The Vanishing

by John Connor

  But the feeling of euphoria didn’t last. When she was certain they were not being followed she made him stop. ‘I saw only one guy,’ she said. ‘It was the other white guy, the one with the scar.’

  ‘The scar?’

  ‘He has a V-shaped scar on his cheek. The other one didn’t have that.’

  ‘Did you get him?’

  ‘I hit him, I think. I’m not sure. But there was only one. That means the rest could be anywhere.’

  He leaned his head on the wheel, but then snapped it up and stared out at the wall of trees. ‘Fuck,’ he whispered, automatically. ‘What was the plan again?’

  17

  The TV interview had taken place in her living room. But it hadn’t looked like her living room. That was the first thing that had thrown her. She recognised nothing. It was like passing through a door into another building, into a sea of staring faces. So many unknown faces she had barely been able to get in. To squeeze them in – she found out later – all her furniture had been moved out to the garage, except her beige sofa and a couple of chairs. Everything else was gone – the pictures on the wall, the rug from the floor, the plant pots and ornaments. The room had been stripped and filled with technicians and reporters and their electronic equipment. She was so confused by it that as she went through the door and looked at them all she stopped dead, frowning, thinking there had been some kind of absurd mistake.

  Then Roger had taken over. He held her arm and walked just in front of her, pushing past them all, gently pulling her in after him. They had all been talking – she realised that was the noise she could hear coming down the stairs – but as soon as she appeared there was silence, voices trailing abruptly off, leaving an atmosphere full of body odour, heat and discomfort – not just because there must have been between twenty and thirty people filling the space in front of her sofa and around it, but also from the lights they’d put up. Too bright to look at, they were shining on to huge reflectors that were angled to point down at the sofa, making it almost white with light. Like a stage set. Not like it, in fact – because that’s exactly what her home had become – a theatre for a vast, ugly reality show that was only just getting into gear. Worse was to come in the following weeks and months.

  She felt the sweat start pouring off her as she sat down. Roger was fussing around her, asking things in a hushed, professional voice, like she was one of his patients. She squinted at the reflectors and asked him to move them, told him they were too bright. But they wouldn’t do that. Someone from the TV company was whispering things in her ear – the same person who had spent forty minutes applying a thick, uncomfortable coating of make-up to her face, neck and hands, and had then sorted through her wardrobe for ‘something suitable’, as if she owned it and Rachel was merely a visitor. The police liaison officer had been there as well. Not John. She hadn’t even met John yet. At that stage someone else was in charge. The liaison woman was a hard-faced blonde who looked at her with dispassionate eyes and tried to sound concerned. Everyone was trying to ape concern, but she knew that wasn’t why all these people were there, staring at her like she was something about to explode. They were here because this was grim entertainment. For the world out there, this was better than fiction.

  The man running the inquiry sat with them on the sofa. The interviewer sat on a chair in front of the sofa. There were cameras all over – hand-held, on tripods, video cameras, big TV-type cameras. And microphones on stands, sticking out above her, across the ceiling, pointing down at her from all directions. The interviewer was a young girl with short, black hair and a Scottish accent – Alison something. She had a professional manner, no room for any sympathy, though she did slot some in, perfunctorily, like saying ‘have a nice day’ to a customer. Rachel just nodded through it all as she explained the procedure, not hearing enough of it for anything to subsequently make sense.

  She didn’t know how long it went on for. They were probably over two-thirds of the way through before she realised they had already started. Nearly all the questions were handled by Roger or the policeman. She just sat there, eyes on the interviewer, but in fact not seeing her at all. Because her head was still choked with her fears and scenarios, still on Lauren, one hundred per cent of the time. So much so that when she was finally asked a few questions Roger had to nudge her and the questions had to be repeated more than once.

  She had seen the broadcast version a couple of times, cringing as she watched it – many years afterwards. About twenty seconds went out to the world, though someone had told her they might have been in there for twenty minutes or more, to get those trimmed and dressed moments of real-life TV drama. Ten seconds were given to the policeman, nearly all the rest to Roger. There was a single clip of her speaking. She could remember, she thought, the moment she spoke the words. She could see herself doing it. She had no idea what the question was, but what she said – and what the world heard – was: This is all a waste of time. Lauren’s OK. She’ll come back. There’s no need for all this. In the room there had been a moment’s stunned pause after that, the interviewer clearly wrong-footed. Then she had asked another question, something like: ‘Are you saying you think she’s safe – that she hasn’t been kidnapped?’ The question was never broadcast. Nor her reply: Of course not. She’s fine.

  From inside herself, from within her patchy memory of the day and her recollection of those words, she could see only a confused and desperate woman who didn’t really have a clue what was going on, who dearly wished that her daughter hadn’t been kidnapped. When she looked down at herself saying the words she saw big, glazed eyes and a fixed, shocked stare. Classic, clinical symptoms. But she had seen the broadcast version, seen herself as the cameras saw her, as the world saw her. And the wonder was that the woman speaking hadn’t looked confused or shocked at all, not on TV. She had looked as hard as nails. Done up so that you couldn’t even see the red eyes and blotchy face, the lank, greasy hair. Sitting there looking for all the world that she really resented the intrusion. When she spoke it wasn’t in a soft, frightened voice. She spoke clearly, almost aggressively. As if telling the interviewer to shut up.

