by Tim Weaver
I tried to think of where to go next.
But then he got up from the tree trunk, the knife in his hand, handle hidden in the cup of his palm, blade facing off behind him into the trees. ‘Anyway, as I said, I want to make use of the time available to me, so I need to make you understand what you did.’
‘What I did?’
He looked at me – blood in his eye, more bruises than skin, streaks of mauve reaching down like fingers towards his throat – and came over, dropping to his haunches beside me. And for the first time I understood what Sam, Drake and the others had seen. Not the ticket inspector, not Edwin Smart. The man inside Smart. Within a couple of seconds he was a completely different man, a monster, without even having to speak.
I glanced between his face and his hand, the knife gripped so tightly his knuckles had blanched, and, briefly, I thought about making a break for it. But I didn’t know how much of the drug he’d given me, how much had left my body or how much of my body was even functioning. So I turned back to him, trying to face him down, and I saw something flicker in his eyes. A second later, I realized what it was.
A warning.
He drove the knife into my stomach, coming in towards me, teeth gritted, face contorted, and every atom of my body seemed to freeze. A piercing pain, cold and hard, drove into the spaces inside me, nerve endings firing, sending agonizing waves, like an alarm, shooting into my fingers, my toes and my head. Everything blurred: my sight, my hearing, the balance between dark and light, and the next time I was aware what was going on, he’d pushed me to the floor and was standing over me, knife in his hand, my blood dripping from it. I watched him bend over me, face coming down towards mine.
‘That’s what I never understood about you,’ he said, his voice still normal; soft and coherent. ‘You of all people should have seen what you were doing.’
I felt blood running free of my stomach.
My shirt sticking to my skin.
‘Your wife died of cancer too. You buried her here, just like I buried my father in Highgate. You must understand the importance of memories, of being able to reach out to them after they’re gone. You must get that. So why did you take it away from me?’
He came in even closer to me, his breath on my face.
‘My father was a violent, abusive, drunken prick, but he was my father. My father. It wasn’t your choice to make. You forced me out into the open, you fucked with me, and you fucked with the only day that ever really mattered to me. My father is buried in this city, and I can never come back here, never come back to his grave, never be here for him because you and that prick I keep reading about in the papers – that cop, Bartholomew – have got in my way.’ He swiped the knife across my face, the air shifting around me. ‘So now I’m going to kill you.’
But I could hardly hear him now. When I tried to breathe, it felt like air was being sucked into the wound, more going into my stomach than my mouth. He shifted position above me, and this time I couldn’t even hear his feet on the floor of the forest. There wasn’t just a depression in the sound, there was no sound. Only a faint ringing, deep inside my head somewhere, like a fire alarm going off in another room.
I watched him re-establish his grip on the knife.
This is it. This is the end.
And then he looked off towards the trail.
I was fading, my vision smeared, but I managed to roll my head in the direction he was studying, and make out two vague shapes coming up the path towards us. Smart glanced down at me, then back at the trail, and as the shapes came closer, my vision cleared momentarily and I recognized the people I’d seen earlier. The couple in their sixties. The woman was still holding the flowers, and they were still holding hands.
Smart glanced at me again.
Uncertainty now.
Turned the knife. Fingers tight around the grip.
Looked at the couple for a second time.
And then he ran.
He headed off, breaking on to the trail and left, out of sight of the couple, and made for the darkness of the entranceway. The couple were too far back to notice him, except maybe to see a blur of movement. I called out to them, screamed help as loud and as long as I could manage, but they didn’t seem to react. When they got closer, I shouted it again, straining every sinew, every fibre of strength I had left. Yet when I was done, they didn’t look over, didn’t change course, didn’t even seem to have heard me.
And then they walked on by.
I realized then I hadn’t made a single sound. Nothing. Not one word. The voice I was hearing I could only hear inside my head. My capacity to speak, my capacity to hear myself, everything I’d ever taken for granted, was shutting down. My vision flickered – grey to white to grey, like an old TV signal – and then I completely blacked out for a moment. When I emerged into the light again, when objects formed in front of me – trees and branches and leaves – I was back in the forest, thirty feet from the trail, dying alone.
Get to your phone.
Get to your fucking phone.
I grabbed some grass and pulled myself forward, pain coursing down the front of my chest. There was blood everywhere, but mostly it was pain. I got about five feet and had to stop, my lungs barely filling now, my heart seeming to slow. I thought of Liz, of the last conversation we’d ever had – a fight about what I did, and who I was – and then I thought of Derryn, of the moment I’d buried her here, in among these graves and tombs and memories. And then I reached around me for something else to grab on to, clamped my hand on a tree root and pulled again. And I kept on pulling, dragging myself forward.
Minutes passed.
Minutes that felt like hours.
But I got there, and when I got there I felt death moving in, as if my body had been prepared to hold out until I got to the trail, but no more. My vision blinked in and out, my hearing pretty much gone. I grabbed the phone, half hidden in grass at the edge of the track. My muscles were failing too now, but I held on to the mobile with everything I had and pushed Call. I didn’t know who it would get through to. I didn’t know whether it would even make any difference. I was dying. But I brought it to my ear and I waited for an answer.
