The Toy Taker

by Delaney, Luke

  Sean and Sally looked at each other, sensing a trap, before Sean answered: ‘As sure as I can be at this time, but I haven’t ruled out other possibilities.’

  ‘As sure as you can be?’ Addis repeated. ‘Then perhaps you can explain this?’ He stepped forward and dropped the folder on to Sean’s desk. Again Sean and Sally exchanged glances before Sean leaned forward and picked up the folder, slowly opening it as if it could be booby-trapped. As soon as the cover fell open he saw the Missing Person Report inside and felt his spirits sink and his gut tighten.

  Addis spoke again. ‘Bailey Fellowes – IC1, five years old, disappeared in the middle of the night from her home in Highgate – which, if you’re not already aware, is not exactly a million miles away from bloody Hampstead.’

  ‘A coincidence,’ Sean faintly offered.

  ‘A coincidence?’ Addis echoed, stifling his rising voice at the expense of going bright red in the face. ‘Read the bloody report, Inspector: no signs of a break-in. A wealthy family living in an exclusive area of North London. Child seemingly vanishes in the night. Christ, what an embarrassment! Just yesterday I was on the bloody television telling the world we were close to solving this damn case. You even had me name McKenzie. You’ve made me look a fool, Inspector.’

  ‘How did you get the report before me?’ Sean changed the direction of the argument. ‘Any suspicious missing persons cases involving children are supposed to come to me first.’

  ‘I countermanded that order,’ Addis told him. ‘We have a chain of command here at the Yard. You would be wise to remember that. Now get the hell over to Highgate. The local CID are waiting for you to take over. And get McKenzie out of custody, for God’s sake – this whole fiasco is embarrassing enough without us wrongfully imprisoning somebody. I want this matter solved as soon as possible before it drags the whole Service down with it. I don’t care how you do it – just get it done. We need a result.’

  ‘What d’you want us to do?’ Sean fought back. ‘Pick someone at random and make them fit the crime? Make the crime fit them?’

  Addis rounded on him in an instant. ‘Don’t take that tone with me, Inspector. I don’t employ people without knowing a lot about them first. I’m fully aware of the types of undercover work you’ve done in the past, and how you got results then. And I know a lot more about the Sebastian Gibran investigation and how you made sure he’d never walk free than you imagine.’

  Sean considered him in silence for a while, trying to decide whether Addis was just guessing or whether he really did know something, and if he did – how? ‘I wasn’t aware you were in any way involved in the Gibran case.’

  ‘There’s a great many things you’re not aware of,’ Addis reminded him. ‘I make it my business to know what’s going on everywhere within the Metropolitan Police. It’s my job to protect the force’s reputation and the reputation of the people who belong to it. I won’t let anyone drag it down – you need to remember that. Now, get over to Highgate and get this matter resolved. A full report – on my desk – by lunchtime.’ Addis scowled at them one last time before spinning on his heels and marching from the room.

  Sally broke the silence. ‘For a second there he reminded me of him,’ she told Sean.

  ‘Of who?’

  ‘Gibran. He said the same things about his job – about how it was up to him to protect his company. Protect its reputation and people. I wonder if he knows what he sounds like?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so,’ Sean answered. ‘He doesn’t know anything about Gibran or that case. He’s just trying to make us think he does.’

  ‘Why?’ Sally asked. ‘And what did he mean about he knows more about how you put him away for good? Did you do something you shouldn’t have?’

  Sean had never told her how he’d taken her bloodstained warrant card from her bedside cabinet in the Intensive Care Unit. How he’d given it to Donnelly, telling him to make sure it was found during the search of Gibran’s house. But he didn’t believe he’d done anything that he shouldn’t have; rather, he’d done what absolutely needed to be done. Gibran hadn’t played by the rules and the only way they were going to take him down was to put the rule book to one side – temporarily.

  ‘No,’ he told Sally. ‘I did exactly what I had to do. Don’t worry about Addis – he knows nothing.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me everything?’ Sally replied.

