by Tim Weaver
Silence. No sound at all, from anyone.
But a few of them knew where this was going. Craw dropped back into her chair, thin fingers massaging her brow; Davidson shifted, looking anywhere but Healy.
Sallows just stared into space.
‘Two nights before, a man walks up to each of the buildings and he systematically dismantles or breaks every single light at the entrances and inside the foyers of the tower blocks. We don’t have CCTV for the individual hallways, but we can assume he kills the lights there too. It’s the same man, wearing the same clothes, every time: black trousers, hooded top, no way to identify him. But we have him on film, we’ve always had him on film – and we know what he’s wearing, his physicality, his build and how he’s able to walk them out the front door without being seen.’ Healy kept his eyes on Craw, but in his peripheral vision he could see the rest of the room. Already Davidson had come forward on his seat, away from Sallows’s space, like a snake moving for shade, leaving his friend, his fellow tormentor, isolated and alone at the back of the room. ‘The problem was,’ Healy continued, fixing his gaze on Sallows, ‘we were too lazy to check any further back than the night they were taken.’
Silence.
Craw finally looked up at Healy, then across to Sallows, then out to the rest of the room. ‘Okay, back to work,’ she said. ‘Kevin, stay where you are.’
They all filed out, Healy following Davidson.
Once they were out of sight of Craw, her office door slamming shut, he stopped and watched Davidson head off between the desks to his seat at the far end. A couple of minutes later, Healy looked up to see Davidson watching him.
He stared back.
One down, one to go.
40
At the steps to the ticket hall at Gloucester Road there was the stench of fried food and perfume. Groups of teenage boys, coated in their father’s aftershave and clutching identical brown McDonald’s bags, were standing beyond the gateline, laughing riotously as one of them – out of sight of the station staff – stealthily fed his fries into the credit card slot on the self-service machine. Adjacent to the group was the booth by which I’d introduced myself to Duncan Pell two days before.
But today he wasn’t there.
I scanned the hall and spotted three Underground employees: one at the turnstiles, one by the entrance and one, the closest to me, sweating under the glass-domed interior, as the sun cut down through the roof. He was about five stone overweight, his hair was matted to his scalp like he’d had a bucket of water poured over him and there were huge sweat patches under his arms. He’d be a pool of water by the time his shift ended. I moved across to him.
‘Is Duncan Pell around?’
He looked at me. Shook his head. ‘Nah, mate. Not ’ere today.’
‘Day off?’
‘Who knows with Dunc.’
‘How do you mean?’
He studied me closer this time, and then shrugged. ‘S’posed to be ’ere at five,’ the guy said, ‘but then he called in sick.’
‘That a regular occurrence?’
He was watching a couple of kids at the turnstiles now. They were laughing about something, whispering to one another, only one of them holding a ticket. He took a step towards them, ready to give chase if they jumped the barriers, but if he made it as far as the entrance before he was out of breath, it probably would have been a personal best.
I tried again. ‘Is Duncan off sick a lot then?’
But the man wasn’t really paying attention any more. ‘Look, mate, he’s not ’ere, all right?’ he said. ‘I dunno where he is.’ Then he shuffled off towards the boys.
I looked across the ticket hall towards the second guy, stationed at the main entrance, but then something else caught my attention: a staffroom door to his left, the station supervisor half in, half out, talking to someone inside. I made a beeline for it. By the time I was halfway across the ticket hall, the supervisor looked like he was about to leave. I slowed my approach, angling the direction I was coming in from so he wouldn’t spot me in his peripheral vision, and as he stepped away and headed off beyond the gateline, I slid a foot in between the door and frame, and slipped inside.
It was small and clinical: a counter on the left with a microwave, kettle and toaster on it, three tables with chairs in the middle and a calendar on the right. No windows, just the faint hum of air conditioning. Right at the back was a vending machine and a bank of nine lockers. At the table nearest to me was a woman, back to me, reading a magazine while eating a sandwich. Facing me was a man, cross-legged, newspaper open in front of him, fiddling with something on his phone.
‘Excuse me.’
They both looked over.
‘My name’s James Braddock,’ I said, taking another step towards them. ‘I’m from the British Transport Police. I was just chatting to your SS and he said it would be okay to ask you both a couple of questions. Would that be all right with you?’
They glanced between them and mumbled agreements.
I asked for their names. The woman was Sandra Purnell; the man only offered his first name: Gideon. She was fully invested in what I was saying from minute one, but he seemed more reticent. ‘I’m looking for a colleague of yours,’ I said, and moved to the centre of the room. ‘Duncan Pell.’
They looked at each other, and the woman broke into a smile. Not one with any humour, but with some insight; as if there were a lot of people looking for Duncan Pell. It seemed like she was about to speak, but then she just cleared her throat.
‘Your SS said he was ill,’ I lied.
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘And that he’s ill a lot.’
She paused. ‘I’m probably not best placed to answer this. I’m just part-time. Gid would know better than me.’
I looked at him. ‘Gideon?’
He shrugged. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Is Duncan Pell off ill a lot?’
