The David Raker Collection

by Tim Weaver

  There you are. Like clockwork.

  He reached across to the glovebox, and pulled it open. Her routine was always the same on a Sunday. Half an hour after she got home from the supermarket, she started tending to her plants. She was a keen gardener; spent hours clipping them and cutting them back. This would be the best time for him to do it: when she was bent over one of the potted firs, her back to him, distracted by what she was doing. He looked down at the glovebox for a second time.

  There was a gun inside.

  Suddenly, his phone started going.

  It buzzed across the passenger seat beside him, display facing up. Craw. Shit. He wiped his eyes and cleared his throat, then scooped up the phone. Get yourself together.

  ‘Healy.’

  ‘Healy, it’s Craw. Where are you?’

  He cleared his throat a second time. ‘I’m at Drake’s building.’

  Four words without any weight at all. They carried off into the space between the two of them and it took everything Healy had not to tell Craw what he was really doing. She didn’t believe him, not a word of it, but she didn’t ask again, and because of that he felt even more compelled to say something: part of him knew he owed her for giving him a route back in; the other part, even more hidden, just wanted to talk to someone about it.

  But he couldn’t talk to Craw.

  He couldn’t talk to anyone at the Met.

  And the only person he could talk to – of his doubts about the case, and of his reasons for being here – was the one person who would get in the way of his attempt to rebuild his career.

  Raker.

  Twenty-five minutes later, Teresa Reed was finished and back inside. The glovebox was closed and the gun no longer visible. Healy knew he should have left for the station the minute Craw had hung up. Bartholomew had scheduled a meeting for two and wanted everyone in to hear his next revolutionary plan for catching the Snatcher.

  But Healy hadn’t left.

  He’d stayed to watch Teresa Reed.

  Any change in her routine, any sidestep away from it, and the whole thing went down the toilet. But, five months in, she was still doing the same things, in the same order on the same days. He knew her life; knew where she’d be and when she’d be there.

  He could take her whenever he wanted.

  Scooping up his phone, he scrolled through his address book. When he found the number he wanted, he hit Dial.

  ‘Hello?’

  A female voice.

  ‘Teresa? It’s Colm.’

  ‘Colm!’ she said excitedly. ‘Are we still on for tonight?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve booked us a table. I’ll pick you up at seven.’

  55

  Each of the discs was the same: the flat, the girl, Pell filming it all, and the terrible suffering that came after. I never saw the other person again. It was a man – you could tell from the shape of the legs; from the trousers and the shoes – but he was never glimpsed in the reflection of the mirror, never caught in shot. Yet, given everything I knew, the connection between Sam and Pell, and both their connections to Wellis, it wasn’t hard to see where the police might go with this.

  Sam was the man watching.

  And somehow the two of them were working together.

  The evening drew in fast as rain continued falling. I turned one of the chairs around and sat at the living-room windows, watching the light fade. At 8.30, I heard Liz come in through the front door and approach me in the darkness.

  Don’t mention the bruises, Liz.

  Not now. Not today.

  ‘Are you saving electricity?’ she said, and perched herself on the edge of the sofa. I slid an arm around her and squeezed gently. She took my head in the crook of her elbow and started running her hands through my hair. ‘Guess that’s the end of the summer.’

  ‘Are you pleased now?’ I said to her, squeezing her a second time.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I much prefer this.’

  ‘You all done with work?’

  ‘Just about. Got a big day in court tomorrow, so need to make sure I don’t show myself up for the massive fraud that I am.’ She was smiling. ‘How was your Sunday?’

  ‘It was fine,’ I lied.

  But she leaned away from me, as if immediately sensing something in my voice, and – even in the half-light of the room – I knew her eyes were falling on the bruises.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. I just ran into some trouble.’

  I studied the disappointment in her eyes, the distrust, the rejection she felt for all the promises I’d made to her about not putting myself on the line, and she shifted away from me, and then slowly got to her feet.

  ‘I’m fine, Liz. Honestly.’

  ‘You’re fine today,’ she said, looking down at me. ‘But don’t you remember anything we talked about? Any of the things you said to me?’

  I sucked down my anger. ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘He took me by surprise.’

  ‘They always do.’

  I got to my feet and stood there in front of her, the living room getting darker every second, only the faint blue glow of the DVD readout adding colour to our faces. ‘This is what I do,’ I said to her gently. ‘This is my job. This is my life.’

  She looked at me for a long time, eyes not moving.

  ‘I know it’s your life,’ she said. ‘You’ve told me that over and over. This is who you are. This is what you do. I get it. But remember something: this is my life now too.’

  I didn’t go after her. Instead, I switched on the computer and tried to concentrate on something else, watching back the footage Tasker had sent me of the day Sam went missing. It felt like I’d seen it a thousand times now, like I knew every second of it intimately: the way Sam moved, his path in, the crowds around him, the platform. But now, thanks to Task, I had the walkways, escalators and ticket halls too. Except Sam never used any of them. Because he never even used the platform.

