The Taken

were a little creepy. “Have a seat if you can find one,” he called from the narrow galley kitchen.

“I’m afraid to touch anything.”

“I wouldn’t worry about breaking stuff. Take a look at that little fellow in the uniform.” She scanned the table and saw what he was talking about: a little jointed wood and tin soldier in a red uniform and a strange conical hat. Bellocque entered the room with two mugs and put them down.

“He’s an acrobat,” he said. “I made him out of birch and paperclips. Look at what he does.” Bellocque put the little soldier at the top of a set of stairs he’d made out of matchstick boxes and bent him backwards over the top edge. The soldier did backflips down all the steps, until he got to the tabletop, stood upright, and his head popped off on a spring.

“Does he always lose his head?”

“It’s a warning to the kiddies not to try it themselves. I’ve also made a crocodile bank that eats quarters, but you can never get them out.”

“What’s the use of that?”

“Don’t feed crocodiles,” he said, looking at her like it should have been obvious.

“Might be hard to market.” She stared at the soldier’s bobbing head. Bellocque nodded to a chair at the end of the table and Hazel sat. It was hard to tell what all the bits and pieces of things were for and she wondered if he was in the business of building sinister moralistic toys for children. She noticed a rotary phone on a table near the front door that had been broken down into parts. He was cannibalizing working things to make his little oddities. He passed her a cup of coffee, which he’d already milked and sugared, and retreated to sit beside one of his bookshelves in a rocking chair. “Now,” he said, “let’s discuss the trouble I must be in.”

“You’re rather jovial for a man being visited by a highranking police officer.”

“Oh, I’m just relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“Gil called me from the road and told me what you showed her. I knew it wasn’t a body, but it was still a relief to have it confirmed. Is that hot enough?”

She looked down into her mug. “It’s fine. How did she call you, Mr. Bellocque?”

“On the phone?”

She cast a look at the dismantled rotary phone on the table near the door. “Really.”

“Really,” he said, and when she turned around, he was holding a cellphone like a tiny biscuit between thumb and forefinger. His hand was enormous. Bigger, much bigger, than the hand in the video.

“And here I thought you were a Luddite.”

“Is that the word she used?”

“Among others,” she said, and he laughed heartily, throwing his head back. “I’m curious about something,” she continued. “If that phone there doesn’t work, why would you have given it as a contact number to Pat Barlow?”

“I didn’t,” he said, then he squinted one eye at her. “Did I? Crud, I might have. The grey matter isn’t what it used to be.”

She lifted the mug to her face and looked over the rim at the room, searching it for a door. The coffee was excellent. “Ms. Paritas is reluctant to call you her boyfriend. Did you know that?”

“It sounds silly to her. That’s what she says. A woman her age having a boyfriend. I just let her struggle with the proper word on her own and let things be what they are. I suppose it matters what things are called.” He crossed one leg over the other, a strangely dainty thing for a man like Bellocque to do.

“What’s that thing for?” she asked, looking at a strange metal object on the table. It seemed to have a lens in it – she wondered if it was something that could be used on a video camera.

He looked a bit perplexed for a moment, then, following her sightline, reached for a small black square that opened into a box with three sides. “This? It’s a loupe, you know? So many of the things I build have little parts.” He passed it to her, then gestured her to look behind where she sat, at the reel-to-reel. “For instance, do you think you could get these screws in or out without aid?”

The screws on the magnetic head assembly were almost as small as the tip of a ballpoint pen. She took the loupe from him and looked down into the machine. The screwheads seemed almost manageable through the magnifier. “I guess not.”

“Try it.” He passed her a screwdriver with the screw already magnetized to it. She held the loupe to her glasses and manoeuvred the screwdriver over the head assembly and put it in.

“It is easier.”

“Even with that thing, I feel like my eyeballs are going to start bleeding.”

Hazel nodded. It was hard to tell where things were going here. Bellocque was too friendly for it not to mean something, unless, of course, it meant nothing. What if he was just a nice guy? Policework inclined you to think about what people might be capable of, rather than what they’re actually doing. It was a good habit for work, but it failed you everywhere else. She couldn’t help but think of what happened in just about every cop flick she’d ever seen: there was always some nice-seeming guy with a hobby who turned out to be a lunatic. If Bellocque was a lunatic, she didn’t want it coming as a surprise. She laid the small screwdriver down on its side. “So,” she said, nonchalantly, “how did you manage to get Ms. Paritas to fish exactly where you wanted her to?”

“Ms. Paritas doesn’t do anything Ms. Paritas doesn’t want to do, trust me. Not only that, but she’s skilled at making it appear as if you’ve chosen to do something she wants you to do. But I like that about her.” He smiled at Hazel. “I like anyone who can think for herself.”

“I don’t think you heard my question.”

He leaned forward a little, his massive forearms on his thighs. “I’m sorry. I thought we were talking about relationships.”

“How is it that Ms. Paritas found that mannequin in ten metres of water, Mr. Bellocque? Someone must have known it was there.”

“Ah,” he said, and he leaned back. “Gil warned me you might ask some pointed questions. So, you want to know how, after hiding it there, I directed my girlfriend – or whatever you want to call her – to the exact spot and got her to fish it up, seemingly at random?”

“Sure. I’d be curious to know that.”

He tilted his head toward the ceiling, searching it with half-lidded eyes. Finally he looked at her again. “Psychokinesis?” When she didn’t respond to that, he said, “It might have been post-hypnotic suggestion. I lose track of all my nefarious plots.”

“Do you have a basement in this place?”

“You mean where I keep the bodies of my victims?”

“Mr. Bellocque -”

“Look,” he said, “if there’s something you really want to know, why don’t you just come out and ask it? I’ll answer anything you put to me honestly. Just stop trying to catch me out. I’ve nothing to hide.”

So this was it, she thought. Her last chance to establish a link between the people connected to this mannequin and the video of the captive man. But Bellocque wasn’t the man in those images, neither the man in the chair nor the man with the knife. But that might mean nothing. “Is there anyone else in this house?” she asked.

“Apart from us?”

“Apart from us.”

“No.”

“So, you’re not holding a man captive in your basement?”

He threw his head back and roared with laughter, but when he looked at her again, he could see she was serious. “Honestly?” he said.

“You told me to be direct.”

“All right then,” he said, and he stood. “Will you come with me, Detective?” He rummaged through the mess on his dining room table and found a flashlight, then gestured with it to the back of the room. There was an open doorway she hadn’t seen behind the bookcase; it led to a set of stairs that went down to a door. So there was a basement. He led the way, shaking the flashlight as he went to get it to function properly. Only a feeble beam came from it, and when he opened the door to the basement, it cast a small orangey