The Toy Taker (19 page)

‘Yes, yes,’ Nashua acknowledged, ‘I remember him. He was here not long ago.’

‘Yes, but what did he want?’ Sean hurried him. ‘Did he buy anything?’

‘He looked around for a bit. I was a bit suspicious at first – he seemed to be looking out the window, checking outside, as if he was waiting for someone to join him in my shop. I can always spot a thief who has only come to steal from me, but this one seemed more interested in what was going on outside the shop rather than the things inside.’

‘Mr Nashua, please,’ Sean appealed. ‘Did he buy anything?’

‘Oh yes – eventually. He seemed to know exactly what he wanted.’

‘And what was that?’ Sean persisted.

‘He bought an MLPX,’ Nashua told them. ‘A very good one too. It cost almost one hundred pounds.’

‘A what?’ Donnelly asked.

‘An MLPX,’ Nashua repeated. ‘A master lock-picking kit. In the right hands, a set like that could open pretty much any standard lock in the world – and this man who bought it seemed very much to know his business. He asked me about the quality and size of the picks, hooks, wrenches, diamonds – everything. I thought this man must be a qualified locksmith – yes?’

‘You could say that,’ Sean answered, still looking at Donnelly. ‘What say we pay our locksmith friend a surprise visit?’

‘I don’t see we have any choice,’ Donnelly agreed. ‘Only …’

‘Only what?’ Sean pressed.

‘I don’t recall anyone mentioning we’d seized any lock-picking tools when he was first arrested.’

‘That’s because we didn’t.’

‘So why does he need a new set?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Because tools leave distinctive marks. Once the lab open up the locks from the Bridgemans’ house they should find tool marks – some may match the tools he used to open them, the rest will fit with the keys normally used to unlock them.’

‘You had Forensics take the locks from the front door?’

‘Of course.’

‘That’s a hell of a long shot.’

‘It is, but McKenzie probably knows it’s possible.’

‘So he ditched the tools he used at the Bridgemans?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Then we need to find them,’ said Donnelly.

‘Would be useful,’ Sean agreed. ‘Have Zukov make sure all the search teams are aware we’re looking for tools used for lock-picking. He may have dumped them not too far from the scene. Tell him to download some pictures from the Internet so people can see what he’s talking about or it’ll mean nothing to most of them.’

‘No problem,’ Donnelly assured him. ‘It will be done.’

‘Is there a problem?’ Mr Nashua asked, aware that the detectives had forgotten he was there.

‘No,’ Sean told him with a wry smile. ‘No problem at all.’

A smile of self-satisfaction fixed itself to his face as he looked out of his first-floor window at the people of all creeds and colours scurrying along Kentish Town Road below. Every few minutes the sight of a child electrified his body with an excitement he couldn’t control and tightened his belly and groin as he licked his dry lips and waited – waited for the inevitable.

As soon as the car came into view crawling along in the rest of the traffic some criminal instinct told him it was them, but he felt no panic or fear – no need to scramble around his tiny, sparse flat to find and destroy any incriminating evidence before they found it. He felt calm and in control, as if everything he’d been planning was coming together better than he could have expected. Corrigan had been a gift – a gift that must have been sent from a greater power – the conduit of all his planned revenge. They had thought him beaten and humiliated. Now it would be him who would teach them the true meaning of defeat and public humiliation.

He drew the stained net curtains to better conceal himself while still keeping watch on the approaching car. It stopped and squeezed itself into the tightest of parking spaces, holding up the traffic and provoking a cacophony of horn blasts. He knew the occupants wouldn’t give a damn about the inconvenience they caused, such was their all-consuming arrogance and ignorance. As he watched them climb from the car he realized he was grinding his teeth in anticipation and hatred, eager to continue the game he knew he couldn’t lose. They crossed the pavement and became impossible to see once they were directly below him – at the communal entrance that ultimately led to his front door.

Slowly he moved away from the window and sat shaking a little at the only table in the flat, wishing he still had a laptop to log on to so that he could download incriminating items to tantalize Detective Inspector Corrigan with – sending him on yet more wild-goose chases, leading him further and further away from the boy and himself closer and closer to final victory.

He listened for the sound of splintering wood – the sound of Corrigan’s career beginning to shatter, but was disappointed to hear instead one of his neighbours’ intercoms buzzing. He immediately knew what Corrigan was up to – threatening or cajoling one of the other occupants of the filth-infested flats to open the communal door so they could sneak up the stairs like sewer rats.

