Vanished

I looked down at him, his eyes like mirrors, reflecting back all the pain and suffering he’d caused during his life. ‘You don’t know what I am.’

He smirked. ‘You’re not a killer.’

‘I guess we’ll see.’

The expression fell from his face.

‘So what happened after he found out about you?’

‘I told him I’d gut him if he ever breathed a word to anyone, and I’d slice up his wife while I was at it.’ He shrugged. ‘Looking back now, maybe I should have done that. But at the time, Wren was useful to me. He legitimized my cashflow.’

‘So he just carried on?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘How often did you speak?’

‘Three or four times a week.’

But there had only been one, eight-second call on Sam’s phone in the entire time he’d been dealing with Wellis. ‘You used pre-paid mobiles.’

‘Correct.’

That was why the calls never appeared on the phone records. All except one. ‘So why did you call him that one time?’

‘When?’

‘There’s a single entry on his phone records for your number.’

He looked nonplussed. ‘It was a mistake. I had his real number, in case I needed him in an emergency and I couldn’t get hold of him on the pre-paids. That day, he was pissing me off: he wasn’t answering his phone, I needed to speak to him, and the longer he was AWOL, the angrier I got. I did it without thinking.’

One tiny mistake – but enough to lead me to him.

‘Did you meet in person?’

‘Once a week in a hotel close to his work. I always liked to look him in the eyes and make sure he wasn’t screwing me.’

The hotel was the Hilton on the South Quay that Ursula had described. He just sat there in the bar by himself. Like he was deep in thought.

‘So how did he disappear?’

‘How the fuck should I know?’

‘You didn’t have anything to do with it?’

Wellis grinned. ‘What do you think? The guy was making me a shitload of cash – why would I vanish him into thin air then, when I could have done it months before when he first found out about me? If I wanted him dead, he would have been dead already.’

‘Did he take any of your money with him?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve no idea where he went?’

‘No.’

I studied him. There was nothing in his face. No hint of a lie. I looked across the room at Gaishe. He was no liar – or at least not one who could lie with any competence. ‘What about you?’ I asked, and he turned in his chair, eyes wide. ‘Do you know where he went?’

He shook his head.

I looked at my watch: 8 a.m. It was time to close this down. ‘What was the name of the girl?’

He frowned. ‘What girl?’

‘What girl do you think? The girl in your loft.’

‘What do you care?’

‘I want to find out what happened to her.’

‘What are you, her guardian angel?’

‘Just tell me her name.’

Wellis stared at me. ‘Don’t know,’ he said finally, his tone flat and even. ‘Don’t know what her real name is. Don’t know what any of the men and women we get in are called. They’re not here so I can get to know them. They’re here to make me money. They’re here for people like you and people like your boy.’

‘My boy?’

‘Wren.’

‘What about him?’

He studied me for a moment, seeing if I was playing him. Then he broke out into a smile. He glanced towards Gaishe. ‘He doesn’t know!’ he shouted across the room.

‘Don’t know what?’

He shook his head. ‘What kind of a detective are you?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Wren. He used our service once. Must have been a month before he left. Asked me if I could set him up with someone. As long as he paid the going rate, I couldn’t have given less of a shit. A customer’s a customer, after all.’

‘Who did you set him up with?’

‘Can’t remember.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Her?’ Wellis smiled. ‘It wasn’t a her, dickhead. It was a him.’

30

Finally it made sense: Wellis was the reason Sam lost all the weight. He’d come into Sam’s life, ruined it, turned it upside down and Sam was dragged under with him. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. I knew as well why Sam never wanted to talk about his work to Julia, and why – even after the affair with Ursula Gray ended – he was working so late. Wellis was turning the screw, demanding more and more. And if Sam refused, he’d put his wife in danger.

I imagined that was also part of the reason for ending the affair. He couldn’t carry on with Ursula while he knew Julia was in the firing line. Sam was many things – a liar, a cheat, an accomplice – but he wasn’t cruel. He was never apathetic. He was conflicted, unable to articulate his feelings or admit to the world what he really was, but he loved his wife deeply. Maybe not as a wife – maybe only as a friend – but he loved her all the same.

Ursula was just an experiment; a bridge for him to go halfway. He’d spent an evening asking her for every detail of her previous relationships: the men she’d seen, who they were, what they did together. It seemed likely Sam was building up to something with Ursula; using her as a vessel, trying to pluck up the courage to invite another man into their bed. It was everything he could never ask Julia to do, and the reason Sam and Julia didn’t have a sex life. He married her because he was still trying to deny what he felt. Maybe he thought he could push it down and bury it somewhere. But as the marriage went on, it became more difficult to control. Ursula was a route that got him some of the way. Wellis, despite the misery he wrought in Sam’s life, could get him to the other side.

‘I set him up with a nice little Albanian kid,’ Wellis said, enjoying the moment. He pushed his tongue in against his cheek in a blowjob gesture. ‘Fresh out of the fridge, this kid was. Nineteen, skinny, cute little tattoo on the back of his neck. Spoke pretty decent English, and was willing to suck cock for pennies. That’s how you want them: young and willing and ready to bend over.’

‘What was the kid’s name?’

‘I told you: I don’t know their fucking names.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘Why, you gonna go round there and try to find him?’

‘Where does he live?’

A pause. ‘The kid’s dead.’

Somehow another lost life didn’t seem all that surprising. Wellis was like a black hole. He drew people in so