The Keeper (18 page)

Seeing him turn his head as if ashamed, Louise saw an opportunity to reach out him, to try to form some kind of bond. She’d vowed to learn from Karen Green’s mistakes. Perhaps if Karen had managed to touch him, he wouldn’t have treated her like an anonymous pawn in his game of fantasy. If she’d only tried stepping from the shadows of whoever Sam was to him, it might have made it more difficult for him to force himself on her and finally, when he tired of her, to dispose of her like an unwanted pet.

By getting closer to him, Louise hoped she could confuse him, make him doubt himself and what he was doing. If she had to, she would take him inside of her, pretend she wanted him, but all the time she would be looking, waiting for the opportunity to hurt him – to hurt him like she’d never hurt anybody in her life.

‘Are you all right?’

The gentle, caring question seemed to catch him off-balance. ‘Sorry,’ he said, before realizing he had heard her question after all. ‘Yes, sorry, yes I’m fine. I’m just a little tired, that’s all. I’ve been working very hard lately … er, things have been a little crazy at work, but I’m fine. Thank you.’

‘What do you do?’ she asked, aware of his awkwardness, determined to keep him talking.

‘You know what I do,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen me.’

‘You mean you’re a real postman? That’s a good job. You must be very responsible to have a job like that.’ She knew her speech was stuttering and unnaturally bright, but she had to search for the chink in his armour of madness.

‘It’s OK,’ he answered suspiciously, his eyes back on her now, moving up and down her body as if the way she moved would betray whatever treacherous ideas she might be hatching. ‘People leave me alone,’ he lied, ‘and I can pretty much do as I like, so long as I get the job done.’

‘That’s good.’ Without meaning to, she found herself talking to him as she would a child. ‘It must be nice to be left alone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. Just it must be nice to be able to do what you want to do, when you want to.’

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Do you resent being here? Don’t you want to be here?’

‘No, no,’ she hurried to assure him, realizing she was losing whatever ground she’d made. ‘I want to be here with you. I want to understand.’

‘Maybe you’ll never understand.’ He was glaring at her, his voice cold. ‘Maybe they poisoned your mind too much for you to ever be able to understand.’

Louise felt herself being dragged towards the edge of the cliff. ‘No, you can make me understand, you can take the poison away. I know you can. I’m Sam, remember?’

He remained silent, considering her, waiting for his instincts to tell him how to react. He felt nothing.

‘You need to go back inside,’ he told her. ‘It’s not safe for you yet. The lies are still in your head.’

‘Why can’t I come with you?’ she almost pleaded, desperate to escape to the daylight above and the unlimited possibilities of salvation she dreamed it held. ‘You don’t need to leave me down here any longer.’

‘I told you,’ he insisted, ‘it’s not safe for you yet. You need to go back inside now.’ He raised the stun-gun a few inches to encourage her. Tears began to roll down her cheeks as she stooped back inside the desolate cage, the door closing quickly behind her, the lock snapping shut, condemning her to more hours alone in the gloom without hope.

He got to the foot of the stairs and then turned back, came right up to the side of her cage. ‘I almost forgot …’ He was smiling again. ‘I have something for you, something that will bring us even closer together.’ He pulled the sleeve of his right arm up over his bare forearm, slowly rolling it back on itself to expose a tattoo on the underside of his arm, its bright colours vivid against his pale, lifeless skin: the reds, blues and greens of a phoenix rising from the gold of the fire. It was clumsy illustration, like something a child would choose at a fairground. ‘This is us,’ he told her, ‘this is our love, rising from the flames. They all tried to stop it from happening, but you can’t stop what is meant to be.’

He bared his small ugly teeth as he smiled at her, his eyes shining brightly as he nervously waited for her reaction. She forced herself to smile through her fear and disgust.

‘Here,’ he said, reaching into the pocket of his tracksuit top, ‘I have something for you, something to show everybody that we were meant to be together.’ Carefully he pulled out a flimsy, shiny-backed piece of paper. He smiled as he looked at the picture she couldn’t yet see, pinched between his thumb and index finger, eventually twisting his wrist to show her the image of the phoenix, exactly the same as his tattoo in every way.

Suddenly his hand shot out and opened the hatch to the cage. ‘Put your arm through,’ he said, still smiling.

