The Keeper (47 page)

He stepped out into the bitter night, the clear skies allowing the temperature to drop dramatically, the freezing, still air catching him by surprise, causing his breath to shallow until his lungs adjusted to the cold mixture he forced into them. As he strode through the night across the derelict yard, great plumes of breath burst from his mouth, clouds of condensation reflecting the moonlight before dying to nothing. He unlocked the padlock and pulled the metal door to the cellar open, its scraping and screeching turning him to a statue as he listened to the darkness for signs of danger, only daring to move once the resonating sounds of the door had faded. Slowly he began to descend into the faintest yellow light below, the underground cavern significantly warmer than the world outside. He reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the cellar, not speaking, waiting in the gloom, listening for the women, allowing his eyes to adjust to the man-made light, feeling calmer than usual, more in control, more instinctive, as if whatever was going to happen was somehow by his unconscious design – clear and unstoppable. Fate. His and theirs.

After a few minutes he walked purposefully to the cage in which Louise Russell cowered in the corner, her eyes wide with terror and suspicion, unblinking, following his every slightest move, waiting for him to speak. But he just stood next to her cage, staring in at her through the wire and faint light, until finally he turned his back on her and walked mechanically to the string that hung from the ceiling and acted as a light switch. He pulled the string and washed the room with the weak light. She could see the cattle prod clearly now, the memories of how he’d used it to torture Karen Green still painfully fresh – how he’d used it to make her compliant the night he had taken her from her cage and led her to the stairs, half helping her, half dragging her, ignoring her pleas and promises to do whatever he wanted her to, just so long as he let her stay. Life in the cage was better than no life at all.

Panic spread through Louise’s body as she realized why he had come in the dead of night. She scuttled around inside her cage like an animal sensing it’s about to be put down, looking for an escape she knew didn’t exist, a weakness in the metal wire she knew she wouldn’t find – watching him with horror as he strode back to her cage, moving around to the small hatch and unlocking it, placing the prod on top of the cage while he took the syringe from his tracksuit bottoms and removed the safety cap.

‘Give me your arm,’ he demanded, his voice strong, but cold and lifeless. She wrapped her arms around her in a futile attempt to save them from the inevitable. ‘Give me your arm or you know what’ll happen,’ he warned, resting his free hand on the cattle prod as a reminder of Karen Green’s fate.

‘No,’ she pleaded. ‘I can’t. Please. I can’t.’ Tears streaked down her dirty face leaving clean tracks through the thin layer of dust that had settled on her skin over the last few days during which she hadn’t been allowed to wash. He stood and watched her for a while, then closed the hatch, replacing the safety cap on the syringe and returning it to his pocket, recovering the prod and moving around to the main door of the cage. Louise’s terrified eyes followed him every inch of the way, watching as he held the prod under his armpit while he fumbled for the padlock key in his pocket. Her heart pounded uncontrollably as she watched him slot the key into the lock and jiggle the padlock free, her eyes darting from side to side. She felt her bowels and bladder loosen as he slowly eased the door open, a trickle of urine running down the inside of her legs.

Now he was in the cage with her, the cattle prod once more held firmly in his hands, pointing straight towards her. She felt close to fainting as she remembered Karen’s body twisting and contorting each time he’d stabbed the prod into her bare flesh, her screams of agony. She couldn’t let that happen to her. Her mind suddenly flashed with false hope, that maybe he had let Karen go free – had taken her into the woods or city and released her, that the drug he had given her was purely so she wouldn’t remember where she’d been kept, that Deborah had been wrong about her body being found, or that it had been the body of someone else. ‘Please,’ she begged him, unfolding her arms and offering both to him, each upturned and ready to be injected. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll do as you say. I’ll do anything you say.’ He was so close, moving slowly towards her, his mouth slightly open, revealing his crooked, stained teeth, his eyes narrow and cruel.

‘Too late for that,’ he hissed at her. ‘I know what you are, you little whore.’

