Vanished

eyes on Drake the whole time, creating naked lines on his scalp like rows of ploughed corn. There was no emotion in his face at all. No movement in his body other than his arm passing back and forth across his head. No sound but the mechanical whine of the clippers, a constant buzz that went on for what seemed like hours, hair falling gently into the bowl. Then, finally, when most of the hair was gone, he switched them off.

Eyes still on Drake.

He placed the clippers down on the floor beside him and started to unbutton his shirt. He had a taut body, toned, shadows forming in the muscles, a scar running from his right collarbone across his chest in a diagonal. He touched a couple of fingers to it, thick and pink like a worm, as if it bothered him somehow, then he started to undo the belt on his trousers, loosening the buckle and drawing it through the loops, one by one, until the belt was out. He tossed it across the room. He watched Drake the whole time.

Drake swallowed, hardly able to breathe now.

Tears formed in his eyes.

This was the end.

He wiped them away as the man sat there, muscles hard and defined in his arms, hands big and powerful, his gaze never leaving Drake even once. Drake knew instantly he wouldn’t stand a chance. The man was too powerful.

‘Please,’ he begged softly. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

But the man said nothing, his skin a tepid yellow in the torchlight. He scooped his clothes up and rolled them into a ball, hurling them across the other side of the room. Then he just sat there, his dark eyes on Drake’s face.

‘Please,’ Drake said again, barely able to form the words. A tear broke free and ran down his face. He let it run until it fell away. ‘Please. Please. Don’t hurt me.’

Finally, the man moved, raising a straightened finger to his lips and holding it there in a sssshhhhh gesture.

And then the torch went out.

70

Edwin Smart’s house was about half a mile from Duncan Pell’s and backed on to the old line at Fell Wood. It was almost on top of it, just beyond the line of trees I’d passed on my way to the Tube station. I’d walked past his house two days before without even knowing. Again, I tried to put it all together in my head: how Pell had first entered the equation, how he and Smart had begun working together, which parts were Pell and which were Smart. But there was nothing but noise around me now as I headed north towards Highgate. Rain hammered against the windows of the BMW. Horns blared. Tyres squealed. Lorries rumbled past. I couldn’t get silence, I couldn’t get the time I needed to piece it together. And then my phone started ringing.

I reached across and answered it. ‘David Raker.’

No reply. Then finally: ‘I got your message.’

‘Healy?’

No answer again. But it was him.

‘Are you okay?’

He cleared his throat. ‘You were right, then.’

‘About what?’

‘About Wren.’

‘It’s not about being right or wrong.’

‘It’s always about being right or wrong,’ he replied, his voice so small I could barely even hear it. He sniffed. I tried to make out any sounds in the background but there was nothing but silence. I turned up the volume on the speakerphone as high as it would go, trying to offset the noise of the rain, of the traffic, of a Monday in the middle of the city. ‘So how do you know this Smart guy took Wren?’ Healy asked, but there was nothing in his voice. He didn’t sound invested in the answers, just curious.

‘I saw him.’

‘On CCTV?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How did you miss him before?’

‘He had a handle on everything. Every second of it. He knew where the cameras were, how to disguise himself, how to get Sam out. It was blind luck that I found him.’ Or maybe fate, I thought. If I’d left Gloucester Road five minutes before I did, I’d never have seen Smart again, never talked to him, never seen the T-shirt in his gym bag or made the connection with his father.

‘Raker?’

I filled in the rest of the details for Healy and then pushed the conversation on. ‘He lives in Highgate, close to Pell. I tried to call Craw, but all I got was Davidson. I need you to call her and let her –’

‘They’re all over Pell.’

‘What?’

‘Tip-off. Caller said they saw someone snooping around Pell’s place.’

‘Who was the caller?’

‘It was anonymous.’

‘Could have been Smart.’

‘Could have been. If he’s going to make a break for it, he probably thought the phone call would be enough to buy him a couple of days. You think that’s what he’s going to do – make a break for it?’

I thought of Smart’s dad, of the anniversary. ‘Not today.’

More silence. A sniff. ‘So what’s Pell to him?’

‘To Smart?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He must be just an insurance policy. A scapegoat. Someone who would look good for all the terrible things Smart had done. Pell’s angry and violent, and Smart would have seen that part of him early on. He probably saw it before anyone else, because a killer recognizes his reflection. When Pell started to go for Leon Spane, started pushing him around and making his life a misery, Smart saw an opportunity. I doubt whether Smart would have killed anyone by that stage, but he would have been thinking about it the whole time, it would have been consuming him, and Spane fitted the bill. He didn’t have a home, didn’t have a family, didn’t have anyone who would miss him. And best of all, if people like me dug deep enough and found that CCTV footage of Pell being violent towards Spane –’

‘You’d automatically suspect Pell, not Smart.’

‘Right.’

I stopped, wondering whether to take it any further with Healy, whether it was even worth the effort, and then I realized it was worth the effort for me: I needed to get everything clear in my head, in some sort of order, and thinking aloud was the best way.

‘Except Smart’s first kill was a mess,’ I continued. ‘Everything about Spane was a mess. Nothing went to plan. There was none of the control or the finesse Smart showed with the other victims. He must have panicked after killing Spane, which was why he dumped him.’

‘Why’d he chop his dick off?’

I thought about it. ‘Maybe he was working out his frustration and his anger on Spane; he probably blamed him for it all going wrong. Or maybe it was more symbolic than that. In a lot of ways, I imagine Smart is like Sam: he’s in denial about who he really is, and when he cut off the penis, he was taking away what made Spane a man.’

‘But then he went back to the drawing board.’

‘Right. After that, he planned it all out. He was meticulous, patient, determined not to make the same mistakes. He probably spent weeks following the men around after spotting them on the Circle line. He’d initiate conversation by pretending to check their tickets and, from there, I assume he’d start watching them, seeing who they were, their lifestyles, their routes, and then slowly begin to reappear around them. They’d have believed it was all by accident. But he wasn’t bumping into them by accident: he was getting them to warm to him.’