The Toy Taker

‘Don’t talk to me like that, Sophia and go and tell Caroline what you want for breakfast.’ Sophia tossed her head to one side to show her dissatisfaction and headed for the kitchen, her mother’s genes already shaping her face and body for a life at the top table. Celia pursed her lips and shook her head as she watched daddy’s little princess swagger towards a health-conscious breakfast before looking at the flights of stairs above her and calling to the heavens. ‘George. Stop playing with your toys and come and get breakfast.’ She waited for an answer, but none came. ‘George.’ Again she waited. Nothing. Caroline, the nanny, had arrived while she was still in the shower. Perhaps she’d already fed and dressed George? She looked at her watch again, the increasing concern she was going to be late for the gym urging her to speak to Caroline and save herself a trip up two flights of stairs. She followed Sophia’s route to the kitchen and found the nanny slicing apples and bananas for her daughter’s breakfast. ‘You should have some toast or something as well,’ she reprimanded her.

‘I don’t want to get fat,’ Sophia answered. Celia almost argued with her but remembered why she was there.

‘Caroline. Have you seen George yet this morning?’ she asked.

‘No, Mrs Bridgeman,’ she answered. ‘Not yet. I thought maybe he’d already had his breakfast.’

‘He’s hardly going to get it himself,’ Sophia unhelpfully added.

‘Don’t be rude, Sophia,’ Celia silenced her.

‘Maybe he’s not feeling very well,’ Caroline suggested. ‘D’you want me to go and check on him?’

‘No,’ Celia snapped, a sudden unexplained feeling of anxiety creeping through her like a grass fire. George had been late before – many times – quietly playing in his bedroom with his toys, unwilling to join the family rituals that his young mind knew would be being played out two floors below, but this felt different somehow. ‘I’ll go,’ she said.

Her daughter and the nanny exchanged bemused looks as she turned her back on them and walked quickly to the stairs, climbing them two at a time, her slim body and athletic legs making her progress rapid, but the closer she got the slower she seemed to move, until she was only feet away from his bedroom door, the silence from within drowned out by the relentless beating of her heart, all thoughts of the gym and lunch gone from her head.

As she eased the door open she could see the curtains were still drawn and the blue night-lamp was still on – not unusual for George, but it meant no one else had been in to see him that morning. ‘George?’ she softly called into the room as the door opened wider, as if she didn’t want to startle him if he was still sleeping, especially if he was unwell – another fever perhaps. ‘George?’ She moved into the room, the sickness in her stomach growing as she approached his bed, the thick duvet and plump pillows making it difficult to tell whether he was there or not, but as she closed the distance the realization dawned on her that the bed was empty, making her sprint the last few steps to where her son should have been. Pointlessly, desperately, she patted the bedclothes, pulling the duvet back and tossing it on the floor, even looking under the pillows, feeling increasingly dizzy. Quickly she pulled the heavy blackout curtains open, almost pulling them from their rail, flooding the room with bright orange light, the late autumn sun still low in the sky, barely clearing the adjacent houses.

She stood in the centre of the room, her eyes desperately searching for signs of life – a slight movement or a giggle coming from a hiding place. For a second she laughed at herself, realizing she must be in a game, a game to find a hiding boy. She dropped to her knees and peered under the bed, about to say the boy’s name when she’d discovered him, but the words never came out and her smile was vanquished as she stared into the empty space, the panic returning – stronger now.

‘Where the hell are you, George?’ she asked the emptiness, pushing herself back to her feet and pacing the room, opening the wardrobe and searching places that in her heart she knew he couldn’t be: his drawers and toy boxes, even under the mattress, until she had to admit he couldn’t be in the room. For a moment she felt her throat swell and close, as if she was about to start crying, before she convinced herself it was only a matter of time before she found him.

She walked quickly from room to room, searching every wardrobe and cupboard, behind every curtain and under every table, checking every window was still locked from the inside, constantly calling the boy’s name – threatening and encouraging him to reveal himself. But something in her soul told her the rooms were empty: the way the silence felt so still and lifeless. In the middle of her desperate search she suddenly stopped for a second, the memory of how the very atmosphere of a space would change when the boy was in it and the sudden fear she would never feel it again making her so nauseous and light-headed that she had to lean against the wall and try and control her breathing, swallowing gulps of air until the floor she was looking down at came back into focus. As quickly as she dared, Celia walked downstairs, her outstretched hand sliding along the wall for support until she reached the kitchen, her softly tanned skin pale now and her lips a little blue. The nanny saw her first. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Bridgeman?’