She was about to speak, but the electricity that the cattle prod poured into her body jammed her jaw shut as she fell on to her side, every muscle wracked in spasm, the pain etching itself into her brain. The convulsion lasted a matter of seconds, unlike the longer-lasting effects of the stun-gun, and she felt her body begin to relax only to be punished again by another shot from the prod and then another and another, in her spine, her stomach and thighs, until she lay exhausted and motionless.

He stood over her, watching for signs that she was still capable of resisting him, the deep scratches in his face reminding him to be cautious, even of fallen prey. He kicked her without venom several times in her ribcage, causing her to moan slightly, but barely stir. Satisfied, he knelt beside her, resting the cattle prod on the floor and removing the syringe from his pocket, taking her arm in his other hand and searching for a useable artery, but her dehydration made it impossible to find one. He clasped the syringe in his teeth and began to slap the crook of her arm, trying to raise the blood vessels, until finally he saw the traces of a blue line running beneath her skin. Quickly he clamped her arm just above the elbow with his fingers and waited for the blood to dam and make the artery more prominent, watching without emotion as it swelled to an almost normal size. He took the syringe from his teeth and laid the needle across the blue line in her arm before bringing it to a shallow angle and pushing its sharp point through her thin, pale skin, sinking it deeply into the blood vessel, drawing the miniature plunger backwards first, pulling a few millilitres of her own blood into the syringe, the red liquid swirling and mixing with the alfentanil already inside. Then he remorselessly pushed both blood and drug into her arm, the beat of her own heart rushing it to the far reaches of her body. He pulled the needle from her artery and waited, listening for the sigh he knew would ease from her mouth, a sigh that would mean the anaesthetic had worked and she would now be unable to resist his will. After a few seconds he heard what he was waiting to hear.

Looking down on Louise Russell’s prostrate body he watched her chest gently rise and fall as her half-shut eyes flickered, quiet moans coming from her mouth, her arms lying behind her, above her head. He watched as her breasts rose and fell, her lips opening and closing, as if she was speaking silent words that only he could hear, telling him she wanted him, needed him, making his already stiff penis harder than he could bear. ‘I know you do, you little whore. I know you desire me.’ Hurriedly he pushed her legs apart and kneeled between them, pulling his tracksuit trousers halfway down to his thighs and releasing himself, swollen and grotesque. ‘Look what you’ve done,’ he chastised her. ‘You’ve made me as disgusting as you are. As weak as you are. You’re nothing to me now,’ he told her, his face twisted with contempt.

Deborah had been looking on, transfixed in horror, but knowing what was coming she could watch and listen no more. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, clamped her hands over her ears, but she couldn’t block out the sound of him grunting and whining, she couldn’t block out the involuntary cries and moans of his victim. Humming to herself as loudly as she dared, she waited until the terrible sounds of Louise’s torture relented before summoning the courage to look back at the other cage, watching as Keller pulled up his trousers. He knew she was looking but he seemed unable to meet her eyes, panting and breathing heavily after the effort of his assault.

‘See what you made me do,’ he asked Louise. ‘Well, you’ve tricked me for the last time. You won’t cheapen me again. You’re the little whore now, not me.’ His voice was flat and mechanical, devoid of emotion. ‘It’s time for you to go. I don’t want you here any more.’

He hauled Louise to her feet and hauled her from her cage. Deborah tried to speak, to scream at him to stop, to leave Louise alone, but no words came from her open mouth, the terror of knowing what was going to happen to Louise striking her dumb. She looked on in silence as he half-dragged and half-assisted the partially anaesthetized woman across the cellar floor, pulling the string that returned the cellar to near darkness as he passed it. Still Deborah couldn’t speak as she listened to him leading Louise around the corner to the stairs, the sound of their shuffling, unsteady feet more awful than anything she’d ever heard.

The metallic clang of the door being closed and locked was followed by silence, broken only by the sound of running water. For the first time since he’d taken her, Deborah was alone. But for how long?

Louise’s terribly prophesy had come true. It was her turn now – her turn to become Louise Russell. To become Karen Green.

Deborah sank to the floor of her cage and hugged herself, rocking and crying in the twilight of the cellar. Alone.

