Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

Sean realized Allen was slipping away from him. Slipping away from any grasp on reality. The killer and taker of children — the man who great swathes of the population would now want executed — the man the media would accuse of being a paedophile — the man whose fellow prison inmates would go to great lengths to try to maim and kill − was nothing more than a broken-down, lonely, ageing man who thought he’d heard the voice of God.

‘Where are they?’ Sean demanded, not expecting an answer, his eyes drifting towards the door behind the counter. ‘They’re here, aren’t they? Through that door.’

Allen’s downcast eyes, the utter defeat in his posture, told Sean everything he needed to know. He moved to the door, his heart rate beginning to rise with expectation and the sense of victory, when suddenly the shop door flew open, the frame filled by a familiar sight.

‘Everything all right in here?’ Donnelly asked.

Sean looked from Donnelly to the broken figure standing by the counter. ‘Stay with him.’

‘And the children?’

‘Upstairs,’ Sean told him.

‘Are they all right?’ Donnelly asked, trying to work out what could have happened between the two men before he arrived.

‘I don’t know,’ Sean answered without emotion, confusing Donnelly all the more.

‘D’you want me to check it out?’

‘No,’ Sean insisted. ‘I’ll go.’ He walked past Allen, who was sliding to the floor, eyes staring straight ahead, fixed on the rows of porcelain-faced dolls, as the tears ran down his cheeks. ‘Arrest him, for abduction and murder.’

‘One thing,’ Allen suddenly blurted out. ‘Just one thing — how did you find me? How did you know it was me?’

‘God brought me here,’ Sean told him without really knowing why. ‘Your God brought me here.’ For a moment he thought he saw a burning light of hatred in Allen’s eyes as he hurried past him and behind the counter to the door. He turned the large metal key and the door opened outwards, the scent of the house beyond unexpectedly rushing him, making him step backwards before he caught himself and pushed forward, through the porthole into the other part of Allen’s life.

Sean could see there was a door immediately on his right and a short flight of stairs with another door at the top. He turned the handle on the door to his right and pushed it wide open, the small windows inside providing enough light for him to see clearly as he stepped just inside the doorway.

‘Anything?’ Donnelly called after him.

‘Looks like an office,’ Sean answered. as he unknowingly surveyed the desk where only days ago Allen had laid out the body of Samuel Hargrave. ‘We’ll search it properly later, but right now I need to find these children. Wait here.’

‘You’re the boss,’ Donnelly told him as Sean leapt up the stairs to the other door. Images of Samuel Hargrave, in the cemetery and the mortuary, filled Sean’s mind and mingled with the memories of other scenes he’d witnessed where children had been the victims. Was that what waited for him on the other side of the door? He forced the fear deep inside himself and moved on, turning the key and pushing the door open. The atmosphere beyond was starkly different to the quaint charm of the shop below. Here he could smell fear, anxiety and desperation, and not just Allen’s or the children’s. He sensed an oppression that seemed to have been consuming the house and all who lived in it for years. Some deep sadness from which Allen had been trying to escape. Only for him there had been no escape, and there never would be.

Sean moved steadily along the corridor, pausing for a few seconds to draw his telescopic metal baton, palming it in his hand without extending it, its weight and coldness reassuring him as he ventured deeper into the house. He imagined the three tiny bodies neatly lined up, lying on their beds, each wrapped tightly in a tartan blanket, crucifix in hand and their special toys clutched to their non-breathing chests — their non-seeing eyes waiting to fall upon him when he finally entered the room where they silently waited. He could feel the coldness and texture of their skin as he saw himself pushing his fingers into their throats, searching fruitlessly for their pulses, only admitting it was too late once it was utterly pointless to pretend otherwise. He thought of Kate, the times she’d come home from work visibly upset, and he knew without asking that she’d had to deal with an infant death — not just having to face the lifeless body of a child, but having to tell the parents that their child was gone — gone for ever.

There were five doors leading to what he assumed were five separate rooms on the first floor. He hurried along the corridor and entered the first room on the left. Quickly he scanned the corners of the room for any signs of danger, but saw nothing. Now that he’d confronted Allen, looked into his sad eyes, Sean was increasingly sure he’d worked alone. Wasn’t that ultimately the point of his crimes — so he didn’t have to be alone? But instinct made Sean check for danger before proceeding to the next floor.

As he looked around the unnaturally ordered room, his eyes fell on the small dressing table pushed up against the wall and the things laid out on it — photographs and pictures, a shrine. A place where Allen could worship the woman who appeared in all the photographs and the God whose son hung on the crucifix nailed to the wall. Even from the doorway he could see the optimism in the faces of the young couple in the photographs, fading as they aged until pictures of Mrs Allen showed her suffering from the ravages of illness, leaving him in little doubt she was gone now and had been for some time. He wondered whether she was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Sean sighed deeply, feeling he understood Allen more and more.

Leaving the altar, he headed back into the hallway, comforted by the sound of Donnelly’s voice coming from downstairs as he spoke to the silent Allen. But he knew soon there would be other voices downstairs — Sally’s and Zukov’s, and then there’d be heavy footsteps on the stairs as they ran to join him. He needed to be in the house alone, needed to find the children alone, no matter how Allen had left them- to bring a suitable end to what had increasingly felt like a lonely journey back to himself, back to the gifts that he knew separated him from most other detectives. Gifts he’d feared had been lost, until the moment Helen Varndell told him that the toy she held wasn’t little Victoria’s favourite.

He hurried across the hallway and stood in the doorway of the kitchen. It looked as if it had been frozen in time, a reminder of the kitchen his mother had seemed to permanently inhabit in the council house he grew up in, only this was far more ordered. At least that’s how Allen had tried to keep it, but there were signs he was struggling to maintain the illusion: the tea-towels were neatly folded and hanging from the oven, but Sean could see that they were filthy; glasses had been placed back on the shelves, but looked stained and greasy, and the fruit that filled the bowl in the centre of the kitchen table was beginning to rot. Clearly Allen had been descending into a world of denial and fantasy for some time. In the sink Sean could see the evidence of more than one meal having been prepared and eaten — dirty plates piled up with cups, pots, pans and even used glasses. The last meals of the children? In Allen’s collapsing mind, had he felt it was the kind thing to do — feed them before he killed them? Prepared to end their lives, but not prepared to see them suffer in life?

Sean feared the worst as he walked back into the hall without having set foot the kitchen. He didn’t have time to dwell. As much as his dark instinct wanted to move slowly through the house, examining every aspect of Allen’s life, absorbing his very existence, he couldn’t — not while the children were still to be found. He checked the other first-floor rooms as quickly as he could. Allen’s bedroom was next. The curtains were drawn and the stale smell told him the windows hadn’t been opened in a while.