The Vault

by Karen Long

  “I know!” said Claddis untroubled by the gesture. “Here’s a better one,” he said, slamming his hand onto her shoulder. “‘How I Escaped Murder at the Hands of…” Eleanor looked through the steel mesh at Laurence’s expression. Curiously he no longer looked angry but a look of fear seemed to widen his eyes and dilate his pupils. She was still puzzling over this change of expression, as she turned to face Claddis McAvoy. She didn’t need to slow down her subsequent actions by processing them through her frontal cortex because she’d practiced them many times in both the Academy and in the line of duty. Using her left hand she unhooked McAvoy’s hand from her right shoulder and twisted it ninety degrees. Before he could vocalise his dismay or pain, Eleanor had spun him onto the ground and delivered a solid finger punch to his throat. This cut off air intake and expression for Claddis, who was flailing desperately in an attempt to unblock his windpipe. Barely registering the shouting from Laurence and the rattle of the fencing as he hauled himself over, Eleanor delivered what were intended to be a series of well-positioned blows to Claddis’ face, designed to render him more accommodating and, most importantly, less talkative.

  However, what spoiled the ensuing silence was the unremitting, mechanical click of the camera.

  “Run that shit past me one more time will you? Because I swear the first time it sounded to me like no one really got hit and the photographs that are sitting on the DA’s desk and on mine are not incriminating at all!” bellowed Marty Samuelson, snatching up a photograph from the large collection spread across his desk and flapping it in Laurence’s face. “This looks like your partner, soon to be ex-partner, thumping the living shit out of a journalist.” He turned the photograph around and drew it up to his face, pausing as he took in the image. “No, it doesn’t matter how many times I look at it, it still says the same thing to me. Suspension pending further investigation!”

  Laurence sighed and shifted his position in the chair. “Mr McAvoy, grabbed DI Raven’s shoulder and her reaction was purely instinctive…”

  “…Instinctive is when a bear eats you and a raccoon shits on your barbeque! There was nothing about that encounter that should have triggered an instinctive response. She could have warned him, or arrested him, or posed for a photograph. What she did was apply deadly force to an overweight journalist nagging her for an interview – one that she had promised him I hasten to add, at an undesirable time. Is that an accurate summation?”

  Laurence thought for a moment and then shook his head. “Her back was to him and she interpreted his actions…”

  “The fuck she did! Eleanor Raven is trained to assert deadly force and withhold it if the circumstances are not appropriate, as they weren’t in this case!”

  Laurence opened his mouth to speak but Marty cut him off with a fist thump to the table. “And you! In an effort to ameliorate the situation, arrested Mr McAvoy when what you should have been doing was calling for an ambulance.” “In my defence…”

  “Fuck your defence. You are indefensible!” Marty pointed a meaty finger at Laurence, his face red and pinched with rage. “There will be no limit to the amount of front page coverage on this debacle. Full cover spreads of Toronto’s finest beating a journalist into a near coma and then cuffing him. It spells IA and some serious personnel relocations to me!”

  “Sir…” began Laurence but was cut off by a knock on the door. Samuelson held up a finger, “Enter.”

  Mo came in quietly and pulled a seat up to Samuelson’s desk and flopped down.

  “Well?” asked Samuelson.

  “He’s ok and is willing to withdraw all charges provided that Raven gives him the interview she promised.”

  Samuelson let the news sink in and then snorted. “What’s the catch?”

  “That’s the catch! He wants a blow by blow account of what happened to her when she was taken prisoner by Lee Hughes.”

  “That’s it?”

  Mo nodded but neither Laurence nor Mo looked in any way relieved.

  “What am I missing?” asked Samuelson scowling. “She gets a free pass and you two are lemon sucking?”

  “She can’t do it,” said Mo simply.

  “Can’t or won’t?” snarled Samuelson.

  “She can’t,” said Mo.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I need to get back to work,” said Eleanor pointedly.

  Seb Blackmore smiled and nodded. The silence grew. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the front of her shirt. Eleanor didn’t look. “It’s blood isn’t it?” he said leaning towards her and examining the stain. “Is it yours?” he asked with the same degree of concern.

  “No. It isn’t.” Eleanor replied. “But you know that don’t you.”

  “I don’t know anything until you tell me,” he replied simply.

  “It belonged to Claddis McAvoy.”

  Seb Blackmore nodded sagely and leaned further back in his chair. “That was several hours ago; didn’t you have the time to change into a clean shirt?”

  She looked at him with irritation. “I was sent straight here by my commanding officer and was not encouraged to go home, shower and make myself more presentable.”

  “Why do you think you were sent here?”

  “Because my actions were considered… excessive, I imagine.”

  “You imagine or know?” he asked.

  “For fuck’s sake! I was irritated by McAvoy’s intrusive approach and… over-reacted. Is that enough?”

  “Enough for what?”

  Eleanor steadied her breathing and stabilised the rising tide of anger and discomfort. “Enough to get me out of this office and back into my own.”

