The Toy Taker Read online

  ‘I agree,’ Addis replied, as if he’d had the same idea. ‘And I want you to be present at the appeal – sitting next to me, in between the parents.’

  Sean went cold inside. The thought of sitting in between the parents, their sadness and pain leaking out and seeping into him while Addis bleated on as the cameras pointed straight at them, searching them for signs of weakness, filled him with fear. ‘I wouldn’t advise that,’ he blurted out.

  ‘Really?’ Addis asked, nonplussed. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘I’m still on SO10’s books,’ Sean remembered, desperate for an excuse to avoid the media show, ‘which means I’m still technically available for undercover deployment. They wouldn’t be very happy if I was to stick my face all over the telly and papers.’

  ‘You did a media appeal for the Gibran case,’ Addis reminded him, making Sean swear inwardly. ‘SO10 didn’t seem to mind then. Besides, SO10 come under my umbrella, so you won’t get any trouble from them. I can assure you of that.’

  Sean kept thinking. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it for other reasons as well – reasons that relate to the offender’s state of mind.’

  ‘Such as?’ Addis demanded.

  ‘I believe they’ll respond to an authority figure better than someone who’s less visibly identifiable.’

  ‘You mean they’d rather see a uniform than a man in a suit?’ Addis took the bait.

  ‘Exactly,’ Sean answered, swimming in relief.

  ‘The uniform of a high-ranking police officer,’ Addis continued.

  ‘Precisely,’ Sean encouraged him. ‘If he sees you alongside a detective then we might lose his trust. We don’t want him to feel hunted.’

  ‘Very well,’ Addis relented, ‘but I need you to prepare me a full briefing of anything and everything you feel could be useful for the appeal – anything that might help us flush this bastard out – understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ Sean told him, already standing to leave, as happy as he could be with the outcome of the meeting. ‘I’ll have it for you before close of play.’

  ‘And, Sean,’ Addis stopped him. ‘Let’s make sure I don’t have to do another media briefing – with another family. That could put you in a very difficult position. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ he answered, never looking away from Addis’s dead eyes, like the black eyes of a shark. ‘I understand perfectly.’

  ‘Good. Because it would be a shame if this privileged position you’ve been given was to prove too much for you.’ Sean’s mouth opened slightly to answer, but Addis cut him off. ‘That will be all, Inspector. You may go.’ He looked down at the reports on his desk as if Sean wasn’t there – as if he’d never been there.

  Early evening and the large, modernized pub close to New Scotland Yard was already growing busy with a mix of off-duty cops and workers from the surrounding offices, the two groups separated by the quality of their suits and the loudness of their voices. Any drinking establishment this close to Scotland Yard was automatically assumed to be police property by the cops who used it as their regular watering hole, but civilians were tolerated so long as they behaved and didn’t get in the way of the bar − although attractive women were always given special licence to behave more freely. Sally weaved her way through a group of almost exclusively male detectives who paid her little attention, having already identified her as one of their own. She tried not to spill the two overflowing drinks as she carried them across to a nearby table where Donnelly waited for her, cursing the day the smoking ban had come into effect and praying for the onset of spring when he could again take his pint outside and enjoy a smoke. Sally slid him his drink and sat next to him, backs to the wall, facing the entrance. Cops liked to see everyone as they arrived – just in case.

  ‘Cheers, Sal,’ Donnelly thanked her.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll be making this place our regular,’ she answered. ‘Costs an arm and a leg. Almost ten quid for a pint and a glass of house white.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Donnelly moaned, ‘I hate the bloody Yard and I hate paying West End prices for a pint when I’m in bloody Victoria. Look at this place,’ he told her, surveying the modern, minimalist surroundings with an expression of distaste, ‘what a dump. Give me the Bee Hive back in Peckham any day.’

  ‘You mean give you back free drinking,’ Sally teased.

