Luke Delaney - The Keeper

Sean didn’t answer. ‘I need you to liaise with the door-to-door teams,’ he said. ‘If anyone in the street’s had junk mail pushed through their front doors in the last couple of days, I want them to seize it and hand it all over to you for fingerprinting. I’m assuming you’ve worked out why?’

‘Probably,’ Roddis confirmed. ‘So you think your man’s been posting stuff through other doors, no doubt trying to blend in while he scouted the area?’

‘I do.’ Sean’s iPhone vibrated in his coat pocket. He wrestled it free of the resisting material and touched his finger on the screen to answer. ‘Sean Corrigan.’

‘Inspector Corrigan. How are you this fine day?’ He recognized Dr Canning’s voice immediately.

‘I’ve been better.’

‘Never mind. Thought you’d like to know that I’ve released Karen Green’s body into the care of the Coroner’s Officer. The family are due to formally identify her at 2 p.m.’ Sean glanced at his watch — it was already 1 p.m. ‘Her body has been moved to the chapel of rest. Better for the family to see her there. We’ll make her look as presentable as we can.’

‘Good,’ said Sean, ‘and thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it. By the way, I’ve also identified what made the rather mysterious circular bruises we found all over her body.’

‘I’m listening,’ Sean encouraged, unaware that he’d stopped breathing while he waited for what could be the breakthrough piece of the puzzle he’d been searching for.

‘He used an electric cattle prod. We tested a fair few instruments of torture, but only the prod gave us an exact match.’

Sean breathed again. ‘Son of a bitch. Question now is, where the hell did he get it from?’

‘A farm,’ Canning offered. ‘Maybe he keeps his victims on a farm?’

‘Not many farms in south-east London.’

‘Perhaps he lives further afield than you thought?’

‘No,’ Sean dismissed the suggestion. ‘He’s no farmer coming up from the sticks to snatch his victims. This one likes to stay close to what he knows.’

‘Well, I know better than to argue with you.’

Sean had already moved on. ‘I need you to do something else for me.’

‘Such as?’

‘Run a full screening for toxins in her blood.’

‘No doubt you’re going to ask me if she has traces of anything that could be used as an anaesthetic or a pre-anaesthetic, something that would make a person compliant but not technically unconscious?’

Sean’s eyes darted from side to side, uncomfortable with having anybody one step ahead of him, even Dr Canning, a man he trusted more than most. He suddenly realized what must have happened. ‘You’ve already run the tests, haven’t you?’

‘Of course,’ Canning answered, the satisfaction in his voice barely concealed.

‘And you found traces of alfentanil.’

The satisfaction in Canning’s voice turned to disbelief. ‘How did you know?’

‘I’ll tell you later,’ Sean promised. ‘Could you inform the Coroner’s Officer that I’ll be there to meet the family at the identification.’

‘Of course,’ said Canning.

Sean hung up and turned to Sally. ‘The formal identification of Karen Green will be at Guy’s at two. I could do with you there.’

Sally’s mouth fell open, but no words came out.

‘I’ll go,’ Anna jumped in. ‘I’d like to go. I want to go.’

‘This won’t be fun,’ Sean assured her. ‘Sally has experience with this. You don’t. Sally?’ She looked at the floor rather than answer. He saw she wasn’t ready yet.

‘Besides,’ Anna continued, ‘if I see the victim’s body and meet with some of her family, it may help me with profiling the offender. And there’ll be a Family Liaison Officer with them too, correct?’

‘There will be,’ Sean agreed. ‘DC Jesson.’

‘Then I can’t see a problem.’

Recognizing her noble intent, Sean decided that if it gave Sally an easy out then he’d take it. ‘OK, but follow my lead and don’t say a damn thing without checking with me first. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ she promised. Sean began to walk towards his car, continually shaking his head. He realized Anna wasn’t following and turned back.

‘Well, you coming or what?’

She rested a hand on Sally’s shoulder and rolled her eyes before walking after him.

‘Women,’ Sean muttered to himself. ‘The one thing I’ll never understand.’

The two women sat together but alone under the dull, jaundicing light of the low-powered bulb that hung above their heads, the sound of water trickling somewhere in the cellar as deafening in the silence as it was maddening. Deborah Thomson clutched her damaged knee and rocked backwards and forwards on the floor of her hellish prison. Her body was drained of adrenalin and she sobbed quietly from the pain and the fear, her last chance of escape and survival surely gone. She was going to die in this dark, damp cellar — or somewhere worse. He would eventually come to take her life. She saw his hands slipping around her throat, squeezing, pushing his fingers into her trachea until it was crushed, the pressure halting the flow of blood through her carotid arteries to her brain, unconsciousness and death soon following.

Her rocking became increasingly frantic and her breathing on the verge of hyperventilation. She looked across the room to Louise Russell, lying silent and motionless but for her constant shivering, her near naked body coiled on the floor, her back towards her, the bones of her spine already becoming more prominent after just a few days without water or food. Deborah knew Louise was growing weaker and weaker — if he didn’t kill her she would probably be dead from hypothermia soon anyway.

A trembling voice made Deborah jump with fright. ‘How could you leave me?’ the weak voice asked. ‘How could you do that?’

It was a while before she could answer, the words stuck in her shrunken throat as if his fingers were already coiled around it.

‘I panicked,’ she managed to say. ‘I was scared, so scared. I saw the light and could smell the air from outside and I just … I just had to get away. I had to get away from here. I couldn’t think of anything else. My mind went blank … and I ran. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Her tears ran into the mucus trickling from her nose, making her face shiny and slippery as she tried to rub it away with the backs of her hands. She inhaled deeply to clear her nose and control her crying. ‘If I get another chance I won’t leave you, I promise. I won’t panic.’

‘There won’t be another chance,’ Louise whispered calmly, as if she’d already accepted her fate. ‘You’ve killed us both.’ She rolled over slowly so she was facing Deborah, her eyes wide open and sparkling with life despite her exhaustion. ‘You’ve killed us both.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Deborah told her sharply. ‘You don’t know that.’ Louise didn’t answer, her green eyes staring in accusation.

‘We’d already picked names for them,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’ Deborah asked. ‘I don’t understand. Names for who?’

‘Our children. The children we were going to have. We’d already picked their names. If we had three boys we were going to call them John, Simon and David. If they were girls we were going to call them Rosie, Sara and Elizabeth.’

‘What if you had a mixture?’ Deborah asked, wishing she hadn’t.

‘We never talked about that. Somehow I knew we’d have three boys or three girls, so we never discussed it. Silly really.’ Deborah said nothing. Louise continued, her voice growing a little stronger as her mind temporarily freed her body from her hell. ‘I like the boys’ names — strong and simple, like my husband. He’s called John too.’