The Vanishing

by John Connor

  She waited for her breathing to settle. But her head was spinning. She was too dizzy to sit up. She crawled as far back from him as she could and curled into a ball, keeping her eyes open and on him. ‘What did you do to me?’ she hissed. ‘What have you done?’ She started to retch again. The room smelled of vomit and machine oil, and something worse, lingering in the background.

  ‘You need to drink something,’ he said. ‘And eat. You’ll feel better then. It was a harmless sedative. An anaesthetic. You’ll have a headache, feel sick – until you drink more and eat more. You need to do that to recover. There’s food here …’ He turned his back to her and walked over to what looked like a rusted, metal workbench with a naked light bulb dangling above it. There was a battered wooden stool placed in front of it, a small fridge to the side of it. The bench was right against the wall of the place. Her eyes took in the space beyond it. It was some kind of long, windowless room with metal walls. Six foot across, maybe thirty feet long, eight feet high. More like a corridor than a room. She couldn’t work out what it was. ‘What have you done to me?’ She tried to shout, but the words came out feeble. ‘What did you do? You fucking cunt. What have you done to me?’

  He came back towards her with a plate in one hand. ‘Nothing bad,’ he said calmly. ‘Why would I? I need you alive. So stop worrying and stop shouting. I only took this from your arm …’ He held up something too small to see. ‘That’s all I’ve done. Aside from that I haven’t touched you. No one has.’

  She frowned, trying to see it properly. He took it from her arm? Her arm was throbbing, right in the armpit. She remembered the transmitter just as he spoke again.

  ‘The transmitter,’ he said. ‘Believe me – the last thing you need is for your father to know where you are. So I took it out and disabled it. I was careful, the cut was clean. I used a sterilised blade. You’ll be fine. Maybe some infection, but nothing your body can’t handle.’ He raised his arm a little higher, and she saw a tiny metal object held clumsily in his fist. Some of his fingers were crudely splinted together, pieces of wood protruding, the whole arm a mess of bloody bandages. ‘I did to you a lot less than you did to me,’ he said. ‘I have maybe two broken fingers. Plus infection in the arm. You tried to kill me.’

  She was starting to tremble violently. ‘I had the crosshairs on your head for ten seconds,’ she spat. ‘If I’d wanted to kill you, you would be dead, believe me …’ The words choked in her throat. ‘I fucking spared you. I’m fucking stupid …’

  She expected no reaction, but his expression changed. ‘You aimed for my hand?’

  ‘I aimed for the gun. I should have put it through your head …’

  He smiled. ‘You have spirit,’ he said quietly. ‘And ability. You hit the gun.’

  ‘What do you want? What do you fucking want? Why am I here?’

  ‘It won’t help you to get angry and excited …’

  ‘You want my mother to pay a ransom? Is that it? Well, she can’t, because she’s dead. She can’t pay you anything.’

  ‘I know Liz Wellbeck is dead. But I know your family too, know how much money there is. I knew your mother before you were even born …’

  ‘She wasn’t my mother. You’re wrong. She wasn’t even my mother …’ She blurted it out before she could censor herself. It was the information Alison had given her – ‘she’s not your mother …’ she had said. ‘Liz Wellbeck is not your mother … that’s why all this is happening …’ Her last words.

  Her gift to Sara.

  For a moment the information sat there in the silence between them.

  ‘Who told you that?’ he asked finally. He sounded puzzled.

  ‘That’s none of your fucking business …’

  He shrugged. ‘We can leave your mother out of it. Freddie Eaton is your father and he has money enough …’

  ‘My father won’t pay you anything. He has a policy. He’s told me many times …’

  ‘He’ll pay. Don’t you worry about that …’

  ‘He won’t. The money isn’t even his. It was hers – Liz Wellbeck’s. I know he won’t pay anything. But I can pay you. Tell me how much you want. I can arrange it.’

  He smiled at that, then knelt again, nearer to her. ‘You should stop talking,’ he said gently. She pulled away involuntarily, but the metal band wrenched at her ankle and she cried out.

  ‘I have to keep that on you,’ he said, looking at it. ‘For obvious reasons. But there’s no need to drag at it, no need to try to get away. I give you my word that I have no intention of harming you. This is food that you should eat …’ He held the plate towards her.

  43

  Tom didn’t think about what he was going to have plenty of time to do once he got to Alex’s place. That decision was already made. His main worry was that his dad would think better of the three-hours deal. He had told his dad the entire thing because it seemed the only way to get his cooperation. Well, not the entire thing. He’d left out crucial parts. What Alison Spencer had told Sara – that Liz Wellbeck was not her mother – for example. And that Liz Wellbeck had probably intended that he, John Lomax, should have ended up on the island with Sara, not his son. Why hadn’t he told him that? He wasn’t sure. It was like he had lied somehow – took on a job that his father was meant to have taken, assumed his identity. He’d felt ashamed about it. Knowing it would only confirm what his father already thought about him – that he was some kind of criminal. But that wasn’t really a good reason not to tell him. And nor was the need to rope him in a good reason to have told him everything he had. He’d let his mouth run, of course. Because it was all sitting there in his head like a squirming monster, because he had to talk about it to someone, get it out. Because Sara was gone. Sara, the person he’d shared this whole nightmare with, the only other person in the world who could understand what he was feeling. If he hadn’t spoken about it to someone his head would have exploded. How much had he given away? he asked himself. He couldn’t even recall now exactly what he’d said. Everything was confused and unreal. The passage of time, too. All he knew for certain was that he had to get to Alex and get out of him who had taken Sara.

