She looked at him. ‘You mean watching me talk to the prisoners?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I spoke to my boss about it after you asked,’ she said, taking two cups out of the cupboard, ‘but he wasn’t massively keen on the idea. Sorry, hun.’
‘Why?’
‘I think he’s just worried it might aggravate the men.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve only been seeing them seven months. That’s no time at all. I don’t want to upset the equilibrium because, slowly, I’m starting to gain their trust. But there’s also the problem that some of them see prison guards and cops – people like you – as the reason they’re inside in the first place.’
‘That is the reason they’re inside.’
‘I know. But it might promote negative feelings in them.’
‘They’re rapists and murderers.’
Teresa Reed paused, as if she’d glimpsed something in Healy that she hadn’t seen before. ‘I know what they are.’
‘Are you sure?’
She frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘What about Broadmoor?’
‘What about it?’
‘You talk to the prisoners there as well.’
‘So?’
‘So, I’d like to go with you there.’
She shook her head, her defences up. ‘No way. It’s a high-security hospital, Colm. We’re talking about deeply disturbed patients. I can maybe talk to my boss again about letting you come along to Belmarsh with me, if that’s what you really want. I know you say you just want to watch me at work, but if we concoct some story about you using it as a research trip for the Met, Belmarsh might sign off the –’
‘I don’t want to go to Belmarsh any more.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I can get inside Belmarsh any time I want. I’ve been doing it five months already. I’ve been watching you talk to those men since January. I don’t need to see their faces up close. They’re not what I want.’
‘What do you mean, “watching me since January”?’
‘Belmarsh isn’t what I want. Broadmoor is.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He studied her, the silence in the kitchen deafening. ‘Belmarsh was just a stepping stone. The thing to make you trust me. If you’d watched me go in there, take notes, look interested as you laughed and smiled and batted your eyelids at the rapists and the killers and the worthless fucking scumbags you call patients, I knew I could get you to take me to Broadmoor too. I didn’t care how long it took, but at some point I thought you’d trust me enough to arrange it.’ He stopped. ‘But then I got fired today.’
Her face dropped. Confusion. Fear. ‘I don’t, uh …’
‘So now nothing matters any more.’
‘Colm, I –’
He sighed, taking a step into the kitchen. He could feel the gun at the back of his trousers, shifting against the belt. ‘Do you know who you talk to up at Broadmoor?’
She backed up against the counter. ‘Talk to?’
‘Your “patients”.’
‘I, uh … I talk to a lot of –’
‘I’m only interested in one of them. The one who killed my daughter.’ A shiver of emotion passed through him. ‘And I don’t care how you get it done, but you’re the one that’s going to take me to him.’
PART FIVE
72
Rain swept in as I parked about fifty yards down from Smart’s house, puddles forming in the gutters, leaves and crisp packets washing along the street. I grabbed my phone and got put through to Craw again, and while it just rang and rang the same as before, this time it went to voicemail. ‘DCI Craw, it’s David Raker.’ I looked at Smart’s house. It was a narrow two-storey terrace, half-painted, half-brick, with a terracotta-tile roof and white window frames. ‘Forget Sam Wren and Duncan Pell. The guy you’re looking for is called Edwin Smart.’ I gave her the address. ‘I’m up here now, on my own, because you fired Healy and Davidson didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I hope it hasn’t cost you.’
As soon as I hung up, I went through the same names again. Davidson. Healy. Craw for a second time. None answered. So I opted for the last resort: I dialled 999, gave them the details and told them to get Craw’s team to come urgently. After I was done, I sat in the silence of the car, eyes glued to the house.
Minutes passed.
You’re wasting time.
I glanced at myself in the rear-view mirror. If I went in alone, I went in blind. I didn’t know what it was like in there. I didn’t know anything about Smart, beyond what I’d been able to pick up at the station. But that information was worthless now.
It was a lie, and he was a mystery.
So are you going in alone?
I flicked a look at the clock in the car. Another two minutes had passed. Soon it would be three minutes, then four, then five. Then it would be ten, and fifteen, and twenty – and every one of those minutes was a head start he shouldn’t have had.
It’s suicide going in blind.
But then I suddenly thought of Liz, of everything she’d said to me the day before. This is who you are. This is what you do. I get it. But remember something: this is my life now too. She was right. She’d always been right. If I was a different man, if I was a little better, perhaps I would have listened. Perhaps I would have been able to stop myself.
But I wasn’t that man.
And Sam Wren was the only thing that mattered.
Water poured down my face, through my hair and ran off my jacket as I stepped up to the door. I didn’t ring the bell. I didn’t knock either. As much as possible, I wanted to avoid letting him know I was here. But when I grabbed the door handle, it bumped away from the frame, opening on to a small, tidy hallway. I immediately felt a prickle of unease. Why would he leave his front door open? I stopped, halfway in, halfway out, wondering if this was the right thing, after all. But I had no choice. I’d rung the police and they’d failed to act.
The hallway was carpeted in an old-fashioned maroon, but the walls were cream, hung with pictures of meadows and black-and-white photographs of old steam trains. On the left was a staircase, on the right a door into a living room. Same maroon carpet, same cream walls. A TV, two sofas, more paintings, more photos of trains. As I stepped further in, the carpet like a sponge beneath my wet boots, I saw brass-framed pictures of a young Smart looking drawn and emotionless: one in front of a Tube roundel, another outside the entrance of a station, the picture scorched by bright summer sun. Next to that was a picture of his father in the uniform of the London Underground, a ten- or eleven-year-old Smart at his leg. The photos were lined up on the coffee table, one after the other, all of them black and white, all of them the same theme, except the last one, which was in colour.
This one was on its own.
It sat away from the others, on the edge of the table, and in front of it was a wooden bowl, placed there like an offering. It was full of hair. I took another step closer. In the photo, Smart was sitting on a chair beside a hospital bed, his father – mask over his face, mobile oxygen tank at his feet – beside him. The old man, stick-thin and shaven-headed, looked like he had hours left. But it wasn’t that that drew my attention. It was what his father was wearing: a red T-shirt, with checked sleeves.
The shirt had belonged to him.
That’s why it had been so important to Smart, why he’d had it with him today. And it must have been why he’d worn it the day he took Sam. Not only because it was red and he would merge with the other protesters, although that would have been in his thinking, but because it was another part of his routine, like the shaved head. A connection to his father. And the hair in the bowl – presumably Smart’s hair – was the other. He hadn’t been shaved at the station earlier, so this was fresh. The second part of the routine. The way he remembered his father – became like him, channelled him – on the anniversary of his death.