with standard-issue green hospital sheets. One of them seemed tiny compared to the other two and he instantly realized who lay beneath the sheet. ‘I don’t suppose you would.’ He turned back to Canning before speaking again. ‘Busy this morning.’

  ‘This poor old dear here was a sudden death brought in from one of the many surrounding council estates. Been dead a good few days, but the cold of her flat’s preserved her rather well. No obvious cause of death and we can’t find a GP for her, so, an autopsy it is, although I don’t expect to find anything too exotic. There’s a middle-aged male, no doubt a heart attack, but I’ll have to check: he wasn’t receiving any treatment. Over there I have a relatively young woman who died in her sleep – a bit of a mystery, that one. And finally we have your little problem. The death of a child – always a terrible thing, but especially when foul play is involved.’

  ‘Have you taken a look yet?’ Sean asked.

  ‘No. He’s exactly as he was when he arrived – still wrapped in the blanket. I thought it better to wait until you or one of yours was present. Will you be taking care of the exhibits yourself?’

  ‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘We can have a preliminary look together now and I’ll send you a competent DC over later to log anything you find.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Canning agreed. ‘Shall we make a start then?’ he asked, tearing off his latex gloves and tossing them into a nearby biohazard bin, repeating the process with his only slightly bloodied and stained apron. ‘Give me a moment to scrub up.’ He headed for the nearby sink and taps. ‘Wouldn’t want to be accused of cross-contamination, would we?’

  ‘No,’ Sean answered, not really listening.

  ‘Any good with a camera, are you, Inspector?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Sean asked, the question knocking him out of his daydream.

  ‘We need to document our findings photographically. I’d usually have my assistant do it, but he’s got the day off. Typical. And I’m afraid I’m going to have my hands full. There’s a digital camera over there,’ Canning told him, pointing with a jut of his chin to a wheeled trolley covered in more green sheets, a collection of tools on top along with the camera.

  ‘My wife never trusts me with a camera. She says I take terrible pictures.’

  ‘You’ll be good enough,’ Canning assured him. ‘Just pretend you’re at one of your children’s birthday parties.’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Sean replied.

  ‘Ah. Quite. Bad example, but just snap away – I’ll sort the wheat from the chaff later,’ Canning told him.

  ‘Fine,’ Sean agreed, recovering the camera from the trolley and switching it on, making it whir slightly. A light began to blink.

  ‘Shall we?’ Canning asked, moving to the side of the small shape under the green cover. Sean breathed in sharply through his nose and nodded. Canning took hold of the top of the sheet and slowly, carefully peeled it back, mindful there could be microscopic traces of evidence clinging inside. Inch by inch he revealed the body of Samuel Hargrave, still wrapped in the blanket he’d been found in. His face was even more devoid of life than when Sean had first seen him, the features that had defined him in life now all but gone – his tiny body looking like nothing more than an organic shell, almost unrecognizable as a person, a child. Canning gave a cough to bring Sean back, prompting him to lift the camera and take two quick photographs. ‘Someone’s gone to great care to wrap him in the blanket: it’s extremely neat and tidy, almost like the sort of swaddling you sometimes see babies wrapped in. Almost as if they were trying to preserve any evidence there may be on the boy’s clothes or body.’

  ‘He wasn’t thinking about evidence,’ Sean told him. ‘He wanted to make sure Samuel stayed warm: it was cold out that night.’

  ‘So the boy was alive when he left him?’

  ‘No. He was already dead. The blanket’s an act of guilt, of shame – an attempt to apologize for what he’d done.’

  ‘Then his death could have been an accident?’ Canning suggested.

  ‘Possibly, or he lost it and killed him deliberately. Too early to say, which is why we’re here, isn’t it?’

  Canning didn’t answer, but instead leaned in close over the boy’s face.

  ‘His lips are quite blue and his skin extremely pale, even for someone who’s been dead for this length of time, so my immediate thoughts are suffocation or strangulation.’

  ‘If it’s suffocation then it could be an accident,’ Sean considered, ‘but if it’s strangulation we’ll know it’s a straight murder, although there’ll still be the CPS to convince.’

  ‘Fortunately that’s your job, not mine. Now, no doubt you’ve noticed the plastic?’

  ‘I did,’ Sean admitted, glancing at the large plastic sheet spread out under the metal stretcher the body had been placed on.

  ‘If anything falls from the body or blanket the sheet should catch it. After we’ve had a look around I’ll remove it for later examination.’

  ‘Fine,’ Sean agreed, grateful for Canning’s professionalism, but eager to press on.

  Canning scanned up and down the wrapping before speaking again. ‘There doesn’t appear to be any fastening or adhesive. The blanket seems to be held in place solely by the skill of the folding. Whoever did this has either done it many times before – a nanny or paediatric nurse perhaps – or they took great care to make it so.’

