The Vanishing

by John Connor

  Sara had made eight or nine calls before trying Lastenouse, Tom recalled. So he had been quite far down the list.

  ‘I hope you will be very careful with her,’ Lastenouse said. ‘In fact, I am telling you to be very careful with her. It’s a warning.’

  Tom frowned. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘She is tough – I told you that – but she is in a very bad place right now. She can be hurt.’

  ‘Not by me.’

  That brought another little chuckle. ‘Come, come, Lomax. You know what she feels about you.’

  ‘I know she hired me to do a job.’

  ‘She feels for you. Do you understand? I can see that. Anyone could see it. And she has told me so. So I feel a little … forgive me … a little paternal about it. She is so young. I don’t want to see her hurt. You have been through so much together, perhaps, over the last few months. So maybe you don’t realise how very much out of your depth you are …’

  ‘The last few months? I’ve known her less than seventy-two hours.’

  That stumped him. He actually coloured a little, then drank from the glass and looked at the floor. ‘I was not aware …’ he started. ‘Or I assumed. Assumed because of what she has told me. Good God! She is so impulsive. I cannot believe it …’ He stopped suddenly and looked to his right. Sara was standing in the doorway, frowning at him. She was wearing a white towel dressing gown. Her hair was wet. ‘Sara!’ he said. ‘Come and join us. We were just …’

  ‘Talking about me. I heard.’ She walked in and came over to Tom. ‘Leave us,’ she said, over her shoulder, to Lastenouse. ‘Tom and I have to talk.’ She sat down in the chair next to him, leaned across and took his hand. Then just sat there like that, looking up at Lastenouse, as if daring him to say something. Tom could feel his face turning pink. So much for keeping him sweet, she thought. ‘And stop being an idiot, Roland,’ Sara added. ‘I don’t need another fucking father.’

  31

  Lastenouse left them, but they didn’t stay there for long. Sara wanted privacy, she said. So she took him back to her cabin. Except it wasn’t a cabin. At least, not like his. It seemed to take up an entire deck of the boat. ‘This is more like it,’ he said, as she closed the door behind them. ‘A tad bigger than what I’ve got.’

  ‘It’s Roland’s room – the stateroom,’ she said, without interest. She stood in front of him, holding both his hands. The dressing gown she was wearing had come loose, but she didn’t seem to notice. He kept his eyes high. He wasn’t sure what she was wearing beneath. ‘I’m so tired, Tom,’ she said. She stepped towards him and rested her head against his chest. He was thrown, didn’t know what to say. ‘I need to sleep,’ she said wearily. ‘I need to put my head down and sleep. But every time I close my eyes I just see everything happening.’

  He brought an arm round and hugged her. ‘I’ll lie down with you,’ he said. ‘If you want I’ll lie down with you, until you sleep.’

  She had her arms around him now. ‘No. Not just until I go to sleep. I want you to stay with me. Can you do that? Can you stay?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ He started to stroke her hair. ‘Of course. You’re frightened. I understand.’

  ‘That’s not why I want you to stay,’ she said. ‘That’s not it at all.’

  He followed her to the bed. It was a huge round thing. She took the dressing gown off and got under the quilt without batting an eyelid. He had a glimpse of her body and felt an odd sort of unease. She wasn’t wearing anything. He tried to keep the facts clear in his head, right in the forefront of his thinking. Everything that had happened to them. The condition she must be in. Lastenouse was right, maybe. Should he walk out, now? Would that be the right thing to do?

  ‘Get in,’ she said. The quilt was pulled up to her chin. There was a different look in her eyes. He thought briefly about taking his clothes off, but that was an absurd idea. He took his shoes off and started to crawl over the bed. She moved like she was going to pull the quilt away, so he could get in beside her. ‘I’ll lie on top,’ he said quickly. She didn’t object.

