The Keeper (24 page)

‘What?’ Sean snapped at him, interested. ‘What does he look like?’

‘Well, he’s black for starters – which no doubt explains a thing or two – about fifty, short and stocky, with a beard and moustache.’

‘I’ll make a note of it,’ Sean lied again. The age, colour and build of Levy’s postman were all wrong. ‘It may come in useful, thank you.’ The front door glowed in front of him like a porthole to another, better world.

‘I distinctly remember him because I had to complain about him a few days ago.’

‘Really?’ Sean’s hand was reaching out for the door handle.

‘I’d specifically asked the Post Office to stop putting junk mail through my letter box – damn stuff was filling my recycling bin. Miraculously, I thought they’d actually listened, but then the other day a bloody great pile was pushed through my door. So I phoned them and gave them a good dressing down. Anyway, it did the trick – no more junk mail.’

For the second time Levy’s words made him freeze. ‘Sorry. What did you just say?’

‘Excuse me?’ Levy replied, suspicious of Sean’s interest in his petty complaint.

‘Someone put junk mail through your letter box, although previously you’d stopped receiving it?’

‘Yes,’ Levy answered, confused. ‘Because I’d told them to stop posting it, and for a while they did.’

‘But it started again?’ Sean asked, the fluttering in his chest and bright whiteness behind his eyes telling him he was close to something he needed, close to a key that would unlock the way to the man he had to find and stop.

‘Yes, a few days ago.’

‘How many times?’

‘I told you, just once, because I phoned them and gave them a—’

‘When?’ he cut Levy dead.

‘I … I’m not sure, a few days ago. Why?’

‘I need to know when – exactly when.’

‘I really couldn’t say.’

‘Morning? Afternoon?’

‘Morning, definitely morning.’

‘How can you be so sure? What were you doing?’

‘I remember, I was walking down the stairs, I was dressed and ready to go out, so it must have been late morning. I saw the mail spilled over the floor as I walked downstairs.’

‘And it made you angry?’

‘I was annoyed, yes.’

‘So you phoned the Post Office straight away?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I needed to get away.’

‘Get away for what?’

‘I’m—’

‘You put off calling the Post Office, so it must have been something important. What were you getting ready for?’

‘Brunch,’ Levy remembered, the weight lifting as soon as he said it. ‘I was going out for brunch, at the garden centre in Beckenham.’

‘What?’ Sean snapped.

‘It’s half-price for pensioners on Tuesdays.’

‘Tuesday – Jesus Christ,’ Sean said to himself, ‘he’s dressing as a postman. That’s how he gets the doors open, he dresses like a fucking postman.’ The images played in his mind like a short film, the faceless man walking along Louise Russell’s street, dressed in a postal uniform, Royal Mail bag over his shoulder, calm and relaxed, knowing exactly what he was doing, every so often casually walking to other front doors and dropping junk mail through letter boxes. The perfect urban disguise.

Levy chased the images away. ‘What are you talking about, Inspector?’

‘Nothing. I have to go.’ He turned his back on Levy and pulled the front door open, leaving without another word, oblivious to Levy shaking his head in disapproval as he closed his front door. As he walked to his car he talked to the faceless man whose features were beginning to appear more distinct: ‘I can feel you now, my friend. We’ll be seeing each other soon.’

The car bumped wildly as Thomas Keller drove too quickly over the uneven surface of his driveway, rocking him violently in his seat. Hearing the loud banging from the boot as his precious cargo was tossed around, he frowned with concern. He didn’t want her damaged. He needed her pristine if she was to be everything he wanted her to be.

By the time the car slid to a halt outside his ramshackle breezeblock cottage it was gone 5 p.m. Darkness would be closing in within another hour or two. Wanting to make sure everything was ready before night descended, he grabbed the keys from the ignition and jumped from his old Ford Mondeo, tripping and stumbling as he hurried to the front door.

