The Toy Taker (53 page)

‘There’s no such thing as an accident,’ Sean told him calmly but firmly. ‘It’s always someone’s fault. If you hadn’t been in the house trying to abduct the boy, you wouldn’t have had to clamp your hand so tightly over his mouth that he couldn’t breathe, and he’d be here today – alive. You killed him, Douglas. Whether you like it or not, you killed him.’

‘No! No!’ Allen raised his voice, tears welling in his eyes. ‘It was an accident. Why won’t you believe me?’

‘Because we call those sort of accidents murder,’ Sean told him. ‘At the very least, manslaughter – although in this case, child-slaughter would seem more fitting.’

‘Inspector, please,’ Leane appealed to him.

‘OK, OK,’ Sean relented. ‘Let me ask you something simple, Douglas: why did you take them? Why did you take these children?’

‘To give them a better life – better than the life they had.’

‘These were children from privileged backgrounds – wealthy parents, beautiful houses, good schools, exclusive areas of London – what could you give them that would make their lives better?’

‘Love,’ Allen answered without hesitation. ‘I could give them love. Their parents didn’t care – not really. Nannies, au pairs, child-minders, toys to keep them quiet, computer games to keep them distracted. Their parents would do anything for them except spend time with them – nurture them and love them. They didn’t deserve children. Iris and I tried for years, but the Lord never saw fit to bless us with a child, even though we would have given it all the love in the world.’

‘Iris?’ Sean asked. ‘Your wife?’

‘She died.’ Allen told him what he already knew. ‘More than two years ago. Cancer. She deserved better.
We
deserved better. I only took the children who I could see weren’t loved. And I would have loved them, loved them as if they were our own.’

‘Must have made you pretty angry – seeing these parents with beautiful children, blessed by God when they didn’t deserve to be, while he left you with nothing: no children and your wife taken from you?’

‘Not angry – determined. Determined to save the children from a loveless childhood.’

‘That wasn’t for you to decide,’ Sean snapped at him. ‘That wasn’t your judgement to make.’

‘Not my judgement,’ Allen agreed. ‘God’s. It was God’s judgement. He blessed them with children and they forsook his blessing, they ignored and took for granted the gift of all gifts they had been given. God passed his judgement on them and gave me the strength and guidance to do his work.’

‘To take the children?’ Sean asked. ‘You’re telling me that God told you to take the children?’

‘The Lord is my shepherd.’

‘And how did he tell you to do these things?’

‘He spoke to me – in my mind – his voice as clear and distinct as yours is now. The voice of Our Lord and the voice of my wife guiding me, always guiding me – telling me what I must do.’

‘You heard your wife’s voice too?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Yes – giving me the strength to go on, even in the darkest of hours.’

‘Given Douglas’s medical history,’ Leane interrupted, ‘there’s no reason to doubt what he’s saying.’

‘No,’ Sean agreed. ‘I don’t suppose there is. But I need to know, Douglas, why didn’t you just take your medication?’

‘And silence the voice of God, and lose my wife for ever? Is that what you would have done?’ Allen asked. ‘Do you think yourself more important than God?’

‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘No, I do not, but I’m not the one being interviewed, am I? You are.’

Allen’s mouth fell open as if he was about to say something, but then it slowly closed. Sean sensed he might be going into lock-down and knew he needed to keep him talking, at least until he had enough to be sure Allen wasn’t a far more darkly dangerous animal than appearances would suggest. That his medical history wasn’t just something he’d created and nurtured so that he could hide behind it if he ever got caught.

‘What did it feel like,’ he asked, ‘when you let yourself into their houses? What did that feel like?’ For the briefest of moments he thought he’d detected the slightest glimmer in Allen’s eyes. ‘It was cold out at night. Inside the house must have felt warm – warm and safe. Did it make you feel like you belonged there?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Allen told him.

‘Did it make you feel in control? Did it make you feel like the God you say you serve?’

‘It didn’t feel like anything. I was only there for the child – for the sake of the child.’

‘Come on, Douglas – it must have felt special, knowing the house was yours – standing alone while the family slept – knowing exactly where the child you’d come to take waited for you. Did it make you feel powerful?’ Allen said nothing, his eyes never leaving Sean’s. ‘Because you knew everything about the house, didn’t you, Douglas? You’d been there before. You’d been there the night you took the child’s most prized possession – the thing you knew they loved more than anything – the thing you knew you could use to win their trust when you went to take them. That sounds like a man in complete control to me – not someone listening to voices inside his head.’