Celia spoke without answering the question, her eyes growing ever wilder with thoughts and fears she’d never once in her life imagined having. ‘Have you seen Mr Bridgeman this morning?’

‘No,’ the nanny answered, confusion spreading across her face. ‘I thought he was away on business last night?’

‘He was,’ Sophia answered for her mother.

‘Be quiet, Sophia,’ Celia snapped. ‘Are you sure he didn’t come back very early this morning? Maybe he …?’ Celia suddenly didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say.

‘He wasn’t here when I arrived,’ the nanny told her, ‘and his car wasn’t here either. Is something wrong?’

‘The front door,’ Celia asked, ‘was it locked when you arrived?’

‘Yes,’ the nanny answered.

‘All the locks?’

‘Yes, Mrs Bridgeman. Is there something wrong?’ the nanny asked again.

Celia’s voice almost failed her as she tried to speak, the words weak and wavering. ‘I can’t find George,’ she finally managed to tell them. ‘He’s gone. Someone’s taken him.’

‘That’s not possible,’ the nanny told her, her smile hiding her own rising fears. ‘He must be hiding somewhere.’

‘No,’ she answered, her voice growing ever weaker as she slumped to her knees on the floor. ‘He’s gone. He’s been taken. I can feel it.’

The nanny came to her side and bent over her, trying to encourage her to stand. ‘Let’s look again – together. I know we’ll find him.’

‘No,’ Celia almost shouted, summoning the last of her strength, the tears rolling freely down her face now. ‘Listen to me – he’s gone. He’s been taken. We’ve wasted enough time. I need to phone the police.’

‘I’ll phone Mr Bridgeman,’ the nanny offered.

‘No,’ Celia spat, grabbing the phone. ‘I’ll do it.’

Sean looked from his office into the main office outside and decided that enough of the team had gathered for the meeting to begin. He exhaled, took a deep breath and walked the few steps next door, suddenly aware of the relentless noise; the laughter and loud chatter mixing with the seemingly constant ringing of land and mobile phones. He caught Donnelly’s eye, but his other stalwart detective sergeant, Sally Jones, seemed to be holding a girls-only meeting with the other female detectives in the far corner next to the coffee- and tea-making facilities: a limescale-clogged old kettle and a fridge that smelled like something had died in it.

Donnelly knew his job. ‘All right, all right,’ he boomed across the office in his Glaswegian-tinged-with-London accent. ‘This office meeting is officially open, so park your bums and listen up.’ He seemed to make eye contact with everyone in the room while he waited for total silence, not speaking again until he had it, turning to Sean. ‘Guv’nor – all yours.’

But before Sean could start, a dissenting voice spoke up.

‘Guv’nor,’ DC Alan Jesson asked in his Liverpudlian accent, ‘when we gonna get a new case? I’m fucking skint. I need the overtime just to make ends meet here, you know.’ The murmur of approval from the others told Sean they were all feeling pretty much the same way.

‘Something will be coming our way soon enough,’ Sean tried to assure them.

‘How d’you know?’ Sally asked. ‘How can you be sure it’ll be sooner rather than later?’

‘Because the sea we fish in just got a whole lot bigger,’ Sean answered in a voice almost too quiet to hear.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sally replied. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘We’re no longer a south-east London Murder Investigation Team, we’re a London-wide Murder Investigation Team.’ He watched the silent, blank faces trying to understand what he’d just told them.

‘Excuse me?’ Donnelly finally broke the stunned silence. ‘We’re a what?’

‘We’ve just gone London-wide,’ Sean explained. ‘Express orders of Assistant Commissioner Addis. Featherstone told me earlier this morning – the Commissioner’s agreed to it, so that’s that. As of now, anything a bit special comes our way. Potential serial offenders, child murders by strangers, sexually motivated murders – all the good stuff’s going to land on our desk. It won’t be easy, but it will be interesting. Anybody not up for it needs to have the applications for a transfer on my desk by this time tomorrow. I’m sure HR can find you all suitable posts on division. You could even stay here at Peckham.’

‘Stay?’ Donnelly said. ‘Then by inference if we decide to stay part of this team we’ll be moving?’

‘Yes,’ Sean told him, beginning to enjoy the game.

‘D’you mind telling us where to?’

