Читать книгу The Keeper - Luke Delaney - Страница 8

Thomas Keller arrived for the afternoon shift feeling content and calm, almost happy. He walked through the gates of the Holmesdale Road Royal Mail sorting office in South Norwood and headed towards the large grey building he’d worked in as a postman for the last eleven years. It had changed little inside and out since he’d started there not long after leaving school at seventeen. To begin with he’d been restricted to menial jobs, working his way up to helping with the sorting. It took several years before he was finally given his own round. He’d never sought to go further in the Royal Mail and knew he never would. He entered the main building and clocked on, the same time-card-punching machine noting his arrival now just as it had done eleven years ago.

Without acknowledging his colleagues he walked to his station in front of the seven-foot tall wooden shelving system and began to prepare the mail for his round, placing the letters and parcels into pigeonholes according to postcode. He found the work easy and relaxing; its repetitiveness allowed his mind to wander to more pleasant thoughts and recent memories.

He was unaware that he was smiling until a voice too close behind him broke his reverie.

‘’Allo,’ the scratchy voice accused, thick with a south-east London accent. ‘Someone looks happy.’

Thomas Keller knew who the voice belonged to. Jimmy Locke was one of his regular tormentors.

‘D’you get your end away or something, Tommy?’ Locke bellowed, the smile broad on his face as he looked around at the other men working their stations for approval. Their laughter indicated that he had found an appreciative audience.

Keller looked sheepishly over his shoulder and smiled briefly before returning to his task, doing his best to ignore them.

‘Oi!’ Jimmy demanded, his face suddenly more serious, the Crystal Palace Football Club tattoos on his biceps stretching as he flexed the sizeable muscles that helped offset his growing beer-gut, his cropped hair making his head look small. ‘I asked you a question, Tommy.’

The room fell quiet as the men waited for an answer.

‘My name’s not Tommy,’ Keller responded weakly. ‘It’s Thomas.’

‘Is it now?’ Jimmy mocked him. ‘So tell me, Thomas – is that Thom-arse or Tom-ass?’

More laughter, the other men enjoying Keller’s impending humiliation. Keller continued to try and ignore them.

‘So what are you, son, an arse or an ass?’ Locke turned to face his audience, pleased with his wit, his daily ritual of destroying Thomas Keller bit-by-bit almost complete. ‘I’m waiting for an answer, Thom-arse, and I don’t like being kept waiting, especially not by little cunts like you.’

Keller felt the shame crawling up his back, hatred and fear swelling in his belly in equal measures. He felt his skin tingling, growing hot and sweaty, his face and the back of his neck glowing red, super-heated by his crushing embarrassment and feelings of uselessness. He heard Locke moving closer to him, readying himself to spit more venomous words into his ear, but still he couldn’t find the strength to turn and face his torturer. He cursed the power for deserting him, the power he felt when he was with them, alone in his cellar with them. If he had that power now he would tear Locke apart. He would tear them all apart. One day, he promised himself. One day he would turn and face them, and then they would all be sorry.

Locke’s mouth moved in close to the side of his face, the smell of stale beer and tobacco unmistakeable. Keller tried to lift his arms to pigeonhole the letters, but they refused to rise.

‘Are you a queer, Thom-arse?’ Locke demanded. ‘Me and the boys reckon you’re a fucking queer. Is that right? Because we don’t like working in the same place as a fucking queer. Some of the boys are worried you might give them AIDS. They reckon you dirty faggots are all disease-ridden. Is that right, Thom-arse? Are you infected?’ Locke’s face, twisted with bigotry, was inches from his.

‘I’m not a homosexual,’ Keller managed to stutter, barely a whisper.

‘What?’ Locke almost shouted into his ear, flecks of spittle pricking the side of Keller’s face.

‘I’m not a homosexual,’ Keller repeated a little louder, wishing he had a knife in his hand, imagining how he would spin on his heels, keeping the knife low and tight to his own body, flashing it across Locke’s abdomen, stepping back to watch the red streak spread across the fat bastard’s belly as his intestines slowly tumbled out like eels from a fishing net, with Locke struggling to push them back into the cavity of his gut, a look of horror replacing the smug expression on his face.

‘What did you say, queer?’ Locke snapped, making him jump as he yelled into his ear. ‘Can’t you faggots speak properly?’

Without warning, Keller turned on his tormentor, the imagined knife in his hand slashing at the soft flesh of Locke’s over-sized belly just as he’d planned. The movement was enough to make Locke jump back, fear flashing across his features for a split second. Keller had never dared turn to face him before. He would make sure the little faggot never did again. His fingers curled into a well-practised fist, miniscule scars bearing witness to the teeth he had punched in the past.

Keller waited for the blow he knew would come. Instead he heard a voice demanding, ‘What’s going on here, men?’

The strong calm voice that carried a trace of Jamaican belonged to the shift supervisor, Leonard Trewsbury. He peered at Locke over the top of his bifocals, refusing to be intimidated by the younger, bigger man. The man who he knew detested being supervised by a black man.

‘Nothing for you to worry about, Leonard,’ Locke pushed.

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ the supervisor warned him, knowing Locke would back down. ‘And you can call me Mr Trewsbury.’ He maintained eye contact with Locke, daring him to give him an excuse to put him on report or, better still, dismiss him altogether. ‘OK, everybody, let’s get back to work,’ he ordered.

Eyes glaring and vengeful, Locke slunk back to his workstation.

Trewsbury pulled Thomas Keller to one side. He liked the boy. Keller kept himself to himself and worked hard. He came to work on time and was always looking for and willing to do overtime. What he did with his money was a mystery. Trewsbury never asked and Keller never told.

‘You shouldn’t let them push you around,’ Trewsbury told him.

‘It’s all right,’ Keller lied. ‘It doesn’t bother me. They’re just joking.’

