The Vanishing (3 page)

He was totally thrown. Some scheme between Glynn Powell and Barsukov? Some stupid joke? At any rate something had gone wrong. Had Alex screwed up the communications, telling him it was court papers? Instead, for some reason, he was meant to have met Barsukov? But what was
that
about?

He threw the paper on to the passenger seat and looked at his phone. There was a text from someone signing off as David Simmons. He said he was outside Tom’s house, waiting for him, wanting to talk urgently. Tom had never heard of him, but was irritated he was outside his house. He had hired a six-by-six box in Hounslow precisely so that there would be some separation between his home address, also in Hounslow, and the working world. The working world was full of middle-tier criminals wanting information on rivals, Glynn Powell included. David Simmons was probably another. He didn’t want that shit at home.

Fifteen minutes later, as he pulled the car on to the driveway of his semi, he saw that the man was actually waiting on his doorstep, right on his doorstep, sitting there. That was annoying, but as Tom got out and Simmons came over, Tom saw that he had to be about sixty, if not older. The anger started to dissipate. Simmons was harmless, stooped and thin, wearing a tailored grey suit, with a shirt and tie, his face clean-shaven. He had a smart briefcase and polished black brogues. He didn’t look like the usual client. ‘David Simmons,’ he said, introducing himself. ‘I’m a solicitor. You’re Tom Lomax?’

‘Yes,’ Tom said, heart sinking, thinking now that it had to be some new maintenance demand from Sally. ‘How did you find my home address?’

‘We called someone and asked them for the information.’ He said it as if to say, ‘obviously’. ‘You are Tom Lomax, the detective constable? DC Lomax, of the Metropolitan Police?’ he asked.

‘Not any more,’ Tom said, curious now. ‘I quit that.’

Simmons considered this for a moment. Definitely not sent by Sally, then. Tom watched the grey eyes take in the bruise on his face, the blood on his T-shirt and jacket.

‘It’s been a bit of a hard day,’ Tom said. That would have to be explanation enough. ‘I’m no longer a policeman,’ he repeated. ‘Does that change things, or is there something I can help you with – since you’re here, standing on my driveway?’

‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

‘Not in my house.’

‘How about your car, then?’ Simmons asked, as if he were cracking a joke.

‘I usually speak to people at the office. That’s what it’s for.’

‘I haven’t time for that.’ Simmons lowered his voice and started to mutter something about his ‘principal’.

‘Your principal?’ Tom asked.

‘Yes. I’m here on her behalf. Her name is Sara Eaton. Have you heard of her?’

Tom shook his head. His face was beginning to throb now. He needed painkillers.

‘Have you heard of Elizabeth Wellbeck? Or Freddie Eaton?’

‘Should I have?’

Simmons started telling him about the Wellbeck-Eaton family. Sara Eaton was part of it, Freddie was her father, Liz her mother. Simmons made it sound like a dynasty. They were big in this and that, had a lot of cash and so on. He phrased it all very delicately, but Tom got the idea. ‘I’m here on behalf of Sara Eaton,’ he said. ‘She wants to meet you.’

‘You mean she wants some work done?’

‘She wants to talk to you, at least. I can take you to her now.’

‘It’s the weekend. She can come to the office on Monday.’

‘That might be difficult. She’s actually in the Seychelles.’

‘The Seychelles? As in … in the Indian Ocean?’

‘That’s right. I have a private jet waiting at an airfield just outside Luton. We can be there in about eighteen hours, if we leave now.’

Tom stared at him with his mouth open. ‘Are you being serious? This is one of Alex’s little jokes, right?’

‘Alex?’

‘You’re being paid by someone, right? You’re filming me?’

Simmons didn’t find that funny. He started to walk past Tom. ‘I’ll wait in my car,’ he said. ‘I’m instructed to offer you five thousand pounds for your time – to fly out to Miss Eaton, meet her and speak to her, spend perhaps two nights maximum at her location in guaranteed comfort, then you will return here by private jet.’ He was on the pavement now. ‘You can think about it for a few minutes then let me know.’

