The Toy Taker (13 page)

Sean swung into the new Inquiry Office at Scotland Yard shortly after eight a.m. and was immediately confronted by a scene of chaos as his team continued to unpack cardboard boxes and rearrange the furniture, crawling under desks to search for power-points and telephone sockets. Donnelly stood in the middle of the maelstrom, conducting affairs without offering to help, while Sally took refuge in her office, her head buried in reports. She gave a start when Sean rattled on the side of her open door.

‘Bloody hell,’ she told him, pressing her hand to the scars hidden under her white blouse, smiling as she spoke. ‘You scared me.’

‘Sorry,’ he apologized, his eyes inadvertently falling on the hand covering her chest. ‘I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you.’

‘I know,’ she assured him, her hand slipping down to her lap. ‘Can’t hear anyone approaching above that din out there.’

Sean stepped inside her office and closed the door. ‘Did you get the extension of detention OK?’

‘Yeah, the local superintendent was most obliging. But it still only gives us a few hours before we either release him, charge him or try our luck with the magistrates to get a further extension.’

‘Hopefully it won’t come to that. We’ll get back to Kentish as soon as we can and re-interview him – see if we can’t put the frighteners on him a bit and get him to talk.’

‘Any ideas how we’re going to do that?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe tell him that the papers and TV are on to him – digging up his past. Let him know we can’t protect him if he doesn’t confess, that he’ll have to take his chances out on the streets alone – with everybody knowing who he is and what he’s accused of.’

‘Bit below the belt.’

‘We’ve got a missing boy, Sally, and a convicted sex-offender and residential burglar with a history of using lock-picking to gain entry. He’s a more than viable suspect, which means I’m within my rights to tell the media his name – in an effort to trace his movements the night the boy went missing. If that puts him in danger at the hands of the public then there’s not much I can do about it.’

‘You seem to be forgetting we have a duty of care to look after anyone we know or suspect is in clear and immediate danger.’

‘Care that we will offer and McKenzie will refuse.’

‘It doesn’t matter whether he accepts it or not – we have to provide it.’

A devilish grin spread across Sean’s face. ‘Which is exactly why Featherstone and the Assistant Commissioner will have to give me a surveillance team to follow McKenzie in the event we have to release him.’

‘Oh, that’s sneaky,’ Sally told him with an appreciative grin of her own.

‘Just want to make sure I’ve got all the bases covered. Now get next door and see if you can’t bring some order to that rabble – we need an office meeting. I doubt half of them have a clue what’s going on. I’ll join you in a couple of minutes.’

Sally immediately bounced into the main office, shouting and cajoling the mess of detectives into something approaching order. Sean took a few deep breaths before following her, but was frozen by the photograph Sally had attached to the whiteboard in her office – the photograph of a smiling George Bridgeman dressed in his nursery school uniform – the type taken by a professional photographer visiting the school. He realized it was the first time he’d stopped to look at any pictures of the missing boy properly – his beauty and innocence he’d noticed the first time he saw a photograph of the child suddenly seemed even more striking. His thoughts travelled back to the boy’s family, and once again he found himself asking whether it was their very beauty that had attracted the monster in the first place.
Was McKenzie visually driven – irresistibly drawn by the physical beauty of the family?
Sally’s voice brought him back to the here and now.

‘Ready when you are,’ she told him. Sean nodded and walked into the main office, all eyes immediately falling on him as the image of George Bridgeman continued to burn itself into his conscience.

‘For those of you who spent all of yesterday back at Peckham, I understand you’re probably not yet up to running speed on our new case.’

‘Another MISPER, isn’t it?’ DC Tony Summers asked in his husky Manchester accent.

‘It is,’ Sean confirmed.

‘Not again,’ moaned DC Tony Summers whose size and thick blond hair had earned him the nickname Thor amongst his colleagues.

‘The last case we had started as a MISPER,’ Sean warned them, ‘and we all know how that one ended. This time, for those of you who don’t already know, the missing person is a four-year-old boy called George Bridgeman. We have limited time to find him before everyone’s going to start assuming the worst and before the media are either informed or find out about it themselves. When that happens, we need to stay focused and separate from the inevitable circus – let Press Bureau do their job and we’ll get on with ours. Understand?’ His team nodded that they did. ‘We’ve had night-duty teams searching the streets around the family house, but nothing so far. Now we’ve got daylight, further teams will continue the search and expand it on to Hampstead Heath. We’ll be using dogs and India 99 will be searching from above if the weather stays fine. OK – updates. Dave, anything from Forensics yet?’

