The David Raker Collection

by Tim Weaver

  ‘The first time Smart saw Sam was at Erion’s flat.’

  ‘How d’you figure that?’

  ‘Something Robert Wren said to me.’ I paused, trying to line everything up. ‘Robert Wren said Sam went to see Erion on 11 November. Erion was taken on 13 November. Two days later. By then, Smart had already taken the lights out in Erion’s building, and he was doing the last of his recon. When he saw Sam come up to the door of the flat, he liked the look of him immediately. Perhaps, given the risks he took to get him, liked the look of him more than any of the others. And because Sam had come to see a male prostitute, Smart assumed he was gay. So Sam wasn’t part of the plan. But as soon as Smart saw him, he made him a part of it.

  ‘He was different from the others: he lived with someone, he didn’t live in the anonymity of a tower block, there was no way Smart could knock out lights in Sam’s street and then walk him out without anyone seeing. So he had to come up with another idea. He would have known about the protests on 16 December, he would have foreseen the risks, but what risk there was in taking Sam from the train was reduced by the chaos of the protests. He must have got on at Gloucester Road, stayed close to Sam and then used the first opportunity that came his way. With or without the fight on the platform, he would have done it. But the fight just made it all much simpler.’

  ‘Yeah, but why not just take Wren outside on the street? That time of year, it’s dark early, lots of shadow and cover. Much easier than from the inside of a carriage.’

  ‘But Smart knew the Circle line intimately.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So maybe, to him, the train was less risky than outside on the street. Or maybe he was just watching Sam that day, with no actual plan to take him, and then the fight kicked off and he saw his chance. Or maybe … I don’t know, maybe it was symbolic.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Something to do with his father. Some connection to the trains.’

  The conversation died away and I hit traffic lights at the top of Heath Street, as it forked into Hampstead High Street. Rain chattered away against the roof of the car. The wipers whined back and forth across the glass. People passed along the pavements under umbrellas. And in that time, all I got from Healy was silence.

  ‘I’m almost here.’

  No reply.

  ‘Are you going to meet me at Smart’s?’ I asked him, and realized how prophetic this moment was. The October before, we’d ended up hunting the same man together. Now we were doing it again, as if we were bound to one another somehow. Two sides of the same coin. At the beginning, I’d always thought I was on the other side to Healy. Now I was starting to wonder if we weren’t the same: built for the same reason, to hunt the same monsters. I glanced at the phone again as nothing came back but silence. ‘Healy? Are you going to meet me?’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ he said.

  ‘Fine. Then you need to call Craw and tell her –’

  ‘I’m not calling Craw.’

  ‘You need to tell her what’s happening, Healy.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  He sniffed. Cleared his throat. Is he crying?

  ‘Healy?’

  ‘She fired me this morning,’ he said, and there was so much pain in his voice, it was like an electrical current travelling down the line. ‘They found out what I was doing.’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘So she fired me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Healy.’

  Silence.

  ‘Where are you now?’ I asked. Faintly, in the background of wherever he was, I could hear rain and the distant sound of people’s voices getting louder and then fading.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Where are you, Healy?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’

  ‘Don’t go and do anything stupid.’

  A pause. ‘It’s too late for that now.’

  And then he hung up.

  71

  Healy killed the call to Raker, flipped shut his phone and dumped it on to the passenger seat of the car. It was raining. A couple walked by, umbrella up, arms locked together, and then his eyes moved across the street to Teresa Reed’s house. It was time. There was nothing to stop him any more. No future. Nothing to get up for, nothing to come home to. He had no job, a wife who hated him and sons who never answered his calls. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out the photo of Leanne, tracing the lines of her face, his finger moving across the creases and bumps of the picture. ‘He won’t get away with it, baby,’ he said quietly, a deep, guttural sadness welling in the pit of his stomach.

  I’ve got nothing else now.

  Just you, Leanne.

  When Teresa Reed answered the door, she broke out into a smile, came forward and kissed him. ‘How are you today, hun?’ she said, touching her hand to his. ‘I didn’t expect to see you so early.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I thought you were going to call.’

  ‘Something came up at work.’

  She eyed him. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Well, I’ve just put some coffee on.’

  He followed her into the house, through a hallway full of ornaments and ornate junk. He hated her taste. In the kitchen, she stood at the counter and finished putting some of the dishes away, talking about what she’d done on her day off. He barely even listened. All he could think about was what he was going to do next. About Leanne. About how he was going to avenge her death.

  And about the gun tucked into the back of his trousers.

  ‘You remember what I asked you?’ he said to her, still standing in the doorway of the kitchen, rain running off his jacket. ‘About coming with you to the prison one day?’

