The Lost

Chapter 23

‘You fucking shit!’

Jonah involuntarily stepped back, almost teetering off the edge of Marie’s doorstep. Her face was contorted as she confronted him through the open doorway.

‘Look, Marie—’

‘Three quarters of a million pounds! Three fucking quarters of a million, and I won’t see a penny of it, thanks to you.’

He’d tried calling her that morning, feeling he ought to explain about the bedsit. In hindsight, he should have known when she didn’t pick up or respond to his message. From what Fletcher had said, the police had already interviewed Dylan, so Marie would know what had happened. But he’d felt obligated to explain to her in person. When she didn’t call him back, he’d driven over to her house, hoping she hadn’t already left for her sister’s.

Bad idea.

‘It’s obvious Gav wanted us to have it, but oh, no! You had to stick your nose in, didn’t you?’ she yelled. ‘And now the police are asking all sorts of questions. They’re even acting like Dylan did something wrong! He was only going to that place to be close to his dad. He didn’t want to upset me, that’s why he’d not said anything. He swears he didn’t even know the money was there, and my son’s no liar!’

Jonah wondered if Dylan had mentioned the dope he’d been smoking, or if that had slipped his mind as well. He tried to get a word in again.

‘Marie, if you’d just let me—’

‘Everything OK, Mum?’

Dylan had appeared in the hallway behind her. He dropped a packed bag onto the floor next to the two suitcases that already stood there, looking out at Jonah with an expression of smug spite.

‘It’s fine, sweetheart, you go and finish packing,’ Marie told him. She turned back to Jonah with renewed venom.

‘Christ, I wish I’d never asked you to help. No wonder Gav stopped talking to you, he knew what a fucking disaster you were! Jonah by name, Jonah by fucking nature. Just stay away from us in future. I don’t want to set eyes on you again. Ever!’

The door slammed in his face.

‘Always a pleasure, Marie,’ he said to the closed door.

Turning away, he went back to his car. He couldn’t blame Marie for being angry. From her perspective all he’d done was bring even more trouble down on them. The fact that he hadn’t had any choice, that his actions had been dictated by events, wouldn’t cut any ice with her any more than it had with Fletcher.

Or with himself either, come to that.

Jonah had lain awake half the night, second-guessing everything he’d done. But most of his self-flagellation rested on the possibility that it really had been Stokes outside the bedsit, that he’d made the wrong call and let him get away. If that were true, then he deserved Fletcher’s contempt. Yet Jonah still couldn’t bring himself to believe that. There had only been Jonah standing between whoever was outside and three quarters of a million in used notes.

If that had been Stokes, surely he’d have tried to take it?

Discovering the money had changed everything. It seemed to settle once and for all the question of whether or not Gavin had been corrupt. And as Jonah had watched dawn break outside his flat window, another disquieting thought had occurred to him. Regardless of who’d been at the bedsit, Stokes had been looking for something when he’d broken into Marie’s house. The obvious conclusion was that it was the money, yet how could Stokes have known about that?

Unless Gavin had told him.

Jonah still didn’t want to believe that Gavin and Stokes could have been working together, but there was a queasy logic to Fletcher’s suggestion. For one thing, there were still the three warehouse victims to factor in. Nadine, Daniel Kimani and the second, as yet unidentified, man. At first glance, Kimani’s presence seemed to undermine the theory that the murders were trafficking-related. That had always seemed strained, especially since Fletcher had said Stokes had no known gang affiliations.

But Gavin did. And three quarters of a million pounds was a motive all by itself. People had been killed for a lot less, which raised all sorts of new and unsettling possibilities about the victims. And if... if... Gavin had been working with Owen Stokes, was it too big a stretch to think that might have led to him stumbling across something to make him re-evaluate what happened ten years ago?

Something about Theo?

Which brought Jonah full circle. All the way back to why Gavin had phoned him that night. Gavin’s motives might be more complex than anyone knew. Maybe the money and the idea of trying to make amends for past mistakes weren’t mutually exclusive, at least in his mind. Maybe one led to the other, and Owen Stokes, the warehouse victims and all the rest of it were inextricably linked together.

Or maybe Jonah was just clutching at straws.

Starting the car, he drove away from Marie’s. He hadn’t felt this adrift or helpless since Theo had disappeared, and he was still no closer to making sense of any of it. But there was one place he might find answers.

Although he’d have to stop off first.

