65
At Battersea Bridge, I pulled the car over. My head was so full of noise, I had to find a side street, bump up on to the pavement and write it all down. An hour later I was done. Twenty pages of my notepad full, everything I’d ever learned about Samuel Wren. In the silence of the car, I went through it all again, trying to see where things didn’t join, trying to look for any kind of hairline fracture I could get into and prise open. But there was nothing new. Nothing I didn’t already know. All that looked up at me was what had looked up at me before: a deeply confused man, blackmailed by a people trafficker and at the mercy of a reality he could never accept.
Where’s the killer in you, Sam?
The rain got harder, popping against the windscreen like pebbles being thrown at the glass. I studied the picture I’d taken of the watcher from Pell’s DVD. There was an obvious question that I’d never got the chance to discuss with Healy: if Sam was taking these men, if we were assuming he was the Snatcher and had brokered some sort of partnership with Pell, why would he engineer his own disappearance but Pell not do the same? Why vanish at all? If he’d managed to take his first two victims – Steven Wilky and Marc Erion – without leaving a trace of himself, if Leon Spane had been dumped on Hampstead Heath and not led back to either him or Pell, why go to all the effort of disappearing? They’d already got away with it. Whatever this was, whatever they were doing together, however it worked, they were already below the radar when Sam went missing. And the only reason you’d then go on to plan your disappearance was if something had started to go wrong.
Or if you weren’t the killer at all.
‘You were the victim,’ I said quietly.
On the way home, as I came off Battersea Bridge, I decided to stop at Gloucester Road station again. I seriously doubted Pell would be there, but the people inside worked with him, got to see him daily, and Pell still represented my best shot at finding out where Sam went.
As I entered from the street, I kept my eyes on the faces of the staff, moving between them as I walked inside. I was conscious of the lies I’d told the last time I’d been in, and I remembered the guy in the staffroom – the man called Gideon – and the way he’d reacted to my being there about Sam and Pell. But, as I walked around the ticket hall, I realized I’d caught a lucky break. I hardly recognized any of the faces, which meant most wouldn’t recognize me. I bought a ticket and headed through the gateline, down to the platform and then back up again. I hadn’t expected to find Pell and I wasn’t disappointed, but I did a sweep of the station just to be sure.
At the booth, the overweight guy who’d been standing underneath the glass dome two days before, bathed in a pool of his own sweat, was perched on a stool, looking on disinterestedly. At one point, as I stood there watching the crowds coming in, turning things over in my head, he looked right at me but he didn’t seem to remember me.
About ten minutes later, as I was thinking about leaving, I saw the staffroom open – the same one I’d been inside before – and in the doorway appeared two faces I recognized: the woman, Sandra Purnell, who I’d chatted to last time out; and a man, one whose name I was struggling to recall, but who’d been here the first time I’d been in and talked to Pell. He’d been a ticket inspector. Eric. Edgar. Edward. Something beginning with E. I remembered seeing his photo and his name badge in the staffroom, and I remembered the conversation I’d had with him that first time. He’d been polite and helpful. In his staffroom photo he’d been immaculately turned out too – crisp uniform, styled hair, looking out through expensive half-moon glasses – and he had dressed with the same care today. I’d take that now: if he was detailed in the way he dressed, he might be detailed in his thinking too. Any hint, however small, of where Pell was, could get me a lead.
I headed over.
As I did, the woman unexpectedly reached out to the man and hugged him. I stopped and watched. He suddenly seemed quite emotional. Not tearful exactly, but lacking some colour, lips flattened, eyes downcast. When she was done, she rubbed his arm, they said goodbye to one another and she headed off towards the station entrance. He just stood there, a ticket machine slung over one shoulder, a backpack over the other. Out of the backpack spilled some clothes – a running top decorated with a square motif, a pair of well-used trainers – as well as some old, rolled-up magazines. It looked like he might have been on the way to the gym, or maybe he’d just taken the opportunity to clear out his locker.
‘Excuse me.’
He looked up. ‘Yes, sir?’ he said quietly.
‘I’m not sure if you remember me,’ I said, and I could immediately see he didn’t. ‘I came in on Thursday last week and spoke to you about this guy.’
I reached into my pocket and got out a picture of Sam. Just as I remembered him doing the first time, the man patted the breast pockets of his jacket, more out of habit than because he genuinely didn’t know where his glasses were, then took the photo from me and held it up in front of him. Although only in his early forties, he had an old way about him: he raised the photo high up into the light coming through the glass dome and perched his half-moon glasses on the end of his nose.
‘His name is Sam Wren,’ I said.
‘Oh right, yes – I remember.’
‘You definitely don’t know him?’
His eyes remained on the picture, but I could tell his mind had shifted elsewhere. Whatever he and the woman had been talking about had really got to him.
‘Is this a bad time?’
‘No, no,’ he replied, but I could tell he was being polite. He removed his glasses and slid them back into his top pocket. ‘Have you asked the other guys here? They’d know better than me. I don’t actually work out of the station.’
‘Because you’re a ticket inspector.’
‘We’re called RCIs these days,’ he said, a small smile on his face. ‘Much posher.’
I nodded, smiled back. ‘Mind if I quickly ask you something else?’
He shrugged. ‘Sure.’
‘When I came in last time, I spoke to you and another guy, Duncan Pell. Do you remember that?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘Any idea where I might find Duncan?’
‘Is he in trouble?’
‘No. I’d just like to speak to him again.’
‘They tell me Duncan’s not been very well.’
‘Yeah, so I hear. Do you know where he might be?’
His eyes moved left, over my shoulder. When I followed his line of sight I could see the overweight guy from the booth had noticed us talking, and was coming over.
‘Everything all right, Ed?’ the big guy asked.
And then his name came back to me: Edwin. I turned around and the other guy was right on my shoulder.
‘Fine, yes. This gentleman was just asking about Duncan.’
Mr Big eyed me with suspicion. ‘Were you in the other day?’
‘I just want to ask him a couple of questions.’
‘You a copper or something?’
‘More like “or something”,’ I said.
It went completely over his head, but when I looked back at the ticket inspector the corners of his mouth were raised in a smile. I took a business card out of my pocket. ‘My name’s David Raker,’ I said to him. ‘If you think of anything, maybe you’d be kind enough to give me a shout. Any time of the day or night.’
He took the card. ‘Okay.’
‘I didn’t catch your name,’ I lied.
‘Edwin Smart. Ed.’
‘Thanks for your help, Ed.’
As I left the station and headed back to the car, my mind returned to the CCTV footage of the day Sam went missing. I’d been over it countless times, trying to find the join. But even though every viewing I’d had of it had been more meticulous than the last, they’d all ended up the same way: no Sam.
And yet as I walked, I felt a tiny shift in my thoughts, like I’d suddenly glimpsed the outline of a memory. Although I tried to pin down what it was, the harder I looked for it, the more of a blur it became. But as indistinct as the thought had been, something of it remained. A residual feeling. A certainty.
That the answers were still in the footage.
And they always had been.