The David Raker Collection

by Tim Weaver

  Originally, I thought he was admitting to killing Erion himself. But it wasn’t that at all. He delivered him. He probably only realized afterwards, as Erion’s face was plastered across the front pages, but Wellis had unknowingly handed the Snatcher his next victim. He’d met the Snatcher too. He told me he always vetted the punters first time out, but Wellis would have been funnelling so many men Erion’s way, the vetting process would have been a shambles. And even if he did recall a face, even if – as unlikely as it seemed – the Snatcher had let his guard down and somehow made himself known to Wellis, Wellis couldn’t have said anything. Go to the police, and he invited the Met into his life. His operation. His secrets. So he said nothing and accepted Erion as collateral damage. Wrong place, wrong time. He was right about that, at least.

  Healy eyed me, as if he sensed my mind was on something else, and he wanted to know what. ‘Wren had Erion’s number tucked away on his work PC, disguised as a business associate. Never called him, but the number was there.’

  ‘Wait a second. If he never called Erion, how did you pin this on Sam in the first place? If there was no phone call, there’s no route from Erion back to Sam.’

  Healy didn’t reply. Instead he placed a hand on top of the files. It was meant to look casual, a movement so slight I wouldn’t even notice. But I did, and it immediately pissed me off. He wanted to remain in control, wanted to establish a hierarchy between us, and in doing so he’d forgotten his association with me, the things we’d done and the sacrifices I’d made for him. But there was something else in the gesture too. I saw it in his eyes, in his expression, a mix of suppression and guilt. He was keeping something back from me. But not just from me – from everyone.

  ‘Do you know much about him?’ Healy asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Snatcher.’

  ‘I want to know how you came to Sam Wren.’

  He could see he’d annoyed me. ‘This is all off the record, understand?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m an amateur.’

  ‘You’re upset about your boy. I get it.’

  ‘He’s not my boy – and it’s got nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Don’t be an arsehole, Raker.’

  ‘I’m not being an arsehole, Healy. But you call me out of the blue after seven months of silence, and then you treat me like I’ve never met you before. I know trust is hard for you, but believe me: if you can trust one person, that person is me.’

  I waited for the fireworks, but instead he just looked at me and I saw again how desperately he was trying to keep a lid on things. In a strange way, it made him easier to read. Everything he’d stopped himself from saying had built up in his eyes – all the smothered emotion, all the words he’d had to let go since returning to the Met – and I caught a glimpse of a man, perhaps only weeks from here, unable to bury it any more.

  ‘You’re gonna want some background.’

  I looked at him. ‘Fine. Just get on with it.’

  He eyed me for a moment and then leaned closer, and I could smell coffee and aftershave on him. ‘He takes them from their homes. First one went missing last year, on 11 August: Steven Wilky. On 13 November he takes Marc Erion aka Evans. On 28 February he grabs Joseph Symons, and this past week it was Jonathan Drake. Drake’s neighbour called us yesterday evening, said she hadn’t seen Drake around since Tuesday, and she saw him every day. Mother-hen type. Uniforms turned up there, then called us. The only thing this guy leaves behind is their hair. He shaves it all off and places it on their pillows.’

  ‘Why does he do that?’

  Healy shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

  He meant, You’re the man who knows Wren.

  Except I obviously didn’t know Sam Wren at all.

  ‘It’s a power thing,’ I said.

  He looked at me and nodded: to exert power over them; to reduce the victims to less than they were. I tried to put that into context; tried to imagine why Sam might do that, what in his life might make him want to do that, but I couldn’t ally the two. Nothing I’d discovered about Sam Wren, even as I trawled through the secrets and the lies, connected with the crimes of this man. Shaving their heads, trapping them, vanishing them into the night – none of that felt like Sam to me. Except, of course, there was one area that was definitely a fit: their sexual preferences. If the Snatcher was taking men, he was turned on by them, wanting power over them, even if ultimately he was trying to deny it.

  And Sam had been in denial for years.

