Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

‘Excuse me?’ he asked. ‘I need to be out here, keeping an eye on this lot. You may be the circus ringmaster, guv’nor, but I’m the lion tamer round here.’

‘You said it yourself,’ Sean reminded him. ‘There’s not enough room out here for everyone — so you get to share with Sally.’ Donnelly was about to continue the argument when Sean silenced him and everyone else in the shambolic room. ‘Listen up,’ he shouted. His voice seem to freeze everyone where they stood, the sound of the guv’nor shouting rare enough to draw their immediate attention. ‘I know this isn’t ideal and we’d all like a few days to get sorted and settled, but that’s not going to be the case, I’m afraid.’

‘Meaning what?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Meaning we’ve just been given a new case.’

‘You must be joking!’ Donnelly said above the rising murmurs of disbelief. ‘We can’t take on a new case — we’re in it up to our necks with this bloody move. There’s not even a single computer up and running. We can’t deal with a new murder investigation yet.’

‘It’s not a murder,’ Sean told them, ‘it’s a missing person.’

‘Not again,’ Donnelly complained.

‘It didn’t take long for our last missing person case to turn into a murder investigation, remember? We have a four-year-old boy disappeared overnight from his home in Hampstead. His mother discovered he was missing earlier this morning. No signs of forced entry, but he’s definitely gone.’

‘Has the house been checked by a Special Search Team yet?’ Donnelly asked.

‘No,’ Sean admitted.

‘Well then, the boy’s not gone anywhere. He’s got himself a secret hiding place, that’s all. Special Search Team will find him soon enough.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Sean locked eyes with him. ‘However, you’re right — the house needs to be searched properly. We have to be absolutely sure.’ He looked across to DC Ashley Goodwin, a tall, fit, black detective in his late twenties. ‘Ashley, sort out a search team and a dog unit and get the house checked. If the boy’s alive and hiding, great. If his body’s been hidden in the house then I want it found.’

‘No problem,’ Goodwin answered, plugging in the phone he was holding and immediately starting to make calls.

‘Dave,’ Sean turned to Donnelly, ‘take Paulo and whoever else you need and get started on the door-to-door, but keep it local and as quiet as you can — we don’t want to start a parental panic across North London.’ Donnelly didn’t reply; resigned to his fate, he simply reached for his jacket and indicated for Paulo to do the same. ‘Alan, find out which Forensic Support Team cover Hampstead for Major Inquiries and get them to examine the house.’ DC Alan Jesson, tall and slim, nodded as he scribbled notes. ‘Maggie, I need you to go Family Liaison on this one.’

‘Not again, guv’nor,’ DC Maggie O’Neil pleaded in her Birmingham accent.

‘Sorry, but I need someone with experience to keep an eye on the family and report anything out of the ordinary.’

Donnelly’s ears pricked up. ‘Are the family suspects?’

‘Too early to say yes — too early to say no,’ Sean answered, ‘but if it turns out they aren’t involved then someone came to their house, got in and took the boy all without breaking a single door or window. And what’s more, they locked up behind themselves.’

‘Then they must have had keys,’ Goodwin deduced.

‘Possibly.’ Sean frowned, picturing the front door and its four locks. ‘But if they didn’t, then they must have somehow come through the locked door and secured it behind them when they left.’

‘Why not a window?’ DC Fiona Cahill asked.

‘Because I checked the windows,’ Sean answered. ‘There’s no way they can be shut properly and locked from the outside, leaving only the front door as a possibility.’

‘What about the back door — if there is one?’ Cahill continued, undaunted.

‘There is,’ Sean explained, ‘but it was secured with old-fashioned bolts, top and bottom. You can’t do those up from outside.’

The office felt silent as the detectives pondered the puzzle.

‘So what does this mean?’ Donnelly finally asked. ‘What are we looking for?’

‘We discount nothing yet,’ Sean warned them, ‘but if he was taken by a stranger then it’s safe to assume he could have been taken by a known sex offender or someone who’s gravitating towards it.’

‘Then why not just snatch a child off the street?’ O’Neil asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Sean admitted. ‘Perhaps because they thought it was too dangerous.’

‘More dangerous than breaking into someone’s house in the middle of the night?’ Zukov queried, disbelief evident in his voice.

‘We’re just exploring possibilities here,’ Sean reminded them, ‘but if someone did go through the front door then it’s possible they picked the locks.’

‘Picked the locks?’ Donnelly asked disbelievingly. ‘Criminals smart enough to pick locks are about as rare as hen’s teeth.’

‘And that’s exactly what I’m banking on,’ Sean told him. ‘That’s our advantage. Sally, have the surrounding stations search their intelligence records for anyone with previous for using lock-picking to commit residential burglaries. If by some miracle you get more than a few, look for those who also have previous for sexual assault — ideally on children, but any type of sexual assault makes them a suspect. If you get no joy then check the local Sex Offenders Registers and see if anything takes your fancy.’

‘No problem,’ Sally assured him.

‘OK, good,’ Sean told his assembled team. ‘Now you all know what you need to be getting on with, so let’s get this show on the road. Dave-’

‘Aye, guv’nor?’

‘Get HOLMES up and running ASAP — make it a priority. We’re gonna have a lot of names and information coming our way soon. Without the database we can’t cross-reference a damn thing, and that’s when we’ll miss things — important things.’

‘It will be done,’ Donnelly promised.

‘As soon as anyone has anything, let me know — I’ll be in my office for the next few hours making the usual endless phone calls and God knows what else, so dust off the cobwebs, people, and let’s get on with it. Remember, a four-year-old boy is apparently missing and if we don’t find him — no one will.’

George Bridgeman sat on the bed in the room where he’d woken up cuddling his teddy — a floppy grey and pink elephant he called Ellie that had been his constant companion since the day he was born. He looked around the strange room the man had brought him to in the middle of the night, his wonderment at the myriad of toys that surrounded him only matched by his fear at being seemingly alone in an unfamiliar house. On the opposite side of the room he could see another child’s bed, but the covers remained unruffled and pristine, the stuffed toys untouched.

George dropped his bare feet carefully over the side of the bed, fearful of what might be hiding underneath, and padded towards the empty bed, still clad in the pyjamas his mother had dressed him in only the night before. As he drew closer to the tempting toys, he was distracted by sounds coming from somewhere deeper in the house — voices, a man and a woman talking — deep, muffled voices he couldn’t understand. Instinctively he looked for a window, but the only source of natural light came from the two skylights high in the ceiling, impossible to reach even if he wanted to, and escape wasn’t yet on his mind. Why would he want to escape from the things the man had promised?

He moved towards the door to better hear the sounds coming from the other side: gentle music leaking through the wooden panels, mixing with the unfamiliar voices, making him swallow hard as his tiny hand reached for the door handle and began to turn it, first one way and then the other. But the door wouldn’t open — he was locked in. He pressed his ear to the door and listened harder, trying to focus on the voices. The sudden scream of a distant child made him recoil from the door, his eyes wide and pupils dilated with sudden, unexpected terror. The woman’s voice was raised now as the man’s faded to nothing, then silence for a few seconds before they started talking again, quieter than before, barely audible. The sound of what he believed was a door closing heavily made him run back to the bed and jump under the covers, waiting — waiting for the voices to start coming upstairs towards him, ready — ready to scream like he’d heard the other child scream, his frail little body beginning to shake. He pulled Ellie close to his chest and cuddled her tightly — tighter than he’d ever held anything in his short life.