Luke Delaney - The Keeper

His strength was beginning to fail when he remembered that the stun-gun was still in his tracksuit pocket. Making sure that she was halfway inside the prison, he untangled his fingers from her hair and felt himself immediately being pulled towards the entrance, the woman’s strength surpassing his own now, inching them both back through the cage door. His hand thrust into his pocket and quickly found the small plastic box, euphoria and panic breaking over him in equal waves. There was no need to consider his next act. He knew this was his only chance. He pulled the stun-gun from his pocket and stabbed it into the side of her neck, pressing the dual control switches to fire the current into her body, forcing it against her skin far longer than he needed to subdue her as he watched her straight, stiff body convulse and writhe. Finally he stopped the flow of electricity and pulled the stun-gun away, thrusting it back in his pocket, no time to waste, letting go of her hair and grabbing her by the clothing around her shoulders. With one last effort he heaved her into the cage.

He slumped against the wire and wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve, smiling and quietly laughing to himself. As he studied the woman lying in front of him, the laughter turned to sobs. Blinking away heavy tears, he reached out to touch her convulsing body. Gently stroking her hair, he murmured ‘Look what they made you do.’ Then, as the stinging pain in his face reminded him of his own injuries: ‘Look what they made you do to me — trying to turn us against each other, just like they did before. Just like they’ll always try and do, Sam. But I won’t let them take you. I’ll never let them take you.’ She mumbled a reply, but he couldn’t understand the obscenities she tried to spit at him. ‘Rest,’ he told her. ‘You should rest now.’

He crawled from the cage and locked it behind him, pulling himself upright, heaving in lungfuls of air to feed his exhausted muscles before staggering to the stairs and beginning his ascent to the daylight, each step a mountain, until finally the cool spring air revived him sufficiently that he was able to snap the padlock into place and walk slowly, carefully across the courtyard.

Submerged in a tide of sorrow and loss, he couldn’t hold back the tears. When he made it to his ugly little cottage, he fell to his knees and crawled across the floor to the cabinet. He took out the shotgun and thrust the barrels between his teeth, resting his thumb across the double triggers, teeth clanking against the metal as he tried to control the terrible sound coming from deep within him. He bit down hard on the barrels and tried to force his thumb to press the triggers, but it refused to move. He screamed into the room, his words turned to an incoherent babble by the cold metal tubes obscuring the movement of his tongue, the meaning clear only inside his mind: ‘ Please. I can’t do this any more. I want to end this ,’ he pleaded with himself. ‘Just fucking do it, you fucking coward! ’

But he couldn’t, not yet. As much as he thought he wanted to take his own life, deep inside his tortured soul he wasn’t ready. He wouldn’t end it until they had suffered more, until they knew he had the power to shatter their lives, to make them pay for all the years he’d had to survive alone in the jungle of children’s homes and vast, anonymous London state schools, preyed upon by the strong, ostracized by the other children who treated him like a leper.

His thumb eased off the triggers as he slowly slid the barrels from his mouth, their ends wet and shiny from his saliva and tears. He uncocked the gun’s hammers with the barrels still pointing towards his face and threw it across the vinyl floor where it slid to rest under his kitchen table. He buried his face in his hands and keeled over on to his side, lying on the floor sobbing like an infant, overwhelmed by emotions he could neither understand nor control. In the midst of this self-loathing he drew a hand away from his face and down his shivering body, fingers working their way under his waistband and inside his underwear, his shrivelled member slowly swelling as his hand gripped it and began to stroke up and down, faster and faster, images of the women from the cages flashing in his mind, their lips, skin, breasts and pubic triangles — their scent. His snivelling turning to moans of pleasure as their images mixed with other scenes playing in his head, pictures inspired by his favourite song: the story of one boy’s bloody revenge.

Sean sat in his office poring over information reports gathered from roadblocks, open-ground searches and every other aspect of the investigation. Anna sat to his side having insisted on reading each piece of paper his eyes passed over, her presence tolerated only because she worked quickly and quietly, never interrupting him and thus derailing a train of thought. Instead it was the phone ringing loudly on his desk that made him jump and scramble back to the real world. Annoyed at the disturbance, he snatched it up and barked his name into the receiver. ‘Sean Corrigan. What is it?’ The voice on the other end didn’t seem to have taken offence.

‘Sir, DC Croucher speaking — Paul Croucher from Lambeth Borough CID.’ The name meant nothing to Sean. ‘I understand you’re interested in missing persons?’

‘Only of a particular type,’ Sean pointed out.

‘How does white, female, about five foot six, twenty-seven years old, slim build, shortish brown hair, green eyes sound?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Deborah Thomson, a nurse at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, home address 6 Valley Road, Streatham. She left work some time after 2 p.m. yesterday, hasn’t been seen since. She failed to turn up for an evening out with friends and this morning she failed to turn up for breakfast with her new boyfriend. He’s the one who reported her missing after he got no reply on her home and mobile numbers. No answer at her home address either and her car’s gone. He called around her friends and found out she’d stood them up too, which is when he came down to the nick and reported it. Interested?’

‘Do you have a photograph of her?’

‘We do.’

‘Can you email it to me?’

‘No problem.’

‘Stay on the line while you do it,’ said Sean. ‘I need to see her face before I make a decision.’ But the sick, tightening feeling in his stomach already told him his worst fears had been realized.

‘I’m sending it now,’ DC Croucher confirmed. Sean pulled up his emails on the screen and waited for the message to appear in his inbox. A few seconds later it jumped straight to the top of his unread list. As quickly as he could, he directed the arrow to the New Mail and double-clicked. There was no text, simply an attached document. He double-clicked again and waited for his antiquated hard drive to produce a picture on the screen. After what seemed like minutes the image of a young, attractive woman jumped on to his monitor. The similarities between her and the other victims were striking. As he stared into her green eyes he had no doubt she had been taken and that Louise Russell was now rapidly running out of time.

There was a sharp intake of breath from Anna when she saw the likeness. ‘Trouble?’ she asked.

Sean’s response was a curt shake of the head. It would take too long to brief her. She’d have to pick up the pieces as they went along.

‘We’re taking over this Missing Persons inquiry,’ he informed DC Croucher. ‘I need you to get round her home and check it out yourself, just to make sure she’s not lying in bed with flu. Force entry if you have to, but preserve the scene for a full forensic examination. Understand?’

‘It’ll be done.’