The David Raker Collection

by Tim Weaver

  Six interviews in, I met Abigail Camara, one of the prominent names on Sam’s phone records. ‘He sat opposite me,’ she said, proper East End accent, ‘so we used to have a lot of banter during the week. We were both big football fans. He was a Gooner, I’ve got a West Ham season ticket. That’s what we generally used to text each other about. Taking the piss and that.’

  ‘Did you notice any change in him before he disappeared?’

  ‘Change?’

  ‘Did he seem any different?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not really. He was always a pleasant fella. He took his work seriously, but he always gave you the time of day. I liked him a lot.’

  A few others failed to add much to my picture of Sam, then another name from Julia’s list, and Sam’s phone records, came to see me: Dave Werr. Almost off the bat, he started telling me a story about how they’d once dragged Sam kicking and screaming into a strip club. ‘This was, like, a couple of years back,’ Werr said, smile on his face. ‘We’d been out on the razz on a Friday, just like normal, but it was friggin’ freezing and the girls didn’t want to leave the wine bar we were in. So we split, grabbed Sammy and got the Tube across town to a strip club one of the boys had complimentaries for.’ He broke off and laughed; a long, annoying noise like a hyena. ‘Sam looked like he was shitting himself.’

  ‘He didn’t seem keen?’

  ‘He didn’t fancy it at all.’ He laughed again and then, when that had died down, gave a little shrug. ‘Sammy just wasn’t that sort of boy. Wasn’t a Jack-the-Lad type. He liked a few jars with us – liked a laugh – but he was all about his missus.’

  ‘All about her how?’

  ‘Some Fridays, and a few week nights too, he’d tell us he had to get home to her. He’d get twitchy, y’know. Be looking at his watch. And then all of a sudden, he’d be up on his feet and telling us he was leaving. When we asked him why, he said it was ’cause he wanted to get back and spend the evening with her. The women thought it was sweet – but the blokes thought he was wet.’ Werr let out another blast of his laugh.

  ‘Was he always like that?’

  ‘Into his missus?’ He paused; thought about it. ‘Probably more later on.’

  ‘When’s later on?’

  ‘The last seven or eight months, I guess.’

  It was totally at odds with how Julia had described that last half-year: she’d said he’d become distant and highly strung, that he was never home until she was in bed.

  ‘Did he ever mention anyone called Ursula Gray to you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ursula Gray.’

  A blank look and then a shake of the head. ‘No.’

  As Werr headed back to his desk, I felt a pang of sadness for Julia Wren: she was paying me to find her husband with what little money she had left, unaware of the lies he’d told and the secrets he’d taken with him. I needed to find out who Ursula Gray was, because that was what Julia had – indirectly – asked me to do. And once I had the answer, I would be closer than ever to finding out why Sam left. But if he’d been having an affair, there would be no happy ending for Julia Wren.

  19

  16 February | Four Months Earlier

  ‘What is it you wanted to see me about, Healy?’

  Healy looked across the desk at DCI Craw, and then out through a glass panel to the CID office beyond her. It was seven in the evening and no one had gone home. Detectives were at workstations, talking to each other or on the phone, solemn expressions on every face. Some were facing the map of London at the other end of the office, red pen marking out key areas and coming off in lines to photocopies and Post-it notes. At the very top, the photographs of the two missing men: Wilky and Evans.

  ‘Healy?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about my role here, ma’am.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  ‘I wanted to see if I could be of more use to you.’

  ‘In what way?’

  He glanced out into the CID office and then back to Craw. ‘I understand there are people who don’t think I should be here,’ he said to her, and as she shifted in her seat, coming forward, he could smell a hint of citrus on her. ‘And I know, with the greatest of respect, ma’am, that you’re probably one of them.’

  She frowned. ‘Don’t second-guess me, Healy.’

  ‘I wasn’t –’

  ‘You don’t know what my position is. I’ve never made that clear.’

  He nodded. ‘I just wanted to tell –’

  ‘No, let me tell you a few things,’ she said, leaning on her desk and dragging a mug of tea across to her. ‘You’re – what? Forty-seven?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And you’ve been on the force how long?’

  ‘Twenty-six years.’

  She leaned back in her seat again and pulled open the top drawer of her desk. A second later she dropped a file down in front of her. It was Healy’s. ‘This,’ she said, pointing to the file, ‘is why a lot of people don’t think you should be here.’ She let the pages of the file fall past her thumb, a waterfall of paper passing across her skin. ‘When you went looking for your daughter off the books, when you teamed up with a civilian, when you waved a gun in another officer’s face, you took twenty-six years of your career and pissed it up against the wall.’

  She looked at him from under the ridge of her brow, as if waiting for a reaction. He wasn’t going to give her one. Instead, he just focused on her face, on not breaking her gaze. He’d spent the last thirty-eight days batting off questions and taunts; trying to prove he could restrain himself, that he regretted his actions, that he was someone different now. But the truth was, he wasn’t different.

