The Vanishing

by John Connor

  It had only half-turned across the road, so his way was blocked. He hit the horn, but that produced no response. Why had it stopped? There was no obvious obstruction in front of it. He horned it again, trying to peer round it. Then the passenger door opened and a big guy in a smart suit got out. He walked casually over. John wound his window down. The man was speaking to him, holding his hands up as if to advise John to be calm. John shouted at him, telling him to fucking move. He couldn’t understand a word the man was saying. But still the Merc wasn’t budging. Was it Russian the guy was speaking?

  He wound the window up and put the car into reverse. But already there was someone behind him. He almost backed into them – a truck. He was horning the guy as well. John banged his fists off the steering wheel. The man from the car was right by his passenger door now. At the instant John thought to lock it, right when his finger was on the button, the man opened the door, picked his mobile off the seat and leaned his head in. ‘Take it easy, mate,’ he said, in a very thick accent. ‘Take it easy. OK?’

  ‘Put my fucking phone down,’ John yelled. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  The man stepped back, looking at the phone. He was trying to get the back off it, John thought.

  Suddenly he realised what was happening. He got out at once and ran round the car. The man saw him and started backing off, hands in the air. The driver of the truck behind was still leaning on the horn, the Mercedes was still stuck across the road. John started yelling at the man, demanding his phone. It registered how big the guy was just as he got up to him. By then he was already pulling his arm back to thump him. He didn’t get that far. The man dropped the phone to the ground, breaking it into pieces, then held both hands up in a submissive gesture. ‘Sorry. Sorry,’ he was saying. ‘Just a little misunderstanding. Sorry.’ John picked up the phone pieces, fuming. He knew exactly what had happened. He looked over the top of the Merc and felt his heart go into overdrive. There was definitely no sign of Barsukov now.

  50

  The place Barsukov turned into must have been right on the river, Tom calculated. As they drove past the outlet for Barking Creek, he kept catching glimpses of grey water and the mudflats on the far bank. There was a nine-foot security fence at the front, electrified along the top, according to warning signs, twisted through with razor wire, with CCTV cameras prominently displayed. Beyond it there were low brick buildings and, over the top of them, Tom could see rows and rows of rusting, used shipping containers, stacked on top of each other, as in a dockyard, sometimes into structures five or six high, the names of shipping lines and export companies still partially visible in big letters on their sides. They were painted a variety of dull colours – off-white, yellow, black, blue – making a chequerboard of random patterns where there were groups stacked closely together. The predominant impression, though, was of a chaotic dump of rust-red, forty-foot-long metal containers piled into an area about the size of two football fields, stacked tightly on top of each other, or side by side in rows and blocks, so high that the whole thing was like a massive, irregular fortress. There were a couple of cranes standing over the biggest stacks, and high floodlight pylons. A sign at the entrance said the place housed EXPRO CONTAINER STORAGE – one of the addresses on the list Barsukov had taken from him. There didn’t seem to be any sign of life within the compound – no movement, no people.

  Barsukov had some kind of remote to open the gates. As they slid back and the Volvo pulled alongside a security cabin, a private security guard in a creased brown uniform appeared from somewhere. Tom kept his eyes moving, trying to take in as much as he could. The guard came to the driver’s-side window. Barsukov and he had a short exchange in Russian, then Barsukov drove past the admin buildings and into a wide concrete yard, overgrown with weeds. The rows of containers started at the edges of the yard, towering corridors of metal with giant forklifts and mobile cranes parked haphazardly at intervals. Tom counted twenty-five rows of containers stretching off towards the river. ‘I told them to take a break,’ Barsukov said as he cut the engine. ‘We don’t want any witnesses. They’re used to that. But they’ll be back. We have about half an hour.’

  Tom nodded nervously and glanced back to the gates. He would have preferred them to have stayed, maybe. Barsukov seemed to have left the gates open, though. ‘This is all storage?’ Tom asked, clearing his voice. ‘That’s what this place is?’

