Vanished

‘A small bit of his face?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he ever say anything?’

She was staring off now, beyond me, into the middle distance. She might have been able to darken the memories she had of the other men, but she couldn’t darken this one. Even faceless, she knew there was something up with him. Something bad.

‘Did he ever say anything?’ I asked again.

‘He say words to …’

‘Duncan?’

‘To Duncan. He say words to him.’

‘Like what?’

She blinked. ‘He call me “it”.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He say, “Fuck it. Hit it. Hurt it.” ’

‘He was telling Duncan what to do?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice breaking a little now.

I took out a photograph of Sam. ‘Could it have been this man watching you?’

She studied the picture for a long time, saying nothing, her eyes wide beneath the bandaging, shimmering a little in the light of the room.

Then, finally, she ripped them away and looked at me.

‘Yes,’ she said, a tear breaking free. ‘That could be him.’

The minute we were outside the hospital, Healy lit himself a cigarette and we stood there in the car park watching the rain come down. Neither of us said anything, Healy trying to figure out where to go next, me trying to process what I’d just found out. Marika thought the watcher might have been Sam, which meant there was also a chance it might not have been. But it was certainly getting harder to back Sam, to deny he was involved, and that was eating away at me. I didn’t call things wrong. I didn’t read people wrong.

Except maybe, this time, I’d done both.

As if on cue, Healy started shaking his head, and when I glanced at him, a caustic, self-satisfied expression formed in his face. My hackles rose instantly. ‘So you still somehow think he’s not involved then?’ he said, blowing a flute of smoke out.

I looked at him. We were standing beneath an overhang, rain running off the roof and exploding against the ground next to us.

He glanced at me and saw my reaction. ‘What?’

‘That’s all you can say?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘That’s the first thing that comes into your head?’

He frowned. ‘What the hell do you mean?’

‘I get her to talk in there because there was no way she was going to talk to you when you’re bouncing around like you’re waiting for your fucking dealer. Last night, I meet you at the Tube because you can’t trust anyone and literally all you care about is bringing this home and stuffing it down everyone’s throat. I do that for you, I look past your flaws, your anger, your capacity to create an argument out of nothing – and, having seen what just happened in there, that’s the first thing that comes into your head?’

He just stared at me.

‘Do you even realize how alone you are, Healy?’

‘I don’t know what –’

‘That’s just your problem, Healy. You don’t know.’

And I walked away.

64

Five minutes later, Healy finished his cigarette and flicked it out into the bushes running along the back of the hospital. He immediately felt like another. He was angry. Pissed off. He’d allowed himself to be manipulated, persuaded that Wren wasn’t a part of this, and had then spent two days chasing his tail. Not any more. Fuck Raker. Fuck them all. He was going to take what the girl had told them – and he was going to put this to bed.

He moved off into the rain, pulling his jacket up over his head and making a break for it. But then, in his peripheral vision, he saw someone approaching and getting closer.

He slowed down. Looked around.

And his heart sank.

Sallows.

‘Well, well, well,’ Sallows said, thirty feet to Healy’s right, under a Metropolitan Police umbrella. In his left hand was a set of car keys. In his right was a digital camera.

Healy didn’t say anything, his eyes flicking to the camera.

‘Didn’t think this was your part of the world, Colm.’

Healy was about to form a lie, about to pretend he was visiting a relative, when he stopped himself. See how much he knows first. ‘It’s not,’ he replied.

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘Following up a lead.’

Sallows smirked. ‘Did someone steal a chocolate bar from the gift shop?’ he said and then stepped closer, eyes fixed on Healy, watching for any shift of expression.

‘That’s more your area, Kevin.’

‘Is it?’

‘You don’t play with the big boys any more, remember.’

But Sallows didn’t react at all. No change in his face. No change in his stance. A fizz of panic stirred in Healy’s guts: the only reason Sallows wouldn’t take the bait was if he had something better. Healy glanced at the camera. Something like photos.

‘You’re a clever bastard, Healy.’ Sallows smiled, humourless and knowing. ‘Only you could pull off all that shit last year and still be standing here in front of me eight months later working the biggest case going.’ He made a soft sound, like he was still having a hard time believing it. ‘But here you are. Mr Squeaky Clean. Except, of course, we both know it’s all another lie.’

Healy didn’t respond. Sallows just looked at him.

‘Well,’ Healy said finally, ‘as nice as this has been, I’d better be going.’

Sallows suddenly made a move forward, right up close to Healy so they were only feet apart. Rain slapped against the umbrella, like a drumbeat, running off into the space between them. Sallows was completely dry. Healy was soaked through to the bone. ‘When you got me kicked off the Snatcher, you fucked with the wrong guy,’ he said, his voice suddenly laced with venom. ‘Colm Healy dropping me in the shit? Even you must see how fucked up that is? Everything about you, your situation, your lying and your back-stabbing, it boils my piss. I mean, you’re the guy who thinks it’s okay to wave guns in the faces of the people you work with. You’re the guy who worms his way back into the big time, who puts on this show for people – this fucking show that no one else is capable of seeing through – and you’re still here working it off the books.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kevin.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘I saw you with Raker this morning. I’ve been watching this hospital every day since they brought that girl in here, because I know Raker was the one who made that call the day she was found and I know he was the one who dumped Gaishe at that warehouse.’

‘What Raker does has nothing to do with me.’

‘There you are again, Colm. Lying.’