The Keeper

by Luke Delaney

  ‘Feeling?’

  ‘What he believes the killer was feeling.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘Is that what all the questions are about, you find him interesting?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Interesting or attractive?’

  ‘Interesting from a clinical perspective. Anyway, I’m married and so is he.’

  ‘Married, not dead,’ Sally teased. ‘And he is a good-looking man. Fit too, keeps himself in good shape. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed, because I won’t believe you.’

  ‘He’s not my type. I don’t do men who have mood swings.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Sally agreed. ‘Although there was a time when I had a bit of a crush on him, I have to admit. I found his intensity very attractive.’

  Anna wasn’t interested in the subject. ‘Has he had a traumatic experience recently, perhaps a serious injury while on duty or something in his private life?’

  Sally’s smile fell away fast. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘I’m surprised.’

  ‘If it’s injuries and post-traumatic stress you’re looking for, then I’m your girl.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Anna, her face changing as the meaning sank in. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, of course. I heard about what happened to you. It must have been terrible.’ She didn’t tell Sally about her role in assessing Sebastian Gibran, knowing it would destroy any trust there was between them. ‘How are you coping?’

  ‘I’m pretty much healed. Still get a little short of breath now and then, but I’ll get there.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘I know it isn’t,’ said Sally, lowering her voice and looking around to ensure she wasn’t being watched or overheard.

  ‘Have you had any counselling?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m a cop. We don’t do counselling, it’s a sign of not coping and not coping’s a sign you’re not up to the job and that means failure. We don’t do failure. Most of the people I work with are men, and the women I work with have been working with them so long they think like men. I guess I did a bit too, until … well, you know.’

  ‘Nobody would judge you if you wanted help.’

  ‘They wouldn’t understand. If I was a man I’d probably think my scars were cool, showing them off every chance I got, on the beach, in the pool – you know how stupid men can be. They wouldn’t need help, they’d be the talk of the office, a proper hero, and they’d love it. It’s not like that for a woman. These scars make me ugly. They mark me as a victim.’

  ‘You’re neither ugly nor a vic—’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Sally answered coldly. ‘I’m both.’

  Anna studied her for a while before trying to reach her. ‘You really need to speak to someone, Sally. And I would like to be that someone. Just take it slowly, move at your own speed. I’m a good listener.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Sally, standing up to leave. ‘I need to get back to the office.’ She gathered her belongings from the table and headed for the door.

  Anna stared into her drink as if she might see answers swirling in the cup. It appeared she now had two new cases instead of one.

  Alone in his office, Sean was oblivious to the noisy mixture of banter and business beyond his door as the rest of the team arrived for work. Already his eyes were red and tired from staring at the computer screen, reading through every crime report of stalking complaints recorded on the Crime Reporting Input System over the last two years.

  He didn’t look up as Donnelly entered with a stack of information reports, peering over his shoulder at the monitor. ‘CRIS reports?’ he enquired. ‘Hoping to find something?’

  ‘What?’ said Sean, drifting out of his trance.

  Donnelly indicated the screen. ‘I was wondering what you were looking for.’

  ‘Just an idea,’ he answered. ‘A possible angle.’

  ‘Care to share?’

  ‘If I’m right about him using the victims as substitutes for something he wants but can’t have, then the thing he wants has to be a woman.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘And if she’s that important to him, he must have watched her, maybe even tried to approach her, made a bit of a pest of himself.’

  ‘You mean stalked her?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. A good possibility. And maybe she became aware of it, got sick of him and reported it …’

  ‘How far you going back?’

  ‘A couple of years. If I use roughly the same description as our victims, I shouldn’t hit too many. I can’t use an exact description in case she’s changed her appearance at some point.’

  ‘Young, attractive women who’ve been stalked.’ Donnelly raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re going to be a busy man.’

  ‘Still, I reckon it’s worth trying.’

  ‘Say you’re right,’ Donnelly continued, ‘about him wanting these women as replacements for someone else, for someone he …’

  ‘Wants, but can’t have,’ Sean finished for him.

