Luke Delaney - The Keeper

He felt the life force flowing out of him, as if he’d been shot in the chest at point-blank range, the realization of what he was being told stabbing at his fragile self-belief. He’d failed — failed to solve the puzzle in time — and now she was dead. The madman had killed Louise Russell, but her blood would be for ever on Sean’s hands. Her lifeless staring green eyes would for ever haunt his dreams.

It had been a long night and he hadn’t got to bed until the early hours of the morning, the night’s events leaving him excited but calm, for the time being at any rate. But as the light penetrated through the thin sheets tacked over the windows of his home, his sleep grew increasingly restless — the deep sleep of oblivion replaced by the shallow sleep that allowed the nightmares to come.

He was young, only seven or eight, and already a veteran of the children’s home in Penge, south-east London. Other children had come and gone, but he remained. It was Sunday — the day when the grown-ups came to look at them, to talk to them and take them out for the day and buy them sweets and ice cream, maybe even take them home — just for a day visit at first, then for a night or two, and then, who knows, maybe take them home for ever. The youngest children were usually snapped up quite quickly, especially if they didn’t have siblings, but the older children, the teenagers, rarely left. They used to tell him that if you were still there when you were ten, then you’d stay there for ever.

There had been no day trips for Thomas Keller for a while, no ice cream or visits to normal homes — not since his last trip. There had been suspicions even before that — incidents . At first nobody could be certain he was responsible. Nobody wanted to consider the consequences if he had been responsible — what that would signify, what that would mean he was. At first it was a case of things going missing, toys belonging to the other children in the family he was visiting. Nobody wanted to make a fuss, after all it was understandable, the other children had so much and he had so little. Nobody wanted him to get into trouble, but they didn’t want him to visit again either, if that was OK with the staff at the children’s home. But then it wasn’t just any toys, it was the special toys — the treasured teddy bears and dollies the children of the host family had had since they were babies. Some turned up, some didn’t, but the ones they found were always the same — slashed open with something sharp, the stuffing pulled out and the limbs removed. Still nobody wanted to make a fuss; he was angry and jealous, it was understandable given what had happened to him — they just didn’t want him to visit again. But it didn’t stop there.

As he grew older and bolder, the family pets became his targets: the tropical fish killed by someone pouring bleach into their tank; the mice and hamsters and gerbils that went missing from their cages and were later found buried in the garden. Again, nobody could be a hundred per cent certain he was responsible. But suspicions had grown stronger when a family’s cat disappeared, only to be found hanging from a tree with a wire cord bound around its neck, swinging gently in the wind, eyes bulging, tongue protruding. They’d gone in search of Thomas then and discovered him, alone in a neighbour’s garden, withdrawn and silent, eyes staring madly with telltale scratches covering his hands and wrists — the cat had marked its killer.

Some at the children’s home had said enough was enough, he should never be placed with a family again. Others argued that they had a duty to try, but that families who had animals, any animals, must be avoided — at least until they could overcome his cruelty towards them. Reluctantly, the doubters agreed.

A few weeks later he had gone on a day visit to the home of a Christian family who believed that between God and themselves any child could be saved. They’d been watching him closely, as they’d been warned to do, but somehow he’d managed to sneak away. There was concern, but no panic — or at least there wasn’t until they realized their five-year-old daughter was also missing. She’d been playing alone in her bedroom with her dolls, and now she was missing . The mother had been hysterical and wanted to call the police immediately, but the father had urged her to wait, saying he would go and find them. There was no sign of them in the house, nor in the garden, nor the garage. So he began to search the alley that ran behind the back gardens. And that was where he found them — in a shed in a neighbour’s back garden, his five-year-old daughter standing naked, tears rolling down her face as Thomas Keller stood in front of her, his trousers and underpants pulled to his knees, a tiny erection gripped between the fingers and thumb of one hand while the other pointed the blade of a penknife at the stricken girl.

The Christian father charged in and swatted Thomas to the floor with an open hand. ‘You sick little bastard! I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget,’ he told him. Then he proceeded to slip the leather belt from his waistband, gripping the buckle and letting the rest uncoil like a whip. Thomas had watched as the man’s big hand eased the shed door closed, raising the belt above his head.

What followed had indeed taught him a lesson, one he never would forget — he was alone and always would be. Totally alone.

After that day there were no more visits for Thomas Keller.

Sean and Sally bumped along the dirt road through Elmstead Woods on the Kent-London border. They’d hardly spoken the entire length of the journey from Peckham. Sean saw two marked police cars and knew they were in the right place. A long strip of blue-and-white police tape closed off the road ahead of where the cars were parked. Sean pulled in behind them and he and Sally climbed from the car in what looked a synchronized movement. One of the uniformed cops who’d been sheltering from the morning chill jumped out of his car and approached them.

Sean held up his warrant card: ‘DI Corrigan’ — he nodded towards Sally — ‘and DS Jones. Why have you taped the road off?’ The woods to his side he expected to be cordoned off, but not necessarily the road.

‘Tyre tracks,’ explained the uniform. ‘Looks like he pulled up on the side of the road, where the ground’s softer. Left some pretty good tyre marks — and footprints too. Two people, by the look of it, one wearing trainers, the other-’

Sean cut him off: ‘The other barefoot.’ He saw the confusion in the officer’s face. ‘The last victim — she was barefoot too.’

The uniform didn’t speak, but his face said everything.

As Sean looked around, breathing in the atmosphere of the woods — he felt the madman’s presence. The place stank of him. They could have been back in the woods where they’d found Karen Green; the two places were so similar he could hardly tell one from the other. ‘Who found her?’ he asked. ‘A dog walker?’

‘No,’ the uniformed cop replied. ‘It was too early for most dog walkers round here on a Sunday. She was found by a birdwatcher looking for pied wagtails, or so he tells me. Good time of year for it, apparently.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Sean distractedly. ‘Anything suspicious about your birdwatcher?’

‘You’re asking the wrong person, sir. I didn’t meet him. That was another local unit — they took him back to the nick before we got here.’

‘I see,’ Sean answered, still not interested in what he was being told — merely going through the question-and-answer routine the uniformed cops would expect. He knew the man he hunted wouldn’t have reported the body to the police in some self-destructive game of risk. He’d be back in whatever hovel he’d crawled from, dreaming of his night’s work and fantasizing about more good times ahead.