The Keeper

Sean could see that Sally had had enough. ‘Fair point. I guess I just didn’t like him. I guess I just don’t like any of them.’

‘Any of who?’ Sally asked.

‘The stuffed shirt Neighbourhood Watch brigade. We might as well get rid of the lot of them for all the good they do. Stickers in windows and monthly meetings, for fuck’s sake – who are they kidding? Some madman came to this street and killed or kidnapped a woman right under their pious noses and nobody saw a damn thing. Neighbourhood Watch? Bunch of sanctimonious wankers.’ Tiredness suddenly swept over him, reminding him to check his watch. It was gone eight. By the time they got back to Peckham and tidied up the first day of inquiries and prepared for the next it would be close to eleven. He had a chance of making it home before midnight.

‘So you’re sure then?’ Sally asked. ‘She’s either already dead or someone’s taken her and she probably soon will be.’

‘I’m not sure of anything,’ Sean lied. ‘Let’s head back to the office. It’s getting late, there’s nothing else we can do tonight. In the morning you go see her parents and I’ll have a word with her workmates, just in case we’re missing something.’

‘Fine,’ was all Sally replied.

Sean forced himself to ask her the obvious question, fearful she might answer truthfully, making him listen to her fears and pain, but Sally wasn’t about to share herself with anyone yet. ‘Sore and tired,’ she told him. ‘I need tramadol and sleep.’

‘Sort out forensics for the house and check her car details have been circulated and then get yourself home,’ he instructed her. ‘Don’t stick around for anything else.’ He watched as Sally again subconsciously rubbed her chest where the knife had entered. He could imagine the scars beneath her jacket and blouse, still red, raised and ugly; one above her right breast and one below. It would be years before they faded, but they would always be clearly visible.

‘I will,’ Sally promised. ‘And thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me,’ Sean insisted. ‘Just look after yourself.’

Louise Russell sat in the gloom of her cage, knees pulled up to her chin, arms wrapped around her lower legs, hugging the thin duvet close and rocking subconsciously as she tried to judge the time. She guessed it must be the early hours of the morning, whereas in fact it was earlier, not quite ten at night. She’d tried to get her fellow captive to talk, but Karen Green just lay motionless on the floor of her wire prison. Louise already suspected that if either of them were ever to see the sun again they would have to work together. Somehow she needed to break through to Karen and persuade her to talk.

The sudden noise of metal striking metal fired her alert, her eyes open impossibly wide, like a frightened deer, her heart beating like a cornered rat’s. She heard Karen shuffling around in her cage, scratching at the floor looking for somewhere she would never find to hide. The noise and movement fleetingly reminded Louise of the pet mouse she was allowed to keep as a child, always searching in vain for a way to escape its wire world.

Gripped by fear, Louise waited for more sounds. She heard the heavy metal door swinging open and waited for the flood of light to sting her eyes, but it never came and she remembered it was night. A thin beam threw a circle of light on to the floor at the bottom of the staircase. As the soft footsteps made their way down towards them the ray of light bounced around. He stepped into the room and swung the torch slowly and deliberately from one side to the other, ensuring everything was as it should be, exactly as he’d left it. Temporarily blinded, Louise could no longer see his silhouette, only the harsh glare of the torchlight touching her skin, making her shudder as surely as the touch of his hands. She couldn’t see his face, but she was sure he was smiling.

A minute or two later the light behind the screen clicked on, the string cord swinging after he released it. Louise squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds while she prayed this was all a nightmare, an unusually long and realistic nightmare, but one that must end soon. If she could only chase the sleep away and wake herself then this would be over. It would leave her shaken for the rest of the morning, but by lunchtime it would have faded like a watercolour left in the rain. But when she dared open her eyes again he was standing there, peering into her very being, a torch in one hand and a tray in the other with a happy smile on his face.

