The Keeper

by Luke Delaney

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Police,’ Sean said into the machine as quietly as he could without sounding like anything but a cop. ‘Can I have a word?’

  More silent seconds. ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Open the door and I’ll tell you,’ Sean promised.

  ‘Hold on a minute. I’ll come to the front door.’ They waited, listening to the sounds of doors opening and closing, locks being turned, shuffling footsteps growing nearer and a chain being attached to the door before finally it opened by four inches and the plump, pink face of a woman in her fifties peered through the gap, her small crooked teeth revealing the brown stains of years of cigarette smoking when she spoke.

  ‘Yeah?’ she asked them suspiciously in a thick South London accent. Sean couldn’t help but look her up and down, noting her ancient slippers and cardigan, her wild grey hair and swollen limbs.

  ‘DI Corrigan,’ he announced, holding his warrant card out.

  The woman looked to Sally, who realized she wasn’t going to be satisfied with seeing just one warrant card. She sighed, pulling hers from her coat pocket and thrusting it towards the suspicious old woman who immediately looked back to Sean.

  ‘We need to find out if a certain person lives here. Can we come in?’

  The woman’s eyes darted between them before she finally relented – more time wasted. ‘I suppose so,’ she muttered, releasing the chain and allowing Sean to push the door fully open and step past her into the building. Sally followed suit, closing the door behind her. The poky hallway felt very crowded with three of them in it.

  ‘Would you like a drink – a cup of tea or something?’ The image of foul-tasting tea served in a filthy cup flashed through Sean’s mind.

  ‘No, thanks, we’re in a hurry.’

  ‘It’s no bother. I was about to put the kettle on.’

  Sean talked over the top of her. ‘Mrs …?’

  ‘Miss, actually. Miss Rose Vickery.’

  ‘Miss Vickery, does—’

  ‘But you can call me Rose.’

  ‘Rose. Does the name Thomas Keller mean anything to you? Does anyone by that name live in this house?’

  ‘People come and go from here all the time,’ she said. ‘Nobody stays long, except me. I’ve been here almost twenty years, back when you used to know your neighbours. Ain’t got a clue who lives here now – people coming and going all hours, but I never see nobody – just keep meself to meself.’

  ‘Do you rent your flat?’

  ‘Yeah, of course I do. All the flats in here are rented by the same landlord – Mr Williams.’

  Sean was about to ask for Williams’s telephone number when Sally interrupted. ‘Guv’nor.’ He turned and saw her holding a bundle of mail, most of which looked like junk. She took a couple of letters from the pile and handed them to him. He read the name – Thomas Keller, Flat 4, 184 Ravenscroft Road, Penge. Sean passed the letters to Rose.

  ‘This is 184 Ravenscroft Road, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ She sounded nervous.

  ‘And this is the name of the man I just asked you about – Thomas Keller.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t read other people’s mail,’ she protested. ‘Besides, there’s mail still comes here for people who are long gone.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Sean. ‘You must see the names on the letters, when you’re searching for your own mail?’

  ‘What you trying to say?’

  ‘I’m saying you know who lives here and who doesn’t. So you need to tell me, does Thomas Keller live in flat 4? Now!’ he demanded, raising his voice and making Rose flinch.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she insisted, pulling her cardigan tightly around herself.

  Sean thought for a second. ‘He’s a postman. Maybe you remember seeing him in his Post Office uniform.’

  ‘Oh,’ Rose declared, almost smiling with relief, ‘him. The postie, yeah, he used to live here, but he don’t no more – ain’t lived here for a few years. He pops back every now and then to pick up his mail. I suppose he kept his key for the front door – most of the old residents do, you know. I saw him a few weeks ago, actually. I remember it because I said to him, you’d think he’d be able to get his mail sent to the right address, seeing how he’s a postie and all.’

  Sean and Sally looked at each other – they needed to go.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a forwarding address for him?’ Sean asked, more in blind hope than anticipation.

  ‘No, love,’ Rose answered.

  ‘What now?’ said Sally.

  Sean stared down at the letter in his hand and jabbed at the name. ‘I know this name,’ he said, ‘but how and where?’ He shook his head as if clearing it of a foolish idea. ‘Samantha Shaw,’ he finally said. ‘We need to see her, maybe she knows where he lives.’

  ‘Shall I tell him you’re looking for him?’ said Rose. ‘You know, the postie. If I see him, shall I tell him to get in touch?’

  ‘No,’ Sean told her. ‘Don’t worry about it, Rose. I’ll be seeing him soon enough.’

  Anna had been at Peckham when she’d received the phone call summoning her to New Scotland Yard, but no one had noticed her slip away. The light Sunday traffic made the journey from one side of the Thames to the other reasonably short and the pavements around New Scotland Yard that were usually swarming with human traffic were deserted. She passed the armed guards clutching their sub-machine guns overtly in a manner that would have been unthinkable on the streets of London little more than a decade ago, flashing her security pass to the private guards manning the metal detectors just inside the entrance and then walking along the long corridor to the back of the building where the main lifts were. She ascended to the penultimate floor where she knew Assistant Chief Constable Robert Addis, Serious and Organized Crime Directorate, awaited.

