Tim Weaver - Vanished

I traced Smart’s face in one of the nearest photographs. There was nothing unique about him. He was just a man. No distinguishing features. Nothing to make your eyes linger on him as he passed you. And that was what had made him so effective.

‘Do you think he was trying to misdirect us?’ she asked.

‘With what?’

‘With the padlock on the lift shaft. Marking it with a red dot like that.’

I looked at her. ‘Are you asking for my input now?’

She smiled, and nodded to herself as if she understood my position. ‘You know, you and your friend Healy are very well suited, even if you don’t see it.’

‘He’s not my friend.’

‘And yet you like him.’

I shrugged. ‘I like some parts of him, but mostly he just wears me out.’

‘Yes.’ She smiled again, a small movement. ‘He does have that ability.’

‘Is he definitely gone?’

She eyed me, but didn’t seem surprised I knew Healy had been fired. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s definitely gone. He went against protocol, broke the law and left me to clean up the mess. He’s a liar, and I can’t trust him.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘You don’t know all the details, Mr Raker.’

‘David’s fine.’

‘You don’t know all the details, David.’

‘I don’t expect I do.’

‘He deserved to go.’

I met her gaze. ‘Then why are we still talking about him?’

She just nodded.

After a long silence, I said, ‘This isn’t how it normally goes for you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You understand people, what makes them tick, what makes them do the things they do. But you didn’t get Smart, and you don’t get Healy.’

‘And you do?’

‘No. I never saw Smart coming, and Healy …’ I paused. Shrugged. ‘I think I know him and then he does something stupid and I realize I don’t know him at all.’

‘Then I guess we can agree on something.’

‘I guess we can.’

Craw looked at the photos of Smart. ‘What is it with you?’ she said.

‘With me?’

‘Come on, David, don’t be coy. You know what I mean. How is it you always end up in these places, chasing down these men? How is it you always get here before us?’

I frowned. ‘Are you accusing me of something?’

‘No. But you have a knack.’

You don’t know when to stop. Maybe it was as simple as that. Or maybe it really was something more. Some kind of twisted destiny.

‘I don’t know,’ I said finally.

She nodded, as if she wasn’t all that surprised by the answer. Then she reached to the breast pocket of her jacket and took out a notebook. ‘Just wait there a second, would you?’ She didn’t wait for my response, just got up and headed out of the living room. A couple of minutes passed. A murmur of conversation in the kitchen. Then she returned, this time flanked by Davidson and another cop, one I didn’t recognize.

‘David, you know DS Davidson,’ she said, gesturing to him. Davidson looked at me, sober, unreadable. ‘This is DC Richter. He’s going to take some notes for me.’

‘Notes?’

‘We want to ask you a few questions.’

‘I’ll call my solicitor then.’

‘We’re not arresting you for anything,’ she continued, sitting down opposite me. Davidson pulled a chair out from the table and dragged it all the way across the living room so he was facing me on my left. Richter sat down at the table. ‘We just want to fill in the blanks. You know Samuel Wren, you know Duncan Pell, you probably know more than we do about Edwin Smart. We’re not too proud to engage the help of an expert.’

‘So you are asking for my input?’

‘I’m not asking,’ she said.

She’d let her guard down when we’d been alone in the living room. Now she was playing up to the crowd. Or maybe this was just her natural state, and the person I’d been with moments before – softer and more transparent – was all part of the act.

I shrugged, an indication she could start.

‘Given the level of your relationship with Colm Healy over the past eight months, and the fact that you were knee-deep in bodies when we turned up here, I’m going to assume you’re up to speed on the Snatcher case.’

‘What is the level of my relationship with Healy?’

‘I think we both know –’

‘No, we don’t,’ I said, making a point of looking at Davidson. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth or lay actions at my feet when you don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about.’ I let that settle, silence in the room now, then turned to Craw: ‘The trouble with your task force, is that it’s manned by people who have no interest in its aims.’

She frowned. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

‘You know what I mean,’ I said, and in the moments that followed I saw her flick a look towards Davidson. ‘I called Davidson an hour before I got to Smart’s house, spoke to him on the phone, tried to tell him what was happening, and he hung up on me.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ he said from beside me.

‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is. You’re a fucking fantasist, Raker.’

I looked at Craw. ‘I called him to tell him to come to the house and he didn’t want to hear it. If you’d got here after I called him, you might have been able to swoop on Smart before he showered the walls of the station with his brains.’

There was no comeback to that. Off to my right, Richter was watching me, pen hovering above the notebook. Craw looked across to him. ‘You actually going to write anything down?’ The irritation was obvious in her voice. I wasn’t sure whether it was with me or with Davidson. ‘What was Smart using that station for?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Really?’

I shrugged. ‘Look at the photos in this room. He had an attachment to the Tube, and to the railways in general, so the building would have meant something to him. But it was practical too. He kept hunting equipment in there.’

‘So?’

‘So maybe he started off killing animals before he moved on to killing men. A place like that, abandoned and locked up, no one’s going to come calling.’

‘And Pell? Where does he fit in?’

‘The best person to ask is Pell.’

‘Yeah, well, he’s in an ambulance.’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t even really know him.’

Davidson snorted, and looked from me to Craw. ‘This is a waste of time, ma’am. The guy doesn’t know what’s the truth and what’s a lie any more.’

I kept my eyes on Craw. ‘I told you everything I knew earlier.’

‘ Was that everything?’ she asked.

‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Davidson said, before I had a chance to respond. ‘If you read the file about what him and Healy got up to last year at those woods –’

‘I don’t care about last year, I care about now.’

Davidson stared at her, obvious disgust in his face, and then started to shake his head, sinking back into his chair. Momentarily, Craw’s emotions played out in her eyes. I didn’t bother getting involved, but I got the sense that after this was all over, Davidson’s future was going to be high on the agenda for her. Even Healy would have seen the irony in that: Davidson following him out the door, or following Sallows into semi-retirement on the south London beat, after they’d teamed up to get Healy kicked off the force.

‘Mr Raker?’

We were back to Mr Raker now. Not David.

‘Like I said, I don’t know Pell that well. I know what he does for a living, know he’s ex-army, realized pretty early on he had a violent streak a mile wide; and even if he wasn’t the same type of killer as Smart, he’d killed on the battlefield and could do it again back home. Smart would have encouraged that side of him. He would have been manipulating Pell the whole time, working him up into a frenzy in order to position him exactly where he wanted.’