The Keeper (52 page)

‘No!’ he screamed at himself, at the ugly thoughts taking over his mind – the thoughts that reminded him of last night – how good it felt to squeeze the life from
the whore’s
neck. ‘That was different,’ he yelled. ‘She betrayed me.’

He jumped to his feet and stumbled to the drawer where he kept his precious letters, pulling it open and searching frantically through the bundles until he found the one he was looking for – a thick roll of envelopes addressed to Hannah O’Brien. Yanking the elastic band away, he let the letters fall over the surface of the chest of drawers and began to spread them around so he could see as many of them as possible at the same time. Without even realizing it, his hand had slipped inside his tracksuit bottoms and gripped himself. Yes, he told himself, the others had all been mistakes, but at last he’d found the real Sam. He would rescue her and then she would save him from the ugly thoughts. It was how it was meant to be. Once he’d rescued her, he’d pile the other letters into one of the oil drums and burn them and with them all the ugly thoughts. But what if she didn’t understand what he’d had to do – the
sacrifices
he’d had to make? No, no, he reassured himself – she’d understand, she wouldn’t judge him – she never had.

First, however, there was still one more mistake he had to deal with. He took his hand away from the letters and headed slowly towards his bathroom.

Sally parked their car a good fifty metres from the address that Trewsbury had illegally given them. If Keller was at home, they didn’t want to spook him by screeching up outside his front door. They climbed from the car and began to walk along the neglected street of three-storey Victorian terraced houses, most of which had been converted into flats. Sean was already beginning to suspect that Keller had given the Post Office a false address or, more likely, had moved and not bothered to tell them. He was a Post Office employee, so discreetly having his mail re-directed wouldn’t have been too difficult.

As they closed on the address Sally became increasingly concerned about their course of action.

‘Maybe we should get TSG to hit the address? Go in hard and shake him up,’ she suggested.

‘No,’ said Sean, assessing the house. Even if Keller was still here, it was clear that Deborah Thomson would not be. ‘Let’s check it out first, see how the land lies, then we can consider using the TSG.’

‘Perhaps we should put him under surveillance,’ suggested Sally, ‘see if he leads us to Deborah Thomson. If we grab him now he may never talk. He could leave her to starve to death in some hole in the ground.’

‘Time,’ he reminded her, ‘it’s all about time we don’t have. Karen Green abducted – found dead seven days later. Louise Russell abducted – found dead five days later.’ He stopped and turned to face her. ‘He’s speeding up, Sally. The interval between the abduction and the killing is shrinking. How many days does Deborah Thomson have? Four? Three? Less?’

He started walking again, Sally trailing behind, almost breaking into a run to keep up until they reached the three shallow steps that led to the front door and a panel of doorbells mounted on the side of the door frame. Six bells meant six separate flats. The peeling paint on the front door and lack of names next to the intercom buttons told Sean the flats were probably occupied by the transient – London’s throngs of the unsettled and unwanted. He rang the only buzzer that had a readable name beside it and waited. After a few seconds that felt like minutes the intercom crackled and a voice leaked out of it.

‘Yes?’

‘Police,’ Sean said into the machine as quietly as he could without sounding like anything but a cop. ‘Can I have a word?’

More silent seconds. ‘What’s it about?’

‘Open the door and I’ll tell you,’ Sean promised.

‘Hold on a minute. I’ll come to the front door.’ They waited, listening to the sounds of doors opening and closing, locks being turned, shuffling footsteps growing nearer and a chain being attached to the door before finally it opened by four inches and the plump, pink face of a woman in her fifties peered through the gap, her small crooked teeth revealing the brown stains of years of cigarette smoking when she spoke.

‘Yeah?’ she asked them suspiciously in a thick South London accent. Sean couldn’t help but look her up and down, noting her ancient slippers and cardigan, her wild grey hair and swollen limbs.

‘DI Corrigan,’ he announced, holding his warrant card out.

The woman looked to Sally, who realized she wasn’t going to be satisfied with seeing just one warrant card. She sighed, pulling hers from her coat pocket and thrusting it towards the suspicious old woman who immediately looked back to Sean.

‘We need to find out if a certain person lives here. Can we come in?’

