The Lost

Chapter 1

It was when he smelled the blood that Jonah realised he was in trouble.

The quayside was pitch-black. None of the streetlights were working, leaving the crumbling warehouses in darkness, abandoned relics from a different era. In the old Saab’s headlights, the scene resembled an industrial ghost town. Staring out through the windscreen, Jonah was reminded that, even though he’d lived in London most of his life, there were still corners of it he didn’t know existed. And didn’t want to know, if this place was anything to go by.

The quayside hadn’t been easy to find. It was part of a desolate stretch of the Thames, an undeveloped area of riverbank that wasn’t even shown on his phone’s map. The directions he’d been given were vague, and several times he’d been forced to backtrack when some rutted road proved to be a dead end. Now he was parked on a patch of weed-choked wasteland, facing a long brick wall. Across the river, the sparkling lights of high-end apartments, bars and restaurants were strung out like jewels. Here, though, all was darkness. The sprawling redevelopment that had engulfed the rest of the docklands had, for some reason, bypassed this watery cul-de-sac. Although that wasn’t surprising, given its name. Jonah had thought it must be a joke, but no. The proof was right there in front of him, a rusted street sign:

Slaughter Quay.

A couple of hours earlier, he’d been sitting outside a pub with a few others from his team, enjoying the late-summer evening after a handgun training session. His phone had rung while he was at the bar waiting to be served. He didn’t recognise the number, and almost didn’t bother taking it. But there were still people waiting their turn ahead of him, so after a moment he’d answered.

‘Jonah? It’s me.’ And then, in case he might have forgotten: ‘Gavin.’

Even though it had been the best part of a decade since he’d heard the voice, the years seemed to fall away in an instant. So did the pit of his stomach.

‘You there?’

Jonah moved to a quieter part of the bar, the drinks forgotten. ‘What do you want?’

‘I need your help.’

No ‘How’s it going?’ or ‘Long time no see’. Jonah felt his jaw muscles clench.

‘Why would you need my help?’

‘Because you’re the only one I can trust.’

Surprise momentarily silenced Jonah. ‘You’re going to have to give me more than that.’

There was a pause. ‘I screwed up. I got it all wrong. Everything...’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ll explain when you get here.’

‘Jesus, you can’t just expect me to—’

‘There’s an old warehouse on the south bank, a place called Slaughter Quay,’ Gavin went on in a rush. ‘You won’t find it on your satnav but I’ll text you directions. It’s the last warehouse on the quayside. I’ll be waiting for you outside at midnight.’

‘Midnight? Are you serious?’

‘You’ll understand when you get here.’ And then Gavin had said a word Jonah had never heard in all the time they’d been friends. ‘Please.’

The line went dead. Shit.

‘You all right?’

It was Khan, another sergeant from SCO19, the Metropolitan Police’s firearms unit. The big man’s shoulders and neck were thick with muscle, and his arms and chest threatened to burst the white T-shirt. Jonah had once seen him kick a door, and the knifeman standing behind it, halfway across a room. But, off duty, he was a family man, the person anyone in the unit with a problem would go to.

Putting away his phone, Jonah nodded. ‘Just someone I hadn’t heard from in a while.’

‘Problems?’

Jonah wasn’t sure how to answer that. ‘It’s probably nothing. But he sounded—’

He broke off as someone gave him a push from behind. ‘I thought you were going to the bar? Fuck’s sake, I could brew them faster than you get served.’

Jonah looked round at the compact woman scowling up at him. Nolan did that a lot. The policewoman was several inches shorter than him and barely reached Khan’s shoulder, but he wouldn’t have given much for either of their chances if push came to shove. Even less if it was your turn to get a round in.

‘We’re having a conversation,’ Khan told her, giving her his sergeant’s look.

‘Right.’ She considered. ‘Give me the money and I’ll get them.’

Jonah had to laugh. ‘It’s OK, I’ll go.’

‘You sure?’ Khan asked.

‘Yeah, it’s fine.’ Jonah gave a shrug. ‘Probably nothing anyway.’

He’d tried to convince himself of that as he’d gone to the bar. Whatever mess Gavin had got himself into, he could sort it out on his own. Jonah didn’t owe him anything. Not one damn thing.

Yet the call had got under his skin. Even as he’d taken the drinks over to the table, he’d kept coming back to one thing Gavin had said.

You’re the only one I can trust.