  Donnelly feigned indignity. ‘I paid my way. Never asked the landlord of that fine establishment for anything per gratis and never expected anything either.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you didn’t accept the odd one,’ Sally said with a grin.

  ‘Careful, Sally,’ he warned her. ‘The walls of the pubs around here have ears. You never know when the rubber-soled brigade are listening,’ he continued, using the police slang for Internal Affairs.

  ‘I’d like to think they’ve got better things to worry about than your subsidized drinking,’ Sally told him.

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ Donnelly scoffed before taking a long draw on his pint, licking the froth from his moustache before speaking again. ‘Anyway, more importantly, how’s the guv’nor doing? Shared any secrets with you lately?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as who’s taking these wee kiddies?’

  ‘No,’ Sally answered honestly. ‘He thought Hannah Richmond was a real go, until it blew up.’

  ‘As he did with Mark McKenzie,’ Donnelly added. ‘Also a … mistake.’

  ‘Whereas you wanted to haul George Bridgeman’s parents over the cobbles,’ Sally reminded him.

  ‘Ah well,’ he replied with a shrug of his heavy shoulders. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

  ‘Indeed they’re not,’ Sally agreed in the tone of a strict school teacher before taking a sip of her wine.

  ‘Well,’ Donnelly continued with a shake of his head, pint held only inches from his lips, ‘he’s not the man he used to be – I’ll tell you that for nothing.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Sally demanded. She’d grown closer to Sean since she’d found him bleeding and helpless on Thomas Keller’s filthy kitchen floor. She’d saved him then from a psychopathic killer and she’d save him now from his own kind if she thought she had to.

  ‘Just that he seems a bit out of sorts,’ Donnelly mused. ‘Not quite the Sean of old.’

  ‘What d’you expect?’ she argued. ‘First they mothball us for almost six months, then they drop this nice little mess into our laps and expect Sean to be able to magically solve it.’

  ‘Sean, now is it?’ Donnelly picked up on her slip. She’d never called him anything other than guv’nor or boss in front of the others before.

  ‘All I’m saying is, he’s bound to be a bit a rusty – we all are. He just needs a little time, that’s all. He needs to get the scent for it again.’

  ‘Is that why he went after McKenzie and this Hannah bird – trying to get the feel for it?’

  ‘Probably,’ Sally admitted. ‘At least he was doing something, not just sitting in his office praying for a miracle, or sitting in a pub drowning his sorrows.’

  ‘Aye, well perhaps he’d better start praying for a miracle now,’ Donnelly told her, ‘because if he doesn’t crack this one soon he’ll be in the brown smelly stuff – and us along with him. The eyes of the world are watching, Sally – the eyes of the world are watching.’

  It had already been a long day and it wasn’t over yet. Every inch of his body ached and throbbed after spending the best part of the night sitting in the front seat of an unmarked police car on what ultimately turned out to be a wasted endeavour. He looked up from the endless reports and loose bits of paper littering his cheap desk and peered into the adjoining office only to see that it was empty. A quick scan of the main office confirmed that neither Sally nor Donnelly was anywhere to be seen. He was pretty sure what sort of place they were probably in, even if he didn’t know exactly where, and as they were the only ones who would be likely to enter his office without announcing themselves first, he k
new he was unlikely to be disturbed.

  Confident of solitude he unlocked his middle cabinet drawer and slid it open. It contained only one thing – his private journal, a visible record of his whirlpool of thoughts and ideas, captured before they escaped his consciousness and were lost for ever. He lifted the book, which was leather bound and about the size of a large photo-album only thinner, and placed it carefully on his desk, opening it at the very beginning and moving steadily through it, page by page, reading his own words, trying to decipher the dozens of small sketches and chaotic graphs – a multitude of names circled and linked to other circled names, each line in a different colour signifying something he’d long since forgotten. But they all related to other cases – old cases solved and consigned to the scrapheap of his memory. So many names: of paedophiles, murderers, witnesses, suspects, the dead. One name made him stop and linger longer than any other, his finger caressing the letters, circling the small cut-out from a surveillance photograph he’d glued on to the page. James Hellier, real name Stefan Korsakov – the man who could have killed him anytime he’d wanted to, but who in the end saved his life, although his motives for doing so were never entirely clear. Maybe he just couldn’t stand the thought of someone else taking his life? ‘Where are you now, my old friend?’ Sean whispered to the small photograph. ‘And what the hell are you up?’ The cold shiver running up his back urged him to move on, flicking through page after page of disorganized notes and scribbles until he came to a nearly blank page halfway through the book. The only words were those written across the top: George Bridgeman – Abduction and a little further down: Bailey Fellowes – Abduction. The rest of the page was barren – the accusation obvious: he couldn’t think any more, not the way he needed to.

