Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

Sean released his grip and pushed McKenzie away from him. ‘Jesus Christ, that’s why you looked so worried when we talked about forensic evidence during that first interview − not because you thought it would implicate you, but because it might implicate somebody else and then we’d begin to suspect you weren’t involved. But why?’ Sean asked. ‘Why would you want us to think you’d taken the boy?’

‘To show everybody what a fool you are,’ McKenzie said. ‘An ignorant fool, just like all your kind. You think you can be police, prosecution, judge and jury. Well, I showed you. I proved to everyone you can get it wrong and that you treat people like me as if we were nothing but filthy animals — animals without even the most basic of human rights — to live in freedom and without fear.’

‘This is bullshit,’ Sean insisted. ‘What’s the real reason you wanted me to come after you? Tell me,’ he almost shouted into McKenzie’s still smiling face, looking up at him, breathing hard as he began to cackle like a witch.

‘I met a lot of interesting people when I was locked in that stinking prison,’ McKenzie explained. ‘A lot of people who told me how to play the game, told me I was missing out, missing out on something every time I was wrongly arrested and held prisoner by the police.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Sean asked, the dark anger inside him boiling up from deep, hidden places, images of McKenzie’s smashed and broken face seeping into his mind, his teeth cracked and bleeding, his nose shattered and gushing.

‘Five thousand pounds for a wrongful arrest, they told me,’ McKenzie continued. ‘Two hundred pounds for every hour you spend locked up, not to mention my very public defamation of character. Should all add up to a tidy little sum, don’t you think?’

Sean felt his fists clenching as he stared into McKenzie’s small yellow and brown teeth, knowing he could knock most of the front ones straight down his throat with one well-placed punch. ‘Money?’ he spat into his face. ‘All this was for money? You deliberately misled an investigation to find a missing four-year-old boy to make some money?’

‘No,’ McKenzie corrected him. ‘ You misled the investigation — I just played along. So I had a lock-picking set — so what? It used to be my job. And a few scribbles on a map — it could be anything. And now I’ll see you in court, only I won’t be the defendant this time, you will be, and I’ll be the innocent victim.’

‘You ignorant fool,’ Sean told him. ‘You’ve admitted to deliberately misleading my investigation and you think you’re just going to walk away from that?’

‘Admitted what?’ McKenzie taunted him. ‘Admitted it where? Here, in this cell, with no solicitor present and no recording? What I’ve told you here means nothing. Nothing .’

Sally saw the muscles and sinews tighten in Sean’s neck and face, his fingers curling into ever tighter fists. ‘Sean,’ she warned him. ‘Sean — it’s not worth it. He’s not worth it.’ The muscles in the side of his face rippled as he fought to control the nearing storm, until finally his jaw unclamped and his blurred vision returned to normal.

‘You’d better just pray they’re both still alive,’ he warned McKenzie, standing and stepping away from him before the rage could return.

‘They’re not alive,’ McKenzie taunted him. ‘They’re already dead and you know it — you can feel it. If someone like me took them then they’re already dead.’

Sean froze, as if McKenzie had unwittingly planted a seed of thought in his mind that now needed to be nurtured, fed and watered so it could germinate and flower into something important he didn’t yet fully understand.

‘You’re telling me that if you had taken them they’d already be dead? Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘Yes,’ McKenzie continued, the smile falling from his now deadly serious face, eyes wild and dilated.

‘Why?’ Sean asked. ‘Why would you kill them?’

‘Abduction and child rape means life in prison — why risk leaving a live witness? Once you’ve crossed that line, there’s no turning back — not for anyone.’

‘You’d kill them just to get rid of a witness?’

‘Why not?’ McKenzie answered coldly. ‘It wouldn’t make anything any worse.’

‘So the killing would mean nothing?’

‘No. Nothing more than a necessary evil.’

‘And their bodies?’

‘What?’

‘What would you do with their bodies?’

‘Get rid of them.’

‘How?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It matters to me. How?’

‘I don’t know,’ McKenzie told him, sounding confused for the first time, as if the game was slipping into new, unplanned territory and he didn’t like it.

‘How?’ Sean barked at him.

‘Maybe we should get an interview room,’ Sally interrupted, ‘get this on tape?’

‘How?’ Sean ignored her. ‘How would you get rid of the bodies?’

‘Just get rid of them,’ McKenzie stumbled. ‘Dump them somewhere — it wouldn’t matter.’

‘Would you bury them?’ Sean asked. ‘Conceal them — try to hide them?’

‘No,’ McKenzie argued. ‘What would be the point? They’d be found sooner or later. Better to just dump them somewhere and do it quickly — reduce the chance of being seen.’

‘And have you crossed that line, Mark?’ Sally asked.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘It hasn’t come to that yet for me. I pray it never will.’

‘Then they weren’t taken by someone like you,’ Sean talked over them.

Silence filled the room until McKenzie finally spoke again.

‘How do you know?’ he asked. ‘How could you know?’

‘Because we haven’t found any bodies,’ Sean told them sombrely. ‘We haven’t found any bodies.’

When they got back to New Scotland Yard, Donnelly was sitting alone in the office he shared with Sally. Sean made directly for him, pulling his coat off and chucking it over Sally’s desk and sitting in her chair without thinking. Sally pulled up a spare chair without giving it a second thought and waited for someone to begin.

‘Well?’ Donnelly asked, arms spread open. ‘What’s going on? Is this second missing child I’m hearing about linked to ours?’

‘Yes,’ Sean confirmed. ‘Whoever took George Bridgeman also took Bailey Fellowes.’

‘Great,’ Donnelly said, rolling his eyes in disbelief. ‘Well, you weren’t the only one to waste your time: DNA results are back from samples we had examined that belong to George Bridgeman. Stuart Bridgeman is his biological father.’

‘Does he know yet?’ Sally asked.

‘He knows,’ Donnelly replied.

‘And his reaction?’

‘Not that of a man who’s just found out he killed his own son, if that’s what you mean. More just relieved.’

‘Then we can all but dispense with the idea of him being a suspect,’ Sean told them. ‘None of which helps us right now.’

‘No,’ Donnelly agreed, ‘I don’t suppose it does. But I would have put a lot of money on one of us being right: McKenzie and Bridgeman were both more than viable suspects. Jesus, what a waste of time.’

‘McKenzie wasn’t a waste of time,’ Sean argued.

‘Really?’ Donnelly questioned. ‘How so?’

‘Because we learned from him. He told us who we should be looking for — or rather, who we shouldn’t be looking for.’

‘Go on,’ Donnelly encouraged.

‘McKenzie told us that if the children had been taken by someone like him their bodies would have been dumped without much care and easily found. If a paedophile had taken them we would have at least one body by now, I’m certain of it.’