Vanished by Tim Weaver

L-shaped kink in theroom. Off to the right was his office. It was entirely encased in glass, standing on its own like a transparent mausoleum. There were no windows on this part of the floor, but any potential darkness was offset by a series of bright halogen lamps running across the ceiling. Inside was his desk, a big leather chair, filing cabinets lined up behind him and a second table with six chairs around it, which I assumed he used for meetings. His screensaver was an extreme close-up of the side of a pound coin, shot in black and white. We sat down at the second table and he pushed the door shut.
    ‘I didn’t know Julia was trying to find him,’ McGregor said as he shuffled in at the table. ‘When did this start?’
    ‘Tuesday.’
    He nodded. ‘You had any joy?’
    ‘Not yet.’ I got out my notepad, laid it on the table, and then removed a business card and pushed it across the desk towards him. ‘I find people,’ I said, ‘but not for the police or any other agency. Just so we’re clear.’
    ‘You work for yourself?’
    ‘Yes.’
    He leaned back in his chair. ‘Do you get many jobs?’
    ‘Well, I’m not on the breadline.’ But I could see in his face what he really wanted to ask: how much money did I make? ‘Can you tell me how you first got to know Sam, and how he ended up here?’
    ‘Sure.’ He paused. He looked much more composed now. ‘We both did Banking and Finance at London Met. I was a mature student. Arsed around for a couple of years after school, did some travelling, that kind of thing. Then came back, signed up for the course, and that was how Igot to know Sam. I only really became friendly with him in the second year, but we hit it off straight away. After finishing, he went into the graduate programme at HSBC and I got a job at J. P. Morgan. He didn’t really like the people at HSBC so he jumped at the chance to move across to JPM with me.’
    ‘Working with you, or for you?’
    ‘For me,’ he said, picking a hair off his cuff.
    ‘And then you left J. P. Morgan?’
    ‘Yeah.’ He shrugged. ‘I got the hump with a couple of the bosses there, and just fancied trying something myself. So I set up this place.’
    ‘What do you do here?’
    ‘We make people lots of money,’ he said, like it was the dumbest question he’d heard all day. ‘That’s the bottom line. We specialize in emerging markets: Russia, Latin America, the Middle East, the Far East. That’s why I poached Sam. He knows those markets. I didn’t just hire him ’cause he was my mate.’
    ‘So he was good at what he did?’
    ‘Very good.’
    ‘No problems you can remember?’
    ‘None.’
    ‘He didn’t run into any trouble with anyone?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I’m looking for a reason he might have left. One of the possibilities is that he ran into problems here: lost a client money, got tied up in something he shouldn’t have.’
    McGregor made an
oh
expression. ‘I doubt it.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I run a tight ship. I like to keep an eye on what’shappening out there. This is my baby. My investment. It’s in my interests to keep the balance sheet close because I need to make sure we’re not losing our clients money and pissing away the goodwill we’ve built up over the last five years. Most of my people out there, they’re good, but they need a steady hand. Someone to step in and tell them what to do, and to make sure they’re not making bad decisions. Sam was different.’
    ‘He didn’t need his hand held?’
    ‘I’d pull him in here for a meeting now and again, but mostly I let him run riot. He was my biggest earner. I cut him some slack.’
    I got the sense that, in a weird way, McGregor was enjoying this: being the centre of attention, being some kind of go-to man in the hunt for Sam. In fact, as I studied him – his eyes scanning the office like it was a palace – I realized whatever friendship had existed between the two of them had always been a firm second place to status in