Tim Weaver - Vanished

‘Ade,’ he said again, but this time there was no purpose in his words, no urgency, and I realized something: he was crying. Soft sounds. Sniffs. ‘Ade,’ he said again.

I reached up, hands either side of his ankles.

‘ Ade! ’

He looked down, and saw me. Shock in his face. Then fear. Then anger. I grabbed his ankles and pulled him off the ladder. He fell hard and fast, cracking his head against one of the steps, before landing awkwardly right on the ball of his foot. He yelled out and collapsed. I grabbed him by the collar, got him to his feet and drove him back, into the wall. The wind whistled out of him.

‘What’s your name?’

Tears and blood on his face.

‘What’s your name ?’

‘Eric.’

‘Eric what?’

‘Eric Gaishe.’

I glanced up, into the loft space. ‘What have you done, Eric?’

He sniffed. More tears in his eyes.

‘I think I killed someone.’

27

I pulled Gaishe, hobbling, to the bathroom, pushed him inside and told him to stay put. Then I returned to the spare room. Above me, the loft hatch was a big, black space. I only had a T-shirt on – nothing to cover my skin, nothing to prevent prints – so I grabbed a shirt from a nearby wardrobe, tore it in two and wrapped the material around both hands. I didn’t know what awaited me in the darkness. Not exactly. But, given this house and the people who occupied it, it couldn’t be anything good. As I started to climb, dread slithered through the pit of my stomach.

Halfway up, a moth escaped from the shadows and, at the lip of the hatch, I could see the full extent of the blood: running along the edges, soaking through into the insulation. Another rung, then another, and suddenly my head was inside the crawl space.

And I saw her.

Matted, unwashed hair. Skin stained with a mixture of grease and sweat. The woman was on her stomach, part of her face in a bed of insulation, skeletal arms out either side, legs spread. Her head was tilted towards me, one of her eyes looking up as if she’d been trying to claw her way back out of the loft. And there was blood everywhere: her face, her arms, her ribs, her legs. Thin, painful knife cuts had been used as a torture tactic, not enough to kill her, but enough to subdue her, and the rest was just bruising, everywhere, scattered all over her like spilled ink. There was a brick beside her, coated in her blood. A couple of strikes to the head from Gaishe, and then there would have been nothing but silence. No fight in her any more.

No life.

I looked at her: drawn and wan, she couldn’t have been more than eighteen. There were older bruises on her arms and legs, around her collarbone, next to her eyes and hips. I felt anger force its way up, blooming in my chest.

And then she blinked.

It was so quick, so unexpected, I wasn’t even sure if I’d seen it. I turned my head and put my ear to her mouth. And I felt it. Soft, warm breath.

Shit. She’s alive.

I thought about what I was going to do. But not for long.

Ultimately, there wasn’t a choice to make.

Using the house landline, I called for an ambulance, gave them the address and where she was in the house. ‘You’ll need police here too,’ I told them, then hung up. She hadn’t moved from her position in the attic by the time I returned to her, but her visible eye was more alert. It swivelled from left to right, as if she was trying to focus on me.

‘It’s okay. You’re going to be all right. This will all be over soon.’ I couldn’t touch her; didn’t want to leave any more evidence than I had already. ‘I need to take care of something, okay? By the time I’m done, the ambulance will be here. You’ll be all right.’

A gurgle in her throat.

‘I promise you’ll be okay.’

‘… hmmmm hurrrrrr …’

‘You’re safe now.’

‘ … done lim hurd mm …’

I started down the ladder – and then stopped.

Done lim hurd mm . Don’t let him hurt me.

I looked at her. Her body, her face, painted with blood. ‘I won’t let them hurt you,’ I said. ‘Not Adrian. Not Eric. Not any more.’

But it seemed to give her no comfort, and then – slowly, inch by inch – she started shaking her head. ‘ … nnnnnnn a … is …’

‘Try not to move.’

‘ … no … adrrri … nnnn … no … e … ’

And as she lay there with her life leaking out of her, something unspoken passed between us – and I realized what she was telling me.

Not Adrian. Not Eric.

She was talking about someone else.

I moved down the ladder, wiping each rung clean with the shirt. At the bottom I looked around: what had I touched? I had about seven or eight minutes before the ambulance arrived – maybe a little more if the traffic was bad.

Downstairs, Wellis was still on the kitchen floor, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. He was woozy: when he tried to roll over on to his back, he couldn’t. I left him and wiped down the door frames, door handles and walls.

Next, I headed back upstairs, one half of the shirt around my hand, one half tucked into the back of my trousers, and opened the bathroom door. Gaishe was inside, perched on the edge of the bath. As soon as I looked at him, I felt the burn in the centre of my chest. ‘Come here, shithead.’ I grabbed him hard by the arm. His face was still streaked with blood and tears and he looked terrified. A man out of his depth, led astray by someone much worse than him. Now he was as deep in as he could get.

I marched him downstairs and shoved him into the wall at the bottom. He stayed there, just staring off at Wellis, and I realized he was dazed as well as scared.

I can use that .

‘Eric,’ I said. ‘Give me a hand with Adrian. We need to get him out of here before the police arrive.’ He thought he recognized something in my voice – something positive, something he could cling on to – and he came over immediately.

We hoisted Wellis on to his feet, I cut the duct tape at his ankles and wrists, and tore it away from his mouth. Then I told Gaishe to get me a long coat from Wellis’s wardrobe. He did just as I asked. When he returned, we dressed Wellis in it. I buttoned it, and left Gaishe holding him while I did one last circuit of the house. At the bottom of the ladder I told the woman that she was going to be fine, and that the ambulance was on its way. And then, grabbing the crowbar and the duct tape, we all left.

Gaishe was on one side, I was on the other, Wellis was in the middle. Gaishe had blood on his face, I had a crowbar and a shirt tucked into the back of my trousers, Wellis had no shirt or shoes on – but it was still early, not even six, and there was no one around. ‘Are you going to help us?’ Gaishe asked as we got to my car.

‘Yes,’ I lied, and flipped the boot.

I glanced up and down the road. No one watching. No one around. I lined Wellis up, his eyes widening as he continually tried to focus, then I pressed his head down and forced him into the back. He folded easily; he still didn’t have the power to fight me.

‘What are you doing?’ Gaishe said.

‘What does it look like?’

‘You’re putting him in there?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘And you’re going in too.’

He frowned, and then I grabbed him by his neck and jammed him down into the space. He climbed in clumsily, hit his knee and his head, but then finally came to rest next to Wellis. They both looked up at me, one dazed, one scared. Rapists. Animals.

And then I shut them in.

28

8 March | Three Months Earlier

They now had a third photograph to pin to the wall of the incident room. Steven Wilky, Marc Evans and the very latest: a 24-year-old office cleaner called Joseph Symons. He’d been gone eight days by the time his father reported him missing, nine by the time the task force realized they had another victim and had descended on his place in Clerkenwell, a pokey fourth-floor flat in a tower block called Dunkirk House. Healy had given Craw a lift from the station.