The Vanishing

by John Connor

  Houses appeared. He was still running, making a lot of noise as he gasped for breath. He slowed. What time was it? Not yet three, he thought. All the houses were dark, curtains drawn. There were a few smaller ones, fronting the street, but most were set back, in gardens, big detached mansions. The street lights made him squint. He prayed there were no police patrolling here. Now that he could see himself he realised he had been bleeding from somewhere. It was all over the clothes he was in.

  He got off the road and kept going, sticking to the shadows under the fences. A sign appeared, a fancy colourful thing in retro style. SHACKLEFORD, it said. ‘Welcome to …’ Etc. Etc. He passed it by, searching ahead for a public phone. It wasn’t guaranteed there would be one, not these days. What would he do then?

  He reached a kind of village green. There was not a soul in sight. Everything was silent, bathed in yellow street light, unreal. The houses were all huge, with mock Tudor beams, or thatch, ostentatious alarm systems. He couldn’t see any shops. He saw a phone box at the other side of the green, though, and picked up his pace, jumping straight over a little fence, passing the ‘Keep off the Grass’ signs.

  It was an old red phone box, very conspicuous. Probably the only reason it still existed was that it was as retro as the rest of the place. Stockbroker-belt street furniture, to remind the wealthy what England had once been like – around the time he was ten years old – before their mobiles had completely taken over. Back then every street had a phone box stinking of piss. He pulled the door open and stepped in. He held the phone to his ear. It was a newer, modern thing. It took credit cards, notes, etc. Not coins. There was a dial tone.

  He screwed his eyes shut and tried to recall the number. It was so long since he had used it. He couldn’t remember. He got a fiver out of his pocket and slotted it in. The machine took it. He let his fingers press the buttons without thinking, hoping they would remember. It didn’t work. He got a continuous tone. He tried again, pressing the numbers he thought might be right. He listened to it ringing. It rang about ten times then a voice answered. He sighed with relief. ‘Dad,’ he said.

  37

  Sara had fleeting flashes from a different perspective, where she could see herself in the back of the car, see what was really happening – and in those moments she felt a panic-stricken horror, because it meant that where she was, standing in the field with her mother, had to be a dream, or some kind of hideous hallucination, not real at all – and then she could feel her mother slipping away from her and had to shout out to her, holding her hands outstretched and trying to grab at her mother’s clothing to stop her from vanishing, because some frightened part of her knew her mother was actually dead, not holding her hand, not smiling at her, not there at all. Instead there was this man forcing her down, whispering in her ear, doing things to her …

  She was trying as hard as she could to stay with her mother, to stay where it was safe. The field was the one right outside the place near Golovchino. It was full of a blond, waist-high grass that was being blown in waves in the wind. The entire field looked like water, rippling in huge spiral waves as the wind whipped across it. Up above them there was a broken old fence between two stands of birch, and then an overgrown lawn leading to the house – a magnificent, broken, collapsing palace, with smashed windows and tarnished minarets, direct from a Russian fairy tale. Even in neglect, abandoned, it looked magical, a relic from a time that had existed many years before she was born, or even before her mother was born. But it wasn’t a dream, it was a memory. Because she had been there, with her mother. She had actually stood where she was now, looking up the slope, across the huge wheat field, with her mother by her side, holding her hand, telling her that this place was where she was from, where she was really from, where she belonged.

  Could that have happened? She could feel her mother’s hand like it was real. But had it happened? Everything was confusing. The images fractured as if on a rent projector screen and she was suddenly back in the car, the man forcing her arms back. His weight was on top of her, crushing her, she had the smell of him in her nose. There was a frightening succession of blurred movements across her vision, things coming at her. Then there were more of them, more men, holding her down, pulling her T-shirt off, saying things to her, warning her to keep still. She began to gasp for air and tried to pull away, but she had no control of her limbs. She couldn’t move anything properly. She felt like something had hit her head, very hard, knocking her to the ground, forcing the air from her lungs. They were pushing her arms up above her head, rolling her on to her side. She was more terrified than she had ever been in her life, yet could do nothing. They had done something to her so she couldn’t move – drugged her. There was some kind of fabric over her mouth, choking her … she tried to scream, but all that came up was vomit. She was being sick and it was sticking in her throat. She would breathe it in and die.

  She started coughing violently, then the images melted again and she could feel her mother’s hand, hanging on to her, calming her. She took a breath. Her throat was clear now. Back in the wheat field she could breathe. She felt a sense of safety and security. It was coming from her mother, directly, going into her hand, then spreading through her body. Liz was staring down at her, her hair waving in the wind, a smile on her face, her eyes kind. One day you will return here. That was what she was saying. You will bring our family home. Pointing at the palace through the trees, moving her arm across the horizon to show what belonged to them. All of it. All the fields as far as she could see, the palace, the section of the river at the bottom of the slope where the dirt track turned into the forest.

