Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

‘But there are keys out there you can’t account for?’ Sean asked. ‘In all likelihood there’ll be keys for this house in the hands of others?’

‘I suppose so,’ Bridgeman agreed.

‘Then we’ll need a list of anyone who might have keys to the house: the estate agent you used, the previous owners, the removal company you hired — anyone who has access to the house.’

‘Fine,’ Bridgeman reluctantly agreed, ‘but that’ll take time. What are you going to do to find our son now ?’

Sean nodded his head slightly, looking around at the faces watching him expectantly. ‘I need to see the boy’s bedroom. I need to see it alone.’

‘It’s upstairs,’ Celia Bridgeman told him without hesitation, her pale lips trembling. ‘On the second floor. Along the hallway on the right.’

‘Thank you,’ Sean replied and headed for the exit. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ he told them, although he was mainly talking to Sally. The relief of being on his own, away from the parents’ torment, guilt and anger felt immediately liberating as he headed for the stairs, stopping for a while to look around him, his eyes drifting towards the front door the nanny had sworn she’d locked. He believed her, but the front door somehow wouldn’t let him look away, as if it held answers to the questions firing inside his head. But the answers wouldn’t come. His mind was awhirl with distractions: the office move, Assistant Commissioner Addis, Thomas Keller still awaiting sentencing … The mental clutter was robbing him of the very thing that set him apart.

Work through the evidence , he told himself, looking at the windows he could see and noting they were all in good condition with security locks fitted and in place. The door , he told himself. Someone came in through that door, in through it in the middle of the night and took the boy away. But how, who and why? Still nothing particular stirred in his subconscious, no early ideas of who or what he could be about to hunt. He felt a rising panic at the thought of no longer being able to see or feel what the people he had to find and stop had seen or felt.

There was an alarm, but it wasn’t working — did you know that? A man lives in the house, but he was away — did you know that? Have you been watching the family — and if so, for how long? He waited for answers or ideas, some coldness in the pit of his stomach that would tell him the darkness within him was beginning to stir — the malevolence that could lead him straight to the front door of whoever took the little boy. You don’t even know for sure he’s been taken yet , he reminded himself as he began to climb the stairs, careful not to touch the mahogany bannister that clearly hadn’t been polished for a day or so. Did you touch this bannister? In your excitement to reach the boy, did you forget yourself and touch the bannister? Did you leave me your fingerprints here, hiding amongst the prints of the family, the nanny, the cleaner? What did it feel like to be inside this warm house with its comforting sounds and smells — so different from the cold, empty street outside?

‘Shit,’ he whispered as still nothing happened — no flash of inspiration or horror of realization, just blackness. ‘If you’re hiding somewhere, George,’ he said, a little louder than a whisper, ‘now would be a really good time to show yourself.’

As he stepped on to the first floor landing his eyes again swept over his surroundings: more oil paintings and Tiffany lamps, good quality carpet under his feet deadening the sound of his footsteps, stretching out in front of him and seemingly spreading into three of the four rooms he could see, the fourth of which he assumed would be a bathroom, the carpet giving way to floor tiles. He began to walk along the landing towards the staircase that continued its way upwards at the other end, but the scent of the mother leaking from the first room he passed made him stop and look around, checking he was still alone. Did the carpet feel good under your feet — silencing your footsteps? Did it reassure you? He moved to the bedroom where he knew the mother slept and moved slowly inside, breathing her in as he studied the room — her clothes tossed on the chaise longue for someone else to tidy and the bed only slept in on one side. Stuart Bridgeman had been away the previous night, but Sean felt only a fading presence of the father in the room, as if he’d stopped sleeping here days or weeks ago. Maybe he never had, just using it to store his clothes for appearances’ sake — to keep the sad truth from the children? Did you come in here? Did you stand where I am now and watch her while she slept — watching her chest rise and fall — hypnotized by her beauty? But you didn’t come for her, did you? Again the answers evaded him. He scratched his forehead and left the room, passing what was indeed a bathroom, a room used as an office and another made up as a spare bedroom, but almost overly tidy and sterile. Was this where Stuart Bridgeman spent his nights — making the bed immaculately every morning before the children, nanny or cleaner could discover it had been used — quickly moving his used clothes into the master bedroom to complete the illusion? Probably, Sean decided, but what did it mean? What, if anything, did it have to do with George’s disappearance?

He left the room behind and climbed to the second floor and the children’s bedrooms, his foot finding a loose floorboard and making it creak loudly. Did you step on the creaking stair? Did it make you freeze with panic or fear? Or did you know it was there and avoid it? But how could you know it was there? He could feel the ideas, even possible answers straining to break free, but the weeds of his everyday responsibilities and life kept strangling his newly flowering strands of thought. Finally he lifted his foot, the returning floorboard making the same loud creaking that would have been magnified ten-fold in the dead of the night. No one came in here in the middle of the night and stole the boy , he almost chastised himself as he strode up the final few stairs and along the hallway. I’m letting things from the past fuck with my head. There’s no mystery here — just a little boy whose joke’s gone too far. The doors and windows are locked. No one came in here and the boy couldn’t have left, so he’s here — somewhere inside this house . He reached George’s room and unceremoniously pushed the door wide open, the sense of excitement that they would soon find the boy hiding instantly replaced by a deep sense of coldness. He felt as if he was stepping into a murder scene where the shattered soul of the victim still lingered, only there was no body, just an awful feeling of emptiness, as if the boy had never been there in the first place and the room was little more than a mock-up of a child’s room: the silhouettes of clouds printed on the powder-blue wallpaper, the train mobile above the bed with its matching bedclothes. The duvet remained on the floor where the mother had thrown it, along with a dozen or so teddy bears and other soft toys. More toys were neatly stacked on the shelving units and play table. But none of it seemed real any more — it felt surreal, just like so many other crime scenes he’d seen. And although the answers to his questions failed to come, the sickness in his stomach told him something had happened to the little boy. But what?

He crouched down and picked up a small brown bear similar to one his youngest daughter Mandy kept in her bed and tried not to think of how he’d feel if anything ever happened to either of his daughters. Sadness and rage swelled inside him at the mere possibility, but a sudden feeling of another presence in the room made him spin around and forget his fearful imaginings. Celia Bridgeman stood in the doorway, both hands clasped over her heart, her eyes red and her skin pale as her lips opened and closed as if she was trying to speak but couldn’t. ‘You all right?’ Sean asked and regretted it.