  She entered the reception area expecting to see the ever-present secretary who guarded Addis’s office like a rabid Rottweiler sitting at her desk, scowling at anyone who dared request an audience with the deity next door. But the reception was empty. As she walked deeper into the room she could hear the faint shuffling of paper coming from the adjoining office and began to move slowly towards it, the sudden sound of a man’s voice, loud and bold, making her jump.

  ‘Anna – glad you could make it. Come in and sit down.’

  She took a seat on the other side of the large wooden desk to the smiling Addis, who sat with his hands together as if praying. ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked. ‘You must get a lot of visitors.’

  ‘Not on a Sunday,’ he said. ‘Even the great police of the metropolis slow down on the Sabbath. If I was ever going to commit a serious crime I’d commit it on a Sunday.’

  ‘I didn’t know assistant commissioners were expected to work on Sundays,’ Anna continued. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at home with your family?’

  ‘My family understand,’ Addis assured her, the smile falling from his lips. ‘Besides, I’m not expected to work on Sundays – I prefer to. I’ve always found it an excellent day to deal with some of the … shall we say, more sensitive policing matters, when there aren’t so many people around who could accidently overhear something they weren’t supposed to.’

  ‘Like your secretary?’

  The smile jumped back on to Addis’s face. ‘Did you bring it? The report?’

  ‘I have it,’ she confirmed. ‘It’s as complete as it can be, given the time and circumstances it was prepared under and taking into account the non-cooperation of the subject.’

  ‘But it’s informative – yes?’

  ‘I believe so, but I’m having some serious concerns about possible client confidentiality. This doesn’t feel entirely ethically correct.’

  ‘Client confidentiality?’ Addis mused, his praying fingers tapping against each other. ‘But my dear Anna, I am the client, remember? I hired you to prepare a psychological profile and in exchange you were given access to areas and information others in your trade could only dream about. A mutually beneficia
l arrangement – I’m sure you’ll agree.’

  ‘But what about his basic human rights – freedom of information and his right to know?’

  ‘Anna, Anna, Anna – he’s a police officer. I’m afraid such niceties don’t always apply to us. Freedom of information, the right to strike, health and safety, restriction on working hours – these are not things that are vouchsafed to us. If they were, we’d never get a damn thing done now, would we? So, the report, if you don’t mind.’

  Anna sighed and fished in her briefcase, pulling out a file the size of a fashion magazine that she passed across the desk to the serious-faced Addis.

  ‘It’s all in there,’ she said. ‘Everything I could discover, anyway.’

  ‘Good,’ Addis replied, finding the temptation to run his fingers over the file too much to resist. ‘And he suspects nothing?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. He’s clearly of a high intellect. I tried to interview him a couple of times, but he saw me coming and clammed up. Most of my findings were through straight observation and speaking to his colleagues.’

  ‘And what did that tell you?’

  ‘It’s all in the report.’

  ‘I’m sure it is, but perhaps you could give me a verbal summary to be going on with?’

  ‘Very well. As I’ve said, he’s intelligent, highly observant and determined. I wouldn’t call him a natural leader, but his subordinates seem to follow him willingly. They clearly believe in him. He’s anchored by his wife and children. He may not spend much time with them, but they’re enormously important to him and his ability to deal with what he has to deal with. Just knowing they’re there is crucial to him – even if he doesn’t always know it himself. He possesses an extraordinary ability to combine his imagination and experience, and this enables him to visualize past events.’

  ‘What does that mean, exactly?’

  ‘It means he can recreate events that have occurred at the crime scenes he attends. In his mind he can see what happened there.’

  ‘Is he psychic?’

  ‘No – and personally I don’t believe anyone is. He simply has a highly developed sense of projected imagination. It’s probably not as uncommon as you may think in police officers – especially detectives. If you see something enough times and then later solve the riddle of how it came to be, then eventually you’ll start to see crime scenes differently. You’ll start to see what happened there even before the evidence or witness testimony explains it.’

  ‘And that’s all he’s doing?’ Addis asked. ‘Combining experience with imagination?’

  ‘Largely.’

  ‘But not entirely?’

  ‘No. Not entirely.’

  ‘So there’s something else? Something that enables him to have these … insights?’

  ‘I believe so. Is there anything in his past, some event in his service history that may have caused him psychiatric problems? Something that may have left him suffering from post-traumatic stress?’

  Addis shook his head. ‘No. A few minor injuries and some close scrapes, but nothing particularly unusual.’

  ‘His service history shows he infiltrated a paedophile ring while working undercover. Things appear to have got a little out of hand during the operation. Could that have affected him?’

  ‘I’m familiar with that operation,’ Addis assured her. ‘Corrigan was returned to normal duties without the need for any special … arrangements.’

  ‘Really?’ Anna quizzed. ‘Only, I noticed the report said the officer in charge of the undercover side of the operation, DS Chopra, had sufficiently serious doubts about DI Corrigan’s psychological welfare during the operation that he considered terminating it?’

