The Toy Taker (48 page)

‘I’m already on my way back,’ he answered, ‘but call me the minute you have news.’

He took his time gathering his things and thoughts, strolling from the café and across the now treacherous road, along the street and through the revolving security doors at the Yard, flashing his warrant card as he passed the security scanners. A few minutes later he entered the main office and walked as casually as he could to where Addis stood like a heron waiting to strike at a fish. Sean tried to act as surprised as he could to find him in his office.

‘Morning, sir,’ he greeted him, pausing to empty his pockets and hang up his coat before sitting behind his desk, further firing the fury in the Assistant Commissioner’s eyes. ‘Is there something I can help you with?’

‘I saw DS Jones leaving the room a few minutes ago,’ Addis began. ‘I assume she’s gone to do your bidding?’

Sean shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you do,’ Addis told him, tapping the file he held across his chest with his thumb. ‘But let me save her the bother. This … this, Inspector, is why I’m here.’ He tossed the pink file marked
Confidential
on to Sean’s desk.

Sean tentatively opened it, holding his breath. The first thing he saw was a MISPER report with the photograph of a smiling little girl attached to it with a paperclip.

‘Fuck,’ Sean barely whispered, but Addis heard him clearly enough.

‘Fuck indeed, Inspector. More precisely, what the
fuck
is happening with this investigation? Another child taken – Victoria Varndell, five years old, snatched from her home in Mornington Crescent …’

Sean ignored the vitriolic tone, tuning out Addis’s presence as he speed-read the file. He didn’t know the area, but was pretty sure it was reasonably close to the other sites.

‘… Four children taken – one killed, for Christ’s sake – and the media all over it, all over us …’

Taken in the middle of the night – no sign of forced entry and nobody heard anything, except for the mother, who now thinks she may have heard whispering voices, but she thought she’d just been dreaming.

‘… made any progress at all? Do we have anything for those media bastards, or are you still flying blind, blundering …’

The family, seemingly wealthy, live in a converted mews. Father a merchant banker, mother a fashion designer with her own label.

‘… brought you here to solve high-profile cases quickly, not to make us look like incompetent, bungling idiots. I was told, wrongly as it turns out, that you were one of the best in the business. That you could make the connections …’

There was another child in the house at the time – the missing girl’s three-year-old sister, Katherine, who doesn’t appear to have been touched.

‘… state of you, and your office: a bloody mess, like this investigation. And look at the state of your team: they look like shit. They’re a disgrace. You’re a …’

The house was alarmed, but the alarm wasn’t activated at night for fear of the children setting it off if they went wandering.

‘… sorry, Inspector Corrigan, but I’m going to have to remove you from the investigation, effective immediately. The people of London want to see the police taking action. Replacing you with someone more suited to this investigation will hopefully at the very least buy us time.’

Sean finally looked up from the file, not having heard a word Addis had said. Something told him he needed to get to the scene as fast as he could – that the answers were there. He needed to see it while he was still in a semi-exhausted, dreamlike state – while his mind was too tired to be cluttered with the irrelevant vines that clung to all major investigations, and too tired to be even slightly affected by Addis’s sermon.

‘It’ll be done quietly,’ Addis continued, ‘you have my word on that. As soon as it can be arranged you’ll be moved back to a borough that’ll suit where you live. You should be grateful for the chance to work some sensible hours and see a bit more of your family.’

Sean stood and began to pull his coat on, still doing his best to ignore Addis, although he’d heard his last words.

‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ Addis demanded.

‘Out,’ Sean replied without emotion.

‘Out? Out where?’

‘To clear my head,’ Sean lied. ‘If I’m not needed here any more, I might as well be somewhere else. You’ll have my Handover Report by the end of the day.’

‘Fine,’ Addis stuttered as Sean brushed past him on his way out of the office. ‘And I’ll need you to clear your desk and vacate by tonight. Take some gardening leave until I find you a new posting.’

Sean stopped directly in front of him and fixed him with his cold, pale blue eyes. ‘Before I go, tell me one thing – were you ever a cop – a real cop?’

