Tim Weaver - Vanished

There were fifteen in all: Wellis at the beach, in woodland somewhere, standing on the edge of a lake with a hunting rifle. He was five-ten, stocky, about forty, with a shaved head. He had a tattoo of a crucifix on the side of his neck. In most of the photos he was on his own, but when he wasn’t he was always with the same guy: taller, thinner, late thirties. They both had looks I didn’t like, but Wellis – his eyes small, like an animal’s – I’d have to watch the closest.

After a while light began to fade from the day, the sun burning out in the sky, the clouds bleeding red and orange. Inside twenty minutes it became a different world: shadows grew deep and long, like vast curtains being pulled across a stage, and although the temperature didn’t drop much, a faint breeze picked up, whispering past the car and down towards the house.

Twenty minutes after that, I heard voices on the other side of the road.

Two men were approaching, silhouettes beneath the faint orange glow of a street light. I lowered myself into my seat, using the lack of light as a disguise, and turned the radio off. They drew level. They couldn’t see in, but I could see out.

One of them was Adrian Wellis.

In real life, he looked a little shorter than five-ten, but in all other areas he was exactly the same as his photo: fierce, shaved head, dark eyes. He wore a red bomber jacket over a blue check shirt and dark blue trousers. All name brands. I thought about the reasons a man might live in a place like his if he was making enough money to buy £200 trainers, but then my eyes fell on the guy next to him. Taller. Thinner. Blotchy skin and greying hair, and without Wellis’s sense of style. He was the other guy in the photos.

They got to the house, and Wellis started fiddling around in his pocket for his keys. But when he finally found them, he paused.

He looked along the row of houses.

It was like he’d sensed someone had been here. In the front garden. Up to the house. In the still of the night, it was possible to hear the other guy asking him what the matter was, but Wellis didn’t reply. He just stared at the front of the house – and then up the road towards me.

Even though there was no possible way he could see me, no way he could know I was watching, it felt like he’d zeroed right in on me. He took a step away from the house, his trainers crunching against a crumbling piece of concrete, and then he stopped, one foot slightly in front of the other as if he was primed, ready to strike. There was something different about him now. He stood rigid, his body taut, his eyes oil-black circles in the shadows. He stayed in the same position – absolutely still – for a long time, hands out either side of him, fists balling and opening, over and over. And then eventually he said something to the other guy and let the two of them into the house.

A light went on in the hallway. The door closed.

And I waited some more.

Not long after, the front door opened again. The other guy stepped out, into the night air, and pulled the door shut. He stood there for a moment, lighting a cigarette, and then started making his way up the road in my direction. I sank back down into my seat and watched as he passed the car and headed up towards a fork in the road about thirty yards behind me. In between a pair of street lights, where it was more shadow than light, he perched himself on somebody’s broken garden wall and waited.

The rhythmic glow of his cigarette.

The brief light from a mobile phone screen.

A couple of minutes later, headlights emerged from the darkness. The road was even quieter now, so the noise of the car travelled across the stillness: every tick of the engine, every stone spitting out from under its wheels. Just short of the man, it stopped and killed its headlights. It was a blue Toyota. The windscreen was just a rectangle of darkness. No shape inside. No idea who was driving. The man got up off the wall, flicked his cigarette out into the road and walked to the car. He bent down at the passenger window.

There was a short conversation, not lasting more than thirty seconds, and then the car’s lights switched back on, the man stepped away, and the vehicle pulled a U-turn and headed back up the road. The man stood there, not moving, just watching the car all the way along the street until it melted away in the night. Once it was gone, only then did he move from his spot and head back towards the house.

As he passed, I noticed something in his hands.

Money.

At 4.40, dawn started to break and light edged its way across the sky, a faint, creamy glow the colour of tracing paper. But in Adrian Wellis’s house, the lights remained on. Throughout the night there’d been movement inside: a shadow passing, a silhouette forming, but never for very long. All I knew for sure was that they hadn’t been to bed.

At 5 a.m. the front door opened and the other guy emerged, dressed in the same clothes, his hair a little ruffled, his clothes not on properly. Why’s he taking a walk at 5 a.m.? He was carrying a black holdall. Halfway along the road he stopped, unzipped it, checked inside and then closed it again.

I got out of the car.

He clocked the movement, his eyes pinging towards me. I stepped around to the back of the BMW and flipped the boot. He carried on walking, his interest in me lost. In the boot, next to the spare wheel, was my escape plan; there in case it all went wrong. I removed the crowbar, slid it into the back of my trousers and made a beeline for him.

‘Excuse me, mate.’

He looked back. No reply.

‘Excuse me,’ I said again, and this time he stopped.

‘ What? ’

He glanced down at the holdall, as if I might be coming for that, and shifted it behind one of his legs to protect it.

‘What d’ya want?’ he said.

South London accent. So he’s from around here somewhere .

‘I’m looking for Adrian Wellis.’

Another frown. His eyes moved from me to the car then back to me. He shifted position slightly and glanced down the road to the house. Panic in his face.

When he turned back to me, he shrugged. ‘Never heard of him.’

But even if I hadn’t seen him come out of Wellis’s house, I would have seen right through the lie. He couldn’t play this game – he wasn’t canny enough – and all of a sudden I saw him for what he was: Wellis’s lapdog.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘What the fuck’s it gotta do with you?’

‘I’m just interested.’

‘Fuck off,’ he said, and started along the road again.

‘You’re going to help me find Sam Wren.’

He stopped and looked back. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard what I said.’

He turned fully towards me, bag swinging around to his front, and tried to make himself bigger and more aggressive. But it didn’t work. A man who barely weighed ten stone wasn’t going to be a match for me. He wasn’t going to be much of a match for anyone. Inside a couple of seconds he knew his ruse had failed and seemed to shrink in his skin. I took a step in his direction, just to underline its failure.

‘Let’s go and see Adrian,’ I said.

‘He doesn’t like strangers inside his house.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I figured.’

‘So he’s not going to open the door to you.’

‘No. But he’ll open it to you.’

26

The man stopped outside the house and knocked a couple of times. We waited. Ten seconds later, a silhouette moved along the hallway, distorted in the mottled glass panel. I took a subtle step away from the door as the silhouette leaned in towards the peephole. Then the lock flipped and the door came away from the frame.

Adrian Wellis filled the gap.

He was dressed in his boxer shorts. Nothing else. I could see the crucifix tattoo at his neck, and more on his body: a snake’s head on his left breast; the numbers 666 on his hip. ‘What the hell are you doing back?’ he said to the man, and then, as he took a step closer, spotted me off to the side. His eyes flicked between the man and me, and he pulled the door back as far as it would go. He had a faintly amused expression on his face. ‘What the fuck is this?’ he said. He was Welsh.