Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘Sally,’ Sean interrupted her, ‘I want you, Maggie and Stan to spin his bedsit. If you find anything interesting, get hold of forensics and keep me informed. Dave, you and Paulo get this idiot back to Peckham and book him into custody. I’ll interview him later.’ Sally and Donnelly nodded their understanding.

‘I’d like to come with you,’ Anna said, appearing at his shoulder. ‘To help you to prepare and do the interview.’

‘Out of the question,’ he replied. ‘Go with Sally and search the bedsit if you want to be involved. Look through his things and see what you can learn.’

‘But the letter from the assistant commissioner clearly states-’ Sean held his hand up to stop her.

‘I don’t have time to discuss this with the committee,’ he snapped. ‘We can talk about it later.’ He turned his back on her and walked to his car. She took a step after him, but Sally caught her arm and gently pulled her back, shaking her head.

‘Let it go,’ she said softly. ‘Now is not the time to fight this battle.’

‘Is he always this rude?’

‘Only if he likes you,’ Sally told her.

Deborah Thomson’s eyes opened slowly before surrendering to the fog of chloroform and flickering shut, then bursting wide open again as her brain deciphered the hazy images it had been sent, recognizing danger and the need to fire the body alert. Her head and torso jerked in all directions, desperately trying to make sense of the near-darkness that surrounded her, her eyes growing increasingly accustomed to the gloom. She felt the mattress beneath her and the duvet on top of her rubbing against bare skin. She slid a hand tentatively under the duvet and confirmed her worst fears, that her clothes had been taken. Choking back tears of panic, she squinted into the darkness and cocked her head to one side, listening for a sound, any sound. A shuffling noise somewhere in the room made her freeze. She tried to focus on the source of the sound, but something was obscuring her view. Slowly and carefully she stretched out a hand, gently waving it from side to side, as if the thing she searched for was more ethereal than solid, its distance away impossible to judge in the poor light. Finally her fingers felt the unmistakeable cold of metal. Her fingers coiled around thin steel as her face came closer to investigate, hundreds of small squares spreading left and right, leading to more walls of squares and above her the same terrible pattern. The fingers of her other hand grabbed at the wire and gripped it hard as she realized what the squares were, that she was locked in a cage.

Suddenly she found it difficult to breathe, the enforced confinement inducing claustrophobia for the first time in her life. She began to shake the walls of her prison, praying the structure would collapse and free her, but all she did was prove to herself the solidity of her surrounds and the futility of attempting escape. She released the wire and retreated to the corner of the cage, pulling the duvet over her nakedness, giving in to tears of despair, until a voice turned her to stone.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ it said, ‘you’re not alone.’ It was the voice of a woman, quiet and gentle, unthreatening. ‘My name’s Louise. What’s yours?’ She couldn’t answer, her fear now mixed with shock and bewilderment. ‘It’s OK,’ the voice explained. ‘He can’t hear us, or at least I don’t think he can. What’s your name?’

‘Deborah. My name’s Deborah. Why are we here? Who is he?’ Her breaths were coming fast and sharp as she tried to control her anxiety.

‘I don’t know,’ Louise confessed, ‘but he’s dangerous. I think he may have …’

‘May have what?’

‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that our only hope of getting out of here is by working together.’

‘How?’ Deborah asked, barely able to comprehend the conversation she was having with a stranger she couldn’t even see properly. Two women locked in animal cages planning their salvation.

‘At first he’ll treat you well.’

‘You call this well ?’ she snapped.

Louise understood her anger and ignored her reaction. ‘He’ll let you out, to use the toilet and wash. After a few days he’ll even give you clean clothes. Listen, when he comes down here, I think he leaves the door to wherever we are open. It leads outside, I’m sure it does. I’ve seen the sunlight and smelled the fresh air. When he gets you out of your cage-’

‘This isn’t my cage,’ she snapped again, ‘this is his cage. I’m locked in his cage.’

‘I’m sorry. You’re right. When he lets you out of his cage, that’s when you have to do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘He’s not very big or strong. He’ll give you a tray with food on. Use that tray to attack him and then get the key to my cage from his tracksuit trouser pocket and let me out. Together we can overpower him and lock him in his own damn cage and escape — call the police and lead them straight to the bastard.’

Deborah shook her head involuntarily. ‘You’re mad. It’ll never work and then it’ll be worse for me.’ She squinted as the other woman began to come into focus, her similarity to herself painfully obvious, as was the fact she wore only her underwear and had no mattress or covers. She looked like she had dark patches on her face.

‘Listen to me,’ Louise urged her. ‘I’m sorry, but you need to know. There was another, before me. Her name was Karen Green. By the time he brought me here she already looked like I do now. I sat in this cage and I watched him beat her and rape her — and not just once. Then the night before he brought you, he took her away. She never came back.’

‘Oh my God, no. I read something about her in the papers. They found her in the woods. She’d been strangled. He killed her. I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here now.’

‘You can’t,’ Louise insisted, her voice raised above Deborah’s increasing panic. ‘Not yet. We have to work together.’

‘No. I’ll do what he wants. I’ll make him think I like him,’ she argued, ‘and he’ll let me out of here and then when I see a chance I’ll get away from him. He’s already killed somebody. If I attack him, he’ll kill me too.’

‘Look at me,’ Louise insisted. ‘I’ve tried all that, please believe me, I’ve tried, but it makes no difference. I am what you will become. Nothing you do can change that.’

‘No.’ Deborah refused to accept it. ‘There must be a better way.’

‘There isn’t,’ Louise answered, ‘and unless you believe me, unless you do what I tell you, we’re both going to die. He’ll kill us both.’

Shortly after eleven p.m. Sean and Sally prepared to begin the interview of Jason Lawlor. Sean had wanted a woman present to try and make Lawlor as uncomfortable as possible, so that he could read the signs he would be unwittingly sending — guilt, remorse, excitement, ambivalence. Innocence? Sally’s heart had dropped when he’d asked her, but she’d managed not to show it.

Sean pressed the red button on the twin-cassette machine that would record the interview. A loud, shrill buzzing sound filled the room for about five seconds, followed by silence. Sean cleared his throat and took a breath before he began: ‘I am Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan and the other officer present is …’

Sally introduced herself. ‘Detective Sergeant Sally Jones.’

‘We are interviewing … could you state your name for the tape, please?’

Lawlor spoke without looking at the recording machine, a sign he was a veteran of taped police interviews. ‘Jason Lawlor,’ he answered, sounding bored already.

‘Jason,’ Sean continued, ‘I must remind you that you are still under caution and don’t have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but if you fail to mention something that you later rely on in court, an inference can be drawn from that. Do you understand?’