Tim Weaver - Vanished

‘You sound like you admire him,’ Davidson muttered.

‘I don’t admire him. I think he’s a piece of shit.’

Now the only sound was Richter frantically making notes.

‘What about Adrian Wellis?’ Craw said.

‘What about him?’

‘His buddy’s locked up and won’t talk to us. That Romanian girl was found in his house. When you gave us a rundown earlier, you said Marc Erion worked for him, Pell used to get his women from him, and this squeaky-clean facade Wellis built for himself is a lie. So where is he?’

I looked at her, blank-faced.

‘Mr Raker?’

If I told her where Wellis was, where his body was dumped, I let her know that Healy had taken me down there with him and broken another rule, and maybe this time she would bring him back in and maybe this time he’d get charged. There were other dangers too. Any conversation about Wellis would eventually lead to his house, to when I’d found the girl and made the anonymous call to police, to when I’d tossed Wellis and Gaishe into the back of the BMW and driven them to the warehouse.

Healy was already gone from the Met, his reputation in the gutter, so the first problem didn’t really matter much. But I wanted to insulate myself and perhaps, on some deeper level, wanted Craw to hurt too. The minute Davidson entered the room, Craw started putting her trust in cops who’d lost sight of their calling; who came into work to seek revenge, to play with lives, and ultimately to misunderstand the people they worked with. She could see Davidson’s flaws a mile off, but she’d brought him here for one reason and one reason only: to get at me. Healy was flawed too, perhaps irredeemably so, but everything he’d done, all the mistakes he’d made, were at least for the right reason: for his daughter, for the child he lost. Somehow I felt Craw recognized that side of him, despite her officiousness, because she was probably a parent herself and could imagine what a parent is prepared to do. But men like Davidson and Sallows didn’t, and that made her guilty by association.

‘I don’t know where Adrian Wellis is,’ I said.

Davidson sighed. ‘Do me a fucking favour.’

‘Why would I know where he is?’

‘Are we really going to believe this shit?’ he said to Craw.

‘Why would I know?’

‘Because you know everything about him and you made that call from Wel–’ He stopped himself. Eyes flicked to Craw. From Wellis’s house . Except Davidson was so caught up in deceit, in his and Sallows’s mission to get to Healy, and to get to me, that he’d forgotten what he could talk about, and what he couldn’t.

By bringing in my unauthorized help on an open case like the Snatcher, Healy had broken every rule in the book, and it had made an easy win for them; easy to present to Craw and impossible for her to defend. Davidson gave her the photos of Healy and me at the hospital, and Healy got the push. But whatever Davidson and Sallows were cooking up for me was also off the books. It was an investigation that hadn’t been approved by Craw, involving one cop already discredited by her, and another she was increasingly having doubts about. The irony was they were like Healy: putting something together – and trying to bring someone down – outside of the rules they had to abide by.

‘I made that call from where?’ I said.

He looked at Craw again. ‘We can’t trust him. We can’t trust anything he says. Everything that comes out of his mouth is a fucking lie.’

Craw said nothing, just stared across the room at him.

Finally she got up from her seat. ‘Let me show you something,’ she said to me, and gestured for me to follow her.

We moved along the route put in place by the scene-of-crime officer, through the kitchen and down to the office. A forensic tech was at the computer. Next to that, inside an evidence bag on the desk, was a letter, written on lined A4 paper. It was from Smart.

‘Simon,’ Craw said to the tech, ‘would you give us a moment, please?’

The tech did as Craw asked, got up and disappeared.

She pointed to the evidence bag. ‘This was left in the drawer of the desk. Why don’t you have a read?’

I moved in front of her and studied the letter. It was headed with yesterday’s date, the writing untidy and spidery. The last outpourings of a dead man.

My name is Edwin Smart , he wrote. I am the man who the media have labelled ‘the Snatcher’. I feel like the walls are closing in now. I could stay ahead of the police, just about, but now I’ve got this other investigator to contend with, this Raker, and I think they’re working together, and the more I try to cover up what I’m doing, the more I’m losing control .

I heard Davidson enter the room behind us.

It’s strange. Sometimes I don’t feel much like a killer. Sometimes I just feel like Edwin Smart. Ed. That guy is the guy everyone likes, the one they tell stories to and share jokes with. Some days I look in the mirror and I see that guy looking back, and I forget – just for a moment – who I am. Other days, all I can feel inside me is this ache, this need, and I remember who I truly am. A man who takes other men. A man who wants to touch them and feel them. Hurt them. A man who tortures and rapes them while they’re begging me to stop. What my father would call a queer. He hated them, but it was all an act. He used to come into my bedroom at night and touch me, used to make me take his dick out when I was barely even old enough to know what it was. He hated himself, just the same as I did – but it was him who made me this way .

The letter covered all of one side and a quarter of the other.

I turned it over.

I hate who I am, but I can’t stop. I hate my father, but I still love him. I know I need to run, to get away from here, but I can’t. Tomorrow, his anniversary, is too special .

I placed the letter back down again.

Smart was a vicious, sadistic killer but one who was, at his most clear-headed, completely self-aware. In many ways, it was as sad as it was frightening.

‘A fucking screw-up, just like his dad,’ Davidson muttered from behind me. He moved in level with us. I glanced at Craw, but her eyes were fixed on the letter, as if she was determined not to give her feelings away. Davidson looked me up and down, as if I had no place being here. ‘You must be loving this,’ he said, loud enough so everybody could hear. ‘You can be a real cop for a day.’

A ripple of laughter from somewhere in the kitchen.

He snorted. ‘You’re a fucking amateur.’

I looked him up and down. Unmoved.

He leaned in to me, ready to go again, when Craw turned to him. ‘DS Davidson, why don’t you carry on with whatever you were doing?’

He stood there, the two of them facing off.

‘Are you having trouble hearing me, Eddie?’

He glanced at me, then at her. ‘No, ma’am.’

He disappeared back into the kitchen, and then she turned to me, nothing in her face – no sense as to whether Davidson had pissed her off or not – and she handed me a business card. ‘We’re going to need a full statement from you in the next couple of days but, in the meantime, that’s my direct number on there.’

I took it from her. She looked at me, silence between us, and it was obvious the tough decisions of the next few days were already weighing heavy on her.

‘I’ll see you soon, Mr Raker.’

77

All six men – Steven Wilky, Marc Erion, Joseph Symons, Jonathan Drake, Sam Wren and Duncan Pell – made it as far as hospital alive. Symons and Erion were in the worst condition and, as doctors tried to rehydrate them and repair some of the damage left on their bodies, Symons slipped into cardiac arrest, as if the only thing that had kept him alive in Edwin Smart’s basement was the lack of movement. He lasted another fifteen minutes, two of those a desperate attempt to revive him after he flatlined. But at just gone midnight, as I lay in bed across the city, unable to sleep, there was no more fight left in Joseph Symons and doctors pronounced him dead. The others clung on.