  ‘Aye, that. What I don’t get is why he doesn’t just take the one he wants – do to her what he’s done to the others.’

  Sean looked confused. It seemed incomprehensible to him that Donnelly didn’t understand. ‘Because she’s his god,’ he said, as if stating the obvious. ‘You don’t kill your gods.’

  ‘Aye.’ Unconvinced, Donnelly nevertheless pretended it made sense to him. ‘I’d best let you get on with it then.’

  Sean didn’t reply, his mind already elsewhere as he watched Donnelly leave. His fingers hovered above the keypad for a few seconds while he cleared his thoughts. When he was ready, he began to type the information for the search criteria into the machine. He pressed the key marked search, leaned back in his chair and waited, a tangible sense of excitement crawling up his spine, spreading through his stomach and chest, making his heart skip along like a flat stone skimmed over a still pond. After a few seconds the screen changed, the number in the top right-hand corner telling him during the last three years there had been over 250 reported cases of harassment, more commonly referred to as stalking, involving women of the description he’d entered. He felt the excitement rush from his torso, leaving the emptiness of disappointment.

  ‘Too many,’ he said to himself, knowing it could take him days to read all the reports properly and make phone calls to victims, witnesses, investigating officers – days he didn’t have. He needed to narrow the search fields, but the fear of missing the one vital report momentarily paralysed him, his own reflection in the computer screen melting away and then reforming as that of Karen Green, her eyes open and staring, contrasting with the pale skin of her dead face, her image fading and being re-born on the screen as Louise Russell, her eyes pleading with him to find her. As her image solidified he could see it was already too late, her skin turning pale, dark, wet strands of hair sticking to her skin as brown leaves gently blew across her face.

  ‘Their eyes,’ he said to himself as the image of Louise Russell sank into the blackness of the screen and disappeared. ‘You both have green eyes. He wouldn’t change that, not the eyes.’

  He added the eye colour to the descriptive search page and ran the inquiry again, the excitement mounting within him. Eyes nervously fixed in the top right-hand corner, he waited until the screen blinked once indicating that the search had been completed. The number of hits had been reduced to forty-three. It was still more than he’d bargained for, but manageable. He brought up the first crime report and began to read.

  Thomas Keller stood at the top of the flight of stairs that led down into the darkness of the cellar. Barely able to control his excitement, he paused in the open doorway, listening for signs of danger, watching for a threatening shadow moving across the floor that could mean one of them was out of their cage and waiting for him. They were both strong, athletic young women – if they caught him by surprise they could
do him serious harm, and he knew it – he feared it. Satisfied all was well, he began his descent, carefully balancing the food and drink on its tray, clean pressed clothes draped over his free forearm.

  As he stepped into the room he only had eyes for the cage that held Deborah Thomson, a happy smile spread across his lips as he peered through the gloom at the shaking figure cowering under the filthy duvet he’d left for her. But he didn’t see her terror, he saw Sam, safe now, safe in his care.

  Sliding the tray on to the table behind the screen that he used to hang her new clothes over, he greeted her. ‘Good morning. Do you mind if I put the light on?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Good,’ he continued, ‘I can’t really see what I’m doing without it.’

  He reached out and pulled the cord, flooding the cellar with weak yellow light. Then he walked slowly towards Deborah, his hand held out in front of him, palm up to convince her he was no threat, and crouched next to her cage, still smiling as she pushed herself into the furthest corner, the duvet pulled up to her chin, her eyes wide open with incomprehension, like a deer just before the car that’s going to kill it hits.

  ‘Did you have a good sleep?’ he asked. ‘I hope the chloroform didn’t make you feel too sick. I’m sorry I had to use it, but it was the only way to get you safely and quickly out of there. I know you’ll forgive me, in time.’ He rubbed his hands together nervously. ‘Anyway, you’ll probably want to clean yourself up and maybe try to eat something. You’ll feel better if you can manage it. OK? Let’s have you out of there then.’

