The Disappearances (8 page)

Lucas leant forward. ‘But Rab, how did the bodies get there? How did they get through your gate without you knowing?’

Rab didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then he stood up. ‘I’ve had enough,’ he said angrily, walking away, back to the City, but Lucas was too quick for him. He grabbed at his wrist, pulled it behind him. Rab was strong, but Lucas knew what he was doing. Moments later, Rab’s nose was on the ground, both his arms twisted behind him. He kicked out, but it was futile.

‘Tell me,’ Lucas said again, his voice lower now, showing the strain of containing Rab. ‘Tell me or you will regret it. For all I know, you were involved in these deaths and I’m telling you now, I will not hesitate to kill you, do you understand? This is not a threat. Unless you want to end up in one of those graves, you talk and you talk now.’

There was silence; Lucas tightened his grip.

‘Fine,’ Rab choked finally. ‘I’ll tell you.’ Lucas let one of his hands go and he fell back onto the ground. Rab stared up at him insolently. ‘But after that I’m done with this business. After that you leave me alone. You all just leave me alone. You understand?’

‘I understand nothing,’ Lucas said grimly. ‘Tell me what you know.’

Rab pulled himself up. ‘You want to bury the bodies, don’t you?’ he muttered. ‘We do that first. Then I’ll tell you what I know. Back at my cottage. Back where I know we’re safe.’

Lucas nodded grimly. Then he put the lid of Rab’s bottle down and holding his breath, he walked towards the pile of bodies, waving away the flies, trying not to look at the rotting corpses, the eaten-away flesh.

Silently he carried each body to its own patch of ground ready for burial. It was a grim job; most of the bodies were just skeletons with rotting flesh hanging off them. They had been ravaged, and now were home to maggots eating through what was left of them.

Rab watched him for a few minutes, shaking his head and spiting on the ground. Then, slowly, he stood up. ‘Going to need some spades,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’

‘Don’t tell Clara. Don’t let her see,’ Lucas said.

‘You want me to take her to the cottage?’ Rab grunted.

Lucas shook his head. ‘She’ll feel safer where I can see her,’ he said.

Rab shrugged and walked off.

Lucas watched him go for a few moments, then carried on moving the bodies until Rab was back and then they dug. One grave per person. The ones at the bottom of the heap were no longer identifiable; the ones nearer the top were more so – a piece of clothing that had survived, perhaps part of a face that had not yet been attacked by beast, fowl or insect. In any event, he knew who each of them was because he had stared at their photographs on a list of Disappeared so many times.

Once the bodies were all under the earth, and after Lucas had marked each grave with a stone, he followed Rab back through the gate to the first body, Gabrielle Marchant. Lucas buried her, then silently followed Rab back through the gate, picking a silent Clara up on the way, then they walked together back to Rab’s house, where he and Lucas washed their hands under the outside tap for a very long time.

‘So,’ Lucas said.

‘So,’ Rab replied, and walked into his cottage.

Lucas followed him in, his arm around Clara protect-ively. He’d never been inside Rab’s house before. On the outside it was little more than a shack, a wooden structure that held no allure whatsoever. But as he walked through the door he was surprised to find a welcoming warmth, chairs covered in blankets and a small fire in the corner next to what he assumed must be Rab’s bed. Above the fire sat a kettle; on a small table was one cup.

Lucas motioned for Clara to sit down on a wooden rocking chair; she did so immediately, pulling her knees up to her chest. He watched her for a few moments, wondering how much she had seen, what she was thinking. Then he turned to Rab. ‘So, Rab. This is where you live.’

‘I’d offer you a brew,’ Rab said, ‘but I’ve only one cup.’ His tone was sarcastic but not unfriendly. He pointed to one of the chairs; Lucas sat down on it.

Rab sat in the other one, pouring more whisky into two glasses; Lucas refused the glass that Rab proffered him, so he offered it to Clara, who hesitated before declining. ‘More warming than tea,’ Rab said, as though an explanation were required. Lucas said nothing; he just waited watchfully as Rab sat back in the chair and exhaled slowly.

‘I didn’t know that’s what they were doing,’ he said, eventually. ‘I had no idea. The Brother just said I was to let them in when they came.’

‘Let who in?’ Lucas asked, leaning forward. ‘Who are “they”?’