  They had gone off her then, she thought, the Great British Public. Right then. They had watched her and failed to find a mother that fitted their expectations. So they had in turn got confused, then decided she was some rich, stuck-up, upper-class bitch (to some newspapers, it seemed, all doctors were somehow ‘upper class’). This response – absurd as it was, not a detail of it being true – had somehow filtered through the media, and within days they were running stories about the hard-nosed mother who hadn’t shed a tear, who looked immaculate though her daughter was missing, who was only concerned about her appearance, who was vain and selfish and heartless, who was getting on with her life as if nothing had happened. Some foreign rag had picked it up and speculated that she might even have killed her daughter. And it had all taken off from there. Until they got tired of it, half a year later. Speculation, supposition, prejudice and pure malice.

  But thinking about it now, and thinking about all the additional grief it had caused her, none of it seemed to matter much. It had all been publicity, after all. Lauren’s photo had gone out with every story. And nothing had made any difference, in the end. What struck her as really, truly awful now, twenty-two years on, was that the woman who had sat there answering questions hadn’t a clue just how bad it was going to be. If she had been asked – ‘where do you think you will be in twenty-two years’ time?’ – she would probably have said something stupidly positive. Because she would never have imagined that she would be here, in exactly the same position as then, in the very same garden, still knowing nothing about Lauren’s whereabouts, still aching for her touch.

  18

  The water was working on him. There was more of it in the back of the Land Rover, plus some kind of gun that Sara found. She took over the driving and he tried to figure out how to work the gun. Without pulling the trigger to test-fire it, though, that was impo
ssible. And they didn’t want to start shooting. The truck was loud enough. His head was clearing, though – he had that to be grateful for.

  They were making very slow progress. They had left the main road after about four miles, taking a turn on to a dry mud trail that would get them to the beaches at the southern promontory, eventually, but she didn’t think they would be able to drive far. The trail was narrowing, the jungle closing in. Soon there wouldn’t be room for a truck. Then they would have to walk.

  They had decided they couldn’t just drive back to the docks. They had no idea how many men might be there, waiting. Instead they would cross to the seaplane from the other side of the bay. If they got there within a few hours the tide would be low, she thought, and they could wade across. But even with the tide right in the water would still be fairly shallow – only a small stretch above the height of their heads. They could swim that if they had to. Once it started to recede, though, it would uncover a large sandflat. When that happened the seaplane would be grounded. So they were up against the clock.

  As it turned out they had to abandon the truck much sooner than expected, because a tree had fallen across the trail. To save time they took a forest path she knew which led them back to a point much nearer the dock than they had intended. They came out of the treeline quite suddenly, on to a perfect white beach, saw how close the dock was and retreated quickly to observe. It was just after three, the sun was blinding, the tide not quite high. The seaplane was still there, bobbing lazily on the swell. There was no sign of life, anywhere. If there was someone in the watchtower they had to be lying flat out on the boards, asleep.

  The distance from where they were across to the jetty was about one hundred yards.

  ‘Right now, it’s shallow all the way over,’ she told him. ‘Chest height at most.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘We should just go for it. We can’t wait. The man we left will be headed back here.’

  ‘Just walk across?’

  ‘Keep the gun out of the water. If anything happens then use it.’ She had looked at it, worked out how to fire it, she thought, and given him instructions.

  ‘You take the gun,’ he said. ‘You can shoot.’

  ‘Not with that. And I need to start the plane. You go to the jetty, loosen the lines. I’ll do the start sequence while you’re doing that. The first danger will be when the engine fires.’

  He stared at her. It was absurd. He couldn’t believe they were even discussing it. As they walked across the bay they would be totally exposed. He saw the expression in her eyes change and she took hold of his hand. ‘What else can we do?’ she asked.

  ‘Wait until darkness.’

  ‘I can’t fly in darkness.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘I can fly and navigate, but I can’t land safely. Not in darkness, on water. I haven’t done that.’

  They went through other options, but she had made her mind up. They were going in the plane, right now. ‘Do we do this or not?’ she demanded. ‘There’s no other way.’

  He nodded, staring all the time at the flat, open stretch of water. ‘If we have to,’ he said. ‘OK.’

  They walked quickly, carefully, but didn’t run. From leaving the trees they were in full view of the watchtower and the dock. He kept his finger over the trigger, kept his eyes on the building at the end of the path up from the dock – the low building where the servants had lived. Behind it he could see the house. Everything looked exactly as it had the day before. No clue at all as to what had happened here during the night.

  The water quickly came up to his waist. It was warm. He held the gun above his head, the barrel pointed roughly towards the jetty. ‘Keep going,’ he heard her whisper back to him. ‘Just keep going. Even if they come out keep going. There’s nothing else we can do.’