‘I did it so they wouldn’t be scared,’ Allen tried to explain. ‘I went to them the night before and I took their special toys so they wouldn’t be scared when it was time to come for them. I didn’t want them to be afraid, that’s all. I couldn’t stand it when they were afraid. They looked so … so alone.’

‘And when
you
were alone with them, what did you do to them? When you stood next to their beds in the middle of the night, did you touch them? Did your hand slide under their blankets and
touch
them?’

‘No! Never! You’re completely wrong. You don’t understand – I’d never … hurt them. I’d never do anything like that. I just wanted to love them.’

‘Love them? But when Samuel became too much trouble, you killed him.’

‘I told you – that was an accident.’

‘What about the others, Douglas? What were you going to do when they became too much
trouble
? Were you going to kill them as well?’

‘No, no!’ Allen spluttered, burying his head in his hands.

‘Get rid of them like the rubbish they were?’

‘No! I just did what the voices told me to do. I just did what the Lord told me to do – what Iris said I should do. They would never tell me to harm the children.’

‘There are no voices in your head,’ Sean accused, his voice rising. ‘No one’s telling you what to do. You took the children because you wanted to. You killed Samuel Hargrave because you wanted to – because it made you feel good.’

‘No!’ Allen fought back. ‘It tore me apart. The guilt was unbearable.’

‘Inspector,’ the solicitor interrupted. ‘I have to point out that, given my client’s medical history, it is entirely possible, even probable, that he has been hearing voices telling him what to do.’

‘If his medical background’s real, if it’s not something he’s created to hide behind. Manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility sounds a lot better than murder – doesn’t it, Douglas?’

‘I didn’t murder anyone, I swear.’

‘You murdered Samuel Hargrave. And it was only a matter of time before you murdered the other children as well.’

‘That’s a lie!’

‘One by one you’d have taken them from the room you kept them in and you’d have—’

‘No.’

‘You’d have pressed your hand over their mouths and held them—’

‘No! Stop this!’

‘Held them until they weren’t struggling any more.’

‘No.’

‘And then you’d have taken them to some place and left them for us to find. Some place you thought was special – some place where leaving them there made you feel less like the cold-blooded murderer of children you are.’

‘No!’ Allen shouted, tears, mucus and saliva mixing together and making his face shiny and wet. ‘No. No. No.’

‘I think that’s enough,’ Leane stepped in, but Sean was finished anyway.

‘All right,’ he told Allen, his voice calm and normal again. ‘All right, Douglas. That’ll be enough for now. Have a chat with your solicitor and Leane, then get some rest. We’ll talk again later, or maybe tomorrow.’ He stopped the recording, took the tapes out and began to seal one in its case.

‘When can I go home?’ Allen’s quiet voice broke the silence.

Sean looked up slowly. ‘Excuse me?’

‘When can I go back to my shop? I need to get back to the shop.’

‘I don’t think that’ll be happening for a very long time, Douglas. I’m sorry.’

‘But I was only doing God’s work,’ Allen explained. ‘I was doing what he willed me to do.’

Sean sighed deeply before answering, remembering the pitiful sight of Samuel Hargrave in the mortuary – his tiny broken body clutching his favourite soft toy, trying to equate that terrible scene with the shadow of a man who sat in front of him now. ‘It wasn’t God’s work, Douglas,’ he told him, ‘and it wasn’t God’s will either. One day I hope you can see that – I really do.’ He gathered his files and the tapes and stood to leave, looking from Leane to the solicitor. ‘Take as long as you need. Just let the jailer know when you’re done.’

He left the room as quickly as he’d arrived, Donnelly trailing in his wake. They stopped at the oversized custody suite desk to book the master-tape in as evidence.

‘Well, you certainly went for him,’ said Donnelly accusingly.

‘I had to know,’ Sean told him. ‘I had to know for sure.’

‘Know what?’

‘Whether he would have killed the other children – eventually.’

‘I see,’ Donnelly replied. ‘So what d’you want to do now?’

‘Let’s see how the search teams and Forensics get on. Let him rest. We’ll interview him again tomorrow in more detail. See if he can remember the when, where and how stuff.’

