Tim Weaver - Vanished

Except he didn’t. He ended up in the hands of Adrian Wellis.

And then a second realization hit me.

The kid’s dead , Wellis had said.

You killed him?

I suppose, in a way, I did.

What does that even mean?

The kid was in the wrong place at the wrong time .

Originally, I thought he was admitting to killing Erion himself. But it wasn’t that at all. He delivered him. He probably only realized afterwards, as Erion’s face was plastered across the front pages, but Wellis had unknowingly handed the Snatcher his next victim. He’d met the Snatcher too. He told me he always vetted the punters first time out, but Wellis would have been funnelling so many men Erion’s way, the vetting process would have been a shambles. And even if he did recall a face, even if – as unlikely as it seemed – the Snatcher had let his guard down and somehow made himself known to Wellis, Wellis couldn’t have said anything. Go to the police, and he invited the Met into his life. His operation. His secrets. So he said nothing and accepted Erion as collateral damage. Wrong place, wrong time . He was right about that, at least.

Healy eyed me, as if he sensed my mind was on something else, and he wanted to know what. ‘Wren had Erion’s number tucked away on his work PC, disguised as a business associate. Never called him, but the number was there.’

‘Wait a second. If he never called Erion, how did you pin this on Sam in the first place? If there was no phone call, there’s no route from Erion back to Sam.’

Healy didn’t reply. Instead he placed a hand on top of the files. It was meant to look casual, a movement so slight I wouldn’t even notice. But I did, and it immediately pissed me off. He wanted to remain in control, wanted to establish a hierarchy between us, and in doing so he’d forgotten his association with me, the things we’d done and the sacrifices I’d made for him. But there was something else in the gesture too. I saw it in his eyes, in his expression, a mix of suppression and guilt. He was keeping something back from me. But not just from me – from everyone.

‘Do you know much about him?’ Healy asked.

‘Who?’

‘The Snatcher.’

‘I want to know how you came to Sam Wren.’

He could see he’d annoyed me. ‘This is all off the record, understand?’

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m an amateur.’

‘You’re upset about your boy. I get it.’

‘He’s not my boy – and it’s got nothing to do with that.’

‘Don’t be an arsehole, Raker.’

‘I’m not being an arsehole , Healy. But you call me out of the blue after seven months of silence, and then you treat me like I’ve never met you before. I know trust is hard for you, but believe me: if you can trust one person, that person is me.’

I waited for the fireworks, but instead he just looked at me and I saw again how desperately he was trying to keep a lid on things. In a strange way, it made him easier to read. Everything he’d stopped himself from saying had built up in his eyes – all the smothered emotion, all the words he’d had to let go since returning to the Met – and I caught a glimpse of a man, perhaps only weeks from here, unable to bury it any more.

‘You’re gonna want some background.’

I looked at him. ‘Fine. Just get on with it.’

He eyed me for a moment and then leaned closer, and I could smell coffee and aftershave on him. ‘He takes them from their homes. First one went missing last year, on 11 August: Steven Wilky. On 13 November he takes Marc Erion aka Evans. On 28 February he grabs Joseph Symons, and this past week it was Jonathan Drake. Drake’s neighbour called us yesterday evening, said she hadn’t seen Drake around since Tuesday, and she saw him every day. Mother-hen type. Uniforms turned up there, then called us. The only thing this guy leaves behind is their hair. He shaves it all off and places it on their pillows.’

‘Why does he do that?’

Healy shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

He meant, You’re the man who knows Wren .

Except I obviously didn’t know Sam Wren at all.

‘It’s a power thing,’ I said.

He looked at me and nodded: to exert power over them; to reduce the victims to less than they were. I tried to put that into context; tried to imagine why Sam might do that, what in his life might make him want to do that, but I couldn’t ally the two. Nothing I’d discovered about Sam Wren, even as I trawled through the secrets and the lies, connected with the crimes of this man. Shaving their heads, trapping them, vanishing them into the night – none of that felt like Sam to me. Except, of course, there was one area that was definitely a fit: their sexual preferences. If the Snatcher was taking men, he was turned on by them, wanting power over them, even if ultimately he was trying to deny it.

And Sam had been in denial for years.

‘The assumption is the Snatcher’s gay?’

Healy shrugged. ‘Who knows now? That’s what we always assumed, that’s what profilers kept telling us. But Wren is married – and he’s straight.’

You’re going to have to tell him .

‘There’s no semen at any of the scenes,’ he went on, ‘no sign of either consensual sex or sexual assault. This guy is careful. We’ve lifted prints from every scene, prints not belonging to the victim, but they don’t lead anywhere. He doesn’t touch their pillows when he puts the hair there, but we have found tiny pieces of wood, which probably means he shaves their heads into some kind of bowl and brings it across like that; touches the pillow with it while he’s placing the hair there.’

I glanced out of the window. ‘There’s something you need to know.’

‘What?’

‘About Sam.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘What?’

‘What Julia wouldn’t have told you, because she doesn’t know …’ I turned back to him. ‘Sam was gay. Or maybe bisexual. Or maybe just curious. But he wasn’t straight.’

‘Fuck me.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I think we’ve got our man.’

‘Now it’s your turn. What led you to Sam’s work?’

He moved his hand from the files and pulled the bottom one out of the pile. He handed it to me this time. It almost looked like a conciliatory gesture.

I flipped the front cover of the folder. Another man in his twenties. The same height and the same build as Erion, but better-looking; square-jawed and dark. He was smartly dressed and standing in bright sunlight, squinting a little but his features and face were very clear. I scanned his personal details. Jonathan Drake. Twenty-seven.

The Snatcher’s fourth victim.

‘You wanna know how we ended up at Wren’s work?’ Healy said, a finger tapping the Drake file. ‘We put in a request for phone and email records as soon as Drake’s disappearance came to light, and were still waiting on getting them back when a London Underground employee called us up this morning – after seeing Drake’s name in the media – and said he’d found a phone on the platform at Westminster station during his patrol on Thursday night.’

‘It was Drake’s?’

‘Yeah. We sent a team down there to find out if there was anything else, but it was just the phone down there. No sign of Drake or anyone else.’

‘Was Sam’s number on the phone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Doesn’t mean he had anything to do with this, even if he somehow knew Drake.’

‘Wrong,’ Healy said, shaking his head. ‘Wren left a voicemail.’

44

Jonathan Drake’s face looked up at me from the file. In among the paperwork was the transcript from the voicemail message: ‘Hi Jonathan, it’s ( pause ) Leon Spane. Just wanted to let you know that I’m really looking forward to seeing you tonight.’ Aside from Sam not even using his own name, there was no explanation for what the mobile phone was doing just sitting there on the platform. Nothing for why a man who had been gone six months had suddenly made a telephone call. Before I could look any further into the paperwork, Healy disrupted my train of thought, shifting forward and picking the file up, and all I was left with was a flash of a memory.