The Keeper (15 page)

His eyes grew wider as a smile fattened his lips. He thrust the prod towards her again, his smile turning to a snarl as he pushed it hard into her back. Her second scream wasn’t as deafening as the first, the pain in her spine causing her to arch unnaturally backwards, squeezing her already empty lungs.

Louise watched the torture from her own cage with both fear and rage. ‘Leave her alone,’ she shouted. ‘You fucking coward, leave her alone.’ But her demands were ignored, as if she wasn’t even there.

‘Put your arm through the hatch,’ he told Karen, sounding calmer now as the room fell silent. After a few seconds she began to stir, struggling to her hands and knees and crawling the three feet to the other side of the cage, her fingers curling around the wire as she slowly dragged herself to the height of the hatch and slid her arm through, quietly crying in surrender. ‘Good,’ he said, pulling the syringe from his pocket and discarding the cattle prod. He tugged the cap from the needle and took hold of her arm. ‘Keep still,’ he warned her and began to search for a vein.

It was proving harder than he thought. He regretted not having brought something to use as a tourniquet to swell the blood vessels in the crook of her arm. Tutting in exasperation he plunged the needle in, but was sure he hadn’t found a vein. He pulled it out without care and pushed it deep into the crook of her arm a second time, the pain making her struggle. ‘Be still,’ he hissed into her face, but again he’d missed his mark. Sweat was dripping from him as his frustration mounted. He wrenched the needle free and immediately shoved it back in, a satisfied noise leaking from his mouth as he saw the needle had found its mark. Too quickly he pushed the alfentanil from the syringe and into her vein, the surging drug agonizingly painful as it made the blood inside her body feel as if it was turning to ice, rushing around her body, slowing her breathing and relaxing her muscles, her mind spinning as if she was seriously drunk. He pulled the needle free and released her arm, watching her as she slid to the floor, conscious but defenceless.

Like a predator wary of its wounded prey, he deactivated the cattle prod and used it as a stick to poke his victim, stabbing it hard into her back and ribcage. Karen groaned each time he jabbed her, limply trying to ward away the stick. Satisfied, he smiled a sickly grin and moved to the main door of her cage, unlocked it and entered.

For a few moment he stood over her, still cautious, still using the prod to ensure she was no threat to him. Then he suddenly snapped into action, discarding the cattle prod and rushing at her, just as he’d practised, grabbing a fistful of the hair on top of her head, slipping his other hand under her jaw, dragging her across the floor of her cage and into the main body of the cellar.

Louise shrank into a ball, pressing her eyes shut and covering her ears against the screams.

‘Get up,’ he told Karen, quietly at first, then louder. ‘Get up.’ He knew he wouldn’t be able to pull her up the stairs; the effort of dragging her from the cage had drained most of his strength. ‘Get up!’ he screamed.

Karen tried to speak but could only mumble, the alfentanil numbing her mind and tongue. The adrenalin of anger breathed some new strength into him as he crouched next to her and draped her arm around his shoulders, lifting her weight with his burning legs, the veins in his neck swelling blue under the strain. Once he began to walk he found she could take most of her own weight as she moved one leg in front of the other, heading in whatever direction he led her, struggling to recall where she was and why she was there.

‘Am I going home now?’ she managed to whisper, her eyes trying to focus on the stranger who was going to take her from this place.

‘Yes,’ he lied, ‘just keep walking. I’m going to take you home now.’

Louise had opened her eyes to the unfolding scene and her ears to his lies. ‘Leave her alone,’ she begged. ‘Please don’t hurt her. She won’t be able to tell the police anything. She doesn’t even know where we are.’

‘No,’ he shouted back. ‘I can’t do that. She’s too dangerous. She could ruin everything for us. I can’t let that happen.’

He headed for the stairs, Karen obediently holding on to him. It took him several minutes to reach the top, the task of removing a drugged woman from the cellar far more difficult than he’d thought it would be. Once outside, he propped her against the wall while he slammed the heavy door shut and clasped the lock back into place, Louise’s screams from below virtually inaudible now.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Karen asked, slurring the words.

‘I told you,’ he replied in a mock-friendly voice, ‘I’m taking you home.’