  How old was she? She was still much shorter than Liz. Maybe ten years old. Liz looked young. It had to be a memory, from a time before Liz got sick and began to obsess about dirt and disease. Sara had been twelve when her mother had bought the clinic in Paris and moved in. After that everything had changed. She had seen less and less of her, been sent off to various boarding schools. And she had hardly ever seen her father anyway. Only Felice had been there for her after that. One series of empty houses after another, full of staff and people she didn’t know. If Felice had not been there she would have killed herself. She had taken an overdose when she was fifteen, but her father had just shrugged when he found out. It was de rigueur to try it, he said, when you had all that she had, when there was nothing else she could need. He’d done it himself. So what?

  Had those really been his words, at the hospital bed, by her side, holding her hand and telling her – so what? She hadn’t remembered that before.

  Her mother had referred her to a batch of psychiatrists, but had never spoken to her about it. Or about anything. Yet up to the age of ten she had never been away from her mother. She had felt loved then. She had been loved. She knew that, because she had been over and over it all with the psychiatrists. But at ten years old it had all stopped. All the love, all the affection, all the contact. Suddenly her mother was gone – into her clinic – inaccessible. So this – this visit to her mother’s property in Russia – if it was a memory – this must have been before the big change, before it all fell apart.

  She felt a sharp pain somewhere in her body. The wheat field wavered and faded. There was urgent noise all around her. The man hissing something at her. He was speaking in Russian, so fast she could barely understand. Liz had spoken Russian to her when she was little, but no one had bothered since then, and it was maybe thirteen years since she had spoken it regularly. She still could, but not well. Was that why she was imagining this thing in Russia, because he was speaking Russian, because … she screamed as the pain sliced into her again. It was her arm they were cutting. Or her side. She tried to struggle, tried to speak, but there was lead in her limbs, her mouth wouldn’t open. Everything was sluggish, spinning, dizzy. She was screaming in her head, but nothing was coming out of her mouth. She could feel a pulse of blood running out of her. She wanted to struggle and kick but couldn’t. He was muttering to her as he did it, his v
oice so close it was like something inside her head, whispering insistently, telling her he was doing this for her, that he had to do it, that it would soon be over, that everything would soon be over …

  38

  When her phone began to vibrate, Arisha was in the library, sitting right opposite Freddie and the policeman at the long oak table there, listening intently, trying very hard to make it look like she was calm. She got up without saying anything and walked over to the closed, panelled door. She stepped out into the passageway, closed the door after her and moved over to the window before taking the phone from the pocket of her jeans and answering. The number had been withheld, the caller anonymous, but she knew who it would be.

  ‘Clear,’ a voice said quickly, in Russian. ‘All safe.’

  Max. She was sure of it. She felt a huge surge of relief, took a massive breath, let the tension begin to escape. ‘And the device?’ she asked, very quietly, with great self-control.

  ‘Done,’ he said. ‘No worries.’ Then he was gone.

  She put the phone back into her pocket and leaned heavily on the windowsill. Thank God for that, she thought. She said a little prayer of thanks, silently, but fervently.

  Outside it was the middle of the night – the early hours of the morning, in fact – but the view across the Thames was lit by the lights from Chelsea Embankment. They were in Freddie’s house there, a place he hated using because it fronted the road, and despite all the soundproofing they could always hear the traffic. There wasn’t much of it at this hour, comparatively, but it was still fairly constant. Streams of light flashing by. To the left, about two hundred yards away, Chelsea Bridge, lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Her eyes fixed on a long, black barge sliding through the water directly in front of her. She watched the reflected yellow light rippling in its wake and felt her heart slowing for the first time since all this had started. From the end of the passageway, up in the drawing room, she could hear the lawyers talking quietly. There were two lawyers at the table up there, and three people from security. Plus the other two policemen. They were waiting for Freddie to finish with the assistant commissioner.

  She got her thoughts together and turned back to the library. She had to stop herself from smiling. ‘All safe’ meant Max had found Sara Eaton, that he had her, that the plan was back on track. Her question about the device, and his answer, meant he had – somehow – managed to disable the tracking device that was implanted in Sara Eaton’s arm. A very discreet agency – owned by a Wellbeck family company – provided this unadvertised service to a select number of clients who had well-grounded kidnap fears and enough wealth to take cutting-edge counter-measures. Arisha had never seen the device, but knew all about it. It was what Freddie Eaton was counting on. Smaller than a pacemaker, it contained a state-of-the-art GPS signalling system. She had been told that if you felt the skin beneath Sara Eaton’s left armpit you could find the location of the thing quite easily, along with the small scar from when it had been fitted, three years ago. To extend battery life the device could lie in a dormant state, until remotely activated by the controlling company. Freddie had already told her to request this, of course, and up until now she had been relying on the device too, waiting for the company to call so that she could pass the coordinates to Max. But either the thing had malfunctioned or something else was interfering with it. The company hadn’t been able to get a clear signal. And now Max had Sara, Arisha didn’t need the thing, so it was imperative Freddie couldn’t use it to trace Sara. So Max had removed it.

