Vanished

by Tim Weaver

  I looked at him. We were standing beneath an overhang, rain running off the roof and exploding against the ground next to us.

  He glanced at me and saw my reaction. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s all you can say?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘That’s the first thing that comes into your head?’

  He frowned. ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘I get her to talk in there because there was no way she was going to talk to you when you’re bouncing around like you’re waiting for your fucking dealer. Last night, I meet you at the Tube because you can’t trust anyone and literally all you care about is bringing this home and stuffing it down everyone’s throat. I do that for you, I look past your flaws, your anger, your capacity to create an argument out of nothing – and, having seen what just happened in there, that’s the first thing that comes into your head?’

  He just stared at me.

  ‘Do you even realize how alone you are, Healy?’

  ‘I don’t know what –’

  ‘That’s just your problem, Healy. You don’t know.’

  And I walked away.

  64

  Five minutes later, Healy finished his cigarette and flicked it out into the bushes running along the back of the hospital. He immediately felt like another. He was angry. Pissed off. He’d allowed himself to be manipulated, persuaded that Wren wasn’t a part of this, and had then spent two days chasing his tail. Not any more. Fuck Raker. Fuck them all. He was going to take what the girl had told them – and he was going to put this to bed.

  He moved off into the rain, pulling his jacket up over his head and making a break for it. But then, in his peripheral vision, he saw someone approaching and getting closer.

  He slowed down. Looked around.

  And his heart sank.

  Sallows.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Sallows said, thirty feet to Healy’s right, under a Metropolitan Police umbrella. In his left hand was a set of car keys. In his right was a digital camera.

  Healy didn’t say anything, his eyes flicking to the camera.

  ‘Didn’t think this was your part of the world, Colm.’

  Healy was about to form a lie, about to pretend he was visiting a relative, when he stopped himself. See how much he knows first. ‘It’s not,’ he replied.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘Following up a lead.’

  Sallows smirked. ‘Did someone steal a chocolate bar from the gift shop?’ he said and then stepped closer, eyes fixed on Healy, watching for any shift of expression.

  ‘That’s more your area, Kevin.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You don’t play with the big boys any more, remember.’

  But Sallows didn’t react at all. No change in his face. No change in his stance. A fizz of panic stirred in Healy’s guts: the only reason Sallows wouldn’t take the bait was if he had something better. Healy glanced at the camera. Something like photos.

  ‘You’re a clever bastard, Healy.’ Sallows smiled, humourless and knowing. ‘Only you could pull off all that shit last year and still be standing here in front of me eight months later working the biggest case going.’ He made a soft sound, like he was still having a hard time believing it. ‘But here you are. Mr Squeaky Clean. Except, of course, we both know it’s all another lie.’

  Healy didn’t respond. Sallows just looked at him.

  ‘Well,’ Healy said finally, ‘as nice as this has been, I’d better be going.’

  Sallows suddenly made a move forward, right up close to Healy so they were only feet apart. Rain slapped against the umbrella, like a drumbeat, running off into the space between them. Sallows was completely dry. Healy was soaked through to the bone. ‘When you got me kicked off the Snatcher, you fucked with the wrong guy,’ he said, his voice suddenly laced with venom. ‘Colm Healy dropping me in the shit? Even you must see how fucked up that is? Everything about you, your situation, your lying and your back-stabbing, it boils my piss. I mean, you’re the guy who thinks it’s okay to wave guns in the faces of the people you work with. You’re the guy who worms his way back into the big time, who puts on this show for people – this fucking show that no one else is capable of seeing through – and you’re still here working it off the books.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kevin.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I saw you with Raker this morning. I’ve been watching this hospital every day since they brought that girl in here, because I know Raker was the one who made that call the day she was found and I know he was the one who dumped Gaishe at that warehouse.’

  ‘What Raker does has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘There you are again, Colm. Lying.’

  ‘It’s not a lie.’

  ‘It’s a fucking bare-faced lie, just like everything else in your shitty little life. You and Raker have cosied up again, doing whatever the fuck it is you two do together. I saw it coming a mile off, so when the girl was found, it was just a matter of being patient. It was just a matter of waiting here for you. And I thought to myself, “What’s the best way of making sure that everyone knows just what a lying sack of shit Colm Healy is?” ’ Sallows held up the camera. ‘Your time is up, Healy. You’re done.’

  Healy tried not to show emotion.

  But it didn’t work.

  Sallows broke out into a smile. ‘I’m realistic. I don’t expect Craw to take me back and, to be honest, I wouldn’t want to go back. I can’t work for a malicious little bitch like that. But I’m going to enjoy hearing about the moment she asks you to clear your desk.’

  ‘What do you want, Sallows?’

  ‘What do I want?’

  ‘There must be something you want.’

  Sallows was still smiling. ‘I’d forgotten about your legendary sense of humour, Colm. What I want is for you to get what you deserve. And then, once I’ve done you, I’m doing Raker as well. You’re both going to get what’s coming.’