‘Why?’ she asked, memories of the torture he’d inflicted on Karen Green too fresh in her mind.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he laughed, ‘it’s not a real tattoo like mine. You can get a real one later, when the poison’s gone – this one’s just a transfer. Don’t you remember? It’s the same one we had when we were kids. It was our secret. Only we knew about them. You put mine on my arm and I did yours. It was our secret sign.’

‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘It was a long time ago, but I remember.’

‘Good,’ he said, his eyes bright with joy. ‘Now put your arm through the hatch.’

She resisted the temptation to close her eyes as she eased her arm through the cage opening, his hand closing around her wrist, gently pulling her forearm towards him. He licked the underside of the transfer, but his swollen red tongue lacked saliva and he had to run it over the transfer several times before it was moist enough to apply. It took every ounce of strength Louise had not to recoil from his vileness, her nausea reaching new levels as he pressed the wet transfer into her forearm, his hand clamped over the top of it, his saliva glistening on her skin.

‘You have to keep still for a while,’ he explained, ‘or it won’t work properly.’ He held her for minutes that felt like hours before peeling away the transfer underside, leaving behind the ugly image of something that should have been beautiful. As he released her arm she couldn’t help but pull it back inside her cage too quickly, turning his smile to a frown of concern. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Of course,’ she lied, ‘it’s beautiful.’ Her blinking eyelashes flicked tears across her face.

Keller had learned to trust what he saw, not what people said. The smile did not return to his face. He stood to his full height and filled his lungs with air pulled through his nose and began to walk to the staircase, tugging the light cord and returning the gloom. At the foot of the stairs he turned to her once more.

‘Everything can be replaced, Sam.’ His voice was flat, devoid of emotion. ‘They taught me that, in the home they took me to, they taught me that. Everything can be replaced. Even you, Sam. Even you.’

Sean strode across the incident room, speaking to everyone he passed without stopping, asking quick-fire questions, making sure they knew he was aware of the tasks they’d been assigned and that he needed results fast. They weren’t used to trying to save a life yet to be lost and Sean was concerned they would struggle to adapt from the pace of a normal murder investigation, where the victim was beyond saving if not beyond redemption.

Through the Perspex windows of his office he could see Sally talking to Detective Superintendent Featherstone. He went in and joined them.

‘Sally’s been giving me the good news.’ Featherstone’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘Are you one hundred per cent sure about this, Sean?’

‘Yes,’ Sean answered bluntly. ‘The woman I saw this morning is not Louise Russell. Sally, what you got?’

‘Karen Green,’ Sally began. ‘Reported missing yesterday by her brother, Terry Green. This is a photograph of her.’ She handed Sean a picture taken with a flash in some bar, Karen’s smile beaming at the unseen lens. ‘She’s twenty-six years old, five foot six approximately, shortish brown hair, slim—’

Sean cut in before she could finish. ‘That’s her,’ he said. ‘Karen Green’s the woman I saw this morning. OK, what do we know about her?’ He looked to Sally for answers.

‘Not much. All we have so far is a basic non-vulnerable MISPER report. It’s not exactly overflowing with information. We know she lived and worked in Bromley, and that she lived alone but had lots of friends, two sisters and three brothers including Terry who reported her missing.’

‘Have they been spoken to yet?’ Sean asked.

‘No,’ Sally told him. ‘Like I said, she was only reported missing yesterday.’

‘But when did she actually go missing? When was she last seen?’

Sally scanned the report. ‘According to Terry, he hasn’t heard from her since Wednesday.’

‘This report’s not going to tell us anything useful. Get this Terry Green to meet us at Karen’s place. I need to speak to him myself and I need to have a look around before forensics pile in.’

‘I’ll get it sorted now.’ Sally was already on her way out of the room.

‘What about going back to the media?’ Featherstone asked. ‘They’ll make a connection sooner or later.’

Sean nodded. ‘They may be a lot of things, but they’re not stupid. I suggest we tell them upfront what’s going on, but hold back enough details so we can dismiss any nutters phoning in, claiming to be the killer. Christ,’ he exclaimed, ‘once the media find out we have one dead and another living on borrowed time, they’ll go fucking mental. They’ll be all over this every second of the day.’

‘I can’t do anything about that,’ sighed Featherstone, ‘but I can probably keep them off your back, keep your name in the background as much as possible.’

