The Keeper (48 page)

She thought in silence for a while before answering. ‘In that scenario I would assume I’d missed something. I’d go back over everything I’d done and double-check I hadn’t missed anything.’

‘And if you hadn’t?’ he asked. ‘What then?’

Kate rolled over to look at him, her face little more than a silhouette. ‘If that was the case,’ she said, ‘then the patient would die and we’d all feel really bad, even though there was nothing we could have done.’

She kissed him on the cheek and rolled over to sleep, leaving him to stare at the ceiling in the darkness. Alone.

She stumbled through the trees, arms wrapped around her torso in a futile effort to keep out the cold, her only clothing the same soiled underwear he’d given her days before – how many days she couldn’t be sure of any more. Her bare feet stepped on sharp stones and thorns as she stumbled, her arms untwisting from her body as she tried to steady himself, her head occasionally turning to look at the hooded figure who followed close behind, a stumpy baseball bat in one hand and the cattle prod in the other. Whenever she slowed too much she felt the bat being jabbed into her spine, driving her on to a fate he had decided for her, the alfentanil’s effects making her too weak and uncoordinated to either run or fight. All she could do was beg for her life.

‘Please,’ she sobbed. ‘You don’t have to do this.’ Her words were slurred but clear enough. ‘I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’ Another stab in the back propelled her on, the cold breeze feeling like a gale on her exposed skin. She stumbled again, gathering more lacerations to her feet and body, as if the trees were his accomplices, cruelly bending to lash her with their thin branches. ‘I have a husband,’ she pleaded. ‘My children need me,’ she lied, desperate to try and reach the man trapped inside the monster.

‘Liar,’ he said. ‘You don’t have children. You shouldn’t lie about things like that. If you do, I’ll know.’

‘You were watching me,’ she accused him. ‘You’ve been watching me for weeks.’ She stopped and turned to face him, expecting the stab of the bat in her spine, but it didn’t come.

‘I thought you were the one,’ he told her. ‘I thought you were her, but I was wrong. I have no need of you now. You were a mistake.’

‘No,’ she tried to reach him. ‘Maybe I am her? You need to help me be her. I can be her. I know I can – for you.’

‘No,’ he barked. ‘It’s too late. Keep moving.’

‘I can’t,’ she pleaded, leaning with her back to a tree. ‘No more, please. No more.’

‘Just a little further and you can go,’ he promised. ‘I’m not going to kill you. Just a little further and you can go.’

She knew the hope he had given her was a false hope, but it was all she had and she clung to it. ‘You’ll let me go?’ she asked breathlessly. He nodded in the moonlight. ‘You promise?’

‘Just a little further.’ He pointed deeper into the woods with the bat.

Louise pushed herself from the tree, brushing the thin branches away from her face with her outstretched arms, closing her eyes in silent prayer, feeling her way through the trees until she sensed she was in a clearing, the ground softer under her feet where invading sunlight had allowed grass to grow and all around her an eerie flapping sound, as if hundreds of birds were trapped in the surrounding trees, unable to escape, not matter how hard they beat their wings. She opened her eyes and walked into the open space, looking for the source of the strange sound, but couldn’t see it in the darkness, feeling him behind her, getting closer, and she knew, she knew this would be where he killed her. If he was going to let her go, he would have melted back into the woods by now, a ghost disappearing into the waiting shadows, but he hadn’t. He’d known this clearing was here and he’d known this was where he was going to bring her. This would be the place where she took her last breath.

Panic and the animal will to survive swept away most of the effects of the anaesthetic, her body becoming aware and alert. She sprang forward into the clearing, her bare feet pushing off the soft ground strongly, but he was ready, as if he’d anticipated she would try to run. Within four strides she felt her legs kicked from under her, sending her unsupported body flying through the air until it crashed hard into the ground, knocking the wind and fight from her, leaving her disorientated and confused. She gave herself a few seconds then rose to her knees, looking around, trying to get her bearings, a new direction to run in, but before she could do either the dark figure stepped in front of her, each hand still clutching a weapon. She gazed up at him, blinking, trying to focus on the blackness inside the hood where his face should have been. ‘Please,’ she pleaded. ‘Please.’ He tossed the bat to one side and slipped the cattle prod inside his trouser pocket, still standing above her, staring down.