  Seb Blackmore studied her for a moment or two before answering slowly. “No. It’s not I’m afraid. I said categorically last session that you were on a knife-edge and sooner or later you would find yourself unable to control your anger. You are unravelling Eleanor Raven and my job is to pick up the stiches and knit you back together.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” she snarled.

  “I need to gain some trust and then take you through the healing process.”

  “Trust? How the hell am I supposed to trust a man who broke the patient’s right to confidentiality and talked to her partner? You even gave him my hospital notes!”

  “You can’t and won’t trust me at the moment, maybe never but you clearly indicated the one person you do trust and I reached for him. He knows nothing more than the fact that you had problems swallowing in hospital and that there’s nothing physically wrong with you. I don’t think I broke your patient confidentiality rights but, like you, I don’t follow the rules to the letter. I see them as more of a guide. That’s right isn’t it Eleanor. That’s how you and I solve our cases by careful and thorough research and betting on our own judgment.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “So what’s the procedure now?”

  Seb looked at her carefully. “We talk.”

  “Until I say the right thing and you call Samuelson and tell him I’m cured?”

  Seb smiled. “Ah, that it were that simple. No, we talk until you don’t need to talk anymore.”

  “And how will we know when I’m done with the talking?”

  He smiled enigmatically.

  She looked at him with scepticism. “Ok let’s start.” She looked at her watch pointedly.

  Seb smiled at her for a moment and then his face hardened. “We’re going to start with Caleb.”

  For a moment Eleanor couldn’t believe that she’d heard him correctly. She tried to articulate but her mouth felt heavy; anaesthetised. “…What did you say?”

  “We’re going to start with Caleb. Caleb Tattenhall was your friend and you found his body when you were thirteen. That’s correct isn’t it?”

  Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t understand how you have that information.”

  “There was a police investigation and court hearing. You were a witness and as one of the investigating officers’ daughter, you were ment
ioned in the national papers. It was an easy research and my position allows me access to sensitive archived materials.”

  Eleanor stared at him in shock.

  Seb allowed her a moment or two before launching into his speech. “We have to start at the beginning and the beginning was Caleb. His stepfather had been sexually abusing him since he was eight and strangled him during one of these rapes. There was no evidence that he intended to kill him; it was a sex session that went too far. He didn’t really try to cover it up did he? He just dumped the body by the trash cans. It was almost as if he were making a point about how little he valued his stepson’s life.” Seb saw the steady paling of Eleanor’s skin and gave her a moment to recover before he ploughed on. “You went to find out what had happened to your friend because he hadn’t been in school. You took your dog, tied it up to the railings when it wouldn’t stop barking and then walked up to the front door.” He didn’t blink or move his focus from hers. “But you didn’t knock did you?” His voice was slowing imperceptibly. “Something told you not to knock but to go and look at the basement steps. That’s where his naked body was, underneath the trash cans and the rubbish. That’s where you found his body.”

  Eleanor felt her body jolt with the exertion of pushing into the seat back. She swallowed hard and tried to get a handle of the rising nausea. “I really don’t want to talk about this,” she managed.

  “What I want to know is why you didn’t knock?”

  Eleanor had had enough; she grabbed her phone and bag and headed for the door.

  “If you walk away from this session I will have no choice but to call Samuelson and inform him that this department cannot endorse you as a serving officer. You will be suspended pending further evaluation.”

  Eleanor’s hand was on the door handle. A wave of coldness swept across her, tightening her chest and throat. She concentrated on her hand, hoping it would make the decision for her but it neither activated nor loosened its grip on the door. Slowly she lowered her forehead against the door, feeling the pressure against her temple. “I don’t know why. An instinct, a sense of foreboding maybe.” She rolled her head and felt the pounding of her temple against the wood. “There was a sign.”

  “What was the sign?”

  She closed her eyes and stopped fighting the image that had visited her so often over the last two decades. “I don’t know.”

  Minutes passed.

  “What was the sign Eleanor?”

  She lifted her head. “He wanted me to listen.”

  He nodded expectantly.

  “He wanted to tell me something.” Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak or breathe. “I could have stopped it happening. Told someone… Got him out of there.”

  Seb shook his head. “No, you couldn’t have Eleanor. Detective Inspector Raven could have stopped it. She’d remove Caleb from the household, piece together the evidence, and make sure there was a leak-proof case. Eleanor the child couldn’t have understood because Caleb wouldn’t have given you enough of the story for you to understand. He may have hinted at what was happening. He may have told you that his stepfather hit him but what he couldn’t have told you was that he was being sexually abused. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “You’re wrong. There were signs and I ignored them.”

  “Eleanor, there were signs but they weren’t for you.”