  ‘The Olympics have generated a lot of storage opportunities. We have nearly five hundred containers here. It’s a little sideline. I would get rid of it, but the privacy is useful. You could keep anyone in here, lost in there …’ He pointed to the maze of stacked containers. ‘No one can see or hear. Sometimes that is useful. You understand?’

  Tom looked away. ‘She’s here?’ he asked. ‘Sara is here?’

  Barsukov smiled. ‘Tell me, Lomax, how did you know to come to me? Not a lucky guess, I assume?’

  Tom swallowed. He’d thought already of a response to that, though. ‘Alex Renton told me.’

  Barsukov frowned.

  ‘He works for Glynn Powell.’

  ‘Ah. Of course. Small-time people. Little people. No standards. I have very few dealings with this man Powell.’ He paused. ‘But you don’t expect me to believe that Renton just gave you my name?’

  ‘He had to be persuaded,’ Tom said, without looking at him.

  Barsukov laughed, then exited the car. Tom got out on his side and stood there, scanning the place, watching out for anyone who might appear from between the rows of containers. Behind them he saw two men walk out of the gates. The security guards. But still the gates were left open. Barsukov had turned the car in the yard so that it was pointing back at the gates. He was leaving the gates open so he could get out fast, Tom thought.

  Barsukov walked round to him. ‘You are a poor liar,’ he said, standing right in front of him, too close. ‘I very much doubt persuading is one of your strengths. But you have done well in this. You persuaded me. When all this is over you should come back to me. I could use your abilities.’ Another one of those nasty little smiles. ‘I mean that. That is an offer you should not refuse.’

  Tom took a step back. ‘When all this over?’ he said. ‘Let’s keep our focus on that right now. What happens now? Is the idea that we just find Sara and I walk off with her?’

  ‘You don’t trust me?’ Barsukov pointed back to the gates. ‘You can leave. The gates are open.’ He looked around, squinting into the sunlight, then shaded his eyes and stared at the rows of containers. ‘Otherwise you can follow,’ he said. He started to walk. ‘Let’s get it over with.’ Tom went after him. He could feel the skin prickling at the back of his neck. ‘Like I said, I know about you,’ Barsukov called over his shoulder. ‘I had some research carried out, on both you and your father. That was why I wanted to meet you, a week ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Elizabeth Wellbeck was trying to make contact with your father. That concerned me, because it touched on another matter. But you don’t need to know about that. Not now. Because of that, however, I wouldn’t have needed your paperwork to be convinced that this should be stopped. I just needed to know your father was with you. That’s what I checked this morning. He was in a car outside my apartment. Easy to spot.’

  Tom tried to work out what that might mean for the backup plan, but Barsukov wasn’t giving him time to think. ‘I calculated that his connections might still be effective enough to make the increased risk not worth my while,’ he said. ‘So it was a simple choice for me. The money involved is negligible. My interest was always in revenge, not the money.’

  ‘Revenge? On Sara?’ Barsukov had entered one of the long canyons of stacked containers now. They were in shadow, the sun cut from view. Barsukov was walking quickly, Tom still a few paces behind him. The corridor was wide, big enough to turn a forklift in, but the space still felt claustrophobic, the huge metal structures leaning in on them. Their footsteps and voices were dampened. Tom saw things scur
rying away in the spaces between the stacks.

  ‘Rats,’ Barsukov said. ‘The place is infested.’ He stopped, looking around as if he were lost.

  ‘Revenge on who?’ Tom asked again. ‘What has Sara done to you?’

  ‘I couldn’t care less about Sara Eaton,’ Barsukov said. He started walking again. ‘It’s her father I despise. This would have ruined him, financially. That would be nice, but not nice enough, not once you changed the equation. So I can wait. I’m very patient, where revenge is concerned. I never forget.’

  They passed a big forklift and kept going. At the end of the row, about four hundred yards away, Tom could see the river glinting in the sunlight. But on the broken concrete surface between the walls of containers it was cold. He was still shivering. It hadn’t completely stopped since he had got out of Barsukov’s bathtub. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked. He sounded frightened, tried to change his tone. ‘Where is she? Are you sure she’s here?’