  She sat down as Freddie started to tell the policeman what he wanted. The policeman glanced uneasily at her, again. He obviously hadn’t wanted her in there with them. He’d wanted privacy. From his own men, from her. Because he was corrupt, in a straightforward way – he was Freddie’s contact point, his eyes and ears on the inside of the Metropolitan Police. One of them, at any rate. The kind of influence Freddie had could get you a lot of friends in powerful places. This man was an assistant commissioner. But the commissioner himself had attended Freddie’s last birthday party. His fingers could pull many strings, if he had to, even now, when he was about to lose virtually nine-tenths of his fortune. Nobody knew that, of course.

  Freddie had summoned this man to explain why there was some kind of international warrant for Sara Eaton’s arrest. He had found that out from friends in France and Belgium. In fact, he probably knew more about what was going on than the policeman sitting here now. They all did.

  The policeman was called William Morgan. Freddie called him ‘Bill’. He wasn’t in uniform – everything looked pretty casual, in fact, Freddie in jeans and open-necked shirt, the policeman in smart casual gear – but he still looked uncomfortable, Freddie haranguing him gently, as if it were a fireside chat at the golf club and Freddie was his superior. ‘I want it sorting, Bill. I really do,’ he said now. ‘It’s absolutely disgraceful that this has been permitted. It’s quite clear that my daughter has managed to escape a truly horrific incident on that island, only to have this happen. She is a victim, for Christ’s sake. And this isn’t how we should be treating the victims of crime. She told me – you should make a note of this – she told me, in effect, that they found one of our most valued former assistants dying. Alison Spencer. It was clear that there had been a burglary. A violent burglary. They found her dying. Good God! Can you imagine it? She told me …’ He paused. Bill was nodding at his words, but hadn’t actually taken any notes. ‘I mean it, Bill,’ Freddie said, smiling. ‘I think you should write this down.’ He stopped.

  Bill looked perplexed. ‘I don’t have …’ he started. His hands went through his pockets. ‘I don’t have …’

  ‘Please use this,’ Arisha said, sliding a small pad of notepaper and a couple of pens across the table.

  ‘Thank you.’ He pulled the pad closer and scribbled something on it.

  ‘Because that doesn’t appear in the information the Belgians have sent to back this warrant, or whatever it is,’ Freddie started again. ‘I know that as a fact. They aren’t even looking at the possibility that my daughter might have disturbed a violent burglary in progress …’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true, Freddie,’ Bill said. He scratched his head. ‘I think they’re just covering all the bases. That’s all. They have this footage of Sara and this other chap at the property and so they want to find them …’

  ‘Well, it’s not on. “Cover all the bases”? It’s simply not on. I want it stopped. I mean it. They just cannot be permitted to do that. It’s a complete affront, an abuse of my daughter’s liberty and rights. I won’t lie down and take it. I won’t have you complicit in such nonsense. Two dead people and a ransacked house. Our house, belonging to our family. You understand that? That property is ours. So there is absolutely no question of Sara herself somehow being classified as a trespasser. What has happened must be obvious to anyone with half a brain. My daughter and her friend arrived while the burglars were still present. They found Miss Spencer and, obviously, fled. Meanwhile the burglars – one way or another – managed to murder Miss Spencer and her friend, Mr Meyer – another trusted and highly valued family assistant, I should add. And instead of searching for the killers, the perpetrators, the Belgian police have issued a warrant to imprison my daughter. It’s absolutely disgraceful. That it would happen in that country does not surprise me. But that you – you of all people, Bill – should be complicit – that I cannot tolerate.’

  ‘I assure you, if there were anything that I could …’

  ‘You must get the lawyers on to it at once. There will be a loophole, a procedural problem. My lawyers already advise me that it is possible to return these wretched things if there are procedural errors. Now if my people can come up with something, then surely yours can too?’

  ‘They’re looking at it. It’s with the lawyers already, Freddie. I’ve seen to that.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Freddie sighed. His face was red with the effort of trying to stay calm. ‘Well,
there we are, then. Hopefully you will have good news for me soon.’ He smiled and shuffled the little pile of loose papers beside him on the table, a signal that the meeting was finished.

  But Bill was frowning. ‘I have to ask you a couple of questions, Freddie,’ he said, as if that were an embarrassment. ‘It will speed matters up if there are things I know.’

  Freddie continued organising the papers. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’ve obviously had contact with Sara.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know where she is presently?’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me. She’s her father’s daughter – she’s careful. She wouldn’t tell me over a public phone network. Not since the last time I was caught out that way.’ Referring to the infamous newspaper bugging debacle. The police had been implicated in that, after all. Freddie started to stand up. ‘For all I know you might have been listening to our conversation. So she was right not to say. I was silly to ask.’

  ‘How long is it since you spoke?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘A couple of hours. I told her to keep away. I told her there were security issues. I’m sorry to say that you …’ He pointed a finger at Bill. ‘… you, the police, I mean, our own British police forces, were those issues. It’s dreadfully disappointing that it should come to that. But as that’s how it is, I didn’t want her coming anywhere near here – or our home in Surrey – until I knew I could count on you not just clapping her in irons. You understand, of course.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘And I’m so glad it’s all clarified now. Now we can get on with finding out about the kidnap attempt and the atrocity on the island.’