That might have held true once. Time was Jonah might have said the same thing. He’d known Gavin forever. Best friends at school, joined the Met and gone through training together and then been posted to the same borough. Gavin had always been more outgoing, with an easy attitude and ready grin that disguised a fiercely competitive nature. They’d shared a flat, even after Gavin passed his detective’s exam and joined what was then the Specialist Crime Directorate, investigating human exploitation and organised crime. For a while Jonah had considered becoming a detective as well. He’d been told he had the aptitude by his superior officers, who’d urged him to sign up for the trainee detective programme. But for some reason — maybe because he didn’t like to feel pushed — he’d chosen a different path. Surprising even himself, he’d taken the rigorous training required to be accepted onto SCO19, the Met’s elite firearms unit. Gavin had mocked the decision, calling him an adrenaline junkie. Yet they’d stayed friends. And when Jonah started seeing Chrissie and Gavin hooked up with Marie, the four of them became a close-knit group. Nights out, holidays together. Good times.

But that had been years ago. Another life. So why was Gavin crawling out of the woodwork now, asking for Jonah’s help? Two things Gavin had never lacked were confidence and friends. He’d have to be desperate to call Jonah, and in the end that was what decided it. Because, no matter how much Jonah wanted to dismiss it, he kept coming back to the same thing.

Gavin had sounded scared.

So, making his excuses, Jonah had left the pub and gone back to his car.

Now here he was, at a derelict quayside in the middle of nowhere. Switching off the engine, he took a torch from the Saab’s glove compartment and climbed out. An Audi he guessed must be Gavin’s was parked nearby, but other than that there was no sign of life. An overgrown path led to the dark hulks of empty warehouses and industrial buildings, beyond which could be glimpsed the river, silvered by the sickle moon. Switching on his torch, Jonah set off towards them.

The path took him to a narrow lane that ran between boarded-up buildings. On one of them the ghost of ancient signage was still visible: Jolley’s Tannery. Fine Hides and Skins. Others identified themselves as wholesale butchers or meat processing companies, while a huge, hangar-like structure declared itself to be an abattoir. Slaughter Quay had been aptly named.

It was an unsettling place to be at night. Jonah wasn’t normally bothered by the dark, but he found himself listening for any footsteps beside his own as he walked down the narrow lane. He was glad when he reached the end of it and emerged onto the quayside. The lapping of water was louder here. Broken cobblestones showed through disintegrating asphalt, and the air was dank, smelling of salt water, rotting weeds and oil.

A cluster of barges were moored together on the tar-black water, bobbing in unsynchronised rhythm. The quiet was broken by low bumps and creaks as they rubbed against each other. A larger boat was tethered slightly apart, and as Jonah walked past it there was a sudden hiss. Startled, he swung the torch, then relaxed as its beam caught a reflected glint of a cat’s eyes. The dirty-looking creature was crouched in the shadow of a hatchway, hunched protectively over a part-eaten burger. One eye was half closed with injury or infection. The other glared malevolently as it gave a warning yowl.

‘It’s OK, it’s all yours,’ Jonah murmured, turning away. As he did, the torch beam fell on ornate lettering painted on the boat’s bow: The Oracle. It was partly obscured by a rubber tyre tied to the side as a fender, but as Jonah shone the torch on it, another hiss from the cat reminded him he’d outstayed his welcome.

‘I’m going, I’m going.’

The ground was muddy, squelching underfoot as he continued. Up ahead he could see where the quay ended at a lone warehouse that backed on to water on two sides. It was half hidden behind a framework of scaffolding, over which hung ragged sheets of translucent polythene. A sagging wire-mesh fence surrounded it, preventing Jonah from going any further.

There was no one else there.

Jonah swore and checked the time. Almost ten past midnight. He was late but not by much. He wondered if Gavin could have given up and left, but then he remembered the Audi parked by the quayside. He’d only assumed it was Gavin’s, but it was hard to imagine anyone else being out there at that time of night.

So where was he?

He shone the torch around, but the quayside remained stubbornly dark and still. As the minutes passed, tension began to form a knot in Jonah’s gut. When it got to twenty past, he called the number Gavin had called from. Pick up, Gavin, he thought, when the number began to ring. Then, as he listened, he became aware of another ringing, this one much fainter. Behind him.

Coming from the warehouse.

Jonah turned to stare through the mesh fencing. When his call went to voicemail, there was one last chime from the unlit building, followed by silence. The knot in his stomach grew tighter as Jonah redialled. The lonely ringing started again, and this time there was no doubting that it was inside the warehouse.

Oh, shit...

