The Vanishing Point

by Val McDermid

  The dregs of the coffee were stone cold by the time Vivian returned, and Stephanie’s anxiety had soared to new levels. ‘What’s happening?’ she demanded as soon as the FBI agent entered the room. ‘You’ve been gone nearly an hour.’

  ‘I had to pull together all the available information then speak to the Emergency Alert System people. I’m sorry it took so long, but I needed some information from Immigration before I could go ahead. We’re also pulling in all the CCTV footage for the whole terminal. We need to backtrack the kidnapper’s movements, to see if we can figure out where he came from. If he was dropped off kerbside or if he came in on public transit.’

  ‘What about forensics? Surely there must be fingerprints or DNA or something?’

  Vivian shook her head. ‘There’s nothing meaningful we can pick up from the security area. Too many people pass through there. And because we didn’t realise right away what was going on, other people passed through after the abduction. I’m sorry, but that’s a dead end.’ She sat down and placed a digital voice recorder on the table between them. ‘Now everything’s running, it’s time for you to fill in a few blanks for me. According to the documents you presented to the Immigration Service, Jimmy’s not your actual son? But you’re responsible for him?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m his legal guardian.’

  ‘So what’s the story there?’

  Stephanie ran her fingers through her hair, leaving it in a chaotic cloud around her head. ‘How long have you got?’

  Vivian leaned back in her chair. ‘We’ve got all night. There’s nothing more we can do right now except try to figure out who’s behind this. Unless this was a random thing, the chances are the reasons for this crime lie in the boy’s background. And you’re my only source for that. So unless you’ve got any bright ideas about the kidnapper’s identity, you’d better start at the beginning.’

  The air conditioning suddenly kicked into life, startling Stephanie. But the shiver that ran through her was nothing to do with the draught of chill air. She couldn’t give voice to the suspicion gnawing at the back of her mind. That would give it too much solidity. She was crazy even to entertain the thought. She wrapped her arms around her slender frame and blinked hard. ‘The first thing you need to know is who Jimmy is. And to understand that, you need to know who his mother was.’

  PART 2

  ghost

  1

  London. Five years and five months earlier

  Sometimes random play of the music streaming on my computer seems to conspire against me. So far that morning, I’d had Janis Ian being miserable, Elvis Costello being miserable and The Blue Nile being miserable. Now Mathilde Santing was singing ‘Blue Monday’, which just about summed up my mood. My last project had been exhausting but it had been three weeks since I’d finished it. I’d been looking forward to spending more time with Pete – that’s Pete Matthews, the man I’d been going out with for the past seven months. But the end of my undertaking had marked the start of a new assignment for him, and he’d been working crazy hours in the studio. I’d discovered some time earlier that there was nothing glamorous about being a sound engineer. Just unpredictable hours, late nights and the sour aftertaste of prima donnas with less talent than they believed or their fans knew.

  I’ll be honest. A little light romance would have suited me perfectly right then. I always become antsy when I’m between jobs. As soon as I’ve recovered from the exhaustion of meeting my deadline, I start to obsess over where the next contract’s going to come from. What if that was it? What if I crashed and burned and didn’t get any more work? How would I pay the mortgage? Would I have to sell up, abandon London and go back, God help me, to my parents in their poky little terraced house in Lincoln? I could handle a few days of reading and shopping, a couple of lunches with the girls, a movie matinee or two. But then I started chafing at the bit for a new challenge.

  Pete always laughed at me when I talked about my fears. ‘Listen to yourself,’ he would tease. ‘You go from nought to disaster in ten seconds. Look at your track record, girl. They know when they hire you, they get total commitment. You’re their bitch from the minute the ink’s dry till you’ve delivered the goods.’

  It’s not really how I see myself, but I took his point. I’ve never taken my projects lightly and in this business, people talk to each other about that kind of thing. I try to believe I have a good reputation. But sometimes it’s hard to cling to that self-belief. Pete could point to his name on CDs. He had tangible validation. But the whole point of what I do is that I remain invisible. Sometimes I show up on the title page or in the acknowledgements, but mostly my clients want to maintain the illusion that they can string sentences together on the page. So when Pete and I were out with friends, there was almost nothing I could say about my work. It was like being a member of the mafia. Except they have the family around them for support. Me, I was just the insignificant one in the shadows.

