The Lost

Chapter 11

The reception was in the private room of a pub. It was a large space with French windows and a curtained-off stage at one end. Tables and chairs had been set out and a long, white cloth-covered buffet table was laden with sandwiches, quiches and stainless-steel warming dishes for hot food. No more than a dozen people had turned up, the small number making the big room seem even emptier.

From what Jonah could see, hardly any of them except him wore police uniforms.

Sitting at a table, surrounded by her family and glasses of beer and wine, Marie looked shell-shocked. Teenage nieces and nephews had congregated nearby, where Dylan sat pale-faced and silent. Jonah went over and was once again pulled into Marie’s tearful embrace. She smelled of make-up and red wine.

‘Jonah, I’m so glad you came! Where is everyone?’ she fretted. ‘Why aren’t there more people here? All his workmates, all those people from the church, where are they? I don’t understand!’

Neither did Jonah. ‘They’re probably on their way,’ he said, but he’d been one of the last to leave. Anyone planning to attend the reception should have been there by now.

Marie looked around the empty room, as though seeing it for the first time.

‘It’s like a nightmare. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up, but I can’t. God, I can’t bear to think of Gav lying in that place on his own, all...’ She wiped at her eyes and took a gulp of wine. ‘I’m glad it was you who found him. You were always such good friends, I never could understand why you lost touch.’

Jonah had already been through this when they’d spoken over the phone. ‘It was just one of those things.’

But she wasn’t really listening. ‘I still can’t take it in. You always know there’s a risk, but you never think anything bad’ll actually happen. Not to Gav. And for someone to take his body... who’d do that?’

He was relieved when she didn’t wait for him to answer.

‘That DI... Fletcher, the one with the face. He came round again last night, asking if Gav ever talked about someone called Owen Stone or Stokes. But he wouldn’t say why.’

Jonah’s heart rate had jumped at the name. ‘Did he? Say anything, I mean?’

‘No, you know what Gav was like. He never talked about work.’ Her eyes searched his face, pleading and scared. ‘Is that... is that who they think did it?’

‘I’m not sure what they think, Marie. They aren’t telling me anything either.’

It was true as far as it went, and he wouldn’t be helping Marie by opening up even more uncertainty for her. He doubted she’d have any reason to connect Owen Stokes with Theo’s disappearance. He hadn’t been a suspect for very long, and even if Gavin had mentioned his name it was unlikely she’d remember after so long.

But Jonah still hated himself for the evasion. He felt even worse when she clutched at his hand.

‘I’m so glad you’re here. I can talk to you, you know what it’s like. How could you stand it?’

‘Just try to take it one day at a time,’ he told her, wishing he had a better answer.

‘I do, but it’s that... that not knowing. I just wish someone would tell me who did it or why, or what he did with... with... Oh, God!’

The older man Jonah took to be her father came over and gently prised her away.

‘Now, Marie, come on. Gavin wouldn’t want you to get upset. Think of Dylan.’

That prompted more tears. Her father stayed by Jonah as one of her sisters led her back to her seat.

‘This is the first time she’s left the house in weeks. I’m her dad, I’m supposed to be there to support her, but I’ve no idea what to say. What am I supposed to tell her? Or Dylan?’

‘Haven’t the police said anything at all?’ Jonah asked.

‘Not really, just that they’re following leads. But what does that mean? They say they can’t give away details of an ongoing investigation. Not even to his wife. Where’s the compassion in that?’

The man seemed to collect himself, blinking at him as though he’d forgotten anyone was there.

‘Anyway, it’s a free bar.’ He made an attempt at a smile but his eyes were far away. ‘Please order whatever you like.’

Jonah moved off with a sense of guilty relief. Going to the bar, he ordered a beer, opting for a bottle rather than a glass on the theory that it would be easier to carry. Taking a pull from it, he regarded the almost-empty room. So much for his big hopes of learning more. Where the hell was everyone? The place should have been packed with Gavin’s colleagues and senior officers, but it looked like they’d all left as soon as the church service was over. As though they couldn’t wait to get away. Jonah didn’t think even the awkward questions surrounding Gavin’s death could explain a snub on that scale.