  ‘The families used nannies, but we could find no links between them,’ Sean explained. ‘But it’s still worth considering.’

  ‘I’m going to open the blanket now,’ Canning continued, ‘see what we can find.’ He rested his fingers on top of the blanket, close to the boy’s face, pausing a moment before loosening it. He moved painstakingly slowly, examining each newly rev
ealed section until he could clearly see the boy’s neck and the clothing around it. ‘There’s no bruising around the neck area, but I can see the early signs of bruising developing around his face, particularly the mouth.’

  ‘So he was smothered, not strangled?’ Sean interrupted.

  ‘It would appear so, but we’ll have to wait until I examine his trachea – internally, that is.’

  ‘I understand,’ Sean replied, keen not to be around when Canning undertook the surgical aspect of the post-mortem.

  ‘And he appears to be still in his pyjamas, unless these are something the killer dressed him in before or after he killed him.’

  ‘Ever tried dressing a dead person, Doctor? Even with a child, it’s almost impossible. These are the boy’s own clothes. The more I see, the more I think he panicked – smothered the boy to try and shut him up, and accidentally killed him – as easily and quietly as that.’

  Canning had dealt with more detectives than he could possibly remember, but none were quite like Sean. He sometimes envied Sean’s insightfulness and other times was grateful he wasn’t blessed with such a cursed gift.

  Eventually Canning looked back to the boy and continued to loosen the blanket, revealing more and more of the boy’s pyjama-clad torso, until he suddenly froze before taking a step away from the body. The boy had a small soft toy clutched to his chest – a blue dinosaur with a smiling face revealing only the top row of friendly teeth, its huge, oversized eyes cheerfully staring at nothing.

  Sean immediately recognized the unfamiliar look of confusion and disturbance on Canning’s face. ‘You find something?’ he asked, stepping forward.

  ‘What does this mean?’ Canning replied, letting Sean discover the toy for himself. ‘Is it some sort of ritual gesture?’

  Sean’s eyes fell on the toy, the sight of it and the questions it brought making him feel a little lightheaded as he tried to comprehend what it could mean: the small, blue dinosaur tucked neatly, precisely under the boy’s arms as they lay folded across his chest. ‘What are you all about, my friend?’ Sean asked out loud, unconsciously lifting the camera and taking pictures. ‘Why did you do this? Where did the toy come from? Did you give it to the boy after you’d killed him – after you’d suffocated him with your own hands? Were you trying to say sorry to him, like you’re now trying to say sorry to the world?’

  ‘Maybe he has children of his own?’ Canning offered. ‘After he killed the boy, he felt so guilty he wrapped the body with one of his own children’s toys? As you said, as a gesture of his sorrow – his guilt?’

  ‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘He doesn’t have any children of his own.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because—’ he began, breaking off as he realized that he didn’t know, at least not in a way he could explain to Canning or anyone else. ‘Wait,’ he suddenly changed tack. ‘There’s something in his hand – his right hand.’ He bent as close as he dared, squinting to better see the edge of something shiny and metallic protruding from the boy’s clenched fist. Sean’s hand began to stretch out towards the shining object, but Canning caught it around the wrist, making Sean’s head snap towards him, a momentary glare of anger in his eyes.

  ‘Gloves,’ Canning told him. ‘You’re not wearing gloves.’ Sean looked at his unprotected hands and withdrew. ‘I’ll do it,’ Canning continued, taking hold of the boy’s fingers and trying to prise them open as the lifeless muscles and tendons resisted. Canning audibly strained until at last he bent the fingers back far enough to extricate the object from the boy’s palm. ‘Fascinating,’ was all he said as he lifted the tiny metal crucifix towards the bright mortuary lights.

  The visit he’d paid to the church that morning flashed in Sean’s mind, and he remembered the words of the young priest: we’re looking so hard, but we can’t see. ‘That’s all I need,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Canning queried.

  ‘That’s all I need,’ Sean repeated. ‘A religious nut running around London abducting kids. The press will bloody love this angle. Keep this on a need-to-know basis,’ he told the pathologist. ‘As in, only you and me.’

  ‘I understand,’ Canning reassured him. ‘But this sort of behaviour, leaving religious artifacts, personal items with the body … Inspector, I’ve been doing this job long enough to know these are the hallmarks of a serial killer. Yet if I understand you correctly, you believe the perpetrator killed the boy accidentally. It appears your man is becoming something of a contradiction.’

  ‘Maybe I’m wrong.’ Sean put down the camera, tried to gather his thoughts. ‘Or he’s becoming what you say, but doesn’t know it.’

  ‘In which case you need to find him and find him quickly. He still has two other children, does he not?’

  ‘He does,’ Sean confirmed with a sigh and a frown. ‘And there’ll be more – soon.’

