The Vault

by Karen Long

  Eleanor lifted the carriage clock that squatted heavily on her desk and picked up the card she’d secreted there, smoothing it between her fingers and tracing the yin/yang symbol with her thumb. She could call the number and taste the contrition and release that anonymous sexual encounters brought.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Laurence knocked loudly and repeatedly on Enda Miller’s front door. It was seven thirty in the morning and emerging from the stairwell Smith looked as if he’d encountered a tornado en route. His clothes were creased and sweaty, his face red and expression pained. Laurence hammered again. “What happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Smith warily.

  “Yes?” said Enda, opening the door fractionally. Laurence held the warrant at eye level before giving the door a meaningful shove.

  “Can you confirm you are Enda Miller of Apartment sixteen, Bantock Estate, Toronto?”

  “Yes,” he replied, licking his lips nervously. “I thought we’d established that yesterday.”

  “This is a warrant to search your premises and confiscate your computer and any other item deemed appropriate in our investigation into missing items from the Royal Ontario Museum,” said Laurence, stepping past Enda.

  “But I’ve not stolen anything from the museum!”

  “Then you have nothing to worry about. Look at this as the first step in clearing your name and enabling us to move on with our investigation and locate the culprit,” said Laurence, walking into Enda’s bedroom.

  If Laurence had expected a pile of incriminating evidence, he was to be disappointed. He turned to face Enda, whose expression slipped fractionally into one of smugness before regaining its default setting of nervous indignation.

  “Where’s your laptop?” asked Laurence, irritated.

  “Unfortunately, I had a small accident last night and managed to knock a full cup of coffee over the keyboard. It’s completely dead. Everything lost!” He shook his head to emphasise his disbelief in this turn of event.

  “Where is it?” snapped Laurence.

  I put it in a box, ready to take to a friend’s to see if anything could be retrieved.”

  “Well maybe our forensics team can help you with that problem. They’ve retrieved data from all manner of broken and seemingly destroyed machines.” He noted with pleasure that Enda’s smile didn’t seem quite as confident as it did earlier.

  Toby was so distracted this morning that he walked straight into his office without registering the presence of Isabel Drake and a uniformed officer. “Toby, this gentleman is here to collect Enda’s computer. Is this it?” she pointed to the machine on Enda’s desk.

  “Yes. Yes it is,” replied Toby. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen him this morning.”

  The patrol officer ignored him and began to pack the machine into a box.

  Isabel moved towards him and said quietly, “You won’t for a while. He’s on extended leave until matters are concluded.”

  “I see,” said Toby, with a suitably worried expression on his face.

  “I’ll be in my office,” said Isabel, off the patrol officer’s expression. She ushered Toby into the corridor and closed the door. “Goodness me what an awful business,” she said unhappily. “Of course we can’t be sure that Enda’s been… pilfering but it seems as though it’s probably him.”

  Toby nodded sympathetically.

  She was just about to walk towards the stairs when she turned back to him, conscious that he seemed rather shaken by the events taking place. “Did you read about the police finding a second body on the Westex Landfill site?” she said in a conversational manner.

  Toby jerked his head up. “I didn’t know they’d found a first!” he said astonished.

  “Really Toby, it’s been headline news for the last week. There’s not a paper or news channel not broadcasting it. Have you still not got a television?”

  “I’m not really very keen on televisions or radio broadcasts,” he answered weakly.

  “But surely you take a paper?”

  “I don’t actually.”

  “How strange you are Toby,” she said as lightly as she could. “I’d thought for a moment they might have found that girl who used to work here. You must remember her, Olivia something or other. She was on an exchange with Vancouver wasn’t she? Lovely girl but it must have been nearly six years since she disappeared. Very sad.”

  “I don’t recall her.”

  Isabel looked at him with astonishment, raising one eyebrow. “I’m surprised. I do recall you were rather attached to her.” With that she turned and walked away. His heart racing, Toby began to feel sick. He put a hand against the wall to steady himself. It had never occurred to him that anyone would find them.

