The Toy Taker (6 page)

He crouched down and picked up a small brown bear similar to one his youngest daughter Mandy kept in her bed and tried not to think of how he’d feel if anything ever happened to either of his daughters. Sadness and rage swelled inside him at the mere possibility, but a sudden feeling of another presence in the room made him spin around and forget his fearful imaginings. Celia Bridgeman stood in the doorway, both hands clasped over her heart, her eyes red and her skin pale as her lips opened and closed as if she was trying to speak but couldn’t. ‘You all right?’ Sean asked and regretted it.

‘No,’ she answered faintly. ‘I don’t feel very well.’ She staggered a little into the room, Sean catching her by the elbow and forearm as he led her to the bed to sit, cringing at the possible forensic evidence he may be complicit in destroying. He watched her trying to catch her breath, breathing in and out a little erratically, but it was enough to put a little colour back into her lips and face. He gave her some time and space. ‘It’s like a dream,’ she told him, ‘or I should say a nightmare – like it’s not really happening. It can’t be happening, can it? He must be here somewhere,’ she continued, panic sweeping over her again as she tried to get to her feet.

Sean placed a hand on her shoulder, preventing her from standing. ‘I need to look for him,’ she pleaded, her red eyes swelling with fear and tears. ‘I have to keep looking.’

‘We’ll all look for him,’ Sean promised, ‘but you need to help me help you.’

‘I feel sick,’ she told him, jumping to her feet and rushing from the room. A few seconds later he heard the sound of her retching in a nearby bathroom, retching that seemed to go on for a long time, before he heard the sound of a toilet lid closing and the flushing of water. She returned to the bedroom looking like a ghost, walking past him and sitting on the bed without speaking, lifting a floppy-eared rabbit from the floor and holding it tight to her chest while she stared at the wall opposite.

‘Feel a little better?’ Sean asked, keen to get her talking before she went catatonic on him.

‘Not really,’ she responded.

‘I have some difficult questions that need answers,’ he warned her. ‘They’re best asked when your husband’s not here.’

‘Stuart?’ she asked in a conciliatory tone. ‘Don’t worry about Stuart – he’s just scared and angry. He always reacts like that when he feels something is beyond his control.’

‘I understand,’ Sean assured her.

‘You said you had questions.’

‘Keys,’ he began. ‘Is there anyone no one’s mentioned who could have keys to the house?’

‘Not that I know of,’ she answered.

‘Anyone who shouldn’t have keys to the house but does?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I need to know if both your children are yours
and
your husband’s – genetically?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, confusion etched into her face. ‘Why?’

‘Most children who are abducted are abducted by their estranged fathers,’ he told her. ‘If there was one and he had keys to the house, then …’

‘There isn’t,’ she stopped him. ‘How could you even think that? I’m his mother and Stuart’s his father,’ she insisted, but Sean sensed some doubt in her voice – and her eyes.

‘Any problems with your marriage?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she muttered, her eyes avoiding his.

‘Could Stuart be seeing anyone else?’

‘God no.’

‘And you?’ Sean ambushed her.

‘No,’ she swore, ‘nothing like that. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that to my children.’

‘My children?’ Sean questioned. ‘Not our children, but my children?’

‘Stuart’s not around much,’ she explained. ‘He works hard for us – that’s all I meant.’

Sean watched her silently for a moment as she continued to hug the toy rabbit – watching her eyes and hands, her feet that stayed flat and still on the carpeted floor – judging her. He believed most of what she was saying, but there were doubts and untruths hiding in her grief.

