Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘Go on,’ Sean encouraged.

‘A consignment of alfentanil went missing. Our investigation team looked into it, but whoever took it was never found.’

‘You have controlled drugs passing through this sorting office?’ Donnelly asked disbelievingly.

‘Of course,’ Trewsbury answered, ‘particularly smaller consignments going abroad, often for relief agencies working in the subcontinent. We’re still the cheapest way to get small packages overseas, despite what you may hear.’

‘I assume you keep them in a secure location?’ Sean asked.

‘Yes. We lock them in our strong room, but someone got in and out without being seen and took the alfentanil.’

‘CCTV?’ Sean queried.

‘No. Unions won’t allow it — quoted the European Commission on Human Rights, no less.’

‘A very unfortunate piece of legislation.’ Donnelly shook his head mournfully.

‘Fair enough,’ Sean conceded. ‘If you find anything, call me straight away.’

‘I will,’ Trewsbury promised. ‘Wait a minute.’ He scribbled something on a notepad, ripped the top sheet off and handed it to Sean. ‘My mobile number, in case I’m not on duty when you need to speak. I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but what the hell.’

Sean took the note and slipped it in his inside jacket pocket. ‘Appreciated,’ he told Trewsbury.

As Trewsbury watched the detectives walk from his office back into the gloom of the corridor he chewed the soft end of a pen and considered Sean for a while. He’d met dozens of Donnellys in his time with the Post Office, but he sensed a difference in Sean, a rare intensity and determination. He would do what he could to help him.

As the detectives headed for the exit, Sean could think of nothing other than the man he hunted, seeing him everywhere he turned in the giant building, imagining him standing by a bank of pigeonholes organizing his daily drop; climbing the same staircase he and Donnelly had as he headed for the canteen or even Trewsbury’s office, hands gripping the same rail, feet stepping on the same flooring tiles. He breathed the air in deeply, hoping to somehow pick up on the scent of his prey, seeing himself walking up behind the faceless man, resting a hand on his shoulder and slowly turning him around, confident that as soon as he looked into his eyes he would know he had found the killer he hunted.

His thoughts were broken like shattering glass by Donnelly’s gruff voice, a mixture of Glaswegian and Cockney, his throat rubbed raw by the thirty cigarettes he’d consumed every day for the last twenty-five years. Donnelly couldn’t wait to be free of the ubiquitous No Smoking signs so he could fill his lungs with warm, nicotine-laced smoke. ‘So, what do we do next?’

‘He works here,’ Sean told him. ‘It all makes sense. I should have been on to it quicker.’

‘You need to slow down, guv’nor, not speed up. Don’t get me wrong — in theory what you’re saying makes sense. But hard evidence — we don’t have a thing. One witness saying a postie put junk mail through his door even though he told the Post Office not to, that’s really all you’ve got. The rest is in your-’

‘In my what?’ Sean barked. Donnelly didn’t answer. ‘We need to take DNA off everybody who works here. Within a few days we’ll match it to samples from Karen Green and he’ll be dead in the water. Fucking game over.’

‘That’s gonna take some time to organize,’ Donnelly reminded him. ‘Today’s Saturday which means tomorrow is Sunday. This place won’t even be open and nobody at the Yard’s gonna authorize a mass DNA screening until it’s been discussed to death by the powers that be, so maybe we get it authorized by what … Tuesday at the earliest? Start testing on Wednesday or Thursday?’

‘That’s too slow. We need to start now.’ Sean sounded desperate, almost irrational, ignoring the very real legal obstacles that meant it was impossible to do what he wanted when he wanted.

‘Guv’nor, we can’t. It isn’t going to happen.’

‘So what do you suggest, Dave?’

‘I don’t know, but we had better pray we don’t have to rely on a mass DNA screening to find Louise Russell. Because if we do, then she’s fucked and so are we.’

Sean recoiled from Donnelly’s crass assessment of their hopeless situation. ‘Then we’ll have to think of something else,’ he said.

‘Listen, guv’nor, I’ve seen you pull a rabbit from the hat more than once, but we can’t always rely on that. I mean, walking around here, chasing leads and witnesses, we shouldn’t be doing this — the DCs and the uniforms should be. We should be back in the office checking through everything that everybody brings to us. The devil will be in the detail, that’s how we’ll find this bastard.’

‘I know,’ Sean agreed reluctantly, calming down, ‘but I needed to come here, I needed to see the scenes. If I don’t, then all the information reports and the witness statements mean nothing to me, d’you understand? I might as well be looking at blank bits of paper. I have to feel him. We will do what you want, but not just yet. I’m not ready yet.’

‘Well, don’t take too long,’ Donnelly warned him. ‘For all our sakes.’

Thomas Keller stood naked in front of the smeared cabinet mirror bolted to the wall of his dingy bathroom. The place reeked of damp from the black mould growing up the walls, the once pristine white seal inside the shower had long since rotted away to nothing. Cold water sprayed from the shower head behind him as he inspected the damage Deborah Thomson had done to his face. He poked and picked at the gouged scratches around his eyes and down his cheeks, their stinging pain and gaping, bloodless ugliness making him wince and moan. Maybe she wasn’t the one after all? Maybe she wasn’t the real Sam, just another imposter sent to try and destroy him? The wounds to his face told him it was something he had to consider.

He lifted a cotton-wool pad from the antiseptic it had been soaking in, took a deep breath and pressed it into the first of the cuts, waiting for the burning pain to come, screaming into the mirror when it did. Over and over he soaked the pad and applied it to his wounds, each time bawling like a child, the noise of the running shower distorting his agony.

When he was finally finished he surveyed his work, happy he’d removed the risk of infection. But it was obvious the scratches would take a while to fade and would probably leave him scarred. He thanked the God who had already forsaken him that today was Saturday and he didn’t have to go back to work until Monday. By then the injuries should have calmed down a little and he would have had time to think of an excuse for how they came to be. For the time being all he could do was force himself into the waiting cold shower to ward off the lingering effects of the anaesthetic. He stepped into the freezing water and felt it sweep his breath away, the pressurized drops like the pricks of thousands of sharp needles on his skin. His mouth gaped open as he struggled to draw breath, his diaphragm refusing to relax and let him breathe. As he slowly grew accustomed to the temperature, the cleansing water had a revitalizing effect on his mind and body and he began to feel better.

He rolled his head on his shoulders and closed his eyes, allowing his mind to drift, hoping it would take him to a happy memory, back when he was with Sam or maybe the times spent in the cages with the women. But he had so few happy memories and so many nightmares. Suddenly he was a boy again, thirteen or fourteen, he couldn’t remember. Small for his age and sexually immature, he would cower in a corner of the communal shower in the large, open changing room at the comprehensive school, hoping the other boys wouldn’t notice him, but all too often they did. He felt someone kick his legs away, knocking him to the floor as the shower head above sprayed blinding water into his eyes, rendering his attackers almost invisible. He heard the squeaking of the tap as one of his tormentors turned the water from warm to cold and then up to scalding while kicks and punches battered his slim body. When the blows stopped, the whipping with damp towels began, their whip-crack mixing with the sounds of high-pitched hysterical laughter, the merciless attackers spurred on by the sight of violent red welts erupting all over his body, his thin white skin threatening to tear apart, the torture only ceasing when commanded to by the booming voice of a man.