Luke Delaney - The Keeper

After a few seconds of silence Sean spoke. ‘I’ve no more. Sally?’

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. ‘No. No questions.’

‘Is there anything you’d like to say, Jason, or to have me clarify for you?’

‘No. Just make sure you get me back to Belmarsh in time for dinner tomorrow, will you? It’s cod and chips on Saturdays. I don’t want to miss that.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Sean, ‘you’ll be back in time for your fish and chips. This interview is concluded.’ He pressed the off button to stop the recording and leaned across the interview table putting his face close to Lawlor’s. ‘And I hope you fucking choke on them.’

He stomped out of the interview room, closely followed by Sally. The on-duty custody sergeant calling after them: ‘What d’you want me to do with your prisoner?’

‘Put him back in his cell for the night. He’ll be recalled to prison in the morning.’

Once they were out of the busy custody area and in a quiet corridor, Sally grabbed his arm and stopped him walking away. He spun to face her, knowing he was about to be cross-examined himself.

‘You knew he didn’t do it, all along. As soon as Zukov told you about him you knew he wasn’t our man.’

‘I had some doubts.’

‘No you didn’t. You knew it wasn’t him.’

‘He looked a decent suspect. We had to at least arrest and interview him.’

‘Why?’ Sally persisted. ‘When you knew it wasn’t him. We’ve just wasted an entire evening chasing after the wrong man, and all the time you knew it.’

Sean pulled away from her as gently as he could and started walking. ‘Jesus, Sally, leave it alone, will you.’

‘I’m trying to understand what’s going on.’

‘He was an arrest, wasn’t he? That’s what the top brass want to see — that we’re making arrests, progressing the investigation, that people are helping us with our inquiries.’

‘Not if we’re arresting the wrong people.’

‘Give me a break, Sally. They don’t care what’s going on as long as they’ve got something to tell the media, as long as they’ve got something to build a load of bullshit around. So Lawlor wasn’t our man — who cares? He served a purpose. By arresting him we’ve bought ourselves twenty-four hours of not being interfered with, maybe more.’

Sally struggled to keep pace with him as they strode along the corridor. Again she took hold of his arm to stop him, spinning him around and fixing eye contact. ‘No, no, that’s not it,’ she insisted. ‘There’s more to it.’ He said nothing as she searched in his eyes for answers. ‘He gave you something, didn’t he, something you were missing, something you needed, something you couldn’t find in yourself?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He tried to walk away, but Sally kept a firm grip on his arm. ‘You’re trying to think like him, aren’t you? You’re trying to think like the man we’re after. You’ve been doing it since you agreed to take the missing persons case … But I still don’t understand why you would go after someone like Lawlor.’

‘Because I thought he could fill in the gaps, all right,’ he finally confessed, knowing Sally wouldn’t give in. ‘I have to be able to think like him if we’re going to find him quickly. I … I know so much about him already, but there were too many gaps. I needed to know why he’s really doing this. Love? Hate? Anger? Power? Acceptance? Lawlor helped fill some of those gaps.’

Sally found herself nodding, both glad and afraid to be right. ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to start thinking like he does? To have the likes of Lawlor going around inside your head?’

‘I don’t have a choice. If Louise Russell is to have any chance, then I don’t have a choice. Anyway,’ he tried to reassure her, ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘I guess that depends on what’s going on in your head already, doesn’t it?’

Sean sighed, almost relieved to have someone to confide in, to share the burden of his innermost thoughts and fears. ‘I’m just trying to think like him, not become him. I’ll be fine, don’t worry.’ They started walking again.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing, guv’nor.’

‘Yeah, well, me too.’

‘And Lawlor — did you get what you want from him?’

‘More or less.’

‘Which was?’

‘His motivation.’

‘And now you know?’

‘Not exactly, but I’m closer. I won’t know exactly until all the pieces fall into place, that moment when everything suddenly makes sense. But Lawlor helped, for sure. I know that their actions are largely underpinned by the same need to feel powerful but at the same time to be accepted and loved. Lawlor achieved that by raping women in their own homes, women he’d stumbled across and made an instant decision to attack. Our man wants the same, but his primary way of getting what he wants is by keeping the women. The question is, why does he do that? Why does he have to keep them?’

‘To make the experience last longer?’ Sally guessed.

‘That’s what I thought, at first. Made good sense, but now I’m not so sure. I don’t think he wants to make it last as long as he can, I think he wants to make it last a very specific period of time.’

‘A week?’

‘Give or take twelve hours, yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Acceptance and love.’

‘I don’t understand?’

‘I think, and I’m only guessing, but I think he’s reliving a relationship he had with someone, a relationship that might have lasted as little as a week or so, but one in which he was happy — accepted and loved. The two women he’s taken look the same, remember?’

‘An ex-girlfriend?’

Sean shrugged his shoulders. ‘That would be my guess. Now all I have to do is work out how to use it to help me find the son-of-a-bitch before it’s too late.’ They’d almost reached the main office entrance. ‘Do me a favour, Sally, keep this between the two of us, OK?’

‘Sure. If that’s what you want.’

‘It is,’ he told her and walked into the still busy main office.

Through the Perspex windows of his own office he could see Anna, waiting for him.

‘How did the interview go?’ said Donnelly. ‘Did he cough for it?’

‘No,’ Sean answered dismissively. ‘It’s not him. We need to think again. What’s she still doing here?’ He jutted his chin towards his office.

Donnelly shrugged his shoulders. ‘Said she wanted to wait for you.’

‘Great.’ Sean headed for his door, entering without speaking.

‘How did the interview go?’ she asked.

Sean exhaled as he sat heavily in his chair. ‘It’s not him, if that’s what you mean.’

‘But you knew that already, didn’t you?’

‘Bloody hell, not you as well.’

‘It was clear from his previous crimes it wasn’t him.’

‘Wait a minute. You need to slow down a little. He could easily have been our man. His previous crimes had enough similarities to make him a viable suspect. Don’t try and be too clever. That’s a sure way of fucking things up. Anyway, are you planning on wasting the whole weekend here?’

‘I wanted to hear about the interview.’

‘And now you have.’

‘I’d like to listen to it in full, if that’s OK with you.’

‘Why, given that Lawlor’s not our man?’

‘For research purposes. He’s still a serial sex offender, even if he didn’t commit these particular crimes. I’d like to listen to what he had to say.’

‘How d’you know he said anything?’

‘Let’s just say I have faith in your powers of persuasion.’

Suddenly he was suspicious of her. Why had she been attached to the investigation? Was her brief to help him — or to study him? Whatever her motive, he was beginning to admire her persistence. Clearly she wasn’t going to be shaken loose easily.