Donnelly remained seated, pausing to clear his throat before speaking. ‘They worked through the night at the family home of the missing boy and have lifted multiple prints, including some shoe prints, and fibres. They’ve seized a few items the suspect may have touched to get to the boy and will be submitting them to the lab this morning for a DNA sweep, but there’s been a ton of people through the house – not just the family, but their cleaner, nanny, the removal men, the estate agent and any one they showed around the house when they were trying to sell it. And no doubt there’ll still be traces of the previous family all over the place too. Basically we’re looking at dozens of sets of prints, and the same for DNA. Other than that – no traces of blood or signs of a break-in.’

‘So we know our suspect entered, took the boy and left without leaving any obvious trace, other than possibly prints and/or DNA.’

Cahill winced. ‘If the media get hold of that they’re going to start making him into some sort of urban bogeyman.’

‘They don’t need the details of the break-in,’ Sean assured her.

‘What break-in?’ Donnelly reminded him.

‘You know what I mean,’ Sean answered. ‘Tell Forensics not to waste their time trying to compare the prints to the family, etc. Just get them all up to Fingerprints and have them run against sets already in their database. Maybe we’ll strike lucky and get a hit against someone with previous convictions.’

‘Fair enough,’ Donnelly agreed, seeing the sense in Sean’s suggestion.

‘Which leads me to the suspect we already have in custody: Mark McKenzie, white, twenty-three years old, and he already has convictions for residential burglary and the sexual assault of a young child. He’s known to have used lock-picks to enter houses at night in the past and he lives only a couple of miles from where the boy was taken.’

‘Fuck me,’ DC Jesson added in his Scouse accent. ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s just charge him now.’

‘I agree,’ Sean told the baying room, ‘he’s an outstanding suspect, but we need to investigate this properly and thoroughly. The boy’s still missing and McKenzie isn’t talking.’

‘Doesn’t sound like we need him to talk to prove he’s guilty,’ Jesson continued. ‘We’ve probably got enough to do him on method alone.’

‘Perhaps,’ Sean told them, ‘but I need him to talk if we’re to find the boy quickly. So far he hasn’t admitted taking the boy, but he hasn’t denied it either.’

‘What does that mean?’ Cahill asked.

‘Means he likes playing games,’ Sean answered. ‘Maybe this is his play at being famous. You can never tell with someone like McKenzie.’

‘Or maybe it’s not him at all?’ Donnelly dropped a fly in the ointment, silencing the room.

‘Got something you want to share?’ Sean asked, barely hiding his irritation.

‘Had an interesting chat with the Bridgemans’ neighbours last night,’ he explained. ‘The Beiersdorfs at number five and Philippa Howells at number nine.’

‘Go on,’ Sean encouraged, trying to get Donnelly’s sideshow over as quickly as he could.

‘Both say the same thing: the Bridgemans have kept themselves to themselves since moving in and don’t appear to want to socialize. Also, both sets of neighbours have heard plenty of raised voices coming from the Bridgemans’ house. My pal Philippa told me it was Mr Bridgeman who seemed to do most of the shouting. She also noticed that although he rarely scolded his daughter, he seemed cold towards the boy.’

‘But not Mrs Bridgeman?’ Jesson asked.

‘According to Philippa, she was fine towards the boy.’

‘So there’s something going on between the boy and the father?’ Cahill joined in.

‘The boy’s only four,’ Sean reminded them. ‘I know as well as anyone that four-year-olds can be a pain in the backside, but you don’t start hating your own children because of it.’ DC Maggie O’Neil tentatively raised her arm. ‘What is it, Maggie?’

‘I was going to raise it in private with you, guv’nor, but seems the cat’s out the bag.’

‘Go on.’

‘Last night, when I was with the family, I picked up on the hostility between George’s parents. A lot of whispered conversations they certainly didn’t want me to hear.’

‘It’s early days,’ Sean warned them. ‘It may turn out their marriage was on the slippery slope even before George was taken. You don’t need me to remind you that families don’t always stick together in adversity.’

