The Vanishing (22 page)

That was how he had ended up in London, in May 1989, while the Wall was still up, but with the writing very clearly on it, at least for those – like Barsukov – who were on the inside track. They had been guests of Liz Wellbeck, and stayed at a place like a palace, somewhere out in the Surrey countryside. Wellbeck had seemed very American, but spoke Russian and apparently had blood connections to people who were part of the Yeltsin circle. Barsukov was part of that clique and had ended up in Surrey as some kind of messenger, sent at Wellbeck’s request to consider future business possibilities, once the barriers fell – or so they had thought.

Maxim had been there as a bodyguard. The group had been Barsukov, Rakachev and one other security guy, plus Arisha – by that time one of Dima’s many female ‘assistants’ – and an older woman who had been with Dima longer. Dima had been put up with the women, in lavish guest rooms. The three men had been lodged in a dingy cellar room and virtually ignored throughout the five days they were there. There hadn’t been a need for security, because the Wellbecks had their own, and plenty of it.

Maxim hadn’t dared look at Arisha back then, and doubted she had noticed him much. The start for them had come almost a year later, when they’d been picked – via Barsukov – to steal a child for Liz Wellbeck. But in 1989 Maxim was a nobody. Arisha – they said – was in bed with Dima, so was far above his level. She had been at the meetings with Liz Wellbeck, while Maxim and Rakachev had been confined to the basement. Later, much later, she had told him that Wellbeck had only been interested in some property claim her family had, an attempt to repossess estates they had held in Golovchino, in southern Russia, taken into state ownership after the revolution, as far back as 1921. The land was worth nothing, Arisha had said, but Wellbeck wanted it back on principle, and refused to discuss anything else until guarantees were given.

That trip had been an eye-opener for him. Until then the richest people he had ever come across hadn’t really had any money at all, merely power – people like Barsukov. Liz Wellbeck had treated Barsukov politely enough, but nevertheless as if he were stupid – from another, dirtier planet. Which was true. For her, Barsukov was there to be instructed, not asked or consulted. It had been humiliating. Since then, the same thing had happened to the whole of Russia, as a nation. He was glad to be out of the place.

There had been some half-pleasant memories too, he supposed. On the fourth day Barsukov had let Rakachev and him travel by train into London itself. They had spent the day wandering around like dazed tourists, staring at everything. They’d had enough cash to buy a meal and a few drinks, but little else. He had wanted to buy Arisha something, stupidly, since he couldn’t even speak to her, but everything had been too expensive, even the silly T-shirts. Perhaps just as well, since he wasn’t sure now how she might have reacted to that kind of thing. Would it have been impertinent to give her a gift, back then?

The pleasant memories were hard to recover now, because he had spent most of the time in a secret and miserable state of obsession, eaten away by jealousy of Barsukov and what he was doing to Arisha, imagining all of it. A year later she had laughed at him when he had confessed all this to her. Barsukov hadn’t been anywhere near her, she claimed. He still didn’t know whether to believe that.

They had all come a long way since then. In so many respects. It was like thinking about something childish and naive when he saw them all sitting uncomfortably in Liz Wellbeck’s chauffeur-driven cars, in their shoddy Soviet clothing, with their pale, poor complexions, startled by the West and its incredible excesses, mumbling their atrocious English on demand. Things had come full circle since then. Or would soon.

Or maybe not. He looked down at his bandaged hand – throbbing constantly now, clearly infected – and swore softly to himself. Nothing could be taken for granted.

He checked his watch as he saw the security guy leave the exit from St Pancras. Alone. No Sara Eaton. No Tom Lomax. But he’d expected that, by now.

He waited until the guy got into the Merc, waited another five minutes while they called Arisha for instructions. Then watched the Merc drive off. Arisha had said Barsukov was making his own enquiries to try to locate Sara Eaton via the connection to Lomax. Lomax, apparently, worked for a minor player called Glynn Powell. Barsukov had asked Powell to find Lomax for him. But Max wouldn’t wait for that. He gently rubbed the thick scar tissue to the side of his right eye, then got the piece of paper with Lomax’s address out of his pocket and looked at it. That would be his next stop.