He carefully placed the things he was carrying on what she assumed was some kind of table behind the screen and began to nervously approach her, one or two small steps at a time, his right hand outstretched in front of him palm up, as if he was approaching a stranger’s dog. ‘It’s OK, Sam,’ he tried to reassure her. ‘It’s me. I didn’t wake you, did I? I didn’t mean to disturb you. I only wanted to make sure you were all right.’ He fell silent as if expecting her to answer. She didn’t. ‘You should be feeling a lot better by now, the effects of the chloroform should pretty much have gone.’ Still she didn’t answer him, but she watched him, watched his every tiny move. He gestured to the tray hidden behind the screen. ‘I’ve brought you more food and something to drink, a Diet Coke – I remembered it’s your favourite.’

Some deep survival instinct told her she had to answer him or soon she would become to him what Karen Green already was. Had that been Karen’s failure, her damnation, that she hadn’t been able to answer him? ‘Thank you.’ She forced the words out, her voice sounding weak and broken.

A wide, relieved smile spread across his face. With his new-found confidence he moved too quickly towards her cage, startling her. He froze for a second, aware his impatience had frightened her.

‘Don’t be afraid, Sam,’ he almost begged her. ‘I would never hurt you, you know that. That’s why I brought you here, so I could look after you, protect you from all those liars, all those liars who told you all those things about me to keep you away from me. I always knew you didn’t believe them, Sam. And now they can’t hurt us any more. We can be together now.’ More silence as he waited for her to answer.

‘I need the toilet,’ she told him, the thought and words coming from nowhere.

He stared at her for a while, his mouth still holding a thin smile, but his eyes darted around in confusion and fear. ‘Of course,’ he eventually answered. ‘I thought you probably would.’ It wasn’t how she’d expected him to answer. ‘I’ll have to let you out,’ he continued. ‘Where you won’t be as safe from them, Sam. They’re still in your mind, you see. All the things they did to you, they’re still in your mind. They might try and trick you, get you to do something you don’t want to do. They might try and make you hurt me.’

‘I won’t,’ she forced herself to say. ‘I promise.’

He pushed his hand into his loose tracksuit bottoms and fished around awkwardly for something, before finally tugging the black box free and showing it to her. She recognized it immediately, the stun-gun he’d used to take her. The thing he’d used to defile Karen Green. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘If they try and make you do something you shouldn’t, I’ll use this.’ He looked puzzled by her expression of fear. ‘It won’t hurt you,’ he promised. ‘It’ll just stop them making you do things. It keeps them away.’

‘I need to clean up, that’s all,’ she told him.

He considered her for a long time before speaking. ‘OK,’ he said, and moved towards her cage slowly and carefully, his eyes never leaving hers. Within a few short steps he was at her cage, almost as close to her as he’d been when he took her, his pallid skin and stained crooked teeth clearly visible, his arms thin, but sinewy and strong, the arteries and veins blue and swollen. He took a key carefully from his other tracksuit pocket and tentatively held it close to the lock. He considered her again, then gave a broad smile, pushed the key into the lock and turned it. A slight moment of hesitation and then he swung the door open, the hinges squealing and the wire of the cage reverberating. He stepped back, the stun-gun in his hand at his side. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘this way,’ and pointed towards the old hospital screen.

Louise walked in a hunched, squatted gait towards the opening, the pain of her muscles cramping matched only by the fear that made her heart send shock waves through her chest. She paused for a moment at the entrance and waited for him to take a few more steps back, at last pushing herself through into the room, stretching her sore, stiff body, straightening for the first time in a day and a half, but all the time careful not to let the duvet slip from her shoulders and show him her nakedness. ‘Behind the screen,’ he instructed her. ‘You can get cleaned up there and there’s a toilet you can use. It’s only a chemical one, but it works well enough.’

‘Thank you,’ she forced herself to tell him, when all she really wanted to do was spit in his face. As she rounded the screen she saw her facilities – an old, stained sink barely attached to the cellar wall; rusty, limescale-crusted metal taps and a new-looking chemical toilet set low on the floor. She guessed he had recently installed the toilet, but clearly he had been planning for this for some time. Her eyes searched around for anything she could fashion into a weapon. There was nothing. She swallowed her disappointment and her rising tears.

She could feel him on the other side of the screen, watching her through the thin fabric, waiting for her to drop the duvet, his imagination removing the barrier, his eyes flicking across her skin. ‘Are you all right in there?’ he asked, as if she was in a separate room.

‘Yes,’ she stuttered in reply. ‘Just getting things ready.’