‘Raker?’
It was Healy. I tried to say his name.
‘Raker?’ he said again.
‘Hea … ly …’
‘Raker – are you all right?’
I swallowed. Coughed. ‘Hea … ly … I’m …’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m … dyin …’
I dropped the phone.
And, finally, there was only darkness.
82
7 July
There was only one space left in the car park, right outside the entrance. Healy swung the Vauxhall into it and killed the engine. The sun was shining, coming in over the roof of the building and in through the windscreen, and as he sat there in his shirt and tie, sleeves rolled up, jacket across the back seat, he watched the people gathered to his left.
On the radio, playing softly despite the engine being off, they were talking about how police had finally found Edwin Smart. He’d been on the run for eighteen days and had been discovered living rough in scrubland east of Glasgow. Everyone soon figured out why. After everything that had happened at Hayden Cemetery, Healy had been back to Raker’s place and been through his notes on Smart, and he saw that Smart’s father had been born in East Kilbride. If he could no longer visit the old man’s grave, maybe Smart figured the next best thing was his birthplace. The truth was, the relationship between father and son was, at points, too difficult to grasp. The father was a violent drunk, an abuser, a paedophile. The son was a killer in denial about himself, a kidnapper and torturer of men; he both loved and hated who he was, in the same way he loved and hated the man who had made him that way. In the days and weeks ahead, police and psychologists would begin to break the surface, but Healy wondered whether they’d ever be able to get at the answers within. By the time they did, if they even did, the public th
at was once so fascinated by the Snatcher, and the men and women at the Met who had tried to find him, would have moved on to something else.
Some other tragedy.
He turned off the radio, reached over to the back seat and grabbed his jacket, then got out of the car. Some people looked over, faces he recognized but didn’t want to talk to. He shrugged on his jacket and then stood there in the sun, enjoying the warmth for a moment and forgetting – just briefly – what he was here for. Then he noticed some of the crowd were looking past him, out towards the gates of the church, to the street beyond.
He thought of Leanne then, of how Raker had helped him find her, and a flutter of sadness took flight, like a bird escaping from its cage. And then the hearse finally pulled into view, the coffin inside it, and Healy headed into the coolness of the church.
Author’s Note
For the purposes of the story, I’ve taken some small liberties with the layout and working practices of the London Underground. My hope is that it’s done subtly enough not to grate, and remains true to the amazing history of the city’s railway lines. Those schooled in the Tube will see echoes of Whitechapel’s past in my version of Westminster station, will note I’ve altered Gloucester Road ever so slightly and I hope will forgive my reinterpretation of night-time hours on the network. Residents of north London will no doubt also recognize Fell Wood as being based closely on Haringey’s Parkland Walk.
Acknowledgements
Once again, at every stage of Vanished’s development, I’ve been backed by an amazing team of people. When the going got tough, my editor, Stef Bierwerth, and agent, Camilla Wray, calmed my nerves, providing razor-sharp editorial insight and welcome words of encouragement. A special thank-you to everyone at Penguin HQ as well who have worked so hard on my behalf in the run-up to publication, as have the ladies of Darley Anderson (with an extra shout-out for the crack foreign rights team of Clare Wallace and Mary Darby).
Thanks to Alistair Montgomery for taking the time to answer my (almost certainly tedious) questions about the Tube’s history, its ghosts and his life on the lines; and to Mike Hedges, whose fascinating insight into the police continues to make my life easier. Vanished wasn’t always the easiest of writes, but my family offered unconditional love and support. Thanks to Mum and Dad, who never complained (and fed and watered me) when I decamped for days at a time; Lucy, for her support and part-time PR; Rich, for travelling the country with posters in his car; and, finally, to the Adamses, Ryders and Linscotts, for spreading the word, turning up and supporting me, laying on events, and everything in between. And, finally, to my two ladies: Erin, who keeps asking when she can read the books (and who promises not to repeat any of the swear words); and Sharlé, who never complains, never doubts, and – without whose incredible patience – the book could never have been written.
Read on for a taste of
NEVER COMING BACK
The next bestseller from Tim Weaver
Part One
DECEMBER 2007
1
When the night came, it came fast. The sky yellowed, like a week-old bruise, and then the sun began its descent into the desert floor, dropping out of the clouds as if it were falling. The further it fell, the quicker the sky changed, until the sun was gone from view and all that remained was a smear of red cloud, like a bloodstain above the Mojave.
The city limits emerged from the darkness about twenty minutes later: to start with just small, single-storey satellite towns, street lights flickering in the shadows either side of the Interstate; then, as the 15 carved its way through the Southern Highlands, a brighter, more persistent glow. Housing estates, strip malls and vast tracts of undeveloped land, illuminated by billboards and the orange tang of sodium lights; and then the neon: casinos, motels and diners, unfurling beyond the freeway. Finally, as I came off the Interstate at Exit 36, I saw the Strip for the first time, its dazzling, monolithic structures rising out of the flatness of the desert, like a star going supernova.