  The bath held no relief for Eleanor that evening. She looked at the two photographs tacked to the mirror and could only see two dead children. She turned away and tried to let her mind free associate but all it did was search amongst the trash cans for a lost face. Inertia and depression were settling on her like an anvil. For a brief moment she contemplated slipping below the water line and letting her lungs fill with water but even in the unlit place she’d retreated to Eleanor knew she still possessed the will to fight. It was with this in mind that she pulled a T-shirt over her wet skin and pulled down the loft ladder. The loft space for her apartment was only marginally higher than a crawl space and had been used mainly to store unloved gifts, several boxes of passed down memorabilia and to hide the photocopied file notes of cases she’d worked on. At the bottom of the first plastic tub was a dated folder, its corners thumbed and scored. Unlike the others this was an original file, designated for incineration when the City converted pre-1995 solved files to digital data only. She didn’t like handling the paper; it had an aura of despair and hopelessness about it. Neither did she didn’t want to read it. There was nothing more to be gleaned from the pages; she just needed to see him.

  It was a school photograph and although the face was immediately recognisable she couldn’t have pulled it up from her memory, it had long ago been replaced by the bloat of decomposed flesh. Caleb wore the same uniform that she had, shared the same classes and, possibly, aspirations but that’s where the similarities with his life ended. On the occasions that Eleanor had forced herself to look at him she’d taste again the cascade of emotions that both defied and defiled her. Caleb was her ‘safe word’, the boy who had experienced all of the world’s horror so she wouldn’t have to.

  Her hands steadier, she slid the remains back into the folder and piled her life back on top of it.

  It was well past midnight when Toby slid the Oldsmobile into the residents’ car park. He’d checked on his initial visit that there was no CCTV but still made every effort to tuck the car into the least visible corner. The sash had been lifted and there was sufficient room for him to slide his arm inside and unplug the wedge. When his eyes had finally acclimatised to the darkness of the room, he could see Tommy lying sprawled on the bed, clad only in pyjama shorts and vest top, the duvet flung to the floor. Climbing through the window was not as easy as he had imagined and his graceless landing made Tommy’s eyes flicker momentarily before he turned himself onto his side and tucked his knees into his stomach. Toby waited, slowing his breathing down and calming himself before tiptoeing slowly towards the door and listening carefully. He held his breath… nothing. Both women must be asleep. He reached into his pocket for the small bottle of chloroform and the lint packed tea strainer and took a step towards the sleeping child. A sudden metallic crunch stopped him dead. Extracting the object from beneath his foot he saw that he’d stepped on a length of train track. The tin engines had been scattered haphazardly around the base of Tommy’s bed and when Toby looked closely he saw that this was no ordinary child’s toy but one of the very early Hornby models. Delighted, he scooped up the engines and placed them carefully into his pocket. How natural that his son would have been attracted to the same quality of artefact that he was.

  It was with some degree of trepidation that he uncapped the bottle and measured out what he believed to be an amount sufficient to anaesthetise the boy but not kill him. Holding it at arm’s length, so as not to inadvertently dose himself, he tipped a couple of drops of the pungent liquid onto the lint and with only a slight hesitation held the strainer close to Tommy’s face so that it funnelled the fumes into his nose and mouth. For several moments nothing happened and just as Toby was beginning to question his ability to read labels the child shuddered and opened unseeing eyes. Toby stared into the blue eyes and noted with dispassionate interest that one pupil was beginning to dilate, making his appearance strangely off-set. For a touching moment Tommy’s hands reached for his face and tried to swat at the strainer. Gently, Toby untangled the hands and reached for the carotid pulse, which after an initial panicked rise was beginning to slow to a steady thump. Tentatively he pulled away the strainer and leaned over the child. He was breathing, a little erratically but he was alive. With infinite care, Toby slid his arms underneath the small hot body and scooped him into his arms.

  Little Tommy was coming home.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The call came in at six thirty am and within twenty seconds Emergency Services had been deployed. It took a further thirteen minutes for the two patrol officers to battle morning traffic and confirm the possibility of an
abduction, before Timms and Wadesky were called to assess the situation. Rosheen Banks was in a state of hysteria when the patrol officers arrived and paramedics were summoned to chemically alleviate the situation to enable the officers to get some information out of her.

  “What we got?” asked Timms, as he slid into the passenger seat. “Say that’s mine!” he said pointing to a coffee.

  “It’s yours buddy,” Wadesky confirmed, as she flipped on lights and siren. “Seven-year-old boy missing from his bed; window deliberately opened. Called in at six thirty by grandma, a Siobhan Banks.”

  Timms reached for the call sheet. “Patrol searching the streets?”

  “Apparently. No signs of him yet.”

  “Eta?”

  “Six to eight,” she replied.

  Timms dialled. “Johnson? You got the Thomas Banks call sheet? Yeah, on our way now. Run the names through the system will ya and call me back? Especially Dad…Thanks.”

  Rosheen Banks was considerably calmer when Timms and Wadesky arrived, the sedative having taken the edge off the turmoil. “Mrs Banks?” asked Wadesky.

  “Rosheen Banks, yes,” she replied. “I went in to get him up for school but his bed was empty. I asked mom if she’d… you are looking for him?” her eyes darted unhappily from Siobhan, to Wadesky, to the female patrol officer.

  “We have patrol officers on the streets but the more information you can give us the faster we can target the search. Do you understand?”

  Rosheen nodded her head jerkily, a fresh brew of tears working their way out noisily.

  “You’re putting out an Amber alert?” said Siobhan Banks.