Vanished

‘Says here that, on 23 October of last year, you turned up at a house up in north London and there were two dead bodies inside.’

I gazed at him. ‘If that what it says, it must be true.’

He didn’t say anything else, just scanned the rest of the file. When he was done, he took a step back from the porch. ‘Most civilians go their whole lives without reporting a crime like your one.’ Sallows looked at me again, and I got the sense this was somehow personal for him, that he’d specifically asked to be here. Have we crossed paths before? ‘I mean, it’s a hell of a thing, stumbling across a scene like the one you found, right?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s the nature of my work, sadly.’

‘Missing persons?’

‘People who are missing for a long time tend not to turn up alive.’

‘But you have to admit you’re like a magnet for trouble.’

‘Why would I have to admit that?’ I said to him. ‘If you’re accusing me of something, then come out with it. Otherwise, I think we’re done.’

He nodded slowly. ‘You found that farm up in Scotland.’

It had been eighteen months since I’d walked on to that farm and almost lost my life, and the scars on my body remained. Not as painful as they once were, because all pain died in time, but a reminder of what had been done to me, like a memory that would never fade. Sallows looked down at the first two fingers of my left hand, where the nails would never grow back, and then up to me.

‘That case …’ He stopped, shook his head, and his eyes flicked to me again. ‘I read some of the paperwork. I read your interviews, the statement you made, what you said went on up there. I was interested because, at the time, I had this religious nut going round killing people and dumping their bodies in Brockwell Park, and I thought to myself, “Maybe my case is related.” ’ He paused, studied me again. ‘It wasn’t, by the way.’

I remained silent.

‘Here’s the thing, though: I’m not sure how much of your statement I believed. I mean, we all know what they did to you up there …’ His eyes moved to my fingernails again. ‘But there were gaps. Big gaps. There were bullet holes all over that place but no one to account for them. Not a single person. So who fired the guns? You said it wasn’t you. You said it was them. But they were either dead or they’d vanished into thin air.’

‘So?’

‘So ten months later – in October last year – suddenly you’re back, and we’re picking the bones out of the mess you made in those woods over in east London.’

I frowned. ‘Have you got a point, Sergeant Sallows?’

‘If you say that wasn’t you at that house yesterday,’ he said, ignoring me, a smile – lacking any warmth – lost beneath his moustache, ‘then I guess I’ll have to go with it. I mean, whoever it was wiped the place down, so it’s not like we’ve got any evidence. But witnesses at the warehouse say they saw an unidentified man running full pelt away from the scene dressed in only a coat, and a grey BMW 3 series leaving shortly after.’ He turned and made a show of eyeing my BMW, parked on the drive next to him. And then he looked back at me. ‘Not dissimilar to this one, actually.’

He let that sit there.

Again, I didn’t respond.

Finally, he continued. ‘So if you say you weren’t there at the house, and you weren’t there driving that BMW, then I guess that’s what we have to run with. But it doesn’t mean I think you’re telling the truth.’ He paused and flipped the file shut, eyeing me before speaking. ‘In fact, quite the opposite. I think you’re a fucking liar.’

38

At Ealing Common Tube station, I grabbed a Travelcard and headed down the steps to the eastbound District. I was on my way to see Duncan Pell for a second time.

It was two on a Saturday afternoon, so the platform wasn’t empty, but it was still pretty quiet. I moved about three-quarters of the way along, to where the sun arrowed through a gap in the roof. It must have been in the high twenties now: heat haze shimmered off the track, shadows were deep and long and the building shifted and creaked around me. A couple of seconds later, my phone went off.

I grabbed it and looked at the display. Terry Dooley.

Dooley was part of my old life; a source I’d managed to get my hooks into as a journalist, and one who had been forced to come along for the ride ever since. He was a reluctant passenger. In a moment of madness, he and three of his detectives had visited a brothel in south London, where things turned drunk and nasty and one of the cops put a prostitute in a neck brace. The next morning the story landed on my desk. I’d called him and offered to keep it out of the papers if, in return, he got me information when I needed it. It was a better trade for him: he was married with two boys, and if there was one thing Dooley hated more than dealing with me, it was the idea of battling for custody of his kids. I hit Answer. ‘Carlton Lane.’ Carlton Lane was where the brothel had been.

‘Funny,’ said a voice. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t answer.’

‘How you doing, Dools?’

‘Yeah, great,’ he replied with zero enthusiasm. The line drifted. I heard footsteps and then a door closing. ‘You got five minutes, then I’ve got to get the boys to football.’

I’d called him as soon as Sallows had left. Dooley hadn’t answered, but I’d left a message on his voicemail, asking him to call me back. Tasker and Dooley were the two sources I used most from my previous life: Tasker was more reliable, more discreet and less prone to putting obstacles in my way; but Dooley was like the oracle. He kept his ear to the ground, knew the comings and goings at the Met, and had his fingers in all sorts of pies. I couldn’t work out why Sallows was trying to squeeze me. I’d made problems for myself by staking out the house, calling an ambulance for the girl and letting Wellis get the better of me, but there was still little for the cops to go on. A witness spotting a car a bit like mine wasn’t going to lead to the Met turning up on my doorstep, not if they didn’t even have my plates. So what had got Sallows interested in me?

‘Did you listen to the whole of my message?’ I asked.

‘Nope.’

‘That’s great, Dools.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ He gave a little snort, as if by asking him to check his messages properly I was asking the impossible. I could see things his way: we went months without talking, and just as he started to believe he’d got rid of me from his life, he picked up the phone and there I was. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got a real job here, not some Mickey Mouse operation like you.’

I ignored him. ‘Does the name Kevin Sallows mean anything to you?’

‘Sallows?’

‘Yeah. You know him?’

‘Don’t know him personally, but I know of him.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Career cop. Old school. He was part of the Snatcher team.’

‘But he’s not any more?’

‘I don’t know exactly what went down.’

‘Which means what?’

‘Which means I don’t know exactly what went down. Not the gory details. That investigation is locked down tighter than a Jewish piggy bank.’

‘So what do you know?’

‘Something blew up between a couple of the cops there – something really big – and then Sallows got kicked off the case and shipped off to south London somewhere. He’s working the shitty cases they wouldn’t even give to a half-cop like you.’

‘Why?’

‘Like I said, I don’t know the gory details.’

‘What about the edited highlights?’

‘You might wanna put in a call to your one-time sparring partner. He’d probably know more about it than I do. You can relive the days when you and him sailed into the Dead Tracks like Laurel and Hardy.’