So what was going on?

‘Nice to see somebody in a uniform decided to turn up.’

Jonah looked round and recognised the thick-set man who’d been on the same pew at the church. He was standing at the buffet table, an overladen plate in one hand and a half-eaten sausage roll in the other. Rather than a suit and tie for the occasion, he wore a black polo-neck sweater and navy chinos under a tan leather jacket, the front of which was speckled with flakes of pastry. He was munching as he looked at Jonah, the small eyes above the bunched cheeks shrewd and watchful. Not exactly hostile, but not friendly either.

‘Not much of a turnout, is it?’ The man’s voice was gruff and slightly hoarse, as though he was getting over a cold. ‘Look at it. It’s a fucking insult.’

Jonah made his way over. ‘You a friend of Gavin’s?’

‘I am.’ The big man drew himself up. ‘I worked with him for eight years, up till I took early retirement last year.’

‘I’m Jonah—’

‘I know who you are.’ He popped the rest of the sausage roll into his mouth and spoke around it. ‘I recognise you from the paper this morning.’

‘That was a stitch-up.’

‘Yeah, I thought it might be. Fucking reporters.’ Brushing the crumbs of pastry from his mouth, the other man stuck out his hand. ‘Jim Wilkes. Detective Constable as was.’

He was looking expectant, as though his name might mean something. It didn’t. Jonah took the offered hand. It was fat and leathery, still greasy from the sausage roll. Wilkes gripped hard enough to hurt if he hadn’t been ready for it. Letting go, the other man set down his plate and picked up a pint of lager.

‘Jesus, what a fucking business. I still can’t believe it. I mean, Gavin? Doesn’t seem possible.’ He considered Jonah’s crutches. ‘Looks like you’ve been in the wars yourself. So what happened in there?’

‘What have you heard?’ Jonah countered.

‘Fuck all. I’ve been asking around but nobody’s talking. I was a detective for twenty-five years, I can understand some details not being made public. But apart from PR bollocks fed to the press, I’ve not heard anything. No word on any suspects, or what Gav was doing there. Nothing.’ Wilkes rolled his shoulders, like a boxer squaring up. ‘I’m not an idiot, I can tell when something’s being hushed up. But Gav was a good mate. I’d like to know what’s going on.’

Jonah thought for a moment, weighing up risks against opportunity. After having his fingers burnt once with Daly, he wasn’t about to take anyone at face value. But the big man had the look of an ex-copper, and Marie clearly knew him. If he wasn’t a friend of Gavin’s, he wouldn’t be there.

Besides, Jonah had been hoping to find someone who could fill in some of the blanks from the last ten years. Retired or not, if Wilkes had worked with Gavin, he’d know a side of his life that Marie never would. If Jonah wanted to hear about that, he’d have to give something in return.

So, leaving out any mention of Owen Stokes, he quietly gave the ex-detective an edited account of the events at the warehouse. Wilkes listened grimly, his expression darkening even more as he heard how Gavin’s body had been bundled up and dragged away. When Jonah finished, he was surprised to see the big man had teared up. Taking out a handkerchief, he blew his nose.

‘Pity you didn’t kill the fucker.’ He cleared his throat, stuffing the handkerchief back in his pocket. ‘And you never got a proper look at him? Even when you were watching all that time?’

‘It was pitch-black,’ Jonah said, nettled. ‘You should try getting knocked out and tied up, see how you get on.’

‘I was just saying, no need to get humpty.’ Wilkes frowned into his glass. ‘So it was just one man?’

‘That’s all I saw.’

‘Doesn’t sound like an organised gang were involved, then. The papers made it sound like it was migrants who’d been killed by traffickers, but what you’ve said sounds more like a lone psycho to me.’ His frown deepened. ‘I still don’t get what Gav was doing there, though. Or why he phoned you. No offence, but I can’t recall him ever mentioning your name. If he was in a bind, then how come he called you instead of... instead of someone else?’

