Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

Finally he could wait no longer and at last he perfected the method of becoming part of another family without anyone ever knowing. He slipped into their houses through silently opened windows and doors, his lock-picking skills improving with each adventure, standing in the kitchens and living rooms of the families as they slept upstairs, knowing that if he was caught he would be accused of terrible things. But all he wanted was to be alone with them, safe and accepted — part of a real family.

For a long time he was too afraid to venture upstairs and stand in the same rooms as the sleeping children. Instead he’d settled for taking things to remind him of his innocent visits; not things of value, just little keepsakes no one would miss. But eventually that was no longer enough, and his fear of walking up the long, creaking staircases was overwhelmed by his need to see the sleeping children. So he took his first terrifying walk up the stairs, struggling to control his bladder and bowels as he slid past the parents’ room and entered the room of a little girl bathed in her blue night-light.

It had been everything he’d dreamed it would be — standing, watching her little chest rise and fall under the covers, her long curly hair draped over her face like a beautiful veil. Her room was warm and pretty, with princesses and rainbows on her wallpaper, toys and dolls on every surface as she slept in her soft, comfortable bed, wrapped in a floral-patterned duvet that smelled of fresh orchids on a spring day. So this was how the other children had lived — cared for and adored, as far from his own childhood as it was possible to imagine. Tears had rolled down his face as he’d stood watching her — tears of happiness for her and sadness for his own lost childhood. After what seemed an age he left her room and slipped away as quietly as he’d arrived, taking one of her dolls from the shelf as he did so — being sure to lock the window behind him, leaving it just as he found it.

Time and again he paid his visits to the sleeping, always taking something small and personal from the child’s room — just another toy lost or misplaced, soon forgotten by both parents and child alike. His collection of soft toys and dolls was squeezed into a suitcase stored under his bed for when he needed their help to relive his innocent little visits.

But his wage as an apprentice remained small and while he was in the houses he saw many things of value: watches, jewellery, cash in purses and wallets. Small things at first, but as he became bolder the things he took grew larger: laptops, iPads, Blu-ray players. He knew just the landlord in just the pub to sell them to — no questions asked, cash over the counter. Finally his luck ran out as he let himself out of the back door of a semi-detached in Tufnell Park, straight into the arms of a waiting uniform police constable who was quietly investigating a call from a concerned neighbour who thought they’d heard something suspicious in next-door’s garden. Obviously he’d been unable to explain the laptop and iPhone they’d found in his bag and once it was established he was not the lawful occupier of the semi-detached he was arrested for residential burglary and handed over to the local CID for further investigation.

He could still clearly remember the abject terror he’d felt when the detectives had handcuffed him and said they were going to take him back to his bedsit to search it for further stolen goods — his mind suddenly unable to think of anything other than the suitcase under the bed and the damning evidence it contained. Trying not to sound too desperate, he told the police he’d happily admit to the burglary and that therefore there was really no need to search his home. But his pleas had been ignored.

Thirty minutes later he could only stand and watch in horror as the younger of the two detectives pulled the suitcase from under the bed and flicked open the latches, throwing open the lid to reveal the toys inside. ‘From my childhood,’ he’d lied before the detective could speak. ‘My parents were going to throw them away so I brought them here. I was going to try and sell them — some of them might be worth something.’ Before the detective could question him his colleague distracted both of them as he began to pull watches, credit cards, mobile phones and jewellery from a drawer in a chest.

‘Hello there,’ he mocked as he let the items he’d found fall through his fingers like pirates’ gold. ‘Looks like you’ve been a very busy boy, Mark.’ McKenzie’s eyes had never left the suitcase until to his astonishment and relief the younger detective closed it and slid it back under the bed before moving quickly to his colleague’s side to examine the items that seemed far more interesting than a suitcase of old toys, and certainly easier to trace and prove as stolen. ‘You’re fucked,’ the detective added for good measure, ‘properly fucked.’

It was all he could do to suppress the smile he felt warming his insides as he continued to thank God that the burglary he’d been arrested for had been one of the rare occasions when he hadn’t taken a toy from the child’s room as a trophy. If he had, the suitcase under the bed would have meant so much more to the young detective, but now it had simply been forgotten. He admitted to eight different residential burglaries, listening carefully as the police listed the property taken from the homes, always fearful the toys he’d taken would be on the list, but they never were. Perhaps the parents of the children had never noticed them missing in the first place. Or maybe they had, but not until days after the burglaries, by which time their minds, their imaginations had failed to make the connection.

Four months later, as a first-time offender, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment and was out in five, jobless and homeless until the Probation Service found him another shithole of a bedsit. With so much time on his hands and bitterness in his heart old, dark, disturbing longings soon began to stir in the pit of his soul and he knew that merely standing by the sides of their beds wouldn’t be enough any more. Besides, if the police were looking at him, they’d be looking at him during the night, as they would any night-time offender.

And so it was that he found himself stalking playgrounds during the day, always waiting for his opportunity, waiting for the watching mothers to look away at the wrong moment, for the young child to wander too close to where he hid. Which was exactly what the little boy had done that fateful Wednesday afternoon. He led him away through the woods, touching him and making him do things as he listened to the cries and screams coming from the playground, as the mother and the other hens frantically searched for the little boy. He’d finally panicked and run deeper into the woods leaving the boy alone, sobbing. But he soon became lost and disorientated, voices seemingly closing in on him from all sides, so he decided to hide in the hollow of an old tree, covering himself with dead leaves as the sound of a barking dog joined the chorus of shouts and screams. Eventually the hound came so close that he could hear its sniffling and scratching and he made a last desperate run for it, only for the huge, terrifying beast to bring him down hard within a few paces. A uniformed dog handler arrived, but was clearly in no hurry to call the beast to bay, and in that moment he knew he’d been labelled forever — labelled as a child-molester, hated by all but his own kind. As a residential burglar he’d already been treated by the police as something ugly and suspicious, but that was nothing compared to the treatment he’d received after his arrest for the sexual assault of the child. It seemed everywhere he turned someone would be singing in a whisper: Sex case. Sex case. Hang him, hang him, hang him .