Tim Weaver - Vanished

He started to clean up, sweeping everything on his desk off into a bin, and then grabbed a dishcloth from the kitchen area and rubbed off the coffee stains. About ten minutes later, at just gone 6 a.m., he looked up to see two men enter the office, laughing at something one of them had said. When their eyes locked on Healy, they briefly stopped – frozen for a moment – and then they tried to disguise the movement by continuing their conversation. They all knew each other – the two men were Richter and Sallows – but the division inside CID would be something he’d have to live with: some of them understood why he’d done what he did, the road he’d walked and the laws he’d broken; others only saw him as reckless. A man that couldn’t be trusted.

About twenty minutes later, his desk clean and his computer on, he saw someone coming towards him out of the corner of his eye. The office was busy now. He’d had a short conversation with a couple of detectives – a guy called Frey who had joined in the time he’d been off, and who told him he was sorry about Leanne; the other a cop called Sampson who he’d known professionally since they’d first got their uniforms – but mostly it had been nods of the head, or just a complete blank. People hadn’t been openly hostile so far, but as he turned to see who was approaching, he knew that was about to change.

‘Watch out,’ a voice said, ‘it’s the Return of the Living Dead.’

There were a couple of titters from elsewhere in the room. Healy looked out and saw Richter and Sallows smiling as Eddie Davidson stepped in closer.

‘How you doing, Eddie?’ Healy asked. He didn’t make eye contact, just fiddled around with the things on his desk: straightening, adjusting, tidying, trying to defuse the situation. Davidson was a DS in his early fifties, podgy and aggressive, with small dark eyes, thick black hair and an unruly beard. He had always been the worst-dressed detective on the force, and Healy noted that he hadn’t disappointed today: too-tight jeans, a red T-shirt with some kind of road-sign motif on it, and a leather jacket which he’d zipped up as far as it would go, which wasn’t very far: his belly was a big round mass.

Davidson was a decent cop: not the best, not the worst, but good enough. What he definitely was, though, was a zealous believer in the religion of the police force, which was why he hated Healy. Healy had gone against the religion and moved against his own. There was some added bad blood too: in a moment of desperation, as he’d searched hopelessly in the shadows for the man who’d taken his daughter, Healy had pulled a gun on Davidson.

‘How’s it feel to be back?’ Davidson asked.

‘It feels good.’

‘Yeah?’

The whole office stopped, some covertly eyeing the two of them, some fully turned around in their seats. Healy looked up. ‘Yeah, it feels good.’

‘You screwed up yet?’

Healy felt the first pulse of anger rise in his throat, and then pushed it back down again. Movement registered with Davidson – the tightness in Healy’s neck, the tension in his muscles – and he realized he’d got to Healy; picked at a wound and made it bleed. He looked out to the rest of the office, like he was working the crowd, and then shuffled in even closer. Healy glanced at him. ‘Was there something else, Eddie?’

Davidson smirked. ‘Is that a fucking joke ? You walk in here after two months and ask me that? Do you even remember what you did?’

Healy looked at him again. ‘I remember.’

‘You remember waving a gun in my face?’

They stared at each other. Healy didn’t reply this time, but suddenly it felt like the office was closing in. Other detectives stepped closer, the whole room squeezing shut around him. He laid a hand flat to the desk and leaned back in his chair, keeping his eyes fixed on Davidson, but gaining some room to breathe. Davidson noticed, pulled an empty chair in from behind him and wheeled in close to Healy again, so the two of them were almost touching knees.

‘Let me be clear on something,’ he said quietly, ‘just so there’s no grey areas here: no one wants you back, Healy.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind, Eddie.’

‘You do that. Because you can play by the rules, you can pretend nothing ever happened, but the truth is you’re not a cop any more. You’re not one of us, and you never will be. You’re just a snide, back-stabbing piece of shit.’

It took everything he had not to reach across and grab Davidson by the throat. But then, through his peripheral vision, he saw someone else enter the office, pausing in the doorway. A few people noticed, returning to their work.

‘Have we got a problem here?’

They all looked around at DCI Melanie Craw, a tall, slim woman in her forties. She was leaning against the door frame, arms crossed, a resigned expression on her face.

‘No problem, ma’am,’ Davidson said, immediately backing away.

‘What about you, Healy?’

He glanced at her, and then back to Davidson. Davidson, his face out of sight of Craw, was half smiling. ‘No,’ Healy said eventually. ‘There’s no problem.’

That night, as Healy made his way outside to his car, sleet sweeping across the car park, he noticed something wedged in place beneath one of the wipers. He reached forward and removed it, brushing off the moisture.

It was a toy knife.

He looked back at the station and, at one of the windows, he saw movement: there and then gone again. But he got the message. A snide, back-stabbing piece of shit .

8

Before heading out to Julia’s, I made a couple of quick calls. The first was to Spike, an old newspaper contact of mine. He was a twenty-something Russian hacker, here on an expired student visa. During my days as a journalist, he’d been an incredible source of information. He could get beyond any firewall without leaving a trace of himself, bagging names, numbers, email addresses, even credit histories and contracts while he was there. As long as I forgot about the fact that he was basically a criminal, and that I was his accessory, he was an unbeatable information source.

‘Pizza parlour.’

I smiled. ‘Spike, it’s David Raker.’

‘David!’

He had been here so long now, he hardly had an accent at all; just a slight twang, refined and smoothed by hours of watching English-language TV.

‘How’s things at the pizza parlour?’

He laughed. ‘Good, man. It’s been a while.’

‘Yeah, a few months. Did you miss me?’

‘I missed your money. So, what can I do you for?’

‘I’m hoping it’s pretty simple. I need a financial check done on someone. Bank accounts, credit cards, mortgage, investments, pensions – basically anything you can lay your hands on. I need the whole thing, A to Z.’

‘Who’s the victim?’

I gave him Sam Wren’s name, address and personal details, as well as a mobile number Julia had passed on to me. ‘I’ll need his phone records as well.’

‘What dates are we looking at?’

‘The last eighteen months, from today back to January of last year. I’ll be on my mobile, or I can pick up emails on the move. Just let me know when you get something.’

‘You got it. I’ll give you details of my bank too.’

Spike’s ‘bank’ was a locker at his local sports centre. For obvious reasons, he was a cash-only man, and he used the locker as a drop-off, changing the combination every time someone deposited his fee there.

Next, I dialled Sam’s brother Robert at work, and immediately got his voicemail. He was out of the country on business until Friday. That was another forty-eight hours away. I left a message, telling him who I was and what I was doing, and gave him my number.

Finally, referring back to Julia’s list of names, I cold-called PC Brian Westerley, the cop who’d filed Sam’s missing persons report. He answered after three rings, sounding pretty chirpy. By the time I’d told him who I was and why I was calling, the mood had changed. Pretty quickly I realized, if I was going to get anything from him, I’d have to work for it – or back him into a corner. Often, uniforms were the most difficult cops to deal with; their relative lack of power meant they took the first chance they could to lord it over someone.