‘That’s not what it looked like. Next time Locke or any of his cronies bothers you, you let me know, OK?’

‘OK,’ Keller agreed, the pounding in his heart mercifully receding, the throbbing pain of self-loathing and rage easing in his temples.

‘Good man,’ said Trewsbury. ‘Now let’s get back to work before we fall too far behind to catch up.’

‘Sure,’ Keller replied, trying to sound cool and in control. But inside his soul, where nobody could see, the images of his revenge were playing out cold and cruel, bloody and excruciating. When he was with Sam, when they were finally together as they were meant to be, as he knew she wanted them to be, she would give him the strength to be the person he knew he really was. And then he would make Locke and the others regret their tormenting. He would make them all regret everything they had ever done to him.

Sean turned on to the access road in Norman Park, Bromley, heading towards Scrogginhall Wood. Only in a city would such an insignificant patch of forest be given the title ‘Wood’. His car bumped along the uneven track, bouncing him around inside and causing him to swear out loud. As he passed between the wooden posts that marked the entrance to the car park, he saw there were a number of cars parked there in addition to the police vehicles he’d expected to see. Presumably their owners hadn’t returned from walking dogs or liaising with their extra-marital lovers. He hadn’t decided yet whether he was going to let any vehicles be taken away. One could belong to the man he hunted. He could be lingering in the trees, watching the police, laughing at them. Laughing at him.

He spotted Donnelly sitting on the boot of his unmarked Vauxhall, which was parked next to the uniform patrol who’d found Louise’s red Ford Fiesta. An AA man was standing by in his van, waiting to be given the order to use his box of tricks to open the abandoned car.

Sean pulled up at a forty-five-degree angle to the car that was now a crime scene, blocking any other vehicles from driving too close to potentially precious tyre tracks or footprints. He swung his feet from the carpet of his car to the surface of the car park, disappointed to feel a rough mixture of compressed dirt and solid stone connecting with the soles of his shoes; not a promising surface for recovering useable prints or tracks.

Catching sight of him, Donnelly flicked his cigarette as far as he could away from the found car, aware of his own DNA soaked into the butt, not wanting to end up the subject of ridicule at the next office lunch for having contaminated the crime scene.

Sean made a beeline for the car, calling out to Donnelly while scanning the ground. ‘Let’s start tightening things up a bit, shall we?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning securing the entire area as a crime scene, not just the car itself. And not dropping fag butts close to the centre of it.’

Donnelly looked in the direction of his discarded cigarette, disappointed by Sean’s lack of appreciation for the distance he’d managed to flick it.

Sean tugged the rubber gloves he’d produced from his pocket over his hands, all the while surveying the ground around Louise Russell’s abandoned car, a mute mechanical witness to her fate. He could see nothing obvious so moved closer to the car, slowly circling anti-clockwise, his eyes passing over every last millimetre of the ground. Donnelly watched silently, knowing when best to leave Sean to himself – to his own methods.

After a few minutes Sean was back at the spot he’d started from. Again he began to circumnavigate the car, clockwise this time, his eyes concentrating on the vehicle itself, searching for anything, anything at all. A trace of the suspect’s blood drawn from his body by a fighting, scratching victim. A scrape from another vehicle that might have left a paint trace or imprinted a memory in the mind of whichever motorist had been struck by a red Fiesta that failed to stop after the accident. Louise had kept the car spotlessly clean – any visible evidence would have been relatively obvious, but he could see none.

If there were clues to be found on the exterior of the car they must be invisible to the naked eye. Perhaps they might yet be retrieved with the use of powders and chemicals, ultraviolet lights and magnification. In the meantime Sean needed to see inside the car, to feel its stillness before Roddis and the forensic boys turned it into a science circus.

‘Let’s get it open,’ he said.

Donnelly strode across to the waiting AA van and tapped on the window. The driver dropped his copy of the Sun and eagerly jumped out, grabbing a bag of unusual tools from the back.

‘Will you be able to get it open?’ Donnelly asked, more out of the need for something to say than because of any doubts.

‘It’s a Ford,’ the AA man answered, heading for the car. ‘It’ll only take a few seconds. Which door do you want opening?’

‘The passenger door,’ Sean told him. ‘I’d appreciate it if you could touch as little as possible.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ he answered, already tugging what looked like an over-sized metal ruler with a hook at one end from his bag. Sean recognized it, known to AA men and car thieves alike as a slim-jim. The AA man peeled back the rubber window seal and slid the metal deep down into the door panel. His face twisted in concentration as he manoeuvred the slim-jim blindly around the mechanics of the door, before suddenly jerking it upwards, an audible click letting all present know the door was now unlocked. The AA man immediately reached for the door handle, but Sean’s hand wrapped around his wrist and stopped him.

‘Hasn’t been checked for prints yet,’ Sean told him.

Once the AA man had been moved away, Sean’s gloved hand stretched carefully towards the handle, one finger hooking under it in the place the suspect was least likely to have touched. He pulled his finger up and waited for the door to pop open a fraction, his other hand poised to stop a sudden breeze swinging it fully open before he was ready. He checked around the now broken seal that separated the door from the main body of the chassis, keeping an eye out for any evidence the wind might threaten to take away – a hair pulled from the suspect’s head as he closed the door too quickly, a piece of material torn from his clothes as he fled from the abandoned car. He saw nothing and allowed the door to open by a few inches, the smell of the interior flooding out and catching him unaware, making him recoil at first. He steadied himself then breathed all the scents in eagerly: cloth, vinyl, rubber and above all else, her perfume, floral and subtle. But there was something underlying the other smells, something trying to disguise itself, trying to stay hidden in the cacophony – the faint trace of something surgical, clinical.

Chloroform, Sean decided. It was not something he’d ever smelt before, but he knew it had to be. Donnelly broke his concentration.

‘Anything?’ he called out.