Millimetre by millimetre his hands moved from his sides, stretching out towards her, reaching for her throat as she watched through her tears, her own hands slowly rising to meet his, her fingers curling around his wrists, but barely able to resist at all, as if she was guiding his hands to her, strong, thin fingers coiling around her neck as his thumbs sank into her throat, slowly crushing her trachea. The blood supply to and from her brain fell to nothing, her eyes bulging under the pressure and her swollen tongue protruding from her mouth searching for oxygen. For a brief second she thought she could see her husband, hear his voice, see the children she’d so often imagined having, their presence encouraging her to frantically claw and scratch at the hands clamping her throat, but she had grown too weak and he too strong. Finally her resisting fingers slowed and slipped away from his, her arms becoming too heavy to hold up any more as they fell limp at her side, and an ugly hiss leaked from her mouth – the last sound she would ever make.

He kept his hands wrapped tightly around her neck, staring at the dead creature he held kneeling in front of him, glad he hadn’t knocked her semi-unconscious with the baseball bat before squeezing the life from her. The sudden overwhelming desire to see her slip from this world to the next had been impossible to resist, to see her full life-force leave her body, not just the remains after he’d partially caved her head in as he had with Karen Green. This had been so much more
rewarding
.

He held her for a long time, watching until her dead staring eyes began to mist over, then he released his grip and allowed her to slump to the ground, falling in an almost foetal position, except for her arms, one of which was trapped under her body while the other had fallen behind her back in a pose only the dead could bear. Still he stood over her, wondering why it felt different to the last time. Then he realized that the difference was he had actually felt something this time – something calm and powerful.

The freezing breeze blowing into his face slowly drew him back to the real world, the dead woman at his feet inconsequential. It was time for him to leave. He crouched next to the body and awkwardly removed her underwear and bra, rolling them together and pushing them into the pocket of his hooded top before returning her limbs to almost exactly the same position she had fallen in without knowing or considering why. He looked at Louise Russell one last time then turned, striding back into the trees heading towards his car and home. Tomorrow was Sunday. He would rest for a day – get things ready – clean the cage and her clothes, once he’d taken them off the woman who was wearing them now. Then on Monday, after work, he’d rescue her. He already knew where she lived and how she lived. He’d been watching her a long time, just like he had the others, but this time he was sure she was the one, even if she didn’t know it herself.

It was barely six thirty a.m. Sunday morning and Anna was already awake and showered, sitting on the edge of her bed unrolling a pair of tights along her legs as her husband looked on through tired, sleepy eyes. He hadn’t seen her look so exhausted in years, if ever. ‘I’ll be glad when this is all over,’ he mumbled. ‘Half-past six on a Sunday – what’s the matter with these people? Don’t they know this is supposed to be a day of rest?’

‘I don’t suppose they have much choice, do they?’ she reprimanded him, feeling a little bit like a cop for the first time, living by different rules and values to everyone around her, but not always liking it.

‘Do you have to go?’

‘Sorry, Charlie.’ She stood to straighten her skirt. ‘Duty calls.’

‘Try and get home a little earlier today,’ he insisted. ‘It would be nice to actually see you sometime this weekend.’

‘I can’t promise anything at the moment,’ she warned him. ‘I’ll be back when I’m back.’

Charles Temple propped himself up against his pillow and reached for the packet of cigarettes by his bedside, tapping one from the box and lighting it with a gold-plated Zippo. ‘Fuck’s sake, Charlie,’ Anna moaned. ‘Do you have to smoke in bed? In fact, do you have to smoke in the house at all? Now I’m going to stink of fags.’

‘Then you’ll probably smell like the rest of them,’ he teased. ‘Like a proper cop. A proper detective.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she snapped.

‘Nothing,’ he answered with a smirk. ‘Anyway, I only smoke at the weekends.’

‘You shouldn’t smoke at all – you’re a bloody surgeon,’ she reminded him. He merely shrugged his shoulders.

‘I must say, you seem quite smitten with your little police buddies. Something must have pricked your interest to have you running off to Peckham, of all places, on a Sunday morning.’

‘I’m working, remember?’ she reminded him.

‘Really?’ he asked with mock suspicion.

‘Yes, really. What is it you’re implying?’

‘Just thought you might’ve fallen for this DI’s animalistic charms. A bit of rough, and all that.’