It was still before midnight, but John Lomax was asleep when his mobile started to vibrate on the little bedside table. He was pressed tight against Rachel’s naked back, one arm beneath her and completely numb. He had to move her forward to get it free, and expected her to wake, but she didn’t. As he moved away from her he remembered with sudden bewilderment the progress of the evening, what had happened between them, how they had ended up like this. But that was as far as his reactions got. The phone was too loud. He got it into his other hand, pressed the button and put it to his ear. It took a while to recognise the voice speaking in a hushed tone. Ian Mercer, a good friend who was still in the job, a DI he had worked with on countless inquiries, including Grenser. He listened to a few sentences, let the initial information sink in, then asked Ian to wait a moment. He rolled carefully out of bed and walked out of the bedroom on tiptoe, closing the door behind him. He went into the study and stood behind his desk in the darkness, stark naked.

‘Tell me about it,’ he said.

‘It’s an APA. Came in two hours ago.’

APA.
That was a piece of Interpol jargon – it meant an All Ports Alert. Some foreign police force wanted info sent out to every UK entry point alerting the authorities to detain an individual.

‘And it’s for Tom? My Tom? You’re sure?’ That’s what Ian had told him a minute ago.

‘Thomas Lomax. I’m looking at it now. I cross-checked the date of birth. Plus there’s a photo. It’s for Tom and one other. The request is from Belgium.’

‘Belgium?’ The Belgian police had never scored high on his respect meter. ‘How long will it take to action it?’

‘It’s done. They go through automatically now. Been like that a year or more.’

‘So there’s already an active All Ports Alert for Tom.’ He said it to himself, not as a question. He was trying to work out what it might mean.

‘There’s a bit of info on the demand,’ Ian said. ‘They suspect he’s kidnapped someone. At least that’s what they say in the summary.’

‘Kidnapped? Who? A child?’ He was thinking maybe Tom’s ex-wife had moved to Belgium with Jamie, and Tom had gone over there to get him back.

‘A kid?’ Mercer sounded surprised. ‘No. A twenty-year-old girl. She’s the other they’ve got the alert for, so I don’t really get it, to be honest. They’re both down in the particulars as homicide suspects – an incident this afternoon in Brussels, but no more detail than that. But then the summary says Tom is suspected of kidnapping this girl. So it’s a mess. A classic Belgian request. They don’t have a clue …’

‘So who is the girl?’ John interrupted him. ‘The other one. You got her name?’

‘Yes. And a photo too. There’s an attached photo of both of them, clear as day, staring up at some CCTV camera in a station somewhere. She looks pretty …’

‘What’s her name?’

‘You’re going to love this. That’s why I took an interest. The name jumped out at me. The girl is Sara Eaton.’

John was so shocked he had to sit down. ‘Sara Eaton? The daughter of Freddie Eaton and Liz Wellbeck?’

‘Yes.’

He took a deep breath, the thoughts spinning through his head too fast. ‘Does it mention that?’ he asked. ‘Does it mention whose daughter she is?’

‘No. But the kidnap allegation relates to her. And that was all over the news earlier …’

‘The island thing?’

‘Ile des Singes Noirs. Exactly. I saw that this evening – about Wellbeck being dead and her daughter being kidnapped from there – so I had Grenser in my head already. Then this APA comes through with her name on it and a picture of your boy. So I called you. Hope you don’t mind.’

‘Christ above.’ He was completely stumped. He had no idea what any of it could mean. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ he wondered, aloud.

‘I have no idea. He kidnaps her and then they both do a murder? Doesn’t really work. Obviously the Belgians are covering all the bases. That’s the way they do it over there. I assume they haven’t a clue what has gone on …’

‘But it still went through? Two years ago we would have sent it back for clarification.’

‘Not any more. Speed is the name of the game now.’

‘And there’s no more info on the homicide?’

‘None at all.’

John paused, thinking furiously. ‘He’s definitely down as having kidnapped Eaton?’

‘Suspected of involvement.’

‘I don’t get it. I don’t understand any of it.’

‘Me neither. But I thought you should know. What will you do?’

John sat in silence, letting the question stew. ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘But I really appreciate the heads-up, Ian.’

‘No problem.’

‘You covered, if they audit it?’

That was exactly what had happened to Tom, of course. He had made a phone call, just like this, to a friend, giving a warning. Then someone had done an internal audit, found the number, made the enquiries. And that was the end of his police career. For no greater offence than Ian had just committed.