The longer he stood in the boy’s room, the more sure he was that George had been taken. But why and by whom? His mind searched back for memories – going back more than ten years to when he was still a detective sergeant, deployed by SO10 on an undercover operation to infiltrate the Network, a paedophile gang who’d been grooming children during the early days of the Internet and then sexually abusing them, filming their exploits and circulating them to other paedophiles. He forced the face of the gang’s leader, John Conway, into his mind, remembering the way he talked and moved, recalling his mindset – what excited him and motivated him. But Conway and his cronies groomed older children and always met the children a safe distance from their houses and schools, whereas whoever had taken George had risked coming into the house in the dead of night. And George was only four, too young to be groomed from a distance.
From a distance, but what about by someone close?
Conway’s face melted into that of Sean’s own father. But there had never been anything subtle about the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of his father. The face faded away, replaced by the things that continued to plague his mind:
There’s an alarm, but you knew it wasn’t working. A man lives in the house, but you knew he wasn’t there. The floorboard creaks, but you didn’t step on it. You knew all this because you know this house. You have to know this house – but how? Who are you and what do you want?
John Conway’s face flashed back into his mind.
Slow down
, he warned himself.
You’re making assumptions. You don’t know he knew about the alarm, the husband being away, the damn floorboard. All you know for sure is that the boy is gone. Someone came to the house, entered without breaking in, took the boy and left, locking the house after them. Was Addis right? Could it have been a paedophile, acting alone or with others, going to the next level that the Network never reached – taking children from their own homes, the danger of the game making the moment of triumph all the sweeter
.

‘You will find him, won’t you?’ Celia Bridgeman asked, making his attempt to build a mental picture of what could have happened tumble like a house of cards. He gave his mind a few seconds to recall and understand what she had asked before answering.

‘Of course,’ he answered, telling her the only thing he could. ‘Cases like this can come together pretty quickly,’ he added truthfully, although he already had his doubts this one would. ‘You should all move out, just while we have the house searched by a dog team. And our forensic people always appreciate an empty scene. We need to do everything possible to give us the best chance of finding your son quickly.’

‘Where should we go?’ she asked, her voice forlorn and sad, as if moving out was giving up on the boy.

‘Family, friends,’ Sean suggested. ‘Just for a couple of days while we do what we need to do with the house. In the meantime, try not to touch anything. We’ll need a set of fingerprints from everyone who’s been in the house since you moved in. Are you OK with that?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘if it’ll help.’

‘Good,’ Sean told her, taking a last look around the room. ‘I have to go now. Do you need some help getting downstairs?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’d like to stay here for a while – if that’s all right?’

‘Of course.’ Sean slowly headed to the door, almost unable to take his eyes off the mother, her sadness and longing dragging at him like a magnet as he managed to pull himself from the room and into the hallway where he rested with his back to the wall for a few seconds before walking quietly to the staircase.

‘All right?’ Sally asked as he joined the others in the kitchen. Sean nodded.

‘Mr Bridgeman,’ he turned to the father, ‘I was just telling your wife you’ll need to move out for a couple of days’ – Bridgeman tried to interrupt, but Sean talked over him – ‘and I’ll need those names: the estate agent, the removal firm, anyone who’s been in the house since you’ve been here.’ He took something from his warrant-card wallet and dropped it on the kitchen island. ‘That’s my card – ignore the landline number, it’s old, but the mobile and email address are good. Call me if you think of anything.’ He quickly turned to Robinson. ‘I need you to wait here until my own Family Liaison Officer gets here. They won’t be long.’ Robinson just shrugged. He understood her keenness to escape. ‘I have to go back and brief my team, Mr Bridgeman. You may not see me for a while, but rest assured I’ll be working full-time to find your son.’

Sean headed for the door with Sally trailing in his wake, the crystal-clear air hitting him like a plunge into freezing water as soon as he opened the door, temporarily taking his breath away. He skipped down the stairs and headed for their car, then sat on the bonnet, breathing in as deeply as he could before blowing out great plumes of breath, trying to settle his spinning mind. But still he was left with only questions – questions to which he had no answers, just too many broken, ragged theories.

‘Family Liaison Officer?’ Sally asked. ‘Why are we wasting our time doing all that? Let’s stick a dog unit in there and find this kid.’

‘He’s not there,’ Sean answered. ‘If he was, the mother would have found him – I would have.’

‘So he’s got a secret hiding place nobody knows about. He can’t hide from a dog.’

‘I’m telling you, he’s gone,’ Sean insisted, the unintentional aggression in his voice silencing Sally.

She was silent for a moment, considering her next move.

‘Listen,’ she opened, ‘maybe the Keller case is messing with your head a bit? Believe me, when it comes to having your head messed with, I’m an expert.’

‘Meaning?’ Sean asked, prepared to consider anything.

