Tim Weaver - Vanished

He let that sit there.

Again, I didn’t respond.

Finally, he continued. ‘So if you say you weren’t there at the house, and you weren’t there driving that BMW, then I guess that’s what we have to run with. But it doesn’t mean I think you’re telling the truth.’ He paused and flipped the file shut, eyeing me before speaking. ‘In fact, quite the opposite. I think you’re a fucking liar.’

38

At Ealing Common Tube station, I grabbed a Travelcard and headed down the steps to the eastbound District. I was on my way to see Duncan Pell for a second time.

It was two on a Saturday afternoon, so the platform wasn’t empty, but it was still pretty quiet. I moved about three-quarters of the way along, to where the sun arrowed through a gap in the roof. It must have been in the high twenties now: heat haze shimmered off the track, shadows were deep and long and the building shifted and creaked around me. A couple of seconds later, my phone went off.

I grabbed it and looked at the display. Terry Dooley .

Dooley was part of my old life; a source I’d managed to get my hooks into as a journalist, and one who had been forced to come along for the ride ever since. He was a reluctant passenger. In a moment of madness, he and three of his detectives had visited a brothel in south London, where things turned drunk and nasty and one of the cops put a prostitute in a neck brace. The next morning the story landed on my desk. I’d called him and offered to keep it out of the papers if, in return, he got me information when I needed it. It was a better trade for him: he was married with two boys, and if there was one thing Dooley hated more than dealing with me, it was the idea of battling for custody of his kids. I hit Answer. ‘Carlton Lane.’ Carlton Lane was where the brothel had been.

‘Funny,’ said a voice. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t answer.’

‘How you doing, Dools?’

‘Yeah, great,’ he replied with zero enthusiasm. The line drifted. I heard footsteps and then a door closing. ‘You got five minutes, then I’ve got to get the boys to football.’

I’d called him as soon as Sallows had left. Dooley hadn’t answered, but I’d left a message on his voicemail, asking him to call me back. Tasker and Dooley were the two sources I used most from my previous life: Tasker was more reliable, more discreet and less prone to putting obstacles in my way; but Dooley was like the oracle. He kept his ear to the ground, knew the comings and goings at the Met, and had his fingers in all sorts of pies. I couldn’t work out why Sallows was trying to squeeze me. I’d made problems for myself by staking out the house, calling an ambulance for the girl and letting Wellis get the better of me, but there was still little for the cops to go on. A witness spotting a car a bit like mine wasn’t going to lead to the Met turning up on my doorstep, not if they didn’t even have my plates. So what had got Sallows interested in me?

‘Did you listen to the whole of my message?’ I asked.

‘Nope.’

‘That’s great, Dools.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ He gave a little snort, as if by asking him to check his messages properly I was asking the impossible. I could see things his way: we went months without talking, and just as he started to believe he’d got rid of me from his life, he picked up the phone and there I was. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got a real job here, not some Mickey Mouse operation like you.’

I ignored him. ‘Does the name Kevin Sallows mean anything to you?’

‘Sallows?’

‘Yeah. You know him?’

‘Don’t know him personally, but I know of him.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Career cop. Old school. He was part of the Snatcher team.’

‘But he’s not any more?’

‘I don’t know exactly what went down.’

‘Which means what?’

‘Which means I don’t know exactly what went down. Not the gory details. That investigation is locked down tighter than a Jewish piggy bank.’

‘So what do you know?’

‘Something blew up between a couple of the cops there – something really big – and then Sallows got kicked off the case and shipped off to south London somewhere. He’s working the shitty cases they wouldn’t even give to a half-cop like you.’

‘Why?’

‘Like I said, I don’t know the gory details.’

‘What about the edited highlights?’

‘You might wanna put in a call to your one-time sparring partner. He’d probably know more about it than I do. You can relive the days when you and him sailed into the Dead Tracks like Laurel and Hardy.’

‘You mean Healy?’

‘The very same.’

‘He’s working the Snatcher?’

‘Yeah. Don’t you ever watch TV?’

‘I haven’t been following the case.’

‘He’s manoeuvred himself back into the big time. Don’t ask me how he managed it. The shit you and him got up to last year, he should be getting bummed in the showers at Pentonville, and you should be there watching.’

‘What do you mean “back into the big time”?’

‘Way I hear it, he’s pretty much playing second fiddle to the SIO.’

‘Who’s the SIO?’

‘Melanie Craw. The chief clown at the circus.’

‘You know her?’

‘No. But people tell me she’s a bitch with ice for blood. You probably need to be when you’ve got a deranged killer pissing all over your career. I give it one more dead homo before they pull the plug on her.’

‘So she fell out with Sallows?’

‘Fell out, didn’t rate him, didn’t like the way he dressed – who knows?’

‘Has Healy been playing ball?’

‘Old Lazarus? Of course he has. He’s a clever bastard. He’s probably been on his best behaviour since the start of the year; probably managed to keep himself in check even while the people there are chipping away at him. But you can bet your arse he’s been spending the whole time plotting some sort of revenge mission.’

‘Against who?’

‘Who’d you think? Against everyone.’

39

9 April | Two Months Earlier

Craw swivelled gently in her seat, half turned away from the men in her office, her gaze on the incident room. She wore every hour of the investigation on her face: dark rings under her eyes that she’d tried to disguise with make-up; the pale, almost translucent skin that shadowed insomnia; the far-away look of someone who’d imagined many times over what it would be like to walk away. Forty days after the third victim, Joseph Symons, went missing, they still had nothing.

Next to Healy was Davidson. On the other side of Davidson was Sallows. On the left-hand side of the office were other, senior CID cops: Sampson, Frey, Richter and then Carmichael, who had a notepad in his hand and was tapping a pen against his thigh. He hadn’t written anything down yet.

Finally, Craw looked back at the group. ‘I’ve got to do a press conference in two hours. I’ve got to go out there, in front of half the journalists in the country, and I’ve got to tell them what we’ve found and how we’re going to catch this bastard.’ She reached down in front of her and picked up a piece of paper off the desk. It was blank. ‘This is what we’ve found. What’s written on Carmichael’s pad is what we’ve found. Six weeks after Symons gets whisked off into the night, and we’re in the same place as we were when Wilky got taken. And he’s been missing eight fucking months .’ She smashed the flat of her hand on the desk – papers gliding off, pens rattling, her keyboard leaping from its position – and turned and looked out at the incident room again.

Silence. Then the gentle squeak of her chair as it moved back and forth.