45
Healy was heading back to Jonathan Drake’s flat, near Hammersmith Bridge, so he offered me a lift down to Hammersmith Tube station so I wouldn’t have change lines on the journey home. We didn’t say much on the walk to his car – the same battered red Vauxhall estate that smelt of wet dog he’d had the previous year – but as he unlocked it, he looked across the roof at me like he knew what I was going to ask.
‘What’s the other file you’ve got?’
He paused for a moment, key in the door, the strap from the slip case slung over his shoulder. His eyes flicked to the slipcase, and there was a moment’s hesitation when he probably saw himself endangering his career again. A part of him didn’t trust me, like I didn’t trust him – perhaps it would always be that way between us – but I sensed this file represented something personal to him. All cops had them: a case that they couldn’t close and that no one else would back them on – or a case that proved them right.
‘Get in the car,’ he said, and flipped the locks.
When both doors were closed, he laid the slip case on his lap, unzipped it and then took out the sixth file: the one in the green folder. Sam’s had been the thinnest but this one wasn’t far off. It must have only run to about twenty pages, which meant it was either simple and wrapped up quickly – or, more likely, it was unsolved. He handed it to me.
‘Meet Leon Spane,’ he said.
I flipped the front cover and, as soon as I saw Spane’s face, he felt familiar. I tried to claw at the memory, tried to drag it back into the light, but couldn’t place him. The man was grey-white, bloodless, eyes open and staring off into space. It was a shot from his autopsy. He was older than the others – mid to late thirties – and, according to his physical description, slightly bigger too.
‘Who is he?’
‘He was found on Hampstead Heath.’
‘When?’
‘Twenty months ago. October 2010.’
‘He’s different from the others.’
‘He wasn’t taken from his home.’ He flipped forward a couple of pages to the coroner’s report. ‘Whoever killed him stabbed him in the throat and cut his dick off.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So how do you think they’re linked?’
‘I always knew he was a part of this – always – but after Wren made the call to Drake and used Spane’s name, I knew for sure.’ He pointed to Spane’s photograph. ‘Plus, his head was shaved just before his body was dumped.’
I nodded. ‘Was he also gay?’
‘Impossible to tell.’
‘How come?’
‘He had no family. We never had anyone claim him.’
And then it hit me. I flicked back to the picture and, through the corner of my eye, I saw a frown form on Healy’s face.
‘Raker?’
I didn’t reply, just looked down at Leon Spane: no beard, no hair, no holdall or cardboard sign. Shaved and lifeless, he looked so different from the CCTV footage.
But he was still the same man.
He was the homeless guy at Gloucester Road.
There was no way to prevent the police getting to Sam. If they believed he was the Snatcher, they were going to be unstoppable. It might have been different if I could push back with something but, four days after Julia Wren arrived in my life, there was no exit I could see, no physical route out for Sam, not even a hint of where he might have been until Healy turned up and told me about Jonathan Drake’s phone.
As we said goodbye I’d thought, for a brief moment, about telling Healy what I already knew about Leon Spane: his connection to Duncan Pell and, in turn, Pell’s connection to Sam. There were reasons for doing that; good reasons that might lead them to the Snatcher. But then I saw the next hour – the Met doorstepping me, dismantling the work I’d done, threatening to bring charges if I didn’t drop the case – and all I felt was discomfort: about handing something over half finished; about failing to get Julia the answers she sought; but mostly about letting the police hunt Sam Wren when, deep down, I wasn’t even sure he was the killer.