  ‘I can see there’s something else bothering you, Inspector,’ Canning added. ‘Would you like to tell me?’

  Sean sighed again, but knew he could speak to Canning more freely than most. ‘The toy,’ he confessed. ‘The crucifix I understand – he placed it in the boy’s hand after he realized he was dead, as an offering, a religious token, something to try and make himself feel better, to dull his own grief and guilt. But the toy, I …’ He stalled, the thought that had seemed so clear only moments ago suddenly drifting away from him. All he could do was wait – if he tried to grab at the thought it could slip between the fingers of his consciousness and be lost for ever. Slowly it drifted back to him. ‘He goes into their houses and he takes the children. They make no sound. They go with him silently – willingly. What’s one way of pacifying a child – what would win a child’s trust in the middle of the night?’

  He looked at Canning as if the pathologist might mouth the answer for him, but he just shook his head slowly and with no small degree of concern, so Sean supplied the answer: ‘You take them a gift – a present. Bastard takes them a toy – he took them all a toy. They wake up sleepily, not sure whether they’re dreaming, and the first thing they see isn’t a stranger in their bedroom but a beautiful new toy only inches away from their face. They reach out for it and he lets them take it, lets them begin to trust him before he even has to speak – that’s how he does it. That’s how he can take them so quietly. I should have thought of this earlier.’

  ‘What if the toy’s not something he brought with him?’ Canning argued. ‘What if he simply took the toy from the child’s bed before waking them.’

  Sean considered it, chewing his bottom lip. As plausible as Canning’s suggestion was, his instinct wouldn’t let him accept it. ‘No,’ he eventually said. ‘No, because it could too easily backfire on him. If the child woke and saw a stranger holding his favourite soft toy he might think he was taking it. Instead of building trust it could destroy it. Our man’s a thinker and planner. He wouldn’t risk it. He couldn’t take that chance. He has to have brought the toy with him. But we’ll check back with the parents anyway.’

  ‘I see,’ Canning murmured. ‘Shall we continue?’

  Sean nodded and the pathologist continued to unwrap the blanket as carefully as he could, inch by inch, until it lay hanging underneath the boy like the dead petals from the head of a flower. Canning moved on to the blue dinosaur-print pyjamas and began to unbutton them. He moved the cloth aside as carefully as if the boy was a living, breathing patient, and revealed his tiny, slim chest and abdomen – the skin as pale and soft as milk.

  ‘No obvious sign of injuries,’ Canning announced, before rolling the body to one side to examine his back, then repeating the process on the other side. ‘No apparent injuries or wounds to the back either.’

  Sean watched, knowing they would find nothing, but also knowing they had to look anyway, the sombre, darkening mood of both men tangible.

  Next Canning began to remove the boy’s pyjama bottoms, folding each section meticulously to catch any tiny pieces of evidence as they came free from the body. He placed the
m in a medium-sized brown paper evidence bag that had a transparent cellophane window running down the full length of one side. All clothes were bagged this way: if they were placed in plastic evidence bags any organic evidence on the clothing could turn to mould by the time the item reached the lab. Paper allowed the evidence to breathe – keeping it alive as long as it took to betray its owner.

  Canning turned to the victim’s immature genitals and anus. Sean didn’t expect him to find anything, but still he prayed he wouldn’t, looking down at his feet while the pathologist completed his initial examination of the boy’s most intimate places.

  ‘No obvious signs of sexual assault either,’ Canning announced, immediately qualifying his statement: ‘Although I can’t say with absolute certainty until I examine him more thoroughly.’

  ‘But it doesn’t look like he was … like he was touched in any way?’ Sean asked.

  ‘No,’ Canning agreed. ‘It doesn’t appear so.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Sean murmured, then gave a start as his mobile rang. It took him a moment to disentangle it from his inside coat pocket and answer.

  ‘Guv’nor, it’s DS Noble. It’s my forensic team that’s been examining the scene at 10 Hawtrey Road.’ The voice went quiet while he waited for some recognition. Eventually Sean realized he was talking about the home of the dead boy lying only inches away.

  ‘Of course,’ he managed to say as if he’d never been in doubt. ‘What d’you have for me?’

  ‘Not much, but enough. A couple of fibres and a couple of hairs from the boy’s bedroom that are probably the suspect’s. No fingerprints, so I’m thinking he wore gloves. The lab can work the hairs up for DNA. They’ll convict him once we have him, but if he doesn’t have previous convictions then they’re not going to help us find him.’

  ‘Make sure the lab compare your samples to any from the other two scenes. At least they might be able to confirm we’re only looking for one man.’

  ‘I’ll make sure it’s done,’ Noble assured him.

  ‘Let me know if you find anything else,’ Sean told him, ‘anything at all.’ He hung up before Noble could answer.