Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘What was it?’

‘A doll.’

‘A doll?’

‘Larger than normal, right in the middle of the crime scene, sitting on the chair opposite the couch where Rebecca was butchered.’

‘And you thought he’d used it as a replacement for the child who wasn’t there?’ Anna caught on. ‘You thought he took the doll from somewhere inside the flat and placed it as if it was watching him rape and murder the mother?’

‘Yes,’ he told her coldly. ‘But blood spray patterns on the doll indicated that it hadn’t been present when she’d had her throat cut, but had been present when the other wounds had been inflicted.’

‘So he inflicted an incapacitating and ultimately fatal blow and as she lay bleeding to death he went looking for the child, to make him watch the rest, only he couldn’t find him, so he replaced him with the doll before finishing his …’

‘His performance,’ Sean finished for her. ‘And yes, that’s what I believed happened. It had to be the same man. Only trouble was, the Rebecca Fordham team had already charged Ian McCaig, who’d killed himself while on remand waiting for his trial. McCaig was clearly unstable from the outset, but he was no killer. The media frenzy around his arrest and the public hatred drove him over the edge. He just couldn’t take it. Everyone took his suicide as his admission of guilt.’

‘But not you?’

‘No and not Charlie Bannan either. As far as we were concerned, the Parkside Rapist was still on the loose and therefore so was Rebecca’s killer. It just couldn’t be McCaig — he was all wrong for it. So why had they charged him in the first place? I’ll tell you why, because some fucking historical criminologist reckoned he could be the one. But there’s no way he could have been. McCaig’s only conviction was for indecent exposure, a crime of self-degradation. Rebecca’s killer was all about the degradation of others. Two traits that can never exist in the same offender. They’re opposite ends of the spectrum — night and day, light and darkness. But the team investigating Rebecca’s murder wouldn’t entertain the idea they had the wrong man. Bannan had pleaded with them to listen, but they wouldn’t. So we met with the criminologist ourselves and asked her to consider a possible link between Rebecca’s murder and the Parkside rapes.’

‘And?’

‘She agreed they appeared to be linked.’

‘So she admitted she could have been wrong?’

‘She said she’d never told the Fordham Team McCaig was guilty, just that he fitted elements of the profile. But the damage had already been done. The investigating team had allowed themselves to be influenced by an outsider and it had led to a catastrophic mistake. Anyway, a few weeks later we found Lindsey Harter and her four-year-old daughter raped and murdered in their own home. The brutality of the attack left us in no doubt it was the same man who had killed Rebecca. The same man who was committing the Parkside rapes. When we looked at the blood spray patterns around the area where the mother had been killed it became apparent that something had been removed from the scene after she’d been killed — something or someone who’d been sitting in the chair opposite. So we had the daughter’s body and clothes examined for traces of her mother’s blood and Christ, we found plenty. The blood spray patterns confirmed it — the killer had made the daughter sit and watch him sexually and physically mutilate her own mother before leading her to her own bedroom and killing her too.’

‘Just like the doll,’ Anna said, pulling her coat tight against the cold of the day and the chill of what she was being told.

‘Yeah. Just like the doll. Later we arrested and charged Christopher Richards with the murder of Lindsey and her daughter Izzy. He admitted his guilt. But when we asked about Rebecca’s murder, he denied having anything to do with it. The criminologist continued to deny her involvement in the conviction of McCaig. Maybe she’d been misunderstood — maybe she was just scared of her reputation being destroyed. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.

‘It took until 2007 for DNA tests to finally prove that it was Richards who murdered Rebecca. He pleaded guilty to Manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility. We’d been right, Charlie Bannan and I — we’d been right all along. A young mother and her four-year-old child, both raped and murdered unnecessarily. Dozens of other women raped by Richards after he’d killed Rebecca — all because the investigation team stopped listening to their own instincts — allowed the world of academic theories and clinical papers into their world — the real world. My world. These things don’t belong in my world.’

‘We’ve improved since then,’ Anna pleaded, all too aware of the cases to which he referred. ‘We’ve learned from our mistakes, we know so much more now.’

‘Why don’t you save what you know for the next time you’re in court, so you can use it to help some other bastard like Gibran get away with murder.’

Anna’s mouth hung slightly open for a few seconds. ‘I don’t deserve that,’ she said.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, letting the anger and bitterness sink back into the dark places that littered his corrupted soul. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t …’

‘I think we should just go.’

‘Fine,’ he agreed. They both climbed into the unmarked car and prepared for a long, silent journey back to Peckham.

Thomas Keller lay on the stained and soiled mattress, a filthy duvet pulled up to his chest. It was early evening outside and still light enough to see without turning the overhead light on. Underneath the duvet he wore his tracksuit bottoms and an unwashed T-shirt. He could see her, see her so clearly, as if she was lying in the bed with him — the only person he ever really loved. The only person who ever really loved him.

They were alone together, a long time ago when he was only twelve years old, in her garden, bathed in August sunshine, warm and strong, early in the summer’s evening, the smell of freshly cut grass from the surrounding gardens filling their heads. Alone where no one could see them, away from prying eyes that would try and stop them if they could see them together. He stroked her long brown hair, occasionally glancing at the transfer of a phoenix on his forearm while she hummed and made a daisy chain, her identical transfer vivid in the bright light — transfers they’d put on each other, a symbol of their never-ending love. She turned to him, smiling. ‘What you thinking about, Tommy?’ she asked, her gentle, kind voice like an angel speaking to him, his one and only escape from the harshness of his reality.

‘I was thinking of you.’

‘Why, do you love me?’ she giggled.

‘Yes,’ he said, not afraid to tell her — not afraid to tell her anything.

‘Enough to stay with me for ever?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t be silly — we’ve only been friends for a week.’

‘But I’ve known you for a lot longer than that,’ he protested.

‘No you haven’t,’ she insisted. ‘Not properly.’

‘I’ve watched you for a long time. Watched you with the others. But I knew you weren’t like them. I knew you were different.’

‘They’re OK,’ she said unconvincingly.

‘To you maybe, but not to me.’

‘They just don’t understand you, Tommy. They think you think you’re too good for them or something.’

‘Is that what they told you?’

‘Not exactly, but I know what they say to each other.’ Thomas Keller didn’t respond. ‘You should just ignore them when they’re being mean to you.’

‘I do, mostly, but one day I’ll show them all what I can do. Then they’ll be sorry they picked on me.’