Vanished

about the case that had broken him, the case that had ended his marriage. Then, as now, I looked at him and thought, in another life, things could have been different. In so many ways we were the same. In so many ways we reflected one another, all the qualities and the faults, the lingering sense of loss. But Healy’s control, over himself and over his emotions, would only ever be tenuous, because that was who he was – and that was what separated us. However far out of the hole he managed to claw himself, he’d always be slipping back in.

‘The disappearance thing bugs me,’ he said finally. It was as close to an apology, an acknowledgement that I was right, as I was going to get, so I accepted it with a nod of the head and we moved on. ‘Like you say, why take Wilky and Erion, then disappear?’ He paused. Looked at me. ‘And the phone is the other thing. Same as you. Why would Wren leave a message? He’s been careful. He hasn’t made any mistakes. Leaving a message is a mistake.’

‘This is what I know about Sam. His whole life was a lie, but it wasn’t something that came easy to him. It weighed heavy. He was in complete denial about who he was. It took him ten years to pluck up the courage to sleep with another man and when he did …’

I stopped.

Should I tell him about Wellis? If I did, the police would corner him faster than I ever could on my own, and it would be one less loose end to worry about. But if they got to Wellis, that would invite questions about the girl at the house, about what happened at the warehouse, about Gaishe and about the anonymous call I’d made. Sallows, the cop who’d come to my home looking into the attack on the girl, would have even more ammunition to come at me with. But the flipside was obvious: if I didn’t tell Healy, Wellis remained out there – and he remained a threat to me.

I studied Healy, saw the way he was trying to play it straight, trying to reboot his career at the Met without straying outside the lines, and, in a weird way, suddenly trusted him a little less for it. The old Healy was accountable only to himself, but that at least made him less invested in what I did, and how I worked the laws of the land. This new one had a responsibility to the people he worked with, a determination to promote his own career and show them how good he was, and that meant he had a rulebook. So I didn’t tell him about Wellis. Not yet.

‘ “When he did” what?’ Healy asked.

I looked at him. ‘Huh?’

‘You said, “It took him ten years to pluck up the courage to sleep with another man and when he did …” When he did what?’

‘When he did sleep with another man, he chose Marc Erion.’

‘You knew about Erion?’

‘I knew Sam slept with a prostitute. I didn’t know who it was.’

‘How did the two of them even meet in the first place?’

‘I don’t know,’ I lied.

He studied me. ‘So you really think Wren didn’t do this, despite everything I’ve just told you?’

This was why Healy had called me. This moment. This question. With me, he could do what he couldn’t at the Met: put himself out there, expose his doubts. And off the back of that question, I suddenly felt a little sorry for him. Because basically, Healy was lonely.

‘I don’t think the Sam I’ve got to know is capable of that.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘But?’

‘But maybe this isn’t the Sam I know.’

45

Healy was heading back to Jonathan Drake’s flat, near Hammersmith Bridge, so he offered me a lift down to Hammersmith Tube station so I wouldn’t have change lines on the journey home. We didn’t say much on the walk to his car – the same battered red Vauxhall estate that smelt of wet dog he’d had the previous year – but as he unlocked it, he looked across the roof at me like he knew what I was going to ask.

‘What’s the other file you’ve got?’

He paused for a moment, key in the door, the strap from the slip case slung over his shoulder. His eyes flicked to the slipcase, and there was a moment’s hesitation when he probably saw himself endangering his career again. A part of him didn’t trust me, like I didn’t trust him – perhaps it would always be that way between us – but I sensed this file represented something personal to him. All cops had them: a case that they couldn’t close and that no one else would back them on – or a case that proved them right.

‘Get in the car,’ he said, and flipped the locks.

When both doors were closed, he laid the slip case on his lap, unzipped it and then took out the sixth file: the one in the green folder. Sam’s had been the thinnest but this one wasn’t far off. It must have only run to about twenty pages, which meant it was either simple and wrapped up quickly – or, more likely, it was unsolved. He handed it to me.

‘Meet Leon Spane,’ he said.

I flipped the front cover and, as soon as I saw Spane’s face, he felt familiar. I tried to claw at the memory, tried to drag it back into the light, but couldn’t place him. The man was grey-white, bloodless, eyes open and staring off into space. It was a shot from his autopsy. He was older than the others – mid to late thirties – and, according to his physical description, slightly bigger too.

‘Who is he?’

‘He was found on Hampstead Heath.’

‘When?’

‘Twenty months ago. October 2010.’

‘He’s different from the others.’

‘He wasn’t taken from his home.’ He flipped forward a couple of pages to the coroner’s report. ‘Whoever killed him stabbed him in the throat and cut his dick off.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So how do you think they’re linked?’

‘I always knew he was a part of this – always – but after Wren made the call to Drake and used Spane’s name, I knew for sure.’ He pointed to Spane’s photograph. ‘Plus, his head was shaved just before his body was dumped.’

I nodded. ‘Was he also gay?’

‘Impossible to tell.’

‘How come?’

‘He had no family. We never had anyone claim him.’

And then it hit me. I flicked back to the picture and, through the corner of my eye, I saw a frown form on Healy’s face.

‘Raker?’

I didn’t reply, just looked down at Leon Spane: no beard, no hair, no holdall or cardboard sign. Shaved and lifeless, he looked so different from the CCTV footage.

But he was still the same man.

He was the homeless guy at Gloucester Road.

There was no way to prevent the police getting to Sam. If they believed he was the Snatcher, they were going to be unstoppable. It might have been different if I could push back with something but, four days after Julia Wren arrived in my life, there was no exit I could see, no physical route out for Sam, not even a hint of where he might have been until Healy turned up and told me about Jonathan Drake’s phone.

As we said goodbye I’d thought, for a brief moment, about telling Healy what I already knew about Leon Spane: his connection to Duncan Pell and, in turn, Pell’s connection to Sam. There were reasons for doing that; good reasons that might lead them to the Snatcher. But then I saw the next hour – the Met doorstepping me, dismantling the work I’d done, threatening to bring charges if I didn’t drop the case – and all I felt was discomfort: about handing something over half finished; about failing to get Julia the answers she sought; but mostly about