Luke Delaney - The Keeper

He reached the raised ground and circled it carefully, walking a wide arc, unsure of what position the body would be in, not knowing whether he would first see her head or her feet.

As he rounded the tiny hill his heart began to pound, not with fear, but with excitement and anticipation at what he would find — at what bit of himself the killer had left behind for him to discover, for him to experience, knowing the more he shared with the man who had been here in the night, the closer he would be to catching him.

When the shattered body came into view Sean looked away, giving his mind vital seconds to prepare itself for what he had to see and what he had to do. He looked up to the blue sky, his vivid imagination turning the daylight to darkness, the sunshine to cold rain. He imagined the forest in the dead of night, the freezing wind and the pale lifeless body lit by the moonlight that bounced off the clouds. When he looked back at the body he saw his instincts had been right — she was naked and uncovered, lying on her back with her arms limp at her sides, her legs somewhat bent at the knees and slightly spread, as if the killer had deliberately posed her in a sexual position. Sean doubted it was caused by anything deliberate or premeditated, although he was sure she would have been violated at some point, probably repeatedly. He pictured clouds looming over the moon, turning the forest pitch-black as the killer kneeled over her, his hands wrapped around her neck as her legs scraped in the mud. Sean went in closer, almost close enough to touch the imaginary dark figure hunched over his victim, faceless and vague. He drew even closer, moving as slowly as a snake before it strikes, reaching out his hand, only inches away from where the killer would have crouched, the woman’s body still writhing under him. Sean’s fingers uncoiled and stretched towards where the killer’s face would have been, imagining himself staring into the killer’s eyes, as if by looking into those eyes he would understand why — why the man he hunted had become a monster, why he felt compelled to do the things he’d done, things no one else could understand — except Sean, perhaps? Understand, but not forgive.

A moment later the vision deserted him as quickly as it had arrived — night turned back to day, rain and wind to spring sunshine and morning stillness. Sean was left momentarily confused and disorientated; the extraordinary vividness of the images from the night before had made them feel somehow more real than the stark loneliness and surrealism of standing alone, inches away from the quiet, still, pitiful body of another murder victim killed and dumped without compassion or mercy.

Usually he was able to control his imagination, use it as precisely as a surgeon would wield his scalpel, but today the images in his mind had been almost beyond his control, taking on a life of their own, showing him all too clearly the last moments of Louise Russell. He knew what it meant — that he was already forming a strong connection with the man who had committed this crime.

A distant-sounding voice pulled him further back to here and now.

‘You all right over there, guv’nor?’ called Donnelly. ‘I thought I heard you say something.’

‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘I’m fine.’

Dismissing Donnelly from his thoughts, he stared once more at the frail body lying amongst the dead foliage, questions rushing into his mind, the answers hard on their heels, preventing him from analysing and ordering them logically and systematically as he knew he must. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply and slowly, deliberately blocking the flow of information to allow his mind to settle. When at last he felt the peace he needed to move forward, he opened his eyes to see the yellow morning sunlight piercing the branches of the trees. It was as if the light was split into hundreds of individual sun rays, the rain of last night turning to mist as it warmed, magnifying the beauty of the rays as steam swirled in the ghostly light beams. Everything around him appeared magical, like a scene from some enchanted fairytale — everything except for the broken body lying inches from where he stood.

The questions and answers were starting to come again, but this time he was ready for them and able to control them. Sean moved as close as he dared to the body, close enough to see all that he needed to see. He knelt and scanned her from head to toe, over and over, the injuries telling their own tale: the split lip that showed signs of healing, well-formed dark-brown bruises that must have been inflicted days ago, in contrast with the fresh wounds to the side of her head and her blood-soaked ear. New bruises to her right knee and right elbow. Her right hand too had recently been injured, the skin of the knuckles scraped away, the fingers swollen, possibly broken; the lack of bruising suggested these too were fresh injuries, like the countless lacerations to her feet. Her entire body was covered in bruises in a variety of shades, as if she’d been repeatedly stabbed with a blunt object over a period of time.

Sean leaned closer, drawn by something unusual in the crook of her arm: bruising and needle track marks. She’d either been forced to inject herself or he had done it to her.

Glancing around to check that he wasn’t being watched, Sean snapped on a single rubber glove and carefully brushed the hair from her face. What he saw stopped him dead as he tried to make sense of it. After a few seconds he began searching in his inside jacket pockets, certain he’d remembered to keep a photograph of Louise Russell close to hand. He found it in the last pocket he searched, holding it in front of him so he could compare it with the face of the woman lying on the ground. He strained to recall the Missing Persons Report, searching his mind’s image of it for the Marks amp; Scars section, recalling that Louise Russell had had her appendix removed when she was a teenager, leaving a four-inch scar on her lower right-side abdomen. His hand moved down her body, floating inches above her skin until he reached the place where the scar should have been, but the skin was pure and unblemished. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said quietly, struggling to comprehend what he had discovered.

His eyes searched her body for other signs this was not who she was supposed to be, but he could find no more unique marks or scars visible on her front. Carefully he gripped her right wrist and slowly rotated her arm, exposing the underside and the cheap-looking colourful tattoo of a phoenix. Something about it seemed childlike and unreal. There was no mention of Louise Russell having a tattoo. This couldn’t be her.

Sean stepped back, never taking his eyes away from the body. ‘Louise Russell wasn’t your first, was she?’ He spoke to the spirit of the killer whose malignant presence had stained the ground he now stood on so indelibly it was as if he was still here. ‘ This was your first. You took her and then you took Louise Russell. But why? What are you thinking? What’s making you do these things?’

He stopped, stood in silence, letting his mind roam, exploring each avenue of possibility before speaking again. ‘They’re the same. The two women are the same — late twenties, early thirties, slim, short brown hair, same nose, face shape … This was no coincidence, was it?’ Once more he paused, thought in silence, letting the answers come to him, not forcing them. ‘They reminded you of someone … No,’ he reprimanded himself, ‘more than that. When you saw them, they became someone, someone you loved, someone who rejected you, who betrayed you. They betrayed you, and so you take these women to be with her again, don’t you?’ He was unaware that his hands were pushing the hair on the sides of his head back continuously as he spoke, the effort of concentration subconsciously manifesting itself. ‘But why this?’ His hands now both pointing towards the body, palms upturned, standing, waiting for further revelations. ‘Did she reject you as well and you couldn’t deal with that again, so you punished her?’ He stopped himself, paused, shook his head. ‘But that doesn’t explain this.’ He looked down at the body. ‘This was an execution. You killed her as quickly and painlessly as you thought you could. There’s no rage here, no leaving the body displayed to humiliate her. So tell me, you sick fucker, what made you go from loving her to dumping her here like a dead animal?’