Ending the call, Jonah stared at the dark building through the cross-linked fencing. Underneath the scaffolding, the warehouse was an indistinct hulk, all hard angles and shadows. He debated calling it in, but if Gavin was injured it would take too long for any back-up to get there. And there was still a chance this could be a false alarm. It didn’t feel that way, though, and Jonah realised he didn’t have a choice.

He was going to have to go in.

‘Jesus, Gavin...’ he muttered.

There was a large metal gate set in the middle of the wire fence. It was secured by a sturdy-looking padlock, but further along Jonah found a gap in the fence big enough to squeeze through. Crossing the broken asphalt to the warehouse, he pushed through the polythene sheets to a pair of huge, hangar-like doors. They were locked but to one side of them was another door. When he tried it, it swung inwards with a creak of stiff hinges.

Jonah shone his torch through the open doorway. The light disappeared into a cavernous space, broken by girder-like iron pillars that disappeared up to a high ceiling.

‘Gavin, you in there?’

His voice rang out before being swallowed. The air in the warehouse was cold and dank, heavy with a churchlike silence as he stepped inside. Taking out his phone, he called Gavin’s number. The answering ring from the darkness seemed shockingly loud. It came from further inside the warehouse. Going towards it, he saw a faint glow behind one of the iron pillars. The phone was lying on the ground behind it, Jonah’s name illuminated on the screen. It winked out when he rang off.

Christ, Gavin, what the hell have you got yourself into? And me?

He shone the torch around. Rough-cut timber, bags of lime and cement and rolls of translucent polythene were stacked haphazardly at one side, but there was no sign of Gavin. Then the torch beam caught something else lying on the floor. A police warrant card, lying face up to display a tiny photograph next to the owner’s name and rank.

Gavin McKinney, Detective Sergeant.

There was a dark smudge on it, and Jonah felt something turn over in him as he realised what it was. It was then he noticed the dark splashes on the stone flags nearby. They glistened like oil, but Jonah knew it wasn’t. He could smell it now, only faint but unmistakable.

The coppery tang of blood.

The black spatters formed a trail that vanished into the shadows. Heart thumping, he began to follow it. The splashes ended at a pair of double doors set in a bare brick wall. A sign reading Loading Bay was stencilled onto the peeling paintwork of one of them. It stood slightly open, a large, unfastened padlock hanging loosely from a hasp. Jonah hesitated. The smart thing to do would be to go back, to call for a blue-light response and let uniformed officers and paramedics find out what was on the other side of the door.

But by then Gavin could be dead.

He gave the door a soft push. It swung open with a groan, and he quickly stepped through, tensed for an attack as he fanned the beam around. None came. The light from his torch showed he was in a long, narrow room. Heavy chains hung down from a rusted winch fixed to a rail in the ceiling. Behind them was a huge, sliding door made from old timbers and black metal brackets. Jonah guessed it would open on to the quayside, where boats would have come to load or unload.

‘Gavin?’

Water dripped somewhere in the darkness with a musical plink, but there was no answer. The smell of blood was stronger in here, mixed with something else. A cloying, animal reek. Jonah aimed the torch at the floor to see where the blood splashes led. Its beam passed over lengths of scaffolding poles and a pile of wadded-up polythene before coming to rest on something else.

A pair of legs.

Jonah rushed over, then stopped. In the torch beam, a man’s body was lying face down on a large square of polythene sheeting. His arms had been fastened behind his back with a plastic tie, and another bound his feet at the ankles. Jonah couldn’t see his face, but even after ten years he recognised the lean build and curly dark hair. Hair that was now matted with blood. Black in the torchlight, a viscous pool of it had spilled over the translucent sheet and onto the stone flags, fanning out like a dark halo.

Jonah found his voice. ‘Gavin...?’

Nothing. Gavin’s body had an eloquent stillness. Pale shards of bone and pulped tissue were visible in the dark hair, but Jonah could see that the blood was no longer flowing. It had begun to set on the polythene sheet and flagstones. Even so, he had to make sure. Careful to avoid the blood, he bent down and felt the side of Gavin’s throat, below his jaw. The skin was cold and flaccid, bristly with a day or two’s growth of whiskers but unmoved by any pulse.

Feeling numb, Jonah straightened and stepped away. A sound made him wheel round. There was no one there, and a moment later the plink of dripping water came again. He breathed out. There was no longer any question of what to do. This was a murder scene. He needed to get out of there and call it in without contaminating it any more than he had already.

