by Tim Weaver
Soundproofing.
I felt a stir of disquiet, the cone of torchlight unable to illuminate anything else in the room below. Then I started down.
After five steps, my head level with the kitchen floor, I felt a subtle change in temperature, as if I was stepping into a freezer. There was a faint draught coming in from somewhere, and the distant sound of dripping, but nothing else. Once I was completely immersed, the kitchen just a square of light above me, I stopped and directed the torch down, into the spaces in front of me. It was a basement. Concrete floors, completely unfurnished. It was difficult to tell how big in the dark, but it must have been the length and width of the house. Every so often there were brick pillars – thick columns holding the building up – and attached to one of them I saw a metal plate flecked with rust, and a chain coming off to a pair of shackles. The shackles had a red dot on them. The same as the key from the kitchen. The key had never been for the lift shaft, just as the bodies had never been dumped there. It had all been a lie; an attempt to confuse.
I carried on down, pausing at the bottom.
Now I could smell something. Something worse than damp. I placed a foot on to the basement floor and slowly moved the torch from right to left. The beam glided past the mid-section of the room and – a split second later – something registered with me.
I moved it back.
In the darkness, barely illuminated by the torch, I saw something shift. I edged further in, keeping the beam high and my eyes fixed on the shadows. I passed one pillar, and then another. The second had started crumbling around its middle and, when I stopped for a moment, I could see why: it also had a metal plate and a chain attached to it – as well as another red dot on the shackles – just like the one close to the staircase. But this one had become almost detached from the wall.
As if someone had been pulling at it.
I felt a shiver pass through my chest, my body sounding an alarm, and then I refocused the torch on the shape.
It was a man.
He was on his side, ankle chained to a metal plate on the back wall, facing me but with his head tucked into the bend of his elbow. He was shivering. There were no marks on him, or at least none I could see. I dropped to my haunches and directed the torchlight away from him, off to the side where it wouldn’t be directly on him.
And I saw someone else.
Another man.
This one was also chained to the back wall, about seven feet further on. He wasn’t moving. I got to my feet, took a sideways step, and picked him out properly. There were bruises all over him, and it looked like his wrist might be broken. His arm was out in front of him, his hand a deep purple, angled away unnaturally. When my torch passed across his face, there was nothing in his eyes. No reaction. No colour. I recognized him instantly from the files Healy had shown me: Joseph Symons, the third Snatcher victim. He wasn’t dead, but he didn’t have long: I could see the soft rise and fall of his stomach, bones showing through his broken skin, and there was dried blood all over his groin.
Like Leon Spane, Smart had removed his penis.
I covered my mouth, nausea rising in my throat, and swung the torch back around to the man in front of me, trying to concentrate on anything but Symons. The man moved slightly, out of the crook of his elbow, his head propped on the upper part of his arm.
It was Jonathan Drake.
He gazed right at me, eyes distant, as if the fight had been beaten out of him. But he didn’t move, even though – for all he knew – I could have been Smart. I inched closer, using the torch to paint him in a soft yellow glow. On his back there were bruises everywhere, most either side of his spine.
‘Jonathan?’
Something sparked in his eyes.
‘My name’s David Raker. I’m here to get you out, okay?’
He blinked. Whimpered.
‘He’s not going to hurt you again.’
Drake shifted on the floor, coming towards me, but the chain locked into place at his ankle. I held out a hand, moving closer, and gently touched him on the shoulder. He flinched. He wasn’t in as bad a state as Symons – physically at least – but then Symons had been missing since 28 February. Almost four months. Drake had been missing six days. He’d suffered, but not like Symons.
‘It’s okay. No one’s going to …’
And then I saw the rest.
They were off to my left, in the opposite direction, chained to metal plates lined up on the outer wall. Some at the ankles, some at the wrists. There was about ten feet between each of them, and – when I could bear to look – I realized Smart had taken something from each of their bodies, just like he’d done with Symons. The one closest to me I knew straight away from the photo of him I’d seen in his file: Steven Wilky. When my torch caught his face, nothing came back; just a glazed stillness, his body curled up in the foetal position, his skin almost translucent, veins showing through like a road map.
Beyond him it got worse: the tiny figure of a man – a boy, really – head shaved, both hands locked together like he was praying. As I left Drake and inched through the darkness, past Wilky and on to the boy, I knew – even before I got to him – that it was Marc Erion. He was tiny and incredibly thin. Just bones. No fat at all.
I swallowed hard, and directed the torchlight beyond Erion to the other two bodies. Both were naked and shaved. Nearest to me, a man was half sitting up at the wall, arm attached to a metal plate above him. His breathing was soft and moist, like there might be blood in his lungs, and there were deep cuts all across his chest, his face beaten to a pulp. But I knew who it was. On the middle finger of his right hand was a silver ring with a rune on it.
Pell.
They’d never been working together. Pell had been nothing more to Smart than another victim. Another piece of misdirection. I’d been chasing Pell, thinking he was the Snatcher, while the real killer had him locked up in his basement with five other men.
I took another step forward.
Beyond Pell was the last of them. Like the others, he was naked, every inch of him shaved, but there was no blood on him. No bruising. He was thin, drawn, but while he was chained at the ankle, Smart had made an effort to keep him pristine, as if he saw him as something better. Something special. Something worth taking a risk over.
I’d found Samuel Wren.
76
Five minutes later the house was crawling with police and forensics. Craw made me give my account of what happened, of all the events leading up to the point at which we found ourselves, and then asked me to wait in the semi-darkness of the living room, surrounded by photographs of Smart’s father, and Smart as a boy. After an hour – after she’d been to the old Underground station, and down into the basement of the house – she came in, sat down and said nothing. We could both hear Davidson in the kitchen, telling someone to be careful with evidence, and when I looked at Craw I saw a kind of resignation in her, as if she was sick of this case, and maybe sick of her job. Men like Smart were a reset button: you thought you’d seen everything that people were capable of doing to one another, and then someone like him came along and you realized there was always someone worse.
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 s
miled 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 manipulating 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 t
here 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.