There was a slight pause before Addis answered, his eyes narrowing menacingly. ‘Once,’ he answered. ‘A long time ago. Can’t say I liked it very much.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Sean told him, the disgust on his face barely disguised as he headed for the exit.

He would usually been up by now, showered, shaved and dressed just as always, but this morning the pain in his head was debilitating, keeping him virtually paralysed in his bed, the usually neat sheets crumpled around his writhing limbs as his head twisted from side to side, a permanent grimace of agony etched into his grey, sweat-coated face. ‘Make the pain stop,’ he begged. ‘Please make the pain stop.’ But it only grew more intense. He jolted under its intensity, struggling to control his bladder and bowels.

All the while he could hear the pounding of the children’s feet on ceiling as they ran around in the room above. Their voices penetrated his pain as they chattered and laughed – conspiratorial voices mocking him, mocking his kindness. ‘Please, tell me what to do. Help me know what to do. I don’t know what to do,’ he panted, his fingers clawing at the sheets, but the voices had abandoned him, leaving him nothing but pain and confusion. ‘Dear God, help me. The Lord is my shepherd.’ Even his prayers went unanswered. ‘Why have you betrayed me – in my time of need?’ He braced himself against the pain and rolled on to his side, shuffling forward, eyes still tightly closed, until he felt his feet hanging over the edge of the bed. ‘God give me strength,’ he pleaded. He pushed himself from the bed, his knees landing hard as the crashed to the floor, his upper body slumped over the bed. ‘Have I not done everything you’ve asked of me? Why do you punish me? Tell me why.’

His eyes began to flicker open, the weak morning light seeping through the curtains serving to increase the hammering inside his head. Eventually he was able to turn his head and look up towards the footsteps pounding on the ceiling above. ‘Have I made a mistake? Have I not chosen carefully enough? Is one of them a Judas?’ His narrowed eyes slid from side to side, old, familiar feelings of paranoia spreading like creeping, strangulating vines through the roots of his mind. ‘Is it the girl?’ he asked. ‘The one who will never do as she is told?’ The pain faded as his delusions took hold, helping him grow stronger and stronger.

‘I understand,’ he told the voices crowding inside his head. ‘I hear you,’ he assured them as he pulled himself from the floor and tentatively stood without holding, his pyjamas clinging to his body, damp with sweat. Once he was sure his legs could support his body he began to head towards the bedroom door – slowly at first, but as the pain continued to subside and his strength returned, his shuffle turned into an unsteady walk and then into a purposeful, steady stride.

He walked into the hallway and stared up the stairs as he began to recite from Christ’s sermon on the mount. ‘And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee.’ The words made it clear to him what he needed to do next. He placed a foot on the first stair and began to climb. ‘For it is profitable that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.’

The door was opened by a tall, slim, flat-chested woman in her mid-thirties wearing a two-piece grey suit, white blouse and long, straight brown hair. Sean immediately recognized her as one of his own. She looked him up and down suspiciously before speaking, making him wonder for a second whether Addis had warned her to expect him and prevent him entering the scene. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked sternly.

He tugged his warrant card from his coat pocket and let it fall open for her to see. ‘DI Corrigan. Special Investigations Unit.’

Her face visibly relaxed. ‘Thank God for that,’ she whispered. ‘Thought you were a bloody reporter. I was told they might come creeping around.’

‘And you are …?’ Sean asked with a false smile.

‘Sorry,’ she apologized, holding out her hand. ‘DC Amanda Haitink, local CID – Sapphire Unit, to be more precise. I was briefed to stay with the family till someone from Special Investigations got here, and to keep an eye out for reporters.’

‘It’s a little early for reporters,’ he reassured her. ‘No one knows about this yet, and that’s the way we need to keep it – for now.’

‘I understand,’ she agreed, still guarding the entrance to the house. ‘Sorry,’ she said, finally standing aside. ‘I suppose you want to come in.’

He walked past Haitink and into the hallway, leaving her to close the door. The inside of the converted stable-block was dark and quiet, the atmosphere oppressive.