  I cut Mathilde Santing off mid-bar and retreated to the kitchen. I’d barely set the kettle on to boil when the phone rang. Before I could say anything, the voice on the other end had launched into conversation. ‘Stephie, darling, I have such a fabulous assignment for you, wait till I tell you. But how are you, dearheart?’ My agent, Maggie Silver. Irrepressible, irresistible and irreplaceable. And always italicised. Nobody does the business like Maggie. Well, nobody does it louder, at least. My spirits lifted at the very sound of her voice.

  ‘Ready for a fabulous assignment,’ I said. Even I could hear amusement in my tone.

  ‘Perfect. Because I have just the thing. They asked for you. No messing about with beauty parades. The publisher is convinced you’ll be the perfect fit.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Pop star? Actor? Politician? Sportsman? I’ve done them all. When people do find out what I do for a living they always ask who I’ve done and what category I like best. The truth is I have no favourites. There isn’t much to choose between those who have been kissed by fame. Scrape away the superficial differences and the gilded pretensions are much the same. But revealing that to the public isn’t my job. My only role in my subjects’ lives is to make them interesting, loveable and desirable. They call me a ghost, but I think of myself as the good fairy, waving a magic wand over their lives to make a narrative that glows with achievement.

  ‘You know Goldfish Bowl?’

  I couldn’t help myself. I groaned. Reality TV. Was this what it had come to? I’d just transformed a former Tory cabinet minister into a dashing, intellectually respectable hero. And my reward was some here-today-gone-tomorrow nobody from a boring market town who would be famous for fifteen minutes. A bestseller for a month, then straight to the remainder table. ‘Christ, Maggie,’ was all I could manage.

  ‘No, listen, darling, it’s not what you think. Truly, there’s a story to tell. It’s Scarlett Higgins. You must have heard of her.’

  Of course I’d heard of Scarlett Higgins. High Court judges and homeless people had heard of Scarlett Higgins. And even if I say so myself, I’ve got a knack for keeping my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. It’s one of the reasons for my success. I totally get popular culture and how to plug into what people want from their celebrities. So yes, I knew the public face of Scarlett Higgins. The Scarlett Harlot, she’d been dubbed by the tabloids. Not because she was particularly promiscuous by tabloid standards. Mostly because it rhymes and they’re lazy.

  ‘What’s to tell? Hasn’t she already spilled everything to the tabloids and the slag mags?’

  ‘She’s having a baby, darling.’

  ‘That’s not news either, Maggie. The pregnancy is what saved her from a public lynching after the debacle of the second series.’

  ‘Her agent has come up with the idea of doing an autobiography in the form of a letter to the baby. Where Scarlett reveals the tragedy of her own upbringing and the mistakes she’s made. She went to Stellar Books, and they love the idea. And of course, they want you. Biba loved the Maya Gorecka book you did for th
em, and she’s absolutely convinced Scarlett will love you.’

  Sometimes listening to Maggie is like drowning in italics. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t get excited about someone who’s already spilled so much about so little.’

  ‘Sweetie, the money’s lovely. And frankly, there’s not a lot else around at the moment. The bottom’s dropped out of footballers and WAGs, most of those ghastly rappers and Mercury Prize nominees have no crossover value for the mainstream readers, and nobody’s interested in Tony Blair’s sacked cabinet ministers. I’ve been beating the bushes for you, but at the moment Scarlett Higgins is the only show in town. If you want to hang fire, I’m sure something will trundle along in a few months, but I don’t like to think of you sitting there twiddling your thumbs. You know how twitchy you get, darling.’

  Annoyingly, she was right. Inactivity wasn’t an option. If Pete had been free, we could have gone away, taken a holiday. But he wouldn’t have liked it if I’d gone off without him. And to be honest, neither would I. It had taken me a long time to find a man I wanted to make a commitment to, and now I was with Pete, I didn’t relish the solitary trips I’d always enjoyed in the past. These days, I wondered how much of that solo travelling had been me kidding myself. ‘All the same,’ I said weakly, not wanting to give in too easily.