Gripping her around the bicep, he marched her across the yard, stopping several times as she fell, tripping on the clutter she couldn’t see in the dark or through the clouds of the anaesthetic. After the short, perilous journey they reached his Ford. He popped open the boot and sat her on the edge, gently pushing her chest so she fell back, lifting her legs and folding them neatly into the tight space. The fingers of her right hand curled around the rim of the boot as she sensed danger.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked, confused, desperately trying to make sense of her situation.

‘Shut up and be quiet,’ he hissed, lifting his foot and stamping down on her fingers, slamming the boot the second she recoiled in pain.

His heart was pumping so fast as he jumped into the driver’s seat he feared he wouldn’t be able to keep control long enough to do what he knew he must do. He paused for a moment, breathing deeply and slowly, calming his mind and body, thinking about the task ahead, the route he would take to the place he’d already chosen – the way he’d take her from the car, the way he’d walk her into the woods and finally, the way he’d rid himself of his mistake.

John Russell sat alone in the kitchen of what he and Louise had dreamed would one day be their family home. He sipped his whisky and water, feeling ever more guilty as he remembered the relief when the police had told him they were sure Louise hadn’t simply run off with another man.

Detective Constable Fiona Cahill entered the room, disturbing his solitude and grief. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked gently.

Russell looked up from his drink at the tall, handsome woman in her mid-thirties standing in his kitchen, her short hazel hair cut for style and function, her intelligent green eyes examining him. ‘Why are you here?’ he answered her question with one of his own.

‘I’m the Family Liaison Officer, remember. That kind of makes me your minder until everything gets sorted out.’ He didn’t respond. ‘I’m here to help you with anything you need, to answer any questions you may have about what we’re doing and what we intend to do. This can all be a bit confusing if you’re not used to it – scary even.’ She noticed a slight contraction of his pupils that betrayed his fears. ‘It’s my job to try and make it that much more bearable – as far as I can, anyway.’

‘Why do I need a Family Liaison Officer?’ he asked without feeling. ‘Aren’t they usually assigned to the families of murder victims?’

DC Cahill managed not to look away. ‘Not always,’ she reassured him, ‘there’s no fixed rule, really. We often assign Family Liaison Officers in kidnaps, vulnerable people, that sort of thing.’

‘But you’re not expecting a ransom demand, are you?’ he asked, his eyes growing ever more dull and lifeless, reminding her of a stabbing victim she’d held until he was dead, back in her days as a rookie in uniform. She shook the memory away.

‘No,’ she answered truthfully. ‘We’re not expecting a ransom demand. If it was going to happen, it would have by now.’

‘What then?’ Russell snapped at her. ‘None of this makes sense. Who would take her? Why would anyone do that?’

‘I’m afraid a lot of the people we deal with make no sense, but you mustn’t give up hope.’ DC Cahill struggled to find words of encouragement. ‘If anyone can find her, it’s DI Corrigan. Trust me, this case couldn’t be in better hands. We all just need to stay positive.’

‘But that won’t make any difference, will it? It doesn’t matter whether I stay positive or whether I think the worst. It won’t make any difference. It’s like having cancer: some people swear they’re going to beat it and then six months later they’re dead, while others almost give in to the disease as soon as they’re diagnosed, but live until they’re ninety. It doesn’t matter what we think – it’s already been decided.’

DC Cahill knew he spoke the truth, but her training and experience wouldn’t let her agree with him. ‘You probably need to eat something,’ she said.

‘No thanks, I’m not hungry.’ DC Cahill saw the tears welling in his eyes, eventually growing too heavy and running down his cheeks like tiny spring streams. ‘I just want her back, you know. That’s all I want. I just want her back. I don’t care what’s happened to her, I don’t even care what happens to the bastard that took her – I just want her back.’

Thomas Keller drove along the single-track road that led to Three Halfpenny Wood, in Spring Park, Addington, a few miles south of London. He drove with the lights off, searching for the spot he’d found several weeks previously, but it had been daytime then and now in the dark and rain, with no street-lighting, it was proving more difficult than he’d expected to find it again. He slowed to a crawl, trying to locate the giant oak tree that marked the place where he would stop. Then he saw it, black branches moving in the wind, making the cold air around it sing. Relief washed over him as he put the car into neutral and let it coast to a stop without touching his brakes. He turned the engine off and stepped into the freezing drizzle that blew into his face making him feel even more alive and awake.

