Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

‘You’re home early,’ Kate said without sarcasm, despite the fact it was almost nine p.m.

‘Hardly early,’ Sean answered.

‘It is for you.’

‘I suppose so. Thought I’d come home and see my wife before things go completely crazy. I’m sorry about the other night.’

‘I am too,’ she replied without looking or sounding as if she meant it.

‘You could be a little bit more forgiving.’

‘Sean,’ she answered, exasperated, ‘I’ve been at work all day, then I came home to look after the kids, and since they’ve been in bed I’ve been catching up on the paperwork I didn’t have time to do because the A and E department was a bloody madhouse today. And I’ve still got bonfire night in south-east London to look forward to, so I’m sorry if I can’t be a doting wife right now.’

‘Fair enough,’ Sean didn’t argue, keen to avoid more harsh words, trying to think of something to say to end the silence. ‘Bonfire night sounds like fun.’

‘Sure. Endless flow of idiots who’ve set themselves on fire.’ Sean failed to stifle a little laugh. ‘It’s not so funny when they’re children,’ Kate reprimanded him.

‘No,’ Sean agreed, instantly serious.

‘Speaking of children,’ she continued, ‘how’s your case going?’

‘All right — I think.’

‘You think? That’s not like you.’

‘I have suspect in custody who looks good for it.’

‘And the boy?’

‘Still missing. Haven’t you been watching the news?’ Kate rolled her eyes at him. ‘I guess not then,’ Sean finished.

‘Won’t he tell you where the boy is?’ she asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m not asking the right questions.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because my mind’s fucked,’ he told her. ‘This move to the Yard, senior officers sticking their noses into my business twenty-four hours a day — I can’t breathe, let alone think. Never thought I’d see the day I missed Peckham.’

‘So that’s the reason you’re home before the early hours,’ Kate suddenly accused him, but without venom. ‘To try and get your head straight before you interview whoever it is you’ve got locked up. Your body’s here, but your mind’s still at work, yes?’

‘I’ve got to get this one solved quickly,’ he appealed to her. ‘If I don’t, then you and the girls won’t be seeing me at all. And to solve it I need a confession or …’

‘Or what?’ Kate encouraged him.

‘Or a body,’ he answered.

‘Jesus, Sean,’ she told him. ‘That’s a bit cold.’

‘It’s the truth. Bodies provide evidence and evidence solves cases and convicts bad people.’

‘Well, on that cheery note,’ Kate declared, closing the lid of her laptop, ‘I’ll bid you goodnight. You’re not the only one around here with an early start and a long day ahead of them.’

‘No, I don’t suppose I am,’ Sean acknowledged, trying to sound sympathetic, but in truth he was just disinterested, too absorbed by his own obsessions to care.

‘Are you coming?’ Kate asked as she stood.

‘Not just yet,’ he answered.

‘Sorry. I forgot you need a little time to get your head together .’

‘Yes,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Yes I do.’

‘I’ll see you later.’ Her voice sounded resigned as she allowed her hand to trail across his shoulders as she passed him on her way to the stairs and bed.

He sat still and silent while he waited for the house to settle, the music swallowed by the closing of the laptop. Once he was satisfied he wouldn’t be disturbed, he closed his eyes and waited for images and thoughts to race into his mind, but the first thing to enter his consciousness was Anna Ravenni-Ceron, her long curly black hair allowed to escape from the unruly bunch it was usually kept in on top of her head — strands hanging in front of her face and obscuring one of her deep brown eyes as she smiled at him. He imagined her slender neck and naked shoulders, although he’d never actually seen her that way. He had no idea why she danced in front of his mind’s eye, just that he liked it. He allowed the image to grow, revealing more of her nakedness as she turned her back on him, looking over her shoulder and smiling seductively — teasing him. But her image was suddenly chased away with a jolt — her twirling beauty replaced by the face of George Bridgeman, pale and lifeless. Sean’s physical desires faded to nothing as George Bridgeman stared at him accusingly with his startling green eyes, demanding to know why Sean hadn’t saved him. Why he’d forsaken him?

The sudden sense of panic almost made him grab his coat and jacket and head straight back to the Yard or even to Kentish Town to drag McKenzie from his cell and do whatever he had to do to get the truth from him. But if he hadn’t talked in his flat, then he wouldn’t talk now — not without some new leverage to prise the truth from him.

Sean eased himself back into his chair and considered his next move. The first thing that came to mind was putting in a call to Dr Canning, the pathologist he preferred to use for murder investigations, warning him to expect a body sooner rather than later — the body of a child, probably at an outside scene, somewhere secluded. He was about to reach for his phone when he remembered the last time he’d called Canning and warned him to expect a body. When his hunch had proved correct, it had left him feeling somehow complicit in the murder of the woman whose body they found the very next day, as if by acting on the premonition he had made it come to pass. His hand moved away from the phone lying on the table, unwilling to damn George Bridgeman to the same fate.

He tried to shake the haunting images out of his mind — to bring back the dancing Anna, but the boy’s pleading face wouldn’t go away. Desperate to break the spell, he jumped from his chair and headed for the cupboard where his bourbon and solitary glass tumbler lived. He poured a decent-sized shot and swallowed it in two gulps before refilling it and heading back to his chair, enjoying the abrasive feel of the thick liquid as it slid towards his stomach. His eyes flickered shut and he allowed the images of the boy and McKenzie to completely flood his mind, but try as he might he couldn’t bring the two together — he couldn’t see McKenzie’s face on the silhouette climbing the stairs towards the boy. He thumped the table in frustration and disappointment; robbed of a sense he had come to rely on, he felt like a hunter who’d forgotten how to track its prey, impotent and useless. ‘It’ll all make sense soon,’ he promised himself. ‘I just hope it won’t be too late.’

The quiet Victorian Street that gently snaked between Highgate Hill and Archway Road was at its widest halfway along where a wide triangular clearing at the junction with Winchester Place gave it the appearance of being a cul-de-sac. The sky was almost completely hidden by a thick canopy of trees whose golden leaves made the gentle breeze sound more like a storm, and the street lamps were spread too far apart to provide much light.

The man pulled the collar of his thick jacket up around his neck to keep out the bitter cold of the night and crouched down in the porch of the tall red-brick, three-storey house, unconcerned by the pale light of the doorway shining above him. He could have gone next door where other children slept, where there was no porch light, but he wouldn’t. This was the only house he was interested in. Without a hint of panic or fear he knelt next to the bag he’d placed on the ground and unzipped it — the sound drowned out by the soughing of the wind in the leaves as he removed the head-torch from inside, turning it on and slipping it over his head, adjusting it until he was satisfied it was fit for purpose, its cylindrical beam of white light moving in the semi-darkness as if it was a part of him. Next he rubbed his hands vigorously and blew his hot breath into them for warmth, making sure they were flexible and full of feeling before sliding them into thin, warm gloves, holding them up in front of his face and examining them, like a surgeon before operating. Next he took the rolled-up suede case from the bag and unfurled it as carefully as if it contained diamonds.