‘It would be appreciated.’

‘But are you sure bringing the media in won’t panic him? We don’t want to be accused of pushing him into doing what we both know he’s going to do anyway.’

‘It won’t,’ Sean assured him. ‘He’s working to his own timeline and nothing’s going to interfere or change that.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘He didn’t just snatch Louise Russell off the street and I’m betting he didn’t just snatch Karen Green either. That means he has a plan in mind for the women he takes, even if he doesn’t consciously know it himself. He won’t let a media appeal interfere with that. Keeping them alive as long as he does is too important to him. It’s everything. If Karen Green’s timeline is anything to go by, and I believe it is, we have about three days to find Louise Russell before she ends up the same way.’

Sally appeared at the door, already pulling her coat on. ‘Terry Green will meet us outside Karen’s house as soon we can get there.’

Sean stood and began to load his pocket with items snatched from his desk.

‘One moment, Sean,’ Featherstone stopped him. ‘I need a quick word.’ He looked at Sally. ‘In private.’

‘I’ll meet you at the car,’ Sean told her. She shrugged and left. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ Featherstone began, ‘first off, let me just tell you the powers that be are very happy that you’re the one heading up this investigation.’

‘But …?’

‘But they want you to work with someone on this one, especially now a body has turned up that’s not the woman we were looking for.’

‘They already know about that?’

Featherstone didn’t answer his question. ‘They want you to work with someone from outside the force – a criminal psychologist, to be exact.’

‘Please tell me you’re joking.’

‘I’m afraid not. Her name’s Anna Ravenni-Ceron. She’s very well qualified.’

‘Anna Ravenni-who?’ said Sean. ‘Look, boss, I really don’t have time to babysit some civi-scientist so she can make a name for herself and get her face on the telly.’

‘I’m sorry, Sean, but the decision’s been made – it’s out of my hands. I know it’s bullshit, but you’ll just have to put up with it.’ He lowered his voice conspiratorially: ‘Listen, my advice – give her the mushroom treatment: keep her in the dark and feed her shit as much as you can. Just don’t get caught doing it, eh?’ He winked and then added cheerily, ‘I’ll send her over in the next day or so.’

‘Fine,’ Sean reluctantly agreed, knowing he had no choice. ‘But if she gets in my way or interferes with this investigation, I’ll personally throw her out on her ear.’

‘Have you considered that she might actually be able to help you?’ Featherstone asked.

‘No,’ Sean told him bluntly. ‘That’s not something I have considered and it’s probably not something I will consider. All she needs to do is keep out of my way.’

Louise Russell lay on the filthy mattress inside her cage, the dirty light bulb hanging from the ceiling painting everything in the cellar a miserable yellow. She’d felt so alone since he took Karen away; alone and afraid. A terrible anxiety and sense of panic had gripped her, sending her heart racing and making her stomach tighten painfully. She sensed she was on the verge of totally losing control and descending into madness if she didn’t find some way of combating the dread that was engulfing her. So she tried to fill her head with thoughts of home, her comfortable house, the things inside it that suddenly meant so much to her – her pictures, her clothes, her own bathroom and real toilet, warmth and safety. Her mind drifted to her husband, strong and quiet, kind and reliable, moral and loyal, the sort of man she’d always planned on settling down with, the sort of man she wanted to have children with – a happy little suburban family.

All too soon other thoughts forced their way into her consciousness. What had he done to Karen? She was sure he hadn’t simply released her. He couldn’t risk letting her walk away to tell the world what he had done. Maybe he’d just moved her to another place, to keep them apart? She hoped so, but somehow she doubted it.

Dear God, she thought, why had he taken her, why was she the one lying on a filthy mattress in a wire cage? What had drawn this beast to her? She hadn’t done anything wrong, she hadn’t hurt anyone, she had no enemies, so why her? And why Karen? Images of Karen being abused and violated flashed behind her eyes, his words as he left her ringing inside her head –
Everything can be replaced. Even you, Sam. Even you.
The inevitability of what was to come consumed and terrified her, the rising sense of panic once again overwhelming her, as if the cage had already become her coffin, the worms and maggots writhing over her skin, spiders crawling across her slowly decaying body. She could feel them and knew she had to escape her crypt.