Luke Delaney - The Keeper

The journey to Tooting Common passed in a blur, making no impression on his memory at all until he realized he’d arrived at the small car park near the swimming pool. Surrounded by trees, it was quiet at this time of day, most people choosing the morning to walk their dogs through the woods. He noted there were a few cars parked close by, but was sure they would either be gone by the time he returned or abandoned for the night by owners now too inebriated to drive them.

Making sure his car was locked, he headed for the pathway that would take him across the common, keeping an eye out for CCTV cameras he might have failed to spot on the many occasions he’d walked this route in preparation for today. Passers-by also came under scrutiny, in case they might be a cop in plain clothes looking for prostitutes or small-time drug dealers. It hadn’t crossed his mind the police might be looking for him now.

It took him more than ten minutes to walk from the car park to the street — her street, Valleyfield Road. As he turned off the busy thoroughfares and into the narrower residential streets there were far fewer pedestrians around and the sounds of traffic fell away, the murmur of a big city mixing with the hypnotizing sound of the gentle, tentative spring breeze stirring virgin leaves on the largely barren trees.

He enjoyed the peaceful sounds and the warm air that surrounded him, still fresh from the cold of winter, unspoilt by the coming heat of a London summer. He breathed in deeply, reassured by the calmness he felt, his fears fading with every step. Occasionally he walked up to one of the houses that lined the street to post junk mail through the letterbox, just in case he was being watched by suspicious eyes. As he drew ever closer to number 6 he felt calm and in control, the experience of taking the other two helping him now as he began to mentally rehearse what would happen the minute he stepped inside the hallway of the newly built townhouse close to the end of the road.

Finally he reached the end of her driveway and paused, searching through his postal bag, apparently looking for the letters addressed to 6 Valleyfield Road. But his bag contained no such letters. The only contents were a squeezy bottle of chloroform, a clean fold of material to apply it to, a roll of masking tape and, most importantly, a stun-gun.

Deborah Thomson was tired after coming off a twelve-hour early shift at St George’s, but her mood was buoyant. The rest of her day was full of things she was looking forward to. First she needed to change out of her uniform and go for a quick run across the common, then home for a long, hot shower. After that she’d take her time getting ready for a night out with friends in a local gastro-pub. No men tonight, just the girls. She was looking forward to telling them all about her new boyfriend, who she’d be seeing tomorrow. A whole Saturday with her new love, and the entire weekend off. It didn’t get any better.

Humming to herself as she tugged off her sensible work shoes and tossed them to one side, she broke off when the sound of the doorbell ringing interrupted her preparations. ‘Bollocks,’ she swore, and set off downstairs vowing to be rid of the interloper as quickly as possible.

She bounced across the hallway to the front door, pausing to look through the spyhole. Having been brought up in New Cross, a south-east London neighbourhood where poverty went hand-in-hand with criminality, she never opened the door unthinkingly. There was a man in postman’s uniform on the doorstep. He stepped back a little so she could see almost all of his body, and reached into his bag, pulling out a parcel the size of a small shoebox, too large to fit through the letter slot.

Deborah opened the front door, the smile returning to her face. ‘Hi,’ she chirped, expecting him to confirm her name and hand over the parcel, but he said nothing. Too late she sensed danger as the hand not holding the parcel whipped out of the bag at lightning speed clutching a strange-looking object. As it moved towards her, she reacted, slamming the door into his shoulder, but the stun-gun had already made it through the gap between door and frame and buried itself in her stomach. She flew backwards as if hurled by an invisible force, what little air she had left in her chest knocked out of her lungs as she lay convulsing on the hallway floor.

The man staggered and dropped to his knees alongside her, then reached into his bag. She stared from her frozen state of purgatory as he took a squeezy bottle and a fold of material, followed by a roll of black heavy-duty tape. She tried to speak, to beg him to leave her alone, not to hurt her, but could make only unintelligible guttural noises. He placed one finger to his lips.

‘Ssssh,’ he urged her. ‘Everything’s going to be all right now, Sam. I’ve come to take you home.’

Sean checked his watch as he pulled up outside the home of Douglas Levy, the Neighbourhood Watch coordinator for Louise Russell’s street. For a moment he sat looking across the road at her house, seeing DC Cahill’s car parked at the end of the drive. He knew he should look in on Cahill and John Russell, show his face and offer support and encouragement, but he couldn’t find it in himself. He’d come here in the mood for harassment, not empathy.

Breathing the cool air through his nose, he approached Levy’s front door and pressed the bell. He heard firm footsteps approaching from within, locks on the other side of the door turning and eventually the door opening, Levy standing tall and proud.

‘Me again,’ Sean announced before he could get a word in. ‘I have a few more questions for you if that’s OK.’

‘Well, yes, but I wasn’t expecting to have to speak to the police again.’

‘This won’t take long,’ Sean assured him. ‘May I come in?’

Levy hesitated for a second before stepping aside. ‘Of course.’

‘Thanks.’ Sean stepped past him and walked briskly into the neat interior. He still couldn’t sense a woman’s presence inside and couldn’t help wondering when and why Levy’s wife had left him. He began to wander around the downstairs of the house, deliberately making Levy feel uncomfortable and challenged. Sean wanted him off-balance, flustered, answering questions without stopping to think; that way he would give true answers, not the ones he thought he should or the ones he thought Sean wanted to hear.

‘It occurred to me,’ Sean began, ‘after the last time we talked, that whoever took her must have been here before, in this street. He would have wanted to watch, to study her movements so he could plan when and how to take her, don’t you think?’

‘Maybe,’ Levy stumbled, ‘I suppose so, I mean, I don’t really know. Why are you telling me this?’

‘I was just thinking about you being in all day, most days anyway, and how a man like you, Neighbourhood Watch coordinator and all that, would have noticed someone hanging around.’

‘I would have, but I didn’t,’ Levy answered, the little patience he had failing, exactly as Sean had hoped. ‘And I’m not in all day, every day.’

‘No, of course not,’ Sean patronized him, walking along the corridor to the lounge at the rear of the house, Levy pursuing him closely. ‘I see your lounge is at the back of the house, not overlooking the street, so even if you were at home, you’d be in here all day watching telly and wouldn’t have seen anything.’

‘I’m a very busy man, Inspector. I can assure you I do not waste my time watching daytime TV. I have the Neighbourhood Watch to see to and I’m a local councillor too — and have been for many years.’

‘So where do you work?’ Sean asked. ‘Where do you attend to all these important matters?’

‘Here, of course. In my office upstairs.’