‘The hot water tap’s the one on the left,’ he warned her.

She let the water run hot before putting the chained plug in the sink and allowing it to fill, looking over her shoulder at his silhouette behind her, allowing the duvet to slip to the floor, leaving her standing naked and vulnerable in a way she’d never felt until now. Quickly she began to wash, using the sliver of soap he’d left on the sink to try and cleanse her skin of as much of him as she could. All the time she knew he was watching her, watching her hands moving over her own damp, shiny body. She rinsed herself clean of the soap and looked around for a towel, a sense of panic rising as she realized there wasn’t one next to the sink, the panic easing when she saw it on the table by the tray of food he’d brought. Hurriedly she patted herself dry, the stale smell of the scratchy towel making her want to retch. She could hear him, breathing heavily as he watched her. Pulling the duvet over herself, she stepped out from behind the screen.

‘Take the tray,’ he said. ‘It’s all for you.’

She studied the tray and the items on it suspiciously. A white-bread sandwich, some crisps emptied into a plastic bowl, a few biscuits and a can of Coke. The emptiness in her stomach and the rasping dryness of her throat told her to take it. ‘You’ll have to eat it in your room,’ he instructed, his eyes pointing to her cage. ‘I’ll get the tray later.’

She did as he wanted and walked as quickly as she could back to her prison, almost relieved to be behind the wire again, a barrier between her and him, even if she knew it was a barrier he controlled. ‘I’ll bring you clean clothes in the morning,’ he said as he closed her cage door and replaced the lock. ‘You need to get some sleep, Sam. We have so many plans to make. I have to go now.’

He was moving towards the light cord when a weak voice stopped him.

Karen’s head raised slightly from the floor. ‘Please,’ she asked desperately. ‘I need a drink and I’m very hungry. Can I have something, please? I promise I’ll be good.’ The room waited silently for a reaction, Louise looking from Karen to him and back, praying he wouldn’t hurt her cellmate, praying she wouldn’t have to watch again.

‘What?’ he demanded, the friendliness in his voice replaced with a quiet menace. ‘You want what, whore?’

‘Please,’ Karen pleaded, her voice trembling, her throat almost shut with dryness and terror. ‘I’m so thirsty. I don’t feel very well. I need some food. Please. Anything.’

‘Lying whores get nothing!’ he shouted.

‘No, no,’ Karen sobbed. ‘Please, I don’t understand what you mean. I don’t know why I’m here. Just let me go, please. I swear I won’t tell anyone what you’ve done.’

‘Shut up,’ he screamed, agitated, behaving as if he was the one who was trapped, as if he was the one in danger. ‘You’re trying to trick me. You’re trying to fuck with my head again.’ He was pointing at Karen, accusing her, close to tears himself now. He turned to Louise. ‘See what they do, Sam? See what they’re trying to do to us?’

‘Just let me go,’ Karen was almost shouting. ‘Please, let me go.’

‘Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Make her stop, Sam!’

Louise covered her ears with the palms of her hands, pressing so hard that her inner ears began to hurt under the pressure. She couldn’t stand to listen to this a moment longer.

‘You’re a whore, a lying whore! She tried to pretend she was you, Sam. She tricked me. She made me bring her here, but I found out she’s a liar. She’s one of them, trying to ruin everything for me.’

‘That’s not true,’ Karen pleaded with him through the strings of saliva that webbed across her contorted mouth. ‘I’ll do anything you want me to, I swear.’

‘Shut up, lying whore,’ he shouted in her face through the wire, holding his stun-gun in front of her so she could see clearly. ‘I know what you’re trying to make me do, it’s what all you whores want me to do to them, but you won’t make me.’ He looked back at Louise, a smile mixing with his fear, his face shining with the sweat of anxiety. ‘Sam’s with me now. You can’t stop us.’ He began to walk backwards, silently, his eyes never leaving Karen’s, wagging his finger at her as if warning her against doing whatever it was he imagined she was about to do. He pulled the light-switch cord, sinking the room back to its deathly gloom as he stepped behind the wall of the staircase and out of sight. They could hear him breathing, deep and panicked, but calming once he couldn’t be seen, then they could hear him no more. They waited a few minutes until the torchlight returned with a click, followed by his familiar soft footsteps climbing the stairs. A metal door being pulled open and then swung carefully shut; the locked padlock clanging against the sheet metal. Then nothing – silence and darkness. Nothing.