  He smoothed out the pages and lifted a red fine-tipped felt pen from an old mug he used as a penholder and flipped the top off, holding it above the notebook as if he expected it to magically lead his hand and start writing for him – solving the puzzle of the missing children without his help. He tried to force thoughts into his mind, but only the broad strokes, stuff he’d already covered with Sally and Donnelly – with Anna – would come. Nothing incisive, nothing that allowed him to cut through the rock and find the diamond. The abductor knew the children, but how? They knew the families, but how? They knew the houses, but how? They even knew the alarms weren’t working, but how did they know that? The alarm fitters checked out OK and were from different companies, so not that … He knew he was asking the right questions, but he needed the answers and they wouldn’t come.

  He allowed the pen to fall from his fingers as he leaned back in his chair with a sigh of resignation, running his hands through his light-brown hair, the tiredness of the last few days suddenly creeping up on him and threatening to drag him into sleep. He quickly straightened in his chair and replaced the lid on the pen, blinking furiously to keep his eyes from sealing themselves closed, his hand scribbling thoughts that almost came from his subconscious, released by the extreme tiredness of a mind too exhausted to resist any more. He read the words as they took form on the pages, columns of facts on each side of the book, one list headed GB and the other BF – Scene One written under George’s initials and Scene Two under Bailey’s. The words he wrote under Scene One he then repeated under Scene Two, circles and lines linking the two across the divide on the page. No signs of violence. No blood. No evidence of drugs being used. No evidence of restraint. No noise. No nothing. Conclusion: the victims went with the offender willingly. ‘They wanted to go with you. They had to have, but why? Why did they want to go with you?’ He leaned back before immediately springing forward, tapping the pages with the pen. ‘They went with you because they know you. But you’re not a family member, you’re not a teacher or child-minder and the families don’t appear to share any friends or at least no one the children could know well enough to go with in the middle of the night. So how do they know you?’

  He stood up, not moving, just standing, starting down at the new words in his old journal, allowing the questions he’d asked to whirl around the room, spin around his head, until at last the simplicity of the solution began to take shape. He sat down again and rested a hand on the book. ‘Maybe then … maybe, you don’t know the families – you don’t know these children?’ His eyes closed for a few seconds while he tried to understand his own conclusion. ‘Or at least you don’t know them like I thought you did. You have no historical link to them – you’re not a trusted friend of the family – no one the children could have known well. But you’re not a stranger, you can’t be, because they went with you willingly and you know these houses – these homes.’ He felt any answers slipping away as quickly as they’d started come, his imagination trying to stop them fading into the dark recesses of his subconscious. ‘Damn you,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘You know the children, you know the houses, you know everything you need to know, but you can’t be closely connected to the families or I would have had you by now. So something else. Something I haven’t thought of yet. Something so fucking obvious I can’t see it for staring at it.’ He exhaled heavily and slumped into his chair, his mind drifting Thoughts of the case were banished as images of his wife and children invaded – and of Anna. Extreme tiredness was making him lose control over his consciousness.

  ‘All right,’ he told himself, his voice still hushed. ‘All right. We look further afield – someone who could have had access to both children, but something the parents wouldn’t necessarily think to remember.’ He began to scribble some notes between the two columns of information, anything he could think of that could possibly link the families – the children.