Wilkes’s house was a 1960s semi-detached set in a small dead-end street. It was the last house forgoing the PVC doors and windows of its neighbours in favour of the timber originals, peeling paint and all. There was a thumbnail version of a garden, in which a few straggly rose bushes were being slowly choked by weeds.

Jonah walked up the short path to the front door and pressed the bell. It made a rusty crunching noise, so he rapped on the wooden door as well. There was the sound of a bolt being shot, then the door opened.

The big man was unshaven and unkempt. He wore a stained white T-shirt and had a towel draped around his neck. A sour odour of alcohol and old perspiration came from him, and the eyes above the broken-veined cheeks were yellowed and bloodshot. He peered at Jonah with hung-over resentment.

‘What do you want?’

‘I wondered if we could have a talk.’

Wilkes gave a hacking cough, sounding as though he was dislodging something wet from his lungs. ‘What about?’

‘I’ll tell you inside.’ Jonah raised the carrier bag he’d had hooked over one wrist. ‘I brought this.’

It was a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey, the brand Wilkes had been drinking in the pub. The ex-detective’s mood brightened.

‘Nice one.’ He stepped back, holding the door open. ‘Go on through.’

The house smelled of cigarettes, fried food and unwashed laundry. The carpet felt gritty underfoot as Jonah went down the dim and narrow hallway to the living room. It was dominated by an old but huge wall-mounted TV, in front of which was a well-worn leather recliner, its cushions split and flattened. On a low coffee table, a dirty plate and mug sat on scattered car magazines.

‘Take a pew,’ Wilkes called. ‘Be with you in a minute.’

The only option other than the recliner was a token armchair, which spoke volumes for the ex-detective’s social life. Jonah moved the magazines that covered its seat, looking around for a clear space before putting them on the floor. Leaning his crutches against the chair, he sat down.

Wilkes came in, wearing what looked like the same black polo neck as he’d worn at the memorial service and holding two cans of Stella.

‘We can start off on these and open the Jameson’s later,’ he said, handing one to Jonah. ‘How’d you know where I lived?’

‘You mentioned it the other night.’

Wilkes hadn’t told him the street or house number, but there was only one person by his name in that area. The recliner creaked under the big man’s weight as he lowered himself into it and cracked open the beer.

‘Cheers,’ he said, raising his can before taking a long swallow.

Jonah contented himself with a token drink. Even if he hadn’t been driving, he didn’t want to get into another drinking session, but Wilkes would take it as a slight if he abstained altogether. The big man lowered the can and stifled a belch.

‘So. What did you want to talk about?’

‘Did you know Gavin had another flat?’

He was watching the other man carefully to see how he reacted. The ex-detective frowned.

‘He what?’

‘He had a bedsit, as well as the flat in Ealing.’

Wilkes’s bewilderment seemed genuine. ‘Why would he have that?’

‘I only found out about it yesterday,’ Jonah hedged. ‘His son stole the keys and was going there to smoke dope.’

‘Yeah?’ Wilkes gave a phlegmy chuckle. ‘Sounds like his old man.’

‘So Gavin didn’t mention it?’

‘Not to me.’ He sounded unhappy about that.

‘Any idea why he might have needed two flats?’

‘If he’d still been living with his missus, I’d have said he wanted somewhere to take women back to. But he wouldn’t need that when he’d moved out. Who else knows about this place apart from you and his kid?’

‘Just his wife and the enquiry team.’ Jonah tried to nudge the questioning away from this. ‘So you can’t think of any reason why he’d have it?’

The ex-detective gave him a jaundiced look. ‘I’ve already said, haven’t I?’

Jonah let it go. Wilkes considered him over the can as he took another drink.

‘I’ve got a question for you. If you and Gav were such good buddies, how come you weren’t talking?’

‘I told you, we lost touch years ago.’

‘Bollocks. His wife said the two of you ran around like a pair of dogs, then boom. Nothing. That doesn’t happen for no reason.’

Jonah took a drink of beer, debating how much to tell him. But the ex-detective would know if he was holding back.

‘I found him in bed with my wife.’

Wilkes threw back his head and laughed. ‘Oh, fuck me! I knew it! I knew there was something!’

‘Glad you find it funny,’ Jonah said.

The big man’s shoulders were shaking. He had to put his can of beer down to wipe his eyes.

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh but... oh, Christ, that’s priceless! His best mate’s wife. That’s Gav for you, never could keep it zipped. That’s what started it.’

‘Started what?’ Jonah asked, his annoyance falling away.

