Free The Keeper by Luke Delaney

uncomfortably in his chair. ‘And as we both know, there’s no way you could ever, ever walk out on a job and let somebody else deal with it. You’re way too conscientious for that. True?’
    ‘I can’t walk out in the middle of a job. There’s no one else to pass it on to. A case comes in, it lands on my desk and that’s it. It’s mine until it’s finished. If I don’t get to come home for a week then I don’t get to come home for a week. That’s the way it is. It goes with the territory. It’s the job. It’s what I do. I can’t run off to New Zealand. I can’t run off anywhere. I am what I am. I do what I do. You don’t want to see me sitting in an office in the City pushing paper around, living for my bonus, another clone – that would kill me. I wouldn’t be me any more. I’d bore you to death.’
    Kate thought for a long while before answering. ‘You’re right,’ she told him. ‘I know you have to be a cop. You thrive on it. It makes you proud – and so it should. But the kids are getting older. At least one of us needs to be here more for them.’
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘I’m just saying,’ Kate went on. ‘The fact is I earn almost twice what you do and I don’t have to nearly kill myself to do it.’
    ‘What are you suggesting?’ Sean asked, his voice thick with suspicion.
    ‘I don’t really know,’ Kate admitted. ‘I think we need more of a plan, that’s all. I have no idea where we’re going.’
    ‘Who ever knows that?’ Sean questioned. ‘All anyone can do is live in the day, try and get something out of every day. All these books and gurus spouting plans for a better life – it’s a load of crap. You have to just try and live your life the best you can.’
    Kate studied him a while. ‘I am happy,’ she told him, ‘but surely there’s more for us somewhere. Something better.’
    Sean searched her brown eyes for signs of happiness. He saw no signs of unhappiness and decided that was good enough, for now.
    ‘I do love you,’ she continued, ‘which is why I worry about you, which is why I don’t want to share you with the bad people, the psychos, the drug dealers, the angry madmen. I want you all for myself and the kids.’
    Her words made him smile. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I want you and the kids to be proud of me. I want them to know what I do.’
    ‘Christ,’ Kate replied. ‘You’ll scare the bloody hell out of them.’
    ‘I’ll spare them the details, but you get what I mean.’
    ‘So,’ Kate surrendered, ‘we carry on as we are, ships that pass in the night, absent parents?’
    ‘I’m not ready to walk away yet,’ Sean told her. ‘Let’s give it a couple more years, then we’ll see.’
    ‘I wouldn’t ask you to walk away if you don’t want to,’ she assured him.
    ‘A couple more years,’ Sean almost promised. ‘Then we’ll see.’
    ‘I’ll remember this conversation, you know,’ she warned him.
    ‘Of course you will,’ Sean conceded. ‘You’re a woman.’

3
    Thursday morning shortly before nine o’clock and Sally was knocking on the door of a nondescript house in Teddington on the outskirts of West London, steeling herself to ask the occupants a set of questions that even their closest friends wouldn’t dare to broach. Though she’d never met these people, experience told her they would see her as their potential saviour. This morning she felt more like an intruder come to wreak havoc. So long as she got the answers to her questions – answers that could progress or kill off this new case – she didn’t really care what impact her visit might have on their lives.
    While she waited for an answer, she took a couple of steps back from the door, surveying the large ugly house that would have been the pride of the street when newly built in the seventies, but now looked tired and out of place amongst the older, more gracious houses.
    She heard the approach of muffled footsteps, comfortable slippers or soft indoor shoes, moving