  He lay down beside her, on top of the quilt, pulling a pillow under his head. He put an arm under her neck and she moved backwards, still beneath the quilt, until her back was pressed against him. He brought the other arm round her and rested his chin and his mouth against the nape of her neck, against the skin there that was hidden by her hair. He kissed her there, almost automatically. Then felt confused and somehow immoral. He did it again, trying to make it more obviously like a fatherly or brotherly thing, a little peck. She didn’t react, or didn’t react in any bad way. Her breathing was getting deeper already. She was relaxing. He was lying next to her, hugging her, and she was relaxing. Job done. A small bonus on top of his final fee? He didn’t want to think like that. About her using him, switching it on and off to suit. But that was what she was doing, he thought. He closed his eyes and started to talk to her, telling her to go to sleep.

  ‘I will,’ she said sleepily. ‘I will.’

  He thought he might sleep himself. It was possible. He realised that something – maybe Lastenouse’s G&T – had worked. He no longer felt sick, though he could still feel the steady, rhythmic thrumming of the boat, the movement unsettling his inner ear. The smell of her hair was incredible. He pulled her closer. Then, without even knowing why, without thinking about it, he started to whisper to her, telling her a story from his childhood, about his mother cuddling him in bed. He wasn’t sure she was listening, but he kept going. His mother had been awful to sleep with, because she would never let him move. He told her about how he had longed to sleep with his mum, even when as old as eight or nine, to be hugged by her and fall asleep with her stroking his brow. He started to stroke her brow as his mother had stroked his. His mother had sung songs to him, from Ireland. She wasn’t from Ireland, but her grandmother was, and the memory was still there in the songs. It all sounded very loving and warm, until he started telling her about his mother kicking him out because he was fidgeting so much. He stopped that story then, and started to sing the same Irish lullaby that he sang to Jamie. But then he felt unexpectedly guilty – because the song was something special between him and Jamie only. So he stopped that too, closed his eyes again and let his breathing slow. He thought she might already be asleep.

  He woke because she was kissing him. He opened his eyes and saw that it was very dark, the boat still moving, the noise of the engines still coming through the decks. She was on top of him, moving against him, her mouth against his, her skin hot to the touch. He had no idea how long they had been like that – or how long they had been asleep. She started whispering things to him. For a moment he thought she might be asleep still, that she was doing it in her sleep. He got his hands up and held her head, very gently, looking into her eyes. She was crying. ‘I want to feel something else,’ she murmured. ‘I want to feel normal. I don’t just want these images going round and round behind my eyes …’

  ‘Stop, Sara,’ he said quietly. ‘Stop.’

  She stopped at once.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I know how bad you feel. But that’s not a good reason to do this …’

  She laughed softly, her face inches from his. ‘Tom Lomax,’ she said. ‘You fucking idiot, Tom Lomax. Did you realise you were such a gentleman? Did you know that before you met me?’

  ‘I’m not sure I …’ he started, but she put a finger over his lips.

  ‘Just shut up,’ she whispered. She wiped her eyes with her other hand. ‘I’m not doing this because I feel bad. This would have happened anyway. It would have happened last night, if we hadn’t been interrupted by someone else’s horror story. This was going to happen from the very first time I set eyes on you, getting out of my seaplane with your eye all bruised. You know that. You know what’s been going on. Or maybe you don’t. But you’ve felt all these things I’m feeling for you. You’ve felt everything the same. I’ve seen it in your eyes. Tell me that’s not true.’

  He took a breath. ‘I d
on’t know …’

  ‘Don’t pretend. Please don’t pretend.’

  He let the breath out, slowly. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You’re right …’

  ‘So don’t think about it,’ she said. ‘Just this once, don’t think about it.’

  ‘That’s not …’

  ‘Ssh …’ The finger was on his lips again. ‘SShh …’

  32

  Maxim sat exhausted in the hired Toyota, illegally parked at the back of a cab rank between St Pancras and King’s Cross stations, two cars behind the Merc that Freddie Eaton had sent to pick up Sara Eaton. He tried to stay awake by keeping an eye on the mirrors, just in case someone felt like ticketing him at 8.30 in the evening. The driver of the Merc didn’t know he was here, didn’t have a clue what was going on, in fact. Nor the security guy who had been sent with the driver, and who was now inside the station waiting for Eaton and Lomax to emerge from the Eurostar exit.

