Free Vanished by Tim Weaver Page A

it?’
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘Well, he just disappears.’
    ‘People disappear all the time.’
    ‘Yeah, but they don’t just disappear, do they?’ She tabbed the footage back and looked at me. ‘When people disappear, they wander off somewhere, hide, try not to resurface. Or they die: they commit suicide, someone kills them, something. Their body goes
somewhere
. But you’ve been through the footage and you can’t see the join. You can’t see where he went. To me …’ She faded out. ‘To me that’s a bit creepy.’
    I didn’t say anything, but in the silence I realized Liz might be right: there
was
something disquieting about SamWren’s journey that morning, more so now I’d seen the CCTV video. I still knew, in the rational part of me, the part I built cases on, that Sam
had
to have left the train – but without being able to see him do it, without the physical act of stepping on to the platform, something troubling remained.
    ‘I’ll see you in bed,’ she said quietly.
    I watched her go and then turned back to the footage. There were twelve thousand CCTV cameras in and around the London Underground. The ticket halls. The platforms. The walkways. The trains. Sam couldn’t have avoided them all.
    I had to widen the search.
    I woke with a start. Outside I could hear people talking, a car idling, and – even more distantly – the sound of a dog barking. Disorientated and half asleep, I sat up in bed, feeling the sheet fall away, a faint breeze reaching across from the window and clawing at my skin. Seconds later, my phone began buzzing.
    I grabbed it. ‘David Raker.’
    ‘David, it’s Spike. You okay?’
    ‘Yeah. Late night. What time is it?’
    ‘7.15. Do you want me to call back?’
    ‘No.’ I got to my feet, grabbed one of Liz’s least feminine dressing gowns and put it on. I made my way through to the living room, set the phone down and switched to speaker. ‘What have you got for me, Spike?’
    ‘Sorry it’s taken me so long.’
    ‘Not a problem.’
    ‘So, you asked for a complete financial picture, as wellas his phone records. I’ll send them through as a PDF, so you can grab them on the move.’
    ‘Great. Anything I need to know?’
    ‘Nah, it’s all pretty self-explanatory. The financial stuff runs to about twenty-five pages. The phone records I’m doing a bit of work on: for each of the incoming and outgoing numbers I’ll get you a name and address.’
    ‘Great work – are those coming over today?’
    ‘Yeah. Not until a bit later on, though. Getting these names and addresses for you will take longer, but it’ll save you a load of time.’
    ‘You’re the man, Spike.’
    I thanked him and killed the call.
    Now it was time to brave the Tube at rush hour.

15
    Gloucester Road Tube station sits on the corner of Gloucester Road and Courtfield Road. Its two-tone facade – all glazed terracotta tiles and sandy brick – harks back to the grand old days of the Underground; to a time when the Tube wasn’t just a vessel to get people to their destination, but an experience, a day out. In truth, it was hard to imagine those times on the hot, cramped District line, moving through the bowels of the earth where there was no air, and eventually no daylight.
    Heading out of the Tube, I walked the half-mile to the Wrens’ street, then did a 180 and retraced the same route, just as Sam would have done the day he went missing. Fifteen minutes later I was at the main entrance, passing through the three thin arches that would lead me back into the earth.
    I took the stairs down to the Circle line platform. The crowds had thinned out in the time I’d been outside. The westbound train was already in the station, but I wanted to go eastbound, so I took a seat on one of the grey metal benches and watched the other passengers. People had always fascinated me: what made them different, how they lied and covered up, how they emoted and broke down. I hadn’t missed the crush of the commute in