‘The Yard.’

Donnelly closed his eyes and groaned as he leaned back in his chair so much he risked over-balancing. ‘Jesus. Not the fucking Yard. How am I supposed to get there from Swanley every day? And there’s nowhere to park.’

‘They’ve reserved us a few spaces in the underground car park.’

‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ Donnelly said sarcastically.

‘Sounds great to me,’ Sally chipped in with a mischievous grin, keen to kick Donnelly while he was down.

‘Aye,’ Donnelly continued. ‘It’s all right for you, living in Putney. Putney to Victoria every day – lovely.

‘Sorry, Dave,’ Sally told him, her grin turning into a fully fledged smile.

‘I’m all right, Jack, eh?’

‘All right,’ Sean broke it up, ‘enough of the table tennis. Let’s make this official – if you don’t want to come with me, put your hand up.’ He scanned the room, but saw no raised hands. ‘I promise you there’ll be no hard feelings. Many of you have wives, husbands, kids, so if the nature of the work or the travelling’s too much I’ll understand.’ Still no raised hands. ‘Dave?’

‘Aye, fuck-it – why not? But there’d better be plenty overtime.’

‘More than you could possibly spend.’

‘Aye, there better be.’

‘Right,’ Sean snapped to attention, ‘we’re moving today.’ The groans almost drowned him out. ‘So let’s get everything packed up and over to the Yard – Room 714, seventh floor in the North Tower. Take everything that’s not screwed down and even stuff that is, if it’s of any use. Take the computers, chairs, phones – everything we’ll need to be up and running straight away.’

‘Pickfords not moving us then, boss?’ Jesson asked.

‘Where d’you think you are, Alan – the City Police? This is the good old Met – remember? Pile everything into anything with four wheels that’s been left in the yard with keys in and let’s get out of this toilet.’ He still felt eyes upon him. ‘Well come on, then. What you waiting for?’

As the detectives burst into action, Sean slipped quietly into his office, summoning Donnelly and Sally with a nod of his head. Within a few seconds they were all gathered together.

‘Problem?’ Sally asked.

‘Not yet,’ he told her as Donnelly caught up with them.

‘Not yet what?’ he asked.

‘A problem,’ Sally filled him in.

‘There’s a first!’ Donnelly replied.

‘Yeah, well,’ Sean continued, ‘I’ve got a feeling we won’t have to wait too much longer before something comes our way, and when it does it’s clearly not going to be anything straightforward and not something we’ll be able to quietly get on with. The Yard’s full of senior officers with not enough to do who’ll be more than keen to stick their noses where they’re not wanted – and that means our business.’

‘So?’ Sally asked.

‘So we need to be ready for anything,’ Sean warned them. ‘Which is why I need you two to keep a fire burning under everyone’s arses until we’re up and running at the Yard. Understand?’

‘Yes, guv,’ Sally answered.

‘Whatever,’ Donnelly agreed unhappily.

‘I’m going to pack up some essentials and head over there ASAP – check out the lay of the land before anyone else gets there.’

‘Looking for anything in particular?’ Donnelly asked suspiciously.

‘No,’ Sean answered, too quickly. ‘But let’s just say I’d rather we used the phones we’re taking with us than the ones that will have been left for us.’

‘That’s a bit paranoid isn’t it, guv’nor?’ Sally asked.

‘It’s the Yard,’ Sean reminded her. ‘Being a little paranoid can go a long way to keeping you out of the brown sticky stuff.’

‘I’ve always avoided the place,’ Donnelly added. ‘Things can get very … political there very quickly. That’s why I always stuck with the Flying Squad – squirrelled away in Tower Bridge, out of sight, out of mind – beautiful.’

‘However,’ Sean interrupted Donnelly’s reminiscing, ‘the Yard it is, so just be mindful and be ready,’ he warned them. ‘I’ve got a feeling something really nasty’s heading our way, and heading our way very, very soon.’

2

Sean staggered along the seventh-floor corridor carrying a brown cardboard box that was heavy enough to make him sweat. The heating at the Yard was turned up high to please the ageing computers housed within. He checked the doors as he passed them – store rooms, empty rooms; occasionally a room with no sign, just a number and a few wary-looking people inside, silently raising their heads from their desks as he passed, disturbing their expectations of another day without change. He didn’t bother to introduce himself but just kept walking down the unpleasantly narrow corridor that was no different to all the other corridors at New Scotland Yard, with the same polystyrene ceiling tiles and walls no thicker than plasterboard, all painted a shade of light brown that blended into the worn, slightly darker brown carpet. ‘At least the floors don’t squeak,’ he whispered to himself, remembering the awful rubber floors back at Peckham as he arrived at Room 714 and its closed door.

