Vanished (27 page)

‘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 letting the police hunt Sam Wren when, deep down, I wasn’t even sure he was the killer.

By the time I got home, an unmarked Volvo was already bumped up on the pavement outside the gates of my house. When I was about twenty feet away, both doors opened and two plain-clothes officers got out. From the passenger side came a woman in her early forties: skinny in a black trouser suit, short blonde hair tucked behind her ears, a sharp, angular face and eyes like puffs of ash. But it wasn’t her I cared about, it was the man who got out from the driver’s side. I slowed to a halt as Eddie Davidson pushed his door shut, looked at me, then leaned against the side of the car, a smirk on his face.

He’d been one of the cops wrapped up in what happened on my case the October before, and he’d disliked me pretty much from the first moment we met. He saw me as a hindrance, as Healy’s crony and collaborator. Things had only got worse as the case went deeper. When I’d left Healy at Hammersmith, he’d warned me again that the Snatcher team would be coming to my house, and that they’d ask me to close down my search for Sam – and he’d told me Davidson would probably want to be a part of that. I’d never been much of a believer in destiny, but I wasn’t surprised he was back. Life had a way of binding you to certain people, and when it did, it became hard to extricate yourself from them.

The woman approached me first.

I guessed this was Craw, the senior investigating officer. She wore a tired look, worn down by months of trying to chase the same man, but I got the impression straight off the bat that she knew nothing about me beyond what Davidson had told her. He wouldn’t have painted me in my best light, which was why I assumed she’d taken on a fierce, stern expression, as if she expected me to create problems as soon as I opened my mouth.

‘Mr Raker, my name’s DCI Craw.’ She got out her warrant card and held it up. I didn’t bother checking it, just looked at Davidson. He was dressed pretty much the same as the last time I’d seen him: jeans and trainers, T-shirt and black leather jacket, his stomach like a planetary mass, his face oddly proportioned: small eyes, big nose, wide mouth. He winked briefly and then stepped away from the car. ‘I think you know DS Davidson.’

‘Unfortunately I do.’

Craw didn’t respond. ‘We’re here to talk about Samuel Wren.’

‘Well, you’d better come inside then.’

We sat in the living room, Craw stiff on the edge of the sofa, Davidson perched in a chair on the other side of me, so we were in a triangle with me as the apex. It was a classic move; an effort to cramp me in the place I should feel most comfortable.

‘We understand you’re doing some work for Julia Wren,’ Craw said.

I looked at her, then at Davidson. He was on his best
behaviour with the boss around, face unmoving, eyes fixed on me. ‘She asked me to look into Mr Wren’s disappearance. I’m in the preliminary stages of doing that. What is it you want to know about him?’

A little snort from Davidson.

Craw glanced at him, then back to me. ‘We don’t need anything from you. We’re here today to ask you to halt the search for her husband. I’m not at liberty to discuss the reasons why, but unfortunately this isn’t a process that’s up for negotiation.’

‘Has Mrs Wren agreed to this?’

‘Ultimately, it’s not up to her.’

I shrugged. ‘Fine.’

Both of them looked at me.

‘Fine what?’ she said.

‘Fine. Do what you have to do.’

Davidson came forward on his seat. ‘That’s
it
?’ he asked, the first thing he’d said since they’d arrived. ‘You’re just gonna sit there and let us take this away from you?’

‘You’re the police. What choice do I have?’

‘Is this a joke or something?’

‘DCI Craw just asked me to halt the investigation.’

‘That never stopped you last time.’

I looked at him. ‘You’re right. It never stopped me last time, because last time you’d fucked things up so badly I had no choice but to try and put them right.’

Anger flushed in Davidson’s face. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard what I said.’

‘You almost destroyed our case.’

‘I found you a killer.’

‘You’re not even a fucking cop.’

‘Well, I guess that makes two of us.’

Before Davidson could come at me again, Craw stepped in, hand up. ‘Okay, okay, that’s enough of that crap.’ She glanced at Davidson, giving him a look that said,
Calm down
, and then shifted closer to me. ‘Mr Raker, I want to be quite clear with you that if you cross us on this, we
will
have to take you down. You need to step back
completely
.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘You
will
be charged.’

‘I understand.’

Davidson eyed me. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’

‘DCI Craw said she didn’t want to hear what I had on Wren.’

‘No, I don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘Whatever you’ve found out about Wren, we’ll find it too, and we’ll find more and do it better. We’re
better
at this than you, Raker, just remember that. No, I’m talking about what else is going on in that head of yours.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Bollocks.’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘You’re full of shit, Raker.’

‘Do you want me to say that you’re better than me, is that it? You’re not better than me. You’re half a cop. You don’t use the badge as a way to understand people, you use it as a way to intimidate and bully. That’s why you could never find the guy who was taking those women last year – and that’s why you’ll never find the Snatcher.’

Davidson erupted. ‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talk–’

‘How do you know that?’ Craw interrupted, her voice even and calm, looking at me. Davidson glanced at her, aghast, cheeks flushed, beads of sweat dotted across his face.

‘What?’

‘That Davidson’s working the Snatcher?’

‘I must have read it in the papers.’

‘He heard it from Healy,’ Davidson said, almost trembling with rage.

‘Last time I saw Healy, he was burying his girl in the ground,’ I said to Davidson. ‘Do you think he’s calling me up to relive old times? We hardly even talked when we were working together, so a catch-up is pretty low on my list of priorities.’

‘Have you got anything you want to tell us?’ Craw asked.

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You say you read the papers, so I guess you know who I am, you know who Davidson is and apparently what case he’s working, and you know we’re here about Sam Wren. So I’m going to credit you with enough intelligence to put two and two together.’