  ‘You’re just getting jumpy. Let it go.’ He opened up the Missing Person Report and began to scan the pages. ‘We’ve got bigger problems than Addis.’

  ‘Same offender?’ Sally asked, happy to leave Gibran in the past.

  ‘Yes. Whoever took George Bridgeman’s taken this one too. But who and why?’

  ‘Well, whoever it is, it isn’t McKenzie,’ Sally reminded him. ‘Unless he’s Harry Houdini.’

  ‘Damn it,’ Sean said, shaking his head. ‘How could I be so wrong about him? I thought we had our man. I thought he was just biding time until we could bury him. Two missing children. Jesus Christ – this is going to be the biggest thing since Fred West.’

  ‘Not if we get the children back alive,’ Sally told him. ‘Then everyone will forget about it within a couple of weeks – including Addis. No deaths – no news.’

  ‘You’re right. But what the hell are we supposed to do now? Where do we go from here?’

  ‘To Highgate,’ Sally told him. ‘We look for the things we missed and we start again. What else can we do?’

  ‘We start again,’ Sean repeated her words. ‘Only now we have two missing children and not a bloody clue what’s happened to them.’

  ‘Do you want me to arrange for McKenzie to be released?’

  ‘No,’ Sean snapped. ‘That fucker can stay locked up for a few more hours.’

  ‘Why?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Because he may not have been playing the game I thought he was, but he’s playing a game nonetheless. First time we interviewed him I knew there was something not right – the way he would neither admit nor deny anything I put to him. I knew the little bastard was up to something.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything.’ Sally’s tone was accusing.

  ‘I was going to – once I’d worked it out. Now I need to know why and I need to know for sure he’s not involved.’

  ‘How could he be? He was locked up in Kentish Town nick all night.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not working alone,’ Sean suggested. ‘People like McKenzie find strength in the group. He takes one child, then to make him look innocent someone else takes the next while he’s in custody. He goes nowhere until I’m sure.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Sally agreed, already standing and pulling her coat back on. ‘I’ll drive – you think,’ she told him.

  ‘Think?’ Sean replied quietly. ‘There’s something I haven’t done in a while.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he assured her. ‘Just … nothing.’

  Forty minutes later they arrived at the address in Highgate. It was situated in a beautiful, broad street with a dense canopy of brown and gold that swayed in the breeze, each movement releasing hundreds of leaves at a time to float gently to the ground. Even in the mid-morning the noise from above was intense – if anyone cared to pay it any notice. Sean did – looking up at the branches above his head as he stepped from the car – imagining how loud the noise must have seemed in the middle of the night – comforting and camouflaging to the man who stalked the street looking for the house he’d already selected. For this was no random act: he’d come for the child – the child he’d already ordained as his next victim.

  As they approached the house the little girl had been taken from, Sean was struck by the similarity between this street and Courthope Road in Hampstead. Not so much the physical similarities, of which there were few other than the height and quantity of the trees, but more by the feel of both streets – quiet sanctuaries close to the heart of the metropolis, almost eerie and a little unnerving, as if th
e houses and trees had borne witness to some terrible act that had changed and stained the atmosphere there forever. He felt a chill that made him shiver and turn his coat collar up against the cold.

  ‘You all right?’ Sally asked.

  Sean ignored the question. ‘Do you see any similarities between this street and the one in Hampstead?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re both affluent, quiet and residential,’ Sally answered, ‘but nothing startling. The houses are different and the road shape’s different. Why – have you seen something?’

  ‘Not really,’ he answered, then added: ‘Just a feeling.’

  ‘What sort of feeling?’

  ‘This place makes me feel displaced – like déjà-vu, or like I can’t clear my head, as if I was under water or in a dream.’

  ‘Come on,’ Sally encouraged him. She understood him better than almost anyone else and had since stopped abandoned any scepticism where his insights were concerned. ‘Let’s go see the parents.’