  She looked at him. ‘You mean watching me talk to the prisoners?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I spoke to my boss about it after you asked,’ she said, taking two cups out of the cupboard, ‘but he wasn’t massively keen on the idea. Sorry, hun.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think he’s just worried it might aggravate the men.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve only been seeing them seven months. That’s no time at all. I don’t want to upset the equilibrium because, slowly, I’m starting to gain their trust. But there’s also the problem that some of them see prison guards and cops – people like you – as the reason they’re inside in the first place.’

  ‘That is the reason they’re inside.’

  ‘I know. But it might promote negative feelings in them.’

  ‘They’re rapists and murderers.’

  Teresa Reed paused, as if she’d glimpsed something in Healy that she hadn’t seen before. ‘I know what they are.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

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

  ‘What about Broadmoor?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You talk to the prisoners there as well.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, I’d like to go with you there.’

  She shook her head, her defences up. ‘No way. It’s a high-security hospital, Colm. We’re talking about deeply disturbed patients. I can maybe talk to my boss again about letting you come along to Belmarsh with me, if that’s what you really want. I know you say you just want to watch me at work, but if we concoct some story about you using it as a research trip for the Met, Belmarsh might sign off the –’

  ‘I don’t want to go to Belmarsh any more.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I can get inside Belmarsh any time I want. I’ve been doing it five months already. I’ve been watching you talk to those men since January. I don’t need to see their faces up close. They’re not what I want.’

  ‘What do you mean, “watching me since January”?’

  ‘Belmarsh isn’t what I want. Broadmoor is.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  He studied her, the silence in the kitchen deafening. ‘Belmarsh was just a
stepping stone. The thing to make you trust me. If you’d watched me go in there, take notes, look interested as you laughed and smiled and batted your eyelids at the rapists and the killers and the worthless fucking scumbags you call patients, I knew I could get you to take me to Broadmoor too. I didn’t care how long it took, but at some point I thought you’d trust me enough to arrange it.’ He stopped. ‘But then I got fired today.’

  Her face dropped. Confusion. Fear. ‘I don’t, uh …’

  ‘So now nothing matters any more.’

  ‘Colm, I –’

  He sighed, taking a step into the kitchen. He could feel the gun at the back of his trousers, shifting against the belt. ‘Do you know who you talk to up at Broadmoor?’

  She backed up against the counter. ‘Talk to?’

  ‘Your “patients”.’

  ‘I, uh … I talk to a lot of –’

  ‘I’m only interested in one of them. The one who killed my daughter.’ A shiver of emotion passed through him. ‘And I don’t care how you get it done, but you’re the one that’s going to take me to him.’

  PART FIVE

  72

  Rain swept in as I parked about fifty yards down from Smart’s house, puddles forming in the gutters, leaves and crisp packets washing along the street. I grabbed my phone and got put through to Craw again, and while it just rang and rang the same as before, this time it went to voicemail. ‘DCI Craw, it’s David Raker.’ I looked at Smart’s house. It was a narrow two-storey terrace, half-painted, half-brick, with a terracotta-tile roof and white window frames. ‘Forget Sam Wren and Duncan Pell. The guy you’re looking for is called Edwin Smart.’ I gave her the address. ‘I’m up here now, on my own, because you fired Healy and Davidson didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I hope it hasn’t cost you.’

  As soon as I hung up, I went through the same names again. Davidson. Healy. Craw for a second time. None answered. So I opted for the last resort: I dialled 999, gave them the details and told them to get Craw’s team to come urgently. After I was done, I sat in the silence of the car, eyes glued to the house.

  Minutes passed.

  You’re wasting time.

  I glanced at myself in the rear-view mirror. If I went in alone, I went in blind. I didn’t know what it was like in there. I didn’t know anything about Smart, beyond what I’d been able to pick up at the station. But that information was worthless now.

  It was a lie, and he was a mystery.

  So are you going in alone?

  I flicked a look at the clock in the car. Another two minutes had passed. Soon it would be three minutes, then four, then five. Then it would be ten, and fifteen, and twenty – and every one of those minutes was a head start he shouldn’t have had.

  It’s suicide going in blind.

  But then I suddenly thought of Liz, of everything she’d said to me the day before. This is who you are. This is what you do. I get it. But remember something: this is my life now too. She was right. She’d always been right. If I was a different man, if I was a little better, perhaps I would have listened. Perhaps I would have been able to stop myself.

  But I wasn’t that man.

  And Sam Wren was the only thing that mattered.

  Water poured down my face, through my hair and ran off my jacket as I stepped up to the door. I didn’t ring the bell. I didn’t knock either. As much as possible, I wanted to avoid letting him know I was here. But when I grabbed the door handle, it bumped away from the frame, opening on to a small, tidy hallway. I immediately felt a prickle of unease. Why would he leave his front door open? I stopped, halfway in, halfway out, wondering if this was the right thing, after all. But I had no choice. I’d rung the police and they’d failed to act.

