by Tim Weaver
‘How did he even know if they were gay or not?’
‘He didn’t. Couldn’t. He just showed incredible patience. There must have been countless failures, men who caught his eye and turned out not to be homosexual, or proved too difficult to get at. But once he zeroed in on the viable ones – Wilky, Erion, Symons and Drake – he worked his way into their lives and then dragged them off into the night. And he didn’t dump them this time. He kept them. Or, at the very least, he hid them somewhere deep.’
‘What about Erion?’
‘What about him?’
‘He was as risky as Wren.’
‘You mean because he worked for Adrian Wellis?’ He didn’t reply, but I knew that’s where he was headed. I could sense a reticence in him to get involved, but at the same time he’d worked hard for these answers, and now he wanted to know how it all fitted together just like I did. ‘Wellis operated a policy of meeting potential clients face to face the first time,’ I said, letting it unfold. ‘He liked to know who he was dealing with so he knew where to drop the shitstorm if something went wrong. That was a major problem for Smart, so as soon as Smart chose Erion, he knew he’d have to deal with Wellis at some point because Wellis had seen his face, however fleetingly.’
In front of me, traffic slowed to a crawl. It was all coming together now.
‘When Smart saw me the first time I went to Gloucester Road, he probably worked out the worst-case scenario there and then: that I’d get to Wellis through Sam, which I did, and I’d eventually get to the man who’d taken Erion. As long as Wellis was alive, Smart was compromised, so he put a plan into place: he somehow got to Wellis in the days after he slipped from my grasp at the warehouse, and he lured him down to the line at Westminster. Persuaded him it was a safe haven, a place he could hide. Then he killed him and dumped his body there, somewhere no one would go or even think to look.’
I expected some kind of reaction from Healy. But I got nothing.
‘Are you okay, Healy?’
‘And Wren?’ came the response. ‘Smart set him up too.’
‘The message on the phone only came much later. By then he knew I was looking into Sam, and he’d started to panic again. The wheels had already been set in motion with Pell – he worked with him, had begun to move himself into Pell’s line of sight, had seen the potential for violence in Pell – so Smart kept at it, placing Spane’s coat and a set of knives at Pell’s house; and then the DVDs of Pell with the girl. Smart must have realized that Pell’s connection to the girl, and to the other prostitutes he’d used, would eventually lead back to Wellis, which was just another way for Smart to insulate himself. But Sam remained a problem. That was why the phone was so clumsy, why it never felt right. Smart recorded the message in desperation, hoping it would lead away from him.’
‘So I was wrong,’ Healy said, in a soft, stilled way I’d never heard before. I’d never heard him admit to a mistake in all the time I’d known him.
‘Wrong about what?’
‘I said the message wasn’t recorded under duress.’
‘It wasn’t, at least in the traditional sense. Smart didn’t put a gun to Sam’s head. All he had to do was pump Sam full of drugs and get him to read from a cue card. If he could walk them out against their will, Smart could also get them to say what he wanted. You remember what you said to me about that message on Drake’s phone?’
‘No emotion in his voice. Just empty words.’ I heard a deep intake of breath and then a sigh crackled down the phone line. ‘But why take Wren from the train? Smart had a foolproof MO. Why change it?’
I didn’t have an answer, just another theory. ‘Maybe he became consumed by Sam for some reason.’
‘Consumed?’
‘Obsessed.’ I shrugged. ‘Thing is, though, if Smart first saw Sam on the Circle line like he did with the others, then he would have followed him and found out – as soon as Sam got home – that he was married. Smart’s thing, the thing that gets him off, is gay men. He wouldn’t have known Sam was gay, not from his daily …’ I trailed off, a memory stirring.
‘What?’ Healy said.
My mind moved back three days to my meeting with Robert Wren and then to the conversation Healy and I had in the coffee shop at Shepherd’s Bush. Healy had accused me of being too invested in Sam as a person, of not being able to see the killer in him. But there had never been a killer in him. The lies he told were the lies I knew about. And he hadn’t been lying when he’d talked to his brother about the night he met Marc Erion. He said the guy lived in this place where there were no lights, Robert Wren had told me. He said he got to his door, on to the floor this guy was on, and all the bulbs were out. We knew why the lights were out. Smart had been through the building a couple of nights before taking Erion, creating cover for himself. And when he got to the flat, Robert Wren had told me, Sam said it felt like someone was there in the corridor with him.
‘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.