Tim Weaver - Vanished

Finally, reluctantly, I put disc two in and pressed Play.

The same girl. The same flat.

As I watched, I remembered again what she’d said in the loft: Don’t let him hurt me . She hadn’t been talking about Adrian Wellis or Eric Gaishe.

She’d been talking about Duncan Pell.

And then I noticed something else.

I shifted closer to the TV. At the far side of the shot was the edge of a long mirror, its reflection casting back the rest of the room. The doors into the bedroom and the bathroom. The sofas. Pell with the camera in his hand this time, and the girl on all fours in front of him.

But they weren’t alone.

A ripple of unease passed through me as I leaned in even closer. To the side of the sofa, about seven feet from Pell and half out of shot, I could see a pair of legs, exactly parallel to one another.

Someone was watching them.

54

17 June | Today

Across London, in a quiet residential street close to Wimbledon Common, Healy sat in his Vauxhall watching a mid-terrace, cream-coloured house. It had a small concrete yard, well maintained. Two potted firs either side of a red door with a black knocker. Metallic blinds at the downstairs window, wooden blinds at the two top-floor ones. A kitchen and two bedrooms. Healy knew that, even though he couldn’t see into any of them from where he was. He knew it because he’d walked this street up and down, countless times.

This was where the psychologist lived.

Teresa Reed.

He’d followed her back from the supermarket; watched her park her Mini and let herself in. She was alone. She was always alone. He knew her routine back to front now, and she had no one to warm her bed and little in the way of a social life. A couple of times he’d been here on a Saturday night, or a week night, and he’d seen friends of hers call in. But it was a rarity, and over the five long months he’d been keeping track of her, he’d used that. He’d bumped into her on purpose that first time at Belmarsh, and engaged her in conversation, for a reason.

And this was the reason.

Healy reached into his pocket and got out the photo of Leanne. It was a bleached, slightly blurred shot of the two of them, arms around each other, about two years before he found her. A different time. A different life. He felt one of his eyes tear up, but he didn’t bother wiping it away. He let it break, let it trace the edge of his cheekbone and the corner of his mouth. Then, when he finally started to compose himself again, he looked up and saw Reed emerge from her front door, carrying a watering can.

There you are. Like clockwork.

He reached across to the glovebox, and pulled it open. Her routine was always the same on a Sunday. Half an hour after she got home from the supermarket, she started tending to her plants. She was a keen gardener; spent hours clipping them and cutting them back. This would be the best time for him to do it: when she was bent over one of the potted firs, her back to him, distracted by what she was doing. He looked down at the glovebox for a second time.

There was a gun inside.

Suddenly, his phone started going.

It buzzed across the passenger seat beside him, display facing up. Craw. Shit . He wiped his eyes and cleared his throat, then scooped up the phone. Get yourself together .

‘Healy.’

‘Healy, it’s Craw. Where are you?’

He cleared his throat a second time. ‘I’m at Drake’s building.’

Four words without any weight at all. They carried off into the space between the two of them and it took everything Healy had not to tell Craw what he was really doing. She didn’t believe him, not a word of it, but she didn’t ask again, and because of that he felt even more compelled to say something: part of him knew he owed her for giving him a route back in; the other part, even more hidden, just wanted to talk to someone about it.

But he couldn’t talk to Craw.

He couldn’t talk to anyone at the Met.

And the only person he could talk to – of his doubts about the case, and of his reasons for being here – was the one person who would get in the way of his attempt to rebuild his career.

Raker.

Twenty-five minutes later, Teresa Reed was finished and back inside. The glovebox was closed and the gun no longer visible. Healy knew he should have left for the station the minute Craw had hung up. Bartholomew had scheduled a meeting for two and wanted everyone in to hear his next revolutionary plan for catching the Snatcher.

But Healy hadn’t left.

He’d stayed to watch Teresa Reed.

Any change in her routine, any sidestep away from it, and the whole thing went down the toilet. But, five months in, she was still doing the same things, in the same order on the same days. He knew her life; knew where she’d be and when she’d be there.

He could take her whenever he wanted.

Scooping up his phone, he scrolled through his address book. When he found the number he wanted, he hit Dial.

‘Hello?’

A female voice.

‘Teresa? It’s Colm.’

‘Colm!’ she said excitedly. ‘Are we still on for tonight?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve booked us a table. I’ll pick you up at seven.’

55

Each of the discs was the same: the flat, the girl, Pell filming it all, and the terrible suffering that came after. I never saw the other person again. It was a man – you could tell from the shape of the legs; from the trousers and the shoes – but he was never glimpsed in the reflection of the mirror, never caught in shot. Yet, given everything I knew, the connection between Sam and Pell, and both their connections to Wellis, it wasn’t hard to see where the police might go with this.

Sam was the man watching.

And somehow the two of them were working together.

The evening drew in fast as rain continued falling. I turned one of the chairs around and sat at the living-room windows, watching the light fade. At 8.30, I heard Liz come in through the front door and approach me in the darkness.

Don’t mention the bruises, Liz .

Not now. Not today.

‘Are you saving electricity?’ she said, and perched herself on the edge of the sofa. I slid an arm around her and squeezed gently. She took my head in the crook of her elbow and started running her hands through my hair. ‘Guess that’s the end of the summer.’

‘Are you pleased now?’ I said to her, squeezing her a second time.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I much prefer this.’

‘You all done with work?’

‘Just about. Got a big day in court tomorrow, so need to make sure I don’t show myself up for the massive fraud that I am.’ She was smiling. ‘How was your Sunday?’

‘It was fine,’ I lied.

But she leaned away from me, as if immediately sensing something in my voice, and – even in the half-light of the room – I knew her eyes were falling on the bruises.

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. I just ran into some trouble.’

I studied the disappointment in her eyes, the distrust, the rejection she felt for all the promises I’d made to her about not putting myself on the line, and she shifted away from me, and then slowly got to her feet.

‘I’m fine, Liz. Honestly.’

‘You’re fine today,’ she said, looking down at me. ‘But don’t you remember anything we talked about? Any of the things you said to me?’

I sucked down my anger. ‘It was nothing.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘He took me by surprise.’

‘They always do.’

I got to my feet and stood there in front of her, the living room getting darker every second, only the faint blue glow of the DVD readout adding colour to our faces. ‘This is what I do,’ I said to her gently. ‘This is my job. This is my life.’