Vanished

PART THREE





29



There were a series of empty warehouses three miles away that I’d once used as a place to meet sources. Since leaving the paper, I’d only been back once. That time, I’d brought the person here under cover of darkness. This time, I had two men in the boot of my car and the sun was carving down out of a clear blue sky.

The road leading in was built in a T-shape, the neck barely big enough for two cars to pass. At the end, it opened up: ten warehouses, all in a line, all facing back down the way I’d come. At one end was a disused railway bridge, arches carved into it like big, dark holes bored straight into the earth. As I swung the car around and backed it in against one of the buildings, a smell came in on the breeze. The arches were dumping grounds: metal shells, so rust-covered it was impossible to tell what they’d once been; kitchen appliances stripped to their bones; old cars and machinery reduced to debris.

I grabbed the crowbar from the front seat and then took them in one by one, Gaishe first. He was scared. Out of his depth. He didn’t weigh anything, and he didn’t fight me. I secured him inside, then came back for Wellis. Popping the boot, I stepped back, expecting him to kick out. But he didn’t. The sunlight was strong, angling right into the BMW, and as he moved a hand to his face, shielding his eyes, I grabbed him by his arms and dragged him out, dumping him on the concrete.

He lay there on the floor, looking up.

‘Get to your feet,’ I said, pushing the boot closed.

He didn’t respond. Didn’t even move. He just stared up at me, unable to find me at first. Then he pulled into focus and spotted me about two feet away.

‘Get up, you piece of shit.’

He clumsily got to his feet, saying nothing. But at the entrance, as I followed him in, he looked back over his shoulder, eyes feral and aggressive.

Inside was a space about one hundred and eighty feet long. The sun drifted in through the gaps in the windows and brickwork, glinting in the smashed glass scattered across the floor. It stank like a toilet. To my right was an old office area, looking out over the warehouse. There was still some furniture in it: a couple of heavy oak desks and four chairs, picked apart and broken, but still basically usable. Gaishe was tied to one of them with duct tape – wrists to the arms of the chair, ankles to the legs. He looked up as we approached, an odd mixture of fear and relief in his face: fear of what was coming, relief that Wellis was here with him, to share in whatever was planned.

Wellis got to one of the chairs and then looked back at me. ‘You don’t know what the f*ck you just stepped into here, Ben. You know that, right?’

I threw him the duct tape. ‘Tie your ankles to the legs of the chair.’

‘Did you hear me?’

‘Tie your ankles to the chair.’

The same expression as before: hostile, his rage barely contained. Then he turned, tiny fragments of glass crunching beneath his bare feet, and dropped into the seat. Once his ankles were secure, I got him to tape one of his wrists down, then I did the other.

‘Let’s start with Sam Wren.’

I perched myself on the edge of one of the desks and put the crowbar down next to me. No response from either of them.

‘Eric?’

Gaishe looked at me.

‘Do you want to tell me about Sam Wren?’

He glanced at Wellis again, but Wellis hadn’t moved an inch. He was just staring at me, the corners of his mouth turned up in the merest hint of a smile.

‘What’s so funny?’

Wellis shrugged.

‘This is all a joke to you?’

He shrugged again. I stepped in closer to him and, as I did, he tried to come at me – teeth bared, fists clenched – forgetting he was tied down. The chair rocked from side to side, teetered on one leg for a second and then toppled over and hit the floor. His head smashed hard against the ground, chips of glass cutting into the dome of his skull, and the coat we’d dressed him in came open. Next to him, Gaishe gasped and pushed back and away, the wheels of the chair carrying him off for about five feet. I dropped to my haunches next to Wellis and looked at him. He was gazing up, blood on his face. I’d get nowhere with him. Threats, torture, none of it would work. A man who lived in the shadows already knew too much about its consequences.

I moved to Gaishe, grabbed his chair and pushed it across the room, away from Wellis. Glass crunched beneath the wheels as we moved. We hit the far wall of the room and I held him there, facing the bricks, unable to see Wellis. ‘What’s going on?’ Gaishe said, a tremor in his voice. I turned back to Wellis. He’d shifted position on the ground and was looking at us. He didn’t have any real affection for Gaishe, nothing with any meaning, and probably didn’t care what happened to him – except Gaishe knew things.

Important things.

I leaned in to Gaishe. ‘Here’s how it’s going to play out, Eric: you’re going to tell me how you know Sam Wren, how he got involved with you two, what happened when he did and how it all ended. You’re going to tell me all that. And when we’re done with that, you’re going to tell me about the girl. The girl you killed.’

Panic in his face, and then a stark realization about what he’d done. After that, his smell hit me: sweat and dirt and cigarette smoke.

I glanced at Wellis.

There was a different expression on his face now. He couldn’t hear what I was saying to Gaishe, couldn’t see Gaishe’s face either. He had no control any more. He couldn’t order Gaishe around. He couldn’t tell him what to say. He couldn’t influence him, or threaten him, or manipulate him. He was helpless.

‘How do you two know Sam Wren, Eric?’