  Do they share the same GP or practice? Have they visited them lately? Have there been any visits to the hospital? Do the parents remember any over-familiar doctors or nurses? Do the missing children belong to any of the same after-school or weekend clubs? Where did the families last go on holiday and did the children use any kids’ clubs? Do they share a local favourite restaurant, playground, sports club, holiday club … The list went on and on until he finally stopped, staring down in dismay at all the possibilities. ‘Conventional. Conventional,’ he found himself repeating over and over. ‘Conventional and slow – too slow. Even if you selected the children this way, how could you know the inside of their houses?’ He wrote the words in bold capital letters across the length and width of the page: Too slow, too slow, too slow underlining it to emphasize his frustration. The pen in his hand began to move again, writing the same word over and over, each time in a different style and size, covering every inch of the open pages: Blind. Blind. Blind. Blind. Blind. Blind.

  The house was his, still and quiet, warm and comforting, the familiar sound of a grandfather clock’s pendulum swaying in the hallway making him feel as if he belonged – as if he was meant to be here. Above him, the Hargraves slept soundly, oblivious to the intruder in their midst. He closed the door behind him and secured the Yale lock, moving deeper into the house, their home, aware of the sounds and odours of the interior, the dark patches where the street lights couldn’t reach – where the shadows lived. He was acutely aware of all these things, all these things that were just as they were before, but he didn’t relish them – didn’t take time to become one with the house – with the family. He wasn’t here for the family – just the boy.

  Douglas Allen took a slow, deep breath before moving across the wooden hallway of the immaculate five-storey Georgian house in Primrose Hill – one of the capital’s most exclusive ghettos for the rich and celebrated. He was relieved to feel the mint condition Persian rug under his feet, covering the wood, his rubber-soled shoes rendering him completely silent but for the occasional sound of his clothes as his legs brushed together when he walked. Everything he wore was selected for silence and ease of movement, but also to blend in and avoid drawing suspicion as he walked and drove through the streets of North London, dressed as he was in grey-flannel trousers, blue shirt and necktie, his padded black anorak zip
ped up against the cold. He’d noticed a lot more police cars in the area lately, and even some checkpoints stopping men in cars, although he was yet to be pulled over and questioned himself. He thought of the children he’d recently rescued – poor little Bailey, even her name was a joke, a thing of amusement and ridicule for all who cared to laugh at her. He almost wished he’d been able to take her siblings too, but his instructions had been clear and specific – take only the girl. In any case, even though the parents weren’t deserving of any children, to take more than one would have been too cruel a punishment. He hoped that in losing one child the parents would be able to appreciate more the ones he’d left them with. In taking George and Bailey he’d saved their siblings too – just like he’d been told he would.

  His gloved hand rested on the polished wooden bannister as he began to climb the stairs, slowly and purposefully. He reached the first floor and walked without hesitation past the children’s playroom and the room their mother used as an office for the business she ran as a justification to abandon her children to be raised by a succession of full-time housekeepers and nannies − the latest of which was an economic refugee from some South-east Asian country who lived in the smallest of the top-floor bedrooms.

  As he arrived at the second floor his heart rate increased, reaching dangerously high levels, momentarily threatening to trigger a panic attack. But the words of his guides came to him when he needed them most and calmed his fear, controlled his sudden urge to retreat back down the stairs and flee the house, leaving the family to wake as if nothing had ever happened. He was reminded of his cause, his resolve stiffened. Belief drove him forward, past the sleeping parents who he knew could never understand his reasons for doing what he must, and up the next flight of stairs to where the children of the house slept in two separate bedrooms, one opposite the other. Samuel and his younger brother, surrounded by all that money could provide, yet virtual strangers to their own parents. It was his duty to save them, to stop them growing up to love only money and status – to stop them from having more unloved children in their turn. But he could save only one, and it was Samuel who had been chosen for him, shown to him.