by Tim Weaver
I traced Smart’s face in one of the nearest photographs. There was nothing unique about him. He was just a man. No distinguishing features. Nothing to make your eyes linger on him as he passed you. And that was what had made him so effective.
‘Do you think he was trying to misdirect us?’ she asked.
‘With what?’
‘With the padlock on the lift shaft. Marking it with a red dot like that.’
I looked at her. ‘Are you asking for my input now?’
She smiled, and nodded to herself as if she understood my position. ‘You know, you and your friend Healy are very well suited, even if you don’t see it.’
‘He’s not my friend.’
‘And yet you like him.’
I shrugged. ‘I like some parts of him, but mostly he just wears me out.’
‘Yes.’ She smiled again, a small movement. ‘He does have that ability.’
‘Is he definitely gone?’
She eyed me, but didn’t seem surprised I knew Healy had been fired. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s definitely gone. He went against protocol, broke the law and left me to clean up the mess. He’s a liar, and I can’t trust him.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘You don’t know all the details, Mr Raker.’
‘David’s fine.’
‘You don’t know all the details, David.’
‘I don’t expect I do.’
‘He deserved to go.’
I met her gaze. ‘Then why are we still talking about him?’
She just nodded.
After a long silence, I said, ‘This isn’t how it normally goes for you.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You understand people, what makes them tick, what makes them do the things they do. But you didn’t get Smart, and you don’t get Healy.’
‘And you do?’
‘No. I never saw Smart coming, and Healy …’ I paused. Shrugged. ‘I think I know him and then he does something stupid and I realize I don’t know him at all.’
‘Then I guess we can agree on something.’
‘I guess we can.’
Craw looked at the photos of Smart. ‘What is it with you?’ she said.
‘With me?’
‘Come on, David, don’t be coy. You know what I mean. How is it you always end up in these places, chasing down these men? How is it you always get here before us?’
I frowned. ‘Are you accusing me of something?’
‘No. But you have a knack.’
You don’t know when to stop. Maybe it was as simple as that. Or maybe it really was something more. Some kind of twisted destiny.
‘I don’t know,’ I said finally.
She nodded, as if she wasn’t all that surprised by the answer. Then she reached to the breast pocket of her jacket and took out a notebook. ‘Just wait there a second, would you?’ She didn’t wait for my response, just got up and headed out of the living room. A couple of minutes passed. A murmur of conversation in the kitchen. Then she returned, this time flanked by Davidson and another cop, one I didn’t recognize.
‘David, you know DS Davidson,’ she said, gesturing to him. Davidson looked at me, sober, unreadable. ‘This is DC Richter. He’s going to take some notes for me.’
‘Notes?’
‘We want to ask you a few questions.’
‘I’ll call my solicitor then.’
‘We’re not arresting you for anything,’ she continued, sitting down opposite me. Davidson pulled a chair out from the table and dragged it all the way across the living room so he was facing me on my left. Richter sat down at the table. ‘We just want to fill in the blanks. You know Samuel Wren, you know Duncan Pell, you probably know more than we do about Edwin Smart. We’re not too proud to engage the help of an expert.’
‘So you are asking for my input?’
‘I’m not asking,’ she said.
She’d let her guard down when we’d been alone in the living room. Now she was playing up to the crowd. Or maybe this was just her natural state, and the person I’d been with moments before – softer and more transparent – was all part of the act.
I shrugged, an indication she could start.
‘Given the level of your relationship with Colm Healy over the past eight months, and the fact that you were knee-deep in bodies when we turned up here, I’m going to assume you’re up to speed on the Snatcher case.’
‘What is the level of my relationship with Healy?’
‘I think we both know –’
‘No, we don’t,’ I said, making a point of looking at Davidson. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth or lay actions at my feet when you don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about.’ I let that settle, silence in the room now, then turned to Craw: ‘The trouble with your task force, is that it’s manned by people who have no interest in its aims.’
She frowned. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
‘You know what I mean,’ I said, and in the moments that followed I saw her flick a look towards Davidson. ‘I called Davidson an hour before I got to Smart’s house, spoke to him on the phone, tried to tell him what was happening, and he hung up on me.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ he said from beside me.
‘Is it?’
‘Of course it is. You’re a fucking fantasist, Raker.’
I looked at Craw. ‘I called him to tell him to come to the house and he didn’t want to hear it. If you’d got here after I called him, you might have been able to swoop on Smart before he showered the walls of the station with his brains.’
There was no comeback to that. Off to my right, Richter was watching me, pen hovering above the notebook. Craw looked across to him. ‘You actually going to write anything down?’ The irritation was obvious in her voice. I wasn’t sure whether it was with me or with Davidson. ‘What was Smart using that station for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Really?’
I shrugged. ‘Look at the photos in this room. He had an attachment to the Tube, and to the railways in general, so the building would have meant something to him. But it was practical too. He kept hunting equipment in there.’
‘So?’
‘So maybe he started off killing animals before he moved on to killing men. A place like that, abandoned and locked up, no one’s going to come calling.’
