Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

‘And the drugs — the painkillers?’

‘Under control: ibuprofen and the occasional tramadol.’

‘Do you really need them any more? Have you seen your doctor about taking them?’

‘I can still feel the pain in my chest from time to time.’

‘Do you think the pain is possibly more psychological — in your mind?’

‘Well, when I feel it, it’s in my chest and it bloody hurts.’

Anna backed off. ‘Perhaps you could try dropping the tramadol and just using ibuprofen?’

‘I like the tramadol,’ Sally admitted. ‘It helps me sleep.’

‘You still have trouble sleeping?’

‘A bit. I struggle to get to sleep and then things wake me up and I need the tramadol to get me back to sleep.’

‘You mean your nightmares wake you up. Nightmares about the night you were attacked.’

‘Yes,’ Sally answered abruptly, as if lingering on the subject would induce the nightmares she still feared more than anything.

‘Tell me about them,’ Anna encouraged.

‘I’ve already told you.’

‘Tell me again. The more we talk about them, the better chance we have of stopping them.’

Sally breathed deeply and closed her eyes, reluctantly allowing the vivid memories to rush to the front of her mind, her hands suddenly tensing as her fingers curled and gripped the arms of her chair. ‘They’re always the same,’ she began, ‘always exactly the same.’

‘Go on,’ Anna softly encouraged. ‘Nothing can hurt you here.’

‘I’m in a strange place — a house — a big house, but there’s nothing in it — no furniture or anything, but everywhere is lit by a red light. Everywhere is red. I start walking from room to room — I think I’m trying to find a way out, but I can’t be sure. Each room just leads to another and another and I can’t find a way outside, there are no doors or windows, just doorways that lead to the next room and the next and …’ Sally stalled, her lips pale and dry, a slight sheen of sweat forming across her forehead and above her lip.

‘Keep going,’ Anna tried to help her.

‘I’m scared and I start to panic — I run from room to room, crashing into walls and tripping over things I can’t see and then I hear something, someone close behind me and I look over my shoulder but keep running and then I feel it …’

‘Feel what?’

‘The pain, the unbelievable pain in my chest …’

‘What do you do next?’

‘I look down at my chest and see it …’

‘What?’

‘The knife — the handle of a knife buried to the hilt in my chest. I’m not wearing any clothes and can see where the blade’s … I’m sorry I can’t …’

‘Try to go a little deeper, Sally. We have to get through this to get better. The dreams are your mind’s way of trying to deal with what happened, to help you be able to talk about what actually happened.’

Sally breathed deeply again before speaking. ‘I can see the blood running from my split skin and when I look up from the wound I see him, standing smiling in front of me, the red light making his teeth and eyes look blood red.’

‘Who do you see, Sally?’

‘It’s him — Sebastian Gibran, always him. And then he stretches out his hand and takes hold of the knife handle and … and he slowly pulls it out of me … and I just stand there and let him. I can’t feel any pain any more, just a feeling of uselessness. Once the knife’s out, he licks the blood off it and he says … he says — It’s time to kill the little pet . And then he puts the point of the blade on my chest, directly in line with my heart, and slowly pushes it through my skin and I feel it scraping past my ribs and piercing my heart and then … and then I wake up. My sheets are soaked. The pain and fear gradually fade, until I’m sure it was just a dream, and I take some drugs. It only ever comes once a night, so usually I can get back to sleep and be OK for work in the morning, more or less.’

‘OK, Sally, you did really well,’ Anna stopped her. ‘I think we should leave it there for the day and pick up where we left off next week if you can make it.’

‘Sure.’ Sally took a deep breath and opened her eyes for the first time since she started reliving the night when Gibran tried to kill her. ‘There’s just one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Why did he say, It’s time to kill the little pet ? What does that mean?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Anna lied. She knew exactly what Gibran had meant — that he considered her to be nothing more than Sean’s pet. It would do Sally’s recovery no good to know it — not yet. ‘It’s probably just something he said during one of his interviews that subconsciously you remembered.’

‘Oh,’ Sally sounded confused. ‘It’s just I never listened to his interviews. I never wanted to.’

‘Something else then,’ Anna suggested.

‘Of course,’ Sally pretended to agree. ‘Probably nothing. Probably nothing at all.’

As Sean and Donnelly strode across the main office at New Scotland Yard, Sean noticed Sally was nowhere to be seen. He grabbed DC McGowan as they crossed paths. ‘Stan — you seen Sally?’

‘Not for a couple of hours,’ McGowan told him.

‘Does she know McKenzie’s been re-arrested?’

‘Yeah,’ McGowan answered. ‘As does everyone else.’

‘OK, thanks.’ Sean made for his office with Donnelly in tow. No sooner had they entered and sat without removing their outdoor coats, peeling the lids off their takeaway coffees, than the main office was plunged into deathly silence by the arrival of Assistant Commissioner Addis. The decorative symbols of his senior rank twinkled from his epaulettes and he smiled like a politician as he paused at the desks of detectives he didn’t know to peer over their shoulders at their tasks, nodding sagely as if he understood what each of them was doing. Meanwhile he inched ever closer to Sean’s office.

‘Heads up,’ Donnelly whispered. ‘Scrambled egg heading our way.’

‘This is all I need,’ Sean muttered in reply as they resumed their silent vigil until Addis finally reached the office and entered without asking. He looked around for a spare seat and found none — neither Sean nor Donnelly showed any sign of offering to give up theirs.

‘I hear your prime suspect is back in custody,’ he told them.

‘You’ve been told already?’ Sean asked.

‘Good news travels fast,’ Addis answered.

‘Bad news travels even faster,’ Donnelly chipped in, showing his usual disregard for senior uniformed officers of all types. They couldn’t sack him for being disrespectful and his total lack of desire to go any further than the rank of detective sergeant gave him all the protection he needed. Addis ignored him and directed his questions towards Sean.

‘You must be very confident he’s our man to have arrested him again so soon after releasing him — not to mention after the press conference I did.’

‘I am,’ Sean told him.

‘Then I’m confused as to why you’re here instead of at Kentish Town, interviewing him.’

‘We booked him in and called his brief, but she can’t get to him for a couple of hours. Then she’ll want a lengthy consultation, by which time it’ll be getting too late to interview him. Besides, this way we give Forensics a few more hours to try and find something to bury him with.’

‘It doesn’t matter how late it gets,’ Addis argued, ‘we still have a missing four-year-old boy. We can interview him in the middle of the night if we need to.’

‘I understand that,’ Sean answered, ‘but he’s not talking. Trust me, if he was going to spill the whereabouts of the Bridgeman boy he would have done it at his flat — when he was alone and scared.’