The Keeper

by Luke Delaney

  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.

  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, a
s 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.

  ‘Christ,’ he said out loud. ‘What were you thinking when you heard that sound?’

  Another voice reminded him he was not alone.

  ‘Sean?’ called Sally. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ he answered. ‘Just give me a few seconds.’

  He forced his eyes from the bramble-bushes and scanned the clearing, until there, almost dead centre, about twenty feet away he saw her, partially covered in brown leaves swept over her by the wind, piled up against her in the direction the breeze had been travelling. Even from this distance he could see she was lying on her side, her knees apparently folded in a near foetal position. Her pale skin contrasted somehow beautifully with the rich brown of the leaves and the green of the moss that provided her soft deathbed. His eyes followed the outskirts of the clearing until he saw the place where both killer and victim would have entered – a break in the trees, where the wood wasn’t so dense – the path of least resistance. A trail of flattened grass and moss led from the same place to where Louise Russell’s body was lying. Another path stretched out directly in front of him, made by the first officers on scene who confirmed the birdwatcher’s fears – he had indeed stumbled across a dead body lying in the woods.

  Sean wondered which direction the birdwatcher would have approached from and decided it was most likely the same one as the killer. He might have entered the woods at a different point, but at some point the paths they’d used had joined. The birdwatcher was about to lose his favourite walking boots to Roddis.

  Finally he lowered his hand, signalling it was safe for Sally to move forward. After a few seconds he felt her by his side. He gave her as long as she needed, waiting for her to speak first. Eventually he heard her voice.

  ‘I suppose we should take a closer look,’ she almost whispered, as if she didn’t really want to say what she just had – afraid he would agree. He answered with movement, carefully stepping into the clearing, scrutinizing the forest floor in front of him before each next step, looking for the slightest sign the ground could have been disturbed by someone other than the police who initially attended the scene, trying to step inside the footmarks they’d already left. Sally followed gingerly behind him. Once he was no more than seven or eight feet away from the body he squatted as low as he could to the ground and looked across at the face of the dead woman – short hazel hair fallen over her temples and brow, eyes half-closed, mouth open with her tongue sticking slightly out between her blue lips, gripped by her upper and lower teeth. She was completely naked, the cuts and bruises on her body too numerous to count, but even from this distance he could see the same telltale circular marks the cattle prod had left on Karen Green – confirmation of what he already knew: it was the same man.

  ‘Is it her?’ Sally asked sombrely, expecting only one answer.

  Sean looked over his shoulder at her. ‘It’s her – Louise Russell. We’re too late. Nothing we can do now.’

  She sensed the self-accusation in his voice. ‘It’s not your fault, Sean.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ he snapped back. ‘I missed something. We’re here because I missed something.’

  She knew there were no words that would change his mind. ‘We should go,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here other than mess up the crime scene.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he argued. ‘I need to check something out first.’

  ‘Roddis won’t be happy,’ she warned, still standing at the edge of the clearing, not wanting to step inside the circle.

  ‘It won’t take long,’ he assured her as he began to move towards Louise Russell’s lifeless body. The closer he got, the more the world around him ceased to exist – the sounds of the birds and trees replaced by a thundering humming in his mind, like the sound of rushing water. He tugged a pair of rubber gloves over his hands and reached out for her head, gently gripping her chin and forehead. The bruising and reddening around her neck and throat told him she’d been strangled, but he needed to know what else had happened.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sally whispered as loudly as she could, but her words fell on deaf ears as Sean carefully tilted Louise Russell’s head, the onset of rigor-mortis making her muscles stiff and difficult to manoeuvre. Eventually he was able to see the back of her skull. He held her head just above the ground in one hand while the fingers of the other gently moved her hair aside, looking for a wound – a wound like the one he’d found on Karen Green. But he could find no sticky, hair-matted patch of blood. He laid her head back, exactly as he’d found it, the rushing sound in his mind growing ever louder as he crouched, staring into the earth at his feet.

  Again Sally called from the edge of the clearing, louder this time. ‘What is it?’ He didn’t hear her. ‘What is it?’ she repeated. Sean looked up at her, unspeaking, as if in a daze. ‘Did you find something?’

  ‘There’s no head wound,’ he said, sounding confused, ‘and he’s at least a day early. He shouldn’t have killed her yet.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means he’s changing. His cycle is speeding up. But not just that, something else too …’

  ‘Go on,’ she encouraged him.

  ‘When he killed Karen Green it was functional – it meant nothing – the actual killing. Everything that went before the killing was intensely personal, but when it came to her murder, it was a simple case of disposing of something that had no value to him. He was more worried about self-preservation than the experience of taking a life – that’s why he all but killed her with a blow to the head before he strangled her, or … or at least that’s what he told himself. He was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t killing for the thrill of it, because that would have … what? Affected his self-image? But what image do you have of yourself? What do you think you are?’

  He broke off the questions and pictures in his head. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he swore at himself for not being able to solve the puzzle instantly, then continued: ‘This time there’s no head wound … because … he
wanted to feel her life drain away. Not just what was left of it, but all of it.’ He studied the position of the body for a few seconds, then went on: ‘He stood in front of her. She was already kneeling on the ground because she’d tried to run away, but in her bare feet, in the dark, she had no chance and she fell or he tripped her, so she was on the floor when he came to her, standing above her, looking down into her eyes. He took his time, reaching out towards her, his fingers sliding around her neck, his thumbs pressing into her throat. She tried to fight, but he was too strong and it felt so good – her struggling, her life ebbing away as he held her tight, it felt good. Even after she was dead he kept hold of her, looking down into her dead face, until eventually he released her and watched her fall to the ground in exactly the same position she’s in now. And then he watched her some more. The cold night air must have felt so good and once you’ve admitted to yourself that the killing feels good too, you’re not going to stop until you’re stopped, are you? Not until I stop you.’

  ‘Sean?’ Sally called. ‘Sean – who’re you talking to?’

  He turned his head quickly towards her, suddenly aware of what he must have done. ‘You,’ he lied. ‘I was talking to you.’

  They stood in silence for a moment, then Sally spoke. ‘I think we should go now.’

  ‘Just one more thing I need to check,’ he promised.

  ‘Fine. Do what you have to do and let’s get out of here before forensics show up.’

  Still crouching next to the body, he looked over her torso at the arm that lay partially concealed under her. He saw scratches and bruises, but nothing else.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Sally asked nervously, desperate to get as far away from the crime scene and body of Louise Russell as she could – to distance herself from her own memories and thoughts of what she’d almost become – a lifeless thing to be pored over and photographed before being removed to a mortuary to be dissected in the search for evidence. Not a person any more, just a case-file.