  The hallway was carpeted in an old-fashioned maroon, but the walls were cream, hung with pictures of meadows and black-and-white photographs of old steam trains. On the left was a staircase, on the right a door into a living room. Same maroon carpet, same cream walls. A TV, two sofas, more paintings, more photos of trains. As I stepped further in, the carpet like a sponge beneath my wet boots, I saw brass-framed pictures of a young Smart looking drawn and emotionless: one in front of a Tube roundel, another outside the entrance of a station, the picture scorched by bright summer sun. Next to that was a picture of his father in the uniform of the London Underground, a ten- or eleven-year-old Smart at his leg. The photos were lined up on the coffee table, one after the other, all of them black and white, all of them the same theme, except the last one, which was in colour.

  This one was on its own.

  It sat away from the others, on the edge of the table, and in front of it was a wooden bowl, placed there like an offering. It was full of hair. I took another step closer. In the photo, Smart was sitting on a chair beside a hospital bed, his father – mask over his face, mobile oxygen tank at his feet – beside him. The old man, stick-thin and shaven-headed, looked like he had hours left. But it wasn’t that that drew my attention. It was what his father was wearing: a red T-shirt, with checked sleeves.

  The shirt had belonged to him.

  That’s why it had been so important to Smart, why he’d had it with him today. And it must have been why he’d worn it the day he took Sam. Not only because it was red and he would merge with the other protesters, although that would have been in his thinking, but because it was another part of his routine, like the shaved head. A connection to his father. And the hair in the bowl – presumably Smart’s hair – was the other. He hadn’t been shaved at the station earlier, so this was fresh. The second part of the routine. The way he remembered his father – became like him, channelled him – on the anniversary of his death.

  Behind me the front door was still open, rain slapping against the driveway and running off the porch roof. I left it like that, realizing the sound would disguise my movement inside the house, even if it immediately let him know I was here. I moved up the stairs. At the top was a small landing area with three doors: two bedrooms, one bathroom. Everything was neat and tidy, but old-fashioned – like a time capsule – and I wondered whether this had been his father’s place.

  I paused. Listened.

  All I could hear was the rain hammering against the glass at the upstairs windows and hitting the steps at the front of the house. But as I moved around, checking hiding places, making sure he wasn’t upstairs, I heard a voice.

  I stopped in the centre of Smart’s bedroom and felt the silence settle around me. Beyond the rain there was nothing now: the faint sound of a car somewhere, a beep of a horn. I must have heard one of his neighbours. Except, as I moved back downstairs, the house creaking around me, as if shifting and changing shape, I started to feel a nagging sense that it wasn’t one of his neighbours I’d heard, but someone much closer.

  Pausing in the hallway, I looked back out through the front door at the deserted street, then into the living room, then on to the kitchen ahead of me. I primed myself, feeling my muscles tense, and edged forward. The kitchen was empty. I looked to the front door again, and turned back to the kitchen. A small, pokey L-shaped unit, wood painted white, with pale green worktops like beds in a hospital ward. A toaster. A pot of utensils. Some spices in metal jars. Where the hell is he? Directly to my left, two steps led down to a sunken office, empty except for a cheap-looking computer desk, a PC connected to a modem and a blue chair with four wheels.

  Beyond that, on the far side, was the back door.

  I took in the kitchen again. Over the sink was a window, looking out over a small garden. I moved across to it, the wet soles of my boots making a faint squeak on the lino. The garden was narrow but long. At the other end were a row of high trees, thick growth – weeds and long grass – clawing at their trunks. On the other side of the trees, partially visible through holes in the canopy, was the old line at Fell Wood. As rain and wind passed through, branches moved and opened up spaces in the leaves, and – on the other side – I saw a tall, cream-coloured structure I recognized.

  The ventilat
ion shaft on top of the Tube station.

  I stepped away and, as I did, a smell drifted towards me, a mix of metal and old dishcloths. The kitchen seemed pretty clean, the worktops wiped down, no food out, no crumbs even, but the longer I stood there, the stronger the odour got. I started opening up the kitchen cupboards one by one, trying to locate the smell, but despite all the things Smart was, all the terrible suffering he’d wrought, he’d managed to build a convincing lie. Everything spoke of normality. In the corner was the fridge, humming gently. And then my eyes happened to fall on the slim gap between the fridge and the wall.

  There was a key, taped to the wall.

  I reached in and ripped it off. It was a small brass Yale key, marked with a single red dot. I flipped it over, hoping to find some clue as to what it was for, when the smell came again. Less metal, more rot: maybe not wet dishcloths. Or maybe not only that.

  Pocketing the key, I headed down into the office and across to the back door. I tried the key, but it didn’t fit. Then I realized it didn’t matter anyway: like the front door, the back was unlocked. My nerves were immediately put on edge. I swivelled, facing back across the office, but no one was there. No sound from the house. And as the wind rushed past me, drawn along the hallway from one door to the next, I noticed a tiny stain on the carpet, an irregular drip pattern running from the steps, across towards the back door. Not much of it, but enough.