Vanished

team, and Sampson – both looked at Craw. Her eyes were still on Healy. ‘You understand why we dismissed it though, Healy – right?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘This is about as far from our guy’s MO as you can get.’

Healy nodded. ‘I agree, ma’am.’

‘Our man takes them, and he keeps them. Or he leaves their bodies concealed. Or he dumps them somewhere remote. He doesn’t leave them on Hampstead Heath, in plain sight, in the middle of a city with 7 million people in it.’

Healy nodded again.

‘The first victim, Wilky, has been missing since 11 August 2011,’ Craw went on, ‘and we still haven’t found his body. The second, Evans, since 13 November. The newest, Symons, since 28 February. They don’t come back.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘He isn’t aggressive either,’ Sallows said, stepping in, sensing an opportunity to kill Healy off. ‘At least not at the scene. There are no signs of a struggle at any of the victims’ flats or houses, and no sign of a break-in. They all lived on their own, in their own places. Spane didn’t. Plus there’s the doubts over the hair: Healy says someone shaved Spane’s hair for him, but forensics say the hair was shaved before he died, so it’s just as likely – in fact, probably more likely – that Spane shaved it himself.’ Sallows paused, glancing at Craw, but she made no effort to stop him. ‘And what you can safely say about our guy, beyond all reasonable doubt, is that he isn’t the type of killer who’s going to dump a body and then spend the next minute messily chopping the victim’s dick off. In fact, with no bodies to find, our guy might not be a killer at all.’

‘What does he do with the men if he doesn’t kill them?’ Healy asked.

Sallows glanced at Craw but didn’t say anything. Craw leaned forward at her desk and laid both hands flat to the surface. ‘Is that it, Colm?’

‘Don’t you think it would be worth looking into?’

‘Sallows looked into it.’

He glanced at Sallows and then to Davidson; there was a hint of a smile on Davidson’s face again, as if he sensed the whole room were now seeing Healy for who he was: a fraud of a cop. ‘I’ll take this case,’ Healy said to her, ‘and I’ll run with it. It won’t impact upon my time, but I will report back as soon as I find anything. It’ll be off the books.’

‘Just like normal,’ Davidson said quietly, but loud enough to be heard.

‘Fuck you, Eddie.’

‘All right, calm down,’ Craw snapped, shooting them both a look. Davidson slid down into his chair, arms crossed on his belly, a satisfied smile on his face. Over his shoulder, like a parrot, Sallows was an exact replica. Craw turned to Healy. Everyone in the office was staring at him. Davidson winked, out of sight of Craw. Sallows had a look on his face that was so clear it was like Healy could see right into his head. You’re done, he was saying. You had your chance – and you crumbled. But Healy wasn’t about to crumble. Not now. Not in front of them.

‘You missed something,’ he said, staring at Sallows.

The smile fell from his face like a stone dropping down a well. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he said, incensed – but Healy could see the doubt in him now.

The minute you brought up my daughter, the minute you tried to use her as a way to get at me, you changed the game. Now I’m going to put you in the fucking ground.

Craw shifted forward. ‘Healy?’

He turned to Craw. ‘Sallows is responsible for checking the CCTV footage from each of the buildings the victims were taken from, is that right?’

‘Yeah,’ Sallows interjected. ‘I checked them all and there’s nothing to find.’

‘Not true.’

‘Get to the point, Healy,’ Craw said.

‘There are consistencies at all of the scenes – the type of victim, their build, their sexuality, the type of location they live in, the hair on the pillow. There’s something else too. At each of the crime scenes there’s been no working internal lighting.’

Craw’s expression changed. ‘Explain.’

He glanced at Davidson and Sallows: Davidson was watching him, eyes narrow, head tilted, trying to see where this was going; Sallows looked as white as a ghost.

‘Every interior light leading up to the flat, including the hallway the flat is on, has been out. In the latest one, in Symons’s building – at the front entrance, at the foyer – the whole floor was out. There were no working bulbs at all.’

‘These places are shitholes,’ Sallows said.

‘It’s not just that,’ Healy replied. ‘I went back and checked the CCTV footage from each of the scenes. It’s difficult to make anything out on the night the victims were taken. You can see vague figures passing in and out of the building, but not much apart from that.’

‘So?’ Sallows said.

‘So I went back and requested the footage from the two weeks prior to each of the victims being taken – of the front of the building and the foyer; as much of the interior as I could get hold of – and I watched it back.’ He turned to Craw. ‘The lights were working at all of the crime scenes three days before the victims were taken.’

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