Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

Sean immediately recognized the unfamiliar look of confusion and disturbance on Canning’s face. ‘You find something?’ he asked, stepping forward.

‘What does this mean?’ Canning replied, letting Sean discover the toy for himself. ‘Is it some sort of ritual gesture?’

Sean’s eyes fell on the toy, the sight of it and the questions it brought making him feel a little lightheaded as he tried to comprehend what it could mean: the small, blue dinosaur tucked neatly, precisely under the boy’s arms as they lay folded across his chest. ‘What are you all about, my friend?’ Sean asked out loud, unconsciously lifting the camera and taking pictures. ‘Why did you do this? Where did the toy come from? Did you give it to the boy after you’d killed him — after you’d suffocated him with your own hands? Were you trying to say sorry to him, like you’re now trying to say sorry to the world?’

‘Maybe he has children of his own?’ Canning offered. ‘After he killed the boy, he felt so guilty he wrapped the body with one of his own children’s toys? As you said, as a gesture of his sorrow — his guilt?’

‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘He doesn’t have any children of his own.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because-’ he began, breaking off as he realized that he didn’t know, at least not in a way he could explain to Canning or anyone else. ‘Wait,’ he suddenly changed tack. ‘There’s something in his hand — his right hand.’ He bent as close as he dared, squinting to better see the edge of something shiny and metallic protruding from the boy’s clenched fist. Sean’s hand began to stretch out towards the shining object, but Canning caught it around the wrist, making Sean’s head snap towards him, a momentary glare of anger in his eyes.

‘Gloves,’ Canning told him. ‘You’re not wearing gloves.’ Sean looked at his unprotected hands and withdrew. ‘I’ll do it,’ Canning continued, taking hold of the boy’s fingers and trying to prise them open as the lifeless muscles and tendons resisted. Canning audibly strained until at last he bent the fingers back far enough to extricate the object from the boy’s palm. ‘Fascinating,’ was all he said as he lifted the tiny metal crucifix towards the bright mortuary lights.

The visit he’d paid to the church that morning flashed in Sean’s mind, and he remembered the words of the young priest: we’re looking so hard, but we can’t see . ‘That’s all I need,’ he grumbled.

‘Excuse me?’ Canning queried.

‘That’s all I need,’ Sean repeated. ‘A religious nut running around London abducting kids. The press will bloody love this angle. Keep this on a need-to-know basis,’ he told the pathologist. ‘As in, only you and me.’

‘I understand,’ Canning reassured him. ‘But this sort of behaviour, leaving religious artifacts, personal items with the body … Inspector, I’ve been doing this job long enough to know these are the hallmarks of a serial killer. Yet if I understand you correctly, you believe the perpetrator killed the boy accidentally. It appears your man is becoming something of a contradiction.’

‘Maybe I’m wrong.’ Sean put down the camera, tried to gather his thoughts. ‘Or he’s becoming what you say, but doesn’t know it.’

‘In which case you need to find him and find him quickly. He still has two other children, does he not?’

‘He does,’ Sean confirmed with a sigh and a frown. ‘And there’ll be more — soon.’

‘I can see there’s something else bothering you, Inspector,’ Canning added. ‘Would you like to tell me?’

Sean sighed again, but knew he could speak to Canning more freely than most. ‘The toy,’ he confessed. ‘The crucifix I understand — he placed it in the boy’s hand after he realized he was dead, as an offering, a religious token, something to try and make himself feel better, to dull his own grief and guilt. But the toy, I …’ He stalled, the thought that had seemed so clear only moments ago suddenly drifting away from him. All he could do was wait — if he tried to grab at the thought it could slip between the fingers of his consciousness and be lost for ever. Slowly it drifted back to him. ‘He goes into their houses and he takes the children. They make no sound. They go with him silently — willingly. What’s one way of pacifying a child — what would win a child’s trust in the middle of the night?’

He looked at Canning as if the pathologist might mouth the answer for him, but he just shook his head slowly and with no small degree of concern, so Sean supplied the answer: ‘You take them a gift — a present. Bastard takes them a toy — he took them all a toy. They wake up sleepily, not sure whether they’re dreaming, and the first thing they see isn’t a stranger in their bedroom but a beautiful new toy only inches away from their face. They reach out for it and he lets them take it, lets them begin to trust him before he even has to speak — that’s how he does it. That’s how he can take them so quietly. I should have thought of this earlier.’

‘What if the toy’s not something he brought with him?’ Canning argued. ‘What if he simply took the toy from the child’s bed before waking them.’

Sean considered it, chewing his bottom lip. As plausible as Canning’s suggestion was, his instinct wouldn’t let him accept it. ‘No,’ he eventually said. ‘No, because it could too easily backfire on him. If the child woke and saw a stranger holding his favourite soft toy he might think he was taking it. Instead of building trust it could destroy it. Our man’s a thinker and planner. He wouldn’t risk it. He couldn’t take that chance. He has to have brought the toy with him. But we’ll check back with the parents anyway.’

‘I see,’ Canning murmured. ‘Shall we continue?’

Sean nodded and the pathologist continued to unwrap the blanket as carefully as he could, inch by inch, until it lay hanging underneath the boy like the dead petals from the head of a flower. Canning moved on to the blue dinosaur-print pyjamas and began to unbutton them. He moved the cloth aside as carefully as if the boy was a living, breathing patient, and revealed his tiny, slim chest and abdomen — the skin as pale and soft as milk.

‘No obvious sign of injuries,’ Canning announced, before rolling the body to one side to examine his back, then repeating the process on the other side. ‘No apparent injuries or wounds to the back either.’

Sean watched, knowing they would find nothing, but also knowing they had to look anyway, the sombre, darkening mood of both men tangible.

Next Canning began to remove the boy’s pyjama bottoms, folding each section meticulously to catch any tiny pieces of evidence as they came free from the body. He placed them in a medium-sized brown paper evidence bag that had a transparent cellophane window running down the full length of one side. All clothes were bagged this way: if they were placed in plastic evidence bags any organic evidence on the clothing could turn to mould by the time the item reached the lab. Paper allowed the evidence to breathe — keeping it alive as long as it took to betray its owner.

Canning turned to the victim’s immature genitals and anus. Sean didn’t expect him to find anything, but still he prayed he wouldn’t, looking down at his feet while the pathologist completed his initial examination of the boy’s most intimate places.

‘No obvious signs of sexual assault either,’ Canning announced, immediately qualifying his statement: ‘Although I can’t say with absolute certainty until I examine him more thoroughly.’

‘But it doesn’t look like he was … like he was touched in any way?’ Sean asked.

‘No,’ Canning agreed. ‘It doesn’t appear so.’