  Once he was on the train, he never got off.

  I returned to the footage of the carriage itself, letting it run from Gloucester Road. When the train got to Westminster, it was like looking at a family photo; a snapshot of a scene I knew every inch of. The people coming off the train and those left on it: the clumps of protesters; the woman with her headphones on, oblivious to what was happening; the two men, one – in a suit – seated and reading, the other – a demonstrator in a red shirt with checked sleeves – picking up a sign and shuffling towards the doors. As I inched it on further, watching the same people take the same routes out, my phone started going. I flipped it over and hit Speakerphone. ‘David Raker.’

  ‘It’s me,’ came a whisper.

  ‘Healy?’

  ‘You ever heard Wren talk?’ he said, bypassing a greeting, the line absolutely silent, as if he’d locked himself away somewhere. ‘I mean, actually talk.’

  ‘You mean like on video or something?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I have. I spent an hour watching a home movie of him at the station.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And the message he left on Drake’s mobile …’

  I looked down at the phone. ‘What, it’s not him?’

  ‘No, it’s definitely him,’ he said, and then stopped. He sounded hesitant, unsure of himself. ‘Look, I haven’t forgotten what you did for me last year.’

  He took me so much by surprise it was a couple of seconds before I caught up: he was talking about what I’d said earlier. I know trust is hard for you, but believe me: if you can trust one person, that person is me.

  ‘I know what you did for Leanne.’

  ‘Are you okay, Healy?’

  ‘I’m trying to rebuild my career,’ he went on, ‘I’m trying to do it right. I know you didn’t give me everything you had earlier on, and that’s fine. You’re being careful. You don’t know which side of the line I’m on now. I’d be
exactly the same if I was in your position.’

  Another pause, and then a sigh crackled down the line. He sounded so different: sad, beaten and ground down. No anger. No fight. No resentment. Just an acceptance, as if he’d looked in the mirror and didn’t like what came back.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked again.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about something?’

  ‘I haven’t got anyone else,’ he said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I haven’t got anyone I can turn to in the Met. If I show any weakness to Craw, she will start watching me, doubting me, seeing every tiny mistake I make as some kind of slippery slope. If I show it to Davidson, to the rest of them, they will tear me apart.’

  Another pause. I didn’t interrupt.

  ‘So I only have you, Raker. And now I need your help.’

  56

  Healy was waiting in the shadows near Westminster Bridge, the glow of a cigarette between his lips. The October before, he’d been an ex-smoker, three months on from his last cigarette, but the whole time you could see him craving them. He nodded as I approached along the riverside. Next to him on the wall were two takeaway coffees.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said quietly, handing me one.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  He nodded, his eyes falling on my bruises. ‘You been in the wars?’

  ‘Yeah, something like that.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’ I looked at my watch: 11.30. ‘What’s going on?’

  Healy stepped away from the station entrance and we shifted back further into the darkness. ‘It’s Wren who left the voicemail message on Drake’s mobile,’ Healy said.

  ‘Definitely?’

  ‘Confirmed now. Forensics did their thing. Got hold of some conversations he’d had with clients at work. The boss there has all telephone calls recorded, and keeps a year’s worth on file, in case the FSA come calling.’

  He handed me a printout of a forensic report. Everyone had a different voice, a ‘voiceprint’, determined by the unique anatomy of their oral and nasal cavities, vocal cords, facial muscles, lips, palate, jaw, even teeth. Forensic techs had used ‘articulators’ – the individual way muscles are manipulated in speech – as a way to match the work calls that Sam had made to the voicemail message he’d left on Drake’s phone. As I scanned the rest of the report, I saw clearly how the Met had mobilized the troops now: forensics were working Sundays, the rest of the task force had been working all weekend, everyone focused on the evidence in front of them, and the man at the centre of it all: Sam Wren. Except maybe he wasn’t doing this on his own. Maybe he had company.

  ‘So why are we here?’ I asked.

  ‘You remember what we talked about before?’

  ‘On the phone?’

  ‘Yesterday, in the coffee shop.’

  I studied him. ‘We talked about a lot of things.’

  ‘About the things that didn’t add up about this. Why a man who’d been so careful until now decided to leave a voicemail message on his victim’s phone.’

  ‘It says there in black and white that it’s Sam’s voice.’

  ‘It’s Wren,’ Healy said. ‘I’m not disputing that.’

  ‘So what’s this about?’

  ‘After dinner tonight, I went back into the station and watched a home movie of Wren we’d been given by his missus. It’s definitely him on the phone. I don’t need forensics to tell me that. I can hear it. But …’ He glanced at me and away again. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He sounds different.’

  ‘Different how?’

  He studied me. ‘I don’t know,’ he said again.

  ‘Different how, Healy?’

  He dropped his cigarette to the floor and crushed it under the toe of his boot. ‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘It wasn’t that he sounded stressed. Forensics would have picked up on any stress, that’s what they look for. It didn’t sound like he was being coerced or manipulated. It was more …’ He paused. ‘It was more that there was no emotion in his voice at all. Nothing. Just empty words.’