Shortly after ten on Wednesday night Sally squeezed her hatchback into virtually the last parking space in the street. Even the necessity to display your residents-only parking permit couldn’t keep the road clear of vehicles abandoned for the night. Her neighbours had been home for hours, most already thinking about sleep before the dawning of another day exactly like the one they’d just lived. Sally almost envied them. She waited in her locked car, lights on and engine running, until she saw some other sign of life in the street. A young couple appeared in her wing mirror, walking arm in arm along the pavement, the man muttering and the woman giggling. At this time of night it would have to do. Sally quickly turned off the lights and engine and jumped from her car, locking it without looking as she walked towards the smart three-storey Victorian terrace her new flat was in: a two-bedroom place on the top floor. By the time she reached the front door she already had her house keys ready and she entered the house quickly and quietly, the way she’d practised hundreds of times. No one could have followed her inside.

She heard the young couple walk past outside, reminding her of one of the many reasons she’d chosen this flat, in this house, on this street: because it was often quite busy, even at night – Putney High Street was just at the end of the road. Sebastian Gibran may not have taken her life, but he’d killed so many things that had been important to her, that she’d loved. She’d not been back to her old flat since he attacked her there. It held nothing for her but nightmarish memories of horror and pain. The selling estate agent had been very helpful and had visited the flat whenever necessary so Sally hadn’t had to.

As quickly and efficiently as she’d entered the house, she climbed the stairs and entered her flat. Only when she was inside did she breathe out the tension she’d been carrying for the last few hours. Standing with her back to the front door, she surveyed the interior, the lights she’d deliberately left on all day – another new habit, to avoid those panicked moments in the dark, fumbling for the light switch. Everything seemed fine as she scanned the sparse furniture and removal company boxes spread around the floor, still waiting to be unpacked. If this latest case went the way she was sure Sean thought it would, the boxes would have to wait a few more days or even weeks.

Sally stepped into the room that served as both her entrance and lounge and searched for the television remote. She found it on the coffee table, hiding under an unread newspaper, and clicked the TV on for background noise. She kept moving deeper into the flat, along the corridor and into the gleaming new kitchen equipped with everything a keen cook would need, things that she would hardly ever use. Stabbing pains in her chest strong enough to make her wince reminded her of her mission. From an overhead cupboard she pulled a pack of tramadol prescription painkillers free, grabbed a glass from the neighbouring cupboard and headed for the fridge. She yanked the door open and checked the barren contents, discovering half a bottle of white wine, still drinkable. Trying unsuccessfully to steady her hand, she poured a full glass, spilling a few drops that ran down the outside of the glass and dripped annoyingly on to the kitchen table. She pushed three tramadol from their foil surrounds, one more than she’d been prescribed to take, and swallowed them in one go with a good swig of the wine.

Closing her eyes, she waited for some relief, some elemental change in her mind and body, but the effects were too slow. She grabbed another glass from the draining board and headed for the freezer, hesitating for a second before surrendering to the idea and opening the door. Her old friend seemed to look at her, that bottle of vodka that had been ever-present in her freezer since her early days in the CID, wedged between a packet of unopened frozen vegetables and a once-raided bag of French fries. The vodka had become more necessary of late, an everyday requirement rather than a treat after a particularly tough day. By five o’clock her mind would already be drifting to the thought of that first taste, first hit, mixing with the tramadol and ibuprofen, a legal narcotics cocktail that rushed straight to her brain and took the world away just as sure as any junky’s fix could. She poured two fingers’ worth into the short, fat tumbler and drank half in one gulp, the freezing liquid numbing her throat and empty stomach, warning her brain of the delights it could soon expect.

