Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘I understand,’ Sean said, eager to move the questioning on. ‘Just one more thing. Have you had any break-ins in the last few months or maybe even longer ago? Anything unusual gone missing?’

She looked truly concerned for the first time since she’d opened the door. ‘Is Tommy in trouble? Did he do something? Is that why you’re here?’

‘My question,’ he reminded her.

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I haven’t had any break-ins and nothing’s gone missing.’

‘I need you to think really hard,’ he insisted. ‘Not necessarily an obvious burglary — maybe just small items that have gone missing?’ He saw a flicker of something in her eyes. ‘You can’t go on protecting him, Samantha. You’re not twelve any more, and neither is he. He’s dangerous now — more dangerous than you can imagine. I need you to answer my questions.’

She sighed and shook her head. ‘OK. A few months ago I’d just had a bath and was in my bedroom. I went to use my body cream, but it wasn’t where I always left it, on my dressing table. I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find it. I asked Ian if he’d moved it and he said no. We’d just taken on a cleaner, because we both work, and I guess I thought she might have taken it.’

‘Did anything else go missing?’

‘A few silly things — a bottle of perfume.’

‘Black Orchid. And the body cream was from Elemis, wasn’t it?’

She gawped at him, mouth hanging open, eyes clouding with suspicion. ‘How did you know? How could you possibly know that?’

‘Lucky guess,’ said Sean. ‘You said other things went missing too. What things?’

‘Some of my clothes: a skirt, blouse and a sweater, I think. But you know how it is, things go missing all the time, lost at the dry cleaner’s, left at work. It happens to us all.’

Clothes. Of course, he thought, berating himself for having not seen it earlier. He dressed them in her clothes — that’s why the bodies had been naked or nearly so, because he was recycling her clothes, using them on victim after victim, taking them from one to give to the next as his belief that they were the real Samantha Shaw faded and died.

‘Did you report it to the police?’

‘Are you kidding? They would have thought I was mental.’

‘But did you think it could be Tommy? In your heart, did you think it could be him? Did you see him in your mind coming into your house, your bedroom, and taking the perfume — the cream?’

‘I … I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she faltered.

‘Yes you do,’ he said. ‘But burying the past mattered more to you than telling anyone the thing you feared — feared more than anything else.’

‘And what would that be?’ she asked calmly.

‘That he was back,’ said Sean. ‘That after all these years, Thomas Keller was back.’

‘You don’t know anything about my fears,’ she warned him, still icy calm.

‘I know more than you think.’

Sally had seen Sean in many guises, but this was a new one, even for her. ‘This isn’t getting us any closer to Keller,’ she said. ‘If you have no idea where he is, then you can’t help us any further. Thanks for your time. We’ll be in touch.’

She turned to look at Sean, as if willing him to walk away, but he stood rooted, eyes locked with Samantha Shaw’s, convinced there was more information she could give, even if she didn’t know it herself. He let his eyes alone ask all the questions, until eventually she answered.

‘Listen, the only other thing I can think of is that Tommy always talked about getting himself a farm when he grew up. That’s all I can tell you.’

Sean suddenly looked at the ground, his hand rising towards her face, fingers spread wide like a net, as if he was trying to catch her words before they escaped and were lost for ever. ‘What did you just say?’ he demanded.

‘I said Tommy wanted to live on a farm. I suppose he wanted to be away from people …’ She was still talking when he turned from her, not listening any more, walking away tugging his phone from his pocket and searching for Donnelly’s number. It was answered within a few ring tones.

‘Guv’nor.’

‘Are you still in the office?’

‘Aye.’

‘Thomas Keller. I remember where I’ve seen his name,’ Sean told him. ‘It was on an information report. A uniform patrol checked out a farm — the man living there gave his name as Thomas Keller.’

‘You sure?’ Donnelly asked. ‘We must have checked out more than a hundred smallholdings, not to mention the hundreds of other information reports with name after name on them.’

‘Samantha Shaw just told me that Keller always wanted to live on a farm. As soon as she said it, I remembered — remembered seeing it. But I can’t remember the address. The report should still be in my office. I need you to search for it — go through every last scrap of paper till you find it.’

‘Fuck me, guv’nor — have you seen your office? That could take days.’

‘No,’ Sean insisted. ‘The information reports from property searches are in a separate pile, as are the ones from door-to-door, as are the ones from roadblocks, as are they all. The pile you’re looking for will be smaller than the others. I’ll stay on the line while you check.’

Donnelly eased himself out of his chair and headed to Sean’s office. ‘On my way — hold on.’ He scanned the stacks of reports until he found the pile he was looking for. ‘Here we go,’ he said, sitting at the desk in front of the reports. He puffed out his cheeks and began to scan through them, checking the names while Sean waited silently, his hands shaking with anticipation, listening to Donnelly discounting each useless report. ‘No.’ A few seconds later. ‘No.’ More seconds later. ‘No,’ until finally Donnelly’s tone changed completely. ‘Fuck me,’ he declared. ‘How the hell did you remember seeing that?’

Sean didn’t have to ask if Donnelly had found it. ‘What’s the address?’

‘It’s in Keston, Kent, off Shire Lane in what appears to be a disused poultry farm. He showed the uniform patrol his driving licence as ID, which by all accounts checked out. Do you want me to scramble TSG, or maybe a surveillance team — make sure he’s holding Deborah Thomson at the same place?’

‘No,’ Sean insisted. ‘For all we know it could be another part-time address. I’ll check it out first — quietly. Once I know he’s there, I’ll call you — then we’ll think about the TSG.’

Donnelly didn’t believe a word of it. ‘OK, guv’nor. If that’s how you want to play it.’

‘It is,’ said Sean, and hung up. He sensed Sally by his side. ‘We’ve got his address.’

‘How?’

‘I’ll explain on the way,’ he promised and strode towards their car.

‘On the way to where?’

‘Where d’you think?’ he asked, oblivious to her fears. ‘To Keller’s home address, of course.’

‘Just the two of us? Shouldn’t we wait for the TSG or at least have some of the team meet us there? We know he has access to electrical weapons and he lives on a farm — God knows what else he’s got down there.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her, ‘we’re not going to arrest him. We’re checking out the address, that’s all.’

She watched him duck inside the car, leaving her with a sickness deep in the pit of her stomach — a feeling of dread that he was leading her towards places in her own soul and consciousness she wasn’t ready to go to yet. But she could see he had the taste for the hunt and his quarry was close. Like an out-of-control freight train, nothing could stop him now.

The pain had been almost as unbearable as the humiliation — his stinking, sweet breath panting in her ear, her body too racked with exhaustion and pain to resist after he’d stabbed her with the cattle prod again and again until she’d finally succumbed. At last her torture was over and he crawled from the cage, dragging her filthy mattress with him and all of her clothes except her underwear. She reached down and pulled her knickers up as best she could with one hand, sobbing a tearless cry — his voice behind her, out of breath and merciless.