‘I’m still trying to work that out myself.’ Jonah didn’t want quizzing too closely about that, not with Fletcher’s revelation about Owen Stokes still so fresh. He nodded at the big man’s nearly empty glass. ‘Get you another?’

‘Won’t say no.’ By the look of him, he rarely did. ‘Let me get some more grub and I’ll come with you.’

Jonah waited while he loaded his plate, then they headed to the bar. Wilkes favoured one hip as he walked.

‘Been waiting months for a bloody op,’ he grumbled. When his lager arrived, he raised it at Jonah. ‘Here’s to Gav.’

Jonah tilted his own bottle — he was still on his first — to acknowledge the toast but he didn’t echo it. ‘When did you last see him?’

The ex-detective’s pouched eyes slid away. ‘Not recently, as such. You know how it is after you’ve left.’

Jonah did. He’d met up with his team for a drink shortly after he came out of hospital. Although it had been good to see them, he’d already felt like an outsider.

‘But you kept in contact?’

‘Yeah, ’course.’ Wilkes sounded defensive. ‘We’d meet up for a beer or a curry, that sort of thing. Though not so much after he moved out.’

‘Moved out?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ The small eyes were shrewd and triumph-ant. ‘Him and his missus were separated. He was renting a flat in Ealing.’

That was news to Jonah. Marie hadn’t said anything, but then she probably wouldn’t have wanted to dwell on it. Not when any chance of a reconciliation had died along with Gavin.

‘What happened?’

‘It’s not my place to say,’ Wilkes said, looking down at his beer.

‘No, of course.’

Jonah occupied himself with his own beer, letting the silence work for him.

‘Between you and me, things had been rocky between them for a while,’ Wilkes said, leaning in. ‘You know Gav, he was no saint. He liked to play hard, but that’s all it was. He’d never had to move out before.’

Jonah took a moment to make sure his face didn’t give anything away. ‘Was he seeing anyone else?’

‘Christ, no, not after...’ Wilkes seemed to catch himself. ‘I mean, it was never anything serious, he wasn’t that stupid. I suppose you can’t blame his wife for getting upset, but you’ve got to blow off steam in this job. Specially with the pressure he’d been under, what with the suspension and all.’

‘Suspension?’

Wilkes gave him an incredulous look, enjoying Jonah’s shock. ‘Jesus, you really are out of touch. He’d been suspended without pay, although no one’s going to want to admit that now. Wouldn’t look good in the press if it came out the DPS had been on his back for months, would it? Bastards.’

Suddenly, a lot of things became clearer for Jonah. The Directorate of Professional Standards investigated allegations of misconduct against the Met’s officers. If Gavin had been in their sights, that wasn’t good.

But it explained the muted official reaction to his death, as well as the empty room Jonah was standing in now. A low turnout at the church, with the media waiting outside, was one thing. That would have raised too many eyebrows, but a private reception afterwards was something else. Whatever Gavin was being investigated for, it was bad enough for his colleagues not to want tarnishing by association.

Except for Wilkes.

‘What was he supposed to have done?’ Jonah asked.

The ex-detective took another drink, scowling. ‘Some trumped-up bullshit. You know how it is, sometimes you’ve got to bend the rules to get things done. Doesn’t matter now, does it?’

It did if it was something to do with Gavin’s presence at the warehouse, Jonah thought. Because that could potentially tarnish him as well. Jesus, no wonder Fletcher was so suspicious.

‘Was he accused of being on the take?’

He could see from the hunted expression that flitted across Wilkes’s face that he’d hit home. The big man hid it behind bluster.

‘You want to talk about that, ask someone else. I’m not going to bad-mouth him when he can’t defend himself. And I don’t care what anyone says, Gav was a good man. He deserved better than this.’ Lager sloshed in his glass as he waved it at the almost-deserted room. ‘A half-arsed eulogy and pork pie in the back room of a pub. And the two-faced bastards can’t even be bothered to come!’

