Vanished

tell the media?’

Most of this, Healy knew, was down to him. Bartholomew had been there when Healy had been trying to find Leanne; and there in the aftermath, desperate not to give him a second chance. The decision to pull him on to the Snatcher case was Craw’s, and hers alone, and now she would be held accountable if it all went wrong: by Bartholomew, by Davidson, by anyone with a grudge against Healy. All Healy knew was that he owed it to her for giving him a chance – and he owed it to her not to make any mistakes.

Bartholomew backed out of the bedroom, letting Healy take in the crime scene, and stepped closer to Craw. ‘Melanie,’ he said again, using her first name to cushion the blow of what was coming next. ‘I think it’s time I took over the media briefings. This needs to come from the top. They need to see that we’re taking this seriously, and that we won’t just sit back and accept what we’ve got here tonight.’

‘With all due respect, sir, I’ve never put an impression across to the media that we weren’t taking these crimes seriously.’

‘Don’t take it personally,’ he said, holding up a hand to her, as if he’d barely heard her. ‘I have full faith in you and your …’ He paused, glancing at Healy. ‘Team.’

‘Is there anything else you want to lead directly, sir?’

He looked at her, trying to find the insubordination in her face, but Craw looked at him blankly. ‘No. You carry on as is. I trust you. I’ll take the media hit.’

Bartholomew left.

Healy glanced at Craw, who looked back. There was nothing in her face, nothing unspoken. No indication that she thought any less of Bartholomew, even though he’d just relegated her from the front line of the case. He was happy for her to work the hours and feel the pressure build, but he wasn’t going to let her have her day in the sun if they ever caught the Snatcher. And yet she remained silent. Healy admired her even more for her poise.

He looked into the bedroom for a second time. The hair had been placed in a neat pile on the pillow. Just like Wilky. Just like Evans. Just like Symons.

‘What was this one’s name?’ Healy asked, looking at Craw.

‘Jonathan Drake,’ she said.

43

I shook my head as I flicked through Sam’s file. The picture of him was from the day of the fight at Gloucester Road, taken in the station afterwards when it looked like he was going to be charged. His face was puffy across the middle, where he’d been punched; traces of blood around his nose and a deep purple swelling on one cheekbone.

But there was nothing else in his record.

It was clean.

‘I just don’t see this,’ I said.

Healy nodded, as if he’d expected that reaction from me. ‘We turned up at his work and went through his computer. They assumed he wasn’t coming back, so they’d cleared out much of what was on his PC. But they didn’t clear out everything.’

As Healy slid a hand into the slip case, taking out the four matching Manila files, my mind rolled back to Investment International a couple of days before. I’d asked to go through his work PC myself, but McGregor, his boss, had wanted a warrant. I should have worked around it, should have got at his PC somehow – even though, at the time, I could never have imagined it would lead to this – and, as I silently cursed myself, Healy laid the files down in front of me. I knew what they were instantly.

The Snatcher victims.

He went to the second one down and opened it. A scrawny white man – no more than nineteen or twenty – looked out at me. It wasn’t official police photography; it was a shot in a living room, brightly lit but overexposed. The man was smiling, a crooked expression weighted to one side of his face in a shy, almost coy fashion. He was thin and wiry, a red T-shirt hanging off him, a pair of denims pulled tight at the waist, and he was perched on the edge of a sofa that was either about to fall apart or deliberately retro.

‘That’s the second,’ he said. ‘Marc Evans.’

Except, according to his file, he wasn’t called Marc Evans at all. That was just an alias; presumably the name most people he met and worked with in London knew him by. His real name was Marc Erion – and he was Albanian. Suddenly, I knew exactly where this was going as my mind flashed to Adrian Wellis, cut and covered in glass, looking up at me from the floor of the warehouse in Kennington. I set him up with a nice little Albanian kid. Fresh out of the fridge, this boy was. Nineteen, skinny, cute little tattoo on the back of his neck. I glanced at Erion’s personal details. Nineteen. Five-seven. Ten stone. A rose tattooed on to the back of his neck. Never registered at any port in the United Kingdom. Because he’d come into the country in the back of a lorry.

‘We estimate Erion, aka Evans, came into the country between March and October last year,’ Healy said. ‘His father was a politician back in the motherland, but Erion wasn’t what you’d call a chip off the old block. They didn’t talk much, mostly because Erion Jr was a Grade A fuck-up. Flunked college, flunked the job Daddy set him up with, got in with the wrong crowd and ended up stealing money from the family bank account to try and pay his way through his smack addiction. The old man booted him out and then Erion ended up getting in with an even wronger crowd, and some time last year he landed in the UK, most probably in the hands of the Albanian mafia.’

Except he didn’t. He ended up in the hands of Adrian Wellis.

And then a second realization hit me.

The kid’s dead, Wellis had said.

You killed him?

I suppose, in a way, I did.

What does that even mean?

The kid was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Originally, I thought he was admitting to killing Erion himself. But it wasn’t that at all. He delivered him. He probably only realized afterwards, as Erion’s face was plastered across the front pages, but Wellis had unknowingly handed the Snatcher his next victim. He’d met the Snatcher too. He told me he always vetted the punters first time out, but Wellis would have been funnelling so many men Erion’s way, the vetting process would have been a shambles. And even if he did recall a face, even if – as unlikely as it seemed – the Snatcher had let his guard down and somehow made himself known to Wellis, Wellis couldn’t have said anything. Go to the police, and he invited the Met into his life. His operation. His secrets. So he said nothing and accepted Erion as collateral damage. Wrong place, wrong time. He was right about that, at least.

Healy eyed me, as if he sensed my mind was on something else, and he wanted to know what. ‘Wren had Erion’s number tucked away on his work PC, disguised as a business associate. Never called him, but the number was there.’

‘Wait a second. If he never called Erion, how did you pin this on Sam in the first place? If there was no phone call, there’s no route from Erion back to Sam.’

Healy didn’t reply. Instead he placed a hand on top of the files. It was meant to look casual, a movement so slight I wouldn’t even notice. But I did, and it immediately pissed me off. He wanted to remain in control, wanted to establish a hierarchy between us, and in doing so he’d forgotten his association with me, the things we’d done and the sacrifices I’d made for him. But there was something else in the gesture too. I saw it in his eyes, in his expression, a mix of suppression and guilt. He was keeping something back from me. But not just from me – from everyone.

‘Do you know much about him?’ Healy asked.

‘Who?’

‘The Snatcher.’

‘I want to know how you came to Sam Wren.’

He could see he’d annoyed me. ‘This is all off the record, understand?’

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m an amateur.’

‘You’re upset about your boy. I get it.’