The Keeper

by Luke Delaney

  Anna watched him without speaking, not wanting to break the spell he was under, analysing him as he worked, unwilling and unable to enter the world he’d retreated to. She resisted the temptation to make notes of what she saw, instead trying to memorize everything he did.

  ‘How did he watch them? He had to watch them. How did he get close enough to smell that sweet perfume?’ He stared into space, temporarily bewildered by his own question. ‘He can’t keep them locked in a cellar, because when he’s in there with them he’d be at risk, Our guy needs to stay in control, which means he must have them in chains or tied up. But then how would they apply the cream to themselves? When he first takes them, he adores them, he worships them. He wouldn’t want them in chains or bondage, so how does he manage them? How does he get close enough to have their scent make him feel alive, properly alive, wanted and accepted?’ He felt like slapping his own face, as if the pain would draw the answer. ‘Does the cellar have a window, so he can safely watch them, through it? In the door maybe? No. That wouldn’t be enough for him, because he’s more than just visually driven. Looking’s not going to do it for him, he needs it all – smell, touch … Does he speak to them as well? Of course he does. But how does he do all these things and stay safe?’ He put his hands together, the fingers touching his lips as if he was praying. ‘So he needs a barrier between them and him, but it can’t be solid, can’t be something that … that isolates them from him, so if it’s not a damn window or a wall then it has to be …’

  His hands slowly fell from his mouth as he remembered the case of the estate agent from Birmingham, abducted and held captive inside a wooden cage inside a garage. A prison within a prison … ‘A cage! He keeps them in a cage, the cruel son-of-a-bitch. A cage inside a cellar or bunker somewhere. Any time he wants to feel alive he can just walk into that room and stroll around their cage in complete safety, watching them, inhaling their scent and dreaming about the day he’ll be with them. But when his illusions fall apart and he needs to punish them, to force himself on them, he has to go into the cage. He can’t use chloroform, not straight away, because he’d have to get too close, so what does he do?’

  He thought back to the post-mortem, trying to recall the marks he’d seen on Karen Green’s sad, broken body, the multitude of superficial injuries, too many bruises to count. And then there were those strange little circular bruises, each with what looked like a burn mark at the centre. He chewed his bottom lip while Anna looked on, fascinated, aware that he had forgotten she was there and that he was now talking solely to himself, unpicking lock after lock, each answer leading to another question, his combination of logic and imagination leading him through the maze.

  Sean’s middle finger rhythmically tapped on the desk, subconsciously keeping pace with his own heartbeat, waiting for the answer. ‘He used something to suppress them, something that meant he could keep his distance and still control them, something that left those marks.’ His finger continued to tap away on the desk, every implement of wounding, death and torture he’d ever seen moving through his mind on an imaginary conveyer-belt. ‘I need to know what made those marks.’

  Anna broke his trance. ‘What marks?’

  Sean turned to her, looking at her as if he was seeing a figure from a dream, something he didn’t believe was really there at all. He snatched the phone off his desk before she could say anything else and called Dr Canning’s office number. He got the answer machine.

  ‘Doctor, it’s Sean Corrigan. The circular bruises left on Karen Green’s body – I need to know what caused them sooner rather than later. Run the tests as a matter of priority and keep me posted.’ He hung up without further explanation, ideas rushing at him now he’d opened Pandora’s box. ‘Whatever he’s using in the cage, we know how he took them from their houses. They opened the door because they saw a postman, but as soon as they opened the door he hit them with his stun-gun and paralysed them. Then he took his time preparing them – that’s when he used the chloroform, when they were beginning to recover. He used it to put them under, so they couldn’t fight, because he’s not strong enough to carry or drag them into the boot of their own car. He’s weak and he’s a coward and I’m going to fucking find you.’ The phone ringing broke through his swelling rage. He grabbed it, hoping it would be Canning.