‘Chloroform, I think,’ Sean answered. ‘Get hold of Roddis and have him take a look at the car in situ before towing it away to the lab.’

‘Will do.’ Donnelly immediately started punching keys on his phone.

Sean opened the door more fully now, all the while searching for anything that might be evidence, touching nothing, seeing all as he crouched next to the opening, bothered by something he couldn’t think of, something missing. Without warning the answer jumped into his head. It was too quiet. He stood upright and spoke to no one in particular: ‘There’s no alarm.’

Donnelly looked up from his phone. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Why’s there no alarm?’ Sean asked. ‘He locked the car, but there’s no alarm.’ His heart was beginning to pound a little with the conviction he’d found something relevant, but his hope was cut short by the watching AA man.

‘It’s a Ford,’ he said.

‘So?’

‘You lock it with the remote key. One press to lock it and another to arm the alarm.’

Did that mean anything? Sean asked himself. Had the man he hunted been in so much of a panic that he’d fled the scene without making sure the alarm was on? Or had he not wanted the beep of the alarm setting to attract attention to him? Why lock it at all? He’d already left his palm and fingerprints at the Russells’ house.

Sean had to remind himself not to get too tied up in the knots of possibilities. All the same, he couldn’t stop this man from invading his mind. As the case went on he would gradually start thinking like his quarry, until the thoughts of the man he hunted would become his own thoughts. A cold, uncomfortable feeling washed over him. The days ahead would be joyless and stressful, his only hope of relief would be finding Louise Russell and the man who took her. The man who had her now.

He desperately wanted to enter the car, to sit in the driver’s seat as her abductor had done. To check the position of the seat, the mirrors, the steering wheel. Louise’s limp body flashed through his mind, bound and gagged, lying behind the back seat in the boot of the hatchback. He saw a faceless shadow driving the car through London traffic with his prisoner, his prize, in the back, moaning muffled pleas for him to let her go from behind the material wrapped around her mouth. He saw the faceless shadow looking over his shoulder, talking to her as he drove, reassuring her everything would be all right, that he wouldn’t harm her, wouldn’t touch her. But Sean wasn’t about to enter the car and risk damaging or destroying any invisible evidence waiting to be found within.

Donnelly came up behind him and made him jump. ‘Roddis is on his way,’ he announced.

‘Good. Thanks,’ Sean replied, hesitating before continuing: ‘I need to have a look in the back.’

‘Are you sure that’s wise, guv’nor? Roddis will not be pleased.’

‘I won’t touch anything,’ Sean promised. ‘I just need a quick look.’ He moved to the back of the car and searched with one finger under the lip of the hatchback door for the handle, the handle he absolutely knew the suspect would have touched. He pulled the handle and watched the hatch door rise open with a pneumatic hiss. He bent inside as much he could without over-balancing and falling forward, noticing immediately how clean the boot was, like everything else in the car. Everything was perfect, everything except for the slight scuffing on the carpeted surface of the boot and the smallest of scratch marks on the interior panelling close by. Sean knew what it meant.

He pulled away and stood. ‘This is where he had her,’ he told the listening Donnelly. ‘He tied her, probably gagged her and put her in the boot. You can see where her shoes have disturbed the carpet and marked the plastic panel. He’s a bold one, our boy. He snatches her from her own home in broad daylight and casually drives her through mid-morning traffic to this spot. And this is where his own car was waiting,’ he continued, indicating with a sweep of his hand that the suspect’s car would have been on the driver’s side of Russell’s. ‘He pulls up here and waits a few seconds, just long enough to be sure no one’s around. Then he gets out, moving fast, but smoothly. He knows exactly what he’s doing, no panic. He unlocks his own car or van, pulls Russell from the boot of the Fiesta and forces her into the boot of his. If he used chloroform in the house then he’s unsure whether he can control her without it, so he probably gives her another dose before trying to move her – but not too much, he doesn’t want to knock her out and end up with a dead weight. He’s not strong enough – if he was, he wouldn’t be so reliant on weapons and drugs – he’d physically overpower her instead. Once he transfers her to his own car, he locks hers and takes the keys with him. He doesn’t stop to wipe any prints or check for anything else he might have left behind because he doesn’t care whether we find it or not. He has what he wants, the one thing that he cares about. He has her. He closes the hatch door and carefully drives away. Have you checked for CCTV?’

‘There is none,’ Donnelly told him.

‘Then he knew there wasn’t,’ Sean insisted. ‘He’s a planner. None of this happened by accident. Have the access road checked for cameras. You won’t find any, but check anyway.’

‘It’ll be done,’ Donnelly promised.

Sean closed the hatch door carefully. He looked into the woods, just as the suspect would have done when he was checking the car cark before moving her. He still couldn’t see the man’s face, but already he felt as if he would recognize him in a second if he saw him. Something he didn’t yet fully understand would enable him to pick this one out in a crowd if only he could get close enough. That’s what he had to do now: let the evidence, let the facts get him close enough to allow the dark thing inside of him to take him the rest of the way to finding this madman.

In the early spring the trees still looked wintery and foreboding. Sean felt himself shiver, as if he was being watched. As if he was being watched from the inside by some spectre he knew he would eventually find himself face to face with.

‘I’ve got a really bad feeling about this one,’ he confessed to Donnelly. ‘I don’t think it’s going to end well.’ He pinched his temples between the middle finger and thumb of one hand and tried to squeeze the growing pressure in his head away before it exploded into a full migraine. ‘You wait here with the motor,’ he said. ‘I need to get back to the office and start trying to piece all this together. People are going to be sticking their noses into our business, so we might as well be ready with a few answers. When Roddis gets here, leave him with the car and head back to Peckham for a scrum-down.’