Quickly he gathered the items he had laid out on the table in front him: an
A to Z of London
with the missing boy’s street circled in red pen, other houses also circled in red, along with a few local schools and − his crowning glory – areas of nearby woodland. He’d enjoyed himself that morning, chuckling to himself as he marked the map and scribbled the apparent ramblings of a dangerous madman across the pages of a notebook that he now placed on top of the
A to Z
. He sat back, trying not to grin as he heard the footsteps climbing the stairs – neither running nor tiptoeing, just steadily walking – not as he’d expected them to come. The departure from how he’d expected things to happen caused a rare moment of panic, a fluttering in his chest like a hummingbird’s wings.

Again he waited for the splintering of wood and the yells of the police commanding him not to move or suffer the consequences. He stared at the door, muttering quietly to himself. ‘Come on, come on,’ he muttered under his breath, willing them to smash open the flimsy, scarred door; the hastily replaced lock from their last visit would be no match for a well-placed kick from a policeman’s boot. But the fireworks never came – only a firm knock. ‘Shit,’ he hissed, frozen to his chair, unable to answer the knocking that came again when he didn’t answer. ‘Who is it?’ he asked, his voice hoarse and quiet. He cleared it with a cough before repeating himself. ‘Who is it and what do you want?’

‘You know who it is and what we want,’ Corrigan told him, his tone overconfident and belittling – the conqueror coming to conquer. ‘I need to speak with you, Mark. Open the door.’

‘What about?’ he asked, still sitting in his chair staring at the thin door, imagining the smiling, self-congratulating cops on the other side, so sure they had the evidence to prove he took the boy.

‘You know what about.’ Corrigan’s tone didn’t waver. ‘This is not the sort of conversation you want to have in public.’

‘In public?’ he asked, momentarily confused, suspicious Corrigan had plans to try and conduct his investigation in the glare of the media spotlight, ensuring that anybody who listened knew the police had decided he was their prime suspect.

‘Your neighbours, Mark,’ the voice explained. ‘Walls have ears and all that.’

‘I see,’ he answered, weighing up his options, still hopeful they might grow impatient and kick the door open – more evidence of heavy-handed police intimidation. But the thought of his irate landlord having to provide yet more new locks forced him to a decision. The stinking flat wasn’t much, but it was a roof over his head – a roof he’d need for some time to come, no matter how things worked out. ‘Just give me a minute,’ he told them as he stood, gathering the maps and notebooks and quickly hiding them under the bed, slipping them through a slit he’d made in its underside before moving purposefully to the door and turning the single Yale lock. He peeped through the gap at the two detectives standing like terracotta soldiers with their arms by their sides – Corrigan and another one he didn’t recognize, thick-set with a prominent moustache, strong-looking. ‘I see,’ he told them. ‘You again. What d’you want now?’

‘Mark McKenzie,’ Sean began, pulling his warrant card from his coat pocket, holding it low at his side, showing it inconspicuously to him. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan and this is Detective Sergeant Dave Donnelly.’

‘I know who you are,’ he snapped, his glare turning to Donnelly, ‘or at least I know what you are.’

‘Mark, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the abduction of George Bridgeman.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ he argued. ‘I was only released last night.’ A sudden wave of nausea strangled his confidence as the fear and realization they may have discovered something that could undermine all his plans flashed in his mind before shrinking away again like a retreating wave on the beach. No. If they were rearresting him this quickly, everything was exactly as he wanted it.

‘As of now, you’re under caution – you do remember the caution, don’t you, Mark?’ Sean asked.

‘I remember it.’

Sean and Donnelly pushed their way into the small flat, carrying McKenzie back inside with the tide of their bodies and closing the door on the outside world. ‘Under Section 18 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act we have the power to search your flat for any evidence relating to the offence for which you’ve been arrested, and for evidence of any similar offences you may have committed – but I guess you already knew that too,’ Sean told him.

‘I did,’ McKenzie agreed. ‘I also know I that should have my solicitor here before you start searching.’

‘You can call your solicitor if you like, but we don’t have to wait for them to get here before searching.’ Sean began to circle the flat like a wolf circling a flock of sheep.

‘Why d’you need your solicitor here for a search?’ Donnelly asked. ‘Got something to hide, Mr McKenzie?’

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Let’s just say I’ve had bad experiences with the police in the past.’

‘I can’t think what you mean,’ Donnelly smirked, casually opening drawers and rifling through their contents.