  Two hours ago Maxim had walked in and scanned the lines of faces waiting for loved ones or family members or business colleagues. The name Arisha had given him for the security guy didn’t ring bells, but Maxim had found him easily enough. He’d had plenty of time to do so. The information was that Sara Eaton would be aboard the 6.30 from Brussels. There had been three arrivals since then and she wasn’t on any of them. The small waiting crowd had thus changed three times, except for Freddie Eaton’s man, making him pretty conspicuous. That was good, because it made the man careless and unprofessional, which would be useful later on – if this plan ever got off the ground – when Maxim would probably have to point a gun at the man’s face and issue threats. No doubt Arisha had already thought of all this.

  When Eaton wasn’t on the second train the man had come back to the Merc and phone calls had been made. Maxim had watched from the station and made his own calls at the same time. Apparently independently – but in fact as instructed by Arisha, handling Freddie Eaton’s calls as usual – they had then all decided to wait for one more train. At Arisha’s end, no one had a clue where Sara Eaton was, or what had happened. Arisha had sounded like she was panicking, her big escape plan slipping away from her. Barsukov had already wanted to call it off, she said. Max had tried to keep her calm.

  It was a warm spring night in London, dry and clear. He could recall very clearly that it had been exactly the same twenty-three years ago, when he had first come here. That had been his first trip outside Russia, the stint in Afghanistan aside. He didn’t like to remember the Afghan months, because they had ended in a kind of shame for him – pulled out of his unit and sent back to Moscow before he’d seen action. His father – a man Maxim had barely known before his death a year later in a drive-by shooting on the streets of Krasnodar – had got Dima Barsukov to pull some strings, to ‘rescue’ his son, at his mother’s request. His father had been a ‘gun runner’ – that was how his mother described it – a criminal of the worst kind, because he had operated by supplying weaponry to the mujahedin, weaponry stolen from Russian forces. That had been a lucrative game back then, one that had got even bigger when the wars in Chechnya kicked off. Many men who were now respectable, prominent members of modern Russian society had started out by selling high-tech stolen weaponry to the country’s enemies. Dima Barsukov had had a finger in that pot too, and owed his father something as a consequence. So Maxim – against his will – had ended up working for Barsukov’s security team, being trained by an ex-sergeant called Rakachev, long since dead of his drunken carelessness.

  That was how he had ended up in London, in May 1989, while the Wall was still up, but with the writing very clearly on it, at least for those – like Barsukov – who were on the inside track. They had been guests of Liz Wellbeck, and stayed at a place like a palace, somewhere out in the Surrey countryside. Wellbeck had seemed very American, but spoke Russian and apparently had blood connections to people who were part of the Yeltsin circle. Barsukov was part of that clique and had ended up in Surrey as some kind of messenger, sent at Wellbeck’s request to consider future business possibilities, once the barriers fell – or so they had thought.

  Maxim had been there as a bodyguard. The group had been Barsukov, Rakachev and one other security guy, plus Arisha – by that time one of Dima’s many female ‘assistants’ – and an older woman who had been with Dima longer. Dima had been put up with the women, in lavish guest rooms. The three men had been lodged in a dingy cellar room and virtually ignored throughout the five days they were there. There hadn’t been a need for security, because the Wellbecks had their own, and plenty of it.

  Maxim hadn’t dared look at Arisha back then, and doubted she had noticed him much. The start for them had come almost a year later, when they’d been picked – via Barsukov – to steal a child for Liz Wellbeck. But in 1989 Maxim was a nobody. Arisha – they said – was in bed with Dima, so was far above his level. She had been at the meetings with Liz Wellbeck, while Maxim and Rakachev had been confined to the basement. Later, much later, she had told him that Wellbeck had only been interested in some property claim her family had, an attempt to repossess estates they had held in Golovchino, in southern Russia, taken into state ownership after the revolution, as far back as 1921. The land was worth nothing, Arisha had said, but Wellbeck wanted it back on principle, and refused to discuss anything else until guarantees were given.