  The board had been neatened since yesterday, all the connectives had been redrawn with a straight edge and the photographs evenly distributed and aligned. She smiled when she saw that Johnson had even taken Ruby Delaware’s ‘Fuck You’ note and placed it below the line in a section marked ‘Tentatives’. Eleanor drew up a chair and began to focus her energies on seeing connections. She hadn’t slept particularly well last night, despite her exhaustion. Her dreams had been filled with chasing, drowning and darkness. She’d taken several painkillers when she woke up and was glad to get into the car and come to work. She let her eyes work the board.

  “What can you see?” asked Mo quietly behind her.

  She let her mind make another sweep before throwing out ideas. “Enda Miller isn’t part of this but I know that the objects he’s believed to have stolen are.”

  “The only one you can link is that toy wooden snake and that could have been bought off Enda when he acquired it from the museum,” proffered Mo. “Did his fingerprints match any of the unknowns?”

  She shook her head. “No, but chances of there being baby skulls…” she began.

  “Neither Parminder nor Dieter mentioned they were conjoined. That’s the only link to the museum. Tara’s hair combs weren’t on their list of missing objets d’art.”

  “There were two calls to the museum from a public call box next to where Parminder worked.”

  “But there were hundreds of enquiries that day. Why couldn’t a tourist have been calling about opening times or directions?”

  “I think I’m going to have another chat with Enda Miller. Can you call forensics and see what the time scale is?” said Eleanor thoughtfully.

  “You betcha,” Mo replied, pulling over one of the phones. Eleanor was dimly aware of her stomach rumbling noisily. When he finished dialling Mo pointed a finger at her belly and then stabbed it at the second room, which adjoined hers. She got up and sauntered in. Timms was on the phone and using a pen nib to puncture holes in an erasure on his desk, while he negotiated with the caller. The empty room was littered with papers and the remains of abandoned fast food, as officers had tried to snatch a mouthful before going back out to work the case. She noted that several spouses had brought in protein bars, snacks and left little messages willing them to find the boy.

  She took a seat and waited for Timms to finish his call, noting that Johnson had applied his visual skills to the Banks Board as well. She cast her eye over the information and felt a pang when she saw the little boy smiling in his school photograph. She stood up and walked towards the board, her attention drawn to a photograph of some old-fashioned toy trains. The photograph had been printed off a website and it contained a detailed description of the Hornby trains and their estimated value in dollars, both with and without their original packing. Her stomach gave a lurch.

  “Hey Raven…” said Timms stifling a burp. “Have you…”

  “Why’d he take the trains?” she asked curtly.

  “Huh? We don’t know… Thoughts are that he may have taken them to comfort the boy or maybe as a trophy. Why?” he said suspiciously.

  “Did he take anything else?” she said deep in thought, her eyes never moving from the board.

  “No, not as far as we know. What are you
thinking? ’Cos we are happy to receive any ideas, however fucking left of field, at the moment.”

  “It says there was track left behind. Was the track antique?”

  “I don’t know… Hang on, mom said he’d been given the track as a birthday present but the trains had belonged to his grandfather, so probably not. What are you seeing?” he asked, moving closer to her and following her gaze.

  “He took the trains along with the boy…” she mused.

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “I think it’s him… The Collector.”

  Timms looked astonished. “I don’t get how you think it’s him? He didn’t take anything when he snatched Giselle or killed Parminder. How have you gotten to this? Give me the thread.”

  “Objects… antiquities, matter to him. They’re his currency.”

  “But taking a seven-year-old boy. That doesn’t fit the MO.” He shook his head. “This isn’t working for me. He takes women and embalms them. That’s women and every book and brain confirms that psychopaths stick to gender, race and type. Where does this kid fit in?”

  “I think –” she turned to Timms and met his gaze “– he’s making a family.”

  “A what?” said Timms with horror.

  Wadesky walked in and lifted a hand in greeting.