‘Enough,’ he said.
I turned back to the woman. ‘So he isn’t a well man?’
She studied me, teetering on the brink of committing. ‘Some people reckon he’s got that – what’s it called? – PT …’
‘PTSD,’ said Gideon.
I flicked a look at him and then back to her. ‘Post-traumatic stress?’
She nodded. ‘Right.’
‘Ever remember him acting strangely at work?’
‘Personally, no.’
‘What about second-hand accounts?’
She paused again, as if gossip wasn’t something she was comfortable with. ‘I’ve just heard stories about him, that’s all.’
‘What are the stories?’
‘That he’s generally a bit rude to people. I just thought he was quiet, but one of the girls in the office told us all a story.’
‘About what?’
She coloured a little, embarrassed at what she perceived to be telling tales. ‘About how he flipped out one lunchtime when the coffee machine stopped working.’ She looked across to the counter. There was no coffee percolator there now. ‘He just went crazy.’
‘And did what?’
‘Punched a hole in the wall.’
I looked around the staffroom and spotted an uneven piece of panelling on a wall to the right of the counter. ‘He had a temper on him?’ I asked.
‘That’s just what I was told.’
Gideon moved in his seat. ‘Do you mind if I ask why –’
‘Thanks a lot to both of you,’ I said, cutting him off and heading for the door of the staffroom. And for the first time, on the back wall, I saw a corkboard, full of photos of the men and women that staffed the station. In the bottom row was Gideon, and his surname: Momodou. On one side of him was the ticket inspector I’d chatted to when I’d first been in and talked to Pell – early forties, half-moon glasses, built like a middleweight boxer; his name tag said he was Edwin Smart – on the other side was the overweight CSA I’d walked up to when I’d arrived today, looking as flustered in his offi
cial photo as he did out on the floor. Appropriately, given how little he’d wanted to help, his name was Darren Cant. But, right at the end, staring into the camera lens, no emotion in his face at all, was the only one I really cared about.
Duncan Pell.
So where are you, Duncan?
Behind me, a chair scraped against the tiled floor and I heard Momodou get up from his table. But before he got a chance to repeat his question, I opened the door of the staffroom and headed out, taking the stairs back down to the platform. As I waited for the next train to pull in, I watched him come up to the bridge and look down. I stepped behind a pillar, out of sight. About ten seconds later, I came out from behind my cover again and saw him returning to his lunch.
Then my phone started ringing.
I took it out and looked at the display. Withheld number.
‘David Raker.’
‘Raker, it’s me.’
It took me a couple of seconds to place the voice. ‘Healy?’
‘We need to talk.’
41
We met in a coffee house opposite Shepherd’s Bush Market. Healy was already inside, sitting at the window so he could watch me approach from the station. Two mugs were on the counter in front of him.
He looked different from when I’d last seen him. He’d lost a little weight, had had his red hair cut and styled, and wore a tailored suit. He appeared fresher, more professional, with none of the ferocity I’d spent so much time reining in the October before. And yet there was just the hint of something; a trace of the old Healy. As I moved inside the shop, shook hands with him and sat down, I wondered how long it would be before it came out.
‘You still drink coffee, right?’ he asked, pushing one towards me. ‘Black, no sugar.’
‘Well remembered.’
‘I’m clever like that.’
He nodded and a moment of silence settled between us. It wasn’t uncomfortable exactly, but it wasn’t relaxed either. The old Healy was a hard guy to like. He did his best to piss you off and fight you on everything. The new one seemed more controlled, but no less intense. I could see his brain ticking over, trying to figure out what he needed to say to me and why. He hadn’t told me a lot over the phone, which was fairly typical of him. In his search for Leanne, he’d spent so long bottling things up, working her case off the books and keeping it concealed, he’d eventually forgotten how to articulate himself.
‘How have you been?’ I asked.
‘Fine. You?’
‘I’m okay.’
He nodded, but didn’t probe any further.
‘How are Gemma and the boys?’
A flicker of sadness in his face. ‘They’re good.’
I hadn’t seen him for over seven months, but as I watched how he sat – his bulky frame perched on the edge of the stool; his hand wrapped around the mug, wedding band still on – it didn’t feel like it.
‘So I hear you’re back in the big time.’
He looked at me. ‘Who’d you hear that from?’
‘Someone I know at the Met.’
His eyes lingered on me – that trace of the old Healy – and then he broke out into a small, tight smile. It was a token effort; hardly even there. ‘That’s right.’
‘How’s it going?’
The smile dropped away. ‘That’s what I need to talk to you about.’
This time it was my turn to look suspicious. His face was turned away from me, half lit by the sun coming in from outside, half darkened by the shadows of the shop.
‘What’s going on?’
He took a long, drawn-out breath. ‘They don’t know I’m here telling you this, and if they found out, I’d get my arse handed to me. So you need to keep this on the QT.’