  ‘It can’t hurt to talk to the girl,’ Maggie said firmly. Wheedling is beneath her. She always prefers assertiveness to supplication. ‘Who knows? You may find you like her. Stranger things have happened, Stephie. Stranger things have happened.’

  2

  Maggie hung up as soon as she’d extracted a promise that I would at least meet the Scarlett Harlot. She always maintained that one of the secrets of her success as a literary agent was getting out of the door before anyone could change their mind. ‘People are generally too embarrassed to go back on their word,’ she told me early on in our relationship. ‘You might like to bear that in mind with the ghosting. Whenever a client produces a revelation you think they might regret, make your excuses and leave. Don’t make a fuss about it, just act as if it’s no big deal, time for you to trot off home now. Much easier that way.’

  I’ve found Maggie’s advice surprisingly effective. It hasn’t made me immune to her tricks, however. ‘Bloody Maggie,’ I muttered at the phone as I replaced it. I finished brewing my pot of coffee and settled at the breakfast bar with my iPad. If I was going to sit down with Scarlett Higgins, I needed to be up to speed with her exploits. And since all the reality-show temporary celebs tend to blend into one amorphous blonde, I had to make sure I knew enough about Scarlett to distinguish her deplorable exploits from the others. There would be hell to pay and no forthcoming contract if I asked about the wrong boy-band lover or soap actor. Or even the wrong drug of choice. I couldn’t help smiling as I recalled Whitney Houston’s notorious interview with Diane Sawyer. All tears and confessional till Sawyer mentioned crack. Then, outraged, the diva bridled and stated sharply, ‘First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let’s get that straight. OK? We don’t do crack.’ OK, lady.

  First things first. I wanted to remind myself of the format of Goldfish Bowl, the reality show that had catapulted Scarlett from Yorkshire oblivion into the nation’s living rooms. Wikipedia would do for that.

  Goldfish Bowl is an elimination-based reality TV show developed in the UK and first aired in 2005. It takes place on Foutra, a small Scottish island at the outer limits of the Firth of Forth. The island, about a mile from end to end and half a mile across at its widest point, is uninhabited except by the game contestants. The only building on the island prior to the show was a ruined gun battery dating from WWII. This has been renovated and provides the contestants with their only shelter. For the purposes of the game, rabbits and cows have been introduced to the island. There are also areas of cultivated land where the TV company has planted edible crops, if the contestants can find them.

  The twelve contestants are deliberately chosen for their urban backgrounds and their lack of practical skills. They are taken to the island by boat and left to find shelter and food. Part of the entertainment value of the show has come from the haplessness of the city kids cast adrift on the land.

  I groaned at the memory of that opening episode. The gob-struck panic of the contestants when they realised that their urban street savvy was completely redundant. Their disgust at the natural world. Their bewilderment at where food actually came from. It had been simultaneously comic and tragic. Their ignorance was toe-curling. They’d probably have made a better fist of being abandoned on Mars.

  The first impression Scarlett had made on the viewers had been when she’d encountered one of the three highland cattle on the island. ‘Fucking hell,’ she’d exclaimed with a mixture of horror and admiration. ‘Who knew cows were that big?’ Well, Scarlett, most of us, actually.

  As I skimmed the rest of the article, more memories crystallised. There had been only six narrow single beds in the barracks. So the first challenge had been to sort out the sleeping arrangements. It had also been the source of the first argument. The lad I’d mentally dubbed Captain Sensible had suggested a sleeping rota; since there were no windows in the underground sleeping quarters, there wouldn’t be daylight to keep awake those whose sleeping shifts happened during daylight hours. The others had ridiculed him straight off the bat. The idea of sharing the beds had appealed until they actually tried it and discovered they were so small they kept falling out.

  It had been Scarlett who had come up with a solution. Among the supplies they’d been given were bales of hay for the cattle. ‘We can sleep on the hay,’ she’d said. ‘Like in that Christmas carol, ‘the little lord Jesus, asleep on the hay’. They always do that in old films when they’re on the run.’