  “Come listen to this one. Raven thinks the perp that took Tommy Banks is the same guy responsible for Giselle, Parminder and Michelle Brown. None of which, I hasten to add, have been definitely linked as killed by the same guy.”

  “Okaaay,” said Wadesky warily. “Let’s hear the whys and hows.”

  For a brief moment Eleanor doubted her judgment. As soon as she’d vocalised her theory it sounded crazy, even to her. She cleared her throat and focused her thoughts. “I believe there might be a connection between Tommy Banks’ kidnapping and the murders of Giselle, Parminder, Michelle and…Tara.”

  “Tara?” yelled Timms. “You have no fucking body for Tara Roques. She’s a missing prostitute who happens to look like a dead transsexual prostitute!”

  Wadesky’s eyebrows shot up. “Hey when did we stop listening to ideas Timms? Because we are drowning in fucking theories and leads at the moment!”

  There was a silence broken only when Laurence and Smith walked in closely followed by Mo.

  Laurence looked around expectantly. “We missing something?”

  “Raven here’s got a new theory on Tommy Banks,” said Timms, waving his hand as if to introduce her.

  Eleanor stood by the board and looked at the exhausted faces. She braced herself. “Whoever took Tommy took his trains but nothing else. The trains were antique Hornby ones by the look of it; collectible and quite rare.” Eleanor looked at the sea of disbelief surrounding her but ploughed on. “I think there’s a possibility that Tommy was taken by the same killer and that he’s going to kill and preserve him.”

  “Urm, why?” asked Laurence sceptically.

  “He’s creating a family for himself.” Her throat felt tight and she was finding it difficult to swallow but she had crossed her Rubicon and carried on. “That’s why he replaced Giselle with Tara, she is a type and I imagine there are more bodies, maybe a lot more. We know that he has an Irish setter that was probably taxidermied years ago, as it registers high for arsenic used prophylactically.”

  “Huh?” said Smith.

  “Used to prevent infestations of mites,” said Laurence.

  “I thought arsenic was a poison,” said Smith, surprised. Laurence looked at him and then back at Eleanor. “Go on,” he said encouragingly.

  The ensuing silence in the room could be sliced.

  “So all this is based on the fact that the perp who took Tommy took his train set?” said Smith, shaking his head.

  “It fits the profile.” Eleanor said flatly.

  “How?” said Timms. “I’m listening but I gotta tell ya I’ve not heard anything that convinced me yet.” He waved his hand expansively.

  Eleanor glanced at her feet before taking a deep breath. “If I stole a child from his bed in the middle of the night I wouldn’t stop to pick up four trains which are ill-suited for just slipping into a pocket. It was hot and the kidnapper wouldn’t have worn lots of clothes, particularly as he had to climb through a window. It’s unlikely that he had a bag or would want to come back and grab them. If I was taking the child with the intention of keeping him alive and wanted to grab a comforter I’d take a teddy bear or soft toy. I could put it under my arm or let the child hold it. I wouldn’t select four trains.” She paused and noted that only Laurence and Mo were nodding at this point but neither with any degree of conviction. She carried on. “A paedophile would find only value in the child, not the trains. So, I think it’s worth pursuing…”

  Timms cut in, “…Pursuing what exactly? You haven’t managed to find a link between any of those murders yet!” he said loudly, pointing his finger in the direction of her murder board. “You haven’t anyone lined up as a possible candidate, neither have you one single piece of evidence that links any of the women. Hell, you don’t have a body for Tara, and Parminder Kaur wasn’t preserved. It’s just supposition! Tell me I’m wrong?”

  She stared at Timms for several moments, thinking carefully. “You’re not wrong. But… I believe I’m right.”

  Timms flung his hands up in despair. “I need facts not wishful thinking. If you can get me some concrete evidence that links your caseload to mine then I will consider it and come on board and let you lead. Until then…”

  Eleanor suddenly realised what Timms was thinking. “I’m not looking to take over your case!” she said with astonishment.