  He drove deliberately carefully, feeling the anger burn within him but not letting it interfere with his reactions. He had to look normal, drive normally, not go too fast. Not that he could see any police cars or patrolling officers. There was traffic, but not much, and nothing that he needed to be careful of.

  He ran through his plan, such as it was. He needed Alex on the ground, incapacitated. That was the first step. Take him by surprise, get him down. Because Alex was bigger than him, of course, and stronger. He had a wily sort of intelligence too, but it wouldn’t reach to correctly judging what Tom was now capable of. Tom would get to the house, he thought – he was almost there already – park up, ring the fucker and get him to step out. He would be waiting for him in the garden, hidden. Alex wouldn’t come prepared because he would be expecting Tom, his old friend, the little wimp he had just given a good kicking. Tom knew the exact spot in the garden where he should wait. Then step out as Alex passed, swing the bat, bring him down. That was the first step.

  He turned into Alex’s street. A long, tree-lined avenue. Plenty of cover. He thought – what will I do if he’s not there? He hadn’t considered that. What if Alex was off with whoever had Sara? He would come back some time. Tom could wait. The rage could wait. This feeling wasn’t momentary. It could last weeks, just bubbling away under the surface. He could guard it, nurture it, wait for the right time. But then it would all be too late. And anyway, his dad would have called all this in before that and then there would be other people coming for Alex. So he hoped Alex was in. He couldn’t think past that right now.

  Get him down – what next? Alex was a tough little fucker. Take him down with the bat, tie him with some rope. Except he hadn’t brought any rope. Alex would have some, though. In his garage. But how would he get him back into the house? Drag him? He started to get confused thinking it throug
h. He could see the trees in front of the place now. He was there. He put the thoughts to one side, but then remembered Alex’s wife and kids. Garth and June. He hadn’t even considered them until this moment. What would he do about them?

  He parked the car, got the bat out and started to jog towards the gateway. He felt weird, his head pounding with real pain now, but also airy, light, as if he were floating along. He tried to ignore the confusion he felt when he thought about Alex’s family seeing anything. He couldn’t stop to consider all that. Not now. Sometimes you just had to act. Now he was getting his phone out to call Alex’s number. Now he was going to do it.

  John already knew where Alex Renton lived. He had a fat dossier of information on Alex Renton from during the disciplinary hearings against Tom. He had needed to find out what the little thug had got into since leaving school. Renton was a middle-tier lackey in some mediocre gang run by a mid-range west London mobster called Glynn Powell. Powell was into the usual mix – drugs, extortion, prostitution, fraud, trafficking of all kinds, plus attempts at laundering and legitimisation. But he wasn’t up to this. He was too small to kidnap someone as big as Sara Eaton. He could command neither the loyalty nor the facilities to keep something like this under wraps once the conflicts arose – once the reward was broadcast, for example. And Powell would know that. He wouldn’t even try something so risky. So if Renton organised this for Powell then Powell was doing someone else a favour, someone bigger. And that, in itself, raised interesting questions about the timings. How had this other party managed to contact Powell so quickly, for example? Was there some warning? Had someone known that Sara Eaton was going to be here?

  Renton lived in a decent enough house – more decent than John would ever be able to afford – in what counted as upmarket Feltham. There were high walls, security gates, tall hedges, a long front garden, trees obscuring clear views to the building. As John turned into the long road he had to slow suddenly, because Tom had already stopped, he saw, right opposite the place, wheels on the verge. John pulled over, turning like he was going into a driveway. He went back the way he had come until a row of trees blocked his view to Tom, then got out carefully, quietly. He heard a door closing.

  Tom was already jogging across the road as John came past the treeline. The road was deserted, with poor street lighting, all the houses set well back. John ducked back behind the trees, though felt there was no need. Tom wasn’t looking around, wasn’t being careful at all. John started to quicken his pace, going down the blind side of the line of trees. He caught intermittent glimpses of Tom walking along the front wall of the place, then a hedge got in the way. How was he going to deal with the security gates? John wondered.

  As he came from behind the hedge he was only about thirty feet from Tom’s car. He slowed and looked across, but couldn’t see him any more. He paused, listening. He couldn’t hear anything either. He stepped out and looked properly, then kept walking, quickly reaching the car. There was no sign of Tom anywhere. Had he already got over the gates somehow?

