Vanished

by Tim Weaver

  He placed the bucket down next to him, made sure the bait was secure and then sat next to the deepest rock pool in the cove. It was about ten feet down. The boy dropped the line in, feeding it out of a box his dad had made for him. It was like a fishing reel, with a small handle on the side that he could use to draw the line back in. He held the box with his left hand, and let the line run over the first two fingers of his right hand so he could feel any movement, however slight, if a crab went for the bait.

  Then he noticed something.

  Twenty feet away from him, right at the back of the cove, between the last of the rock pools and the sharp incline of the hill, it looked like someone had left some bait behind. He shifted on the rock, trying to get a better view from where he was sitting, but all he could see was a white slab of meat. Chicken maybe, or pork. His dad always said bacon was best, but the boy had caught loads of crabs with pieces of old chicken. Oily fish was good too, but not as good as meat. Crabs generally weren’t fussy eaters, but if the bacon didn’t get them interested, the boy figured he could use the bait left behind as a back-up plan. If someone hadn’t taken it with them, they obviously wouldn’t miss it.

  But as he turned back to the hole, he realized there was even more of the bait, on top of the rocks in front of him, about five feet above his eye line. This time he scanned the whole cove. Within a couple of seconds he could see the same bait in three other places: to his right, down towards the shoreline; at a diagonal from him, in a gully; and one more immediately behind him, wedged in a fracture in the rocks about ten feet away.

  He placed the line box down – securing it in a crevice it couldn’t escape from – and got to his feet. The surface down to the nearest bait, the one behind him, was slick with seawater. He took a couple of careful steps, then dropped down on to his backside and slid the rest of the way. Up close, he could see that the bait was wrapped in plastic – like the type he kept his bacon in – and the meat inside had been cut into five thin strips. They were much too long and impractical for crabbing – even the boy knew that – which must have been why they’d been left here. Whoever had tried using them hadn’t had much success.

  He reached forward to pick them up.

  But stopped.

  One of the strips of meat had a shell attached to it. He leaned in closer. They all had shells attached to them: in the same place, right at the end. He glanced between his hand – still hovering over the plastic covering – and the strips of meat inside; back and forth, as if his mind had made some sort of a connection but he didn’t realize what it was.

  Then a second later it hit him.

  A whimper sounded in his throat as he scuffled back on his hands, reversing as far from the bait as he could get himself. He tried to gain purchase on the rocks but his feet kept slipping, the heels of his boots sliding off the surface. ‘Dad!’ he yelled, an automatic reaction, even though his dad was at work, miles away, and the boy was out here on his own where no one would hear him. ‘Dad !’ he screamed again, tears forming in his eyes as he desperately tried to claw his way back up to where he’d left his line.

  Thirty seconds later he got there – but he didn’t stop for the line. He didn’t stop for his bait, his bucket, or his backpack either. He just clambered across the rocks, back over the dragon’s tail, and ran as fast as he could along the shingle to his house at the end of the sea wall. His mum was in the kitchen, organizing cakes for his sister’s birthday, and when she looked at the boy, at his tears, at the wide-eyed terror in his eyes, she grabbed him, brought him in close and made him recount what he’d seen. And he told her.

  How the shells had been fingernails.

  How the strips of meat had been fingers.

  And how the bait had been a hand.

  3

  Half a mile away, as the boy was telling his mother what he’d found, Colm Healy pulled his Vauxhall up alongside a cottage he’d been staying at for the past five months. On the passenger seat were two shopping bags. He grabbed them, got out and headed inside.

  After putting the food away and making himself a coffee, he sat at the window and smoked a cigarette. The view, even in the middle of winter, was beautiful: the gentle curve of the shingle beach; a long line of pastel-coloured fishermen’s cottages; the high sea wall and the masts rising up from behind it. Sea spray dotted the glass, and wind cut in from the sea, swirling and buffeting the cottage – yet, to Healy, after twenty-six years in the Met, and even longer in the city, this was as close to silence as he had ever known.

