Tim Weaver - Vanished

‘Changed how?’

‘Became different. Preoccupied.’

‘Did you ever talk about it?’

‘I never got the chance. He became very quiet, really highly strung and stressed out. It was never like that before. He was easy-going and fun.’

This was returning to the same place all conversations about Sam seemed to retreat to: he was a nice guy, he was easy-going, he didn’t have any reason to leave, but he changed in those last few months. The minor details were different, but everyone was saying the same thing. His finances, his affair, how he felt about Julia, everyone had a theory, but no one had an answer.

‘Nothing else sticks with you?’ I asked.

She glanced at me, down to her wine, then back up. A frown formed on her face. ‘There was this one time …’ She paused again, trying to recall the details; rubbed a hand across her forehead. ‘It was about two or three months after we started seeing each other. He came back to my place for a couple of hours and we …’ She looked at me. Had sex. I nodded for her to continue. ‘Anyway, he started to ask about my previous relationships.’

‘What did he ask?’

‘It was weird. He wanted to know the details. Like, all the details. He wanted to know how long I’d gone out with each of them, how many times I’d slept with them, what our sex life was like, that kind of thing.’ She paused, forefinger and thumb pinching the neck of her glass. ‘I only really thought about it after he disappeared, because it never struck me as odd at the time. We weren’t married, we were just having sex. Him wanting to know what I’d done, what I liked, it was all a part of it; part of the affair. The excitement. When it’s taboo, when it’s risky, when people see it as wrong, you’ll do anything. Try anything. Because it doesn’t matter any more. All the stuff you’ve always wanted to do, you just …’ She looked at me, shrugged. ‘You just do it.’

‘So why did it feel weird when he asked?’

‘It was just strange coming from him.’

‘You pegged him for a straight arrow?’

She nodded. ‘Definitely.’

I looped the conversation around to a point we’d left unfinished earlier. ‘How did you react when he started cooling things off?’

‘React?’

‘Did you just accept it?’

She shrugged. ‘I could see myself becoming a bunny boiler, the psycho bit on the side, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t bear the silence; going from all-in to all-out.’ She stopped; looked downcast. ‘So, no, I didn’t just accept it.’

‘What did you do?’

She glanced at me, a reluctance in her face. ‘I started following him.’

‘When was this?’

‘Things started to change in early September, and by the middle of October I wasn’t getting anything from him: no calls, no texts. I found that very hard.’

‘So you started following him at the end of October?’

‘End of October, beginning of November.’

‘How many times did you follow him?’

‘Only twice. The second time I started feeling ridiculous. I was angry with him – jealous and hurt, I suppose – but I got a dose of clarity halfway through the evening the second time and that was when I left.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘Both times, it was just down there, to the Hilton.’ She was pointing over my head, in the direction of South Quay. ‘He just sat there in the bar by himself.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Nothing. Just drinking. Like he was deep in thought.’

‘That was it?’

‘That was it.’

Deep in thought . But about what?

‘You never told Sam you followed him?’

‘No. He would have flipped.’

‘And done what?’

‘He wasn’t violent, if that’s you mean. We only ever had one fight in the time we were seeing each other. But he wouldn’t have taken kindly to me following him.’

‘What was the fight about?’

‘It was a Friday night,’ she said, remembering it instantly. ‘August, in the weeks before he started getting weird. He was in the shower and his phone went off. It was right there next to me on the bed, so – without even thinking, really – I glanced at the display to see who was calling. It was just an automatic reaction. I saw the name, it didn’t mean anything to me, so I just assumed it was a client of his. When he came back out, I told him his phone had gone off and he was fine about it. Really relaxed. Then he checked to see who’d called, and it all changed.’

‘Changed how?’

‘He went absolutely crazy. Started accusing me of snooping around in his phone, of going through his private things. It just came out of nowhere. I tried to tell him I hadn’t done anything, that I hadn’t looked at his messages, that I didn’t even know who the guy was who’d called him, but he wouldn’t believe me. I’d never seen him like that.’

‘Who was the caller?’

‘Some guy called Adrian.’

‘No surname?’

‘It just said Adrian.’

I noted it down. He definitely wasn’t on Julia’s list, which meant she didn’t know about him, and although I didn’t remember seeing an Adrian in the phone records, it didn’t mean he wasn’t there. Spike had got me eighteen months of calls and texts from Sam’s phone, and – in the first run-through – I’d concentrated on repeating numbers and the people who’d contacted Sam the most. Adrian was a reason to go back to it.

‘Did you ever find out who this Adrian guy was?’ I asked.

‘No. Sam was too busy screaming in my face. I was determined not to sit there and take it, but I couldn’t fight back. He just blitzed me; completely shouted me down.’

‘Did he apologize?’

‘The next day, yeah. But a couple of weeks after that he started backing away. That was the end for us. That was the moment things really changed.’ She paused, one of her eyes blurring. ‘And then four months later he was gone.’

23

By the time I got back to the car, I had a name: Adrian Wellis. There had been just one call in the entire year and a half I had records for: 5 August, just as Ursula had described. The call lasted eight seconds, which presumably meant he’d dialled in, got voicemail and then hung up. Sam never phoned back; Wellis never tried again. And yet, in order for Ursula to read his name on the display, Sam must have put Wellis into his address book. So why would Sam go to that kind of trouble for a person he was never going to ring?

As Spike had done with all the other numbers, he’d managed to source a street address off the back of the call. Tierston Road, Peckham. It was only five miles from Canary Wharf, which meant I could have been down there inside thirty minutes, barring traffic jams. But heading down now meant heading in blind.

Liz had once said to me that the reason I did what I did, the reason I put my life at risk for the missing, was because I was trying to plug holes in the world that couldn’t be filled; trying to prevent other people from feeling the way I had. She meant Derryn. She meant her death, and everything – all the grief and anger – that came after. I understood that, saw the truth in it, even told her – and maybe believed – that I could control that part of me and become a different person. Not detached exactly, but not so affected by the people I found either. When you became affected by them, by their stories, by the people they’d lost, you took risks: you stepped into the dark, not knowing what was there – and the only armour you took into battle was the debt you felt to the families.

I knew Liz was right and, for a time, I’d resisted the temptation to stray back into the shadows. I stayed rooted to the right side of the dividing line, taking the cases, working them and closing them off, then leaving them alone. But it couldn’t be like that for ever. Seeing through my commitment to the lost, to their families – however I did it and whatever it took – was who I was. It was woven into me. When Derryn died, a little part of me went too – and the space she left behind was never filled; only replaced, temporarily, by the people I returned to the light. I wanted to be with Liz, wanted to be in her life. But she’d never fully understood that part of me.