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

Sean didn’t hear Donnelly’s reply; he was already climbing into his car looking for Superintendent Featherstone’s mobile number with one hand while starting the ignition, releasing the hand brake and fastening his seat belt with the other. He still hadn’t got around to setting his phone up to be hands-free. Again he cursed the uneven road as he bounced along, driving too fast and making it even worse. He had to wait longer than he’d wanted to before Featherstone answered.

‘Boss, it’s Sean.’

‘Problem?’ Featherstone asked bluntly.

‘Your missing person case,’ said Sean. ‘I’m afraid it’s an abduction case now.’

‘Any idea who took her?’

‘Whoever it was, I don’t think she knew them.’

‘A stranger attack,’ Featherstone said. ‘That does not bode well.’

‘No, sir,’ Sean agreed. ‘It does not.’

‘What do you need from me?’

‘Have you got anyone in the media who owes you a favour?’

‘Maybe,’ Featherstone answered cagily.

‘I need to get an appeal out tonight,’ Sean explained. ‘Ask for public assistance. He took her in broad daylight and transferred her from one vehicle to another in a public place. It’s possible someone saw something.’

‘If someone has taken her, won’t an appeal spook him?’ said Featherstone. ‘We don’t want to force his hand. I don’t want to push him into—’

‘I understand,’ Sean agreed, eager to cut to the chase, ‘but I have no choice. Her family have already worked out what’s happened, and now we’ve found her car dumped close to a wood in Bromley. If we don’t pull out all the stops to find her, we’re leaving ourselves wide open. It’s a shitty call to have to make, but we have no choice.’

‘All right,’ Featherstone reluctantly agreed. ‘I’ll call in a few favours, see if I can get my face on the telly tonight – but no promises. I’ll catch up with you later.’ He hung up before Sean could reply.

He tossed his phone into the centre console, finally controlling the car with two hands, relieved to be back on a smooth road, suddenly remembering he needed to call Sally, again cursing himself for not having set up his hands-free system. He found Sally in his contacts and called her number while pushing his car through the increasingly dense traffic, all the while wishing he had more time – more time to simply sit and think, to try to become the thing he had to stop. The sooner he did, the sooner they would catch the man who dumped Louise Russell’s car near the wood. The man who Sean knew would soon dump her body as casually as he’d abandoned her car, unless he could find him first. Find him and stop him, any way he knew how.

Sally paced up and down the street outside the Russells’ home under the pretence of checking on the door-to-door team’s progress, but in truth she just needed to get out of the office and get some fresh air, to be away from sympathetic and suspicious eyes alike. She knew Sean was trying to prevent her becoming involved in the main body of the investigation, his way of protecting her, but it wasn’t making her feel any better.

She spotted DC Paulo Zukov walking along the street towards her. ‘All right there, Sarge?’ Zukov asked in his usual chirpy, mischievous manner.

‘You’re not in uniform any more,’ Sally reminded him. ‘You call me Sally now. Remember?’

‘Just being respectful,’ Zukov teased. ‘But seriously, how are you?’

‘Don’t try and sound genuine and caring,’ Sally chided him unfairly. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

It was water off a duck’s back for Zukov. He’d only been in the police six years, but it had been more than enough to harden his shell. ‘Harsh, but fair,’ he replied with a grin, pleased she perceived him as some cynical old detective, despite his young years and short length of service.

‘Have you finished the door-to-door yet?’ Sally asked.

‘Not quite, but we ain’t getting anything interesting anyway and I don’t suppose we will. Door-to-door, waste of bloody time if you ask me.’

‘No one did,’ Sally reprimanded him, her phone vibrating in her hand distracting her from their tête-à-tête. Caller ID told her who it was. ‘Yes, guv’nor.’

‘We found Russell’s car.’

‘Any sign of Louise?’ Sally knew he’d have said so right out if there had been, but she asked anyway.

‘No,’ Sean replied. ‘The official line is that she’s been taken. That’s what I believe.’

‘What’s our next move?’

‘As much media coverage as we can get, roadblocks, start canvassing a wider area and wait for forensics to give us something. Where are you?’

‘Checking on the door-to-door.’

‘They don’t need you there. Get back to Peckham as soon as and I’ll see you then.’

‘OK,’ Sally managed to get in before he hung up, leaving her alone with Zukov.

‘Problem?’ he asked.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ she muttered, a feeling of dread crawling over her skin. A suffocating anxiety was spreading through her body like an unstoppable rising tide turning dry sand wet and heavy. ‘I’ve got to head back to the office.’

The few steps to the car felt like miles and the car door seemed heavy as a drawbridge as she pulled it open, falling into her seat, feeling for the thick scars under her blouse, her breath coming in short sporadic bursts. She grasped the computer case she used as a holdall and frantically searched inside until she found the two small cardboard packets she needed. She popped two tramadol from one and six hundred milligrams of ibuprofen from the other into the palm of her hand and threw them down her throat, swallowing drily. She was glad now she hadn’t concealed a bottle of vodka in the bag as she’d considered doing.

Leaning back with her head on the headrest she closed her eyes, waiting for the drugs to give her some relief, both physical and psychological. To expel the memories of Sebastian Gibran breathing into her face as he waited, expected her to die – of Sebastian Gibran sitting opposite her in an exclusive London restaurant, smiling and flirting and her liking it. The memories forced her eyes open. She found herself gazing up the branches of a nearby tree, dead-looking limbs beginning to burst into life, the little green buds forcing their way through the hard bark. She thought of Louise Russell’s parents, so normal and unsuspecting, dragged from their comfortable life of cruise-liner holidays and early evening soap operas into a world they’d only ever seen fleetingly on the news. She hoped Sean wasn’t planning on putting them in front of the cameras – a tearful appeal from loving parents wanting their precious child returned to them unharmed. She had a horrible feeling he was, but as she shook the thought away more unwelcome images rushed her consciousness. Where was Louise now, right now? Was she looking into the eyes of the man who’d taken her, the man who meant her harm, the way Sally had looked into Gibran’s eyes? Was she feeling sick with fear the way Sally had? Did she feel suddenly weak and vulnerable, as impotent as Sally had – like a victim?

