Tim Weaver - Vanished

‘You’re a clever bastard, Healy.’ Sallows smiled, humourless and knowing. ‘Only you could pull off all that shit last year and still be standing here in front of me eight months later working the biggest case going.’ He made a soft sound, like he was still having a hard time believing it. ‘But here you are. Mr Squeaky Clean. Except, of course, we both know it’s all another lie.’

Healy didn’t respond. Sallows just looked at him.

‘Well,’ Healy said finally, ‘as nice as this has been, I’d better be going.’

Sallows suddenly made a move forward, right up close to Healy so they were only feet apart. Rain slapped against the umbrella, like a drumbeat, running off into the space between them. Sallows was completely dry. Healy was soaked through to the bone. ‘When you got me kicked off the Snatcher, you fucked with the wrong guy,’ he said, his voice suddenly laced with venom. ‘ Colm Healy dropping me in the shit? Even you must see how fucked up that is? Everything about you, your situation, your lying and your back-stabbing, it boils my piss. I mean, you’re the guy who thinks it’s okay to wave guns in the faces of the people you work with. You’re the guy who worms his way back into the big time, who puts on this show for people – this fucking show that no one else is capable of seeing through – and you’re still here working it off the books.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kevin.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘I saw you with Raker this morning. I’ve been watching this hospital every day since they brought that girl in here, because I know Raker was the one who made that call the day she was found and I know he was the one who dumped Gaishe at that warehouse.’

‘What Raker does has nothing to do with me.’

‘There you are again, Colm. Lying .’

‘It’s not a lie.’

‘It’s a fucking bare-faced lie, just like everything else in your shitty little life. You and Raker have cosied up again, doing whatever the fuck it is you two do together. I saw it coming a mile off, so when the girl was found, it was just a matter of being patient. It was just a matter of waiting here for you. And I thought to myself, “What’s the best way of making sure that everyone knows just what a lying sack of shit Colm Healy is?” ’ Sallows held up the camera. ‘Your time is up, Healy. You’re done.’

Healy tried not to show emotion.

But it didn’t work.

Sallows broke out into a smile. ‘I’m realistic. I don’t expect Craw to take me back and, to be honest, I wouldn’t want to go back. I can’t work for a malicious little bitch like that. But I’m going to enjoy hearing about the moment she asks you to clear your desk.’

‘What do you want, Sallows?’

‘What do I want ?’

‘There must be something you want.’

Sallows was still smiling. ‘I’d forgotten about your legendary sense of humour, Colm. What I want is for you to get what you deserve. And then, once I’ve done you, I’m doing Raker as well. You’re both going to get what’s coming.’

Healy imagined going for the camera, imagined grabbing Sallows by the throat and ripping him to pieces. He realized he was opening and closing his fists, all the anger and frustration and desperation channelled through his fingers. If he didn’t get the camera, everything was over. He was done. His life, his career, whatever semblance of normality he’d managed to claw back. But then Sallows glanced down, as if he knew what was going through Healy’s head, as if he could read the movement of his hands like words being spoken aloud, and he handed Healy the camera.

Except it wasn’t the camera.

It was just the case.

‘The camera’s in the car,’ Sallows said, watching the rain run down Healy’s face, hair matted to his head, clothes stuck to him. ‘I don’t know what concern that girl is of yours, I don’t know what you’re even doing here, or what you and that other prick have got planned. And to be honest, I don’t really care. Honestly, I don’t. What I care about is seeing you go down in flames – and if you take Raker with you, all the better.’

Healy scanned the car park, desperately looking for Sallows’s car.

‘A guy who waves guns in people’s faces can’t be trusted,’ Sallows said, reading the situation again. ‘So while the camera’s in the car, and the photos are still on it, I also took the trouble of emailing myself the pictures. Just to make sure they’re nice and safe.’

‘Look, Kevin, we can work –’

‘You’re done.’

‘There must be –’

‘You’re done , Healy,’ he said again, and as the gentle sound of rain settled in the silence, Sallows headed back to his car, leaving Healy alone.

65

At Battersea Bridge, I pulled the car over. My head was so full of noise, I had to find a side street, bump up on to the pavement and write it all down. An hour later I was done. Twenty pages of my notepad full, everything I’d ever learned about Samuel Wren. In the silence of the car, I went through it all again, trying to see where things didn’t join, trying to look for any kind of hairline fracture I could get into and prise open. But there was nothing new. Nothing I didn’t already know. All that looked up at me was what had looked up at me before: a deeply confused man, blackmailed by a people trafficker and at the mercy of a reality he could never accept.

Where’s the killer in you, Sam?

The rain got harder, popping against the windscreen like pebbles being thrown at the glass. I studied the picture I’d taken of the watcher from Pell’s DVD. There was an obvious question that I’d never got the chance to discuss with Healy: if Sam was taking these men, if we were assuming he was the Snatcher and had brokered some sort of partnership with Pell, why would he engineer his own disappearance but Pell not do the same? Why vanish at all? If he’d managed to take his first two victims – Steven Wilky and Marc Erion – without leaving a trace of himself, if Leon Spane had been dumped on Hampstead Heath and not led back to either him or Pell, why go to all the effort of disappearing? They’d already got away with it. Whatever this was, whatever they were doing together, however it worked, they were already below the radar when Sam went missing. And the only reason you’d then go on to plan your disappearance was if something had started to go wrong.

Or if you weren’t the killer at all.

‘You were the victim,’ I said quietly.

On the way home, as I came off Battersea Bridge, I decided to stop at Gloucester Road station again. I seriously doubted Pell would be there, but the people inside worked with him, got to see him daily, and Pell still represented my best shot at finding out where Sam went.

As I entered from the street, I kept my eyes on the faces of the staff, moving between them as I walked inside. I was conscious of the lies I’d told the last time I’d been in, and I remembered the guy in the staffroom – the man called Gideon – and the way he’d reacted to my being there about Sam and Pell. But, as I walked around the ticket hall, I realized I’d caught a lucky break. I hardly recognized any of the faces, which meant most wouldn’t recognize me. I bought a ticket and headed through the gateline, down to the platform and then back up again. I hadn’t expected to find Pell and I wasn’t disappointed, but I did a sweep of the station just to be sure.

At the booth, the overweight guy who’d been standing underneath the glass dome two days before, bathed in a pool of his own sweat, was perched on a stool, looking on disinterestedly. At one point, as I stood there watching the crowds coming in, turning things over in my head, he looked right at me but he didn’t seem to remember me.