‘And Pell? Where does he fit in?’
‘The best person to ask is Pell.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s in an ambulance.’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t even really know him.’
Davidson snorted, and looked from me to Craw. ‘This is a waste of time, ma’am. The guy doesn’t know what’s the truth and what’s a lie any more.’
I kept my eyes on Craw. ‘I told you everything I knew earlier.’
‘Was that everything?’ she asked.
‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Davidson said, before I had a chance to respond. ‘If you read the file about what him and Healy got up to last year at those woods –’
‘I don’t care about last year, I care about now.’
Davidson stared at her, obvious disgust in his face, and then started to shake his head, sinking back into his chair. Momentarily, Craw’s emotions played out in her eyes. I didn’t bother getting involved, but I got the sense that after this was all over, Davidson’s future was going to be high on the agenda for her. Even Healy would have seen the irony in that: Davidson following him out the door, or following Sallows into semi-retirement on the south London beat, after they’d teamed up to get Healy kicked off the force.
‘Mr Raker?’
We were back to Mr Raker now. Not David.
‘Like I said, I don’t know Pell that well. I know what he does for a living, know he’s ex-army, realized pretty early on he had a violent streak a mile wide; and even if he wasn’t the same type of killer as Smart, he’d killed on the battlefield and could do it again back home. Smart would have encouraged that side of him. He would have been mani
pulating Pell the whole time, working him up into a frenzy in order to position him exactly where he wanted.’
‘You sound like you admire him,’ Davidson muttered.
‘I don’t admire him. I think he’s a piece of shit.’
Now the only sound was Richter frantically making notes.
‘What about Adrian Wellis?’ Craw said.
‘What about him?’
‘His buddy’s locked up and won’t talk to us. That Romanian girl was found in his house. When you gave us a rundown earlier, you said Marc Erion worked for him, Pell used to get his women from him, and this squeaky-clean facade Wellis built for himself is a lie. So where is he?’
I looked at her, blank-faced.
‘Mr Raker?’
If I told her where Wellis was, where his body was dumped, I let her know that Healy had taken me down there with him and broken another rule, and maybe this time she would bring him back in and maybe this time he’d get charged. There were other dangers too. Any conversation about Wellis would eventually lead to his house, to when I’d found the girl and made the anonymous call to police, to when I’d tossed Wellis and Gaishe into the back of the BMW and driven them to the warehouse.
Healy was already gone from the Met, his reputation in the gutter, so the first problem didn’t really matter much. But I wanted to insulate myself and perhaps, on some deeper level, wanted Craw to hurt too. The minute Davidson entered the room, Craw started putting her trust in cops who’d lost sight of their calling; who came into work to seek revenge, to play with lives, and ultimately to misunderstand the people they worked with. She could see Davidson’s flaws a mile off, but she’d brought him here for one reason and one reason only: to get at me. Healy was flawed too, perhaps irredeemably so, but everything he’d done, all the mistakes he’d made, were at least for the right reason: for his daughter, for the child he lost. Somehow I felt Craw recognized that side of him, despite her officiousness, because she was probably a parent herself and could imagine what a parent is prepared to do. But men like Davidson and Sallows didn’t, and that made her guilty by association.
‘I don’t know where Adrian Wellis is,’ I said.
Davidson sighed. ‘Do me a fucking favour.’
‘Why would I know where he is?’
‘Are we really going to believe this shit?’ he said to Craw.
‘Why would I know?’
‘Because you know everything about him and you made that call from Wel–’ He stopped himself. Eyes flicked to Craw. From Wellis’s house. Except Davidson was so caught up in deceit, in his and Sallows’s mission to get to Healy, and to get to me, that he’d forgotten what he could talk about, and what he couldn’t.
By bringing in my unauthorized help on an open case like the Snatcher, Healy had broken every rule in the book, and it had made an easy win for them; easy to present to Craw and impossible for her to defend. Davidson gave her the photos of Healy and me at the hospital, and Healy got the push. But whatever Davidson and Sallows were cooking up for me was also off the books. It was an investigation that hadn’t been approved by Craw, involving one cop already discredited by her, and another she was increasingly having doubts about. The irony was they were like Healy: putting something together – and trying to bring someone down – outside of the rules they had to abide by.
‘I made that call from where?’ I said.
He looked at Craw again. ‘We can’t trust him. We can’t trust anything he says. Everything that comes out of his mouth is a fucking lie.’
Craw said nothing, just stared across the room at him.
Finally she got up from her seat. ‘Let me show you something,’ she said to me, and gestured for me to follow her.
We moved along the route put in place by the scene-of-crime officer, through the kitchen and down to the office. A forensic tech was at the computer. Next to that, inside an evidence bag on the desk, was a letter, written on lined A4 paper. It was from Smart.
‘Simon,’ Craw said to the tech, ‘would you give us a moment, please?’
The tech did as Craw asked, got up and disappeared.