He quickly looked around and found his bearings. It was a large and luxurious home, the old features of the building perfectly blended with the contemporary interior design. Any pleasure he might have taken in the beauty of his surroundings had already been crushed by the presence he had sensed as soon as he entered the house. He knew the man he hunted had been here: the fact the family were obviously wealthy, the age of the missing child, the time and method of abduction, the fact there was another child left at the house – it all led him to the same conclusion. But aside from the logical arguments linking this case to the others, for the first time he could
feel
the man’s presence. His exhaustion, his conversation with the priest and Addis leaving him nothing to lose had at last freed his mind from the confusing clutter. He knew beyond doubt that there was something here, at this scene; something crucial that would finally lead him to the man he’d been so fruitlessly hunting. He could feel it with such certainty that his heart-rate began to rise and stomach tighten. Now all he had to do was find it, and find it before Addis had a moment of clarity and realized that he wasn’t about to just walk away from his quarry and three missing children, not when he knew he was still their best chance.

‘Any idea how they make their money?’ he asked, still looking for any link between the families.

‘He’s an investment banker in the City, but apart from that he seems all right, and she owns and runs a clothing boutique or something,’ Haitink explained.

‘Where are they now?’

Haitink grimaced and kept her voice low. ‘Dad’s in the kitchen at the moment, although he can’t sit still: keeps walking from room to room. Understandable, really. He’s not too enamoured with the police right now – he knows all about the other abductions, wants to know how we could have let this happen.’

‘I’ll talk to him,’ Sean promised. ‘And the mother?’

‘Not doing too good. I’ve tried to talk to her – just sit with her − but she wants to be on her own. Won’t even talk to her husband.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘The missing girl’s bedroom.’ Sean fired her a look of concern, and she knew why. ‘I know – I should have preserved it for Forensics, but … I just didn’t have the heart. If you’d seen her …’

‘It’s all right,’ Sean stopped her. ‘I understand. Besides, she must have been in the room a thousand times: she won’t affect its forensic state much now.’

‘Thousands of times?’ Haitink questioned. ‘I don’t think so. They only moved here a few weeks ago.’

Sean almost smiled at his own forgetfulness. ‘Of course,’ he told her. ‘Of course they did.’

‘Does that mean something?’ Haitink asked.

‘Only one man can tell us that for sure,’ he answered.

‘And who would that be?’

‘The man who’s taking them.’

Haitink studied him for a while before speaking again. ‘Kitchen’s through here,’ she told him and headed towards it knowing Sean would follow.

As soon as they entered Seth Varndell rounded on them. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, looking at Sean.

‘DI Sean Corrigan – Special Investigations Unit. It’s my job to find your daughter,’ he told him, trying not to think of Addis and what he’d do if he knew Sean was here now.

‘Then maybe you can start by telling me what the hell’s going on?’ Varndell’s short, stocky frame was taut with tension, his almost invisible spectacles magnifying terrified eyes. ‘We reported Victoria missing hours ago and nothing seems to have happened. Where are the forensic people? Why aren’t the streets full of cops searching for her? And what about search dogs and helicopters? Why isn’t anything happening?’

‘That all takes time to organize,’ Sean tried to explain, ‘but it will all be done, trust me.’

‘Time to organize,’ Varndell mocked. ‘No wonder you haven’t caught him yet. Why’s he doing this? Is he some sort of pervert, or has he got a grudge against people working in the City? Is this a revenge attack? How could you let him do this?’

Sean fought hard to resist the temptation to bite back. ‘Unfortunately these abductions aren’t the only bad thing happening in London right now and I don’t have a limitless supply of people, but I can assure you we’re putting as many resources as we possibly can into finding the man responsible, and getting the children back safely.’

‘Safely?’ Varndell questioned. ‘Safely? Isn’t it already too late for one of the children? I haven’t just arrived from another planet,’ he continued. ‘I saw it on the news last night. You found a boy in Highgate Cemetery – right? Dead – and you think he was taken by the same man who’s—’ He suddenly stopped himself, his hands searching for something to support him as his legs suddenly could no longer bear his weight. Sean sprang forward and managed to get both arms around Varndell’s chest and manoeuvre him into one of the chairs at the kitchen table.