‘Keller took his victims from their homes before he killed them,’ she explained. ‘Maybe that’s stuck in your head, making you see similarities here that don’t actually exist.’

‘The boy’s gone,’ Sean insisted, his voice sad and resigned. ‘But get a dog to check it over anyway. It might find
something
.’

Sally studied him for a moment, searching for things in him that not so long ago she’d seen in herself. ‘OK,’ she relented, ‘so the boy’s gone. Someone came in the middle of the night, somehow got in, took the boy and left, all without being seen, heard or leaving any signs of entry.’

‘Either they had a key,’ Sean told her, ‘or they picked the locks.’

‘Christ, Sean,’ she reminded him. ‘Lock-picking’s bloody rare.’

‘Good, then that helps us. But why lock the door after they’d left? Why would they do that?’

‘Because they’re insane.’

‘Or because they cared about the people they left in the house – didn’t want to leave them at risk. Exposed.’

‘You mean the father?’ Sally asked.

‘Possibly.’

‘Why would the father want to abduct his own son?’

‘Why do some fathers slaughter their entire family at the first sign their wives might leave them?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sally admitted. ‘You tell me, Sean. Why do some men do that?’

‘Better to destroy something you love rather than lose it.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘No. No it doesn’t,’ he agreed. ‘Much like this case.’

‘So what you want to do?’

‘Keep an open mind.’

‘Easier for some than others,’ she mumbled.

‘What was that?’

‘Nothing,’ she lied. ‘How’s your shoulder, by the way?’

‘Sore. And you?’

‘Better and better,’ she told him.

‘Is there something you want to ask me, Sally?’

‘No,’ she lied again. This was not the right moment.

‘Then we’re wasting time,’ he told her. ‘Time we don’t have.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Featherstone sat in his office at Shooter’s Hill Police Station looking at pictures of sailing yachts in the magazine he subscribed to and kept hidden inside a pink cardboard file marked
Confidential
. Owning a nice thirty-two-footer had long been his retirement dream, but constant pay-cuts, pay-freezes, allowance-scrapping and now attacks on the police pension were turning his dream into a fantasy. If he could make it to the rank of commander before he retired, the dream might still be alive – just. His mind drifted to Sean and the sort of results he seemed able to pull out of a hat. At the end of the day, he was Sean’s supervising officer and therefore in a position to bask warmly in the reflected glory of Sean’s successes – successes that might just get him over the line and promoted to commander before deadline-day struck. But only if things kept working out and Corrigan didn’t fuck up. He liked the man and watched his back better and with more fervour than most senior officers ever would, but he wasn’t about to put his head on the chopping block for anyone.

His daydreaming was interrupted by the shrill ring of the phone on his desk. He answered it slowly and without enthusiasm. ‘Hello, Detective Superintendent Featherstone speaking.’

‘Alan. Assistant Commissioner Addis here.’

Featherstone felt his heart drop and his bowels loosen slightly. ‘Sir.’

‘I’ve assigned that case we discussed to Inspector Corrigan,’ Addis told him.

‘That was fast,’ Featherstone replied.

‘I thought the sooner he got on with it the better. The quicker we act the more chance we have of finding the missing boy.’

‘If there’s been foul play, Corrigan’s the best man to lead the investigation. He won’t let anyone down.’

‘I hope not,’ Addis told him, making it sound like a threat. ‘Let’s hope your confidence in him isn’t misplaced.’

‘Like I told you in the beginning, sir, Corrigan has special qualities. In the field, he’s one of the best I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen some good ones.’

‘Good,’ Addis replied. ‘Then once it’s confirmed the boy is actually missing I suggest we get the media in and tell them how confident we are of bringing the investigation to a swift conclusion. Some good publicity for the Metropolitan Police would be very useful right now.’

‘Publicity?’ Featherstone asked, his voice riddled with concern. ‘Don’t you think it’s too soon for publicity? Maybe we should give Corrigan and his team a little breathing space for—’

‘Breathing space?’ Addis asked mockingly. ‘That’s a luxury we don’t have in the Metropolitan Police. Not any more. This is a results-orientated business, and Corrigan has been brought here to deliver those results. He has until tomorrow, then I’m briefing the press.’