A victim. Sally had never realized how much she feared becoming a victim until it happened. All the power and prestige she’d built up as a detective, a cop, stripped away by a man whose madness ran so deep even Sean had struggled to grasp his motivation. She felt the tears beginning to force their way to her eyes, the pressure of holding them back numbing her brain and dulling her senses, and all the while the questions banging inside her head – could she face another killer now each case was all so much more personal to her than ever before? Could she sit across an interview room from them and resist the instinct to flee or worse? Would she be able to chase a suspect into a dark alley in the middle of the night, alone? ‘You bastard,’ she whispered to the car. ‘I hope you rot in hell.’

A loud rap on the window put her heart into her mouth. It was Zukov. She wound the window down.

‘You OK?’ he asked, registering the glassiness in her eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Just knackered, that’s all.’

Zukov offered his packet of cigarettes to her. ‘Smoke?’

‘No,’ she said bluntly. ‘I quit. Remember?’ It wasn’t true entirely. The fact was she’d been unable to smoke after the attack, lying for weeks in a medically induced coma, then weeks more of drifting between this world and another few would ever see. By the time she could make her own way from her bed to the hospital garden she’d broken the physical habit, but the psychological addiction still burned strongly, only the pain in her chest stopping her from reaching for a packet. ‘I need to get back to the office,’ she told him, winding up the window and starting the engine. ‘I’ll see you later.’

She drove away leaving Zukov standing alone, cigarette in mouth.

‘Nice speaking to you too,’ Zukov called after her, knowing she couldn’t hear him. He reminded himself to speak with Donnelly about Sally. No one wanted someone who was going to lose it on the team. The poison of their inability to cope would affect them all. He was young, but old school. He liked everyone around him to be solid and predictable, to pretend everything was fine even if it wasn’t. All troubles, be they domestic, health, financial or other, should be left at home, not brought to work. The job took precedence over everything. If Sally couldn’t handle it any more, then maybe it was time she was moved on. He dragged on his cigarette and wondered whether they would make him acting sergeant if Sally went. He saw no reason why not.

Louise Russell sat in the gloom of her cage dressed in the clean clothes he’d brought her, but despite their pristine condition they made her skin crawl with revulsion. These weren’t her clothes and no matter how much she tried to quieten her mind, it kept asking her the same question. Whose clothes are they? Whose clothes were they? She looked across at the shape she knew was Karen Green and remembered what she had told her: the first few days he’d let Karen wash and then he’d given her some clean clothes to wear, but the night before he’d taken Louise, he’d made Karen remove the clothes, his false affection towards her replaced by violence and lust, an outlet for his sick frustrations. Was she about to become what Karen was already? And if so, what was he going to do to Karen?

Desperation to survive forced her into action. ‘Karen,’ she whispered, just loud enough to be heard, a barely audible echo reverberating around the hard walls of their prison. No answer. ‘Karen,’ she said a little louder. ‘We have to help each other. We can’t just wait for someone to find us.’ Still no movement. ‘I think he leaves the door open,’ she explained. ‘When he comes down here, I think he leaves the door open. The door to this cellar or wherever we are.’ Karen moved a little on the floor of her cage. ‘Please, I’m not your enemy,’ Louise promised. ‘I know it probably feels that way, but that’s what he wants. He does it on purpose, to stop us helping each other.’

‘How do you know?’ Karen broke her silence with a quiet, defeated voice.

‘How do I know what?’

‘How do you know he leaves the door open?’

‘Because the last time he came here there was daylight. I heard him opening the door and then there was daylight and the light stayed, even once he was down here, the light stayed. Next time one of us is out of these cages we have to try and free whoever isn’t. Together I think we can overpower him.’

‘How would you get the key to open the cage?’ Karen asked, already doubtful and afraid of the consequences of any attempt to rescue themselves.

‘Take him by surprise,’ Louise explained. ‘Throw the tray in his face and kick him where it hurts. Just keep hitting him until he’s the one cowering on this stinking floor. Take the keys off him while he’s still confused. Then open the cage and free whichever one of us is locked in. Then we can both kick the bastard to death.’

‘It won’t work,’ Karen argued. ‘And if we try, it’ll only make things worse. He’ll be so angry, it’ll just make things worse.’

‘How could things be worse?’ Louise asked, exasperated.

‘We could be dead.’

Karen’s response silenced Louise for a moment while she tried to come up with another way to reach her. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘Sorry. Stupid question. You must be. I have some food left, maybe I could get it over to you.’

‘No,’ Karen snapped. ‘If he sees you’ve tried he’ll blame me and then you know what he’ll do. You’ve seen it.’

They both sat in silence for a long while before Karen spoke again. ‘I was supposed to be going to Australia. The day he took me. I had everything packed, everything arranged. Six months of travelling, maybe longer. I might even have stayed there. But he took me and brought me here. Jesus Christ, why is this happening to me?’

Louise waited for the crying to stop, then asked, ‘Is there anyone special in your life?’

‘No,’ came the answer, followed by more silence.

‘I’m married. My husband’s name is John. We were going to start a family. My God, John. He must be beside himself. Blaming himself. I miss him so much. Please, God, let me see him again.’ She felt sorrow and loss threatening to engulf her. It wasn’t what she needed now and she pushed all thoughts of home and lovers away. ‘Karen, I need to ask you something …’

‘What?’

‘These clothes I’m wearing – are they the same clothes he made you wear? Are these the clothes he took from you before I got here?’ There was no answer. ‘Please,’ she tried. ‘I need to know.’ She waited, dreading the answer.

‘I can’t be sure,’ Karen lied. ‘They look the same, but I can’t be sure.’