  John crossed the road, noting the security camera above the gates. It was pointing down at the gates themselves. They were about ten feet high. He couldn’t see how Tom would have got over them without any noise. He looked around, starting to panic. About thirty feet along he realised there was a path through trees, leading down the side between Renton’s place and the gardens of the next property. He ran to it, looked down into the darkness. The route was overgrown. He began to push through. Tom must have come this way.

  John was making a lot of noise as he went, so much that he couldn’t hear anything ahead. To his left the wall was lower now and he kept catching glimpses of a big house, lights all off. He started to swear to himself, and right then he saw Tom. He was about forty feet ahead, past the line of the house, on a clearer area of path. He was crouched down, motionless. John stopped, holding his breath. But then immediately realised there was nothing he could do here except stop Tom – it had gone too far to do anything else – so he kept walking, gaining quickly on him.

  He was almost on him before Tom looked up and saw him. He didn’t register surprise. The stick was a baseball bat, John saw now, but Tom wasn’t holding it – it was already discarded, lying in the foliage behind him. At the same time John realised there was another, lower gate here, a side entrance. But Tom wasn’t trying to get through it. He was crouched down, head in his hands. When he raised his head the light from the moon fell across his face. It was wet. He was crying. John stopped. ‘It’s only me, son,’ he whispered, confused. He looked across at Renton’s house, but could see no signs of life.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ he heard Tom mutter. ‘I can’t do it.’

  John stepped over and crouched down beside him, put a hand on his shoulder. He felt worried about the house, about Renton hearing something, but more than that he felt a tremendous relief. He’d been foolish to worry at all, maybe.

  ‘I would have to go in,’ Tom said. ‘I’d have to take him down, crush his fucking face with the bat. His kid might see, or his wife … I can’t do that …’

  John nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ Tom said again. ‘I can only think about it. I can’t actually do any of it. Not to anyone.’

  John patted his shoulder, very gently. He felt like whooping with relief. ‘It’s good you can’t,’ he said. ‘It means you’re not like that fucker. It means you’re human.’

  ‘They’ll kill her, though. I’ve fucked it up completely. I can’t do anything.’

  ‘That’s not true. We need to talk about it. Urgently.’

  44

  She was starving, but she wouldn’t touch the food he was offering. He kept coming back to her with the plate. She kept refusing. He was standing in front of her again now, holding it out. ‘Will you eat or not?’ he asked.

  ‘Tell me how much you want,’ she said to him, again. ‘I can arrange it. I will arrange it right now. Just give me my phone. If that is what this is about … if it’s only money …’

  ‘Only? You have forty million sterling?’

  His eyes flickered as she hesitated. He saw the truth at once. Of course, she didn’t have anywhere near that. Not in liquid assets. Maybe he knew that already.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But on Friday I will have it. I’ll pay you then if you let me go now. You have my word …’

  He laughed now, but not unkindly. ‘It’s out of my hands,’ he said. ‘Sorry, but I can’t do it. I just look after you …’

  ‘And kill people.’ She could hear herself spitting the words at him. Shut up, she thought, in her head. Stop goading him. But her mouth wouldn’t obey. ‘You’re a fucking monster. You killed my friends …’

  ‘Your friends? You mean your staff?’

  ‘Janine Mailot was a friend.’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t do that. And I think it was you who started the shooting. No?’

  ‘The others were already dead. She was stripped, terrified …’

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t want anyone to die or be hurt. It was a mistake. All of it. I used the wrong people.’ He looked at the floor, still frozen in the same position, with the plate extended towards her. Incredibly, he looked upset. She inched a fraction closer, just enough to ease the tension on her ankle, then pushed herself into a half-sitting position. If he crouched lower, she could kick him with her free leg, she thought. There was enough slack. Get him in the face, or the throat. Jean-Marc had taught her how to kick or punch people in the throat. If she was lucky she would disable him for a few minutes. But what then? She had to think about it, not just react. She had to be intelligent, use her head.

  ‘Sometimes shit like that happens,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about your friend.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, her voice cracking as she fought back the tears. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  He looked up at her, then knelt on the floor, right in front of her, the plate still in his hand. ‘Will you eat this food? Pl
ease?’

  ‘You going to force it down me if I don’t?’

  ‘Of course not …’

  ‘My arm is sore. It’s infected. I need antibiotics …’

  ‘You’ll live. This should be over in a few hours, then you can use all that money you’ve got to get all the medicine you want …’

  How did he know about the transmitter? He knew about her family, so he was connected somehow, so she had to know him from somewhere. There had to be a link. Or was the connection to Tom Lomax? Could he have set this up? He had left her to this man, left the car and abandoned her. She forced her mind away from that. She couldn’t face it. She had heard Tom shout a warning, anyway. The truth could be anything. She had no idea what was going on. She needed to know who this man was. She had thought she recognised him on the island, when he was in the sights of her gun. She should have killed him then. She was fucking stupid. He had cut out the transmitter. Her last hope, the final back-up. Now no one could find her.