by Tim Weaver
By choosing a station to leave at, he would have given me a compass bearing for that area of the city, and while it might not have led me to him, it would have given me an advantage. But most of all it would have helped erase the impossible: that a man really could step on to a train and then – three stops later – disappear into thin air.
12
As I entered Liz’s house there was the smell of coffee and perfume and the buzz of the electric shower along the hallway. Her living room was understated but stylish: an open fireplace, two black leather sofas, a TV, a huge bookcase; and then a potted palm, big and out of control, which looked like it belonged on a Caribbean island.
I went to the kitchen, got two mugs from the cupboard and poured some coffee, then padded through to the bedroom. She’d finished showering and was drying herself off, steam pouring off her, condensation on every surface. I announced my arrival by singing the Psycho shower-scene music.
She smiled. ‘Very funny.’
‘It’s like a volcano in here.’
Rolling her eyes, she hung her towel on the door, and started hunting around in her drawers for underwear.
‘How was your day?’ I asked.
‘I was defending that hit-and-run driver.’
She looked at me, her opinion on him clear to see. Even outside of the courtroom, in the privacy of her own home, she maintained a kind of dignified silence. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to discuss her cases with me, more that she preferred not to judge people, even if sometimes – like tonight – it was hard not to. I liked that quality in her.
‘And yours?’
‘It was okay.’
She looked at me. ‘Just okay?’
I put her coffee down and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘So this guy I’m trying to find gets on at Gloucester Road and then disappears. Just …’ I looked at her. It sounded strange saying it out loud. ‘Vanishes.’
‘How do you vanish from the inside of a train?’
I shrugged. ‘That’s just the point. You don’t. You can’t. He must have got off at some point – but I can’t see where. I’ve been over the footage twice today.’
‘No sign of him?’
‘Nothing after Victoria.’
‘He’ll turn up.’ She sat down on the bed and squeezed me, then shifted slightly, as if she’d suddenly remembered something. ‘Oh, I bumped into an old friend of yours today.’
‘I didn’t realize I had any left.’
Another smile formed on her face. ‘He was giving evidence in one of the other courtrooms.’
‘Who was the friend?’
‘Colm Healy.’
His name made me pause.
The last time I’d seen Healy was at the funeral of his daughter the previous November. He’d been in a bad way at the time: emotionally damaged, physically broken, estranged from his wife and suspended from his job at the Met. In the weeks before he buried his girl, we’d formed an uneasy alliance, one built not on trust, but on necessity, as we both came to realize we were hunting the same man.
‘Did you say hello?’
‘Yes. He passed on his best.’
‘Is he back on the force?’
‘Since 9 January. He said he’d had to suck up a demotion.’
‘But he seemed okay otherwise?’
Liz looked up at me. ‘He seemed better.’
He couldn’t have been much worse. Healy had gone against all the rules of his profession to find his daughter. In the interviews afterwards, police had accused me of feeling a kinship for him, using it as a stick to beat me with, a way of cornering me. But they’d failed to understand the relationship. We’d caught a monster – a murderer who’d eluded police for years – and, in order to do that, in order to go as far as we had, there had to be something deeper tethering us to each other. The police thought it was that I felt sorry for him.
But it was more than that.
Until you’d buried the most important person in your life, it was difficult to understand how grief forged a connection between people. Yet, ultimately, that was what had happened with Healy and me. I didn’t trust him, in many ways didn’t even really like him, but we each saw our reflection in the other, and – as we tried to stop a killer who had preyed on us both – that had been enough.
13
23 January | Five Months Earlier
The grass around the front of the building was still covered in frost and, in the sky above, unmarked by cloud, a pair of seagulls squawked, drifting beyond the walls of the prison. There was a faint breeze in the air, carried in from the Thames, but otherwise it was still.
Healy passed through the front entrance and waited in line at security. Ahead of him, a man in his seventies was being patted down, a prison officer’s hands passing along both legs. The old man’s coat, jacket, belt and shoes were already sitting in a tray on the other side of an X-ray machine, and – once he was done being searched – he had a door-shaped metal detector to contend with. A second prison officer lay in wait beyond that, looking like he’d come off the same production line as the one doing the rub-down: shaved head, moustache, semi-aggressive.
The old man was still putting on his shoes by the time Healy was done. In the corridor ahead were a series of lockers where visitors were asked to store all personal possessions. Healy made a show of switching off his phone, and opened one of the locker doors. But he didn’t put anything inside.
He wasn’t planning on staying.
A couple of minutes later, as he pretended to check his phone, he saw her emerge through a security door. She was wearing a visitor’s badge on her front and holding a slip case. As he watched her, he felt a prickle of anger form at the bottom of his throat, but then she seemed to sense she was being watched and looked vaguely in his direction. He stepped in front of the open locker door and disappeared from view.
A few seconds later, he leaned back out and saw that she was chatting with one of the prison guards. There was a smile on her face that pissed Healy off, as if nothing was on her mind. As if she’d forgotten where she’d just come from and who she’d been talking to. He’d missed her the week before because she’d been finished by the time he’d fought his way through London traffic – but he hadn’t missed her this week. He’d made sure of that.
