Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

‘You’re just getting jumpy. Let it go.’ He opened up the Missing Person Report and began to scan the pages. ‘We’ve got bigger problems than Addis.’

‘Same offender?’ Sally asked, happy to leave Gibran in the past.

‘Yes. Whoever took George Bridgeman’s taken this one too. But who and why?’

‘Well, whoever it is, it isn’t McKenzie,’ Sally reminded him. ‘Unless he’s Harry Houdini.’

‘Damn it,’ Sean said, shaking his head. ‘How could I be so wrong about him? I thought we had our man. I thought he was just biding time until we could bury him. Two missing children. Jesus Christ — this is going to be the biggest thing since Fred West.’

‘Not if we get the children back alive,’ Sally told him. ‘Then everyone will forget about it within a couple of weeks — including Addis. No deaths — no news.’

‘You’re right. But what the hell are we supposed to do now? Where do we go from here?’

‘To Highgate,’ Sally told him. ‘We look for the things we missed and we start again. What else can we do?’

‘We start again,’ Sean repeated her words. ‘Only now we have two missing children and not a bloody clue what’s happened to them.’

‘Do you want me to arrange for McKenzie to be released?’

‘No,’ Sean snapped. ‘That fucker can stay locked up for a few more hours.’

‘Why?’ Sally asked.

‘Because he may not have been playing the game I thought he was, but he’s playing a game nonetheless. First time we interviewed him I knew there was something not right — the way he would neither admit nor deny anything I put to him. I knew the little bastard was up to something.’

‘You didn’t say anything.’ Sally’s tone was accusing.

‘I was going to — once I’d worked it out. Now I need to know why and I need to know for sure he’s not involved.’

‘How could he be? He was locked up in Kentish Town nick all night.’

‘Maybe he’s not working alone,’ Sean suggested. ‘People like McKenzie find strength in the group. He takes one child, then to make him look innocent someone else takes the next while he’s in custody. He goes nowhere until I’m sure.’

‘Fair enough,’ Sally agreed, already standing and pulling her coat back on. ‘I’ll drive — you think,’ she told him.

‘Think?’ Sean replied quietly. ‘There’s something I haven’t done in a while.’

‘Sorry?’ Sally asked.

‘Nothing,’ he assured her. ‘Just … nothing.’

Forty minutes later they arrived at the address in Highgate. It was situated in a beautiful, broad street with a dense canopy of brown and gold that swayed in the breeze, each movement releasing hundreds of leaves at a time to float gently to the ground. Even in the mid-morning the noise from above was intense — if anyone cared to pay it any notice. Sean did — looking up at the branches above his head as he stepped from the car — imagining how loud the noise must have seemed in the middle of the night — comforting and camouflaging to the man who stalked the street looking for the house he’d already selected. For this was no random act: he’d come for the child — the child he’d already ordained as his next victim.

As they approached the house the little girl had been taken from, Sean was struck by the similarity between this street and Courthope Road in Hampstead. Not so much the physical similarities, of which there were few other than the height and quantity of the trees, but more by the feel of both streets — quiet sanctuaries close to the heart of the metropolis, almost eerie and a little unnerving, as if the houses and trees had borne witness to some terrible act that had changed and stained the atmosphere there forever. He felt a chill that made him shiver and turn his coat collar up against the cold.

‘You all right?’ Sally asked.

Sean ignored the question. ‘Do you see any similarities between this street and the one in Hampstead?’ he asked.

‘They’re both affluent, quiet and residential,’ Sally answered, ‘but nothing startling. The houses are different and the road shape’s different. Why — have you seen something?’

‘Not really,’ he answered, then added: ‘Just a feeling.’

‘What sort of feeling?’

‘This place makes me feel displaced — like déjà-vu, or like I can’t clear my head, as if I was under water or in a dream.’

‘Come on,’ Sally encouraged him. She understood him better than almost anyone else and had since stopped abandoned any scepticism where his insights were concerned. ‘Let’s go see the parents.’

Sean looked her in the eye for an unnaturally long time before nodding and walking the last few steps to the porch of the house, stopping when he reached the short flight of steps, his arm stretched out to the side to ensure Sally didn’t go further. He stared at the front door, his imagination turning day to night as the figure of a man slowly formed behind his eyes, crouched by the front door, calmly and carefully working his fine tools to unpick the locks. Sean looked up at the porch light that had been left on in the morning panic, its weak glow almost unnoticeable in the daylight and insufficient for the intruder’s purposes at night.

‘He used a torch,’ he suddenly said out loud. ‘He needs light to work the locks. To do it as quietly as he needs to, he needs light.’

‘Makes sense,’ Sally agreed, aware that the fact alone was of little importance, but for Sean to be able to build the picture he needed to see every detail. These were his foundations.

‘But it would have to be small, like a miniature Maglite — something he could hold in his mouth for at least a few minutes while his hands were full.’ Sean paused for a second, feeling the cold of autumn wrapping around him, imagining the freezing, harsh metal of a torch in his mouth, the discomfort distracting him from the vital work his hands needed to perform. ‘No,’ he contradicted himself, ‘no he wouldn’t put it in his mouth. Something else.’

‘A head-torch,’ Sally suggested, ‘like a miner’s hat type thing, only not on a hat, on a headband like those things you see cyclists wearing.’

‘Yeah,’ Sean agreed, as he continued to stare at the invisible figure. ‘Something like that.’ But although he could see the man, he couldn’t feel him — couldn’t even begin to understand him. Why did he have to break into the houses to take the children? Why did he want the children? Why these particular children?

‘Anything else?’ Sally asked after a long while.

‘No.’ Sean admitted defeat, wondering why there was no police tape cordoning off the porch area as he began to climb the few stairs until he was close enough to see the telltale signs of aluminium dust on the door, handle and locks. ‘They’ve already checked for prints,’ he told Sally.

‘I noticed,’ she replied. ‘Someone’s in a hurry.’

‘Addis,’ Sean muttered. ‘I can smell his interference already.’

‘Then best we get on with it,’ Sally sighed, and rang the doorbell hard, in the way only cops and postmen do. They waited silently for it to be answered — listening as heavy, purposeful steps beat their way towards them, giving cruel, practical thoughts just time enough to invade Sean’s mind. He prayed the children were still alive, but if they were not, or if one was not, then he prayed they would find the body soon. With the body would come nightmares, but also evidence. Evidence of the man he sought, his state of mind and motivation. If the body showed signs of violence and sexual abuse, he could limit his suspect searches to violent paedophiles, motivated by their twisted desires and anger bred by their own stolen childhoods. But if the body was relatively untouched, with no signs of abuse, then he would be hunting a different animal altogether — a tortured, guilt-ridden beast, motivated by some insanity that neither psychiatrists or pharmaceuticals had been able to touch or cure. Either way, it would give him a route into his quarry’s mind, a way to build a picture that would enable him to think like him and therefore predict him. Once he had that he could build the path that would lead to the door of the man who’d taken the children.