‘They are, aren’t they?’ Louise pressed. ‘Aren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ Karen almost shouted before returning to a whisper. ‘Now you know. Now you know what’s going to happen to you.’

Trying to comprehend the enormity of what she was being told, Louise looked across the cellar at the wretched creature in the opposite cage, filthy and bruised, covered in his foul scent, with his diseased seed forced inside her. She wouldn’t let it happen to her. She couldn’t let it happen to her.

She tried to imagine Karen away from this hell, in Australia somewhere, on a beach, happy and tanned, her attractive young body drawing attention from the men showing off on the beach. No cares, no worries, young and alive, enjoying the adventure of a lifetime. The image almost made her happy, but then it made her sad, replaced by thoughts of herself at home, cooking something in the kitchen while John tried to help but only succeeded in getting in the way. Herself happy and looking forward to having a bump in her belly and shopping for tiny clothes. Feeling safe. Above all else, she feels safe.

What wouldn’t she give to feel safe again? Louise closed her eyes, promising herself that she would never undervalue that feeling ever again, just so long as she could live through this.

Karen’s voice broke the silence. ‘When he takes away your clothes, when he comes to you the way he comes to me, if he offers you drugs, take them. It makes it easier. You’ll feel less.’ Then she rolled over so her back faced Louise, leaving her alone in the silent darkness, happy thoughts of her home and husband chased away by the gathering demons of things yet to come.

Sean paced the floor of his office, listening to Donnelly updating him on the progress of the forensic examination of Louise Russell’s car. Roddis’s team had searched the area around the vehicle, but found nothing. The car had then been loaded on to a flat-back lorry, covered in a plastic tarpaulin and carried off to the forensic car-pound at Charlton, where it would be minutely examined inside and out. By the time they had finished it would be little more than a shell, but any evidence would have been carefully and meticulously bagged and tagged before being sent off to the various private forensic laboratories that had taken over from the once fabled do-all government-funded lab at Lambeth. Another stroke of genius from the powers that be, granting access to highly sensitive material to commercial enterprises all for the sake of saving a few pounds.

His eye was drawn to movement in the main office: Sally had come in and was making her way to her desk. He summoned her with a jut of his chin. She dropped her computer case on her chair and headed straight for them, eyes down and shoulders slumped. Watching her, Sean was again reminded how much he missed the person she used to be. She walked into his office and sat without being asked. ‘What’s happening?’ she demanded.

‘Not enough,’ Sean replied.

‘Whatever that means,’ she said, oblivious to her own mood. Sean let it slide.

‘We’ve been on this for twenty-four hours. He snatched her in broad daylight in her own car. He’s a planner and he’s organized. He would have checked her house before he took her, made sure he couldn’t be seen.’

‘So he’s been there before,’ Donnelly surmised.

‘Yes, but when?’ Sean asked. ‘Sally, have the door-to-door team ask neighbours to think back at least a couple of weeks for sightings of strangers hanging around.’ She scribbled something in her notebook. Sean took it as a sign she understood.

‘What else?’ said Donnelly. ‘Any insights?’ Sean knew the question was directed solely at him.

‘No,’ he answered, not entirely truthfully. ‘Other than I believe he’s local and probably lives alone in a decent-sized house or maybe somewhere reasonably isolated. He needs space and privacy.’

‘For what?’ Sally joined in.

‘I don’t know yet,’ Sean answered, ‘but I know it’s bad. Sorry.’ Sally looked at the floor again. Sean wanted to bring her back. ‘But you’re right. We need to work out why he takes them. When we understand that, we’ll be that much closer to catching him.’

‘Them?’ Sally stopped him. ‘You said them.’

‘I meant her,’ he lied again.

‘No you didn’t,’ Sally insisted. Sean didn’t reply.

‘Oh, bloody marvellous,’ Donnelly exclaimed. ‘You mean there’s going to be more?’

‘Only if we don’t stop him in time,’ Sean pointed out.

‘But surely we have to consider the possibility this is a one-off, that for whatever reason Louise Russell was special to him?’ Donnelly insisted. ‘Special enough to make him want to take her.’

‘She was special to him,’ Sean agreed, ‘but not because of any relationship between them. She was a stranger to him and he to her. He chose her quite deliberately, maybe because of the way she looked or maybe just because of the type of house she lived in – I don’t know yet. But whatever he saw in her, he’ll see in others. That much I’m sure of. If we don’t find him, there will be others.’

Sally came back to them. ‘There was no forced entry,’ she pointed out. ‘So maybe she knew whoever took her.’

‘She was young and strong and in her own home. She had no reason to be fearful of a knock at the door. Do you only open the door to people you know?’ Sean regretted his question as soon as it was out of his mouth. Sally unflinchingly held his gaze, her misting eyes accusing him. His desk phone saved him from making it worse by ringing before he had a chance to say sorry, the last thing Sally wanted to hear. He snatched it like a drowning man reaching for a life-jacket. ‘DI Corrigan.’

‘Andy Roddis here,’ announced the forensic team leader. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid. No match on file for the prints we lifted from the Russell home. Sorry.’

‘Damn it,’ Sean said calmly, despite the twisting in his guts. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

‘Nor me,’ Roddis confided.

‘What about the car? Anything yet?’

‘Too soon to tell, but I expect to at least find his prints. They won’t help us identify him prior to his arrest, but once we have him they’ll certainly help get a conviction.’

‘OK. Thanks, Andy. Keep me posted.’ He hung up and turned to the others. ‘His prints aren’t on file.’ They knew what it meant – the man they were looking for had no convictions.

‘I was bloody sure this one would have previous, even if it was just a bit of flashing on Bromley Common,’ Donnelly said.