  He thought they were making a lot of noise. He thought they were super-visible. He thought it took about an hour to wade through a hundred yards of water, his breathing fast, his vision constricted and his eyes twitching with fear. But suddenly he was there. He was standing up to his chest in water and the jetty ladder was right in front of him. She was saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear her now. The blood was pounding in his ears. She was climbing on to the nearest float, opening the plane door. He pulled himself up the ladder and lay in a flat wet pool on the jetty, the sun hot on his back and head, facing the buildings, looking.

  No movement. Nothing. He forced himself into a crouch, then shuffled backwards and started to find the ropes mooring the plane. It took a while to figure out how to loosen them. He had to actually put the gun down and heave at the rope securing the plane to create some slack. While he was doing that he had his back to the buildings, the skin on his neck crawling. As he got the last rope loose he heard the engines starting to turn, saw the props spinning. His stomach lurched. Now it was going to happen. Now they would rush out. He turned back, picked up the gun and waited. But the jetty was empty, and moments later she was shouting at him to get in.

  He went down the ladder quickly, still carrying the gun. As he dropped into the water he miscalculated and the gun went under. He cursed, threw it away and started to wade as fast as he could towards the seaplane. He hardly had the door closed before she was pulling back the throttles and the thing was moving. ‘This isn’t the way you’re meant to do this,’ she shouted, above the roar. ‘I hope the engines are good,’ she added. ‘If they don’t pack up we have enough fuel to get us to Victoria in two and a half hours.’ He looked out of the window, ducking instinctively, still expecting shots to streak towards them. But nothing came.

  When it took off, smoothly, as if this was some kind of normal trip, she started to cry and he had to pull his eyes from the receding sea and the view back to the jetty and the buildings, lean over and stroke the side of her face. ‘It’s OK,’ he yelled. ‘It’s OK, Sara. You’re fucking brilliant. We’re alive. You got us off it. You did it.’ She took one hand from the flight controller and crossed it over her other arm to grab his hand. The plane wobbled in the air, but she didn’t bat an eyelid at that.

  19

  Just over three hours later Maxim stood panting at the end of the jetty, staring at the place where the seaplane had been. He could hardly believe it. The pilot was dead, which meant the man she had with her could fly. He had fucked up badly. No one had told him about the man. He had just appeared out of the blue, by the Land Rover. Maxim had no idea who it was.

  He walked slowly back along the jetty, waiting for his heart and lungs to recover. He had run all the way from the far end of the island, and while he could run well, his usual pace was much slower, and not in this heat. He felt dizzy, confused, angry. He had lost her. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong. He still couldn’t work out why.

  Behind the house he stepped over the bodies with care, with an increasing feeling of vertigo. The Somalis had gone completely crazy. He tried not to look at the upturned, gaping faces. He went into the staff building and went through it, looking for some clue. Even in here the stench was already like something coating his nostrils.

  The man who had protected her had either lived here or up in the house. Who was he? The security guards could have told him, but they were all needlessly dead. He started shouting at the top of his voice, cursing the Somalis. But there was no one to hear.

  At the main house he went through each room methodically, looking for clues. All wasn’t lost. His boat was intact. He could be back on the big boat within an hour. He could take it from there, use the helicopter to get to Victoria, make contact with Arisha in London, move on, start again, find her. There was still time. There had to be time. This was his last chance with Arisha, his last hope for bringing her back to him. Because he wasn’t stupid, he knew what Arisha was, what she had become. She hated where she was now – he was certain of that – but that didn’t mean she would come back to him, erase the last twenty years. The money would have to be there too. She wouldn’t go any
where without money. Not now. But this plan, her plan, would deliver both – Arisha and the money. So it had to work.

  He found nothing downstairs. There were papers in a set of drawers in her room, which he didn’t have time to go through, and a computer, though he wasn’t sure how useful it would be as there was no internet connection here. In the room directly above Sara Eaton’s he found a crumpled jacket and went through the pockets. He opened a tattered envelope from the inside pocket and found a bill from an electricity company in the UK, for someone called Tom Lomax, with an address in Hounslow. The name rang bells – something he’d seen downstairs.

  He walked back down to the kitchen, sat down at the big wooden table there – the very same one that had been here twenty-two years ago. His hand was throbbing painfully, his pulse still too fast. She had shot the weapon out of his hands. He was still trying to accept how lucky he had been. She would have been aiming for his head, no doubt. But she had hit the weapon, destroying it and wrenching his hand and arm, possibly breaking a finger of his right hand. He hadn’t had time to bind it up yet. A piece of the gun stock had shattered and spun off into his left arm, gashing him. It had bled a lot as he was running.

  He put his head in his hands and gave in to the trembling for a good five minutes. He could feel the scar to the side of his right eye swelling up. Ten years ago a piece of shrapnel had gashed him there when he was lying on the floor of the schoolroom, bleeding to death. It had been the least of his injuries back then, but it was the most obvious and public now. It began to ache when he got stressed, or exhausted, then turned an angry red. He massaged it gently with his fingers, at the same time picking up the letter he had found on the table when he had first searched here. It was from Liz Wellbeck. It mentioned Tom Lomax, a policeman from London. So it was a good bet that Tom Lomax was the man who was with her. Which was good, because he had his address now.