She pointed to the evidence bag. ‘This was left in the drawer of the desk. Why don’t you have a read?’
I moved in front of her and studied the letter. It was headed with yesterday’s date, the writing untidy and spidery. The last outpourings of a dead man.
My name is Edwin Smart, he wrote. I am the man who the media have labelled ‘the Snatcher’. I feel like the walls are closing in now. I could stay ahead of the police, just about, but now I’ve got this other investigator to contend with, this Raker, and I think they’re working together, and the more I try to cover up what I’m doing, the more I’m losing control.
I heard Davidson enter the room behind us.
It’s strange. Sometimes I don’t feel much like a killer. Sometimes I just feel like Edwin Smart. Ed. That guy is the guy everyone likes, the one they tell stories to and share jokes with. Some days I look in the mirror and I see that guy looking back, and I forget – just for a moment – who I am. Other days, all I can feel inside me is this ache, this need, and I remember who I truly am. A man who takes other men. A man who wants to touch them and feel them. Hurt them. A man who tortures and rapes them while they’re begging me to stop. What my father would call a queer. He hated them, but it was all an act. He used to come into my bedroom at night and touch me, used to make me take his dick out when I was barely even old enough to know what it was. He hated himself, just the same as I did – but it was him who made me this way.
The letter covered all of one side and a quarter of the other.
I turned it over.
I hate who I am, but I can’t stop. I hate my father, but I still love him. I know I need to run, to get away from here, but I can’t. Tomorrow, his anniversary, is too special.
I placed the letter back down again.
Smart was a vicious, sadistic killer but one who was, at his most clear-headed, completely self-aware. In many ways, it was as sad as it was frightening.
‘A fucking screw-up, just like his dad,’ Davidson muttered from behind me. He moved in level with us. I glanced at Craw, but her eyes were fixed on the letter, as if she was determined not to give her feelings away. Davidson looked me up and down, as if I had no place being here. ‘You must be loving this,’ he said, loud enough so everybody could hear. ‘You can be a real cop for a day.’
A ripple of laughter from somewhere in the kitchen.
He snorted. ‘You’re a fucking amateur.’
I looked him up and down. Unmoved.
He leaned in to me, ready to go again, when Craw turned to him. ‘DS Davidson, why don’t you carry on with whatever you were doing?’
He stood there, the two of them facing off.
‘Are you having trouble hearing me, Eddie?’
He glanced at me, then at her. ‘No, ma’am.’
He disappeared back into the kitchen, and then she turned to me, nothing in her face – no sense as to whether Davidson had pissed her off or not – and she handed me a business card. ‘We’re going to need a full statement from you in the next couple of days but, in the meantime, that’s my direct number on there.’
I took it from her. She looked at me, silence between us, and it was obvious the tough decisions of the next few days were already weighing heavy on her.
‘I’ll see you soon, Mr Raker.’
77
All six men – Steven Wilky, Marc Erion, Joseph Symons, Jonathan Drake, Sam Wren and Duncan Pell – made it as far as hospital alive. Symons and Erion were in the worst condition and, as doctors tried to rehydrate them and repair some of the damage left on their bodies, Symons slipped into cardiac arrest, as if the only thing that had kept him alive in Edwin Smart’s basement was the lack of movement. He lasted another fifteen minutes, two of those a desperate attempt to revive him after he flatlined. But at just gone midnight, as I lay in bed across the city, unable to sleep, there was no more fight left in Joseph Sym
ons and doctors pronounced him dead. The others clung on.
Doctors talked of the complications of the men’s injuries, of amputations and skin grafts and transplants, and the long road to recovery. Drake was relatively unharmed, on the surface at least. In the days that followed, though, he recounted how he’d been raped, how Smart had taunted him in the dark, how he woke up some nights and could feel him there, in the basement, but never see him. He revealed a little of the last conversation he’d had with Smart – the only conversation of any note – where Smart had talked of his father, also called Jonathan, and what his father had turned him into.
‘In that last conversation we had, before you found me, he started telling me about his upbringing,’ Drake told the police in his statement. ‘He said they used to call him “Ed Case” at school because he was always in trouble. He said he got caned fourteen times once, because he told a teacher to fuck off.’ Drake had paused at that point. The detective taking his statement thought it was because it was becoming too emotional for him. But it wasn’t that at all. It was that, just like I had after reading Smart’s suicide note, Drake felt a strange kind of sorrow for Smart, a sorrow he was desperately trying to fight because of everything Smart had done to him. ‘He said he grew up without a mother; that she died when he was one, so his father brought him up. He said he sometimes wondered whether life might have turned out differently if his mother had lived.’
Duncan Pell – never a victim like the others but, in a different way, manipulated by Smart as well – had been semi-conscious as they’d brought him out. When he got to hospital, Craw posted an officer outside his room. Pell and the police had a lot to talk about too, not just in terms of his involvement with Smart, but about who Smart was as a person. In order to close the case, the police would have to use Pell to fill in the blanks, and then – beyond that – they would start looking into the terrible things he’d done too.