  ‘An overreaction,’ Addis answered. ‘The operation was successfully concluded and Corrigan did his job. So, something else then? In his past perhaps? Before he joined the service?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ she admitted. ‘But if there is anything of that nature he’s buried it so deeply I couldn’t find what it is. I can only guess.’

  ‘And what’s your guess?’

  ‘It’s in the report – better to read it in full.’

  ‘Very well,’ Addis agreed. ‘I shall look forward to it.’

  Since she’d watched Louise Russell being dragged from the cellar hours ago Deborah Thomson had been unable to do anything other than stare through the thin grey light at the cage he used to keep her in, its door hanging open as if to torment her. She’d prayed to hear the cellar door wrenched open, to hear their voices descending towards her and watch as he imprisoned Louise in her wire crate once more – anything rather than being all alone in the bleakest of dungeons. But in her gut she could feel the truth – that Louise was never coming back, never coming back to anyone.

  She’d cried for so long, abandoned in the virtual darkness, that she couldn’t cry any more. Dehydration had dried her tear ducts and made her skin thin and vulnerable. She couldn’t remember the last drink she’d had and her mouth and throat burned with thirst as her gums began to shrink back over her teeth. Another day or two without water and they’d start to split and bleed while her non-essential organs would begin to slow down and eventually cease functioning as her body sent what little moisture there would be to the most vital organs – the brain, heart, lungs and liver. She chastised herself for having wasted so much valuable water on self-indulgent tears – water that had long since fallen on the stony ground and dried away. What would her brothers have thought if they’d seen her feeling sorry for herself, huddled in a corner crying like a baby when she should have been planning her escape – the next attack on the bastard who’d brought her here? They would have been ashamed of her – their tough little sister, scared of some loser-freak. Next time she had a chance she’d make it count, even with her broken kneecap. She’d almost got the better of him the first time. If it hadn’t been for an unlucky slip on the stairs, she’d have been off.

  Deborah vowed not to make the same mistakes again. Next time, instead of being in a rush to get away she’d stand her ground and beat the living shit out of him – make sure he was totally incapacitated before getting out of the cellar and finding help. Or maybe she’d just call her brothers and tell them what the bastard had done to her. They’d see to it that he paid. No need for police to be involved – no interviews and court appearances. Her brothers would make him suffer – suffer like he’d made her suffer. And once she decided he’d had enough, they’d take him somewhere he’d never be found and bury him alive in a six-foot hole and that would be the end of the bastard.

  Her fantasy of revenge and punishment made her feel temporarily brave, but the clang of the padlock on the cellar door being tampered with brought the terror flooding back, vanquishing all thoughts of her brothers and escape. For a brief moment she imagined it could be someone other than him fumbling at the lock, the excitement of the possibility rushing through her, almost making her cry out for help, but the lack of voices warned her to stay silent. A few seconds later she heard the dreaded sound of the metal door being dragged open, followed by the slow, steady tread of his feet on the stairs. She continued to stare at the empty cage opposite her own. She was alone now. He couldn’t be coming to see anyone else. Louise was gone. He was coming for her.

  Sally pulled the car to the side of the quiet, tidy street in Catford. The small, newly built houses were arranged at strange angles to each other in an effort to give the occupiers some feeling of privacy. Sean climbed out of the car without speaking, moving as if he was somehow hypnotized by 16 Sangley Road – its new brown bricks and white PVC windows with a small garage to match – the front door hidden from passers-by. Sally appeared at his shoulder.

  ‘Looks familiar,’ she said, but he didn’t answer as he drifted towards the front door, his head thumping with possibilities. He was about to meet for the first time the woman who was a goddess to the man he hunted, but couldn’t help but feel he’d already met her twice – yet never while she was still al
ive. As he walked along the short driveway he experienced the same disorientating sense of déjà-vu – the same sense of the killer’s presence he’d had at the other scenes, and knew he’d been here and why.

  He rang the doorbell, stepped back and waited, sensing movement inside – hearing muffled voices. After a couple of minutes a face warped by the thick glass of the door approached, moving quickly and confidently, not like someone who was living in fear of being stalked. The door was pulled open without caution and a young woman with short brown hair smiled at them, her green eyes shining with life.

  ‘Hi,’ she greeted them without a care in the world – it was Sunday and the sun was beginning to poke through the low cloud. Her hair was still wet from the shower and strands were sticking to her temples and brow. Sean remembered gently brushing the hair away from Karen Green’s face when he’d been alone with her in the woods. He hadn’t expected to be so vividly reminded of the women, now dead, that the killer had taken to replace the one standing in front of him. ‘Is there something I can help you with?’ Sam prompted him, her smile fading a little.

  He suddenly remembered why he was there and pulled his warrant card free, flipping it open for her to see. ‘Samantha Shaw?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. That’s me. Is something wrong?’ The smile disappeared from her face.

  Sean ignored her concern, her obvious fear they were there to deliver bad news about someone she loved. ‘I’m DI Corrigan and this is DS Jones. It’s about Thomas Keller,’ he told her. ‘I need to find him. Do you know where he lives?’