trying to solve one of their cases, even if it was a low-priority one like Sam Wren. A detective I used a lot during my days as a journalist used to have a shelf in his filing system marked ‘DGAS’; as in ‘Don’t Give a Shit’. That was where the low-priority missing people, the drug addicts and the repeat offenders got stashed and forgotten about. But I’d never met a cop who didn’t start giving a shit the minute an outsider stepped into view.
‘Does Sam have any family?’
‘A brother. Robert.’
‘Is he here in London?’
‘He works here. But he lives in Reading.’
‘I’ll need his address,’ I said.
She reached into the handbag and brought out a diary. She’d prepared for this day; prepared for the questions I was going to ask. She leafed through it, found the page she was looking for and then ripped it out of the book. She set it down in front of me. It was a list of names – numbered 1 to 15 – of the most important people in Sam’s life. Each name had full contact details.
‘That’s everybody I could think of,’ she said.
Each name had an entry after it, headed ‘Relationship to Sam’. His brother was top, followed by friends and work colleagues. ‘This’ll work,’ I said, smiling.
‘If I think of anyone else, I’ll let you know.’
I folded the piece of paper up. ‘I’ll need to have a look around the house.’
She nodded. ‘Whenever you need to.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘I’m working the morning shift. I’ll be home about two.’
‘I’ll be there for three.’ She gave me the address and I noted it down. ‘Can I take this?’ I asked her, and touched a finger to the photograph of her husband.
‘Of course.’
I nodded my thanks and pulled it towards me. Part of the reason for going to the house – apart from the fact that it was one of my routines; a way to understand the person better – was to find out if there were any older photographs of him. I wanted to see how he looked; if he had always been as thin as he was at the end.
My watch beeped gently. Eleven o’clock.
‘One last thing before I go,’ I said. Outside the rain had stopped and with it had come a strange kind of silence. No drizzle drifting against the window any more, no people passing in the street. She studied me expectantly. ‘If I start looking into this, there can’t be any secrets between us.’
Her eyes flicked to her coffee cup and up again. ‘Secrets?’
‘Any secrets, any conflicts that existed between the two of you, any problems Sam might have been having, I need to know about them. I’m not here to make a judgement on you. I’m here to find Sam.’
I let that sit there for a moment.
But she didn’t take the bait.
If she was lying to me, the lie would surface eventually. They always did. Usually families lied out of some misguided belief that it might affect how I did my job; as if my performance was based on how picture-perfect their life was. But the truth was, no life was perfect. Everyone had secrets.
It’s just some were buried deeper than others.
4
I walked Julia Wren back down Long Acre and then watched her disappear into the Tube station at Covent Garden. The streets were starting to empty now, the noise drifting away, a different, softer city emerging from the shadows. I took out my phone and thumbed through the address book until I got to the name I wanted: Ewan Tasker.
‘Task’ was in his early sixties, retired for a couple of years but still employed in an advisory role at the Met. Before that, he worked for the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the precursor to the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Our relationship had started off slowly: he’d come to me with a story he wanted to break about Kosovan organized crime, hoping to force one of its leaders out into the open; I used it as a bargaining chip, and a way to secure him as a long-term source. We sparred for a while but eventually, over time, became good friends. These days, I wasn’t able to offer him column inches in return for his help, so he made me turn up to a charity golf day once a year on his birthday. For me, it was eighteen holes of misery. For him, it was hilarious.
‘Raker!’ he shouted down the phone. ‘What time do you call this?’
It was late, but I knew he’d be awake. Task enjoyed his golf, but he wasn’t built for retirement: he’d spent the first six months driving his wife up the wall, and the next six on bended knee begging any agency he could find to give him something to do.
‘How you doing, old man?’
‘I’m good. Up to my arse in work, but otherwise good.’
‘I’m not sure lifting beer cans to your mouth counts as work, Task.’
He laughed. ‘I didn’t even have time for a pint at the clubhouse this morning, and you know I always make time for a pint or ten.’
‘I thought you were just advising the Met part-time?’
‘I am. Normally it’s more sedate: meetings once a week at Scotland Yard, the rest of the time here at home reading up on cases and offering my devastating insight.’
‘But not this week?’
‘There’s a few things going on,’ he said, ‘but nothing exciting. Not yet, anyway. You been following this Snatcher stuff?’
‘Not closely.’
‘You’re losing your touch, Raker.’
I smiled. ‘If I ever had it. I only know what I’ve read in the papers: he gets inside their houses and takes them from their beds.’
‘Yeah,’ Tasker said. ‘He’s got some balls, I’ll give him that.’
‘You’re not working that case, are you?’
‘No. Definitely not my area. But it’s the water-cooler case at the Met: everyone’s talking about it, everyone’s got an opinion. The press are all over it like flies on shit.’
‘Can’t blame them. It’s the biggest story of the year.’
‘Spoken like a true hack.’ He laughed. ‘So what can I do for you?’
I needed to get hold of the CCTV footage from the day Sam disappeared on the Tube, but I didn’t have any sources at Transport for London, or at the Transport Police. Task’s contacts at SOCA – soon to become the National Crime Agency – were a decent alternative: they’d be policing organized crime, people trafficking, e-crime and fraud at the London Olympics, which meant securing CCTV footage through them wouldn’t raise any flags and probably wouldn’t require a lot of paperwork. They’d be watching the Tube for suspicious activity anyway, and as a way to identify potential suspects, so it was natural they’d be analysing footage as prep in the months leading up to the Games. I told Task what I needed.
‘What do you want the footage for?’
‘A guy I’m trying to find – he disappeared somewhere on the Circle line.’
‘Disappeared how?’
‘Just disappeared. Got on the train and never got off again.’
‘You serious?’
‘You know me, Task: I don’t have a sense of humour.’
Another laugh. ‘That’s true.’
‘His wife came to me tonight and asked me to find out where he went. The Met opened a missing persons file on him and had one of their uniforms look into it.’
‘Sounds like they pulled out all the stops to find him.’
I smiled ruefully. ‘PC Plod doesn’t seem that bothered.’
‘You gonna call him?’
‘Yeah. I’m sure I can look forward to my usual warm welcome from the Met.’
