Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Sally demanded. She’d grown closer to Sean since she’d found him bleeding and helpless on Thomas Keller’s filthy kitchen floor. She’d saved him then from a psychopathic killer and she’d save him now from his own kind if she thought she had to.

‘Just that he seems a bit out of sorts,’ Donnelly mused. ‘Not quite the Sean of old.’

‘What d’you expect?’ she argued. ‘First they mothball us for almost six months, then they drop this nice little mess into our laps and expect Sean to be able to magically solve it.’

‘Sean, now is it?’ Donnelly picked up on her slip. She’d never called him anything other than guv’nor or boss in front of the others before.

‘All I’m saying is, he’s bound to be a bit a rusty — we all are. He just needs a little time, that’s all. He needs to get the scent for it again.’

‘Is that why he went after McKenzie and this Hannah bird — trying to get the feel for it?’

‘Probably,’ Sally admitted. ‘At least he was doing something, not just sitting in his office praying for a miracle, or sitting in a pub drowning his sorrows.’

‘Aye, well perhaps he’d better start praying for a miracle now,’ Donnelly told her, ‘because if he doesn’t crack this one soon he’ll be in the brown smelly stuff — and us along with him. The eyes of the world are watching, Sally — the eyes of the world are watching.’

It had already been a long day and it wasn’t over yet. Every inch of his body ached and throbbed after spending the best part of the night sitting in the front seat of an unmarked police car on what ultimately turned out to be a wasted endeavour. He looked up from the endless reports and loose bits of paper littering his cheap desk and peered into the adjoining office only to see that it was empty. A quick scan of the main office confirmed that neither Sally nor Donnelly was anywhere to be seen. He was pretty sure what sort of place they were probably in, even if he didn’t know exactly where, and as they were the only ones who would be likely to enter his office without announcing themselves first, he knew he was unlikely to be disturbed.

Confident of solitude he unlocked his middle cabinet drawer and slid it open. It contained only one thing — his private journal, a visible record of his whirlpool of thoughts and ideas, captured before they escaped his consciousness and were lost for ever. He lifted the book, which was leather bound and about the size of a large photo-album only thinner, and placed it carefully on his desk, opening it at the very beginning and moving steadily through it, page by page, reading his own words, trying to decipher the dozens of small sketches and chaotic graphs — a multitude of names circled and linked to other circled names, each line in a different colour signifying something he’d long since forgotten. But they all related to other cases — old cases solved and consigned to the scrapheap of his memory. So many names: of paedophiles, murderers, witnesses, suspects, the dead. One name made him stop and linger longer than any other, his finger caressing the letters, circling the small cut-out from a surveillance photograph he’d glued on to the page. James Hellier, real name Stefan Korsakov — the man who could have killed him anytime he’d wanted to, but who in the end saved his life, although his motives for doing so were never entirely clear. Maybe he just couldn’t stand the thought of someone else taking his life? ‘Where are you now, my old friend?’ Sean whispered to the small photograph. ‘And what the hell are you up?’ The cold shiver running up his back urged him to move on, flicking through page after page of disorganized notes and scribbles until he came to a nearly blank page halfway through the book. The only words were those written across the top: George Bridgeman — Abduction and a little further down: Bailey Fellowes — Abduction . The rest of the page was barren — the accusation obvious: he couldn’t think any more, not the way he needed to.

He smoothed out the pages and lifted a red fine-tipped felt pen from an old mug he used as a penholder and flipped the top off, holding it above the notebook as if he expected it to magically lead his hand and start writing for him — solving the puzzle of the missing children without his help. He tried to force thoughts into his mind, but only the broad strokes, stuff he’d already covered with Sally and Donnelly — with Anna — would come. Nothing incisive, nothing that allowed him to cut through the rock and find the diamond. The abductor knew the children, but how? They knew the families, but how? They knew the houses, but how? They even knew the alarms weren’t working, but how did they know that? The alarm fitters checked out OK and were from different companies, so not that … He knew he was asking the right questions, but he needed the answers and they wouldn’t come.

He allowed the pen to fall from his fingers as he leaned back in his chair with a sigh of resignation, running his hands through his light-brown hair, the tiredness of the last few days suddenly creeping up on him and threatening to drag him into sleep. He quickly straightened in his chair and replaced the lid on the pen, blinking furiously to keep his eyes from sealing themselves closed, his hand scribbling thoughts that almost came from his subconscious, released by the extreme tiredness of a mind too exhausted to resist any more. He read the words as they took form on the pages, columns of facts on each side of the book, one list headed GB and the other BF — Scene One written under George’s initials and Scene Two under Bailey’s. The words he wrote under Scene One he then repeated under Scene Two , circles and lines linking the two across the divide on the page. No signs of violence. No blood. No evidence of drugs being used. No evidence of restraint. No noise. No nothing. Conclusion: the victims went with the offender willingly . ‘They wanted to go with you. They had to have, but why? Why did they want to go with you?’ He leaned back before immediately springing forward, tapping the pages with the pen. ‘They went with you because they know you. But you’re not a family member, you’re not a teacher or child-minder and the families don’t appear to share any friends or at least no one the children could know well enough to go with in the middle of the night. So how do they know you?’

He stood up, not moving, just standing, starting down at the new words in his old journal, allowing the questions he’d asked to whirl around the room, spin around his head, until at last the simplicity of the solution began to take shape. He sat down again and rested a hand on the book. ‘Maybe then … maybe, you don’t know the families — you don’t know these children?’ His eyes closed for a few seconds while he tried to understand his own conclusion. ‘Or at least you don’t know them like I thought you did. You have no historical link to them — you’re not a trusted friend of the family — no one the children could have known well. But you’re not a stranger, you can’t be, because they went with you willingly and you know these houses — these homes.’ He felt any answers slipping away as quickly as they’d started come, his imagination trying to stop them fading into the dark recesses of his subconscious. ‘Damn you,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘You know the children, you know the houses, you know everything you need to know, but you can’t be closely connected to the families or I would have had you by now. So something else. Something I haven’t thought of yet. Something so fucking obvious I can’t see it for staring at it.’ He exhaled heavily and slumped into his chair, his mind drifting Thoughts of the case were banished as images of his wife and children invaded — and of Anna. Extreme tiredness was making him lose control over his consciousness.