Even a quarter of a mile short of its parking garage, I knew the Mandalay Bay would be a step up from the last time I’d stayed in Las Vegas. On my first trip to the city five years before, the newspaper had taken care of the booking and left me to rot in a downtown grind joint called The George. ‘George’, I later found out, was casino lingo for a good tipper. Except the only people doing the gambling at The George were the homeless, placing 25c minimum bets on the blackjack tables out front so they could scrape together enough for a bottle of something strong. This time, as I nosed the hired Dodge Stratus into a space on a huge rooftop car park, I passed eight-storey signs advertising a televised UFC fight at the hotel in January, and I knew I’d made the right decision to book it myself: last time out, the only fighting I’d seen anywhere close to The George was of the fully drunk kind.
I turned off the ignition and as the engine and radio died, the sound of the Las Vegas Freeway filled the car; a low, unbroken hum, like the rumble of an approaching storm. Further off, disguised against the sky except for the metronomic wink of its tail light, was a plane making its final approach into McCarran. As I sat there, a feeling of familiarity washed over me, of being in this city, of hearing these same sounds, five years before. I remembered a lot from that trip, but mostly I just remembered the noise and the lights.
I opened the door of the Dodge and got out.
The night was cool, but not unpleasant. Popping the trunk, I grabbed my overnight bag and headed across the lot. Inside, the hotel was just as loud, the cars and planes and video screens replaced by the incessant ding, ding, ding of slot machines. I waited in line for the front desk, watching as a young couple in their twenties started arguing with one another. By the time I was handed my room card, I was ready for silence – or as close as I could get.
I showered, changed, and raided the minibar, then called Derryn to let her know I’d arrived okay. We chatted for a while. She’d found it hard to adapt to our new life on the West Coast initially: we had no friends here, she had no job, and in our Santa Monica apartment block our neighbours operated a hermetically sealed clique. Gradually, though, things were changing. Back home, she’d been an A&E nurse for twelve years before giving it up to come out to the States with me, and that experience had landed her a short-term contract at a surgery a block from where we lived. She was only taking blood and helping doctors patch up wounds – much more sedate than the work she’d been doing back in London – but she loved it. It got her out meeting people, and it brought in a little money, plus she got weekends off too, which meant she could go to the beach.
‘You going to spend all our money, Raker?’ she asked after a while.
‘Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Do you even know how to play cards?’
‘I know how to play Snap.’
I could tell she was smiling. ‘I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you sidle up to the blackjack table pretending you know what you’re doing.’
‘I do know what I’m doing.’
‘You can’t even play Monopoly.’
‘My biggest fan talks me up again.’
She laughed. ‘You’ll have to take me with you next time.’
‘I will.’
‘I’d love to see Vegas.’
I turned on the bed and looked out through the window. Millions of lights winked back through the glass. ‘I know. I’ll bring you here one day, I promise.’
At one-thirty, I was still awake, even if I didn’t understand why. I’d been up until four the previous night filing a story, was fried after the five-hour drive down from LA – but I just couldn’t drop off. Eventually, I gave up trying, got dressed and headed downstairs.
When the elevator doors opened, it was like time had stood still: the foyer, the sounds of the slots, the music being piped through speakers, it was all exactly the same as I’d left it. The only thing missing was the couple screaming at one another. This was the reason casinos didn’t put clocks up: day, night, it was all the same, l
ike being in stasis. You came in and your body clock disengaged. I looked at my watch again and saw it was closing in on two – but it may as well have been mid-morning. Men and women were wandering around in tracksuits and shorts like they’d just come from the tennis courts.
I headed to a bar next to the hotel lobby. Even at one-fifty in the morning I had plenty of company: a couple in their sixties, a woman talking on her phone in a booth, a guy leaning over a laptop, and a group of five men sitting at one of the tables, laughing raucously at something one of them had said. Sliding in at the stools, I ordered a beer, picked at a bowl of nuts and flicked through a copy of the Las Vegas Sun that had been left behind. The front-page story neatly echoed the one I’d been sent down to follow up: Las Vegas, the bulletproof city. While some analysts were predicting a recession inside the next twelve months, America’s gaming capital was set to make a record eight billion dollars.
About ten minutes later, as I got to the sports pages, a guy sat down beside me at the bar and ordered another round of drinks. I looked up, he looked back at me, and then he returned to his table with a tray full of shots. A couple of seconds later, a faint memory surfaced, and – as I tried to grasp at it – a feeling of recognition washed over me: I knew him. I turned on my stool and glanced back over my shoulder. The man placed the tray down on the table – and then looked back at me. He knows me too. There was a moment of hesitation for both of us, paused at each end of the room – but then it seemed to click for him, a smile broke out on his face and he returned to me.
‘David?’
As soon as he spoke, the memory became fully formed: Lee Wilkins. We’d grown up together, lived in the same village, gone to the same school – and we’d left the same sixth-form college and never spoken since. Now, almost twenty years later, here he was: different from how I remembered, but not that different. More weight around his face and middle, hair shaved, dark stubble lining his jaw, but otherwise the same guy: five-ten, stocky, a scar to the left of his nose where he’d fallen out of a tree we’d been climbing.