  Sean looked her in the eye for an unnaturally long time before nodding and walking the last few steps to the porch of the house, stopping when he reached the short flight of steps, his arm stretched out to the side to ensure Sally didn’t go further. He stared at the front door, his imagination turning day to night as the figure of a man slowly formed behind his eyes, crouched by the front door, calmly and carefully working his fine tools to unpick the locks. Sean looked up at the porch light that had been left on in the morning panic, its weak glow almost unnoticeable in the daylight and insufficient for the intruder’s purposes at night.

  ‘He used a torch,’ he suddenly said out loud. ‘He needs light to work the locks. To do it as quietly as he needs to, he needs light.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Sally agreed, aware that the fact alone was of little importance, but for Sean to be able to build the picture he needed to see every detail. These were his foundations.

  ‘But it would have to be small, like a miniature Maglite – something he could hold in his mouth for at least a few minutes while his hands were full.’ Sean paused for a second, feeling the cold of autumn wrapping around him, imagining the freezing, harsh metal of a torch in his mouth, the discomfort distracting him from the vital work his hands needed to perform. ‘No,’ he contradicted himself, ‘no he wouldn’t put it in his mouth. Something else.’

  ‘A head-torch,’ Sally suggested, ‘like a miner’s hat type thing, only not on a hat, on a headband like those things you see cyclists wearing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sean agreed, as he continued to stare at the invisible figure. ‘Something like that.’ But although he could see the man, he couldn’t feel him – couldn’t even begin to understand him. Why did he have to break into the houses to take the children? Why did he want the children? Why these particular children?

  ‘Anything else?’ Sally asked after a long while.

  ‘No.’ Sean admitted defeat, wondering why there was no police tape cordoning off the porch area as he began to climb the few stairs until he was close enough to see the telltale signs of aluminium dust on the door, handle and locks. ‘They’ve already checked for prints,’ he told Sally.

  ‘I noticed,’ she replied. ‘Someone’s in a hurry.’

  ‘Addis,’ Sean muttered. ‘I can smell his interference already.’

  ‘Then best we get on with it,’ Sally sighed, and rang the doorbell hard, in the way only cops and postmen do. They waited silently for it to be answered – listening as heavy, purposeful steps beat their way towards them, giving cruel, practical thoughts just time enough to invade Sean’s mind. He prayed the children were still alive, but if they were not, or if one was not, then he prayed they would find the body soon. With the body would come nightmares, but also evidence. Evidence of the man he sought, his state of mind and motivation. If the body showed signs of violence and sexual abuse, he could limit his suspect searches to violent paedophiles, motivated by their twisted desires and anger bred by their own stolen childhoods. But if the body was relatively untouched, with no signs of abuse, then he would be hunting a different animal altogether – a tortured, guilt-ridden beast, motivated by some insanity that neither psychiatrists or pharmaceuticals had been able to touch or cure. Either way, it would give him a route into his quarry’s mind, a way to build a picture that would enable him to think like him and therefore predict him. Once he had that he could build the path that would lead to the door of the man who’d taken the children.

  The door was swung open by a short, stocky man in his fifties with a crown of unkempt, curly, hazel hair that fitted his poorly fitting, cheap blue suit perfectly. He adjusted the ancient glasses that balanced on the end of his nose and spoke in a thick Welsh accent, despite having spent most of his adult life in London. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, although he knew what they were.

  ‘DI Sean Corrigan,’ Sean told him quietly, discreetly showing him his warrant card. ‘My colleague, DS Sally Jones, from the Special Investigations Unit.’

  ‘How you doing?’ the stocky little man replied, holding out a hand that Sean accepted. ‘DI Ross Adams, from the local CID. I’ve been expecting you. My sergeant, DS Tony Wright, is inside looking after the family. Special Investigations Unit, you say? I don’t think I’ve heard of you before.’

  ‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘It’s a new thing.’

  ‘Is it now?’ Ross grinned. ‘Sounds very important.’

  ‘Perhaps you can tell me why this porch hasn’t been sealed off for Forensics?’ Sean asked, keen to change the subject. ‘This is a crime scene, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mr Addis … Assistant Commissioner Addis, he thought discretion was the order of the day. We had the door and its furniture examined when the street was nice and quiet like. Don’t want to draw unwanted attention by stringing police tape all over the house like bloody party streamers, do we now?’