Trying to close his mind to what was lying on the ground, he tried his phone. There was no reception. Gavin’s phone had rung in the main warehouse, so the loading bay’s thick internal wall must be blocking the signal. He’d started back for the door when another noise stopped him. It was too faint to place, but this time he was sure it wasn’t dripping water. He stood, listening. At first all he could hear was the blood pulsing in his ears, then the sound came again. Clearer, this time.

A rustle of plastic.

The hairs on Jonah’s arms rose as he turned towards the mound of wadded-up polythene sheeting lying a few yards away. It wasn’t a single mound, he saw now, but three large, distinct bundles. They could have been building waste, but as the torch beam fell on them they reminded him of something else.

Cocoons.

As though hypnotised, Jonah felt himself drawn closer. The bundles were each five or six feet in length, bound up with black gaffer tape. They were dusty, coated with white powder that made it impossible to see inside, but now Jonah realised where the rank, animal odour he’d noticed earlier was coming from.

Gavin’s body wasn’t the only one down there.

Get out. Now! Jonah began to back away, but then the same noise came again. A silky, crinkling whisper. He saw that a corner of sheeting had come loose on the topmost polythene bundle. Reaching down, he eased the plastic aside. Below it, blurred beneath more polythene, was a face.

As Jonah stared, the mouth opened and the polythene was sucked tight.

He stumbled backwards. The urge to run overwhelmed him before reason asserted itself. At least one of these people was still alive.

But not for much longer.

‘It’s OK, I’m going to get you out,’ Jonah said, fumbling at the polythene. There were multiple layers, wound round and round and held in place with long strips of gaffer. He wrenched and tore at both, trying to find an edge he could grip, but it was bound too tightly. The translucent covering made the blurred features look as though they were underwater, drawing in over them before slowly filling out again. But each time was weaker than the last. Pulling out his car keys, he tried to pierce the plastic with a sharp corner. It resisted, then gave way with a soft pop. Jonah tore at the hole with his fingers, until with a sibilant crackle, the polythene parted as though it had been unzipped.

Now the lower half of a face was revealed. The mouth was partly open but there was no movement or response. Come on, please breathe, Jonah willed, trying to tear more of the sheeting.

Suddenly, the mouth coughed and opened wider, spasming as it sucked in air. The polythene ripped, exposing a head topped with thick black curls. It was a young woman. Not much more than a girl, Jonah thought, although it was hard to be sure. Her skin was crusted with dried blood. In places it was livid and blistered, caked with the same white dust that coated the sheeting. Her face was contorted with pain and fear, but neither that nor the darkness could disguise a striking beauty that made the sight of her now all the more grotesque. Wishing he had some water to give her, Jonah continued ripping at the polythene, ignoring the human stench that came from the fouled plastic. He started talking as she coughed and fought for breath.

‘You’re safe now. I’m a police officer, I’m going to get you out, OK?’

She made a thin keening sound in her throat, then said something in a language Jonah didn’t recognise. It sounded like it could be Arabic.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Just try to lie still so I can get you out.’

‘... hurts...’

‘I know, I’ll be as fast as I can,’ he told her. Keep her talking. ‘What’s your name?’

She murmured something he didn’t catch. Christ, she was slipping away.

‘Na... Nadine...’

‘Hi, Nadine. I’m Jonah.’

He spoke with a calmness he didn’t feel, but now another sensation was beginning to filter through the urgency. His hands had begun to burn, and he noticed how the skin was smeared with the powder from the polythene sheet. It looked blotched and angry, and remembering the bags of building supplies outside he realised what it was.

Quicklime.

Oh, Christ. Jonah tried to think. The caustic powder could eat away skin and flesh down to the bone, and the woman was covered in it. She must be in agony, and Jonah knew she needed more help than he could give her. He checked the signal bars on his phone and saw there was still no reception. Much as he hated it, he knew what he had to do.

‘Nadine, I’m going to have to go outside to call for help,’ he said, though he wasn’t sure if she could understand. ‘I’ll be back as quick as I can, OK? I’ll leave you the torch.’

He set it down on the floor; he couldn’t leave the young woman alone down here in the dark. She moaned again, becoming more agitated. Jonah wondered if she was delirious, but the reddened eyes were lucid and terrified as she stared up at him. No, not at him, he realised.

Behind him.

He heard the soft footstep as he spun around, bringing up his arms in a block. Too late. Something knocked them aside and smashed into his head. There was a burst of light and pain, followed by a weightlessness like falling.

And then nothing.