Luke Delaney - The Keeper

He pushed the memories aside as he crossed the room and slunk into his office, throwing the contents of his pockets across his cluttered desk and hanging his raincoat on one of the metal hooks on the back of his door that served as a coat-rack. He considered sitting on the uncomfortable chair waiting for him behind his desk, but knew he needed to keep moving for a while, or at least standing. The few hours’ sleep and a hot shower had revived him somewhat, but if he sat in the chair now, as uncomfortable as it was, the tiredness would sweep back over him and beg him to allow his body and mind to sleep. He couldn’t let that happen. He was already feeling guilty about going home when the killer was still out there, the lives of two women Sean had never met hanging on his ability to find them.

It was too early for the local cafés, or even the station canteen, to be open, so the caffeine he both craved and needed would have to come from something other than his usual black coffee. Still standing he rummaged through the desk drawers for his caffeine tablets, pushing aside packets of ibuprofen, paracetamol and indigestion tablets until he found what he was looking for, popping two from the silver foil and swallowing them without water, then taking another without checking the dosage instructions. ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ he muttered to himself as he began to push papers around his desk, waiting for the tablets to stimulate his brain enough for him to begin reading through the seemingly endless reports, the memory of last night’s fitful sleep fading to nothing — the dreams of trees in the dark, the constant hissing of the leaves in the breeze, the faceless man in the hooded top standing over a semi-naked Louise Russell giving way to the images that would plague him during the day to come.

As he looked around his office his attention was drawn to an enlarged photograph of Louise Russell’s face stuck to his whiteboard, her green eyes staring at him, pleading with him to find her — to save her. Involuntarily his hand came from his side and reached out to her, his index finger tracing the outline of her face. He stepped back with a jolt as an image of her yet-to-be crime-scene photographs flashed in his mind. The green eyes were still staring out at him, only now they were lifeless, no longer pleading but accusing — damning him.

When the image cleared he stepped forward and studied her picture again. ‘Are you still alive?’ he asked her. ‘Am I too late?’

The sound of Sally barging through the swing doors helped him look away from the photograph. They nodded hellos at a distance as he watched her go through the same routine of emptying her coat pockets on to her desk as he had just minutes earlier. He moved to the door frame of his office entrance. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked without enthusiasm.

‘Well, it’s barely seven o’clock in the morning, my eyes are sore and so are my feet, it’s Sunday and I’m at work … Other than that, I’m great. How about you?’

‘The same,’ he answered without smiling.

‘Any news on Louise Russell?’

Sean knew what she meant — had a body been discovered overnight or was there still a chance? ‘No one’s called me, so I’m assuming things remain the same.’

‘It’s Sunday, remember,’ she warned him. ‘People walk their dogs later on a Sunday morning. My guess is we won’t be in the clear until about nine-ish.’

‘We should have one more day,’ he argued, ‘provided he keeps to his seven-day cycle.’ He spoke more in hope than belief, the fear that the killer was spiralling towards an end game — an orgy of unrelenting violence — marred his faint optimism.

‘Let’s hope he does,’ Sally muttered, looking away distractedly, searching through the notes and memos on her desk, mumbling to herself more than to him. ‘What time’s that bloody canteen open on a Sunday? Their coffee’s foul, but it’s better than nothing.’

Sean didn’t answer, sliding back into his office and shuffling paper around on his desk only to look up and see the big, white-faced clock hanging on his wall. Sally was right — they had to survive past nine o’clock. Louise Russell had to survive past nine o’clock. If her body hadn’t been found by then, she might still be alive and maybe he had as much as another twenty-four hours to find her before … But even that wouldn’t give him enough time to get a Production Order, serve it and then gain access to the employee records at the sorting office. He needed something to break today — something to fall into place — something that would tear down the brick wall between the madman and him.

In sudden desperation he grabbed a chair and pulled it up to his computer desk, sitting astride it as his fingers began to nimbly type on the keyboard. He called up the CRIS system and punched in the instructions for the same search he’d already carried out with a negative result. ‘I know you stalked the woman they’re replacements for, you must have. You must have watched her and you must have known her and she you. She couldn’t have been some stranger you obsessed over — she accepted you, but then something happened and she was taken away from you, but what and how? I know I’m right,’ he reassured himself. ‘I have to be.’

He typed in the details of the crime he was searching for, the description of a young woman matching that of the three women he’d taken. He pressed the key to run the search and pushed himself away from the desk while he waited for the result, his heart hammering inside his ribcage. ‘I have to be right,’ he told himself, ‘I must have missed something.’ After a few seconds the screen blinked and changed to the results page. The search had returned no results . ‘Fuck,’ he called out loudly enough to make Sally look up. Last night’s conversation with Kate began to play over and over in his mind.

… I would assume I’d missed something. I’d go back over everything I’d done and double-check I hadn’t missed anything.

And if you hadn’t? What then?

Then the patient would die …

He pulled himself and the chair back to the computer and began again, this time expanding the age group of the victim by a few years either way — no results. He tried changing the length of the victim’s hair; maybe she’d had it cut since he knew her — no results. He tried changing the height of the victim a few inches either way — no results. He tried removing the specific eye colour — no results. Over and over he tried, but it was always the same — no results.

The sound of a phone ringing in the main office somehow cut through his concentration when other distractions had not. His head spun to look at the big clock — it was almost eight o’clock. Christ, he’d been fruitlessly searching the CRIS database for more than an hour without even noticing the detectives who’d been slowly arriving and filling the office with chatter and noise, including Donnelly — but the phone ringing, its shrill electronic chirping, was something he’d been unable to block out. Why? Once again his heart started kicking and punching his chest walls. He felt his throat grow tight as he watched Sally lift the corded phone from its receiver and hold it to the side of her face as if everything was happening in slow motion, but only to him. He watched her listen to the caller, lip-reading as she responded, Where? She wrote something on a piece of paper, hung up and got to her feet, turning towards his office, head down, eyes cast to the floor.

Silently he cursed her for walking towards him with the piece of paper in her hand. He cursed her for answering the damn phone and he cursed her for what she was about to tell him. She reached his door and looked up into his eyes without stepping inside. ‘I’m sorry,’ was all she said.