  “Honey, you’re welcome to this shit. We’re past forty-eight and as far as me and Wadesky here are concerned, we’re most likely looking at taking Tommy to Doc Hounslow, not his mom when we find him! But listen it was interesting and anything more substantial I’m all ears.” He pointedly reached for the phone, after first catching Wadesky’s eye.

  Eleanor made her way back to her own office and closed the door.

  What the hell was she thinking? She hadn’t even given herself five minutes of thought processing before jumping in with an opinion. She rubbed her neck and head and tried to clarify her thoughts, why had she jumped to the conclusion that The Collector had kidnapped Tommy Banks? There wasn’t a shred of proof or even a hint that could be communicated clearly to another person. It was just a belief, a gut instinct. Maybe, she surmised, every single above the board fact and link could be relocated below the line into ‘Tentatives’ and the only thing that was a solid, fact-based concept was that Timms should ‘go fuck himself’!

  She sank into her chair and hoped that she’d said enough for everyone to steer clear of her for the next couple of hours. Mo and Laurence entered and closed the door behind them. “Maybe,” said Laurence firmly, “you could have run that little theory past us first. You know, just to see if there were any holes in it.” He lifted his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Because if you had I think we could have refined it a little more and not just stated that there was only the one guy responsible for every body between here and Nova Scotia!” He sat down heavily and sighed.

  Eleanor rubbed her eyes. She felt an overwhelming tiredness. “ I agree,” she said.

  “Do you regret what you said?” asked Mo carefully.

  She thought for a moment. “No. Not what, just how I said it.”

  Mo nodded and then added simply, “Then find him.” Mo answered the phone after a couple of rings. He nodded. “Be right down.” He picked up a notepad and pen. “Bob Brown’s just arrived.”

  Mo ushered Bob Brown into ‘Interview Three’ and pulled a chair out for him. “Mr Brown, we met on a couple of occasions three years ago.”

  Bob nodded and held out his hand, “I remember. It’s Detective Morris?”

  “Just Mo,” he shook Bob’s hand and gestured to Eleanor. “This is DI Eleanor Raven and she is in charge of the investigation into Michelle’s death.”

  Bob to
ok a seat.

  “Neither Mo nor myself worked your daughter’s case three years ago but we have read through all available materials and are being supported by Detective John Smith, who will be working closely with us,” said Eleanor, positioning her notebook and pouring three cups of water.

  “Can you tell me if you’ve got any suspects yet?” Bob asked carefully.

  “We are following several lines of investigation but were hoping that by talking to you, there may be something you could add that might help us,” said Mo, taking over at the prearranged nod from Eleanor.

  “Christ, I told them at the time everything I knew about her plans that day.”

  “The day she disappeared?” clarified Mo.

  “Yes. And I can’t be one hundred per cent that anything I tell you again wouldn’t have been altered by the years passing. I kinda knew the day off by rote, as I’d been through it so many times with the officers.” He scratched his head and fidgeted.

  They waited. Bob began to wring his hands uncomfortably, reluctant to embark on the journey again. He cleared his throat. “She…” He took a deep breath and started again. “Michelle, was already up that Thursday with her mother Liza when I got downstairs. She’d been accepted at the Nursing School and was making some extra money over the summer to help with the costs, so she’d been helping her mother clean.

  Mo consulted his notes. “She helped clean over at the morgue.”

  Bob coughed and nodded. “Not the morgue itself; she cleaned the offices. Her mother used to work for the city cleaning services but they’d brought in some legislation that allowed the morgue to go to private tender. So, Liza set up her own sort of one-woman company and cleaned the office suites because Doctor Hounslow, bless her, wouldn’t have anyone else do it. She trusted Liza…” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed his face, emptying the cup of water before resuming his account. Eleanor filled it up again. “So, she paid Michelle to help her there and with some of her private clients. She had about five houses she’d go and clean for when she’d finished at the morgue.”