Free The Toy Taker by Luke Delaney Page B

sitting on the table above his head and the damning evidence it contained. The fear of it being discovered turned his legs to springs as he rolled from under the table, stood and reached for the computer – but before his fingers could touch a single key one of the bastard policemen had crossed the room and knocked him back to the floor with a two-handed push to the chest. By the time he recovered his breath and his senses, the cop was standing over him, holding a warrant card in his face.
    ‘DI Corrigan, you little prick. Consider yourself under arrest.’
    McKenzie coughed violently before speaking, to the point where he almost vomited. ‘I haven’t done anything,’ he pleaded, almost out of habit.
    ‘Really,’ Sean snarled. ‘Then what the fuck is this?’ He grabbed McKenzie by the back of his head and pushed his face close to the screen.
    ‘I don’t know how that got there,’ McKenzie stammered, feigning amazement. ‘Swear to God.’
    ‘Don’t lie to me, you miserable little shit. You lie to me, it’ll only get worse for you.’
    ‘I’m telling the truth,’ McKenzie lied again. ‘It’s a second-hand computer – the download was already on it – I just found it when I was clearing its memory.’
    ‘Liar,’ Sean told him, his voice threatening as his hand slipped behind McKenzie’s neck and began to squeeze hard, the pain opening his mouth and making him whimper in pain. ‘You’re off to a bad start, McKenzie. Now it’s time to start telling the truth.’
    The sweat on his brow made the thin, brown hair of his long fringe stick to his forehead as his thin fingers tried to prise Sean’s iron grip from the back of his neck, his dirty, broken fingernails scratching and drawing lines of blood on the back of Sean’s hand. ‘I’m not saying anything until I speak to a solicitor,’ he managed to say between deep swallows. ‘I know my rights.’
    ‘Fuck your rights,’ Sean hissed. ‘The children you were convicted of assaulting – where were their rights when you were abusing them?’ He thrust McKenzie’s face closer to the laptop’s screen. ‘Where are
their
rights?’
    ‘Maybe you should take it a little easy, guv’nor?’ Keeping her voice low, Sally laid a hand on Sean’s arm. This was no game of good cop, bad cop – she’d seen Sean like this before and knew it could mean trouble – trouble for them all.
    ‘Anyone wants to leave, they can leave,’ Sean told Sally and the other two detectives. ‘Mark and I wouldn’t mind being left alone, would we, Mark? We could have a private chat – get a few things straightened out.’
    Sally sighed inwardly, but said nothing.
    ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ McKenzie sneered through his pain, the fear leaving him as his mind began to spin with the possibilities of his situation.
    ‘Wrong,’ Sean shouted in his ear. ‘Time to talk, McKenzie. Now, where’s the boy? Where are you keeping him?’
    McKenzie shook his head, trying to assess the situation and play it to his own advantage – to turn the tables on the police at last, especially the one who held him by the neck as if he was nothing more than an unruly dog. He couldn’t stand any police, but this one was especially easy to hate. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he answered. A sickening smirk twisted across his face as he fed off Sean’s dark anger, sensing that he was the one in control, no matter how hard Sean squeezed his neck; no matter how much he might beat him or try to humiliate him. He held the power – for now.
    ‘The boy?’ Sean repeated. ‘You snatched him from his bedroom in Hampstead last night, but where is he now? What have you done with him? For your sake, Mark, I hope he’s all right.’
    ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you – whoever you are.’
    ‘I already told you who I am, Mark. You need to pay a little more attention and you need to answer my questions and you need to answer them now. Do you know what happens to child