  He spoke as if they were on an awkward first date, but his words made her recoil, her feet desperately trying to push her further away, the wire of her prison imprinting a pattern of squares in her back.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ he tried to soothe her, ‘you won’t have to stay in here too long, I promise. It’s only to keep you safe until you’re stronger, until you understand. We have to be careful because they’ll be looking for you, trying to take you back, make you believe you’re someone you’re not. In time you’ll understand what I’ve done for you – for us.’

  Deborah’s throat fluttered and pulsed as she repeatedly tried to swallow non-existent saliva, fear and nausea straining every muscle taut to the point where it felt as if they would snap, shock drawing the blood away from her non-vital organs, redirecting it to her brain in an effort to keep her conscious, turning her lips almost white and her skin grey.

  Oblivious to her terror, he unlocked the cage door, swinging it open carefully so as not to alarm her. His face reddened slightly with excitement and anticipation, his lips swelling plump and purple as his eyes moved over the shape under the duvet, the familiar tightness returning to his groin as he remembered her shape and warmth – the soft skin of the woman under the bedding. Without thinking he found himself moving into the cage, his eyes growing larger and larger as the tightening in his trousers grew more and more uncomfortable, suddenly snapping out of his trance as instinct kicked in, warning him he was being reckless, putting himself in danger. He checked his hands and realized he was unarmed.

  In a panic he stumbled backwards out of the cage, tugging at the stun-gun that was tangled in the pocket of his tracksuit, ripping the material as he finally pulled it free, panting and smiling with relief, looking back into the cage, seeing the recognition of what he was holding in her eyes. The feeling in his groin had faded away and again he felt in control of the woman and himself. He looked down at the stun-gun and back to her. ‘Don’t be afraid of this,’ he said. ‘It’s not to hurt you, it’s to keep you safe.’

  ‘I don’t want you to keep me safe. I want you to let me go.’

  He hadn’t been expecting her to speak and her words momentarily shocked him into silence, the smile still fixed on his face like a painted doll’s. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that, Sam. I’m here to look after you.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone to look after me,’ she answered, the aggression and bitterness in her voice obvious. ‘All I need is for you to let me out of here and stop calling me Sam – my name is Deborah, Deborah Thomson.’

  ‘No,’ he insisted, trying to restrain his anger, ‘that’s what they want you to believe, but it’s all lies. Your name is Sam. Don’t you remember? It’s me, Tommy. I told you I’d come back for you. So that we could be together, like we’re supposed to be.’

  ‘I don’t know you,’ she yelled, tears of anger and fear bursting through her frustration. ‘My name is Deborah Thomson and I want to go home.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Face twisted in rage, he advanced towards her holding the stun-gun in front of him. ‘Shut the fuck up! That’s just their lies. You have to clean yourself of their lies and then you’ll remember.’

  Louise Russell watched from her cage, eyes darting between the two unevenly matched combatants, praying that Deborah would do as she had asked, knowing that his anger would be redirected to her, the way it had been when Karen Green was occupying the other cage. She remembered unwittingly playing a dangerous game with Karen’s safety, and now Deborah was doing the same thing, pushing him ever closer to venting his anger on Louise. She prayed for Deborah to stop, her eyes never leaving him while her heart punched against her ribs, the sound echoing deafeningly loud in her head. ‘Please stop, please be quiet,’ she silently pleaded with Deborah, unaware that she was mouthing the words as she said them over and over again, waiting for Deborah to respond to his accusations. After a few seconds she realized Deborah had fallen silent, the relief causing her body to slump as she drew in a long, staggered breath. She listened to the silence, her eyes once again darting between the two of them, as something like calm spread through the cellar.

  Finally he spoke. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told Deborah. ‘I forgot: you’ve been through a lot. You must be tired.’ He walked to the screen, his eyes never leaving her, and picked up the tray in his free hand, taking it back to the cage and sliding it in through the open door, then returning to the screen and, as carefully as he could, pulling her clothes from the metal frame, carrying them back across the room and placing them on the floor just inside the entrance to her wire prison before closing and locking the door. ‘It’s probably better if you get cleaned up a bit later, but you can wear the clothes – they’re yours, after all. Your real clothes, not the ones they made you wear.’ He searched her face for some sign of approval, but she merely stared back at him with unblinking bright green eyes. ‘I’ll leave you to get some rest.’

