Vanished

‘Wren knows Erion and he knows Drake,’ Healy said. ‘He’s been in contact with both of them. What’s the next logical step? That he knows Wilky and Symons.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Give me a fucking break, Raker. You know what this means.’

‘It’s an assumption.’

‘You’d make the same one.’

I couldn’t argue with that. If Sam knew two out of the four victims, if he’d been in touch with them, then it was only a very small step to Wilky and Symons.

‘This just doesn’t feel like Sam.’

He snorted in derision. ‘This is a murder investigation, not some carnival sideshow. Cases aren’t built on how you feel. This isn’t the fucking magic circle.’

‘I wouldn’t have pegged Sam for a killer.’

‘Sam.’

I frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Maybe you’re getting too cosy with him,’ Healy said, and sank some of his coffee. ‘You ever thought of that? You need to separate out what you think is the truth – what you want to be the truth – from what is actually the truth.’

‘Is there anything else linking him to the crimes?’

‘Anything else but his own voice? I don’t know how you’ve found it in your vast experience of working murders, but generally they’re not standing there with their dicks out holding the murder weapon when we arrive on the scene. This is as good as it gets.’ Healy glanced at me, his hackles rising again. ‘And here’s another thing: the Snatcher’s a planner. He watches these guys for weeks, he gets to know their routines, he doesn’t leave room for error. He even takes out all the lights leading into and out of the building. Every single one. I couldn’t get my head around why there was no lighting in the places he took them from. Then I realized every one was the same. He sweeps the building before the night he takes them, and then he walks them out in total darkness.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘What’s my point?’ He smirked. ‘My point is, I chatted to Julia Wren and she said your mate Sam was working late at work all the time. So what’s the betting he wasn’t at work? What’s the betting he’s out there getting a hard-on, picking himself a new victim?’

‘Or he could really have been working late.’

He shook his head. ‘You live in fantasy land, Raker. Your guy is the best lead we’ve had in almost a year of trying to track down this arsehole. We’ve got him all over two of the vics, he fits the profile like a glove and, all of a sudden, he’s mysteriously disappeared and no one – not even David Raker – can find him. The only thing batting against all that is this whimsical shit you’re spinning about some kind of gut feeling.’

‘He’s been missing six months.’

‘So?’

‘So he hasn’t disappeared “all of a sudden”. And why take two of them and then disappear yourself in order to take the next two – and then leave a voice message on the latest victim’s phone and be careless enough to lose it on the Underground? The Snatcher’s left no trace of himself until now. There’s no sense in him suddenly deciding to leave his name and number on Drake’s phone.’

‘Sense? What, you think this guy is lucid? You think he’s logical? What’s logical about shaving people’s heads and killing them? He’s a nutjob.’ He paused; regained his composure. ‘You get close to people on a case. I know that. I’ve done the same. Sometimes it’s hard to accept what they’ve done when you get attached to them.’

‘I’m not attached to him.’

‘It sounds to me like you are.’

I went to answer, went to fight my corner again, when I stopped. Had I become too attached to Sam? Had I bought into his life too much, failed to process the truth out there on the periphery of his life? He was a fraud. He’d lied to everyone important to him. And he’d been leading a double life – which was exactly what the Snatcher had been doing. I looked at Healy and saw the way he was studying me. I backtracked through our conversation and then back even further, to the people I’d spoken to, the lies I’d unearthed.

And then something emerged from the dark.

It was weird, Robert Wren had said to me when he’d told me about Sam going to see the prostitute I now knew to be Marc Erion. He said the guy lived in this place where there were no lights. He said he got to his door, on to the floor this guy was on, and all the bulbs were out. It was completely black … And when he got to the flat, Wren went on, he said it felt like someone was there. Sam meant there, in the corridor with him.

Had Sam told another lie? Or was there something more at play here?

‘I’m not attached to him,’ I said again.

‘Whatever.’

‘Do you even value my opinion, Healy?’

‘You looking for an ego massage?’

‘Do you?’

He just stared at me.

‘Or is this simply about getting one over on the cops you hate?’

‘It’s not about that.’

‘Then what’s it about?’

There was a sudden kind of sadness to him and, for the briefest of moments, I saw a flash in one of his eyes; the same one as earlier. He was definitely hiding something. He looked away, and when he turned back he’d composed himself and there was nothing in his face. No emotion. No expression. Just a blank.

‘Healy?’

‘It’s about getting the guy respon–’

‘Responsible for these crimes, blah blah blah. Look, if you value anything I did for you last year, if any of that meant anything, you owe it to me to –’

‘I don’t owe you shit.’

I paused. This was how Healy’s anger played out: indiscriminate and damaging. But even though I knew that, even though I’d dealt with this over and over the October before, it still stuck in my throat. It provoked me and irritated me, and – in my most uncontrolled moments, moments I tried to contain – it made me want to hurt him back.

‘Why are you still here?’

He looked at me. ‘What?’

‘You’ve got the evidence. You’ve obviously got all you need to know about Sam from his wife. She’s told you how he disappeared, what her life was like at the end, how he started to change. You know all that already. Now I’ve just filled in the rest of the blanks for you. So why are you still here?’

His eyes turned to his coffee mug.

I leaned into him. ‘Don’t bullshit me, Healy. I never thought this was a social call so I’m not upset you aren’t asking me how I’ve been keeping, but don’t try to pretend this is something it isn’t. You called me because you want to know what I’ve got, so you can take it back to the station and pretend it’s all your own work. You want to solve this case by yourself so you can prove them all wrong. But mostly you’re using me because you’ve got some doubts about something. So what have you got doubts about?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘I’m not your enemy, Healy, remember that.’

‘So what are you?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what we are.’

We sat there for a while, both of us nursing identical mugs of coffee, both of us at the window, on identical stools, looking out at the same street. I studied our reflections in the glass and remembered a moment from the last time we were together, sitting at the window of a coffee shop just off East India Dock Road, Healy telling me