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people, some barely even in their teens, freeze-framed in a different life.
    I was good at finding them. Liz once said I had a kindof gravitational pull, an ability to drag the lost back into the light – and although she had only been joking, I did feel a connection to them. Sometimes it felt like more than that. Sometimes it felt like a responsibility; an unwritten contract. And maybe that was the reason I was drawn so quickly into their world – and why, at times, I’d been prepared to go as far as I had.
    Ewan Tasker very rarely let me down, and at just gone 10.30 he pulled into the driveway in his dark-blue Porsche 911 Turbo. It sounded better than it was. He’d had it for years, but while he loved it like his daughter, hardly a month went by without something falling off it.
    He got out, locked it and made his way up to the open porch. His frame filled the doorway: six-three, sixteen stone, wide and strong even if his muscle definition had started to fade. His black hair was being reclaimed, grey streaks passing above his ears, but it was one of his few concessions to age.
    I made coffee and we headed through to the back garden. There was a small patio area immediately outside, with a table and a couple of chairs. Task eased into a seat with a theatrical sigh, playing on the fact that he was sixty-two and already in semi-retirement – but he wasn’t just physically imposing: he was quick-witted and sharp too.
    ‘You’re not convincing anyone with your OAP act,’ I said.
    ‘I like to lure people into a false sense of security.’ As he leaned forward to sip his coffee, I saw a USB stick in the breast pocket of his shirt. He took it out and handed it to me. ‘That’s everything I could get for you in the time I hadavailable to me this morning. It’s a pretty fast turnaround, even for a man of my skills. Luckily for you I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a geek.’ He pointed to the USB stick. ‘One thing: you asked for footage from inside every eastbound Circle line carriage between 7.30 and 8. That’s a problem. The District, Jubilee, Northern, Waterloo and City lines all have onboard CCTV already, but the Circle and Hammersmith lines are late to the party. My guy tells me that they’re in the process of refurbishing all those trains and that a lot of them are in service now – but, going back six months, to when your man disappeared, they didn’t have cameras.’
    ‘So it’s just the station cams on here?’
    ‘Right. Sorry.’
    ‘No – this is great. I really appreciate it, Task.’
    But the truth was, it wasn’t great: having onboard footage would have helped narrow down Sam’s route in and out easily, and given me a much closer view of his movements. Now I’d have to rely on picking him out from a platform camera positioned about twenty feet up, and tracking him through a London rush hour.
    I looked down at the USB and turned it with my finger. Task had got me footage from every Circle line station for the day Sam Wren disappeared. That was 36 stations, which meant about 19 hours of CCTV for each station, and roughly 680 hours of video total. Sam got on to the Tube at approximately 7.30 on the morning of 16 December, which made things easier. But if – as expected – it wasn’t obvious when he got off, it was going to make for a hell of a morning.

6
    After Task left for his golf tournament, I ran the footage from Gloucester Road. Sun poured through the window of the spare room, the air still, the heat prickling against my skin. I felt the familiar buzz that came at the start of a case. The lack of onboard footage was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. I’d just have to work around it.
    Onscreen, there was a time clock in the bottom left, with the date adjacent to that. It was 5.30 a.m. In the video, there was no one in shot. Off to the left, the District line platform was visible; on the right were two Circle line tracks, one for westbound trains, one for eastbound. At 5.38, a