Luke Delaney - The Keeper

Sean looked at the ground on the edge of the forest where he could make out the tyre-tracks the uniformed cop had mentioned and the accompanying footprints, both of which disappeared into the grass as they headed deeper into the trees. Beyond the treeline his eyes could see nothing, but his mind could see everything — the madman walking close behind Louise Russell as he marched her towards her death, occasionally shoving her in the back to encourage her to keep walking.

‘Guv’nor …’ Sally asked without being heard. Then, louder: ‘Sean.’

‘Sorry. What is it?’

‘You OK?’

‘I’m fine,’ he lied. ‘What about you?’

She shrugged, but he could see the tension and fear in her face. This would be the first time she’d been to a crime scene where the body was still in situ since she’d almost become a murder victim herself. Sean knew that when she saw Louise Russell’s body she would be seeing herself. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he told her. ‘I can go alone. You can wait here or search the perimeter for something that might have been missed.’

Sally breathed in deeply through her nose, desperately wishing she still smoked. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I think I need to do this.’

‘OK,’ he agreed, turning back to the cop guarding his crime scene. ‘Do you have an alternative route to the victim?’

‘Sure — duck under the tape across the road there and keep going for a few metres. You’ll come to some more tape leading into the woods. Just follow that tape all the way and it’ll take you straight to her.’

He sounded as if he was giving a lost motorist directions, but Sean admired his professionalism — using crime-scene cordon tape to mark a forensically safe path to the victim was a sound idea.

Sean took one last look at the soft ground where the training shoe prints led both into and out of the wood, but the barefoot prints led only in — so the killer had probably exited the same way he’d entered, leaving them with one route to concentrate on. It also meant the killer had chosen the path of least resistance, both before and after he’d killed her. Clearly convenience was still more important to him than concealing forensic evidence.

Sean walked past the parked police cars and ducked under the tape, holding it higher for Sally to follow, like a trainer helping his boxer enter the ring. Without speaking they followed the treeline until they found the trampled ground and tape that snaked into the woods, like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs. They began to stumble deeper into the wood, their city footwear and clothing hindering their progress — long coats catching on branches that seemed to reach out and search for them, their smooth-soled shoes constantly slipping on the damp grass and moss, the air surrounding them both heavy and fresh, the strong breeze encouraging Sally to button her coat as they walked ever closer to Louise Russell’s body. ‘D’you think it’s much further?’ she asked, more out of a need to say something than curiosity, the constant eerie rustling sound from the trees, like waves breaking on a deserted pebble beach, increasingly spooking her.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered truthfully, wishing he could have walked the same path the killer and Louise Russell had, but knowing he couldn’t. He reminded himself that their journey into the woods would have been almost exactly the same as his and Sally’s, but somehow not stepping in the killer’s footsteps was stopping him feeling how he would have felt — stopping him seeing what he would have seen. He pushed a branch away from his face, but it sprang loose and whipped back, an unseen sharpness cutting him along his cheekbone, just under his left eye. ‘Bastard,’ he cried out, putting the back of his hand to the wound, seeing the blood when he took it away.

‘You all right?’ Sally asked.

He kept walking. ‘I’m fine.’

‘I don’t know how Roddis and his forensic team are gonna hump their gear through this.’

‘They might have to wake someone up at the council — get a few blokes down here with chainsaws to cut a decent path. If that’s what we have to do, then that’s what we have to do.’

‘Roddis won’t like it,’ Sally warned, ‘letting civilians that close to his crime scene.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s his problem, not ours,’ muttered Sean, tired of the small talk that was clouding his mind. He pushed ahead more quickly, not caring if the branches of trees punished his recklessness further, subconsciously hoping he would leave Sally behind, temporarily lost in the woods, allowing him to be alone with Louise Russell and any remaining traces of the man he hunted — be they physical or otherwise. But Sally kept pace with him, the fear of being abandoned in the woods driving her on.

‘Nice of the uniforms to warn us about the route they’d chosen. If I’d known I was gonna get my tights laddered I’d’ve stayed with the car.’

Sean saw through her bravado — trying to be flippant and jokey to conceal her anxiety. But at least it was a sign of the old Sally breaking through. Perhaps she did need this — needed to go through it before she could start truly healing.

‘They did the right thing,’ he said, pushing deeper into the woods. ‘Choosing the path of most resistance is exactly what our man would never do.’

‘You know that, do you?’

He stopped and looked at her for a moment. ‘Yes,’ was all he said. They locked eyes, not speaking, until he turned away and carried on walking.

Sally waited a few seconds then followed, watching him ahead of her, pushing through branches that closed behind him, obscuring her view, as if he and the trees were conspiring to isolate her. For the first time since they’d entered the woods she became aware of the sound of birds all around them — the shrill alarm whistles of blackbirds warning the dwellers of the forest of their approach mixing with the mocking laughter of magpies. She was sure Sean was unaware of the avian eyes observing their intrusion. He was going to another place, forcing himself to enter into the mind of the murderer — a place where she didn’t belong, where she wasn’t wanted. She allowed Sean the distance he needed.

Every step he took towards Louise Russell was a step closer to the madman, and with every step he took he changed a little more, his thoughts and those of the killer beginning to merge. He was close now and Sean could feel him, see through his eyes: the woods at night with nothing other than the moon to light the way, the sharp branches grabbing and scratching at her bare skin, catching and pulling at his loose clothes, feeling calm and in control, almost for the first time in his life, accepting what he had to do with no trace of doubt or guilt.

Suddenly the sound of the woods seemed to change, the hissing of the leaves replaced with a strange alien sound, like the flapping of thousands of tiny man-made wings or hundreds of broken kites. He kept following the length of blue-and-white tape that appeared to be leading him directly to the source of the mysterious noise. What must she have been thinking, he wondered — alone in the dark woods with the madman, not knowing what beast, man or animal was making the terrible flapping sound? Suddenly he stepped into a clearing, instinctively thrusting out his arm behind him until he was sure that the source of the sound represented no danger to them.

As he looked around the clearing he saw what was making the hellish noise — dozens of empty plastic bags trapped on the barbs of the bramble-bushes, blown here from God knows where, inflating and flapping in the breeze like obscene Christmas decorations, tattered and haunting. In the moonlight Louise Russell would not have been able to see the innocent, harmless things that serenaded her death.