Ignoring the squalor and filth, he ran through the house to the tiny spare bedroom, just big enough for a single bed – not that there was one. The room was in semi-darkness, its one window facing north, away from the sinking sun. He kicked aside piles of boxes and worn, tattered clothes until he uncovered what he was after: an old, thin, stained single mattress that was folded in two but sprang open as the weight was removed from on top of it. Taking hold of the mattress as best he could, he tried to shift it. But it was heavier than he’d remembered and he struggled to haul it through the confined space, cursing himself for not having moved it earlier. He’d planned everything so meticulously, weeks and weeks of making sure there would be no mistakes, yet somehow he’d failed to ensure things would be ready for her once he got her home.

Next time, he vowed to himself, he would be better prepared. The admission that there would be more, that his chosen one was already damned, was a paradox his consciousness did not dwell on.

He dragged the mattress from the room and along the narrow hallway, trying to suppress the anger and frustration welling within him as he battled with the inanimate foe. Passing through the narrow entrance to the kitchen, he scraped his knuckles on the door frame and let out a scream of pain. Throwing the mattress to the floor, he sucked on the blood that trickled through his broken skin. Then, as if trying to exorcise the rage from his body, he gave vent to his fury, stamping on the mattress and yelling abuse. Instead of receding, his anger grew; he tugged open a kitchen drawer and snatched a knife from inside, dropping to his knees on the offending mattress and plunging the blade deep into the foam, over and over again until fatigue weighed down his thin arms and calmed his frantic mind.

As his self-control gradually returned he loosened his grip on the knife and let it fall to the floor. He knocked it away, not looking as it slid across the old linoleum surface, his focus now on the damage to the mattress. There were two or three dozen stab marks, mostly in the centre, but fortunately it was made of foam and would still serve its purpose. Thomas crouched over it, waiting for his breathing to slow, feeling the sweat running down his back grow cold, making him shiver as it reached the base of his spine. He sniffed loose mucus from his nose and stood, then he took hold of the mattress once more and hauled it outside.

As he dragged it past his car he could hear knocking coming from the boot, reminding him of the need to be quick – the boot wasn’t air-tight, but she couldn’t survive in there indefinitely. But despite his efforts the journey across his courtyard took for ever, the mattress snagging on every obstacle, forcing him to wrestle it this way and that to get it loose. Eventually he reached the cellar door and undid the padlock, pulled the door open and threw the mattress down the stairs. The one already down there was moving around in her cage, no doubt startled by the noisy arrival of her soon-to-be companion’s makeshift bed. He descended the stairs slowly, brushing dust from his postman’s uniform, feeling physically and mentally exhausted, but at the same time exuberant at having achieved what he set out to.

When he reached the bottom step he saw her cowering in the far corner of her cage, the duvet wrapped around her for protection as much as warmth. As he approached, she tried to retreat further, but there was nowhere for her to go. Producing another key from his trouser pocket, he unlocked her cage door and swung it slowly open, crouching down to peer in, but averting his eyes from her face, as if she were a Medusa with the power to turn him to stone merely by looking at him.

‘Give me the quilt,’ he demanded. She neither said nor did anything. ‘Give me the fucking quilt,’ he repeated, shouting now, but still avoiding her gaze.

His anger made her jump. Her face distorting in readiness for the tears that welled from her emerald green eyes, she unpeeled the duvet and pushed it towards him with her feet, her legs kicking it away quickly as if it were an intruding rat or spider. He grabbed it by the corner and pulled it off her and out of the cage in one movement, slamming the door shut and re-securing the padlock before moving to the other cage, dragging both the mattress and duvet with him. Stooping to pass through the entrance, he hauled the bedding inside, taking care to straighten out the mattress and lay the duvet on top of it so he could wrap her inside once she was in her safe place.

Happy with the arrangement, he left the cage and walked as quickly as his exhausted body would allow back to the car, looking up to the sky to ensure he still had plenty of daylight to play with, giving himself a few seconds to gather his composure before meeting her properly after all this time. When he was ready, he leaned into the front of the car and removed the bottle of chloroform and pad of material from his bag, stuffing them both into his jacket pocket. Then he pulled the lever that unlocked the boot and stepped away from the car. Breathing deeply, as if preparing himself to receive some life-changing news, he walked the few steps to the back of the car, coiled his fingers under the boot latch and pressed. The cover popped open, slowly and quietly rising with a pneumatic hiss.

