Luke Delaney: The Keeper

‘You shouldn’t do that,’ the voice whispered. ‘He might hear you. You never know when he’s listening. If he hears you doing that he’ll punish you. He’ll punish us both.’

Louise froze, the terrible realization she was not the first he’d taken paralysing her mind and body. She lay absolutely still, listening, disbelieving, waiting for the voice to speak again, beginning to think she had imagined it. She could wait no longer. ‘Hello,’ she called into the gloom. ‘Who are you? How did you get here?’ She waited for an answer. ‘My name’s Louise Russell. Can you tell me your name?’

A short, sharp ‘Sssssh,’ was the only reply. Louise waited in silence for an eternity.

‘We need to help each other,’ Louise told the voice.

‘I said be quiet,’ the voice answered, sounding afraid rather than angry. ‘Please, he might be listening.’

‘I don’t care,’ Louise insisted. ‘Please, please. I need to know your name.’ Frustration brought more tears into her eyes. She waited, staring at the coiled shape lying on the floor in the other cage, until eventually the shape began to unfold and take on a human form.

Louise looked at the young woman now sitting, legs folded under herself in the cage opposite. She looked around and confirmed to herself there were no more cages in the room, her eyes soon returning to the other woman. Louise could see that she was still pretty, despite her unkempt appearance — her short brown hair tangled and her face pale and dirty, any signs of make-up long since washed away by tears and sweat. She had bruises on her body and face, as well as a badly split lip. She looked to be in her late twenties, slim and as far as Louise could tell from a sitting position, about the same height as she was. In fact almost everything about her was similar to Louise. She couldn’t help but notice the other woman had no mattress or duvet, no covers or bedding of any kind, and all she had to wear were her filthy-looking knickers and bra. She looked cold, despite the fact the room was reasonably warm, although Louise couldn’t see an obvious source of heating. She guessed the room might be next to a boiler room or maybe the fact they were underground, as she suspected, kept it warmer than outside. But why was this other woman apparently being treated so much worse than she was? Was she being punished? Was that why she wouldn’t speak, for fear of further punishment? What would he do to her next — remove her underwear, the final humiliation?

‘My name’s Karen Green.’

The sound of the voice froze Louise. It took her a few seconds to find her own voice.

‘I’m Louise. Louise Russell,’ she answered. ‘How long have you been here for?’

‘I don’t know. He’s got my watch.’

‘Can you remember what day it was when he took you?’

‘Thursday morning,’ Karen told her. ‘What day is it now?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t be sure. I remember it was Tuesday morning when he …’ Louise struggled to find the word. ‘When he attacked me. Do you know how long I’ve been here for?’

‘Quite a while. Maybe even a day. You’ve been out the whole time.’

Louise slumped against the wire mesh of her cage, trying to comprehend the fact she could have been missing for a day and still not been found. And then a more chilling thought swept over her; Karen had been missing for almost a week and yet here she was, rotting in a mesh cage and, up until now, alone — except for him.

‘Do you know what he wants?’ she asked Karen in a sudden panic. ‘Why are we here?’

‘No. I don’t know what he wants, but he always calls me Sam.’

Louise remembered he had called her Sam too. I’ve come to take you home, Sam. Just like I promised I would. She felt the sickness rising in her stomach, the foul, bitter bile pushing up through her throat and into her mouth. They were replacements for someone else — replacements for whoever the hell Sam was.

Another wave of exhausting fear washed over her, a tangible, physical pain. They were being held by someone who was insane, someone impossible to reason or rationalize with. Hope drained from her.

Louise looked across at Karen and was reminded of her lack of clothing and the only thing she feared almost as much as death itself. ‘Has he touched you?’ she asked. There was a long silence and she watched Karen shrinking and coiling into the foetal position, hugging herself silently.

‘Not at first,’ Karen answered in little more than a tearful whisper. ‘When I woke up he’d taken my clothes, but I don’t think he’d touched me. He left me a mattress and duvet, like he has for you, but later he took them away and he … he started to hurt me. At first he was almost gentle. He injected me with something that stopped me struggling and then he did it. But now he’s always angry with me. He does it to punish me, but I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t done anything to make him angry.’

Louise listened as if she was listening to her own future being described, her body stiff with panic, her muscles cramping with tension. ‘What happened to your clothes?’ she asked. ‘You said he took them when he brought you here, but he gave you back your underwear. Why didn’t he give you the rest back?’

‘These aren’t mine,’ Karen explained. ‘My first few days here he let me wash, then he gave me some clothes and made me wear them. But last night — I think it was night, he came and took them off me, except for what I’m wearing. I didn’t know why he took them until he brought you here.’

Louise too realized why he had taken the clothes and knew that soon she would be wearing them. She retched bile, capillaries in her eyes rupturing, leaving them pink and glassy. The silence was suddenly shattered by the metallic clank of something small and heavy hitting against what sounded like sheet metal. A padlock being opened, Louise guessed, and for a second dared to believe it could be their rescuers. The fear and dread she heard in Karen’s voice soon chased her hopes away as she instinctively backed into the furthest corner of her cage.

‘He’s coming,’ Karen told her. ‘Don’t speak to me now. He’s coming.’

Sean and Sally entered their murder inquiry incident room at Peckham police station shortly before four on Wednesday afternoon. The office was both unusually busy and quiet, the detectives from Sean’s team taking advantage of the lull between new investigations to catch up on severely overdue paperwork. They hadn’t picked up a murder case in weeks, despite there being no shortage to go around. The other Murder teams working South London were getting more than a little annoyed that the regular flow of violent death seemed to be passing Sean’s team by. Though glad of the respite, Sean increasingly had the feeling he was being saved for something he knew he wasn’t going to like.

As they crossed the room he saw Detective Superintendent Featherstone through the Perspex of his partitioned office. He caught DS Donnelly’s eye as he walked and with a barely noticeable twitch of his head indicated for Donnelly to follow them. As Sean approached Featherstone, he began to get the feeling this was the day he’d been dreading. They entered the office and Featherstone stood to greet them. ‘A little bird tells me it didn’t go so good at court today,’ was Featherstone’s hello.

‘Depends on your point of view,’ Sean answered.

‘And what’s yours?’ Featherstone asked.

‘Well, he’ll probably spend the rest of his life banged up with the worst of the worst in Broadmoor. That sounds like a result to me.’

‘And who would disagree with that point of view?’ Featherstone enquired. Sean said nothing, but his eyes flicked towards Sally. ‘Nobody gets out of Broadmoor, Sally. That bastard will rot in there. Think of it this way: he’s got a life sentence and we didn’t even have to go to trial. All it takes is a couple of dimwits on the jury who like the look of him and he walks free. Trust me, Sally, this is an outstanding result.’