‘Oh, you know,’ McKenzie told him. ‘Things found in my home that hadn’t been there before the police started searching.’

‘That’s a pretty serious allegation,’ Donnelly played with him. ‘Did you make a complaint?’

‘No,’ McKenzie admitted.

‘Aye, well, not much we can do about that now then, is there?’

‘Perhaps if you tell me what you’re looking for I could save you the bother of searching,’ McKenzie offered, ignoring Donnelly’s comment.

‘You know what we’re looking for,’ Sean accused him.

‘I have no idea.’

‘We’ll rip this place apart to find it if we have to,’ Sean threatened.

‘And that bothers me how?’ McKenzie asked, looking around his own home with distaste printed across his face, allowing his eyes to linger a little too long on the single bed pushed into a corner of the bedsit. He resisted the temptation to smile as he noticed Corrigan immediately seizing on his apparent mistake, striding across the room and unceremoniously pulling the soiled quilt back and tossing it on the floor.

Sean kicked the quilt and pillow around until he was satisfied they hid nothing, but still McKenzie’s face told him he was looking in the right place, something McKenzie confirmed by licking his drying lips.

Sean flicked the entire mattress up on its side to search the space under it, its cheapness and lightness making it easy to lift, but there was nothing to be found. Briefly he looked back at McKenzie. ‘I’ll find it,’ he warned him. ‘No matter where it is, I’ll find it.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he lied.

‘Really?’ Sean asked sarcastically. ‘Well, I guess we’ll see about that.’

McKenzie’s eyes never left Sean as he dropped to his knees and peered under the bed before stretching an arm underneath and pulling out the items that lay hidden there: old newspapers and magazines, shoe-boxes full of photographs from a better time, postcards, letters and long irrelevant documents that provided a chronology of his life. None of it interested Sean, who pulled a small Maglite torch from his belt and clicked it on, shining it underneath the bed.

‘Got something?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Just an old trick I used to use when I was undercover – if I had something I really didn’t want anyone to stumble across.’

Donnelly and McKenzie watched in silence as Sean scanned the underside of the bed until he found what he was looking for: a six-inch slit in the nylon material. Sean checked the entrance to the slit for booby-traps before carefully sliding the torch into the darkness, using it to light the way and pull the opening wide apart, revealing the
A to Z
and the notebook. With his other hand he reached in and pinched the items between his fingers, pulling them free and carefully placing them on the bed-base above, mindful that he’d forgotten to wear gloves of any kind, something that he quickly remedied by snapping on a pair of forensic latex ones.

‘Found what you’re looking for?’ Donnelly asked.

‘No,’ Sean answered, ‘but I’ve found something.’

‘So you and Mark here share the same secret hiding place. Interesting,’ Donnelly added, drawing quick-fire glances from both Sean and McKenzie.

Sean opened the
A to Z
first and flicked through to the pages covering Hampstead and the surrounding area, the neat red circles leaping out at him like tracer bullets, his eyes frantically searching until he found the street the boy had been taken from – Courthope Road – ringed in red, just like numerous others. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, loudly enough for both Donnelly and McKenzie to hear, his gloved finger tracing the pages to the areas ringed in red, several of which marked remote areas on Hampstead Heath.

‘Problem?’ Donnelly asked.

‘Yes,’ Sean answered, ‘but not for us – for him.’ He turned and nodded once towards McKenzie, who stood silent and motionless, his eyes wide with anticipation and trepidation, afraid he wouldn’t be able to control what he’d begun – wouldn’t be able to control Corrigan.

Leaving the
A to Z
open on the damning page, Sean turned his attention to the accompanying notebook, immediately noticing that it appeared almost new and largely unscathed – something that niggled at him, his instincts warning him that the book should look well worn, as if McKenzie had hardly been able to bear not to have it in his hands for even a second. But the fact the boy had only been taken recently chased his doubt away. As soon as he opened the notebook, the same garish red ink stared up at him, obscene scribblings detailing extreme sexual acts and acts of excessive violence between people of all ages and sexes, along with sketches and rough diagrams illustrating the words. Crude drawings of what looked like Christ on the cross littered most pages, as did caricatures of the devil and demons, all frolicking with the naked, deformed, wounded and bleeding humans – the most grotesque creatures of hell paying the children special attention. Sean again glanced briefly over his shoulder at McKenzie. ‘You’re fucked, McKenzie,’ he announced. ‘Your throat cut by your own hand.’