  Healy imagined going for the camera, imagined grabbing Sallows by the throat and ripping him to pieces. He realized he was opening and closing his fists, all the anger and frustration and desperation channelled through his fingers. If he didn’t get the camera, everything was over. He was done. His life, his career, whatever semblance of normality he’d managed to claw back. But then Sallows glanced down, as if he knew what was going through Healy’s head, as if he could read the movement of his hands like words being spoken aloud, and he handed Healy the camera.

  Except it wasn’t the camera.

  It was just the case.

  ‘The camera’s in the car,’ Sallows said, watching the rain run down Healy’s face, hair matted to his head, clothes stuck to him. ‘I don’t know what concern that girl is of yours, I don’t know what you’re even doing here, or what you and that other prick have got planned. And to be honest, I don’t really care. Honestly, I don’t. What I care about is seeing you go down in flames – and if you take Raker with you, all the better.’

  Healy scanned the car park, desperately looking for Sallows’s car.

  ‘A guy who waves guns in people’s faces can’t be trusted,’ Sallows said, reading the situation again. ‘So while the camera’s in the car, and the photos are still on it, I also took the trouble of emailing myself the pictures. Just to make sure they’re nice and safe.’

  ‘Look, Kevin, we can work –’

  ‘You’re done.’

  ‘There must be –’

  ‘You’re done, Healy,’ he said again, and as the gentle sound of rain settled in the silence, Sallows headed back to his car, leaving Healy alone.

  65

  At Battersea Bridge, I pulled the car over. My head was so full of noise, I had to find a side street, bump up on to the pavement and write it all down. An hour later I was done. Twenty pages of my notepad full, everything I’d ever learned about Samuel Wren. In the silence of the car, I went through it all again,
trying to see where things didn’t join, trying to look for any kind of hairline fracture I could get into and prise open. But there was nothing new. Nothing I didn’t already know. All that looked up at me was what had looked up at me before: a deeply confused man, blackmailed by a people trafficker and at the mercy of a reality he could never accept.

  Where’s the killer in you, Sam?

  The rain got harder, popping against the windscreen like pebbles being thrown at the glass. I studied the picture I’d taken of the watcher from Pell’s DVD. There was an obvious question that I’d never got the chance to discuss with Healy: if Sam was taking these men, if we were assuming he was the Snatcher and had brokered some sort of partnership with Pell, why would he engineer his own disappearance but Pell not do the same? Why vanish at all? If he’d managed to take his first two victims – Steven Wilky and Marc Erion – without leaving a trace of himself, if Leon Spane had been dumped on Hampstead Heath and not led back to either him or Pell, why go to all the effort of disappearing? They’d already got away with it. Whatever this was, whatever they were doing together, however it worked, they were already below the radar when Sam went missing. And the only reason you’d then go on to plan your disappearance was if something had started to go wrong.

  Or if you weren’t the killer at all.

  ‘You were the victim,’ I said quietly.

  On the way home, as I came off Battersea Bridge, I decided to stop at Gloucester Road station again. I seriously doubted Pell would be there, but the people inside worked with him, got to see him daily, and Pell still represented my best shot at finding out where Sam went.

  As I entered from the street, I kept my eyes on the faces of the staff, moving between them as I walked inside. I was conscious of the lies I’d told the last time I’d been in, and I remembered the guy in the staffroom – the man called Gideon – and the way he’d reacted to my being there about Sam and Pell. But, as I walked around the ticket hall, I realized I’d caught a lucky break. I hardly recognized any of the faces, which meant most wouldn’t recognize me. I bought a ticket and headed through the gateline, down to the platform and then back up again. I hadn’t expected to find Pell and I wasn’t disappointed, but I did a sweep of the station just to be sure.

  At the booth, the overweight guy who’d been standing underneath the glass dome two days before, bathed in a pool of his own sweat, was perched on a stool, looking on disinterestedly. At one point, as I stood there watching the crowds coming in, turning things over in my head, he looked right at me but he didn’t seem to remember me.

  About ten minutes later, as I was thinking about leaving, I saw the staffroom open – the same one I’d been inside before – and in the doorway appeared two faces I recognized: the woman, Sandra Purnell, who I’d chatted to last time out; and a man, one whose name I was struggling to recall, but who’d been here the first time I’d been in and talked to Pell. He’d been a ticket inspector. Eric. Edgar. Edward. Something beginning with E. I remembered seeing his photo and his name badge in the staffroom, and I remembered the conversation I’d had with him that first time. He’d been polite and helpful. In his staffroom photo he’d been immaculately turned out too – crisp uniform, styled hair, looking out through expensive half-moon glasses – and he had dressed with the same care today. I’d take that now: if he was detailed in the way he dressed, he might be detailed in his thinking too. Any hint, however small, of where Pell was, could get me a lead.

  I headed over.

  As I did, the woman unexpectedly reached out to the man and hugged him. I stopped and watched. He suddenly seemed quite emotional. Not tearful exactly, but lacking some colour, lips flattened, eyes downcast. When she was done, she rubbed his arm, they said goodbye to one another and she headed off towards the station entrance. He just stood there, a ticket machine slung over one shoulder, a backpack over the other. Out of the backpack spilled some clothes – a running top decorated with a square motif, a pair of well-used trainers – as well as some old, rolled-up magazines. It looked like he might have been on the way to the gym, or maybe he’d just taken the opportunity to clear out his locker.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  He looked up. ‘Yes, sir?’ he said quietly.

