The Toy Taker. Luke Delaney

       4

      The only window in the prison cell was made of heavy, opaque, square glass bricks through which the rising sunlight outside struggled to penetrate, but it was enough to stir Mark McKenzie from his shallow sleep. He’d grown used to sleeping in prison cells, at police stations or more permanent institutions. Although he slept better than most, he was still frequently disturbed by the comings and goings of prisoners elsewhere in the custody area – drunken fights and the screams of the mentally ill, locked up until the system decided what to do with them.

      He pulled the regulation blue prisoners’ blanket off and padded barefoot on the cold stone floor to the stainless-steel toilet which had been bolted to the wall in a purpose-built alcove of the small room to afford the user some degree of privacy if the cell was being shared. Mercifully he was on his own – the white paper forensic suit ensuring he would not be expected to share this Victorian hole with anyone else. But the suit also marked him out to police and villains alike as something special, and the other criminals had a dog-sense born of the need to survive that told them at a glance that he was no armed robber to be respected and revered; no suspected gangland assassin to be avoided or sucked-up to. No, they knew what he was – a sex case – a rapist or kiddie-fiddler. Either way, he wouldn’t be sharing his accommodation with anyone – just in case. He didn’t fear too much for his safety while he was banged up with the Old Bill – he knew they wouldn’t let the other prisoners near him, and thanks to the advent of CCTV inside custody areas the risk of a visit from a uniformed Neanderthal administering summary justice was unlikely. But if he ended up going back to prison things would be different, even on Rule 43, segregated from the main prison population. He would be constantly living on his nerves, always aware that a vindictive prison officer – or, more likely, a bribed one – might leave a door unlocked just at the right time.

      He tried not to dwell on the subject as he finished emptying his bladder and returned to his bed – a flat, blue, plastic mattress on a completely solid wooden bench affixed to the wall on three sides. He pulled the blue blanket back over himself to keep out the morning chill. Clearly some police bastard had turned the heating off in his cell knowing he only had a paper suit and thin blanket to keep out the cold.

      As he lay on his back staring at the off-green ceiling his mind wandered back to his life as a young teenager living with his drunken stepfather who beat him for light entertainment and a mother who was too busy with much younger children from her new husband and too in need of the income he provided to do anything about it. And then the stepfather had started making accusations – whispering evil things in his mother’s ear about how he seemed a bit too keen to help bathe the younger children – how he’d caught him sneaking out of their bedrooms in the middle of the night. Even though they couldn’t prove anything, when he was only sixteen years old they had pushed him out of the door with a suitcase and two hundred pounds cash, given to him only once he’d promised never to come back. His pleas to his mother had fallen on deaf ears, but alone in the world he’d survived, living off a pittance of unemployment benefit in godforsaken bedsits until finally he’d been forced to take a job as an apprentice locksmith as part of his Job Seeker programme. After a few months he realized he was actually enjoying the job. Getting up every day knowing he had a purpose. Everybody in the small family business treated him with respect – treated him indeed as if he was part of their family as he watched and learned from the more experienced locksmiths. Soon he could fit almost any type of lock to almost any type of door and had even begun to learn the finer art of picking the locks open – a company speciality that had saved many a customer the expense of fitting new locks to doors that had unexpectedly swung shut on them. It started innocently enough as far as he was concerned – just a bit of harmless thrill-seeking – crouching in the dark at the doors of shops closed for the night, working his fine tools until the locks popped open, pushing the doors inwards until the burglar alarms were activated, then watching from a safe distance as the attending police berated the shopkeeper who they’d dragged out in the middle of the night to turn off the terrible noise, warning them that police would stop responding to their alarms if they couldn’t even be bothered to make sure they’d shut their doors properly. His night-time games were amusing as well as giving him the opportunity to hone his new-found skills, but soon their appeal began to wear thin. He needed more.

      The first few years of his life had been happy enough, – as far as he could remember – living with his mother and real father as an only child, but the admiring looks his mother drew from other men drove his father insane with jealousy – an insanity he tried to drown in drink, until finally his alcoholism chased him from the family home never to be seen again. He’d died a few years later and was buried in a pauper’s grave somewhere in the Midlands. After that it had been a succession of strange men he was told to call uncle until such time as they became more permanent in his mother’s life. Some had been decent enough, but most saw him at best as an inconvenience, while a few had treated him as something to be used and abused. All the while he’d had to watch the children of other families being loved and cherished by their parents – knowing that, while he was unwelcome in his own home, they would be sleeping soundly in warm, comfortable beds. If only he could share some of their life.

      Finally he could wait no longer and at last he perfected the method of becoming part of another family without anyone ever knowing. He slipped into their houses through silently opened windows and doors, his lock-picking skills improving with each adventure, standing in the kitchens and living rooms of the families as they slept upstairs, knowing that if he was caught he would be accused of terrible things. But all he wanted was to be alone with them, safe and accepted – part of a real family.

      For a long time he was too afraid to venture upstairs and stand in the same rooms as the sleeping children. Instead he’d settled for taking things to remind him of his innocent visits; not things of value, just little keepsakes no one would miss. But eventually that was no longer enough, and his fear of walking up the long, creaking staircases was overwhelmed by his need to see the sleeping children. So he took his first terrifying walk up the stairs, struggling to control his bladder and bowels as he slid past the parents’ room and entered the room of a little girl bathed in her blue night-light.

      It had been everything he’d dreamed it would be – standing, watching her little chest rise and fall under the covers, her long curly hair draped over her face like a beautiful veil. Her room was warm and pretty, with princesses and rainbows on her wallpaper, toys and dolls on every surface as she slept in her soft, comfortable bed, wrapped in a floral-patterned duvet that smelled of fresh orchids on a spring day. So this was how the other children had lived – cared for and adored, as far from his own childhood as it was possible to imagine. Tears had rolled down his face as he’d stood watching her – tears of happiness for her and sadness for his own lost childhood. After what seemed an age he left her room and slipped away as quietly as he’d arrived, taking one of her dolls from the shelf as he did so – being sure to lock the window behind him, leaving it just as he found it.

      Time and again he paid his visits to the sleeping, always taking something small and personal from the child’s room – just another toy lost or misplaced, soon forgotten by both parents and child alike. His collection of soft toys and dolls was squeezed into a suitcase stored under his bed for when he needed their help to relive his innocent little visits.

      But his wage as an apprentice remained small and while he was in the houses he saw many things of value: watches, jewellery, cash in purses and wallets. Small things at first, but as he became bolder the things he took grew larger: laptops, iPads, Blu-ray players. He knew just the landlord in just the pub to sell them to – no questions asked, cash over the counter. Finally his luck ran out as he let himself out of the back door of a semi-detached in Tufnell Park, straight into the arms of a waiting uniform police constable who was quietly investigating a call from a concerned neighbour who thought they’d heard something suspicious in next-door’s garden. Obviously he’d been unable to explain the laptop and iPhone they’d found in his bag and once it was established he was not the