  That trip had been an eye-opener for him. Until then the richest people he had ever come across hadn’t really had any money at all, merely power – people like Barsukov. Liz Wellbeck had treated Barsukov politely enough, but nevertheless as if he were stupid – from another, dirtier planet. Which was true. For her, Barsukov was there to be instructed, not asked or consulted. It had been humiliating. Since then, the same thing had happened to the whole of Russia, as a nation. He was glad to be out of the place.

  There had been some half-pleasant memories too, he supposed. On the fourth day Barsukov had let Rakachev and him travel by train into London itself. They had spent the day wandering around like dazed tourists, staring at everything. They’d had enough cash to buy a meal and a few drinks, but little else. He had wanted to buy Arisha something, stupidly, since he couldn’t even speak to her, but everything had been too expensive, even the silly T-shirts. Perhaps just as well, since he wasn’t sure now how she might have reacted to that kind of thing. Would it have been impertinent to give her a gift, back then?

  The pleasant memories were hard to recover now, because he had spent most of the time in a secret and miserable state of obsession, eaten away by jealousy of Barsukov and what he was doing to Arisha, imagining all of it. A year later she had laughed at him when he had confessed all this to her. Barsukov hadn’t been anywhere near her, she claimed. He still didn’t know whether to believe that.

  They had all come a long way since then. In so many respects. It was like thinking about something childish and naive when he saw them all sitting uncomfortably in Liz Wellbeck’s chauffeur-driven cars, in their shoddy Soviet clothing, with their pale, poor complexions, startled by the West and its incredible excesses, mumbling their atrocious English on demand. Things had come full circle since then. Or would soon.

  Or maybe not. He looked down at his bandaged hand – throbbing constantly now, clearly infected – and swore softly to himself. Nothing could be taken for granted.

  He checked his watch as he saw the security guy leave the exit from St Pancras. Alone. No Sara Eaton. No Tom Lomax. But he’d expected that, by now.

  He waited until the guy got into the Merc, waited another five minutes while they called Arisha for instructions. Then watched the Merc drive off. Arisha had said Barsukov was making his own enquiries to try to locate Sara Eaton via the connection to Lomax. Lomax, apparently, worked for a minor player called Glynn Powell. Barsukov had asked Powell to find Lomax for him. But Max wouldn’t wait for that. He gently rubbed the thick scar tissue to the side of his right eye, then got the piece of paper with Lomax’s address out of his pocket and looked at it. That would be his next stop.
>
  33

  It was still before midnight, but John Lomax was asleep when his mobile started to vibrate on the little bedside table. He was pressed tight against Rachel’s naked back, one arm beneath her and completely numb. He had to move her forward to get it free, and expected her to wake, but she didn’t. As he moved away from her he remembered with sudden bewilderment the progress of the evening, what had happened between them, how they had ended up like this. But that was as far as his reactions got. The phone was too loud. He got it into his other hand, pressed the button and put it to his ear. It took a while to recognise the voice speaking in a hushed tone. Ian Mercer, a good friend who was still in the job, a DI he had worked with on countless inquiries, including Grenser. He listened to a few sentences, let the initial information sink in, then asked Ian to wait a moment. He rolled carefully out of bed and walked out of the bedroom on tiptoe, closing the door behind him. He went into the study and stood behind his desk in the darkness, stark naked.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said.

  ‘It’s an APA. Came in two hours ago.’

  APA. That was a piece of Interpol jargon – it meant an All Ports Alert. Some foreign police force wanted info sent out to every UK entry point alerting the authorities to detain an individual.

  ‘And it’s for Tom? My Tom? You’re sure?’ That’s what Ian had told him a minute ago.

  ‘Thomas Lomax. I’m looking at it now. I cross-checked the date of birth. Plus there’s a photo. It’s for Tom and one other. The request is from Belgium.’

  ‘Belgium?’ The Belgian police had never scored high on his respect meter. ‘How long will it take to action it?’

  ‘It’s done. They go through automatically now. Been like that a year or more.’

  ‘So there’s already an active All Ports Alert for Tom.’ He said it to himself, not as a question. He was trying to work out what it might mean.