  ‘Addis?’ Sean asked. ‘Addis told you to do it?’

  ‘He did indeed. Now, if you’re finished, you’d better come inside and have a look around.’ He pushed the door wide open and walked back into the darkness inside. Sean and Sally looked at each other for a second before they followed him, Sally carefully closing the door behind them while Sean spotted what he was looking for: the control panel of an alarm system. ‘I take it you’ve read the Missing Person Report?’ Adams called over his shoulder.

  ‘We have,’ Sean answered.

  ‘Then you know about as much as we do. Little girl seems to have just disappeared,’ he told them, his voice lowered as they approached the kitchen and the family. ‘Mum put her to bed about eight p.m. and checked on her about eleven. Everything was fine and normal. The au pair went to get her up for school about seven thirty this morning and she was gone – nowhere to be found. The parents and au pair have searched the house and so have we, and the uniforms who came here first. They recognized similarities between what they were being told and your case: one of them had seen a news article about it or something. Anyway, they thought they’d better tell us and here we are.’

  ‘How did Addis find out about it?’ Sean asked, Addis’s involvement still troubling him.

  ‘Not from me,’ Adams told him. ‘Must have had someone at the Yard monitoring Missing Person Reports as they were going on to the PNC. Here we are then,’ Adams almost cheerfully declared as they reached the kitchen. Always the kitchen, Sean thought, where families gather in good times and desperate times. Nathan and Jessica Fellowes sat close to each other at the table – a heavy block of mahogany that he guessed had been artificially aged to look antique. He was immediately struck by the similarity in general appearance of Mrs Fellowes to Mrs Bridgeman: the same toned, athletic body, luminous skin and immaculately faked ash blonde hair. But Jessica Fellowes’ facial structure was slightly different, as if she wasn’t from quite the same stock as Celia Bridgeman. Mr Fellowes also had a physique honed over many hours in an expensive health club with a personal trainer, tanned skin and pushed back, dark brown, wavy hair, the product of an upmarket stylist rather
than a side-street barber. But his appearance somehow lacked the self-assurance of Stuart Bridgeman, his jet-black eyes betraying a crueller upbringing, as if he had only recently joined the ranks of the rich and privileged. DS Tony Wright, tall and muscular, his angular face and shaved head adding to his athletic appearance, despite his advancing years, stood leaning against the window frame with the expression of a man who really didn’t want to be there. Sean noticed Mrs Fellowes clutched a white-backed piece of paper to her stomach that he instinctively knew would be a picture of the missing girl.

  ‘Mr Fellowes – Mrs Fellowes, this is DI Corrigan, from the Special Investigations Unit – come to take over the investigation and get your little girl back for you.’

  Adams’ over-the-top introduction earned him a glare from Sean.

  ‘Special Investigations?’ Mrs Fellowes asked, her gravelly voice and London accent catching Sean by surprise. ‘You think she’s been taken by the same animal who took that little boy, don’t you?’ Sean looked at Adams who looked at his feet.

  ‘How much has DI Adams told you, Mrs Fellowes?’ Sean asked. He had no intention of trying to gild the lily – it was way too late for that.

  ‘He told me you couldn’t be sure – that maybe, somehow she just got out of the house on her own.’

  ‘And what do you think?’ he continued.

  ‘I think someone took her,’ Jessica answered. ‘I think whoever took that little boy has taken my Bailey.’

  ‘So do I,’ Sean admitted.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Nathan Fellowes managed to say before allowing his face to sink into his hands.

  ‘You haven’t found that little boy either, have you?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘No,’ Sean told her, ‘we haven’t.’

  ‘So why should I believe you’re gonna find my Bailey?’

  ‘Because I’m your only hope,’ Sean told her straight.

  She stared silently at the only man who could return her child – the child she’d carried in her belly for nine months and held to her swollen breasts to feed for another eighteen. For a moment she thought she could still feel her suckling, but told herself it was simply more recent memories of breast-feeding Bailey’s two-year-old brother.