‘It’s unfortunate,’ Sean agreed. ‘But there must be something in his past. He may not have been convicted, but you can bet he’ll have been arrested and charged somewhere down the line. This guy is in our records, we just need to dig around till we find him: run checks on local sexual offenders who’ve come to our notice but have never been convicted of anything. And let’s check on any local stalkers – top-end only though, not ones who’ve gone after celebrities and footballers. Concentrate on the care-in-the-community types. Our boy hasn’t just jumped in at this level, he’s been building up to this for years, convictions or no convictions. Anything else?’

‘Sounds straightforward enough,’ Donnelly said. ‘All we need now is about another hundred detectives and we’ll have him nicked by lunchtime tomorrow.’

‘Well, that ain’t going to happen,’ Sean confirmed what he already knew. ‘So let’s do the best we can with what we’ve—’

A ripple of disturbance from the main office caused him to break off and look through the Perspex that separated him from his team. Featherstone was making his way across the main office, stopping periodically, handing out pep talks to one and all en route.

‘Heads up, people,’ Sean warned Sally and Donnelly. A few seconds later Featherstone was knocking on his office door frame and entering without being invited.

‘Afternoon, boss,’ Sean said. ‘Only a step backwards since we last spoke, I’m afraid.’

‘How so?’

‘It appears whoever we’re looking for has no previous. Prints found at the Russells’ house came back “no match”.’

‘That sounds unlikely.’ Featherstone raised an eyebrow.

‘Unlikely or not, it’s a fact. And any DNA we find will go the same way.’

‘So,’ Featherstone continued, ‘we’ll have to find him by old-fashioned means – shoe leather and hard work, folks.’

‘With respect, sir,’ said Sally, ‘we’re going to need more than that if we want to catch him quickly.’

‘Agreed,’ Featherstone contradicted himself. ‘Which is why I’ve sorted out a media blitz. ITV and BBC will put out an appeal for information on their local channels tonight, with a special appearance by yours truly. I’m still working on Sky, but they’re holding out for more details than we want to give them at this time.’

‘What about the papers?’ Sean asked.

‘The papers will follow the TV channels’ lead.’ He made a show of looking at his watch. ‘Right, I need to be at the Yard by six to meet the TV people, so I’m off. Keep me posted.’ Dismissing them with a nod, he strode out of the office.

‘God save us from senior officers,’ Donnelly said when Featherstone was well away.

‘He’s not so bad,’ Sean reminded him. ‘We could do a lot worse.’

‘If you say so.’ Sean let it slide. ‘Me, I’m off to chase my daily quota of useless leads.’ Meaning he was heading to the pub, Sean thought. ‘Care to give me a hand, Sally?’

‘Not just now,’ she answered. ‘I need to tidy a few things up, make a few phone calls.’

‘Suit yourself,’ sniffed Donnelly. ‘Then I shall bid you farewell. If I don’t see you later, I’ll see you tomorrow.’ With that he headed for the main office in search of recruits to buy him a drink.

‘He’s got the right idea,’ Sean told Sally.

‘How so?’ she asked.

‘Get some rest and recreation now, while you still can. I get the definite feeling this will be the last chance for some time. Once that media appeal goes out, the spotlight will fall on us.’

‘Just go home and forget about Louise Russell until tomorrow?’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Sean. ‘It’s just things are going to start happening tomorrow, I can feel it. And they’re not going to stop until this case is finished, one way or another.’

‘You think she’s already dead, don’t you?’

Sean sat heavily in his chair, caught off balance by her question.

‘Maybe not … It depends on his cycle.’

‘What cycle?’

‘Just an idea,’ Sean explained. ‘A theory.’

‘What theory?’ she demanded, losing patience with his secrecy.

‘He’s taking a lot of risks. Calculated risks, but risks all the same. He doesn’t just do to them whatever it is he wants to do in their homes, because he needs more time with them. And if he needs time with them then the chances are there is a timescale. I think he fantasized about her for a while before taking her and transporting her into his living fantasy – a fantasy that will have a beginning, middle and end. All of which suggests a timescale. It might be a week, a month – I don’t know yet.’

‘Or it might be a lot less?’ Sally questioned.

‘Might be,’ Sean admitted. ‘There’s no way of telling until he releases her or we find her.’

‘Find her body, you mean.’

‘We have to be prepared for that possibility.’

‘Possibility or probability?’ Sally asked.

‘You know how this works.’ Sean shrugged. ‘Look, if it’s too much too soon, I’d understand. If you want to keep this one at arm’s length it’s not a problem. I can make that happen.’

‘Don’t make allowances for me.’

‘You’ve got nothing to prove,’ he told her and meant it. She didn’t reply. ‘Go home, Sally. Get some rest. I’ll call you if anything happens.’

She slowly rose and headed for the door, turning when she got there. ‘One thing …’

‘Go on,’ said Sean.

‘I want to be in on the interviews. When we catch him, I want to sit in on the interviews.’

‘OK.’ Sean granted the request, knowing why she needed to sit in. She nodded once and left him alone.

Sean scanned the office for anyone heading his way. When he was happy no one would require his immediate attention, he lifted the phone on his desk and punched in a sequence of numbers. It was answered on the fifth ring.

‘Hello.’

‘Dr Canning, it’s Sean Corrigan.’

‘And what can I do for you, Inspector?’

‘Nothing yet,’ said Sean. ‘This is more of a heads-up to expect something in the next few days. Something a little more unusual than the norm.’

‘Ah,’ Canning replied. ‘Your speciality seems to be things that are a little more unusual than the norm.’

‘What can I say? Somebody somewhere must like me.’

‘So what should I be expecting?’ Canning sounded intrigued. ‘What does that crystal ball of yours tell you, Inspector?’

He nodded as if Canning could see him. ‘When it happens it’ll be an outside body drop, in a wooded area, possibly in water. The victim will be a white woman in her late twenties. Cause of death will be suffocation or strangulation with evidence of drugs having been administered to her. That’s all I’m prepared to speculate for the time being,’ Sean explained. ‘But I’ll need you to examine the body in situ.’

