Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

The more he thought, the more he imagined, the more McKenzie’s face fitted the man he watched slowly climbing the stairs in the Bridgemans’ house. ‘But taking trophies isn’t enough any more, is it? You need more.’ Sean opened his eyes, the seeds of an idea floating in his mind like so many pieces of a broken mirror until they all came together to form an answer that was another question. ‘You took things belonging to the children, didn’t you? Before you started taking things to sell, you just took things belonging to the children. Only we never found out. Or we did, but we missed the relevance — we didn’t understand its importance. And now that’s not enough. Now the only trophy that helps you relive your fantasies is the children themselves, isn’t it? The children are your trophies. Only …’

The phone ringing on his desk crushed his hypnotic concentration, an iron curtain crashing down in his mind, derailing his train of thought at the most critical time. ‘Fuck it,’ he shouted, loud enough to be heard in the adjoining main office. He snatched the phone, furious at yet another pointless interruption. ‘What the hell is it now?’ he almost screamed into the mouthpiece.

‘Happy New Year to you too,’ Featherstone replied, unfazed by Sean’s telephone manner. ‘Just thought I’d let you know the Assistant Commissioner is about to start briefing the media down in the conference room, in case you wanted to join him.’

‘No thanks,’ Sean answered, calmer now, but unapologetic.

‘Any last-minute updates you want me to get through to him — any sign of an imminent break through?’

‘Isn’t the arrest of McKenzie a breakthrough ?’

‘Only if you’re close to charging him.’

‘I don’t have enough to charge him yet, hence the surveillance.’

‘I know, but are you close?’

‘That’s hard to say. You know how these things are — one minute you have nothing and the next everything falls into place,’ Sean explained.

‘So what does your gut tell you?’

Sean took a breath before answering. ‘It tells me I’m close,’ he lied, knowing that in truth he had little or nothing on McKenzie. But he needed to use the press briefing to his advantage, to pile the pressure on McKenzie and try and panic him into making a mistake that would lead to George Bridgeman — dead or alive. It had happened before; the killer had successfully disposed of the body in an effective hiding place where it would rot away for all eternity, only to then panic and move it to another, less considered, less remote location. With the surveillance team following McKenzie, Sean knew now was the time to try to make him panic into returning to the boy or his body. ‘You can tell the Assistant Commissioner I’m very close. You can tell him we have very reliable information on the boy’s whereabouts that we’re looking into as a matter of priority.’

‘I can tell Addis that?’

‘It’s important he gets it in time for the briefing.’

Featherstone sighed loudly into the phone. ‘Are you sure this is how you want to roll the dice?’

‘I have no choice,’ Sean answered and waited nervously for Featherstone’s answer.

‘OK. I’ll tell him, but a word to the wise, Sean — if you tell him it is so, then it had better be so.’

‘I understand,’ Sean told him, his belly tight with anticipation and anxiety.

‘Try and watch the briefing if you can,’ Featherstone told him. ‘Addis will expect it.’

Sean listened as the phone went dead, his mind once more cluttered with the barriers — barriers that stopped him thinking how he needed to. Barriers that stood in the way of ever finding George Bridgeman alive.

Heavy raindrops bounced off the windscreen, the wipers failing to cope with the downpour on the outside while the heaters failed to prevent it misting on the inside. Sally leaned forward, the seatbelt pressing uncomfortably against her chest, which still ached when anything dug into her, and wiped the obscured windscreen with her gloved hand. Light spilled down on her from the street lights above making, refracting and intensifying as it travelled through the raindrops, each ray turning into hundreds that dazzled her eyes and made the road little more than a blur of coloured lights.

To her relief she found a space just big enough to park her car not too far from the front door of the converted Victorian house that contained her top-floor flat. The flat’s poor state when she’d bought it had made it just about affordable despite its location in Putney, south-west London. Of all the properties she’d viewed after abandoning the flat where she’d been attacked, it seemed comfortably to be the worst. But many of its supposed drawbacks were the very things that drew her to it. It was small, having been constructed in the loft, with many of its ceilings sloping so low half the room was unusable, and the windows were small, too small for a person to slip through, most of the natural light being provided by heavy framed skylights that she kept shut and locked; it was accessed by three steep flights of stairs; and the neighbours were easily heard through the thin partition walls. These were all the attributes she’d hunted for — the things that comforted her after the attack, that helped make her feel safe in her own home. Once she’d checked the outside of the building to make sure there were no drainpipes running anywhere near any of the windows she made an offer at the full asking price straight away. The estate agent didn’t argue and the deal was done.

After checking the road in front and behind, she jumped from her car, checked twice she’d secured it properly and jogged along the pavement with her thin raincoat over her head and her mid-height heels clicking against the soaked pavement until she was safely under the cover of the front porch. She searched in her small, uncluttered handbag, another of the many deliberate changes she’d made since Sebastian Gibran entered her life, and pulled her keys from the internal zip-pocket, smoothly and quickly opening the front door. She searched the road for signs of danger before pushing the door open just wide enough to slide through the gap, closing it firmly behind her and standing in the darkness inside. She waited, listening for any sounds that shouldn’t be there, but also to prove to herself that she could — that she could stand in the greyness without fear overtaking her. To her relief, her breathing and heart rate remained reasonably calm and steady. After a few moments more she pushed the light timer switch and gave herself about thirty seconds of light to reach the next landing. She heaved herself away from the front door and climbed the stairs one at a time, the sounds of her neighbours still awake and living their normal lives comforting her all the way to the first-floor landing where she found the next light switch and continued her ascent until she reached her own front door, the keys for which she already held in her hand. As she slid the first key into the lock she paused for a second or two, looking back down the staircase, listening hard, just in case. Satisfied, she unlocked the three locks and pushed the door open, the light from inside flooding into the hallway just as the timer plunged it back into darkness.

Sally stepped inside her sanctuary, closing the door behind her without locking it and moving deeper into the front room, glad she had left the light on all day so she wouldn’t have to step into a dark flat, but disappointed that she still felt it necessary. At least she’d made it to the point where she could bear to leave the rest of the flat in semi-darkness, though it had taken her months to get there.

She moved quickly, going from room to room turning the lights on — but only lamps, not the overhead ones. Another step forward in her recovery . For months, the mere act of touching a lamp had filled her with so much anxiety it would almost instantly bring on a panic attack as the memories flooded back: turning the lamp on that night , the red light flooding her flat and the sense of him standing right behind her. The lamp had been the last thing she’d touched before … Sally shook her head to stop herself thinking too much about the attack and continued switching on a lamp in every room, searching every dark corner — just in case. Having confirmed that she was alone, she returned to the living room and secured the front door.