Seven miles away, in her house in Fulham, Rachel Gower lay curled on her bed with all the curtains drawn and the lights off. Today was the anniversary. Twenty-two years ago, to the day. Outside it was sunny, and the garden was full of flowers and colour, but she didn’t want to see that. She didn’t want to see anything. She wanted to be a blank space, empty of thought, without consciousness. She wanted to dissolve into the bed, become part of it, sink into oblivion until the day was past and gone.

But there was no chance of that. No matter what she did there was no chance of that. So she kept her eyes closed, listened to her heart racing and stammering, felt the panic rising.

She couldn’t stop herself. The memories were there even if she managed to ignore them. They were there constantly, every day of her life, a movie reel that played endlessly in her head, just behind the surface illusion of rationality she wore like a set of clothes. But all the time they were insisting, probing, trying to find a way through. She had to fight it with all her strength, because if they got through they would kill her.

April 14 1990. The anguish was still a raw wound. If she allowed her mind to go there, each trivial memory could trigger a mental collapse that would require hospitalisation, literally. It had happened ten times in the last twenty-two years. On three occasions, in the early years, she had been so desperate that she had self-harmed. In 1998 a kind of cold-blooded insanity had found her plunging her arm into a fire, trying to drive back the endless terrifying scenarios with overwhelming physical pain. She had wanted to push her face into the flames, but that would have killed her, and that was the one thing she was absolutely forbidden. She had to live, survive, be here. Because the event had left her a responsibility, a splinter of hope that bored daily into her sanity – the possibility that Lauren would return. And if that happened – and it
could
– she had to be alive, she had to be ready.

She had been alone the morning it happened. Roger had worked the night at Barts, so was asleep in the spare room when they got up. She had dressed and fed Lauren herself, without waking him, then Lauren had played on the floor of the bedroom while Rachel herself washed and dressed, turning many times to speak to her. Nothing significant, though she could remember every word. Just normal chatter, a mother to her baby.

They managed to leave the house just after eight. It was a sunny, warm day, hints of spring in the air. The sunlight had picked Rachel’s spirits up, made her feel lighter as they left. That was why she didn’t want to see it now. She had stopped to show Lauren a clump of daffodils growing by the gate. Lauren had reached her hand out, touched the petals and smiled, kicking her legs in excitement as she had when she was only a few months old. So Rachel had picked one and given it to her. The moment, so simple and beautiful in itself – her holding out the flower and Lauren’s hand taking it – was burned into her brain like an image of horror. Over the years it had come to stand for everything. She couldn’t look at a daffodil now without the distress rising in her throat like a physical lump, suffocating her.

After that they got into the car and drove to Belgravia. At the time they were renting an apartment in Clapham and she had driven with Lauren in the baby chair, on the back seat of their Golf, passenger side, so she could turn round and see her, or even reach a hand across if she cried. But Lauren rarely cried. At precisely thirteen months and six days old she was a model baby. Everybody had said it about her. She had thick curly black hair and beautiful blue eyes, a face that wasn’t flabby, unlike many babies of that age that Rachel saw. She looked like her mum, people said. Roger had very light brown hair, brown eyes, but Rachel’s eyes were light blue, and back then her hair had been as dark as Lauren’s. Lauren had only just started walking, hesitantly, but with great enthusiasm. She was intensely interested in exploring her world, and had sussed already that walking would allow her to move more quickly, if she could only get the balance right. She would stumble towards an object – anything was interesting, but animals, especially the neighbour’s pet cat, would make her literally squeal with curiosity – and when she reached it, usually reverting to all fours still, she would look back at Rachel with a massive, proud grin, showing her four perfect, tiny front teeth.

They got into work at just after five past nine and Rachel had carried Lauren straight to the crèche, in a hurry. In January she had started as a junior doctor at the Wellbeck Clinic, in Belgravia, a small but very well-appointed private clinic that specialised in oncology, and particularly in inheritable forms of cancer. It was private medicine – exclusive medicine, actually – which wasn’t what she had ever intended to do, but the years of study had left them with considerable debts, so while Roger was doing the right thing at Barts, Rachel had agreed, for a short time, to take what Elizabeth Wellbeck’s foundation had to offer, which was roughly three times what Roger was earning. The hours were sensible too, with Rachel starting on half-time until Lauren reached eighteen months old. The crèche was within the clinic itself.