  ‘The assumption is the Snatcher’s gay?’

  Healy shrugged. ‘Who knows now? That’s what we always assumed, that’s what profilers kept telling us. But Wren is married – and he’s straight.’

  You’re going to have to tell him.

  ‘There’s no semen at any of the scenes,’ he went on, ‘no sign of either consensual sex or sexual assault. This guy is careful. We’ve lifted prints from every scene, prints not belonging to the victim, but they don’t lead anywhere. He doesn’t touch their pillows when he puts the hair there, but we have found tiny pieces of wood, which probably means he shaves their heads into some kind of bowl and brings it across like that; touches the pillow with it while he’s placing the hair there.’

  I glanced out of the window. ‘There’s something you need to know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About Sam.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘What?’

  ‘What Julia wouldn’t have told you, because she doesn’t know …’ I turned back to him. ‘Sam was gay. Or maybe bisexual. Or maybe just curious. But he wasn’t straight.’

  ‘Fuck me.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I think we’ve got our man.’

  ‘Now it’s your turn. What led you to Sam’s work?’

  He moved his hand from the files and pulled the bottom one out of the pile. He handed it to me this time. It almost looked like a conciliatory gesture.

  I flipped the front cover of the folder. Another man in his twenties. The same height and the same build as Erion, but better-looking; square-jawed and dark. He was smartly dressed and standing in bright sunlight, squinting a little but his features and face were very clear. I scanned his personal details. Jonathan Drake. Twenty-seven.

  The Snatcher’s fourth victim.

  ‘You wanna know how we ended up at Wren’s work?’ Healy said, a finger tapping the Drake file. ‘We put in a request for phone and email records as soon as Drake’s disappearance came to light, and were still waiting on getting them back when a London Underground employee called us up this morning – after seeing Drake’s name in the media – and said he’d found a phone on the platform at Westminster station during his patrol on Thursday night.’

  ‘It was Drake’s?’

  ‘Yeah. We sent a team down there to find out if there was anything else, but it was just the phone down there. No sign of Drake or anyone else.’

  ‘Was Sam’s number on the phone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean he had anything to do with this, even if he somehow knew Drake.’

  ‘Wrong,’ Healy said, shaking his head. ‘Wren left a voicemail.’

  44

  Jonathan Drake’s face looked up at me from the file. In among the paperwork was the transcript from the voicemail message: ‘Hi Jonathan, it’s (pause) Leon Spane. Just wanted to let you know that I’m really looking forward to seeing you tonight.’ Aside from Sam not even using his own name, there was no explanation for what the mobile phone was doing just sitting there on the platform. Nothing for why a man who had been gone six months had suddenly made a telephone call. Before I could look any further into the paperwork, Healy disrupted my train of thought, shifting forward and picking the file up, and all I was left with was a flash of a memory.

  ‘How do you even know it’s Sam?’

  ‘It’s Wren. It’s his voice.’

  ‘That’s been verified by forensics?’

  ‘Initial tests say yes. We’ll know for sure tomorrow.’

  ‘S
o why did he call himself Leon Spane?’

  ‘He’s protecting his identity.’ He looked at me. ‘Plus it’s a cute little touch.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Spane might be connected to the Snatcher.’ I waited for Healy to expand on that, but he didn’t. ‘Anyway, that doesn’t matter for now. What matters is that it’s Wren.’

  I’d come back to Spane. But for now I returned to the voicemail message: the Met reckoned Sam had called Drake on the evening of 12 June. The mobile phone records that Spike had got for me only ran up until 1 June, and Sam had made zero calls from the time of his disappearance until then. So why suddenly use it on 12 June?

  ‘I’m still having a hard time seeing this,’ I said.

  The smile fell from Healy’s face. I’d touched a nerve; unintentionally, but I’d done it all the same. He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want obstacles put in his path. He was able to control himself against men he hated, against those who had an agenda against him, because he was determined not to arm them with anything they could use. But against me, against a man who had no reason to come at him, no agenda, he didn’t have to maintain the facade any more.