  ‘Mr Corrigan, it’s Sergeant Roddis.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘The unidentified prints found at the Green house and the Russell house definitely came from the same man. Given that they were both recovered from the inside door handles we can assume they belong to the killer. They also match the prints we took from both victims’ cars. I took them to Fingerprints myself and supervised the search. I’m afraid I can confirm they don’t match any on file. Your killer has no previous convictions, not in this country anyway. I’ve sent a copy to Interpol, but even for a murder it’s going to take days if not weeks before they get back to us.’

  ‘What about DNA?’ Sean asked.

  ‘It’ll take a few more days to prepare a full profile, but if he doesn’t have any previous convictions it’s still not going to help you find him. It’ll convict him, as will the fingerprints, but it won’t identify him.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Sean couldn’t contain his frustration. ‘Anything else comes up, let me know.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Sean hung up, dissecting the importance of what he’d just learned, not simply dismissing the lack of previous convictions as a dead end, but cross-examining it, interrogating it for information and relevance, using it to connect him to the heart and mind of the man he hunted, thinking silently.

  So this one doesn’t care about leaving his prints and DNA, because he knows it can’t help us identify him from police records, or because he just doesn’t care? He must know he’s leaving enough evidence to convict himself ten times over, so why be careless?

  He suddenly reverted to talking quietly to himself, as if Anna wasn’t there. ‘He’s working to a plan that makes his identification irrelevant. He knows that sooner or later we’ll find him, but he doesn’t care. He’s not even comprehending being caught … He takes the women and keeps them for a week, or close to, then he takes them from their cage to a place he knows and kills them. He worships them at first, then he hates them. The same cycle over and over again, from love to hate, from acceptance to rejection. But he wasn’t just rejected by one person, he was rejected by everyone. He hates everyone?’

  His eyes moved from side to side as he began to realize what he was saying. ‘These women are a snapshot of his anger and rejection, even if he doesn’t know it himself yet. When he feels me closing in, what will he do? Walk into a high street, a shopping centre, a school … and what will he use, a knife, home-made pipe bombs, a gun? That’s why he doesn’t care about leaving his prints, his DNA – subconsciously he’s already planned for that day, haven’t you? You’re not going to let anyone take you alive. You’re going to send yourself to hell and drag as many others with you as—’

  A knock at his door made him spin around, angry at the interruption. If Featherstone had heard him talking to himself he didn’t show it.

  ‘Morning, Sean. Anna.’

  ‘Boss,’ Sean addressed him.

  ‘Alan,’ said Anna.

  Sean’s eyebrows rose at the sound of Featherstone’s never-used Christian name. Clearly they were more familiar than he’d realized.

  ‘I’m doing another TV appeal for assistance. Do you have anything new I could use, either of you? The telly people always like to have new stuff for the paying public.’

  Sean looked at his computer screen, his latest CRIS inquiry still displayed. He considered telling Featherstone about his stalker theory, asking him to appeal to anyone who had been harassed in the last two or three years to come forward, but some instinct and the negative results of his search told him not to.

  ‘Nothing that you’d want to put in a TV appeal,’ he said. ‘We need to focus our search efforts on dece
nt-sized properties, or isolated plots of land within a twenty-mile radius of where the women were taken. It’s possible he keeps them somewhere other than his home – a disused factory or an abandoned smallholding. Other than that, I don’t have anything. Just do the usual, appeal to family, friends and colleagues who may have noticed anyone behaving strangely lately, keeping odd hours, disappearing without explanation, not turning up for work. You never know your luck.’

  ‘No problem,’ Featherstone assured him.

  ‘Actually,’ Sean suddenly remembered, ‘there is one thing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he dresses like a postman. That’s how he gets the doors open. Maybe we could ask the public whether anyone’s noticed a postman behaving strangely, someone who’s not their regular postie hanging around an area longer than usual, putting junk mail through their doors when they’d already asked the Post Office not to.’