  And he didn’t regret anything.

  He didn’t regret going after the piece of shit that took his girl, and he didn’t regret going up against the cops who tried to stop him. He could play their games now, he could act how they wanted him to, but it would never change how he felt: he could never forgive cops like Davidson and Sallows for trying to get in the way of him finding Leanne. In their eyes, he was some sort of heretic: the traitor, the back-stabber, the man who showed no contrition about the things he’d done. To him, they were even less than that. If they hated him, he hated them more.

  ‘Are you too old to change, Colm?’

  He looked at her. Her voice was softer now, and the change threw him for a moment. ‘No, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe I am.’

  ‘Are you going to make me look like an arsehole?’

  ‘In what way, ma’am?’

  ‘If I give you a little rope,’ she said, eyes fixed on him, same expression on her face, ‘if I give you a little rope, are you going to hang me with it?’

  He studied her. She was quite attractive – slate-grey eyes, a face full of sharp angles – but she gave off the air of not being too particular about how she looked. Her hair was short, tucked behind her ears and swept across her forehead at the front. It was a haircut built for practicality, for the job, just like everything else: grey trouser suit, and no jewellery apart from a thin wedding band and an even thinner gold chain.

  ‘Healy?’

  He looked out to where Davidson was sitting at one of the computers. When Healy turned back to Craw, she’d swivelled in her seat, following his line of sight.

  ‘If you give me a chance, ma’am, I will show you what I can do.’

  Craw’s eyes were fixed on Davidson, who was up and moving around the office. ‘He outranks you now. How does that make you feel?’

  ‘It doesn’t make me feel anything, ma’am.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m new in this station but I know a little of your history, and I think we can safely say that your best days were a few years back.’ She reached forward to a picture frame on the desk – one facing away from Healy – and turned it so he could see. It contained a photo of her, with two teenage girls. ‘I don’t condone what you did, but I get it. Someone takes something from you, you have to claim it back. Until yo
u’ve had kids, you don’t understand that.’ He tried not to show his surprise, but she must have seen a change in his face: she nodded once, as if to tell him he’d heard correctly, but then caution filled her eyes. ‘Like I said, though – I don’t condone it. You were rash and you were stupid. You put people’s lives at risk, as well as your own.’

  Silence settled across the office. She rocked gently back and forth in her seat, her eyes moving to a second window, which looked out over the station car park. In the darkness, snow was falling, passing under the fluorescent orange glow of the security lights. When the wind picked up, flakes were blown in against the glass, making a soft noise like fat crackling in a pan.

  ‘What’s your personal situation now?’

  ‘Personal situation, ma’am?’

  ‘Are you still with your wife?’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand the relevance of –’

  ‘Are you still with her?’

  Healy paused. ‘No. We’re separated.’

  Craw eyed him. ‘This isn’t the speech the chief super wants me to make to you. It’s probably not the speech most of them out there want me to make to you either. But I’ve watched you over the past month and a half, and – even before you came to me today – I’d been thinking about how we could better harness what skills you have. I needed to see that you were prepared to keep your head down. I needed to see that you were willing to show restraint.’ She paused; eyed him. ‘Truth is, we’re short on numbers and we’re in need of experience. So if I give you some rope, the fewer distractions you have, the less you have to go home to, the better it is for me.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘But if you make me look like an arsehole, even once …’

  ‘I won’t.’

  A long silence and then she snapped his file shut. ‘What do you know about the Snatcher?’

  He looked out into the office, to the cops working the case and then to the two faces on the wall above the corkboard. ‘Two victims so far. Steven Wilky and Marc Evans. He takes them from their houses at night. No bodies. No trace of the victims.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘There’s never any sign of a break-in, which suggests he knows the victims, or has at least befriended them prior to taking them. They’re both men, both about the same age – late twenties to early thirties – and they’re both homosexual. There are text messages from the suspect on the victims’ phones, but nothing we can use: he purchases a new SIM card and phone each time, in cash, giving a bogus home address, then he dumps the phone somewhere we can’t find it. He never uses email, social networking or picture messaging.’

  ‘Anything else about the victims?’

  ‘They’re both small men. I think I read one of them was only five-five.’

  ‘So?’

  He studied her. She wasn’t asking because she didn’t know the answer. She was asking because she was testing him. ‘So, smaller men fit his fantasy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they provide less resistance. He’s probably bigger than them, which is how he’s able to overpower them.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘The hair.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘He shaves their heads before he takes them and he leaves the hair in a pile at the end of their beds.’

  ‘Why do you think he does that?’

  Healy paused. ‘Maybe he’s trying to dehumanize them.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Perhaps he feels that, by removing their hair, he’s removing their dignity. Forcing them further into a position of inferiority. That’s how he would want them.’

  She started turning her mug, her mind ticking over. ‘You seem to know the case pretty well for someone who’s been working burglaries for five weeks.’

  ‘I’ve just overheard things.’