‘His name’s Sean Corrigan and he’s neither rough or charming.’

‘Like him, though, don’t you?’

‘No really,’ she laughed. ‘Besides, he’s work. Or rather, it’s work.’

Bored with his little game, he gave a dismissive wave of his cigarette. ‘Whatever. Just hurry up and help the cops catch this sicko so we can return to a normal life.’

‘Is that what you think I’m there to do?’ she demanded, suddenly serious, annoyed by his ignorance as much as she was by her own feelings of deceit and treachery. ‘You think I’m there to help the police find this offender?’

‘Aren’t you?’ he questioned, puzzled.

‘Partly,’ she admitted, ‘but it’s not as simple as that. Never mind. I need to get going.’

‘Try not to let it get to you,’ he warned her, without really caring. ‘Be like the cops, blank it all out.’

‘You think it has no effect on them – seeing young lives torn away, dealing with the families of the victims? You think they just carry on, business as usual, and forget about it? Forget about everything?’

‘Don’t tell me you’re going native on me, Detective Chief Inspector Ravenni-Ceron.’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘I could never be one of them. Even if I worked with them for ten years, I’d never be one of them. For that to happen I’d have to become a police officer. They’re a closed shop to outsiders, it’s just the way they operate.’

‘But you admire them, don’t you?’ he seemed to accuse her, as if admiration was a betrayal of their own preconceived self-importance.

‘Of course I do,’ she snapped back. ‘If you saw what they had to do and how they had to do it, the hours they have to work, the lack of sleep or rest – and still they keep going, never asking for or expecting anyone’s gratitude, always expecting to be kicked when they’re down and blamed for everything that goes wrong in the world, but doing what they have to do anyway – if you saw that the way I’ve seen it, you’d admire them too.’

‘Don’t get too hooked on your new friends, Anna,’ he warned. ‘They’re only temporary, remember? It’s like you said, you can never be one of them.’

‘If you think I’m hooked, you must be delusional,’ she told him. ‘I want this over as much as you do, but not until I find out what I’m there to find out.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she answered as she pulled her suit jacket on. ‘Not any more.’

Sean pushed through the swing doors into the main incident room and found it deserted. He checked his watch – just gone half-past six in the morning. The office looked like a tip: dirty plates left on desks, mugs stained with half-drunk coffee dumped on every conceivable surface, rubbish bins overflowing with polystyrene cups, plastic sandwich boxes and screwed-up balls of paper that should have been shredded and placed in the confidential waste sacks, but people were getting too tired to care. He remembered it was Sunday, so the cleaners wouldn’t be through the office until the following morning. Things would get a lot worse before they got better. He couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the state of the office and the state of the investigation. Sundays – he always felt something bad was about to happen on Sunday and this was no different. Sundays as a child meant his father would be around more than usual, drinking, leading him by the hand to the upstairs bedroom, away from the rest of his family and his mother. Blind eyes turned.

He pushed the memories aside as he crossed the room and slunk into his office, throwing the contents of his pockets across his cluttered desk and hanging his raincoat on one of the metal hooks on the back of his door that served as a coat-rack. He considered sitting on the uncomfortable chair waiting for him behind his desk, but knew he needed to keep moving for a while, or at least standing. The few hours’ sleep and a hot shower had revived him somewhat, but if he sat in the chair now, as uncomfortable as it was, the tiredness would sweep back over him and beg him to allow his body and mind to sleep. He couldn’t let that happen. He was already feeling guilty about going home when the killer
was still out there, the lives of two women Sean had never met hanging on his ability to find them.

It was too early for the local cafés, or even the station canteen, to be open, so the caffeine he both craved and needed would have to come from something other than his usual black coffee. Still standing he rummaged through the desk drawers for his caffeine tablets, pushing aside packets of ibuprofen, paracetamol and indigestion tablets until he found what he was looking for, popping two from the silver foil and swallowing them without water, then taking another without checking the dosage instructions. ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ he muttered to himself as he began to push papers around his desk, waiting for the tablets to stimulate his brain enough for him to begin reading through the seemingly endless reports, the memory of last night’s fitful sleep fading to nothing – the dreams of trees in the dark, the constant hissing of the leaves in the breeze, the faceless man in the hooded top standing over a semi-naked Louise Russell giving way to the images that would plague him during the day to come.