Vanished (11 page)

‘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 you’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.’

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 Esther 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.’

‘Stuff like what?’

She shifted in her seat, her eyes flicking to me, then out through the window behind me. For the first time she looked uncomfortable. But then, a second later, she managed to completely change her expression, as if she’d raised a disguise. I wasn’t sure whether she was hesitant because she genuinely didn’t like office gossip, or because I’d strayed close to something and now she was trying to back away from it.

‘Ever hear Sam talk about a woman called Ursula Gray?’

Her face remained impassive. ‘Ursula?’

‘Gray.’

Another shake of the head. ‘No, I haven’t heard that name before.’

Normally I could get a handle on people pretty quickly, but Esther Wilson was different. Phlegmatic. Cool. I thanked her and watched her go. When she got to her desk, she opened the top drawer, reached in and took out a packet of cigarettes. I scooped up my notes and walked to the door of the office just in time to hear her tell one of the others that she was heading out for a smoke.

Esther Wilson headed out of the big glass doors of One Canada Square. As soon as she was outside, she swung her bag across to her front and started to dig around inside, taking out her mobile. Then she crossed South Colonnade and headed towards Jubilee Park. I was eighty yards back, on the opposite side of the road, where the shade had formed in thin strips around the bases of the towers. Eventually, as she entered the park, the shade disappeared and I had to hang back and watch her cut across the grass and find a bench facing the Citigroup Centre. She was talking to someone on her phone.

The call lasted about three minutes. After she was done, she remained where she was but kept looking back across her shoulder to Heron Quays. She seemed flustered. About five minutes after that, she glanced back again – around fifty feet to the right of where I was standing – and spotted someone, giving them a quick wave. The park and its approach was crowded, so it was difficult to zero in on who it was until another woman broke through, making a beeline for the bench. She looked about the same age as Esther and wasn’t too dissimilar in looks: slim and attractive, a little taller, but not by much. She had blonde hair, scraped back into a ponytail, a red skirt and a white blouse.

The woman perched herself on the bench and Esther immediately launched into conversation. No smile, no
greeting. The blonde didn’t seem perturbed, as if she expected it to be like that, which presumably meant she was the woman Esther had called. I moved a little closer, positioning myself against one of the park’s snaking stone walls, and got a clearer view of the other woman. If she’d walked here – if Esther had phoned her out of the blue in the middle of the afternoon – then her work must have been somewhere close by. That was backed up by the fact that she hadn’t brought anything out with her. No bag. No jacket. Esther thumbed open a packet of cigarettes and offered one to the woman.

The conversation went on for a couple of minutes, the other woman eventually taking part. But mostly it was Esther talking. Finally, the blonde reached out, put a hand on Esther’s arm and spoke sternly and seriously to her. When she was done, she stubbed her cigarette out and then – looking at her watch – got up and left.

I followed her, leaving Esther on the bench, back across the park in the direction of the docks. She wasn’t heading for the bridge across to the South Quay, so she had to be heading into one of the buildings running in an L-shape around Bank Street, right in front of us. The routes and grass verges of the park were busy so it became easy to merge with the crowds, but I kept a good distance just in case. On the other side of the park, she moved in a diagonal towards 40 Bank Street, a thirty-three-floor tower towards the corner of Heron Quays. I made up some of the distance between us and, as she entered the foyer, stepped through after her and followed her around, past the front desk, to the elevators. I didn’t look much like I belonged in the world of investment banking, but no one
paid me much attention as I waited, just behind the woman, for the lift to arrive. Twenty seconds later, the elevator doors slid open and we both stepped in.