Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

Sean pulled the door open and walked quickly outside without closing it behind him, looking up and down the road just as Sam’s father had, in some forlorn, desperate hope that even now, hours later, he might somehow see the man and boy under the yellow street lights. He found himself frozen to the spot, unable to decide which way to walk, waiting for some unseen power to direct him, turning one way then the other, squinting to try and tell which way to head, but nothing revealed itself. In the end he decided to walk in the direction where the road was longest, past the rows of parked SUVs and top-end estate cars, looking for a place where the man he hunted could have parked without disturbing the solitude of the street in the middle of the night. ‘You didn’t park here — didn’t park close to the house, because if you had the father would have heard the slam of the car door, the engine starting — he would have seen you speeding away. So you were parked somewhere else — in the next street — at the end of the road and around the corner? But you couldn’t have made it all the way to the end before he saw you — not while you were carrying the deadweight of the boy. The father said he couldn’t see anyone — couldn’t hear anything.’ Sean stopped and looked around. ‘So you hid — you hid with the boy, listening to his father running in the street, his footsteps little more than dull thuds as he searched for you in his bare feet. But the sound of those footsteps must have been terrifying while you cowered like a hunted animal, and you had to stop the boy calling out or making a sound — you had no choice — so you kept your hand pressed across his face, didn’t you? You kept your hand pressed across his face until the footsteps disappeared, and then you ran — you took the boy to wherever your car was. But where did you hide?’

Again he searched the street. Between the parked cars? No. Where then? He walked to the closest house and peered over the iron railings into the basement, before moving to the next house and doing the same and then the next and the next. They were all the same — a mixture of chained-up bikes and wheelie bins, most in complete darkness, but not all. ‘You hid down here, didn’t you — like the coward you are. But which one, you bastard son-of-a-bitch?’

He kept moving along the street, looking into the basements, desperately searching for something that would tell him it was the one where the taker of children had hidden, but he could find nothing — feel nothing. ‘Fuck,’ he told the emptiness. Now he’d have to get Forensics to search every basement in the street. If he wasn’t already Mr Unpopular, he soon would be. ‘Damn you and damn me too,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know you yet, but I will find you. I just need more. I need something else. I need the post-mortem.’

Douglas Allen sat in his study that resembled a small workshop on the first floor of his house, surrounded by his collection of clocks and mechanical toys. He wore a magnifying eye-scope over his right eye with his mini-potholing lamp strapped around his forehead, which was switched on despite the bright circle of light provided by the large flexible desk lamp he’d pulled close to where he worked. The rest of the room was in semi-darkness. He hummed along to the choral music that was quietly playing in the background as he selected a lock from his large collection and began to insert his delicate tools into the keyhole, reminding himself of where each pin and hole inside could be found — of every tiny sound they made as he gently manoeuvred them into exactly the right position to spring the device open. Within a few minutes he heard and felt the pins drop into their housings and the deadbolt suddenly retracted into the body of the lock. He put it to one side and reached for the next, only to be instantly frozen by a sound, real or imagined, coming from somewhere in the house. He cocked his head and listened intently, filtering out any sounds from beyond the house as he tried to allay or confirm his fears. Had one of the children wandered from their bedroom against his express wishes? He’d fed them, bathed them and put them to bed over two hours ago and checked on them since, finding them soundly asleep in their pristine pyjamas and bed linen. Maybe one of them had had a bad dream? After a few minutes he was satisfied the sound had been nothing and returned to his work, pulling the next lock into the circle of light before abandoning it just as quickly and reaching for a small, framed photograph of his wife, lifting it from the desktop and holding it close to his face, unclipping the eye-scope from his spectacles. The sadness of the previous night still hung over him like oppressive black clouds, haunting his every waking moment.

‘What should I do, Iris?’ he whispered, his voice trembling. ‘I don’t know what to do. If … if you were only here with me … I … I … I’d know what to do.’ You do know what to do . ‘Iris?’ You must carry on God’s work . ‘I don’t know, Iris — after what happened with … the last time.’ The Lord is thy shepherd . ‘Is this truly what God wants?’ He lets me rest in the meadow grass and leads me beside the quiet streams. He gives me new strength. He helps me do what honours him the most . ‘And do I honour him? Does doing what I do truly honour him?’ But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven . ‘Is Samuel with the Lord now?’ He lives with him for ever in his home now . Allen choked back his joy and relief, but the tears still streamed down his face until he could taste the salt on his lips. You must save as many as you can before it’s too late. Time is always against us .

He felt her fade away as suddenly as she’d arrived and the emptiness returned, tearing at his chest and pounding in his head, the pain making him dizzy and nauseous.

‘God give me strength to carry on,’ he called out, his eyes tightly closed, hands clamped to the side of his head, trying to squeeze the demons from inside his mind. ‘God give me strength.’ But the pain was unrelenting and merciless. With his eyes still firmly closed he clumsily felt around in the dark, fumbling at the small drawers of the desk until he believed he’d found the one he needed. He pulled it open and groped inside until his fingers coiled around the first small bottle as his other hand pulled at the lid, ripping it off and sending lilac pills cascading across the desk and on to the floor. ‘God give me strength,’ he begged again. ‘God give me strength to bear my burden.’ But the pain in his head had begun to exhaust his strength. Just take the medication , his doctors had told him, just take the medication and you’ll be fine — painless . But the drugs took the voices away too — the voice of his wife, the voice of his Lord.

Blindly he gathered up a handful of the pills from the desktop, not looking to see how many he was about to swallow, weeping with pain and shame — shame that he was about to betray his own wife, the only person who’d ever really loved him. ‘Please, God … please God, give me strength,’ he begged one last time, his hand moving closer and closer to his mouth, as if it was controlled by the Devil himself, pushing the poison relentlessly nearer. But as his lips reluctantly began to part, the white pain suddenly broke like giant wave over the shore, its energy spent and fading. His breathing began to return to normal, his eyes flickering open, still dazzled by the lamplight, but increasingly able to tolerate it. He rocked back on his knees and opened his clenched fist, allowing the lilac pills to trickle from his grip and fall to the floor. ‘The Lord is my saviour — the Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my saviour — the Lord is my shepherd.’ He swayed back and forth as he chanted his allegiance. ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil — Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ Over and over he repeated the words of the Lord’s Prayer, frantically at first, then more calmly, until he could feel a only trace of the pain that had threatened to defeat him.