  He paused for a moment, the cigarette packet in his hands. He started turning it between his fingers and then looked at me. ‘You want to find him, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I want to find him too. We want to find him for our own reasons.’ He paused, studying me. We both understood what his reasons were – he wanted to prove people wrong, people he hated – but I got the sense he was trying to work out what mine might be. ‘I know it’s his voice on the phone,’ he continued, ‘I know he was the last person to call Drake, I know Erion’s number is on his work PC … but something still bothers me. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just the things you were filling my head with, but it’s something. Thing is, I can’t tell anyone about it because it’s based on nothing. The evidence is there in plain sight – it’s there – and all I’m left with is this vague …’

  ‘Gut feeling.’

  He looked at me. This is a murder investigation, not some carnival sideshow. Cases aren’t built on how you feel. This isn’t the fucking magic circle. He’d been hitting out at me as a defence mechanism. He didn’t want me bringing problems to the table because then he had to deal with them. Then he had to take them back to an SIO who was constantly watching him, and a group of men and women who were waiting for him to make a mistake. But the whole time he’d taken what I’d said and filed it away.

  My mind turned back to Fell Wood, to the old line, to the staffroom. And then more images flashed inside my head: Pell with the prostitute, beating her and raping her, and the man – momentarily caught in the mirror’s reflection – sitting there calmly, legs exactly parallel, watching it all play out.

  ‘You want the truth?’ I asked.

  He studied me. Didn’t reply.

  ‘I don’t honestly know what I think about Sam.’

  It was the first time I’d admitted it out loud, the first time I’d even really admitted it to myself. I’d never seen Sam as a killer, and still struggled to see him as one now. Nothing I’d pulled out of the earth, in any part of his life, pushed me in that direction. But I’d seen men – good men – shackled to forces much darker than them; and then I’d seen the things those men were prepared to do, either because they wanted to, or because they were forced to. And in Sam’s life there was Adrian Wellis and Duncan Pell. Both of them out there, somewhere. One a trafficker. One a hunter and a rapist.

  ‘He might be working with someone,’ I said.

  Healy frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know how exactly. I don’t even know if I really believe it. I’m putting all this together as I go along, but …’ I stopped and looked at him. A part of me still didn’t trust him not to take what I had and run back to Craw with it. He was trying to reboot his career, after all. But as I stood there, I noticed the look in his face, the loneliness and frustration, and realized the biggest part of him was still out there on his own – and, ultimately, that was the part of him I had to take a chance on.

  ‘Your unsolved …’

  A change in his face. ‘Spane?’

  ‘Yeah, Leon Spane. I think I know who really killed him.’

  I told him about Duncan Pell, about Leon Spane, about the CCTV footage I’d studied and the DVDs I’d had to sit through. I told him about the girl and her connections to Adrian Wellis, about what I’d found out at the old line, and then about the man watching Pell and the girl in the videos. I didn’t offer any theories, because Healy could see where this was headed, and, afterwards, I started to wonder if I’d given him too much. But as he lit a second cigarette, I realized it was too late anyway. It was out there, in the space between us, and whatever he chose to do with it wasn’t going to make much of a difference to me.

  I was finding Sam Wren either way.

  I looked out to the river, black and swollen, a wall of rainwater cas
cading down from Victoria Embankment. ‘What sort of person is comfortable doing that?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sitting there, watching Pell rape that girl.’

  Healy shrugged. ‘Someone who was just like Pell.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Is that person Wren?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why he’d sit there and watch a woman get beaten and raped. I don’t know why he’d choose not to intervene. I don’t know how he’d get into that situation in the first place. If – just for a minute – we’re assuming he’s the one taking these men, then this woman isn’t even his fantasy. This is Pell’s.’

  ‘So they’re working together.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘You’re still not certain that Wren’s involved?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said I’ve never seen him as a killer.’

  ‘What about if Pell’s doing the killing for him?’

  ‘It’s a stretch.’

  ‘Is it?’

  He meant the CCTV footage of Pell beating Robert Stonehouse to a pulp on the floor of Gloucester Road station; harassing and bullying Spane, pushing him and kicking him; and he meant the station on the old line. Its smell. Its unseen history. Me being attacked in the tunnel.

  ‘Pell’s a soldier,’ Healy said. ‘He knows how to kill.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He could be taking the men for Wren.’

  ‘But Pell’s into women.’

  ‘So maybe he’s taking women too.’

  ‘But that’s my point: who are these women? The Snatcher’s left behind a trail, however slight. There’s no trail leading to any missing women. And what about the girl on the DVD? She’s alive. She’s in hospital, but she’s alive. If Pell wanted her dead, if this was part of the plan and some kind of reciprocal arrangement – if Sam’s helping Pell and Pell’s helping Sam – why let her live? Why rape her repeatedly, expose your identity on film and then hand her back to Adrian Wellis?’