She waited for the chemicals to ease her pain and anxiety, but as the storms calmed the quieter ghosts began to sweep forward. The tears seemed to start in her throat, but no matter how hard she tried to swallow them back down they found their way to her eyes and escaped in heavy drops that ran down her face, each finding a new route, dropping on to her hands and into her drink. Once the tears were flowing she knew there was no point fighting them, better to let them come until she would be too exhausted to cry any more; then she would sit quietly, motionless, her mind still and blank, her heart fluttering in the silence until finally sleep would take her. In the morning she would feel a little better, hung-over, but a little better, just about able to face the world.

Since she went back to work she’d been holding it together OK during office hours, getting the job done, not asking for any special treatment, but there were frequent moments of burning anxiety, when she’d been scared to speak for fear of her voice shaking, scared to hold a pen in case someone noticed her hand trembling. And every morning before leaving for work she stood frozen by her front door, physically unable to reach out and open it, hyperventilating with fear of the world beyond. Two weeks ago she’d suffered one of her worst attacks, remaining slumped against her door for more than an hour while she desperately tried to gather up the courage to leave her sanctuary. Even on the days when she overcame the fear and made it to her car, she would drive through the streets pretending nothing was wrong, sit at her desk pretending that she didn’t have to endure this daily ritual of personal torment.

Sally drained the glass and reached for her old friend in the freezer to pour a refill.

It was midnight by the time Sean arrived home, a modest semi-detached Edwardian house in the better part of Dulwich that he shared with his wife Kate and their two young daughters, Mandy and Louise. He knew Kate had been working the late shift as the attending physician in the Accident and Emergency Department of Guy’s Hospital and would therefore not long have got home herself. Probably he’d find her awake, eager to talk about her day and the children. On a normal day at a normal time he’d have looked forward to sitting with Kate and chatting about the unimportant and important alike, but this had been no normal day. His mind was swimming with images and ideas he wouldn’t share with her – images and ideas that would make it difficult to concentrate on anything she said. He reminded himself that women needed to talk, that somehow he would have to focus on his wife’s conversation. All the same he was hoping she’d be asleep so he could grab a drink and watch the TV in the kitchen and pretend to himself he wasn’t thinking about Louise Russell.

He turned the key and quietly pushed the door open. The lights were on in the kitchen. Dropping his keys as noisily as he dared on the hallway table, hoping Kate would hear the noise and know he was home before he accidentally startled her, he took a breath and walked to the kitchen.

Kate looked up from her laptop. ‘You’re late,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m the one who’s supposed to be on lates this week, remember?’

‘Sorry,’ Sean told her. ‘We picked up a new case.’

‘So you won’t be around much the next few days?’

‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘You know what it’s like when a new one comes in.’

‘Yes, Sean,’ she answered. ‘We all know what it’s like when you get a new one. Shame,’ she continued, ‘I was hoping to save some money on childcare this week.’

‘Kirsty’s all right looking after the kids, isn’t she?’ he asked. ‘She probably needs the cash.’

‘So do we,’ Kate reminded him. ‘At least if you were still a sergeant, you’d get paid overtime. The hours you work, we’d be rich.’

‘I doubt it,’ Sean scoffed.

‘So what’s the new case?’ Kate asked. ‘What tale of horror do you have to untangle this time? I assume it’s another murder?’

‘Even if it was a murder, you know I wouldn’t tell you about it. Work stays at work.’

‘Even if it was a murder,’ Kate pointed out. ‘Meaning it’s not a murder this time. So why is a Murder Investigation Team investigating something other than a murder?’

‘As it happens, it’s a missing person,’ Sean told her.

‘Oh,’ Kate said, interested and concerned. ‘A missing person who you think is dead. Get you on the job early, ready for when the body turns up. That’s not like the Met, planning ahead.’

‘I don’t,’ Sean said.

‘Don’t what?’

‘Think she’s dead. I think someone’s taken her.’

‘A kidnap case?’ Kate asked.

‘I’m not expecting a ransom note.’

‘Then what?’

‘Like I said, no details.’ Sean changed the subject: ‘How are the girls?’

Kate paused before answering, unsure as to whether she should try and prise more details from him. She decided she’d be wasting her time. ‘Last time I saw them awake they were fine, but they miss their dad.’

‘I suppose that’s good.’

‘I think I know what you mean,’ Kate smiled. ‘Next time you’re home they’ll mob you – you have been warned.’