  A smile drifted across her face. She didn’t believe him. She’d seen right through the lie: with no one to go home to, he’d used the late nights to go through the Policy Logs and the HOLMES data. ‘Tonight, I want you to take copies of the victims’ files home with you – officially. I want you to read them, and I want you to know them better than anyone else out there.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Because tomorrow morning I want you in at 6 a.m. on the dot. If you’re even one minute late, you’ll be back to working burglaries.’

  ‘I won’t be.’

  She looked up at him. ‘You’ve got a lot to prove, Healy.’ He didn’t respond, because he didn’t agree with her, but he let her know he was willing to play ball. ‘I need you to be better than everyone else. You make one mistake and we’re both in the shit. So bring your wits with you, and whatever it was that used to make you good. Because from tomorrow, you’re working the Snatcher. And you’re going to help nail him to the wall.’

  20

  An hour later, there were only two members of I2 left to interview. The first, Iain Penny, was one of the dominant numbers on Sam’s records, and Julia had listed him as one of Sam’s best friends. He was in his late thirties, pale and tubby, but well groomed.

  I reintroduced myself to him and told him what I did. It was basically an exercise in making him feel good: how, because of his relationship to Sam, he was my best hope of finding him, how the rest of the office had said he was the person to speak to. He wasn’t much of a challenge to read: when he spoke it was without hesitancy, his eyes reflecting the words coming out of his mouth, all of which was a pretty good sign. I’d interviewed plenty of liars and eventually a secret started to weigh heavy, even for the good ones; Penny didn’t look like he had much to hide.

  ‘How long have you known Sam?’

  ‘He joined I2 before me,’ Penny said, ‘but when I started, I was put on the desk next to him and Ross asked Sam to kind of take me under his wing. We pretty much hit it off from the start. Sam was like the unofficial boss on the floor, so we all looked up to him and respected him, but he would muck in and help us out, and he’d always be there for you. That’s why we liked him.’

  ‘He was universally liked at I2?’

  ‘Yeah, definitely.’

  No one had said otherwise in the interviews that morning. In fact, the standard response, pretty much from the beginning of the case, was that Sam was a lovely guy.

  A lovely guy who lied to his wife.

  ‘You were his best mate at I2?’

  ‘That’s how I saw it,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘But then he upped and left without saying anything to me. This is a guy I’ve known for four years, a guy I used to socialize with, talk to and text all the time. My girlfriend and I used to get together with Sam and Julia on weekends; be round there for barbecues or out on the town. We went away for weekends with them, helped them move house when they bought that place in Kensington, looked after it when they were away. I thought we were pretty close. It always felt that way. But, like I say, maybe he felt differently.’

  ‘So it was a surprise when he disappeared?’

  ‘A complete shock.’

  ‘You never saw it coming?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’ He paused, but I sensed there was more to come. ‘He did change a bit towards the end. Not massively. I’m sure most people at I2 didn’t even notice. But I knew him better than most – and I could definitely see it.’

  ‘What do you mean by “change”?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just got quieter, you know? Sam always used to joke around, join in with the banter.’ He smiled. ‘He used to do a cracking impression of Ross, actually.’

  ‘And he wasn’t like that at the end?’

  ‘No. Definitely not.’

  ‘Did he ever confide in you as to why?’

  ‘No. Like I say, maybe he just felt differently to me.’

  After Penny disappeared back to his desk, I watched the last of I2’s employees come across the floor towards me. She was attractive: five-eight, slim, dressed in a tailored skirt suit, with shoulder-length black hair and dark eyes. She introduced herself as Est
her Wilson, another name on the list, and when she said she was from Sydney, I put her at ease with some talk about the city’s beaches.

  After a few minutes I returned to Sam.

  ‘I didn’t know him that well,’ she said. ‘We used to go out – a big group of us – and I’d chat to him, like I’d chat to any of the guys on the floor. We texted a few times, mostly about work stuff. I knew him as a colleague, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about him as a person; any family stuff. Only what I’ve heard about him since.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Obviously everyone talked about him a lot when he went missing. Everyone had a theory on where he might have gone, and why.’

  ‘What was your theory?’

  ‘I didn’t really have one. Like I said, I didn’t know his personal circumstances, so I’d just be speculating.’

  ‘So what would you speculate?’

  She shrugged. ‘I know Sam was pissed off when the pay freeze kicked in. We all were. It affected us all. But I think it got harder for Sam when his wife was made redundant.’ A pause. ‘Iain said she was laid off some time last year.’

  ‘Do you and Iain talk a lot?’

  ‘We work together. We both do a lot of business in Russia, so it’s not unusual for us to chat over coffee and after work. Him and Sam were good mates – I think he felt like he needed to offload on someone after Sam left. I was just around.’

  I made some notes. ‘What was Iain’s theory, then?’

  Movement passed across her face, and I could see the answer: that Iain had had a theory, but not one he’d shared with the other people on the floor. ‘You’d really be better off speaking to Iain,’ she said. ‘I don’t like getting involved in stuff like this.’