‘True,’ Maggie agreed, ‘but when I spoke to the nanny she said that Mrs Bridgeman was devastated by George’s disappearance, but that Mr Bridgeman was just angry.’

‘Did she say who with?’ Sean asked, unable to so easily dismiss the Bridgemans as suspects in his own mind now, no matter how much he wanted McKenzie to be guilty.

‘No,’ Maggie answered. ‘Just that he was angry.’

‘Hidey-fucking-hi,’ Donnelly interrupted. ‘Let’s get ’em in, both of them, Mr and Mrs.’

‘We haven’t got enough to arrest them yet,’ Sean warned him off. ‘So Mr Bridgeman’s a bad-tempered bastard – so what?’

‘Not arrest them,’ Donnelly suggested. ‘Get them in as primary witnesses, but interview them on tape separately under caution – shit them up a bit. Divide and conquer them before they pull together for self-preservation and concoct a pack of well-ordered lies.’

‘Not yet,’ Sean insisted. ‘This isn’t the time to go in like a bull in a china shop. If we do that and it turns out you’re wrong, we’ll be slaughtered. Let’s not show them our hand just yet. Besides, we need to concentrate on McKenzie first. It won’t look good if we’re treating the parents as suspects while we’re still interrogating McKenzie. Let’s get him sorted first, one way or the other, then we can think about the Bridgemans.’

‘By then it might be too late,’ Donnelly told him.

‘It might already be too late,’ Sean countered, and regretted it. ‘Listen, we have two very different but promising lines of inquiry. McKenzie remains our prime suspect until I say different. As for the Bridgemans, find out whatever you can, but do it subtly and without dragging them in for interview, understand?’

‘Fair enough,’ Donnelly agreed, taking what Sean said as a green light to go after the parents.

‘Sally and I will be re-interviewing McKenzie again soon and will make a further decision after that, but for now do the jobs you’re given – and for Christ’s sake, try and get this bloody office sorted.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Featherstone was just about to devour a large cooked breakfast he’d carried down to his office from the canteen when his desk phone rang, drawing a string of obscenities from his still empty mouth. He answered the phone as he continued to watch his egg yolks solidify.

‘Alan – Assistant Commissioner Addis here.’ Featherstone’s appetite faded quickly. ‘I was wondering whether you had any updates for me on the Bridgeman case? I would have popped down and spoken to DI Corrigan myself, but I’m away from the Yard this morning promoting the new Safer Neighbourhoods Scheme in Lambeth, of all places.’

‘I understand things are progressing well enough,’ Featherstone tried to buy some time and space. ‘No stone’s being left unturned.’

‘What about this suspect you told me about? He sounded very promising.’

‘Somebody McKenzie,’ Featherstone recalled. ‘He’s still in custody over at Kentish Town.’

‘Has he been interviewed yet?’

‘I’m not entirely sure, sir. I’ll be getting an update this morning,’ Featherstone answered, making it up as he went along.

‘I need you closer to this, Alan,’ Addis warned him. ‘We can’t afford any more bad press. We need the boy found as a matter of urgency. If he’s already dead then we need someone charged with his murder without delay or we’ll have a panic on our hands. A child murderer at large does not read well.’

‘Then perhaps we should keep the press out of it for a while longer,’ Featherstone tried to stall him, ‘until we have a positive result lined up?’

‘No, we can’t afford to do that. If they get wind of it from another source before we inform them there’ll be hell to pay and I’ll never get them back on side. I’ve made my decision – arrange a press conference for this evening. It’s time to get the media and public involved. I’ll do the briefing myself. Let me know when you’ve sorted it out,’ Addis ordered and hung up, leaving Featherstone holding an empty phone still pressed to his ear as he stared at his congealing breakfast.

Finally he hung up and pushed the plate as far away as he could across his desk, his already significant regrets at allowing himself to become involved with Assistant Commissioner Addis growing by the second.

‘The time is approximately ten a.m.,’ Sean announced for the tape, ‘and this is a continuation of the first interview of Mark McKenzie who’s being questioned regarding the disappearance of a four-year-old boy – George Bridgeman. Do you understand why you’re here?’ Sean asked.

‘No comment.’

‘I’m just trying to clarify that you understand why you’re here, Mark.’

‘I said no comment.’