Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

‘I’ve explained all this to Mr McKenzie,’ said his solicitor, keen to move on.

‘And anything you do say can be used in evidence,’ Sean finished. McKenzie said nothing. ‘I’ll assume that’s also been explained.’

Jackson briefly looked up and over the top of her spectacles. ‘It has,’ she told him, leaving Sean a little unsure who she disliked most — him or McKenzie. Had she already done his job for him and browbeaten McKenzie into making a confession? He decided there wasn’t enough excitement in the room for that.

‘Mark, you’ve been arrested on suspicion of having abducted a four-year-old boy, George Bridgeman, from his home in Hampstead last night. Is there anything you want to tell me about that?’

‘No comment,’ McKenzie answered, looking Sean square in the face while his solicitor seemed to raise her eyebrows as she stared down at her increasing notes. Was McKenzie going against her advice? And if so why?

‘Anything at all?’

‘No comment,’ McKenzie continued, already beginning to sound irritated.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sean quickly changed tack, ‘are my questions annoying you in some way?’ Jackson gave him a warning glance.

‘No comment.’

‘You live in Kentish Town — right?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Pretty close to Hampstead, isn’t it?’

‘So what?’

‘The boy went missing from Hampstead, from Courthope Road. Have you ever been to Courthope Road, Mark?’

‘No comment.’

‘Did you go there last night?’

‘No comment.’

‘Did you go there because you knew the boy would be there?’

‘No comment.’

‘Did you take the boy, Mark — a simple yes or no?’

‘No comment.’

Sean leaned back silently for a few seconds before continuing, trying to read the man in front of him — trying to crawl inside his mind and see what he saw, feel what he felt − but nothing came to him. Keep asking the questions — keep asking until the light begins to spill through a chink in his armour . ‘Funny how you answer some questions no problem, but then when it’s about the missing boy you answer no comment.’

‘That’s his right, Inspector,’ Jackson was obliged to interrupt.

‘Of course,’ Sean insincerely apologized, ‘just an observation — that was all. So you’ve never been to Courthope Road in Hampstead?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ McKenzie corrected him.

‘So you have been there before?’

‘I didn’t say that either.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘Perhaps it would be better if you stuck to answering no comment,’ Jackson advised him.

‘And I’ll ask you again,’ Sean kept up, ‘have you ever been to Courthope Road or not?’

‘Like my solicitor says, no comment.’

‘Mark, we’re investigating the disappearance of a very young boy. If you’re involved in it then you really need to start answering my questions.’

‘Disappeared? Sure of that, are you?’

‘What d’you mean?’ Sean asked, caught slightly off guard by McKenzie’s question.

‘I mean, have you searched the house properly yet? I know how you police do things — slow and steady, step by step, always afraid of missing something.’

‘It’s being done as we speak,’ Sean told him bluntly. ‘But I’m sure the boy is missing.’

‘Then maybe his parents did him in and got rid of the body before they called you lot, knowing you’d come after someone like me to blame for it.’

‘Is that how you see yourself — as a victim?’

McKenzie ignored him and shrugged his shoulders, the thin smile still fixed on his face. ‘Or you’re right. Someone went into the house and took him — took him away right under your nose.’

‘Right under my nose?’ Sean asked.

‘You’re a policeman, aren’t you? You’re supposed to stop things like this from happening.’

Was that McKenzie’s motivation — some kind of twisted intellectual vanity? A misguided sense of needing revenge on the police and justice system for all that had happened to him? Take the boy to prove he could get away with murder? ‘I suppose so,’ Sean played along, ‘but whoever took the boy was obviously extremely smart. They got in and out without leaving a single piece of evidence.’ McKenzie’s smile grew a little wider as his eyes grew narrower. ‘Is that why someone took the boy — to show us how clever they are?’

‘Maybe.’

‘And is that someone you?’

‘Ha,’ McKenzie laughed, ‘you’ll have to do better than that.’

‘This is not a game, Mark. Do you know what your life will be like if anything happens to the boy? Nowhere will be safe for you ever again.’

‘Is that a threat?’ McKenzie pushed back, making his solicitor look up like a teacher surveying a class of trouble-makers.

‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘It’s a warning.’

‘Don’t patronize me. I know what it’s like to survive behind bars once they call you a sex offender. You bastards have put me away before, remember? But I survived all right, and I will again if I have to.’

‘But this time it’ll be child-abduction,’ Sean warned him. ‘You’ll be the scalp everyone’s looking to take.’

‘Only if you can prove it,’ McKenzie mocked, stopping Sean dead for a while.

‘OK,’ Sean continued after a few seconds, ‘let’s move on to something I can prove, and maybe we’ll come back to the missing boy. Earlier today when you were arrested in your flat there was something on your laptop — care to tell me what it was?’

‘You know what it was. But I told you — I just bought it second-hand. The stuff you saw was already on it.’

‘Come on, Mark,’ Sean gently encouraged, ‘we’ve already had a look at it and it’s clear the obscene images — the obscene images of children, Mark − were only downloaded seconds before we entered your flat. And seeing as how you were the only person there, it kind of means you had to be the one who downloaded them — doesn’t it?’

‘Must have been a glitch, or maybe someone downloaded it remotely from somewhere else.’

‘On to your laptop?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Not with your previous it’s not,’ Sean told him. ‘Are you aware of Bad Character Evidence? Have you discussed it with your solicitor?’ McKenzie shrugged while Jackson briefly looked up to shake her head. ‘It means if you rely on a story like that then we can tell the jury all about your previous convictions for downloading other, similar pornography, not to mention your convictions for sexually assaulting children. I really don’t think that’s going to help your cause.’

‘You can’t prove anything.’

‘By the time the specialists at our computer laboratory have examined that laptop, I’ll be able to prove plenty.’

‘If you say so.’

‘You’re going back inside, Mark.’

‘I don’t think so.’

McKenzie’s misplaced confidence was beginning to irritate him. ‘Well at least we’ve established one thing — that you’re a liar. A liar who, even when faced with the truth, still can’t be honest.’ McKenzie squirmed a little in his chair. ‘Everybody in this room knows you downloaded the child pornography yourself and everybody here knows you took the boy.’ Sally and Jackson now also shuffled uncomfortably in their chairs.

‘Like I said,’ McKenzie goaded him, ‘you can’t prove anything and you can’t save the boy. You’re too late.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sean asked, as calmly as he could. ‘What do you mean, I’m too late?’

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’

‘If you know something, you need to tell me.’

McKenzie’s foot tapped fast and repeatedly as his excitement grew. ‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’