‘You think Wren is involved in the Snatcher case.’

A gentle nod of the head.

‘No, I haven’t got anything to tell you,’ I said.

But her eyes lingered on me. Maybe she believed me, maybe she didn’t, but she was smart and switched on – and I knew instantly that this was a different sort of cop
from Davidson and Healy. She was in control of her emotions, able to sit back and analyse.

And that made her dangerous.

I was going to have to watch Melanie Craw.

I called Julia and listened to her tearfully describe how the police wouldn’t tell her what was going on. I told her they’d been to see me too, had asked me to step back from the case, and that I’d agreed. It would have been easier to tell her the truth – that I was still going after Sam, but now through Duncan Pell – but then she’d have that burden to carry, that lie to tell, and the police would eventually pick up the scent. I needed to stay ahead of them.

As I waited on Spike to call me back with an address for Pell, I thought of something Liz had said to me once.
You don’t have that mechanism that tells you when enough is enough
.
You don’t know when to stop.
I didn’t know how to respond to that at the time and I didn’t know how to respond to it now. But without Pell, without using him to try and find Sam, without getting Julia the answers she needed, I had nothing. No missing person to bring back into the light, no hole to fill. Nothing to define my life.

Duncan Pell lived about a quarter of a mile from Highgate Tube station, in a tiny house on the edge of Queen’s Wood. The road was nice but Pell’s house wasn’t. It looked like a late addition to the street; out of place among the big, red-brick fronts and gleaming bay windows that surrounded it. It was tucked away, half hidden behind a copse of trees, and the driveway slanted downwards, so you
were forced to approach at a jog. It was just a box – completely square with no external features and nothing to distinguish it – and, as I approached it, passing the manicured lawns and spotless fascia boards of the other houses, I wondered what Pell’s neighbours made of him. I also wondered how he could afford to live in an area like this. Either London Underground were paying more than I’d imagined, or he’d been left the house by a relative.

The lawn hadn’t been mowed in weeks. Big, overgrown trees cast shadows across the house, and there were weeds everywhere: the grass was infested with them, but they were crawling through the driveway as well, fingering their way out of the cracks and up the side of the house. There was a red ceramic pot in the corner, with nothing growing in it, and a tap with a hose attached.

The front of the house had two windows, the curtains drawn both sides. I rang the doorbell and waited, watching for any sign of movement behind a small glass panel, high up on the door – but none came. I pressed my finger to the buzzer a second time, leaving it there, listening to the sound reverberate around inside the house but, ten seconds later, I got the same lack of response.

No approaching footsteps.

No sound inside at all.

I moved back up the driveway and headed down to the end of the road. From right on the corner, between a couple of monolithic fir trees, the gardens of the houses in Pell’s row were visible. Beyond was Queen’s Wood, its trees housed inside metal fencing, its endless canopy a patchwork of leaves. Pell’s back garden was pretty much a mirror image of the front, all grass and weeds and
neglect, but it was built on two levels: a stone staircase connected them, the bottom one leading down to a rear gate. It was the easiest and quickest way to get onto the property, because there was no padlock – just a slide bolt – but it was far too exposed: all the neighbours’ windows looked down across it, and it backed right on to the edge of the woods and one of the approaches to Highgate Tube station. It was too risky.

I headed back up the road and returned to the front door, trying the bell for a third time. ‘Duncan?’ I said, keeping my voice low so the neighbours wouldn’t hear. But still I got no response. I turned and looked back at the street. The house was hidden so well behind all the natural growth, it was like a homing beacon for burglars. I took out my wallet, flipped it open and slid out a couple of thin hairpins.

Now I was the burglar.

I’d learned to pick locks in South Africa during my second spell there, from an ex-member of the National Intelligence Service. He was an arrogant, pig-headed racist who I’d interviewed on six separate occasions as part of a feature I was writing on the country, post-apartheid. His views were abhorrent, and his refusal to apologize for the things he’d done even worse, but he seemed to believe we shared some kind of kinship, however misguided, perhaps because I was the only person who’d ever spent any sort of time listening to him. I’d rarely picked locks as a journalist. As an investigator, outside of the rule of law, I did it often.

I hated it.

The difficulty. The precision. The frustration.

Working the kinks out of the hairpins, I took a look back out at the street and dropped down at the door. It was a cylinder lock – the same kind I’d learned with – so I had a small advantage. But the one true thing the South African had said in all the time I spent interviewing him was that lock-picking wasn’t like the films. The next ten minutes of failure proved him right – until, finally, the door popped gently away from its frame.

I paused, waiting for an alarm to start beeping and, when nothing came, entered the house and pushed the door shut behind me. Straight away it was clear Pell must have inherited the house. It was like stepping into a 1970s sitcom: an awful beige carpet, worn thin by traffic and scattered with stains, and wallpaper, thick and dirty, bleached yellow with smoke. In the kitchen, dishes were piled up in the sink; burger cartons and chip paper; food dried to a hard crust on the plates and worktops. The house was hot and stuffy from having been closed up, but there was a musty, decrepit smell as well, as if every inch of the house – even the foundations it had been built on – had reached the end of its life.

I headed upstairs. At the top were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The first bedroom was where he slept: a bed had been pushed in among built-in wardrobes and a mattress dumped on top. No sheets. No duvet. Just a sleeping bag. A side table was next to that with an ashtray on it. The room smelled strongly of smoke. To my left was a separate stand-alone wardrobe. I opened it up. There was hardly anything inside: two or three suits, three London Underground uniforms, a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts. At the bottom, lined up, were his boots: all
steel-toecapped, all black with red stitching – the same as he’d had on the day I’d first met him at the station – and all polished until they shone.