Rab shrugged. ‘I never got any names,’ he said, the sarcasm returning. ‘The Brother just called them our Informers.’

Lucas glanced over at Clara, who visibly whitened.

‘Informers?’ Lucas asked. ‘Why didn’t I know about this?’

Rab looked at him for a moment, then he started to laugh. ‘You?’ He shook his head. ‘You really think you’re in charge, don’t you. You really think …’ He shook his head again, wiped away a tear from his eye, then his face turned serious. ‘You know nothing,’ he said. ‘You’re the Brother’s poodle, whatever he tells you.’

Lucas felt his eyes narrow. ‘Things have changed,’ he said, levelly. ‘The Brother is no longer in control.’

‘No, Lucas,’ Rab said, launching forward and grabbing his hand without warning. ‘The Brother is not in control. But not because of you. Not because of what you and your friends did. You think that changed anything? You have no idea. No idea at all.’

‘No idea about what?’ Lucas asked angrily. He pushed Rab’s hand away. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Rab. You’re a drunk. You live out here in the middle of nowhere … Just tell me about the Informers. What are they doing here?’

Rab took a deep breath. ‘They bring stuff. Deliveries. Food, grain. From other camps and settlements. Taxes, the Brother calls it.’

Lucas’s face creased into incomprehension. ‘But I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I stopped the food coming from the Damaged Ones,’ he said uncertainly, remembering when he’d discovered that the ‘Evils’ created by the supposed New Baptisms had been put to work in farms outside the City walls, their produce shipped straight back to the City. ‘I stopped—’

‘You stopped nothing,’ Rab said, shaking his head wearily. ‘City can’t survive without the supplies the Informers bring. Dead of night they come, bring the food, and the Brother’s men collect it. That’s all I know. Been going on as long as I’ve been here.’

Lucas stood up, his mind racing. He started to walk around the small room; Rab and Clara sat and watched him.

‘Okay,’ Lucas said suddenly, sitting back down. ‘Tell me everything you know about these Informers. Everything.’

Rab pulled a face. ‘Nothing much to tell,’ he said gruffly.

Lucas bent down so that his face was inches from Rab’s. ‘There are six graves a mile away from here,’ he said, his voice low. ‘A girl, here, whose friends are …’ he paused, not wanting Clara to know about the bodies. ‘Whose friends have disappeared.’

‘Who are dead, you mean,’ Clara interjected. ‘The flies? The spades? I’m not stupid, you know. I know what you were doing.’

Her eyes were blank; she was rocking back and forth on the chair.

‘Who are dead,’ Lucas said, his voice quieter now. ‘A girl who is so scared of being Disappeared that she can’t sleep, can’t function, who hasn’t dared to tell anyone because telling them what she knows is to hand out a death sentence. And now I discover that people have been coming into the City undetected for years. Walking around as if they own it. Tell me what you know and tell me now.’

Rab sighed and took another drink. He looked twitchy; his eyes darted around the room as though worried that someone might be listening. Then he started to talk, looking at Lucas intently as he spoke. ‘Like I said, they’ve been coming a long time. Once a month maybe. In, then out. Always at night.’

Lucas’s brow furrowed. ‘Every month? And where do they come from?’

‘No idea. I opened the gate, went back to my house. Just like I was told to by the Brother.’

Lucas grimaced as he remembered the look of irritation on the Brother’s face when he confiscated the gatekeepers’ keys. ‘You didn’t watch them?’

Rab looked down. ‘Not supposed to watch them.’

‘But you do. You must. How many of them are there? What do they look like?’

Rab shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Maybe I’ve seen them once or twice. Not on purpose. Just, you know, glimpses. There are usually two or three of them. With a lorry.’

‘And what do they do?’ Lucas demanded.

‘They come in for a few hours, leave their stuff, then they go,’ Rab said gruffly. ‘I don’t know what they do, I don’t know why. All I know is that when they leave I lock the gate again. That’s all I want to know.’

Lucas shook his head, his brain trying to process this information, trying to make sense of it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t buy this. They would have been seen. The System would have spotted them. I would have spotted them.’

‘These people can hide,’ Rab said, his voice dark suddenly. ‘These people can do anything.’

‘Like killing people? Dragging them here without anyone seeing? Without you seeing? Rab, this doesn’t make any sense.’