He half-expected the door to be locked in a final gesture of defiance from the now disbanded Arts and Antiques Squad – a show of two fingers to Assistant Commissioner Addis, who Sean ironically always pictured living in a house surrounded by arts and antiques. Maybe one day Addis would get burgled and have to hastily re-form the squad in an effort to recover his own stolen treasures.

Sean balanced the heavy box on his raised thigh and tried the door handle, which to his surprise turned and opened, the door itself swinging aside in response to a good kick, allowing him to enter his new home from home.

Sean peered inside as best he could before stepping over the threshold. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he exclaimed as he walked deeper into the office, which was about half the size of the one they’d just left and looked like a hand-grenade had gone off in it. Clearly the Arts and Antiques boys and girls had been moved out in a hurry, leaving very little but rubbish and broken computers behind. He congratulated himself on the decision to tell his own team to ransack the Peckham office as part of the move. He dumped the box on an abandoned desk and crossed the office to the still-closed blinds – cheap, grey plastic venetians. He tugged the string, expecting the blind to neatly, if noisily, roll up to the ceiling, but the entire thing came crashing to the floor, the reverberating sound appearing to go on for ever as it bounced back and forth off the empty walls. Sean stood frozen, his face a grimace, long after the sound had faded. He turned back towards the door, anticipating a flurry of concerned people coming to investigate, but no one came, although he thought he heard laughter from further down the hallway. He moved along the line of blinds and gingerly pulled the strings until all were open and he was able to look down on the streets of St James’s Park below, the traffic little more than a distant murmur.

Turning his back on the windows, he surveyed the office in the daylight and didn’t like what he saw any better than before. It was going to be a real squeeze and arguments would abound as to who was entitled to a desk of their own, but at least there were two offices at one end of the main room, partitioned off with the usual polystyrene boards and sheets of Perspex, all held together by strips of aluminium. He made his way to the larger office and stepped inside, deciding it was about as big as his last one. He decided he’d give it to Sally and Donnelly to share while he took the smaller one. At the very least it might placate the unhappy Donnelly.

Leaving the office, he retrieved the heavy cardboard box that contained his most precious policing tools and entered the smaller office, dumping the box on the standard-sized desk that would soon be covered in keyboards, computer screens, phones and files. Under the desk he found the usual cheap three-drawer cabinet and miraculously the previous owner had left the keys in the top lock. Only someone leaving the force for good would abandon such a prized possession. Sean felt a twang of jealousy as he imagined the previous owner skipping out of the office after their last day at work, knowing they would never be returning. He shook the thought away and looked around for a chair, finding a swivel one pushed into the corner of the room, foam peeking from the rip in the seat cover. Never mind – it would have to do.

Before sitting he began to unpack the contents of the box – the few personal things first, placed on top of everything else where they were least likely to be damaged: a photograph of his wife, Kate, and of his smiling daughters, Mandy and Louise, and finally a small silver cross on a thin silver chain, given to him by his mother when he was just a boy. She’d told him it would protect him. It hadn’t, but still he’d kept it without knowing why. He hung it over the corner of the frame that held Kate’s picture and remembered being dragged to church as a child, never to return as an adult, despite his mother’s frequent encouragement.

He continued to unpack his things: his Detective’s Training Course Manual – otherwise known as The Bible, a copy of Butterworths Criminal Law and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, old files kept for reference, stationery and even the landline phone he’d commandeered from his old office back at Peckham. Every so often he glanced up from arranging his new desk to look exactly like his old one and stared into the empty main office – imagining, almost seeing how it would soon look – the characters who he so strongly associated with Peckham transported to this strange new environment, working away at computers, phones clamped between ears and shoulders as they hurriedly scribbled notes, the constant chatter and noise bringing the place to life. He blinked the imaginary detectives away, returning the office to its eerie emptiness and leaving him feeling strangely lonely. It wasn’t something he felt often, not since his childhood when being alone generally meant being safe. He shook his head and continued to empty the box, but a voice close by broke the silence and made him jump a little, leaving him surprised that he hadn’t felt the other person approaching as he usually would have.