The woman’s eyes darted between them before she finally relented – more time wasted. ‘I suppose so,’ she muttered, releasing the chain and allowing Sean to push the door fully open and step past her into the building. Sally followed suit, closing the door behind her. The poky hallway felt very crowded with three of them in it.

‘Would you like a drink – a cup of tea or something?’ The image of foul-tasting tea served in a filthy cup flashed through Sean’s mind.

‘No, thanks, we’re in a hurry.’

‘It’s no bother. I was about to put the kettle on.’

Sean talked over the top of her. ‘Mrs …?’

‘Miss, actually. Miss Rose Vickery.’

‘Miss Vickery, does—’

‘But you can call me Rose.’

‘Rose. Does the name Thomas Keller mean anything to you? Does anyone by that name live in this house?’

‘People come and go from here all the time,’ she said. ‘Nobody stays long, except me. I’ve been here almost twenty years, back when you used to know your neighbours. Ain’t got a clue who lives here now – people coming and going all hours, but I never see nobody – just keep meself to meself.’

‘Do you rent your flat?’

‘Yeah, of course I do. All the flats in here are rented by the same landlord – Mr Williams.’

Sean was about to ask for Williams’s telephone number when Sally interrupted. ‘Guv’nor.’ He turned and saw her holding a bundle of mail, most of which looked like junk. She took a couple of letters from the pile and handed them to him. He read the name –
Thomas Keller, Flat 4, 184 Ravenscroft Road, Penge.
Sean passed the letters to Rose.

‘This is 184 Ravenscroft Road, right?’

‘Yes.’ She sounded nervous.

‘And this is the name of the man I just asked you about – Thomas Keller.’

‘Yes, but I don’t read other people’s mail,’ she protested. ‘Besides, there’s mail still comes here for people who are long gone.’

‘Come on,’ said Sean. ‘You must see the names on the letters, when you’re searching for your own mail?’

‘What you trying to say?’

‘I’m saying you know who lives here and who doesn’t. So you need to tell me, does Thomas Keller live in flat 4? Now!’ he demanded, raising his voice and making Rose flinch.

‘I don’t know,’ she insisted, pulling her cardigan tightly around herself.

Sean thought for a second. ‘He’s a postman. Maybe you remember seeing him in his Post Office uniform.’

‘Oh,’ Rose declared, almost smiling with relief, ‘him. The postie, yeah, he used to live here, but he don’t no more – ain’t lived here for a few years. He pops back every now and then to pick up his mail. I suppose he kept his key for the front door – most of the old residents do, you know. I saw him a few weeks ago, actually. I remember it because I said to him, you’d think he’d be able to get his mail sent to the right address, seeing how he’s a postie and all.’

Sean and Sally looked at each other – they needed to go.

‘I don’t suppose you have a forwarding address for him?’ Sean asked, more in blind hope than anticipation.

‘No, love,’ Rose answered.

‘What now?’ said Sally.

Sean stared down at the letter in his hand and jabbed at the name. ‘I know this name,’ he said, ‘but how and where?’ He shook his head as if clearing it of a foolish idea. ‘Samantha Shaw,’ he finally said. ‘We need to see her, maybe she knows where he lives.’

‘Shall I tell him you’re looking for him?’ said Rose. ‘You know, the postie. If I see him, shall I tell him to get in touch?’

‘No,’ Sean told her. ‘Don’t worry about it, Rose. I’ll be seeing him soon enough.’

Anna had been at Peckham when she’d received the phone call summoning her to New Scotland Yard, but no one had noticed her slip away. The light Sunday traffic made the journey from one side of the Thames to the other reasonably short and the pavements around New Scotland Yard that were usually swarming with human traffic were deserted. She passed the armed guards clutching their sub-machine guns overtly in a manner that would have been unthinkable on the streets of London little more than a decade ago, flashing her security pass to the private guards manning the metal detectors just inside the entrance and then walking along the long corridor to the back of the building where the main lifts were. She ascended to the penultimate floor where she knew Assistant Chief Constable Robert Addis, Serious and Organized Crime Directorate, awaited.