Gaishe glanced at me, wide-eyed and terrified. He looked like he was about to say something, but his eyes strayed to Wellis and he stopped himself. ‘I … I can’t …’

‘You can’t what?’

‘Ade will …’

‘Ade’s tied up on the other side of the room,’ I said. ‘Ade’s not in control here any more. I am.’

Gaishe swallowed. ‘I, uh …’

‘What do you want to know?’

A voice from behind me. I turned and looked back at Wellis. It was just how I’d imagined it going: by stepping in, he could control what information was revealed. Gaishe would give me everything he knew – but everything Gaishe knew wasn’t everything Wellis knew. So it was a trade-off: Gaishe would be easier to pick apart, but Wellis was the man who’d give me Sam Wren.

‘What do you want to know?’ Wellis repeated.

I left Gaishe facing the wall.

‘Start at the beginning.’

‘I went to see him.’

‘About what?’

He eyed me for a second, a natural defence mechanism kicking in. He never told his business to anyone. ‘I had some money – I thought the stock market might be a good place to start. So I went along and asked him to invest it for me.’

I smiled. ‘You’re an investor – that’s what you’re telling me?’

‘It’s true.’

‘Don’t bullshit me, Wellis.’

‘The cops were sniffing around my business,’ he said, his voice even, ‘and if they ever kicked down my door, I needed to look legit. I needed a legitimate source of income. So I went to see Wren.’

‘Why him?’

‘Someone I knew told me about him. This guy said Wren was in finance.’

‘Who was the guy?’

‘Just a guy who I do some business with.’

I looked at him.

He shrugged. ‘Believe what you want to believe.’

‘So what’s your business?’

‘Transportation.’

‘You mean trafficking?’

He shrugged again. ‘Call it whatever you like.’

‘Is that how that woman ended up in your loft? A little present to yourself?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘It doesn’t bother you?’ I asked him.

‘What?’

‘The lives you’re ruining?’

‘I don’t lose a lot of sleep over it,’ he said, his face a blank. He wasn’t even trying to coax a reaction out of me. It was just a statement of fact. ‘You can’t call up an escort agency and ask for a thirteen-year-old. There’s not a number for that in the Yellow Pages. So I run a service for people.’

‘You’re talking about paedophiles.’

He could see the disgust in my face. ‘I make sure we vet them first, if that makes you feel any better. First time someone new gets in touch, we take a look at them, we get their name, just in case there’s any blowback.’ He glanced across to where Gaishe was still sitting, facing the wall. ‘The girl was for Eric, anyway. She got off the boat from Romania, or Bulgaria, or wherever the f*ck she was from, and started earning straight away. She was a right goer. Tight little body. We had a few boys who liked her. Eric was one of them.’

‘You like them young too?’

‘She was sixteen. That’s legal where I come from.’

‘So you don’t mind raping the legal ones?’

He didn’t say anything.

I could hardly bear to look at him now. ‘What about Sam?’

‘I told you. I had some money, I wanted the business to look kosher. We were earning a lot of cash and it was getting hard to hide it under the floorboards.’

‘You went to see him.’

‘Like I said.’

‘And what happened?’

‘What do you think happened? I gave him some money and he invested it. Three weeks later, he’d made me a small profit. So I gave him more, and he invested it, and so on and so forth.’ He sniffed. Rolled his face against his shoulder, trying to dislodge a chip of glass stuck to his cheekbone. ‘What, you don’t think I can carry that off? You got a good look at my house earlier, but you missed my wardrobes. In my wardrobes I’ve got expensive clothes. Good suits. Good shoes. That’s where my money goes. Not on the house, or a car, or holidays in the Bahamas. In my business, none of that shit matters. It’s all about appearances. If you look good, people will believe anything.’

‘And you had Sam fooled?’

A movement in his face. But no reply.

‘Wellis?’

He glanced at me and then away. ‘He did due diligence on me and that was fine. I’d put everything into place in the months before I went to him, so I sailed through that. I’ve been doing this a long time, so I know what to hide, and what to keep on show.’ He pursed his lips. Dispassionate. Detached. ‘But Wren was a clever boy. He had this natural suspicion. I could see that from the start.’

‘He found out about you?’

‘He found a hole in my story. A payment I’d made. He traced it forward to the recipient, and then he found out who the recipient was. And then it all fell apart.’

‘Who was the recipient?’

‘One of the guys that brings people in for me.’

‘How did Sam know who he was?’

‘He used a CRB check, I imagine.’

‘The guy had a record?’

‘Correct.’

A noise outside.

I got down off the desk and walked to the doors of the warehouse. At the far end, a homeless man was trying to get to his feet inside one of the tunnels. An oil drum had tipped over, spilling dirt and ash all over the floor. When I got back, Wellis hadn’t moved, but Gaishe was looking over his shoulder towards us. I told him to turn around, then seated myself on the desk again.

‘What are you gonna do with us, Ben?’ Wellis said.

‘Do?’

‘You gonna kill us? You don’t seem the murdering type to me.’

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 f*ck 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.’