  Barsukov made an impatient noise. ‘You think I brought you here to kill you? I gave you my word – remember? Of course she’s here.’

  He turned suddenly into a much narrower corridor between two very tall stacks of containers. Tom glanced up – they were five or six high, reaching at least fifty feet into the air.

  ‘Come on,’ Barsukov shouted to him. ‘Be quick.’ He was in front of a container, holding a metal ladder that was leaning against it.

  ‘We go up there?’ Tom asked.

  But Barsukov was already climbing.

  Tom went to the bottom of the ladder and looked up. Barsukov was going quickly, the ladder bouncing and shaking with his weight. It was an ordinary two-stage aluminium ladder and it went straight up the side of two containers. When Barsukov got to the top he leaned over and shouted for Tom to follow. Tom hesitated, then started up. There wasn’t much choice. At the top he crawled on to the roof of the container and stood up. There was no rail, no protection from the drop. Barsukov was already walking away.

  They had come out on to a platform created by the roofs of multiple rows of containers, all placed together and surrounded by higher stacks. Barsukov was headed for another ladder, lying on the roof of the farthest part of the platform. As he crossed the containers his footsteps made a booming sound in the cavities below. ‘A good warning system,’ he said. ‘They will be able to hear us coming.’ There were narrow gaps between the containers – two feet at most – which he simply jumped across. He picked the ladder up and placed it against the side of another container, then started to climb. He knew where he was going. Tom followed more quickly this time. Once on the roof of the next level they walked to the far end of that container and then down another ladder, taking them back to the first level, but now they were completely surrounded by containers, completely cut off from the access route they had used to get here, with only a square of sky visible above. It reminded him of when he had been little and he and his brother had played in a giant haystack on a cousin’s farm. They had moved rectangular bales into walls and towers to make a secluded fortress in the middle. Just like this. But this was a more sinister attempt at secrecy.

  Barsukov was already at the other side, positioning another ladder. This led up to a gap between the walls of higher stacks of containers, ending in another enclosed platform, one level higher. There were containers stacked very high around this – two further levels on each side, but on the farthest side there was a wide gap between the platform and the wall of containers opposite– at least two yards wide. To get across to the farther containers you would need some kind of bridge or gangplank. These containers were facing the platform end-on, their doors all bolted. Barsukov stood right on the edge of the drop, facing them. Tom followed him more cautiously and peered over. There was a drop down to an area of ground, the height of three containers, about thirty-five feet. Enough to break your neck if you were unlucky, and he knew how that could happen. He could see rats crawling around down there. Maybe they’d fallen and got stuck. ‘So where is she?’ he demanded, out of breath. He was very tense now.

  Barsukov pointed up, to a container across the other side of the gap, a level higher than them. ‘She’s up there,’ he said.

  In a fucking shipping container, Tom thought. His heart was very loud now. She would be terrified. ‘You’d better not have hurt her,’ he said.

  Barsukov ignored him, started to shout up. Tom caught a man’s name – ‘Max’ – but the rest was in Russian again.

  ‘You didn’t call him first?’ Tom asked. ‘He doesn’t know you’re doing this?’

  ‘Obviously I do not have direct contact. There are no direct links between myself and this man. But someone else has called. He knows I’m coming.’

  Tom heard bolts sliding, then the door of the container cracked open. There was a moment’s pause before it swung back on its hinges, banging off the front of the container adjacent. A man stepped into view, his legs at a level twelve feet above Tom’s head, so Tom could see nothing inside the container itself but a section of roof. The man may have been the man he had seen on the island, or may not have. He was certainly the man from his father’s photo. The scar was obvious. So was the gun, a short machine pistol with a magazine jutting from it. He looked at Tom and Barsukov, the gun pointed down at them. He looked puzzled, wary, angry. He started to speak back to Barsukov, who was already talking to him very fast, all in Russian. Tom couldn’t understand a word of it, but it didn’t look like the two were in agreement. It didn’t look like things were going to be as easy as Barsukov had thought.