She entered the reception area expecting to see the ever-present secretary who guarded Addis’s office like a rabid Rottweiler sitting at her desk, scowling at anyone who dared request an audience with the deity next door. But the reception was empty. As she walked deeper into the room she could hear the faint shuffling of paper coming from the adjoining office and began to move slowly towards it, the sudden sound of a man’s voice, loud and bold, making her jump.

‘Anna – glad you could make it. Come in and sit down.’

She took a seat on the other side of the large wooden desk to the smiling Addis, who sat with his hands together as if praying. ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked. ‘You must get a lot of visitors.’

‘Not on a Sunday,’ he said. ‘Even the great police of the metropolis slow down on the Sabbath. If I was ever going to commit a serious crime I’d commit it on a Sunday.’

‘I didn’t know assistant commissioners were expected to work on Sundays,’ Anna continued. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at home with your family?’

‘My family understand,’ Addis assured her, the smile falling from his lips. ‘Besides, I’m not expected to work on Sundays – I prefer to. I’ve always found it an excellent day to deal with some of the … shall we say, more sensitive policing matters, when there aren’t so many people around who could accidently overhear something they weren’t supposed to.’

‘Like your secretary?’

The smile jumped back on to Addis’s face. ‘Did you bring it? The report?’

‘I have it,’ she confirmed. ‘It’s as complete as it can be, given the time and circumstances it was prepared under and taking into account the non-cooperation of the subject.’

‘But it’s informative – yes?’

‘I believe so, but I’m having some serious concerns about possible client confidentiality. This doesn’t feel entirely ethically correct.’

‘Client confidentiality?’ Addis mused, his praying fingers tapping against each other. ‘But my dear Anna, I am the client, remember? I hired you to prepare a psychological profile and in exchange you were given access to areas and information others in your trade could only dream about. A mutually beneficial arrangement – I’m sure you’ll agree.’

‘But what about his basic human rights – freedom of information and his right to know?’

‘Anna, Anna, Anna – he’s a police officer. I’m afraid such niceties don’t always apply to us. Freedom of information, the right to strike, health and safety, restriction on working hours – these are not things that are vouchsafed to us. If they were, we’d never get a damn thing done now, would we? So, the report, if you don’t mind.’

Anna sighed and fished in her briefcase, pulling out a file the size of a fashion magazine that she passed across the desk to the serious-faced Addis.

‘It’s all in there,’ she said. ‘Everything I could discover, anyway.’

‘Good,’ Addis replied, finding the temptation to run his fingers over the file too much to resist. ‘And he suspects nothing?’

‘I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. He’s clearly of a high intellect. I tried to interview him a couple of times, but he saw me coming and clammed up. Most of my findings were through straight observation and speaking to his colleagues.’

‘And what did that tell you?’

‘It’s all in the report.’

‘I’m sure it is, but perhaps you could give me a verbal summary to be going on with?’

‘Very well. As I’ve said, he’s intelligent, highly observant and determined. I wouldn’t call him a natural leader, but his subordinates seem to follow him willingly. They clearly believe in him. He’s anchored by his wife and children. He may not spend much time with them, but they’re enormously important to him and his ability to deal with what he has to deal with. Just knowing they’re there is crucial to him – even if he doesn’t always know it himself. He possesses an extraordinary ability to combine his imagination and experience, and this enables him to visualize past events.’

‘What does that mean, exactly?’

‘It means he can recreate events that have occurred at the crime scenes he attends. In his mind he can see what happened there.’

‘Is he psychic?’

‘No – and personally I don’t believe anyone is. He simply has a highly developed sense of projected imagination. It’s probably not as uncommon as you may think in police officers – especially detectives. If you see something enough times and then later solve the riddle of how it came to be, then eventually you’ll start to see crime scenes differently. You’ll start to see what happened there even before the evidence or witness testimony explains it.’

‘And that’s all he’s doing?’ Addis asked. ‘Combining experience with imagination?’

‘Largely.’

‘But not entirely?’

‘No. Not entirely.’

‘So there’s something else? Something that enables him to have these … insights?’

‘I believe so. Is there anything in his past, some event in his service history that may have caused him psychiatric problems? Something that may have left him suffering from post-traumatic stress?’