PART TWO
14
At 1 a.m., I was still awake. Through the open window, I could hear the soft drone of cars from Gunnersbury Avenue and the gentle whine of a plane overhead, but otherwise the streets of Ealing were still. No breeze, no animals rummaging around, no people passing.
The first day of a new case it was always difficult to sleep. Everything was new – the people, their world – and every question you asked at the beginning only led to more questions. Those that remained unanswered were like holes; little punctures in the case that you had to find a way to repair before the whole thing collapsed.
And there were already big holes in Sam Wren’s life.
When the clock hit 1.30, I finally accepted I wasn’t going to sleep, flipped back the covers and sat up. Grabbing my trousers, I padded through to the living room where Liz’s MacBook was still set up. I cleared the screensaver and plugged in the USB stick Task had got for me, saving the contents on to the desktop. Then I opened the videos again and watched them through. A shiver of electricity passed along my spine as I saw Sam for the last time, his legs and briefcase disappearing as the train doors slid shut. And then the train jerked forward and headed into the black of the tunnel.
Gone.
Behind me, I heard footsteps in the hallway and looked back to see Liz emerge from the darkness. She moved through to the kitchen, filled a glass with water and returned to where I was sitting.
‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘No. I’ve got first-night insomnia.’
She nodded. Her eyes fell on the laptop. I’d rewound the footage to the seconds before the train doors closed. ‘Is this your guy?’
‘That’s his train.’
‘Where’s he?’
I pointed to his legs. ‘There.’
‘All you’ve got are his legs?’
‘In Victoria, yes.’
‘What about after?’
‘This is the last time you get to see him.’
She leaned in even closer and tabbed the footage on. Doors sliding shut. Train taking off. Disappearing into the tunnel. ‘That’s a bit … creepy, isn’t it?’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, he just disappears.’
‘People disappear all the time.’
‘Yeah, but they don’t just disappear, do they?’ She tabbed the footage back and looked at me. ‘When people disappear, they wander off somewhere, hide, try not to resurface. Or they die: they commit suicide, someone kills them, something. Their body goes somewhere. But you’ve been through the footage and you can’t see the join. You can’t see where he went. To me …’ She faded out. ‘To me that’s a bit creepy.’
I didn’t say anything, but in the silence I realized Liz might be right: there was something disquieting about Sam Wren’s journey that morning, more so now I’d seen the CCTV video. I still knew, in the rational part of me, the part I built cases on, that Sam had to have left the train – but without being able to see him do it, without the physical act of stepping on to the platform, something troubling remained.
‘I’ll see you in bed,’ she said quietly.
I watched her go and then turned back to the footage. There were twelve thousand CCTV cameras in and around the London Underground. The ticket halls. The platforms. The walkways. The trains. Sam couldn’t have avoided them all.
I had to widen the search.
I woke with a start. Outside I could hear people talking, a car idling, and – even more distantly – the sound of a dog barking. Disorientated and half asleep, I sat up in bed, feeling the sheet fall away, a faint breeze reaching across from the window and clawing at my skin. Seconds later, my phone began buzzing.
I grabbed it. ‘David Raker.’
‘David, it’s Spike. You okay?’
‘Yeah. Late night. What time is it?’
‘7.15. Do you want me to call back?’
‘No.’ I got to my feet, grabbed one of Liz’s least feminine dressing gowns and put it on. I made my way through to the living room, set the phone down and switched to speaker. ‘What have you got for me, Spike?’
‘Sorry it’s taken me so long.’
‘Not a problem.’
‘So, you asked for a complete financial picture, as well as his phone records. I’ll send them through as a PDF, so you can grab them on the move.’
‘Great. Anything I need to know?’
‘Nah, it’s all pretty self-explanatory. The financial stuff runs to about twenty-five pages. The phone records I’m doing a bit of work on: for each of the incoming and outgoing numbers I’ll get you a name and address.’
‘Great work – are those coming over today?’
‘Yeah. Not until a bit later on, though. Getting these names and addresses for you will take longer, but it’ll save you a load of time.’
‘You’re the man, Spike.’
I thanked him and killed the call.
Now it was time to brave the Tube at rush hour.