DI Sean Corrigan Crime Series: 6-Book Collection: Cold Killing, Redemption of the Dead, The Keeper, The Network, The Toy Taker and The Jackdaw

Featherstone waited until they were well out of earshot before speaking again. ‘How’s Sally?’ he asked.

Sean sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘She’s getting there,’ he answered.

‘Bollocks,’ snapped Featherstone. ‘Any fool can see she’s struggling, unsurprisingly.’

‘She’ll be OK,’ Sean assured him, a little disappointed in Featherstone’s lack of faith in Sally’s ability to recover. ‘She needs some time and a decent investigation to take her mind off what happened, that’s all.’

‘Is that why you so readily agreed to take on a missing persons inquiry?’ Featherstone asked. ‘To help Sally.’

Sean avoided the question. ‘I didn’t realize I had a choice.’

‘For what it’s worth,’ Featherstone told him, ‘you did have a choice.’ Sean said nothing as Featherstone headed out of his office. ‘Make sure you keep me posted and if there’s anything I can do, give me a call. I know you’re allergic to the media, so if you need me to deal with them, no problem.’

Featherstone was halfway out the door when Sean stopped him with a question. ‘Do you think she’s already dead? Is that why you want me to take this on?’

‘I was hoping you would tell me that, Sean,’ Featherstone answered. ‘And her name’s Louise Russell and she’s someone’s wife, someone’s daughter – and if we do our jobs properly, one day she might be someone’s mother. I think we all need to remember that, don’t you?’

Sean said nothing as he watched Featherstone close the door behind him.

He suddenly felt very alone, sitting in his small warm office, surrounded by cheap furniture and out-dated computers with monitors that belonged in a museum. Even the view out of his window offered nothing but the sight of sprawling Peckham council estates and the travellers’ caravan site on the wasteland next to the police station itself. He started to think about Louise Russell, to imagine what had happened to her and why. Where was she now? Was she still alive and if so why? Had somebody taken her, taken her to do horrific things to her? Should they expect a ransom note? No, he didn’t think so. This felt like madness, as if madness had come into Louise Russell’s life without any warning or reason.

Sean rubbed his face and tried to chase the questions away. She’s a missing person, he told himself. Stop treating her like she’s dead. But he knew it was pointless – he’d already begun. He’d already begun to think like him. Like the madman who’d taken her.

2 (#ulink_cdd968dc-6a56-5f25-921d-09a96e91f1e7)

Natural light flooded down the staircase and into the room, its brightness temporarily blinding Louise Russell as she blinked to adjust to its harshness, before the noise of a door being quickly but carefully closed took the light away. Louise’s eyes welcomed back the twilight she had grown accustomed to and looked across the room at Karen Green, who was sinking further into the corner of her cage, her fingers curling through and around the wire mesh as if she was bracing herself, anchoring herself against a tide that was about to sweep her away. Louise could hear her trying to stifle her tears as the footsteps on the stairs grew closer. She listened to those footsteps approaching, but they weren’t heavy and dramatic, they were light and made little more than a shuffling, scraping sound that filled her with a fear worse than anything she’d ever experienced.

It was as if her senses were tuned in to the minutest sound, shade, smell, movement in her prison. This was the darkest most desperate place and time of her life, yet she’d never felt so alive. She found herself mimicking her fellow captive as she backed into the furthest corner of her cage, the beat of her own throbbing pulse almost drowning out the gentle footsteps that tentatively crept down towards them.

After what seemed both an agonizingly long time and a desperately short time he appeared at the bottom of the stairs and stepped falteringly into the makeshift dungeon. Louise watched as he paused before slowly moving inside, keeping close to the wall. As far as she could make out he was wearing a dark or grey tracksuit top and bottoms. Still he said nothing as he moved deeper into the room, then suddenly disappeared as if by magic. A second later she heard the springy click of a cord being pulled, followed by the yellow glow of a low-wattage bulb spilling into the subterranean room. The light wasn’t strong enough to trouble her eyes or vision, but it made a huge difference to what she could see clearly. She saw that he’d walked behind a fabric screen, the type used on hospital wards to provide some degree of privacy.