‘That’s quite a lot of information you have there, considering this person is still alive,’ said Canning. ‘I am correct in assuming they are still alive?’

‘You are,’ Sean admitted, but he’d say no more.

‘Very well,’ Canning agreed. ‘I shall await your call – and thanks for the warning. I don’t usually get advance notice of such things in my business.’

‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘I don’t suppose you do.’

‘Until the unhappy event then,’ Canning said.

‘Indeed,’ Sean agreed and hung up, already regretting making the call. He knew forensically it made good sense – forewarning Canning meant he could prepare himself and his pathology equipment for an outside scene examination, possibly saving as much as a few vital hours. Outside scenes could deteriorate incredibly quickly, especially if whoever took her went to the trouble of dumping her body in flowing water, although Sean doubted he would; he’d made no effort to destroy evidence at the other scenes so why would he when it came time to rid himself of her body? Mother Nature was no respecter of the dead or of those trying to gather the evidence to give them justice. But nonetheless he wished he hadn’t made the call. He felt soiled, complicit, as if he’d somehow sealed Louise Russell’s fate.

Shaking his regrets away, he buried his head in the ever-growing pile of reports spreading across his desk.

Thomas Keller arrived home still upset and agitated by the confrontation he’d had at work. His ageing Ford slid to a stop on the dust road outside his ugly cottage just as the spring day was turning into a cold, cloudless night. His mind was racing so much he almost forgot to turn the lights off and lock the door. He fumbled for his house keys, desperate to release the pressure he felt hammering in his head and tightening in his groin. Once inside, he tore through the cluttered cottage, not stopping to turn on any lights, tripping over unpacked boxes and piles of old magazines in the rush to get to his bedroom. The frantic pace came to a halt only when his hand was within reach of his special drawer, where he kept his special things. He froze, heart drumming on the walls of his chest, listening to the silence, feeling the air around him until he was certain he was alone. With a sudden burst he pulled the drawer open, pushing aside the mish-mash of clothes until he found the bundle of letters bound together with an elastic band. He would have liked to linger, to unwrap the magical package the way he planned to undress Sam when they were finally together, but his excitement was overpowering, forcing him to rush. He yanked the elastic band away and let the letters spill on to his unmade bed, grabbing at the nearest one, running his fingers across the name on the front of the envelope as if he was reading Braille. He looked down at the other envelopes, his eyes leaping from one to the next, all bearing the same name – Louise Russell.

Most of the letters were the usual bills and credit card statements, although some were personal, but they were all precious to him, they all brought her closer to him, entwined his life with hers. These letters had been the beginning of their relationship. It had taken him months to collect them, as he couldn’t risk arousing her suspicions that her mail was being stolen. Somehow he’d been disciplined enough to limit himself to a few items each month, mostly things she would never miss, resisting the almost unbearable temptation to take everything that looked personal. Every time he needed to be with her, he turned to the letters.

He knew the letter he held in his hand was from an old friend of hers who now lived on the other side of the world, in a place where he suspected mail regularly went missing. He slipped the letter from its envelope and began to read the hellos and how are yous, the apologies for not writing sooner, the references to a past life they’d shared as young girls. The more he read the more agitated he felt, the more his uncontrollable desire engulfed him. He dropped to his knees by his bedside as if he was about to pray, but his hands did not come together. Holding the letter in one hand, he slid the other hand slowly under his waistband, moving tentatively towards his swelling sex. As he touched himself a moan escaped his mouth in anticipation of the pleasure and release he would soon feel washing through his body. He gripped himself tightly and began to move his hand back and forth, gently at first, but then quickly, desperately, as he failed to reach a full erection, the frustration overtaking any thoughts of ecstasy, causing his penis to grow ever more flaccid in his palm.

Cursing and issuing silent threats in his mind, he leapt to his feet and snatched another bundle of letters from the drawer, held together by an elastic band just as the others had been. His eyes fleetingly rested on a third bundle of letters and a fourth and a fifth, before returning to the one in his hand. He checked the name on the top envelope – Karen Green. Yes, he told himself, this was all her fault. She was ruining everything with her jealous lies, deliberately coming between him and Sam. But he knew how to deal with her. He knew what he had to do. Throwing her letters on the floor, he tore off his postman’s uniform and began rifling through a pile of dirty clothes on the floor until he found his tracksuit. He tugged it on and stomped to the kitchen.

The narrow cupboard by the back door held a number of illicit items. After a moment’s thought he selected the electric cattle prod he’d found and repaired when he first bought the buildings and land from the local council for a bargain price, other potential buyers having been put off by its history of animal cruelty and slaughter. The land was everything he’d been waiting and praying for – everything he’d been saving for, putting aside most of his earnings for years until finally he’d amassed enough to buy it, the land and buildings that meant he could begin to prepare for a life with Sam. Once he’d bought the land he’d immediately started his search for her, but it had been difficult to tell who Sam was now – so many years had passed and her mind had been so poisoned, any one of them could be her. He had no choice but to work his way through them until he found the real one. No matter how many of them tried to make him look a fool. He knew what to do with people who tried to make him look a fool.

With a final glance at the double-barrelled shotgun that held pride of place, he grabbed the keys to the cellar from their hook and closed the door. Then he stumbled to the bathroom, pulling the cabinet open and taking out a first-aid box. He opened it and removed one of the syringes and a large phial of alfentanil. Taking the safety cap from the syringe, he expertly eased it into the phial, drawing out fifty millilitres of the anaesthetic before replacing the cap.

Now that he had everything he needed, he made his way outside, striding across the yard, the syringe in his trouser pocket, the cattle prod gripped in his hand. But when he reached the metal door he froze, the absolute clarity of what he had to do suddenly deserting him, the enormity of it almost too much comprehend.

You have no choice