‘And then?’

‘Talk to the CPS – see what they want to do. It’s their decision.’

‘Fine,’ Donnelly agreed. ‘But what do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘About whether he would have killed the other children?’

Sean looked into Donnelly’s grey eyes. ‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On what God told him to do,’ Sean answered, his face serious and still. ‘But then you might say it was God who saved them – in the end.’

‘God?’ Donnelly questioned. ‘I thought it was you who saved them.’

‘Whatever,’ Sean said, continuing to log the tape. ‘None of that really matters now. The main thing is, this show’s over – for now, at least.’ He closed the logbook and tossed the master-copy tape on top of it before looking back to Donnelly. ‘Drink?’ he asked.

‘Constantly.’

Sean crawled around on his hands and knees collecting dozens of treacherous pieces of Lego from the living-room floor. He could hear the voices of his wife and daughters one floor above as Kate struggled first to get them into the bath and then struggled even more to get them out. A couple of days’ rest had made him feel almost like a different person. Normal. He allowed himself a smile as he listened to Kate’s toil, glad to be left in charge of the downstairs tidying up. It was almost the first time he’d let the children out of his sight since coming home after seeing Douglas Allen being led away on remand to await his possible trial. He tossed the last of the Lego pieces into the box and stood, still feeling stiff and sore after surviving the investigation with close to no sleep or proper rest. At least he still had another couple of days off before going back to work. When and what the next case would be, God alone knew the answer.

He made his way to the kitchen and poured himself and Kate a glass of inexpensive Chianti, sitting contentedly at the dining table to wait for her to reappear before he got on with cooking dinner – something he hadn’t done in quite a while. He hoped the distraction would stop his mind from wandering back to Douglas Allen and all the others before him. He didn’t want to return to that world, not just yet. Kate had pushed him for details about the investigation, but as usual he’d kept it vague – even more so than usual. No details.

Kate’s hurried footsteps down the stairs broke his tranquillity and warned him something was wrong. A few seconds later she burst into the kitchen looking agitated.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, getting to his feet.

‘I can’t find Louise’s Froggy.’

Sean knew his daughter wouldn’t sleep without the floppy green toy she’d had since birth.

‘What d’you mean, you can’t find it?’

‘I mean I don’t know where it is.’

‘Can she remember where she left it?’

‘If she could do that it wouldn’t be lost, would it?’

‘When did you last see it?’ he asked, his voice urgent and anxious.

‘When did I last see it?’

‘Yes,’ he snapped at her. ‘When did you last see it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Think,’ he pushed her. ‘Did you see it this morning?’
Allen had been working alone, hadn’t he? There couldn’t be – another?

‘I … I can’t remember,’ she answered, growing increasingly concerned as she watched him frantically move around the kitchen, searching in every cupboard and drawer, under the table and every chair.

‘I haven’t seen it today,’ he told her over her shoulder. ‘If I had, I would have remembered. Did she have it last night?’

‘Yes,’ Kate replied. ‘She definitely had it last night.’

‘But you can’t remember seeing it this morning?’

‘No.’

‘What about when you made her bed?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘But I thought you always put it on her pillow?’

‘Not always. Sometimes she keeps it with her. What’s this about, Sean? You’re beginning to scare me.’

‘Like you said – she won’t go to sleep without it.’

‘No – something else. There’s something else you’re not telling me.’

He walked past her and headed back towards the relatively tidy living room, certain he hadn’t come across the prized toy when he’d cleaned up.

‘Sean,’ Kate asked as she followed him into the room. ‘Why are you so worried about this bloody toy?’

‘I’m not,’ he lied. ‘Just help me find it – please.’

She shook her head and without another word began to help him search the room. Sean pulled toys from the shelves and dropped them on the floor, emptying out boxes of Duplo and anything else that could be concealing the thing he desperately searched for. His eyes fell upon the sofa the children had not long ago been curled up on, watching cartoons before bath and bed. He grabbed handfuls of loose cushions and threw them aside, pulling off the covering blanket they used to try and preserve the sofa covers and hurling it to the side until only the main cushions remained. He drew a breath and said a fast, silent prayer before tossing them aside, dropping to his knees with relief as a huge weight suddenly lifted from his mind and body. He held the small green frog in both hands, breathing out and smiling slightly as he stared into its stitched eyes.