Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘Locked and secure, apparently. No signs of damage or a struggle. A routine uniform patrol found it in the car park while they were looking for local toe-rags who screw the cars there with annoying regularity.’

‘Are you already with the car?’ Sean asked.

‘No,’ said Donnelly. ‘I’m on my way. ETA about fifteen minutes.’

‘Fine. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can. Travelling time from Forest Hill,’ Sean explained. ‘Make sure uniform preserve it and the car park for Forensics. And have the AA meet us there to get the thing open. I don’t want any over-keen constables smashing the windows in.’

‘It’ll be done,’ Donnelly assured him.

Sean hung up and turned to his waiting audience.

‘Have you found something?’ Montieth asked, his lips pale with dread.

‘We’ve found her car,’ Sean told them, seeing no point in keeping it a secret. Montieth’s eyes widened, while Gabby started to cry and Tina covered her mouth with both hands, as if pushing the scream of anxiety back inside her. ‘It’s just her car,’ Sean tried to reassure them. ‘There’s no sign of a struggle, nothing to suggest anything untoward has happened to her.’ Gathering up his belongings, he told them, ‘I need to get to where the car was found as quickly as I can, so I’m afraid I’ll have to cut our meeting short. Thanks for all your help. I promise I’ll be in touch if we find anything.’ During the long months without Sally at his side, covering for his abruptness, he’d had to learn to be a lot more subtle and polite with the public.

‘Of course,’ Montieth agreed. ‘Please, you do what you have to do.’

Sean headed for the door, only to be stopped by Gabby grabbing his arm and locking eyes with him.

‘If someone’s hurt her,’ she told him, ‘and you find them, you do the right thing by Louise. You understand?’

‘I understand,’ he assured her, resisting the temptation to rattle off a spiel about justice, courts and trials, knowing it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She continued to hold his arm and eyes. ‘I understand,’ he repeated, his gaze dropping to the fingers coiled around his forearm. She slowly released her grip. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he promised.

The moment the office door closed behind him he broke into a run, virtually jumping down the stairs, desperate to get to the car before any more evidence could fade. Before the last lingering traces of the man he hunted drifted away in the next spring breeze.

Thomas Keller arrived for the afternoon shift feeling content and calm, almost happy. He walked through the gates of the Holmesdale Road Royal Mail sorting office in South Norwood and headed towards the large grey building he’d worked in as a postman for the last eleven years. It had changed little inside and out since he’d started there not long after leaving school at seventeen. To begin with he’d been restricted to menial jobs, working his way up to helping with the sorting. It took several years before he was finally given his own round. He’d never sought to go further in the Royal Mail and knew he never would. He entered the main building and clocked on, the same time-card-punching machine noting his arrival now just as it had done eleven years ago.

Without acknowledging his colleagues he walked to his station in front of the seven-foot tall wooden shelving system and began to prepare the mail for his round, placing the letters and parcels into pigeonholes according to postcode. He found the work easy and relaxing; its repetitiveness allowed his mind to wander to more pleasant thoughts and recent memories.

He was unaware that he was smiling until a voice too close behind him broke his reverie.

‘’Allo,’ the scratchy voice accused, thick with a south-east London accent. ‘Someone looks happy.’

Thomas Keller knew who the voice belonged to. Jimmy Locke was one of his regular tormentors.

‘D’you get your end away or something, Tommy?’ Locke bellowed, the smile broad on his face as he looked around at the other men working their stations for approval. Their laughter indicated that he had found an appreciative audience.

Keller looked sheepishly over his shoulder and smiled briefly before returning to his task, doing his best to ignore them.

‘Oi!’ Jimmy demanded, his face suddenly more serious, the Crystal Palace Football Club tattoos on his biceps stretching as he flexed the sizeable muscles that helped offset his growing beer-gut, his cropped hair making his head look small. ‘I asked you a question, Tommy.’

The room fell quiet as the men waited for an answer.

‘My name’s not Tommy,’ Keller responded weakly. ‘It’s Thomas.’

‘Is it now?’ Jimmy mocked him. ‘So tell me, Thomas — is that Thom-arse or Tom-ass?’

More laughter, the other men enjoying Keller’s impending humiliation. Keller continued to try and ignore them.

‘So what are you, son, an arse or an ass?’ Locke turned to face his audience, pleased with his wit, his daily ritual of destroying Thomas Keller bit-by-bit almost complete. ‘I’m waiting for an answer, Thom-arse, and I don’t like being kept waiting, especially not by little cunts like you.’

Keller felt the shame crawling up his back, hatred and fear swelling in his belly in equal measures. He felt his skin tingling, growing hot and sweaty, his face and the back of his neck glowing red, super-heated by his crushing embarrassment and feelings of uselessness. He heard Locke moving closer to him, readying himself to spit more venomous words into his ear, but still he couldn’t find the strength to turn and face his torturer. He cursed the power for deserting him, the power he felt when he was with them, alone in his cellar with them. If he had that power now he would tear Locke apart. He would tear them all apart. One day, he promised himself. One day he would turn and face them, and then they would all be sorry.

Locke’s mouth moved in close to the side of his face, the smell of stale beer and tobacco unmistakeable. Keller tried to lift his arms to pigeonhole the letters, but they refused to rise.

‘Are you a queer, Thom-arse?’ Locke demanded. ‘Me and the boys reckon you’re a fucking queer. Is that right? Because we don’t like working in the same place as a fucking queer. Some of the boys are worried you might give them AIDS. They reckon you dirty faggots are all disease-ridden. Is that right, Thom-arse? Are you infected?’ Locke’s face, twisted with bigotry, was inches from his.

‘I’m not a homosexual,’ Keller managed to stutter, barely a whisper.

‘What?’ Locke almost shouted into his ear, flecks of spittle pricking the side of Keller’s face.

‘I’m not a homosexual,’ Keller repeated a little louder, wishing he had a knife in his hand, imagining how he would spin on his heels, keeping the knife low and tight to his own body, flashing it across Locke’s abdomen, stepping back to watch the red streak spread across the fat bastard’s belly as his intestines slowly tumbled out like eels from a fishing net, with Locke struggling to push them back into the cavity of his gut, a look of horror replacing the smug expression on his face.

‘What did you say, queer?’ Locke snapped, making him jump as he yelled into his ear. ‘Can’t you faggots speak properly?’

Without warning, Keller turned on his tormentor, the imagined knife in his hand slashing at the soft flesh of Locke’s over-sized belly just as he’d planned. The movement was enough to make Locke jump back, fear flashing across his features for a split second. Keller had never dared turn to face him before. He would make sure the little faggot never did again. His fingers curled into a well-practised fist, miniscule scars bearing witness to the teeth he had punched in the past.