Rab looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m not saying it was them. Just that they exist.’

Lucas nodded. ‘So when did they come last? Before I took your key, I assume?’

‘It was three months ago.’

‘Three months ago?’ Lucas’s face creased into a frown. ‘But that doesn’t make any sense either. That … I don’t understand.’

Rab raised an eyebrow, then he leant forwards, his expression suddenly conspiratorial. ‘That’s the thing, though,’ he said under his breath. ‘This time it was different.’

‘Different how?’ Lucas asked impatiently.

Rab smiled, apparently enjoying Lucas’s frustration. He took another sip of whisky, then spat violently on the floor. ‘Different,’ he said, cradling his glass and looking at Lucas knowingly, ‘because like I said, they came three months ago. But this time, they didn’t leave.’

Lucas felt his heart begin to thud in his chest. He could feel Clara’s eyes on him, saying ‘I told you so. I told you.’

‘So they’ve been here all this time?’ he asked, but Rab didn’t answer; instead he held his hand up, motioning for Lucas to be quiet.

‘You hear that?’ he asked. Lucas shook his head. ‘They follow you here?’

Lucas was surprised to see Rab’s face fill with fear. ‘You led them to me?’ he asked, standing up, agitated. ‘Get out. Let them take you. I just want to be left alone. I don’t want anything to do with this.’

‘You’re already up to your neck,’ Lucas whispered, because now he too could hear the sound of footsteps outside. ‘You’re the one who let these people into the City,’ he said. ‘And you found the bodies with me.’

‘I noticed the flies, that’s all,’ Rab hissed, then he grabbed Lucas. ‘This way,’ he said, bundling him and Clara out through a kitchen that smelt of mould and sour milk. ‘You get out, you get yourself hidden and you don’t get yourself unhidden, understand?’ He opened a door silently and pushed them through it before closing it immediately.

Lucas grabbed Clara and pulled her down towards the swamp, submerging them both in its foul-smelling depths, guiding her hands to find the narrow platform that enabled access to the gate. With one hand, he held her; with the other, he clung onto the platform himself. Then, silently, they waited.

It was dark outside, and his limbs were beginning to ache. Thomas realised that he had been sitting in the same position for several hours; he was hungry and thirsty. But such mundane things could wait another few minutes. He was so nearly there. So close he could almost feel it.

As he scrolled through the information in front of him, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. And what made it so incredible was how easy it was, how easy it all was. Four years ago, he’d been a junior manager in a technology firm having to answer to a stupid boss who didn’t understand anything. Now … now he had his own department, a budget that no one questioned, a remit that was as wide as he wanted it to be. He was in charge of security and data, of investigating breaches. At his say so, the entire network could be changed, closed, manipulated. His investigations were so secretive he could fly to the Caribbean for a week’s holiday on expenses and no one would question it. All because he got it. All because he knew how to harness people, harness technology. All because he knew how to scare people, how to excite them, how to make them think they needed him.

And they did need him; they needed him because he was the only person who saw what was possible. The only person who was thinking big.

And Thomas was thinking very big. Very big indeed. He scrolled through his list of candidates, checking and double-checking the information he had on them. And oh, did he have information. Reams of it. Every sorry detail of their pathetic lives. He smiled to himself as he remembered his former boss talking to him about privacy, like it was something that had to be preserved. Prosser was gone now, left in the last reshuffle, managed out of the business. Some information had got out about an affair, some dubious expense claims. It had been easy, in the event. Pitifully so.

But what lay ahead would be a real challenge. What lay ahead would take patience, time, skill, cunning and confidence. It was almost impossible to pull off. But only almost.

Thomas smiled to himself. At last a proper challenge. And if it worked …

What was he saying? Of course it would work.

He opened a screen, stared at the face of a despondent-looking girl with eyes that seemed completely empty; she had proved to be one of his best recruits. Then he flicked to another prospective recruit, a boy, black skin, fierce eyes full of anger, full of mistrust. He stared at the face for a few minutes, then flicked to his file. He was the perfect candidate. But it would be a long game. It would take time. And he would need some help.

He stood up, opened his door, looked at his assistant who was sitting at the desk just outside. ‘Get in here.’

Two minutes later, his latest recruit Adrian Crouch appeared. ‘Got your badge on?’ he asked.