  He hesitated at the entrance to her cage, expecting her to thank him or tell him she looked forward to seeing him again, but to his disappointment she said nothing.

  ‘OK, well …’ he said, to cover his embarrassment, ‘I’ll see you later.’

  Turning the main light off, he scampered up the stairs, slamming and locking the door behind him.

  Neither woman said anything. They waited, listening to the quiet sounds of the cellar, praying he wouldn’t return. Louise knew his habits well by now – if he didn’t come back immediately, he would be gone for hours. When she felt it was safe she exhaled a long slow breath, stale air she’d been holding in her lungs for what seemed like hours finally escaping.

  ‘Deborah … Deborah you need to listen to me.’

  ‘He’s a fucking lunatic,’ Deborah whispered.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Louise agreed. ‘He’s a lunatic who’s going to kill us both if we don’t help each other escape.’

  ‘You’ve said all this already. You want me to attack him when he lets me out of his fucking cage and grab his key and let you out. Overpower him together, right?’

  ‘Yes. It’s our only chance. You have to believe me.’

  ‘It won’t work. And then it’ll be worse for me.’

  Louise fell silent, thinking of a way to cut through Deborah’s self-preservation instincts.

  ‘I was you,’ she said. ‘Just a day or so ago – I was you. He gave me a mattress and a duvet, he let me clean myself and gave me food and drink. He gave me those clothes, Deborah. Those sam
e clothes he’s given you – he made me wear them.’

  Deborah looked at the clothes on the floor of her cage. ‘These?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Deborah picked up the pile of laundered items and threw them against the wire, kicking them away with her feet. ‘I won’t be part of this sick fucker’s fantasy,’ she said loudly, unconcerned who heard her, her South London accent as thick as her anger.

  ‘No!’ Louise tried to calm her. ‘No, don’t do that. We need the clothes, you have to wear them.’

  ‘No fucking way.’

  ‘We have to play along with him, make him think everything is exactly how he wants it to be. That’s the only way he’ll relax, so we can catch him by surprise.’

  ‘You mean long enough for me to catch him by surprise and risk my neck.’

  ‘We have no choice.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ said Deborah, and looked away, signifying an end to the discussion.

  There was another silence, then Louise spoke again.

  ‘Soon he’s going to start coming down here, Deborah, he’s going to start coming down here and he’ll come into my cage and he’ll beat me and rape me – and you’re going to have to watch, you’re going to have to listen to me scream while he holds me down and … Soon after that he’ll come and take me away, and you’ll have to listen to me beg him not to take me, beg him not to kill me. And when I don’t come back, you’ll know what’s happened. Then, soon after I disappear, he’ll come down here and he’ll come to you, Deb—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Deborah pleaded. ‘I don’t want to—’

  ‘He’ll come to you and he’ll take those clothes off you and he’ll take your duvet and your mattress. And then, when he brings another woman down here and puts her in this cage, you will become me, Deborah. You will become me.’

  Louise could hear sobbing coming from the other cage. Knowing that the next words had to come from Deborah, she waited.

  ‘All right,’ Deborah finally said. ‘What do we do?’

  Louise felt a flutter of nervous excitement for the first time since he’d taken her, the chance to regain control of her own destiny suddenly thrilling, giving her hope that she would escape the darkness and find her way back to the light that was home and her husband and their plans for an unremarkable, happy life with each other and the children they were yet to have. ‘Next time he comes, he’ll let you out to have a wash. You’ll need to wear the clothes or he could get angry and not allow you out. He’ll bring you a tray of food and drink that he’ll leave behind the screen. After you’ve washed he’ll tell you to carry the tray yourself and that’s when you have to do it.’