Now he needed to get to know her.
He needed to get a fix on her routines, her habits, her quirks, her route into and out of this place.
And when he knew all that, when he was sure, then he’d move in for the kill.
An hour later, Healy pulled his Vauxhall up outside the station. He killed the engine and glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror. He’d hardly slept the night before, knowing he was due at the prison early, and it showed in his eyes and in his face. He’d told Craw that he was going to the doctor, and maybe she’d believe that for a while. But she was smart. She’d see it in him. And, after a while, she’d realize it wasn’t a lack of sleep that was getting to him. It was the anger and resentment.
It was the need for revenge.
His eyes flicked back to his reflection. Get yourself straight. Don’t let them see any weakness. He took a deep breath, the heat from the car fading as winter started to creep back in. Then he reached for the door, opened it and headed inside.
13 February
Healy looked up to see he was the only one in the office. It was 10 p.m. For a second, twenty-three years of instinct kicked in and he reached for his jacket, his first thought of Gemma and what she would say when he got home. But then reality hit: Gemma had left him, their marriage was over and the only home he had to go to was a dark, pokey flat in King’s Cross he was renting from a friend at Scotland Yard.
He leaned back in his chair and fixed his eyes on the clock at the far end of the room. Below it was a map of central London and two photographs of two different men. Their names were Steven Wilky and Marc Evans. The map had pins, Post-it notes, pieces of paper and marker pen all over it. Healy glanced at his in-tray: burglaries, violent d
omestics, dealers. He’d been given a second chance at the Met, survived the disciplinary procedure and come out the other end, but he hadn’t done it unscathed. He’d taken a demotion, from detective sergeant down to detective constable, and now he was working the sort of cases he’d left behind a decade ago. They were his ticket back in, the way to win Craw’s favour, but he hated them; hated the satisfaction it gave people like Eddie Davidson to see him working shitty cases that were plainly beneath him.
What he wanted was something bigger.
What he wanted was Wilky and Evans.
Voices in the corridor. He looked over the top of his monitor and saw Davidson, Richter and Sallows approaching the office, laughing at something one of them had said. He thought about grabbing his jacket and heading out the other door, but it was too late to make a swift exit without being noticed. He’d have to ride this one out.
Davidson entered first, saw movement out of the corner of his eye and zeroed in on Healy. The other two followed suit, the pack mimicking their leader. A smile spread across Davidson’s face, his small dark eyes flicking from one side of the room to the other, making sure no one else was around. Then they all started to approach.
‘I didn’t think you’d need to clock overtime working domestics, Colm,’ Davidson said by way of a greeting. The other two smiled. Davidson came right up to Healy, into his personal space, and then backed away slightly, perching himself on a desk opposite. ‘Or maybe you’re finding them tough to crack.’
The other two laughed. Healy looked at Davidson, then at Richter and Sallows, and felt the muscles in his jaw tighten. Don’t let them get to you. There was a flash of disappointment in Davidson’s eyes when Healy didn’t rise to the bait.
‘Seriously, Colm, what are you doing here?’
‘What does it look like, Eddie?’
Davidson’s eyes flicked to Healy’s desk and then back again. ‘It looks like you’re still here at ten o’clock and all you’ve got in your tray are piece-of-shit cases.’
‘Even piece-of-shit cases need closing.’
Davidson frowned, like Healy had said something stupid. Then he looked him up and down, his desk, his work space. ‘What is this?’
‘What’s what?’
‘This,’ he said, waving an arm in Healy’s direction. ‘You were away – what? – ten weeks, and suddenly you’re the fucking Zen master?’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You don’t follow?’ He shuffled off the edge of the desk, running a hand through his beard, and stepped in closer. ‘The old Healy was a prick, but at least you knew where you were with him. You said something he didn’t like, and he flipped out. Screamed in your face, did everything in his power to fuck things up for you and everyone around him. But this new one …’ He stopped, looked Healy up and down like he was pond life. ‘You’re just a shell. You’re fried. You’ve got nothing left in the tank.’
‘I guess we’ll see.’
‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’ Sallows this time. He was in his early fifties, just like Davidson, but unlike Davidson he was tall and skinny. The two of them had been together for years. Before things went wrong, before Leanne went missing, Healy used to joke that they were an old married couple. But not any more. There were no jokes now. Those days were gone.
Healy glanced at Sallows. ‘What do you think it means, Kevin?’
‘I think it means you’re done,’ Sallows said.
Healy looked between the three of them. He’d known Richter for the least amount of time and, judging on his performance tonight, he wasn’t going to be much to worry about. But Davidson and Sallows were different. They’d keep chipping away at him until the first cracks appeared, and then they’d get into the cracks and prise them as far open as they’d go.
Davidson leaned forward, into Healy’s personal space again. ‘Look at you – you’re pathetic. You can’t even get it together for a fight any more.’