  51

  All the way across town Arisha was having doubts. She could remember holding Sara Eaton when she was too small to even talk, could remember her in her arms, remember the smell of her baby hair and skin. In a way she had loved her then. There had been hardly any contact since – at least, not contact like that – but she knew the person Sara had grown up to be. There was nothing wrong with her, nothing spiteful, evil or malicious. She had managed to turn out completely different to Liz Wellbeck and Freddie Eaton. She didn’t resemble them at all. Whenever Arisha came across her, she was always polite, friendly, generous, and all that despite the rumours about Arisha and Freddie, which she must know of, since everyone else did.

  Sara didn’t know about Sasha, of course – they had been extremely careful to keep Sasha a secret while Liz was still alive. That was one of the reasons she suspected Freddie had killed Liz, or set it up. She wasn’t sure – and she had played no part in that – but she had seen paperwork which made her suspicious. Freddie wanted Sasha out in the open, wanted everyone to know about him, wanted him ‘legitimised’. And Liz wasn’t dying to schedule, wasn’t rotting away as quickly as her doctors had predicted. It was possible that Freddie would do that – pay the doctors to overdose her. He was capable of it. And the PA too – Liz’s ex-assistant? Had Freddie had something to do with that? Everything had happened so quickly over the last few days she had lost control of it. Now she didn’t know what was going on.

  But even if Sara knew about Sasha, Arisha had no reason to think she would behave any differently. Her character was due to the nanny, maybe – Felice Cotte. She had been a good mother, the real mother to Sara when she was a child. That was the way it always was in rich families – it couldn’t be avoided – there was always paid help to bring up the children, to replace the missing maternal love. It was happening now with Sasha. At this moment he was with a young American woman they had employed to care for him. She had two others who helped her, who she used on the basis of a rota they drew up. Arisha had very little to do with it. How often did she actually spend time with Sasha, each week, or each day? It wasn’t more than two hours a day, normally, a little longer at weekends. It wasn’t enough, she knew that. She had always known that, always felt it in her heart. She was doing no better for him than her mother had done for her, that odious woman. And that was because of the money, because Freddie needed her the whole time to manage his affairs. The money was the root of all this
evil, that was for sure.

  Could she do without it? Could she change her mind, turn her back on it? Why shouldn’t she? This hadn’t been her plan. Her idea – kicking off from Freddie’s twisted plans – had been to spoil his intentions, to turn them against him. She had gone to Dima with information about Freddie’s monstrous plot and with a really simple quick-hit idea – take Sara, hold her harmlessly on a boat off the island for a few hours, get Freddie to pay for her. Then release her. Dima had gone along with that because he was owed, because he hated Freddie. There had never been an intention to hurt Sara.

  What had happened on that island? Stupid fucking Max, with his guns. He couldn’t be trusted. The war had savaged him, done something to his brain as well as his balls. He had screwed it up. She still didn’t know how or why. She should have stopped it then. Dima had wanted to, when she visited him. But what would have happened to Sara if she had stopped it then? In a way everything she had done was to protect Sara. Sara had no idea who her worst enemy was. It was the same now. What was going to happen when Freddie went in with his shotgun? Would he kill Dima? Where would that leave her?

  She was driving as she fretted about it all, the sweat pouring out of her, soaking her back and under her arms. Just her and Freddie in the car. He was ranting the whole way, but she couldn’t hear it. Her thoughts were too fearful, she had no space for him. And they were here now. Here already. The time for choosing was past. She could see the sign – EXPRO CONTAINER STORAGE – hear Freddie demanding if this was the place. The gates were open, no one in sight. Dima would already be here. He had left the gates open for her. She slowed down in front of them and looked in, saw his car parked farther into the yard there, facing her. But no Dima. No sign of him.

  ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘This is the place.’