‘I called you to check if you had recent contact,’ Ian said. ‘That’s what I’ll say.’ But he hadn’t asked that question at all. John waited for it, but it didn’t come. Ian was the real thing, a straight-up, loyal friend. He knew his priorities. John thanked him again. They exchanged some vague ideas about meeting up, but John couldn’t really get his head around that right now.

After the connection was cut he sat in the darkness, listening to his heart. What Tom had done wasn’t that similar, he realised, because Ian Mercer was one of the best DIs he’d ever worked with, a solid, honest man. Tom, on the other hand, had made a call to warn a piece of criminal shit who he’d been inexplicably attached to since age eight, a species of bad company who John hadn’t tried hard enough to discourage. There weren’t many similarities there. Except that Ian Mercer had broken the rules too, technically – and had done it for the same reasons, out of friendship and loyalty. Assuming he was being truthful. Maybe the call had been official, maybe they had a connect on John’s mobile, right now, set up, ready and waiting for him to make the warning call to Tom, so they could trace him. It seemed unlikely. Ian had done only what John would have done in the same circumstances. Only what his son had done too. John needed to acknowledge that. That Tom had been misguided, to say the least, in his choice of friends – or unlucky enough to be caught – didn’t change the principle. Poor judgement was one thing, loyalty quite another. If Tom had a problem with excessive loyalty it was probably because his father had planted it in him.

John stood up and peered out of the window, into the darkness, across the river. Was he going to call Tom, warn him? Or ask him what was going on, at least? It was stunning – the connections lining up.
Tom involved in kidnapping someone with a link to Grenser.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. But
kidnapping
? Had Tom slipped that far? It seemed absurd, but it was possible, he supposed. Tom’s ‘friend’ – the one who had cost him his job, Alex Renton – could easily have a part in something like that. John knew all about Renton’s connections. He had made it his business to know.

He walked quietly back to the bedroom and sat on the bed beside Rachel. He pulled open the drawer on the bedside table and took out his alternative mobile. It had been a standard part of his precautions, three years ago, to have an alternative mobile. This one was brand new. No one knew about it. He hadn’t even set up the chip. Rachel was still asleep, turned away from him. He didn’t know what to do, felt he didn’t have enough information to think it through properly. But he wasn’t going to get any more information. He wanted to wake Rachel up, ask her what he should do. But he resisted.

Instead, he tried to work out what his gut feeling was. It was what he had done throughout his career when things got stuck – he had gone with his instincts. Simple enough, and they had rarely been wrong.

He remembered suddenly the moment Tom had been born. John had been there, right there, with the best view in the house. For Tom’s brother it had been different – there had been some work thing on, a double murder. He wished now he had ignored the double murder, been there for both births. But he’d been younger then, more stupid. So Eric had been born without him. But not Tom. He had even done the training for Tom, gone to the prenatal classes Jane had been so keen on, reminded her about her breathing when it was happening, massaged the base of her spine, and all the rest of it – watched dumbstruck as his second son had come out into the world. A tiny, grey, curled-up thing, completely still – he had looked dead, and John had actually suffered a moment thinking that … that the baby was stillborn. But a few seconds later Tom had thrown his arms out and changed colour, coming to life as blood flooded through him. His face screwed up and he started screaming. John had felt his heart somersault with relief and joy. It had been the most incredible thing.

That was his son, the one he had loved most dearly, no doubt about that. Eric had only wanted his mother. But Tom had been his special lad. Could he have kidnapped someone, killed someone? Did having a dodgy friend mean that he could do that? It was stupid, impossible.
That
was his gut feeling. Choose between Belgian incompetence or Tom having turned into something unrecognisable. That was what the Americans called a ‘no-brainer’, surely?

The boat was quiet, moving gently beneath them. They sat on the bed in her stateroom, facing each other, but not touching. They were moored in some private harbour near Hayling Island. The cabin lights were off, but there was light coming through the row of windows, from the arc lights on the jetty they were nearest to. Until a moment ago they had been waiting for a car, which Lastenouse was organising, to take them to a private airfield near Portsmouth. From there a plane, also set up by Lastenouse, to another airstrip close to her father’s place in Surrey. It was all very convenient. But then her father had called her mobile and she had stood whispering to him in the semi-darkness.