For a second, Healy imagined reaching up, grabbing Davidson by the neck and smashing his face through the table; felt the tremor in his hands, the fire in his chest, the need to react and hit out. But then he remembered standing in a darkened courtyard the October before, waving a gun in Davidson’s face, and telling him that he would kill him if he got in the way of finding Leanne. Healy had meant it too; never been so sure about anything in his entire life. But it had cost him – his position, his marriage – and now he needed to maintain control in order to claw his way back out of the hole and get his teeth into something better. He looked beyond Davidson, to the photographs on the far wall.
He wanted a piece of that.
He wanted to help find those two men.
He wanted to hunt the Snatcher.
PART TWO
14
At 1 a.m., I was still awake. Through the open window, I could hear the soft drone of cars from Gunnersbury Avenue and the gentle whine of a plane overhead, but otherwise the streets of Ealing were still. No breeze, no animals rummaging around, no people passing.
The first day of a new case it was always difficult to sleep. Everything was new – the people, their world – and every question you asked at the beginning only led to more questions. Those that remained unanswered were like holes; little punctures in the case that you had to find a way to repair before the whole thing collapsed.
And there were already big holes in Sam Wren’s life.
When the clock hit 1.30, I finally accepted I wasn’t going to sleep, flipped back the covers and sat up. Grabbing my trousers, I padded through to the living room where Liz’s MacBook was still set up. I cleared the screensaver and plugged in the USB stick Task had got for me, saving the contents on to the desktop. Then I opened the videos again and watched them through. A shiver of electricity passed along my spine as I saw Sam for the last time, his legs and briefcase disappearing as the train doors slid shut. And then the train jerked forward and headed into the black of the tunnel.
Gone.
Behind me, I heard footsteps in the hallway and looked back to see Liz emerge from the darkness. She moved through to the kitchen, filled a glass with water and returned to where I was sitting.
‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘No. I’ve got first-night insomnia.’
She nodded. Her eyes fell on the laptop. I’d rewound the footage to the seconds before the train doors closed. ‘Is this your guy?’
‘That’s his train.’
‘Where’s he?’
I pointed to his legs. ‘There.’
‘All you’ve got are his legs?’
‘In Victoria, yes.’
‘What about after?’
‘This is the last time you get to see him.’
She leaned in even closer and tabbed the footage on. Doors sliding shut. Train taking off. Disappearing into the tunnel. ‘That’s a bit … creepy, isn’t it?’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, he just disappears.’
‘People disappear all the time.’
‘Yeah, but they don’t just disappear, do they?’ She tabbed the footage back and looked at me. ‘When people disappear, they wander off somewhere, hide, try not to resurface. Or they die: they commit suicide, someone kills them, something. Their body goes somewhere. But you’ve been through the footage and you can’t see the join. You can’t see where he went. To me …’ She faded out. ‘To me that’s a bit creepy.’
I didn’t say anything, but in the silence I realized Liz might be right: there was something disquieting about Sam Wren’s journey that morning, more so now I’d seen the CCTV video. I still knew, in the rational part of me, the part I built cases on, that Sam had to have left the train – but without being able to see him do it, without the physical act of stepping on to the platform, something troubling remained.
‘I’ll see you in bed,’ she said quietly.
I watched her go and then turned back to the footage. There were twelve thousand CCTV cameras in and around the London Underground. The ticket halls. T
he platforms. The walkways. The trains. Sam couldn’t have avoided them all.
I had to widen the search.
I woke with a start. Outside I could hear people talking, a car idling, and – even more distantly – the sound of a dog barking. Disorientated and half asleep, I sat up in bed, feeling the sheet fall away, a faint breeze reaching across from the window and clawing at my skin. Seconds later, my phone began buzzing.
I grabbed it. ‘David Raker.’
‘David, it’s Spike. You okay?’
‘Yeah. Late night. What time is it?’
‘7.15. Do you want me to call back?’
‘No.’ I got to my feet, grabbed one of Liz’s least feminine dressing gowns and put it on. I made my way through to the living room, set the phone down and switched to speaker. ‘What have you got for me, Spike?’
‘Sorry it’s taken me so long.’
‘Not a problem.’
‘So, you asked for a complete financial picture, as well as his phone records. I’ll send them through as a PDF, so you can grab them on the move.’
‘Great. Anything I need to know?’
‘Nah, it’s all pretty self-explanatory. The financial stuff runs to about twenty-five pages. The phone records I’m doing a bit of work on: for each of the incoming and outgoing numbers I’ll get you a name and address.’
‘Great work – are those coming over today?’
‘Yeah. Not until a bit later on, though. Getting these names and addresses for you will take longer, but it’ll save you a load of time.’
‘You’re the man, Spike.’
I thanked him and killed the call.
Now it was time to brave the Tube at rush hour.
15
Gloucester Road Tube station sits on the corner of Gloucester Road and Courtfield Road. Its two-tone facade – all glazed terracotta tiles and sandy brick – harks back to the grand old days of the Underground; to a time when the Tube wasn’t just a vessel to get people to their destination, but an experience, a day out. In truth, it was hard to imagine those times on the hot, cramped District line, moving through the bowels of the earth where there was no air, and eventually no daylight.