  ‘You’re having a hard time seeing this?’ he said, grimacing. ‘We’ve got Erion’s number on Wren’s computer and his voice on Drake’s mobile phone.’

  ‘What’s Sam’s connection to the other two Snatcher victims, though?’

  ‘You struggling to understand my accent or something?’

  I held up a hand, trying to cool him.

  ‘Wren knows Erion and he knows Drake,’ Healy said. ‘He’s been in contact with both of them. What’s the next logical step? That he knows Wilky and Symons.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Give me a fucking break, Raker. You know what this means.’

  ‘It’s an assumption.’

  ‘You’d make the same one.’

  I couldn’t argue with that. If Sam knew two out of the four victims, if he’d been in touch with them, then it was only a very small step to Wilky and Symons.

  ‘This just doesn’t feel like Sam.’

  He snorted in derision. ‘This is a murder investigation, not some carnival sideshow. Cases aren’t built on how you feel. This isn’t the fucking magic circle.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have pegged Sam for a killer.’

  ‘Sam.’

  I frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Maybe you’re getting too cosy with him,’ Healy said, and sank some of his coffee. ‘You ever thought of that? You need to separate out what you think is the truth – what you want to be the truth – from what is actually the truth.’

  ‘Is there anything else linking him to the crimes?’

  ‘Anything else but his own voice? I don’t know how you’ve found it in your vast experience of working murders, but generally they’re not standing there with their dicks out holding the murder weapon when we arrive on the scene. This is as good as it gets.’ Healy glanced at me, his hackles rising again. ‘And here’s another thing: the Snatcher’s a planner. He watches these guys for weeks, he gets to know their routines, he doesn’t leave room for error. He even takes out all the lights leading into and out of the building. Every single one. I couldn’t get my head around why there was no lighting in the places he took them from. Then I realized every one was the same. He sweeps the building before the night he takes them, and then he walks them out in total darkness.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘What’s my point?’ He smirked. ‘My point is, I chatted to Julia Wren and she said your mate Sam was working late at work all the time. So what’s the betting he wasn’t at work? What’s the betting he’s out there getting a hard-on, picking himself a new victim?’

  ‘Or he could really have been working late.’

  He shook his head. ‘You live in fantasy land, Raker. Your guy is the best lead we’ve had in almost a year of trying to track down this arsehole. We’ve got him all over two of the vics, he fits the profile like a glove and, all of a sudden, he’s mysteriously disappeared and no one – not even David Raker – can find him. The only thing batting against all that is this whimsical shit you’re spinning about some kind of gut feeling.’

  ‘He’s been missing six months.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he hasn’t disappeared “all of a sudden”. And why take two of them and then disappear yourself in order to take the next two – and then leave a voice message on the latest victim’s phone and be careless enough to lose it on the Underground? The Snatcher’s left no trace of himself until now. There’s no sense in him suddenly deciding to leave his name and number on Drake’s phone.’

  ‘Sense? What, you think this guy is lucid? You think he’s logical? What’s logical about shaving people’s heads and killing them? He’s a nutjob.’ He paused; regained his composure. ‘You get close to people on a case. I know that. I’ve done the same. Sometimes it’s hard to accept what they’ve done when you get attached to them.’

  ‘I’m not attached to him.’

  ‘It sounds to me like you are.’

  I went to answer, went to fight my corner again, when I stopped. Had I become too attached to Sam? Had I bought into his life too much, failed to process the truth out there on the periphery of his life? He was a fraud. He’d lied to everyone important to him. And he’d been leading a double life – which was exactly what the Snatcher had been doing. I looked at Healy and saw the way he was studying me. I backtracked through our conversation and then back even further, to the people I’d spoken to, the lies I’d unearthed.

  And then something emerged from the dark.

