Luke Delaney - The Keeper

Donnelly had remained at the scene where Karen Green had been found. Following the removal of the body the forensic team were busy in the woods, searching for evidence hidden between the trees and under the fallen foliage, gathering as much as they could before the weather turned against them. They might be here for days, but Donnelly had no intention of sticking around that long. He yawned widely and decided to head back to the access road and his car for a smoke. As he sat on the bonnet he saw the familiar figure of DC Zukov walk towards him. ‘All right, son?’ Donnelly acknowledged him. ‘What you doing here?’

‘Thought I’d have a look for myself, see if there was anything I could help with.’

‘You’ve got your actions to complete, haven’t you, same as everyone else?’

‘Yeah,’ Zukov answered, barely disguising his contempt for the routine course of an investigation, the day-to-day mundane tasks that had to be completed, ‘but the guv’nor’s got me wasting my time doing personal inquiries for him, trying to trace the source of a tattoo on the victim’s body that he now tells me isn’t a tattoo after all, it’s just a bloody transfer. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?’

‘What tattoo?’ Donnelly kept his tone casual, hiding the concern he felt about not being kept informed about every aspect of the investigation.

‘Like I said,’ Zukov replied, ‘the tattoo of a phoenix on the victim’s arm, only now we know it’s not a tattoo it’s a-’

‘A transfer,’ Donnelly finished for him, ‘yeah, yeah, you already told me that. But why’s the boss interested in her tattoo, transfer, whatever the fuck it is?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.’

But Donnelly knew — Sean thought the killer put it there, and the fact it was a transfer and not a tattoo made that all the more likely.

‘He’s got me checking on scumbags with previous for using artifice too, particularly those with previous for sex offences and residential burglary.’

Donnelly had to admire Sean, he was an insightful bastard, always two steps ahead of the rest of them. He didn’t like it, but he respected it. ‘That makes sense,’ he told Zukov. ‘No forced entry into either victim’s home, no reason to believe either knew their attacker. There’s a better than fair chance our boy tricked his way in.’

‘Maybe the guv’nor’s trying to be too clever?’ Zukov argued. ‘Maybe whoever took them just knocked on their doors and they opened them? There’s no artifice there.’

‘Whatever,’ Donnelly said dismissively. ‘I’m off back to the office. You stay here and liaise with forensics, then you’d better get on with the inquiries the boss has given you, or you’re going to be Mr Unpopular. And by the way, if and when you find out anything, any suspects flag-up, tell me first and I’ll let the guv’nor know, understand?’

Zukov was on the verge of putting another question but decided against it. Best to keep his suspicions to himself. Instead he just said, ‘Fair enough, guv.’

‘Good,’ said Donnelly, climbing into his car, the suspension creaking as he sat heavily in the seat. Zukov had to step clear as he pulled the door shut with a slam. The engine roared to life and he pulled away with a wheel spin along the last road Karen Green had ever seen.

It was almost three p.m. on Friday afternoon and Sean was in Lambeth, sitting in the second-floor Forensic Laboratory reception area, clutching his numbered ticket and the body swab samples he’d brought directly from the post-mortem. He glanced at his ticket, the kind they handed out at a supermarket delicatessen counter, and muttered an obscenity under his breath — if Sally didn’t arrive soon he’d miss his turn and would have to take another ticket and start from the back of the queue all over again. Back in the days when the lab was run by the Home Office, it was manned by fellow public servants who were all too ready to impose harsh words and on-the-spot fines for any incorrectly labelled exhibits or ill-prepared laboratory submissions forms. Though he wasn’t entirely in favour of the lab being placed in private sector hands, there was one big advantage from Sean’s point of view. Its employees treated him as a paying customer, entitled to make demands that would previously have been met with howls of derision from the lowly paid scientists running the show.

His not so fond memories were wiped away the second he saw Sally step through the automatic double swing-doors, the items she’d grabbed from Karen Green’s bathroom safe inside plastic evidence tubes that were in turn neatly sealed inside evidence bags. The number counter mounted on the wall clicked around to show 126 — the number on Sean’s blue ticket. He took Sally by the arm and steered her towards the submissions counter. ‘We’re up,’ he told her.

‘It would be nice to know what the hell’s going on,’ she replied. ‘Why you wanted the stuff from her bathroom, for example, and why I had to drop everything and rush to the lab with it.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t have time to explain, but you’ll understand why once you’ve listened to me explaining it to the lab people.’

They completed the short walk from the waiting room to the exhibit reception desk, where a slim bespectacled man in his forties was waiting for them with a private sector smile.

‘Afternoon,’ he greeted them, ‘and what have you got for us today?’

Sean didn’t try to match his friendliness. ‘Two sets of exhibits from two different scenes,’ he said, pushing the swab tubes across the counter. ‘These exhibits are marked with RC, the initials of the pathologist who took them during a post-mortem of a woman whose murder we’re investigating.’ The smile dropped from the receptionist’s face like an Arctic sunset. ‘They’re swabs taken from her skin containing some type of cream and an unknown brand of perfume. These — ’ he took Sally’s exhibits from her and pushed them across the counter, careful not to mix them with the others — ‘are cosmetics and perfumes taken from the murdered woman’s house. I’ll keep this simple: I want you to compare the exhibits taken from the house with the exhibits taken from the body and see if any of them match. If they do, which ones? And if they don’t, I need to know what brand the cream and perfume taken from her body are, and I need to know as a matter of urgency. Everything clear?’

‘Perfectly,’ said the receptionist, partially recovering his smile. ‘But it’ll take a few days to get the results, particularly if there’s no match between the two sets of exhibits. Our library of cosmetics isn’t vast. We might have to outsource it.’

‘Do the best you can, but make sure the urgency of the situation is understood.’

The receptionist made some notes on the lab submission form and stamped it with a red marker that said urgent. He handed Sean a copy of the form by way of receipt. ‘Good enough?’ he asked.

‘I hope so,’ replied Sean, taking the form and heading for the exit.

Thomas Keller left work shortly after four p.m., passing through the gates of the sorting office still dressed in his uniform, walking fast with his head down, praying he would not be recognized or accosted by any malevolent colleagues who would unwittingly ruin what for him was about to become a very special day. A day he’d been planning for months. He knew her name and where she lived. He knew she lived alone. He knew the shape of her house and that the front door could not be seen from the quiet road. He knew that she banked with NatWest and worked as a nurse at St George’s Hospital in Tooting. He knew she had electricity and gas from On Power, satellite television from Virgin, that her bins were collected on Thursdays, that she drove a red Honda Civic that she insured with the AA, that most months she was overdrawn, that she shopped at ASDA in Roehampton, that she’d been single for a long while but now had a boyfriend, that if she wasn’t working she went out most weekends with some of her apparently many friends. Above all, he knew she was the one. They’d poisoned her mind and made her forget, but still she was the one and soon he’d rescue her from her state of ignorance and make her alive once again and then, then they could be together as they were always supposed to be: he and Sam together for ever.