Wilkes’s face was flushed and angry. Jonah didn’t want to upset him more than he already was, but he had to know.

‘Whatever it was he was suspended for,’ he asked, ‘Do you think it could be connected to what happened at the warehouse?’

It took Wilkes a moment or two to come down from his high horse. ‘I can’t see how it could. Like I say, it doesn’t even sound like he had any business being there. Not unless...’

‘Unless what?’

Wilkes rubbed his nose, looking discomfited at the direction his thoughts had taken.

‘Well, it’s not like he’d got much left to lose, is it? He’d got the DPS after him, his wife had kicked him out and he was suspended without pay. He was shafted, however you look at it. So if he got wind of something in that warehouse he might have just thought ‘fuck it’ and gone steaming in. If it worked out, he’d end up smelling of roses, and if it didn’t...’

He didn’t finish. But there was a certain kind of sense to it, Jonah thought. Gavin always had a reckless streak, a gambler’s mentality that sometimes led to stupid risks. More often than not they’d work out, bolstering Gavin’s belief that it was the natural order of things. But not always, and sometimes it was other people who got hurt.

It was all too easy to see a similar pattern playing out here.

Jonah fell silent as the big man threw back the last of his drink and banged down his glass.

‘Let’s get a proper drink.’ He motioned the barman over. ‘Two brandies. Large ones.’

The drinks had only just arrived when there was a commotion from Marie’s table. She was on the phone, agitated and shaking her head. One of her sisters took it off her and spoke into it as the other comforted her. The other people around her were talking among themselves, upset and angry.

‘Hello, now what?’ Wilkes said.

The sister ended the phone conversation and said something to Marie, who started crying again. Her father was helping her up, and others around her were standing as well.

Wilkes knocked back his brandy. ‘Better see what’s going on.’

He set off over without waiting for Jonah to arrange himself on his crutches. The whole family were milling about now, preparing to leave. Two of them broke off to speak to Wilkes. Whatever had happened, it didn’t look good. After a moment Wilkes came back, carrying himself with an air of self-importance.

‘Better get your coat. The party’s over,’ he told Jonah. ‘Some bastard’s broken into their house.’

Since the last time Jonah had visited, Gavin and Marie had traded up their cramped, two-bedroom maisonette to a detached house in a modern development. The sales brochure probably would have described it as ‘executive’, skirting over the mean dimensions and the way the houses had been squeezed close together. Large cars were parked in driveways barely big enough to hold them, the front gardens reduced to token patches of turf edging concrete block paving. It wasn’t the sort of place Jonah would have wanted to live, but then he wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway. Mean or not, the mortgage repayments would have been a stretch on a detective’s salary.

Especially one who’d been suspended without pay.

Climbing out of Wilkes’s car, Jonah followed the big man up the drive to the front door. It was open, a wood-effect PVC with a frosted panel set in its top half. It didn’t appear to have been forced, so whoever had broken in must have found another way. But the house was a mess. Most of the rooms had been ransacked, drawers and cupboards emptied and the contents scattered on the floor. That would make it harder to determine what had been taken, but the signs suggested that it had been a rushed job. The house had a burglar alarm, and it seemed the thieves had torn through the house grabbing whatever valuable items they could carry before anyone responded. In the living room, a large, expensive TV and speaker had been left untouched, probably too big to move.

Marie wandered from room to room, propped up as she’d tearfully surveyed the damage. ‘Who’d do something like this?’ she kept repeating. ‘Today of all days? How can anyone be so heartless?’

Jonah picked his way through the house. The worst-hit room was Dylan’s bedroom. All his computer equipment had gone, along with a gaming console and headphones. The teenager seemed especially aggrieved that a pair of still-boxed trainers was missing as well.

‘Shit! Shit!’ he yelled, punching the wall. ‘What’s the point of having an alarm?’

