Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

‘Gentlemen,’ Donnelly introduced him. ‘This is DI Sean Corrigan.’ Sean just nodded.

‘DS Simon Rogers,’ the older, greyer detective offered, holding out his hand. Sean accepted it briefly before turning to the other detective and his already outstretched hand.

‘DC Martin McInerney, guv’nor.’ Again Sean just nodded.

‘Is it one of the missing children?’ Sean asked.

‘No,’ Donnelly answered, his lips thinner and paler than usual. ‘It’s a boy, about four or five years old, but it’s not George Bridgeman.’

‘We’re aware of your investigation into the missing children,’ Rogers told him. ‘Figured given the age of the victim and the location, you’d want to take a look.’

Sean looked over Rogers’s shoulder at the rolled up tartan blanket lying on a shallow, grey slab of stone, the grave marked with a simple headstone that was too far away for Sean to be able to read. ‘Yeah,’ he answered remorsefully, ‘I need to take a look.’

He walked between the two detectives and stepped slowly and carefully towards the rolled-up blanket, not speaking, examining the floor to avoid accidentally stepping on any potential evidence — a footprint or discarded food wrapper, a snagged clump of human hair or fabric − but he saw none.

The body was laid with its head pointing towards the tombstone: carefully arranged, not dropped in a panic, or dumped by someone who didn’t care. Did you pick this grave for some particular reason? Sean asked silently. Is there something special about it, here amongst thousands of others? Are you trying to tell me something — something about yourself — about what you’re trying to do — why you’re taking these children? He twisted his head slightly over his shoulder to speak to the detectives behind him, although he avoided looking at them, their searching eyes examining him, watching for signs of weakness or uncertainty, ready to judge him. ‘Any reports of missing children overnight?’ he asked.

‘Not in our borough, Rogers told him, ‘but we’ve put out a Met-wide request for everyone to check their overnight MISPER reports. Amount of publicity your investigation’s been receiving, it shouldn’t be long before we find out who the poor little sod is — or was.’

‘No,’ Sean agreed, ‘I don’t suppose it will.’ Slowly he turned back to face the rolled-up blanket, inching forward until the boy’s face began to come into his eyeline — just a little hair and the outline of a nose at first, but eventually his entire face confronted him, his eyes closed peacefully, his lips slightly parted, but no warm breath plumed into the cold morning air. Sean breathed in deeply and involuntarily found himself holding the air in his lungs as he leaned as close as he dared to the boy’s porcelain face, the images of the dolls from Bailey Fellowes’ bedroom flashing in his mind. He thanked God the boy’s eyes were closed and prayed that this time, at this scene, he could make a connection with the man he hunted — the man who’d killed now, taken the life of a young child — the most heinous crime imaginable. If the missing children had caused a storm, then the discovery of a child’s body would cause a hurricane and Sean knew he’d be at the centre of it.

He wondered if Addis already knew a child’s body had been found. He tried to clear his head of all the irrelevant crap that weighed him down, cluttering his mind and strangling his instincts. He needed to make a breakthrough, the sort of breakthrough only he could make — a leap across the existing evidence, one single piece of unique insightfulness that would set off a chain reaction of realization and finally put Sean on to the scent of the child murderer.

At last he released his breath and began to examine the boy, his beautiful, peaceful innocence momentarily swamping him with deep sadness like only the death of a child could, violent or otherwise. He quickly built brick walls in his mind to stop thoughts of his own children invading and overwhelming him, allowing him to look beyond his grief and do his job, although he knew the sadness he’d suppressed would return sometime in the future — when he was alone late in his office, or perhaps when he tiptoed into his daughters’ room to kiss them on the forehead.

He examined the blanket and the gravestone slab it lay upon, but could find no signs of blood, or even the slightest disturbance — nothing. Already he was sure the tartan blanket would have come from the killer’s home and would be a treasure chest of forensic evidence, possibly enough alone to convict the killer. But it was probably next to useless in his search to find his quarry. And there was no telltale sign of old blood seeping through the blanket where the base of the boy’s head lay. If he’d been hurriedly dumped on the stone or even thrown down, then the scalp would have probably split. He was convinced that the boy had been carefully placed on the stone, but why?

Look beyond what’s staring you in the face , Sean told himself. The killer’s trying to tell you something, even if he doesn’t know it himself . He almost began to speak out loud before he remembered the detectives standing behind him, watching his every move without speaking, unwittingly interfering with his train of thought, their mere presence disturbing him. If only he could be alone. But he couldn’t think of any logical reason to send them away and instead had to do his best to block them out — to pretend they didn’t exist, that only he and the little broken body of whoever this was were in the cemetery together — alone.

So what are you trying to tell me? he asked, his eyes still fixed on the boy’s face. Is it something about the body, something you’ve done to the body that will lead me to you? He could barely resist unwrapping the blanket and examining the body himself, right here and now, but the risk of losing invaluable forensic evidence stopped him. Besides, his instincts told him the body would be unharmed — undamaged. But what if the killer had left something wrapped in the blanket — something he wanted Sean to find. How badly he wanted to unwrap that blanket, but with Donnelly and the others standing so close he daren’t, no matter what. Best to unwrap it under controlled conditions in the morgue, remove each piece of evidence hair by hair, fibre by fibre. The body as it was told him nothing other than that the killer had cared about its disposal — had wanted to ensure the boy suffered no more — had felt guilt for what he had done?

You left him here, where you knew he would be found. Why? Because you couldn’t bear to dump him where he might not be found — to bury him in a shallow grave or leave him in the woods at the mercy of scavenging animals. Why did you care what happened to him after death so much? Because you wanted to show the world you’re not a monster? And why here, in a cemetery — so he could be with his own kind — the dead — to give him some peace?

Donnelly’s voice all but collapsed the house of cards he was building in his mind. ‘You found something, guv’nor?’

‘No,’ Sean snapped back before mellowing his tone, looking sheepishly at the detectives who were still strangers to him. ‘Nothing yet.’ He quickly turned away and tried to descend back into the world he’d just been dragged from — to be alone with the man he had to hunt. In leaving the body here you’ve already told me so much, but there’s more, isn’t there? Something right here, right in front of me. But I can’t see it, can I? For some reason I just can’t … He suddenly stopped his own thoughts, his head slowly turning towards the gravestone, as if some unseen force was twisting him towards it, opening his eyes for him, enabling him not just to look, but to see. He found himself reading the words carved into the pristine gravestone − yet the stone the body lay on was obviously over a hundred years old. ‘The gravestone’s new,’ Sean called to the others without looking away from the stone, ‘but the grave’s old.’