Keller stood by the side of his car, as alert as the nocturnal creatures that hid in the wood watching him, every sense burning with concentration as he listened and watched for movement, tasting the air for the presence of others. Only after several minutes, once he was totally sure he was alone, did he move to the back of the car, filling his lungs with the night air and tugging the hood of his tracksuit top over his head to protect him from the rain before opening the boot and staring down on the terrified woman curled into a tight ball inside.

He reached in and gripped her wrist, pulling her hard, trying to drag her from the boot, but he wasn’t strong enough to lift the dead weight she had become. ‘Get out,’ he ordered her in a loud, flat voice. ‘It’s time for you to go.’

‘No,’ Karen pleaded. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘I’m letting you go,’ he lied, ‘but you need to get out of the car.’

‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you.’

Keller felt panic rising in his chest, the fear that someone might discover him here in the woods in the dead of night with a near-naked woman in the boot of his car. He had to do something. Leaning into the boot, he grabbed the small, stunted baseball bat he kept there and waved it in front of Karen’s face. ‘Get out or I swear I’ll hurt you.’

‘Leave me alone,’ she begged him. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

‘Get out of the car and I won’t.’ He spat the words into her face, panic threatening to take away what little control he had left, but still she wouldn’t do as he commanded. ‘Get out of the fucking car,’ he screamed as loudly as he dared, the wind and rain swallowing his words before they could travel more than a few feet, but she continued to cower in the boot.

He raised the bat above shoulder height and brought it smashing down on to her knee, the pain slicing through the alfentanil and making her scream. Again he raised the bat, this time smashing it down on to her elbow, her next scream merging with her first. Wrapping a hank of hair around his fist, he pulled as hard as he could, partially dragging her as she scrambled from the boot and fell to her knees on the wet gravel road. He slammed the boot shut and pushed the bat into the waistband of his loose tracksuit bottoms, his eyes never leaving the cold, wet, shivering creature kneeling before him, the drizzle sticking to her body, making her olive skin look like the sea at night. He slid his hands under her armpits and pulled her to her feet, immediately pushing her towards the forest that waited at the side of the road.

She stumbled across the grass verge and into the dark, foreboding trees, the shadow and musky smell of him close behind her, shoving her forward and then helping her to her feet whenever she fell, marching her deeper into the forest. Soon her feet were covered in cuts from the brambles that snaked across the ground. She tried to turn to face him, wanting him to see her face as she pleaded not to die in this godforsaken place, but each time she turned he shoved her in the back, sometimes knocking her to the ground as she tripped on unseen snares. ‘Please,’ she implored the trees in front of her, ‘just let me go and I swear I won’t tell anyone. Please, Jesus, I swear to God I won’t tell anyone.’

‘You have no god,’ he sneered, gripping her hair and twisting it tight. ‘You betrayed me, Sam. You let them keep us apart. Your parents, the teachers, they all lied and you believed them. You turned your back on me. You abandoned me and left me alone, Sam, you left me all alone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she told him, playing his game, sensing one last chance to save herself. ‘I won’t ever leave you again, I promise, I swear to God.’ The anaesthetic was wearing off, but still she felt so weak and confused, it was difficult to keep up with what he was saying, difficult to pick her way through the labyrinth of his distorted mind.

‘Do you know what happened to me after you left me?’ he asked. ‘Do you know what they did to me in school, in the care home? The things they made me do?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she tried to touch his conscience. ‘It wasn’t my fault. I wanted to stay with you, but they took you away. I couldn’t find you,’ she rambled, hoping something she said would ring true with whatever he was talking about, would make him pause and think before he did to her what she was increasingly sure he would.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice devoid of emotion, ‘but you betrayed me then and you’d betray me again.’ He stopped walking, his hand resting on her shoulders, pulling her to a halt.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked through choking sobs, trying to turn to face him.