Sean drove through the virtually deserted streets of south-east London to his modest terraced home in Dulwich, the empty roads making the short journey a fast one. He enjoyed the peaceful eeriness of the streets at dawn, a nether-world that few other than emergency service workers ever saw, at least while they were sober. It reminded him of his early days in the police, a young uniformed officer driving home after a night-shift, tired but content, watching all the bleary-eyed commuters driving in the other direction. It made him feel different – unique. He parked as close as he could to his house and walked the short distance to the front door, his footsteps heavier than he would have wished in the quiet of the night, although thankfully a gusting wind disguised his approach. As he unlocked the door he was pleased to see Kate had followed his often repeated instructions and had used the dead-lock as well, not just relying on the far more easily opened latch-lock. He eased the door open and stepped into his home, the warmth and comforting scent of his family temporarily chasing away the daytime demons. Kate had left a small lamp on for him, her own experiences of arriving home in the dead of night making her appreciate a little illumination when first stepping inside your own house, while at the same time not wanting to turn the more powerful overhead lights on and risk disturbing the rest of the family while they slept. Police and doctors, firemen and nurses – eternal teenagers who would never be allowed to grow out of sneaking into their own homes in the middle of the night, forever fearful of capture.

He closed the door behind him even more carefully than he’d opened it, slipped his shoes off and tiptoed to the kitchen, where he turned on the lights of the overhead extractor-hood to help him navigate his way around. Next he emptied his pockets on to a newspaper on the kitchen table, its density nullifying the sound of his phone, keys, wallet, warrant card and assorted coins as they hit the surface. He hung his raincoat and jacket over a chair, loosened his tie even more than it already was and headed for the cupboard where he knew he’d find a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a short, fat glass. He poured himself what he thought he could get away with and still be able to drag himself out of his bed in little more than three hours’ time and sat at the table, sighing loudly as he felt the pain in all his joints at once.

Three hours’ sleep wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough to allow his body and mind to regroup. He tried to work out how many hours he’d been awake for, but exhaustion made the problem almost impossible to solve and he soon gave up. The clock hanging on the kitchen wall warned him it was nearly 2.30 a.m. He gave another sigh and stared into the drink in his hand, the bourbon the only thing he could think of that was going to slow his thoughts enough to allow any sort of sleep to come. He drank it in one go, burning his throat and chest as it headed for his empty stomach, the lack of food making the effects of the alcohol instant and satisfying.

He heaved himself out of the chair, left the kitchen and climbed the stairs. As he passed his daughters’ bedroom, he tried to resist peeking in through the gap in the door but failed, the faint blue light from their night lamps somehow making them look even more alive than they did in natural light, although he could barely remember the last time he’d seen them in daylight. Two little girls who before he knew it would become young women – just like the young women the madman had taken. His eldest daughter even had the same name – Louise.

Sean chased the thoughts away as quickly as they’d come – they had no place in his home. He eased his head back through the gap and sneaked into his bedroom, Kate’s shape clear underneath the duvet, still and silent. He undressed in the dark, draping his clothes over the only chair in the room, and slipped into bed, the bourbon acting like an anaesthetic, like the chloroform the madman used on his victims. Again he chased the thoughts away, thoughts that had no place in his bed as he lay next to his wife.

Kate’s voice startled him – not the voice of someone who had been asleep and then woken, but the voice of someone who hadn’t been able to sleep – the voice of someone who had been waiting for him. ‘If you’re home, then I assume you haven’t caught him yet. You haven’t found the women.’

‘No.’ His heart was still racing from the surprise. ‘Not yet, but it won’t be long. I’m sure of it. We’re coming to the end. I’ll be meeting him soon.’

‘How d’you know? Have you found something?’

‘No,’ he answered, ‘but I will. The answer’s there, just waiting for me to see it.’

‘I know what you mean,’ she said, giving him an idea.

‘Kate.’

‘Uhhhm.’

‘What do you do when you’ve got a patient who is critically ill, one you’ve tried everything on, done everything to try and save them, everything that should have helped them recover, yet their condition goes on getting worse and worse? What would you do?’