  A minute later the silence broke.

  On the table in front of him, his phone started buzzing, quietly turning circles. He didn’t have a ring tone these days, which he preferred because it meant he missed a lot of calls. His ex-wife. The people he’d worked with. Men and women from his old life he’d happily never see again. But there was always a risk he might miss the one call he cared about: the call from his boys. So he brought the phone towards him and turned it over.

  Liz Feeny.

  He thought about letting it go to voicemail. Any conversation with Feeny was a conversation without a conclusion. She’d been phoning him constantly for the past three months, looking for any kind of closure, any kind of answer. But there wasn’t one.

  There was no happy ending.

  He pushed Answer and flicked to speakerphone. ‘Liz.’

  ‘Healy.’

  Her voice was soft. It sounded like she’d already been crying. ‘This isn’t really a good time,’ he said, lying. He looked around the kitchen. Dishes were stacked up in the sink. Cereal boxes were left on the worktops. ‘I’m right in the middle of something here.’

  ‘Why do you still answer my calls?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When David described you, he always said you were difficult to break down. Angry. Aloof. When I first started calling you, that was the man I expected to find.’

  Healy didn’t say anything.

  ‘But I’ve never found that man.’ She paused. ‘You’ve never been like that. I know you hate talking to me, but you still answer my calls.’ Another pause, this time for longer. She sniffed, stopped, sniffed again. ‘Why do you answer my calls, Colm?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘Do you feel sorry for me – is that it?’

  There was nothing in the question, no malice, but there was no right answer: yes, and she clung on to it and used it as some kind of excuse to call him more often; no, and he was telling her never to call again. So? If you hate her calling so much, just tell her. Except he couldn’t do that. Because, deep down, he wasn’t sure he did hate her calling.

  Reaching across the table, he lit another cigarette and opened the window. Smoke drifted out through the gap, vanishing into the rain. For a moment his thoughts turned to David Raker. Everything Raker had told Liz was right: anger, resentment, bitterness, revenge, these were the rules Healy had built his life around. And maybe when the pressure was turned up he would become that man again. But here, in this place, miles away from the life he’d once known, Healy felt like a different man. She may only have been using him, may only have been calling him because he was a vessel for something else – some sort of connection to Raker – but, in her own way, she needed him. And that was the first time anyone had needed Healy – for whatever reason – for a very long time.

  ‘Colm?’

  ‘It’s hard to understand,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Why what happened, happened.’

  ‘Is it hard for you to understand?’

  He looked out through the window. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She didn’t sound like she believed him.

  ‘Listen, Liz, I know this is tough to hear, but –’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she cut in, voice quiet. ‘I know what you’re going to tell me to do. Accept it. Try to move on. Try to forget about what happened.’

  He didn’
t respond. She’d second-guessed him.

  ‘Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, it’s not so easy for me,’ she said. ‘I’m still here in London with all the memories, living next door to his empty house. I haven’t got myself a new life like you; a nice little cottage in south Devon where I can forget about everything that happened.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten about what happened.’

  ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  Outside, the wind came again – harder and more forceful than before. The house seemed to wheeze, like the foundations had shifted.

  ‘He was so similar to you,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, you said that before.’

  ‘He was chasing after ghosts, just like you.’

  ‘Look,’ Healy said, trying to maintain the composure in his voice, ‘I know what it’s like to lose someone. Remember that. I’ve been where you are – I’ve been through worse than you – so I know how it is.’

  She cleared her throat, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘You can’t forget about it. I understand that. But you need to try. You need to start processing what happened. Sooner or later, you need to start facing it down.’

  Silence on the line.

  ‘Because Raker’s gone, Liz. And he’s never coming back.’

  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.

  He just wanted a decent book to read ...

  Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks – the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company – and change the world.

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  First published 2012

  Copyright © Tim Weaver, 2012

  Cover image © Bildagentur Hamburg/ Alamy. Person © Stephen Mulcahey/ Arcangel Images

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-14-196964-0