  ‘I’m not sure if you remember me,’ I said, and I could immediately see he didn’t. ‘I came in on Thursday last week and spoke to you about this guy.’

  I reached into my pocket and got out a picture of Sam. Just as I remembered him doing the first time, the man patted the breast pockets of his jacket, more out of habit than because he genuinely didn’t know where his glasses were, then took the photo from me and held it up in front of him. Although only in his early forties, he had an old way about him: he raised the photo high up into the light coming through the glass dome and perched his half-moon glasses on the end of his nose.

  ‘His name is Sam Wren,’ I said.

  ‘Oh right, yes – I remember.’

  ‘You definitely don’t know him?’

  His eyes remained on the picture, but I could tell his mind had shifted elsewhere. Whatever he and the woman had been talking about had really got to him.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’

  ‘No, no,’ he replied, but I could tell he was being polite. He removed his glasses and slid them back into his top pocket. ‘Have you asked the other guys here? They’d know better than me. I don’t actually work out of the station.’

  ‘Because you’re a ticket inspector.’

  ‘We’re called RCIs these days,’ he said, a small smile on his face. ‘Much posher.’

  I nodded, smiled back. ‘Mind if I quickly ask you something else?’

  He shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  ‘When I came in last time, I spoke to you and another guy, Duncan Pell. Do you remember that?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘Any idea where I might find Duncan?’

  ‘Is he in trouble?’

  ‘No. I’d just like to speak to him again.’

  ‘They tell me Duncan’s not been very well.’

  ‘Yeah, so I hear. Do you know where he might be?’

  His eyes moved left, over my shoulder. When I followed his line of sight I could see the overweight guy from the booth had noticed us talking, and was coming over.

  ‘Everything all right, Ed?’ the big guy asked.

  And then his name came back to me: Edwin. I turned around and the other guy was right on my shoulder.

  ‘Fine, yes. This gentleman was just asking about Duncan.’

  Mr Big eyed me with suspicion. ‘Were you in the other day?’

  ‘I just want to ask him a couple of questions.’

  ‘You a copper or something?’

  ‘More like “or something”,’ I said.

  It went completely over his head, but when I looked back at the ticket inspector the corners of his mouth were raised in a smile. I took a business card out of my pocket. ‘My name’s David Raker,’ I said to him. ‘If you think of anything, maybe you’d be kind enough to give me a shout. Any time of the day or night.’

  He took the card. ‘Okay.’

  ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ I lied.

  ‘Edwin Smart. Ed.’

  ‘Thanks for your help, Ed.’

  As I left the station and headed back to the car, my mind returned to the CCTV footage of the day Sam went missing. I’d been over it countless times, trying to find the join. But even though every viewing I’d had of it had been more meticulous than the last, they’d all ended up the same way: no Sam.

  And yet as I walked, I felt a tiny shift in my thoughts, like I’d suddenly glimpsed the outline of a memory. Although I tried to pin down what it was, the harder I looked for it, the more of a blur it became. But as indistinct as the thought had been, something of it remained. A residual feeling. A certainty.

  That the answers were still in the footage.

  And they always had been.

  66

  When Healy finally got back to the station, he walk
ed into the incident room to find a meeting taking place. At the front, Craw was addressing the Snatcher task force, Davidson sitting almost at her side, pad on his lap, pen in his hand. Both of them clocked the movement, Craw glancing across to Healy and then returning her gaze to the detectives in front of her; Davidson looking over, a half-smile forming on his face.

  Healy moved to the back of the group and perched himself on one of the desks but he could barely hear anything Craw was saying. All he could hear was his own voice: had Sallows already sent the pictures? Did Craw already know about the hospital, about how he’d got together with Raker? And what lie could he spin to help minimize the impact?

  There are no more lies worth telling if she knows.

  The thought sent a bubble of bile up from the pit of his stomach, but he managed to pull himself forward, further towards the group. Davidson was swinging gently from side to side on his chair as he made notes. At the back of the group, one of the other cops looked around, saw Healy and nodded, but Healy was so distracted he didn’t even remember the guy’s name. All he could see were the decisions he’d made over the past few days, and – with absolute clarity now – how he’d become consumed by revenge. He’d wanted to show them. He’d wanted to shove their taunts and their jokes and the looks he got in the office so far down their throats they’d be choking on them. They’d used Leanne against him, they’d tried to grind him down and spit him out, and he’d become so focused on that, he hadn’t been able to see where the road was leading. Raker was the only person he could trust – even after the hospital, even after the way things had been left, that still held true in Healy’s head – but Healy knew he should never have sought Raker’s help. Not now. Not this soon.

  ‘Healy?’

  He looked up. Craw was addressing him. ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  ‘Did you get all that?’

  ‘Most of it, ma’am.’

  There were a couple of sniggers, though he couldn’t see where from, and as Craw stepped forward, in front of Davidson, Healy watched a smile form on Davidson’s face.

  You’re done, he mouthed.