  ‘And what are the cows going to eat?’ Captain Sensible objected triumphantly.

  ‘Well, they’re not going to eat it all at once, are they?’ Scarlett said with a flounce of her thick blonde mane. ‘And one of us gets the bullet every week. By the time we’re running out of hay, there’ll be enough beds to go around.’ For someone who had seemed dangerously dim, it was a surprisingly convincing argument.

  It had been a rare flash of brilliance from Scarlett, however. What had struck me most at the time about Scarlett in that first series of Goldfish Bowl had been her willingness to take on whatever task Big Fish – the voice that represented the controlling TV company – set the contestants, coupled with a shrewd eye for the weaknesses of others. Scarlett had been adept at appearing to offer support while actually undermining her fellow contenders. It was hard to believe this was a deliberate tactic because she seemed remarkably stupid most of the time. Her first attempt at putting together the contestants’ shopping list within a budget demonstrated the literacy and numeracy of a six-year-old. Her grasp of current affairs was pitiful; she was convinced that Prime Minister Tony Blair was the son of dancer Lionel Blair, and that Bill Clinton was still President of the United States. (‘Well, why do they call him President Clinton if he’s not the president, then?’) She demonstrated weepy sentimentality over children, kittens and puppies, while revealing terrifying ignorance about the care of any of them. She was unpopular with her fellow contestants in the Bowl because of her tendency to speak her mind. But the public grew to like her because she had the knack of hitting the nail on the head and saying what the viewers were thinking. They admired her brass neck. And she made people laugh, which is always a winner on reality shows.

  She was overweight and nobody’s idea of pretty, but she made the most of herself. She took the same care with her hair and make-up whether she was about to go in search of carrots to dig up or talk to Big Fish in the Aquarium – the glass-sided room at the heart of the complex where contestants were summoned for progress reports, debriefs and instructions.

  The punters also gradually came to admire her refusal to give up. When the contestants were low on food, she made a virtue of the op
portunity for weight loss. When Captain Sensible dropped their only fishing rod in the sea during the ‘Larder of the Ocean’ challenge, she beachcombed till she found a substitute. Even though she let her guard slip often enough to reveal herself as a foul-mouthed bigot, people warmed to Scarlett. She was nominated for elimination by her fellow contestants a record six times. Every time, the public chose to keep her and ditch the other candidate.

  But they didn’t quite love her enough. In the final vote of the series, she lost out to Darrell O’Donohue, an amiable lump of beefcake from Belfast. I reckon he won because there was absolutely nothing to object to about Darrell. He was good-looking, kind and hard-working. He appeared to have no strong views on any subject. And he’d made a fine job of Shania Twain’s ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ in the karaoke challenge. Still, I’d have killed him within the hour if I’d been forced to spend an evening in his company. After the show was over, he had his five minutes of fame, then disappeared back to Northern Ireland, happy to be a C-list fish in a small pond.

  Despite being the beaten finalist, it was Scarlett who went on to make the most of her success. I wanted to refresh my memory of her trajectory of fame, so I moved to Scarlett’s own Wikipedia entry. As I read, I remembered how ballsy she’d seemed. Shedding her past in the sink estates of south Leeds, she’d headed straight for the celebrity circuit. She hooked up with an agent and within days she’d become a staple of the red-tops and the slag mags that celebrated drunken women falling into limos or gutters at three in the morning. Slimmed down and burnished by stylists, Scarlett seemed to become almost beautiful and it wasn’t long before she’d landed a boyfriend with a foot on the celebrity ladder.

  Scarlett hadn’t quite built up enough superstar Brownie points to snag a Premier League footballer, but she managed the next best thing. Reno Jacuba was a striker with a Champion ship side struggling in mid-table. He’d suffered from a couple of allegations of nasty sexual assaults, he shared the same agent as Scarlett and there was benefit to both of them in a link-up. So, linked they were – for a couple of magazine cycles. Once he was rehabilitated and her stock had risen a little, he ditched her. Or she ditched him, depending on which account you bought into.