Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘You were telling me about Sean.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Sally remembered, ‘DI Corrigan.’

‘Do you like working with him?’ Anna asked.

‘Like isn’t necessarily the right word. It’s more a case of being interesting, I suppose.’

‘Because of his intuitions?’

‘He can think like them, you know,’ Sally blurted out. ‘Not just how and when and where, but really think like them, in every detail. He seems to be able to understand why they do whatever it is they’re doing. It can be a little unnerving at times, but he’s able to control it, to turn it off and on.’

‘Where is he, when he turns on this intuition? Can he be anywhere, or does he do it more often in certain places?’

‘I think he can do it anywhere, but mainly at the crime scenes. He seems to get a lot of information from scenes that nobody else notices. Like I said — details.’

‘Does he talk to himself when he’s examining a scene?’

‘That I haven’t seen, but if you’re there with him he’ll tell you what he’s seeing or feeling, like a kind of commentary.’

‘Feeling?’

‘What he believes the killer was feeling.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘Is that what all the questions are about, you find him interesting?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Interesting or attractive?’

‘Interesting from a clinical perspective. Anyway, I’m married and so is he.’

‘Married, not dead,’ Sally teased. ‘And he is a good-looking man. Fit too, keeps himself in good shape. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed, because I won’t believe you.’

‘He’s not my type. I don’t do men who have mood swings.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Sally agreed. ‘Although there was a time when I had a bit of a crush on him, I have to admit. I found his intensity very attractive.’

Anna wasn’t interested in the subject. ‘Has he had a traumatic experience recently, perhaps a serious injury while on duty or something in his private life?’

Sally’s smile fell away fast. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not as far as I know.’

‘I’m surprised.’

‘If it’s injuries and post-traumatic stress you’re looking for, then I’m your girl.’

‘Excuse me?’ said Anna, her face changing as the meaning sank in. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, of course. I heard about what happened to you. It must have been terrible.’ She didn’t tell Sally about her role in assessing Sebastian Gibran, knowing it would destroy any trust there was between them. ‘How are you coping?’

‘I’m pretty much healed. Still get a little short of breath now and then, but I’ll get there.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I know it isn’t,’ said Sally, lowering her voice and looking around to ensure she wasn’t being watched or overheard.

‘Have you had any counselling?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m a cop. We don’t do counselling, it’s a sign of not coping and not coping’s a sign you’re not up to the job and that means failure. We don’t do failure. Most of the people I work with are men, and the women I work with have been working with them so long they think like men. I guess I did a bit too, until … well, you know.’

‘Nobody would judge you if you wanted help.’

‘They wouldn’t understand. If I was a man I’d probably think my scars were cool, showing them off every chance I got, on the beach, in the pool — you know how stupid men can be. They wouldn’t need help, they’d be the talk of the office, a proper hero, and they’d love it. It’s not like that for a woman. These scars make me ugly. They mark me as a victim.’

‘You’re neither ugly nor a vic-’

‘Yes, I am,’ Sally answered coldly. ‘I’m both.’

Anna studied her for a while before trying to reach her. ‘You really need to speak to someone, Sally. And I would like to be that someone. Just take it slowly, move at your own speed. I’m a good listener.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Sally, standing up to leave. ‘I need to get back to the office.’ She gathered her belongings from the table and headed for the door.

Anna stared into her drink as if she might see answers swirling in the cup. It appeared she now had two new cases instead of one.

Alone in his office, Sean was oblivious to the noisy mixture of banter and business beyond his door as the rest of the team arrived for work. Already his eyes were red and tired from staring at the computer screen, reading through every crime report of stalking complaints recorded on the Crime Reporting Input System over the last two years.

He didn’t look up as Donnelly entered with a stack of information reports, peering over his shoulder at the monitor. ‘CRIS reports?’ he enquired. ‘Hoping to find something?’

‘What?’ said Sean, drifting out of his trance.

Donnelly indicated the screen. ‘I was wondering what you were looking for.’

‘Just an idea,’ he answered. ‘A possible angle.’

‘Care to share?’

‘If I’m right about him using the victims as substitutes for something he wants but can’t have, then the thing he wants has to be a woman.’

‘Naturally.’

‘And if she’s that important to him, he must have watched her, maybe even tried to approach her, made a bit of a pest of himself.’

‘You mean stalked her?’

‘It’s a possibility. A good possibility. And maybe she became aware of it, got sick of him and reported it …’

‘How far you going back?’

‘A couple of years. If I use roughly the same description as our victims, I shouldn’t hit too many. I can’t use an exact description in case she’s changed her appearance at some point.’

‘Young, attractive women who’ve been stalked.’ Donnelly raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re going to be a busy man.’

‘Still, I reckon it’s worth trying.’

‘Say you’re right,’ Donnelly continued, ‘about him wanting these women as replacements for someone else, for someone he …’

‘Wants, but can’t have,’ Sean finished for him.

‘Aye, that. What I don’t get is why he doesn’t just take the one he wants — do to her what he’s done to the others.’

Sean looked confused. It seemed incomprehensible to him that Donnelly didn’t understand. ‘Because she’s his god,’ he said, as if stating the obvious. ‘You don’t kill your gods.’

‘Aye.’ Unconvinced, Donnelly nevertheless pretended it made sense to him. ‘I’d best let you get on with it then.’

Sean didn’t reply, his mind already elsewhere as he watched Donnelly leave. His fingers hovered above the keypad for a few seconds while he cleared his thoughts. When he was ready, he began to type the information for the search criteria into the machine. He pressed the key marked search, leaned back in his chair and waited, a tangible sense of excitement crawling up his spine, spreading through his stomach and chest, making his heart skip along like a flat stone skimmed over a still pond. After a few seconds the screen changed, the number in the top right-hand corner telling him during the last three years there had been over 250 reported cases of harassment, more commonly referred to as stalking, involving women of the description he’d entered. He felt the excitement rush from his torso, leaving the emptiness of disappointment.

‘Too many,’ he said to himself, knowing it could take him days to read all the reports properly and make phone calls to victims, witnesses, investigating officers — days he didn’t have. He needed to narrow the search fields, but the fear of missing the one vital report momentarily paralysed him, his own reflection in the computer screen melting away and then reforming as that of Karen Green, her eyes open and staring, contrasting with the pale skin of her dead face, her image fading and being re-born on the screen as Louise Russell, her eyes pleading with him to find her. As her image solidified he could see it was already too late, her skin turning pale, dark, wet strands of hair sticking to her skin as brown leaves gently blew across her face.