Two full-time nursery assistants looked after eleven children belonging to doctors who worked there. Lauren had quickly taken to one of them – a twenty-one-year-old called Lovisa Dahlbacka, who whispered in Swedish to Lauren – and that had made the mornings easy. There had never been any crying or hanging on to Rachel.

This morning had been the same – so that Rachel’s last ever contact with her child had been unthinking, fleeting, void of the significance the moment was to later acquire. Rachel had simply passed Lauren to Lovisa, then bent forward and kissed her on the nose. Lauren, as usual, hadn’t even appeared to notice that this was a transition. She was with Lovisa now. She would see her mummy later. Then Rachel was rushing off, because her first appointment was for nine, and would be waiting.

At three minutes to ten the entire clinic suffered a power cut which lasted nearly fifteen minutes, an event which caused a measure of quiet panic since most of the systems had only limited back-up power. Rachel had just finished her first consultation and for a time she stood in the windowless, darkened corridor outside her cubicle, listening to the running footsteps and voices. Then she decided to go down to the crèche and check on Lauren. There was no real reason to, and by the time she got there the lights were back on.

She entered the crèche at thirteen minutes past ten, according to the wall clock with Mickey Mouse hands, which she looked at as she came in. She found Lovisa absent, but Millie – the other assistant – was fussing over a very young baby, who was crying. She looked for Lauren among the other kids playing on the floor and it took about ten seconds, she calculated, to realise that the reason she couldn’t see her wasn’t because she wasn’t looking properly, but because Lauren wasn’t there.

The sudden, shocking perception of her child’s absence had come to her once previously, when Lauren had crawled off into some shrubs in a friend’s garden, so she knew not to give into it immediately, not to let loose and yell with panic. But that came pretty quickly once she discovered that Millie wasn’t even aware that Lauren was gone.

All the predictable stages of reaction had followed. She could recall them less well now, because they had dragged into months of police enquiries and useless activity and all become blurred together in her (often drugged) recollection. The immediate responses were significant enough – the frantic combing of the corridors near by, then the hospital, then the street outside, before some kind of worse realisation began to set in – but oddly, they weren’t the moments that had stuck clearly in her head. Not like bending down and showing Lauren the daffodil.

She had been living with the truth ever since. Lauren had been snatched. Someone had come in and deliberately removed her from Rachel’s world – possibly arranging the power cut to facilitate this, the police had said, waiting until Millie had run out of the room leaving the kids ‘
for just a few seconds
’ unprotected. It had taken months to realise, to fully sink in, but around ten minutes past ten on 14 April 1990 Lauren Gower had vanished.

Twenty-two years ago. If alive, Lauren would be twenty-three years old now.
If.

They had told her that time alone could heal her, that she would get used to the livid absence at the heart of her life, that the need to live and move on would finally dull the agonising mental trauma. But they had lied. Nothing had changed. Only her limited ability to control her focus, to turn away from it. There was no living with it, and never would be, no accommodation with the horror. All she could do was avert her concentration and hang on. Fill her head with other things. By a sheer effort of will she had to trick herself that she was just like everyone else around her. The normal people. She had to pretend she was one of them.

Sara Eaton sat on the very end of the wooden dock, the letter in her hand, waiting. In front of her, shimmering in the intense afternoon sunlight, stretched the vast, translucent blue of the Indian Ocean, framed in the near distance by the twin horseshoe promontories of the island. The wide bays to either side of her – formed on the inside of the horseshoe – were rimmed with a thin edge of golden beach fringed by the palms and mangoes cascading out of the jungle interior. The view was stunning, and though she had sat here and gazed at it almost every day she had been here, it never failed to inspire, to lift her spirits, to leave her mentally gasping at whatever it was such perfect natural views revealed – something
beyond
the image, she thought, without being able to articulate it better than that.