‘Don’t swear,’ his mother pleaded. ‘It could have been worse—’

‘That’s all right for you to say, it’s not your stuff that’s gone! I didn’t want to go in the first place, I said it was a waste of time!’

‘Oh, don’t say that, Dylan! You know you don’t mean it!’

‘Spoilt as shite,’ Wilkes said under his breath as they turned away. ‘That’s his mother to thank for that. Gav wouldn’t have let him get away with it.’

At the back of the house, a panel in the rear porch had been smashed and the timber door frame inside was splintered. Wilkes crouched down to examine it, looking like a polo-necked Buddha as he nodded sagely.

‘Opportunists,’ he grunted. ‘Bastards keep an eye out for funeral notices, when they know everyone’s going to be out. Kicked the panel in, then crawled through and forced the lock on the door. Went for the computer stuff they knew they could flog and then legged it. They’d have been in and out in a few minutes.’

‘They must have been small,’ Jonah said, looking at the size of the broken panel.

‘Probably kids. Send the smallest through first to open up and let the rest in. Like a chimney sweep.’

Wilkes gave a wheezing laugh at his joke, but Jonah wasn’t convinced. ‘Look how jagged the edges of the wood are. Even a kid would risk getting snagged on that.’

‘So what? I’ve seen the bastards get through places you wouldn’t believe.’ His knees cracked as he heaved himself to his feet. ‘You’ve got forced access right here. Don’t overcomplicate it.’

Jonah still felt doubtful, but burglaries weren’t his field. By contrast, the ex-detective was in his element. He strutted around the house, bossing the two patrol officers there as though he were the SIO instead of a retired DC. After demanding to know when the SOCOs — scenes of crime officers — would arrive to dust for fingerprints and what follow-up enquiries would be carried out, Wilkes had seemed satisfied that he’d made enough of an impression.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll make it my personal business to get this sorted,’ he assured Marie.

She’d found an untouched glass and a bottle of wine and seemed to be picking up from where she’d left off at the wake. Her sisters were staying with her, and one of her brothers-in-law was going to secure the back door and porch, so once the police officers had left, Jonah couldn’t see any reason to stay. As he took his leave, Marie gave him a wine-scented hug that had him teetering on his crutches again.

‘Stay in touch, won’t you?’ she sniffed.

Jonah hugged her back. Sorry as he felt for her, it was still a relief to leave. Outside, it was cold, a chill in the air giving a foretaste of winter to the late-autumn twilight. But at least the burglary had put Wilkes in a better mood.

‘Rough day,’ he said, pulling on brown leather gloves as they walked down the path. His bad hip didn’t seem to be troubling him anymore, and he sounded more energised than he had all afternoon. ‘I thought Marie looked well, considering. Wouldn’t say no to her sisters, either.’

Jonah gave him a look, but Wilkes was too buoyed up to notice.

‘I’d offer you a lift but I’m not going your way,’ the big man said as they reached his car.

Jonah hadn’t told him where he lived, but he didn’t want a lift anyway. He was in no rush to spend any more time in the ex-detective’s company. It had been a long day, and he still hadn’t had a chance to process what he’d learned about Gavin, let alone Fletcher’s bombshell about Owen Stokes. He was tired, his knee was aching, and he’d not eaten since breakfast. All he wanted was to go back to his flat so he could try to order his thoughts.

But then he might be missing an opportunity.

‘Got any plans for tonight?’ he asked.

Wilkes paused by his car, jangling his keys. ‘Why?’

He sounded wary but also cautiously hopeful. Jonah had noticed Wilkes didn’t wear a wedding ring, and there had been no mention of any family. That didn’t got necessarily mean he hadn’t got one, but there was something about the ex-detective that made Jonah think he was on his own.

So was he, if it came to that. He allowed himself a moment to imagine walking into his flat, sinking onto the sofa with a beer and some food. Then he pushed it away from him.

‘We never finished that drink,’ he said.