Tim Weaver - Vanished

Craw shifted forward. ‘Healy?’

He turned to Craw. ‘Sallows is responsible for checking the CCTV footage from each of the buildings the victims were taken from, is that right?’

‘Yeah,’ Sallows interjected. ‘I checked them all and there’s nothing to find.’

‘Not true.’

‘Get to the point, Healy,’ Craw said.

‘There are consistencies at all of the scenes – the type of victim, their build, their sexuality, the type of location they live in, the hair on the pillow. There’s something else too. At each of the crime scenes there’s been no working internal lighting.’

Craw’s expression changed. ‘Explain.’

He glanced at Davidson and Sallows: Davidson was watching him, eyes narrow, head tilted, trying to see where this was going; Sallows looked as white as a ghost.

‘Every interior light leading up to the flat, including the hallway the flat is on, has been out. In the latest one, in Symons’s building – at the front entrance, at the foyer – the whole floor was out. There were no working bulbs at all .’

‘These places are shitholes,’ Sallows said.

‘It’s not just that,’ Healy replied. ‘I went back and checked the CCTV footage from each of the scenes. It’s difficult to make anything out on the night the victims were taken. You can see vague figures passing in and out of the building, but not much apart from that.’

‘ So? ’ Sallows said.

‘So I went back and requested the footage from the two weeks prior to each of the victims being taken – of the front of the building and the foyer; as much of the interior as I could get hold of – and I watched it back.’ He turned to Craw. ‘The lights were working at all of the crime scenes three days before the victims were taken.’

Silence. No sound at all, from anyone.

But a few of them knew where this was going. Craw dropped back into her chair, thin fingers massaging her brow; Davidson shifted, looking anywhere but Healy.

Sallows just stared into space.

‘Two nights before, a man walks up to each of the buildings and he systematically dismantles or breaks every single light at the entrances and inside the foyers of the tower blocks. We don’t have CCTV for the individual hallways, but we can assume he kills the lights there too. It’s the same man, wearing the same clothes, every time: black trousers, hooded top, no way to identify him. But we have him on film, we’ve always had him on film – and we know what he’s wearing, his physicality, his build and how he’s able to walk them out the front door without being seen.’ Healy kept his eyes on Craw, but in his peripheral vision he could see the rest of the room. Already Davidson had come forward on his seat, away from Sallows’s space, like a snake moving for shade, leaving his friend, his fellow tormentor, isolated and alone at the back of the room. ‘The problem was,’ Healy continued, fixing his gaze on Sallows, ‘we were too lazy to check any further back than the night they were taken.’

Silence.

Craw finally looked up at Healy, then across to Sallows, then out to the rest of the room. ‘Okay, back to work,’ she said. ‘Kevin, stay where you are.’

They all filed out, Healy following Davidson.

Once they were out of sight of Craw, her office door slamming shut, he stopped and watched Davidson head off between the desks to his seat at the far end. A couple of minutes later, Healy looked up to see Davidson watching him.

He stared back.

One down, one to go .

40

At the steps to the ticket hall at Gloucester Road there was the stench of fried food and perfume. Groups of teenage boys, coated in their father’s aftershave and clutching identical brown McDonald’s bags, were standing beyond the gateline, laughing riotously as one of them – out of sight of the station staff – stealthily fed his fries into the credit card slot on the self-service machine. Adjacent to the group was the booth by which I’d introduced myself to Duncan Pell two days before.

But today he wasn’t there.

I scanned the hall and spotted three Underground employees: one at the turnstiles, one by the entrance and one, the closest to me, sweating under the glass-domed interior, as the sun cut down through the roof. He was about five stone overweight, his hair was matted to his scalp like he’d had a bucket of water poured over him and there were huge sweat patches under his arms. He’d be a pool of water by the time his shift ended. I moved across to him.

‘Is Duncan Pell around?’

He looked at me. Shook his head. ‘Nah, mate. Not ’ere today.’

‘Day off?’

‘Who knows with Dunc.’

‘How do you mean?’

He studied me closer this time, and then shrugged. ‘S’posed to be ’ere at five,’ the guy said, ‘but then he called in sick.’

‘That a regular occurrence?’

He was watching a couple of kids at the turnstiles now. They were laughing about something, whispering to one another, only one of them holding a ticket. He took a step towards them, ready to give chase if they jumped the barriers, but if he made it as far as the entrance before he was out of breath, it probably would have been a personal best.

I tried again. ‘Is Duncan off sick a lot then?’

But the man wasn’t really paying attention any more. ‘Look, mate, he’s not ’ere, all right?’ he said. ‘I dunno where he is.’ Then he shuffled off towards the boys.

I looked across the ticket hall towards the second guy, stationed at the main entrance, but then something else caught my attention: a staffroom door to his left, the station supervisor half in, half out, talking to someone inside. I made a beeline for it. By the time I was halfway across the ticket hall, the supervisor looked like he was about to leave. I slowed my approach, angling the direction I was coming in from so he wouldn’t spot me in his peripheral vision, and as he stepped away and headed off beyond the gateline, I slid a foot in between the door and frame, and slipped inside.

It was small and clinical: a counter on the left with a microwave, kettle and toaster on it, three tables with chairs in the middle and a calendar on the right. No windows, just the faint hum of air conditioning. Right at the back was a vending machine and a bank of nine lockers. At the table nearest to me was a woman, back to me, reading a magazine while eating a sandwich. Facing me was a man, cross-legged, newspaper open in front of him, fiddling with something on his phone.

‘Excuse me.’

They both looked over.

‘My name’s James Braddock,’ I said, taking another step towards them. ‘I’m from the British Transport Police. I was just chatting to your SS and he said it would be okay to ask you both a couple of questions. Would that be all right with you?’

They glanced between them and mumbled agreements.

I asked for their names. The woman was Sandra Purnell; the man only offered his first name: Gideon. She was fully invested in what I was saying from minute one, but he seemed more reticent. ‘I’m looking for a colleague of yours,’ I said, and moved to the centre of the room. ‘Duncan Pell.’

They looked at each other, and the woman broke into a smile. Not one with any humour, but with some insight; as if there were a lot of people looking for Duncan Pell. It seemed like she was about to speak, but then she just cleared her throat.

‘Your SS said he was ill,’ I lied.

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘And that he’s ill a lot.’

She paused. ‘I’m probably not best placed to answer this. I’m just part-time. Gid would know better than me.’

I looked at him. ‘Gideon?’

He shrugged. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Is Duncan Pell off ill a lot?’