Deborah Thomson blinked fast and hard against the punishing light that swarmed into the boot. She tried to speak, to call out for help or mercy, but her incoherent cries were prevented from escaping by the thick black tape fastened across her mouth. Before her eyes could adjust the light began to recede again and she felt a presence above her, the outline of someone leaning in. Despite the chill of fear running through her, she kicked her legs, trying to find purchase, her feet scraping and scuffing the interior surface of the boot.

The shape came closer and closer, her vision improving quickly, enabling her to make out the shape of a head and shoulders. More detail soon followed: his unkempt brown hair, strands of which had stuck to a forehead slick with a sheen of sweat; his crooked stained teeth glistened in the faint light; the writhing sinews of his thin arms, hands and neck, all latticed with swollen blood vessels. She saw his lips open and close and realized he was speaking, his words seeming to reach her seconds after he’d spoken them.

‘Don’t struggle,’ he warned her, ‘you could hurt yourself. I’m taking you to your safe place now, but you’ll still be a little woozy because of the chloroform. You’ll have to let me help you walk, but first we need to get you out of this boot.’

Her eyes betrayed the horror she felt, the sheer disbelief that this could be happening to her. She struggled to recall the last thing she could remember before the darkness came, her mind awash with tentative images of being in her bedroom, being annoyed by someone unexpected calling at the front door … Then the nightmare overtook her, the feeling of being unable to move, unable to run from danger, followed by darkness and suffocation, confinement and the sensation of being buried alive. As his long, insect-like fingers reached for her, Deborah knew this nightmare was real. She felt his clammy hands touching her, one sliding under the back of her neck as the other coiled around her upper arm, gripping it tightly.

‘Sit up,’ he instructed, tugging roughly on her arm and neck, gritting his teeth with the effort. Instead of cooperating, she pushed against him, burrowing as deep as she could into the boot. He tightened his grip and pulled her, his face flitting between a thin, forced smile and a grimace of anger and effort. ‘No, no,’ he told her, ‘don’t do that. We have to get you out of here. It’s not safe. They might be watching us. I can’t do this on my own. I need you to help me.’ He tugged her again, making her cry out with pain, but ignoring her muffled pleas he carried on pulling until he had forced her to bend at the waist into a sitting position. ‘That’s it. Almost there now,’ he panted.

Her eyes left him, frantically searching for help or an opportunity to run or, if she had to, to fight back. But her vision was swimming in and out of focus, her mind and body too weak with shock and the remaining effects of the chloroform. She knew any attempt to escape or attack would be pointless.

Keeping one hand on her back, he used the other to scoop her legs one at a time over the rim of the boot. Then he perched beside her, one arm snaking around her waist while the other cradled her bound forearms.

‘Ready?’ he asked. ‘OK, let’s do this together.’ He pushed with his legs, thrusting them both to their feet, relieved she could support most of her own weight. ‘Good,’ he said, propelling her forward. ‘Now we need to walk.’

Stumbling and staggering, they crossed the uneven courtyard. Sweat was pouring off him from the effort of supporting her, and his breathing was heavy and erratic. The smell of his sweet almond breath drifting into her face made her gag behind the tape that covered her mouth. Deborah tried to draw fresh air in through her nose to calm the nausea and clear her head of the drug-induced fog, instinct telling her that whatever she could learn now, whatever she could remember seeing as he dragged her across this cluttered wasteland, could yet prove to be the difference between living or dying.

Finally they reached a red-brick building, no bigger than an outside toilet, but as he led her through the door she realized it was merely the entrance to some type of underground shelter left over from the last war, or in readiness for the next. He steered her down the stairs and she watched him from the corners of her eyes, her hatred for him burning in her heart. The desire to attack him, to scratch at his eyes, knee him in his genitals was overwhelming, but she knew she wasn’t yet strong enough and her bindings gave him too much of an advantage. She reassured herself that the time would come when they would face each other on more equal terms, and the thought of inflicting pain on him, of taking revenge, helped to quell the fear that could so easily have incapacitated her.

‘Almost there,’ he reassured her, as they stepped off the last stair together.