‘Settling in all right I trust, Inspector?’ Assistant Commissioner Addis asked from the doorway.

‘More moving in than settling in,’ Sean answered.

‘Indeed,’ Addis agreed, a thin, unpleasant grin fixed on his face, his eyes sparkling with cunning and intelligence. ‘The office is on the small side, I know, but I’m sure it will serve its purpose.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ Sean told him without enthusiasm, returning to the task of unpacking.

‘Good,’ Addis said, walking deeper into the room. ‘It’s fortunate you’ve arrived early,’ he added, making Sean look up.

‘Really?’ Sean asked, already concerned about what was coming next. ‘How so?’

‘Gives us time to chat – in private.’ Addis looked around at the emptiness as if to make the point.

‘About what?’ Sean asked without trying to veil the suspicion in his voice.

‘Your new position, of course – here at the Yard. I’m assuming Superintendent Featherstone briefed you?’

‘He did – more or less.’

‘You should thank me,’ Addis told him without a hint of irony. ‘You’re free now. Free of all those tedious investigations a trained chimp could solve: husband strangles wife to death; drug dealer shoots other drug dealer; teenage gang member stabs other teenage gang member. I think we can leave the mundane to the less gifted to solve, don’t you?’

Sean shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Suppose so?’ Addis asked. ‘You know so I think. Yes?’ Sean said nothing. ‘You know one of the things we do really badly in the police, Sean? We waste talent. But I don’t waste talent when I see it, Sean – I use it, in whatever way I think best.’

‘And that’s why I’m here?’ Sean asked. ‘To be used?’

Addis gave a short, shallow laugh before pulling a thin manilla file from under his armpit that Sean hadn’t registered he was carrying until now. Addis flopped it on the desk, some of the documents inside spilling out, including a photograph of a radiant, beautiful child. ‘Your first case,’ Addis told him without emotion. ‘A four-year-old child has gone missing in suspicious circumstances from his home in Hampstead.’

‘Hampstead?’ Sean asked, remembering the area or at least several of its pubs that were frequently used by detectives attending residential courses at the Metropolitan Police Training Centre in nearby Hendon.

‘The boy apparently went missing overnight while his mother and sister were asleep. No signs of forced entry anywhere in the house, so it appears the boy has vanished into thin air. Quite the mystery. Right up your street – don’t you think?’

‘And the father?’ Sean asked.

‘Away on business, I believe. The local CID are at the address with the family eagerly awaiting your arrival.’

‘Has the house been searched yet?’ Sean enquired. ‘Sounds like the kid’s probably still in there somewhere, hiding.’

‘The house’s been searched by the mother, the local uniform officers and the local CID. No trace of the boy, which is why I’ve decided to assign the investigation to you.’

‘I see,’ Sean said, realizing that nothing he could say would deter Addis.

‘If you find the boy hiding somewhere the others failed to look then all well and good,’ Addis told him. ‘But if you don’t …’ He let it hang for a while before speaking again. ‘I understand you had some success a few years ago working undercover to infiltrate a paedophile ring known as the Network?’

‘I did,’ Sean admitted, slightly fazed that Addis had taken the time to research him so thoroughly.

‘Then you’ll have good understanding of how these people work.’

‘And you think a paedophile is involved here?’

‘That would be my guess,’ Addis answered. ‘And these people aren’t council estate scum, Sean – before you start accusing the parents of being involved.’

‘I was only thinking it’s a little too soon to make any assumptions. If the family are wealthy there may be a ransom demand.’

‘Well,’ Addis said, allowing Sean his moment of contradiction, ‘I’ll leave that for you to discover. All the details I have are in the file.’ Addis’s eyes indicated the folder on the desk. ‘Oh, and while I have you, I’ve decided your team needs a new name – to help you stand out from the crowd. As of now you will be known as the Special Investigations Unit. Should keep your troops happy: there’s nothing detectives seem to like more than a bit of elitism – or at least that’s what I’ve always found. Predominantly you’ll still be investigating murders, but every now and then something else may come along.’ Sean didn’t reply, his eyes never leaving Addis. ‘I’ll leave you to get on with it. A quick result would be much appreciated: we could do with some positive press. If you need anything just pop in and see me – I’m never far away, just a few floors above. Report to me when you find anything, or Superintendent Featherstone if I’m not around. Until later, then.’ Addis turned to leave.