  Featherstone sucked in a long breath, shaking his head like a mechanic about to give an estimate for a car repair. ‘Sorry, Sean, no can do. I’d have to get prior approval from the Post Office before releasing that, and they’d have to get prior authority from their members’ union – and it’s unlikely they’ll be given it. Look, it’s a pain in the arse, but if we put it out there that this nutter’s going around dressed like a postie, by this time tomorrow we’ll probably have half a dozen postal workers in hospital, stabbed or kicked to shit by vigilantes or nervous husbands, not to mention the several dozen that’ll be blocking up every casualty in South London waiting to have the CS gas washed out of their eyes after paranoid women – no offence meant, Anna – have sprayed them. The postie release is a no-go.’

  ‘I think it’s important,’ Sean pushed. ‘It could stir something in a witness that they haven’t even considered.’

  ‘Sorry, Sean, but it can’t happen. Anything else? Anna?’

  ‘I’m absolutely certain he’s a local man, or at least someone who knows the area well or visits it regularly, so I recommend you continue with the roadblocks and door-to-door inquiries. Also, I agree with DI Corrigan that he needs somewhere relatively secluded to keep them, so concentrate your searches around farms, wasteland, derelict buildings, anywhere he could conceal the women, particularly anything underground.’

  ‘Round here or Central London that wouldn’t take long,’ Featherstone replied, ‘but once you start getting into Bromley and the Kent borders, near where the women were taken from, there’s bloody thousands of places he could keep them. They don’t call it “the sticks” for nothing.’

  ‘Publicize what you’re doing,’ Anna continued. ‘It may panic him into moving the victim, increasing the chances he’ll make a mistake or that someone will see them and call the police.’

  ‘If you reckon it’s worth trying,’ Featherstone agreed before turning to Sean. ‘What about this suspect I hear you arrested? Judging by the fact you haven’t mentioned it to me, I take it you don’t think he’s our man?’

  ‘No,’ Sean answered quickly, ‘he’s nothing to do with this. We won’t be looking at him any further.’

  ‘Shame,’ Featherstone said. ‘Well, must get on. The telly people want to film me standing outside Scotland Yard, next to that bloody rotating sign. Call me if anything new comes up.’ And then he was gone, leaving them sitting in an uncomfortable silence until Anna spoke.

  ‘You didn’t tell him that you never considered Lawlor responsible.’

  ‘How d’you know I didn’t?’

  ‘I’ve watched you work, Sean. If I could tell he wasn’t our guy, then so could you. The question, is why did you go after him, knowing that?’

  ‘Because he filled some gaps,’ Sean confessed, ‘allowed me to see some things I was struggling to understand.’

  ‘To understand or …?

  ‘To feel.’

  ‘What did he help you feel?’

  ‘Things that were already in me, but buried too deep to use.’

  ‘And he unburied those feelings?’

  ‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘He just helped me bring them to the surface. Gave me the taste for what he feels when he’s doing what he does.’

  ‘What does he feel? What do you feel?’

  ‘Right now I feel hungry.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Grab your coat and I’ll take you for brunch. There’s a half-decent café not too far away. We’ll walk there. The air will do us both good. Just promise me one thing …’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Don’t try and analyse me,’ he warned her. ‘If I want your help, I’ll ask for it. Understood?’

  ‘Sorry. Occupational hazard.’

  ‘Fair enough. Now, let’s go get something to eat.’

  The silence in the kitchen was becoming oppressive, allowing his mind too much room to wander to old, bitter memories of his childhood, the faces of people he hated, past and present, refusing to let him be at peace, even for a second. He hurriedly searched through the shambolic kitchen drawer that held, amongst other things, the CD of a rock band with his favourite song on it. He remembered the first time he’d heard it, years before and how the lyrics seemed like they must have been written for him, giving him hope that somebody understood him – understood what he would eventually do. But unlike the words of the song, the hope faded and died. Fumbling the disc from its scratched and cracked cover, he loaded it into the portable CD player he’d bought himself as a Christmas present, back in the days when he was still trying to cling on to the belief he could one day live as others did.