‘I can’t tell anyone anything if I don’t know what it is we’re talking about,’ I said to him and, almost immediately, he reached down to his side where a slip case was leaning against the legs of the chair. He brought it up and unzipped it. Inside there were six files. Four were thick, rammed with paper, all contained within identical Manila folders. A fifth was about half the size, in a green folder. The last was the thinnest – maybe only ten pages, in a charcoal-grey surround – and was the one he took out.
‘I’ve just come from Julia Wren.’
That stopped me dead. ‘What?’
‘You’re working for her, right?’
But I didn’t hear him. My mind was already shifting forward: why would he have been to see Julia? Was this to do with Sam? Did I miss something? Overlook something? I reached into my coat pocket and took out my phone. On the display was one missed call, received while I was on the Tube. Julia. She’d been calling me about the police.
‘Raker?’
I glanced at him. ‘Yeah.’
‘You’re working for her?’
‘Yeah, I’m working for her. So?’
‘Have you found her husband?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘Well, the Met are going to ask you to shut this down.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘They’re going to turn up on your doorstep’ – he looked at his watch – ‘in about an hour, and they’re going to want you to stop looking for him.’
‘Why would I do that?’
He handed me the file. On the first page was a colour picture of Sam. ‘Because they think Samuel Wren is the Snatcher.’
42
15 June | One day earlier
It had been 108 days since the third victim, Joseph Symons, was taken. Some people in the Met, some cops who Healy didn’t believe deserved to be cops, started talking about the end; whispers in the corridors at first, and then – like a wave of chatter – it filtered down through the hallways and into the meeting rooms. They believed a man who had taken three people and never been found could just stop; turn it off like a light. Or if they didn’t believe that, they held on to the remote possibility he’d got caught up in something else: that he’d been forced off the radar; that he’d been charged with another crime or gone to prison on something unrelated. But Healy knew it hadn’t happened like that, and so did Craw and the rest of the Snatcher team. And at 11.14 p.m. they got the call to prove it.
It was a tower block in Hammersmith, sitting in a patch of land between the flyover and the river. The call had come in from a neighbour who knew the occupant of Flat 312 and said she hadn’t seen him for three days. Ordinarily they’d chat in the corridors of the third floor every day when he returned from his job as a shop assistant. But the last time she saw him was the Tuesday before. She’d heard him leave for work, had even watched from her window as he headed off towards Hammersmith Tube station – but that was the last time she saw him. She thought she might have heard him come home that night, perhaps the sound of his door opening and closing, perhaps even the faint sound of conversation in the hallway, but she couldn’t say for sure. She definitely didn’t see him or hear him on Wednesday, and she hadn’t seen him since. It was now Friday night.
The tower block was perched on the edge of a grass bank that dropped down to a rusting fence and the train tracks beyond. It was one of five, all connected via walkways, all part of the same estate. If it hadn’t have been for the media, camped out in a space to his far left, light bulbs flashing, camera crews jostling for space, there might have been a strange kind of stillness to the place; a lack of light and sound, as if a pregnant hush were hanging in the air. In the walkways, in the alleyways, in the windows, Healy could make out figures – their faces freeze-framed in the glow from the police lightbars – looking on as things played out. At any other time, this was one of the most dangerous housing estates in London. He’d stood over bodies in this place. He’d knocked on doors and told parents their kids weren’t coming home. But now even the gangs and the dealers stood back and watched in silence as another came into this place.
One who was even worse than them.
After coming up the stairs – every light out, just like the others, bulbs smashed in th
e stairwell – he put on the forensic boiler suit, zipped it up and moved into the flat. Again, it was a carbon copy of the flats the other victims had lived in. Healy spotted Craw in the kitchen. There was a door off the living room, opening on to a bedroom. Chief Superintendent Ian Bartholomew stood in the doorway. Healy glanced at him but didn’t greet him. Bartholomew had started to get involved personally about four weeks after Joseph Symons went missing. ‘Three is three too many,’ he kept saying in daily briefings, as if no one on the task force felt anything for the men. Craw hated it; maybe hated him too. She’d never said as much to Healy, but her feelings were barely concealed: there, just below the surface, bubbling and stewing until one day in the future she would either say something she regretted to Bartholomew’s face, or she would walk into his office and hand in her resignation.
‘Melanie,’ Bartholomew said to Craw as she arrived from the kitchen. ‘What the bloody hell am I supposed to tell the media?’
Most of this, Healy knew, was down to him. Bartholomew had been there when Healy had been trying to find Leanne; and there in the aftermath, desperate not to give him a second chance. The decision to pull him on to the Snatcher case was Craw’s, and hers alone, and now she would be held accountable if it all went wrong: by Bartholomew, by Davidson, by anyone with a grudge against Healy. All Healy knew was that he owed it to her for giving him a chance – and he owed it to her not to make any mistakes.
Bartholomew backed out of the bedroom, letting Healy take in the crime scene, and stepped closer to Craw. ‘Melanie,’ he said again, using her first name to cushion the blow of what was coming next. ‘I think it’s time I took over the media briefings. This needs to come from the top. They need to see that we’re taking this seriously, and that we won’t just sit back and accept what we’ve got here tonight.’