68
The man at the doors of the train paused and then joined the other groups being funnelled towards the platform exit. I hadn’t been looking for him. I’d been looking for Sam. I’d been looking for Sam on his own. I’d been looking for him in a suit, or in a protest T-shirt that had been pulled over a suit, or – at the very least – over a shirt and tie. If he’d removed his coat and jacket in order to put on the T-shirt, it made sense that he would have been carrying them, or they would have been inside his briefcase.
But Sam wasn’t carrying a coat or jacket.
He wasn’t even holding a briefcase.
And he wasn’t leaving the train on his own.
The man with the sign had his arm around Sam Wren’s waist, though if you weren’t specifically looking, you could barely even tell. I’d never noticed before. It looked like the two of them had just been pushed together by the crowds. Sam was in an official red protest T-shirt, pulled over his work shirt, but he had nothing else with him. I’d always figured the briefcase had gone with him, because if he’d left it behind, it would have been shipped off to lost property and ultimately traced back to him. But it had never surfaced. So either it had contained nothing that could lead back to Sam – or any kind of link to him had been taken out of the case before it was left in the train.
He looked woozy, unsteady on his feet, but the man was keeping him close. This was the perfect morning to drug someone: there were so many people, so many protesters dressed the same, that no one batted an eyelid. Sam still seemed capable of walking, still seemed capable of being manipulated, but he had no fight in him, no way of preventing what was happening. That was enough to make him pass unnoticed. And the man knew exactly where the CCTV cameras were in order to save drawing attention to the two of them. There were only the checked sleeves of his red shirt, and the sign. No clear view of his face. He made sure the same was true of Sam too: inside a second of hitting the platform, he raised the protest sign above their heads, shifting it across so nothing of Sam’s upper half was visible any more.
Inside eight seconds, they were both gone.
I rewound the footage.
Something squirmed through my stomach as I watched it all unfold again. This was the drug he must have used on Wilky, on Erion, on Symons and on Drake. This was how he was able to walk them out of their front doors. I couldn’t see him drug Sam – maybe because he’d done it between stations – and, in fact, couldn’t see Sam inside the carriage at any point once it arrived at Westminster. But when the man was bending down, presumably dealing with the briefcase, Sam’s clothes and Sam himself – that had to have been moments after Sam had been jabbed with a syringe. From there, the man had been incredibly adept: he kept Sam on the floor, out of sight of any cameras – and the moment he turned his back and jolted to the right was the moment he yanked Sam to his feet again. Unseen by CCTV. Unseen by me.
I imagined what came next: if anyone had paid any sort of attention – and most people hadn’t because most people were disembarking protesters, half watching a fight at the other end of the platform – he’d claim Sam had fainted. He’d have taken his jacket off, pretending that he was trying to get him some air. Then, as the drug kicked in, he would have made Sam put the T-shirt on, helped it on to him, knowing he was pliant. Putting a protest T-shirt on him, even as he lay there semi-conscious, would have looked odd, but it wouldn’t have looked odd enough. People might have wondered what the man was doing – why he was putting the T-shirt on now, of all times – but once he was off and out of sight of the carriage, most of them would barely even recall it as a footnote. This was London, after all. A city where a body had once lain dead for five days in plain sight before anyone paid it any attention. A city where a jewellery shop’s windows were smashed in by an armed gang and people just wandered past. He didn’t have to worry about people remembering. He just had to get Sam off the train without being seen by the cameras. And but for a second – maybe even less – as they stepped out on to the platform, he’d managed it. I knew the footage better than anyone, had watched it more times than anyone, but it had taken me countless viewings – endless repetition, rewinding and inching through, frame by frame – before I’d seen him walk Sam out.
The Snatcher.
It had to be him.
But why take Sam? Why deviate from the plan? I let the questions go for the time being, moving the slider back to the moment they stepped off the train. And in the second they were both visible – Sam, drugged, looking down at the floor, the man next to him turning away and trying to protect his identity – I finally saw the face of a killer. I saw the man who had taken Sam Wren. I saw the man who had taken Steven Wilky from a flat half a mile from Paddington; Marc Erion from an apartment in King’s Cross; Joseph Symons from his home north of Farringdon station; and Jonathan Drake from his flat in Hammersmith.
All homes close to the Tube stations.
All stops on the Circle line.
He was using it as his hunting ground, watching the men, following them, getting to know their routines and then moving in for them. He knew the Underground stations.
Because he worked them.
I’d looked right at him so many times in the footage as he’d moved around inside the carriage, his face a blur behind the glass. I’d watched so many times as he’d stepped out onto the platform, the sign shielding him and his victim from the cameras – and not once had I put it together.
But I knew why I had today.
His clothes were different from the uniform he should have been wearing on a Friday morning, and maybe he’d thought that was what would make him blend in. But, ultimately, it was the change of clothes that had given him away. Because now I saw why this time, of all times, I’d been drawn to him: a red T-shirt with checked sleeves. The same top I’d seen in his gym bag earlier in the day.
The Snatcher knew the Circle line because he worked it.
The Snatcher was Edwin Smart.