  Selecting the track he needed to hear, Thomas Keller sat back and waited for the music to carry him away, the vocals kicking in soon after the intro, his eyes closing as the beautiful images raced through his mind, a feeling of indestructible power tightening his every muscle while his heart pumped to the beat of the song, the singer telling the tale of a boy despised by his mother and rejected by his father – ignored and ridiculed by the other children at school and detested by the teachers – just as he had been. He began to lose himself in the song, seeing himself walking through his old school cutting down all who’d humiliated him – reaping the sweetest and cruellest revenge as the dead mounted at his feet. He smiled gently as he mouthed along to the words of the song until a sudden noise from outside startled him from his dreaming: a car’s wheels moving across the rough gravel, towards his house. He searched for the off switch to stop the music, accidentally hitting the volume control in his panic, his favourite song betraying his presence to anyone close enough to hear. He covered his ears with his hands in a childlike attempt to pretend it wasn’t happening before yanking the plug from the socket. The silence that followed felt more deafening than the music had been.

  He listened, senses alert like a trapped rabbit listening to the fox scratching around the entrance to its burrow, at first sure he’d been mistaken. But as the ringing and buzzing cleared from his ears the sound of the approaching car returned, prompting him to cross the kitchen and carefully peek through the curtainless window, just able to make out the markings on the police car through the grease and dirt on the glass. ‘Fuck,’ he shouted, immediately clamping his own treacherous mouth shut with his hand, the fear in his belly making his eyes fill with water. This can’t be happening, he told himself. It’s too soon. Not yet. I’m not ready. He crawled across the floor of his kitchen like a lizard, reaching into the cupboard for the sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun, snapping it open at the breach, breathing deeply with relief when he saw it was already loaded with twelve-gauge rounds – if there were two of them in the car he could kill them both before they even opened their lying pig mouths.

  He walked in a crouch back across the kitchen, rising to glance at the police car that pulled to a halt some twenty feet from his front door, the two uniformed figures stepping simultaneously from the vehicle and beginning to search the area with their eyes without moving from the car. ‘Fuck,’ he swore again as he ducked away from the window, whispering to himself repeatedly. ‘What do I do? What do I
do? What do they know? Maybe they don’t know anything. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’ He exhaled and tried to steady himself, calm down enough to be able to think. After a few seconds he crept to his front door and propped the shotgun up against the inside wall, within reaching distance of the entrance. He took a breath and opened the door, the two police officers immediately turning towards him, apparently unconcerned.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Keller managed to ask without stuttering or blurting.

  The officers looked at each other before answering, the taller, slimmer one speaking first.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ he said, ‘we’re just checking on some reports that a prowler was seen around here earlier this morning. Have you noticed anything yourself, sir?’

  ‘No,’ Keller answered, a little too quickly and surely, while trying to work out if the policeman was lying. He thought he was but couldn’t be sure. Not sure enough to reach for the shotgun only inches away.

  ‘You haven’t seen or heard anything?’

  ‘Not around here, no.’

  ‘Is this your place?’ the shorter, more heavily muscled one asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does anyone else live here?’

  ‘No. I live alone.’ He watched the taller one surveying the grounds, noting the outbuildings and debris, nodding to himself as he did so while the heavier one began to approach him. Panic rising in his stomach with every step the policeman took, Keller stepped from his house and walked towards him.

  ‘You’ve got a lot of land here,’ the heavier one remarked. ‘Must have cost a fair bit, eh?’

  ‘Not really. It was land the council repossessed. Nobody else seemed to want it. I got it quite cheaply.’

  ‘You should sell it to a developer – make a fortune.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Keller answered awkwardly, unused to small talk.

  ‘Do you mind if I take your name, sir?’

  ‘Why do you want to know my name?’

  ‘Just so we can have a record that we’ve spoken to you about the prowler.’