  It was weird, Robert Wren had said to me when he’d told me about Sam going to see the prostitute I now knew to be Marc Erion. He said the guy lived in this place where there were no lights. He said he got to his door, on to the floor this guy was on, and all the bulbs were out. It was completely black … And when he got to the flat, Wren went on, he said it felt like someone was there. Sam meant there, in the corridor with him.

  Had Sam told another lie? Or was there something more at play here?

  ‘I’m not attached to him,’ I said again.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Do you even value my opinion, Healy?’

  ‘You looking for an ego massage?’

  ‘Do you?’

  He just stared at me.

  ‘Or is this simply about getting one over on the cops you hate?’

  ‘It’s not about that.’

  ‘Then what’s it about?’

  There was a sudden kind of sadness to him and, for the briefest of moments, I saw a flash in one of his eyes; the same one as earlier. He was definitely hiding something. He looked away, and when he turned back he’d composed himself and there was nothing in his face. No emotion. No expression. Just a blank.

  ‘Healy?’

  ‘It’s about getting the guy respon–’

  ‘Responsible for these crimes, blah blah blah. Look, if you value anything I did for you last year, if any of that meant anything, you owe it to me to –’

  ‘I don’t owe you shit.’

  I paused. This was how Healy’s anger played out: indiscriminate and damaging. But even though I knew that, even though I’d dealt with this over and over the October before, it still stuck in my throat. It provoked me and irritated me, and – in my most uncontrolled moments, moments I tried to contain – it made me want to hurt him back.

  ‘Why are you still here?’

  He looked at me. ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got the evidence. You’ve obviously got all you need to know about Sam from his wife. She’s told you how he disappeared, what her life was like at the end, how he started to change. You know all that already. Now I’ve just filled in the rest of the blanks for you. So why are you still here?’

  His eyes turned to his coffee mug.

  I leaned into him. ‘Don’t bullshit me, Healy. I never thought this was a social call so I�
�m not upset you aren’t asking me how I’ve been keeping, but don’t try to pretend this is something it isn’t. You called me because you want to know what I’ve got, so you can take it back to the station and pretend it’s all your own work. You want to solve this case by yourself so you can prove them all wrong. But mostly you’re using me because you’ve got some doubts about something. So what have you got doubts about?’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m not your enemy, Healy, remember that.’

  ‘So what are you?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what we are.’

  We sat there for a while, both of us nursing identical mugs of coffee, both of us at the window, on identical stools, looking out at the same street. I studied our reflections in the glass and remembered a moment from the last time we were together, sitting at the window of a coffee shop just off East India Dock Road, Healy telling me about the case that had broken him, the case that had ended his marriage. Then, as now, I looked at him and thought, in another life, things could have been different. In so many ways we were the same. In so many ways we reflected one another, all the qualities and the faults, the lingering sense of loss. But Healy’s control, over himself and over his emotions, would only ever be tenuous, because that was who he was – and that was what separated us. However far out of the hole he managed to claw himself, he’d always be slipping back in.

  ‘The disappearance thing bugs me,’ he said finally. It was as close to an apology, an acknowledgement that I was right, as I was going to get, so I accepted it with a nod of the head and we moved on. ‘Like you say, why take Wilky and Erion, then disappear?’ He paused. Looked at me. ‘And the phone is the other thing. Same as you. Why would Wren leave a message? He’s been careful. He hasn’t made any mistakes. Leaving a message is a mistake.’

  ‘This is what I know about Sam. His whole life was a lie, but it wasn’t something that came easy to him. It weighed heavy. He was in complete denial about who he was. It took him ten years to pluck up the courage to sleep with another man and when he did …’

  I stopped.

  Should I tell him about Wellis? If I did, the police would corner him faster than I ever could on my own, and it would be one less loose end to worry about. But if they got to Wellis, that would invite questions about the girl at the house, about what happened at the warehouse, about Gaishe and about the anonymous call I’d made. Sallows, the cop who’d come to my home looking into the attack on the girl, would have even more ammunition to come at me with. But the flipside was obvious: if I didn’t tell Healy, Wellis remained out there – and he remained a threat to me.