4
I walked Julia Wren back down Long Acre and then watched her disappear into the Tube station at Covent Garden. The streets were starting to empty now, the noise drifting away, a different, softer city emerging from the shadows. I took out my phone and thumbed through the address book until I got to the name I wanted: Ewan Tasker.
‘Task’ was in his early sixties, retired for a couple of years but still employed in an advisory role at the Met. Before that, he worked for the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the precursor to the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Our relationship had started off slowly: he’d come to me with a story he wanted to break about Kosovan organized crime, hoping to force one of its leaders out into the open; I used it as a bargaining chip, and a way to secure him as a long-term source. We sparred for a while but eventually, over time, became good friends. These days, I wasn’t able to offer him column inches in return for his help, so he made me turn up to a charity golf day once a year on his birthday. For me, it was eighteen holes of misery. For him, it was hilarious.
‘Raker!’ he shouted down the phone. ‘What time do you call this?’
It was late, but I knew he’d be awake. Task enjoyed his golf, but he wasn’t built for retirement: he’d spent the first six months driving his wife up the wall, and the next six on bended knee begging any agency he could find to give him something to do.
‘How you doing, old man?’
‘I’m good. Up to my arse in work, but otherwise good.’
‘I’m not sure lifting beer cans to your mouth counts as work, Task.’
He laughed. ‘I didn’t even have time for a pint at the clubhouse this morning, and you know I always make time for a pint or ten.’
‘I thought you were just advising the Met part-time?’
‘I am. Normally it’s more sedate: meetings once a week at Scotland Yard, the rest of the time here at home reading up on cases and offering my devastating insight.’
‘But not this week?’
‘There’s a few things going on,’ he said, ‘but nothing exciting. Not yet, anyway. You been following this Snatcher stuff?’
‘Not closely.’
‘You’re losing your touch, Raker.’
I smiled. ‘If I ever had it. I only know what I’ve read in the papers: he gets inside their houses and takes them from their beds.’
‘Yeah,’ Tasker said. ‘He’s got some balls, I’ll give him that.’
‘You’re not working that case, are you?’
‘No. Definitely not my area. But it’s the water-cooler case at the Met: everyone’s talking about it, everyone’s got an opinion. The press are all over it like flies on shit.’
‘Can’t blame them. It’s the biggest story of the year.’
‘Spoken like a true hack.’ He laughed. ‘So what can I do for you?’
I needed to get hold of the CCTV footage from the day Sam disappeared on the Tube, but I didn’t have any sources at Transport for London, or at the Transport Police. Task’s contacts at SOCA – soon to become the National Crime Agency – were a decent alternative: they’d be policing organized crime, people trafficking, e-crime and fraud at the London Olympics, which meant securing CCTV footage through them wouldn’t raise any flags and probably wouldn’t require a lot of paperwork. They’d be watching the Tube for suspicious activity anyway, and as a way to identify potential suspects, so it was natural they’d be analysing footage as prep in the months leading up to the Games. I told Task what I needed.
‘What do you want the footage for?’
‘A guy I’m trying to find – he disappeared somewhere on the Circle line.’
‘Disappeared how?’
‘Just disappeared. Got on the train and never got off again.’
‘You serious?’
‘You know me, Task: I don’t have a sense of humour.’
Another laugh. ‘That’s true.’
‘His wife came to me tonight and asked me to find out where he went. The Met opened a missing persons file on him and had one of their uniforms look into it.’
‘Sounds like they pulled out all the stops to find him.’
I smiled ruefully. ‘PC Plod doesn’t seem that bothered.’
‘You gonna call him?’
‘Yeah. I’m sure I can look forward to my usual warm welcome from the Met.’
‘I can ask around if it’s easier.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you a shout if I need a hand.’
‘Okay, well, I’ll put in a request now, but it won’t get picked up until the morning. I can probably cash in a favour and get it prioritized, so I might be able to get you something for mid-morning. You going to be home?’
‘Yeah. You coming past?’
‘I’ve got a golf tournament up in Ruislip. I can’t promise anything, but if I’ve got something, I’ll drop it in. Probably be around about 10, 10.30.’
‘Perfect. Thanks, old man.’
‘Don’t thank me yet. You owe me a round of golf.’
Fifteen minutes later, the Piccadilly line train pulled into Gloucester Road Tube station. It was 11.35 and the platform was deserted. Somewhere above me, where the Circle and District lines ran parallel to one another, Sam Wren had stepped on to a carriage and never got off again.
As the doors wheezed open, I leaned out and took in the length of the station. The morning of 16 December 2011 wouldn’t have looked like this. Sam had got on at another line, on another platform, and was headed in a different direction. He would have been surrounded by commuters too. But, at its heart, the mystery remained the same: how did a man disappear from the inside of a train? If he’d ridden the Tube to the end of the line, he would still have had to get off, because every journey terminated somewhere. And if he had got off at one of the other stations on the Circle line, rather than at Westminster, his exit would have been recorded on CCTV.
Maybe Julia honestly believed neither had happened. Maybe the PC who opened Sam’s missing persons file, who sat down and watched the footage, didn’t care enough to take more than a cursory glance and find out. But the reality, however well concealed, was that Sam must have got off at some point.
Because there weren’t any genuine magic tricks.
Only illusions.