Wilkes drained his can and crushed it in a meaty fist. ‘Let me get another one of these and I’ll tell you.’

Her name was Eliana Salim.

She’d been smuggled into the UK from Syria with a dozen other young women, crammed inside a container of stuffed toys. Her parents had been killed in the war and her plan was to work as a nanny until she could afford to bring over her younger sister, who was living with relatives.

It didn’t happen.

‘She was a real looker,’ Wilkes said, taking a drink from his can. ‘Like a model. Good job for her, because instead of putting her in a backstreet brothel with the rest, it meant the gang who brought her over put her to work as an escort. Same job, but she got to dress up and smile at some rich bastard before she got fucked.’

Guarded night and day with three other young women, the only time she was allowed out of the small flat they shared was to work. One night while she was being driven to a private party in Mayfair, her driver was flashed by a patrol car.

‘He was carrying a knife and cocaine, so the stupid bastard panicked and put his foot down,’ Wilkes continued. ‘When he realised he couldn’t get away, he pulled onto a side street, shoved them at Salim and kicked her out of the car. Told her to make her own way back to the flat or else, and then took off. She wasn’t stupid, though, so she went to the nearest police station and asked for help. It was just bad luck for everyone it was Gav who got the call to interview her.’

By the time Gavin arrived at the station, the driver was in custody as well. He was Armenian, part of a local gang known to be involved in widespread human trafficking and prostitution. Wilkes frowned at his beer can as he remembered.

‘They were only small time, but we knew they were facilitators for a big international OCG from Eastern Europe. That’s organised crime gang,’ he added, with a glance at Jonah. ‘We’d been working with Interpol and the National Crime Agency, trying to get a handle on these bastards for years, but it was like wrestling snakes. They were fucking brutal. They didn’t just kill anyone who talked, they tortured and killed their family as well. So when Gav saw Salim sitting in an interview room, he knew it was an opportunity to get someone on the inside.’

‘As an informer, you mean?’ Jonah couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘He made her go back?’

Wilkes looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘He didn’t make her, he just said there might be a way to get her sister over here if she cooperated. And if she didn’t... well, she could be looking at months or years in a detention centre before being deported. Which, given the sort of people we were dealing with, she probably wouldn’t want.’

Jesus... Even by Gavin’s recent standards this was a new low. ‘Could he even do that?’

‘Fuck, no. He shouldn’t have, anyway. Informers are supposed to be registered, and that’s after you’ve jumped through all the safety hoops and red tape, but Gav knew there wasn’t time for any of that. If it was going to work, she had to get back before her minders started to wonder why it took her so long. If they thought she’d returned of her own accord, they might start letting their guard down around her. I mean, it was a fantastic opportunity. We might never get another chance like that to get inside intelligence on the bastards. Not just them either, it was the people they were pimping her out to as well. And believe me, there were some big names. Politicians, businessmen, bankers. Gav knew he was taking a gamble, but he thought it was worth the risk.’

‘What about the risk to her?’ Jonah said, appalled. ‘For Christ’s sake, he was sending her back to be prostituted!’

Wilkes had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Yeah, well. It looks bad when you put it like that, but she knew what she was getting into. Nobody forced her. And it was a risk for Gav as well. There was a real shitstorm when it came out. Looked for a while like he was going to get sacked.’

He should have been, Jonah thought.

‘Why wasn’t he?’

Wilkes gave a shrug. ‘Stable door, and all that. The damage was done, and it’d have been stupid not to use an asset that was in place and willing.’

‘Asset?’ Jonah said, before he could help himself.

‘What else would you call her?’ Wilkes’s stare was as hard as his tone. ‘You needn’t look like that, either. It’s easy to judge when it’s not you getting your hands dirty.’

Jonah knew he couldn’t afford to antagonise Wilkes, not if he wanted to hear the rest. He raised his hands, making a show of backing off.

‘OK. What happened?’

Giving him a last sour look, Wilkes took another drink before continuing.

‘I’m not sure even now how he swung it, but they agreed to let him be her handler. The excuse was that he’d already established a rapport, but if you ask me, it was so they could limit the fallout if shit hit the fan. He roped me into it as well, which I wasn’t thrilled about. Not to start off, anyway, because it looked like he’d fucked up. We couldn’t risk trying to get in touch while she was being watched twenty-four seven, so we had to wait for her to contact us. Gav had slipped her his phone number, but we didn’t hear anything for weeks. Then he got a text out of the blue asking to meet. Turned out he’d been right about her minders easing up. They stopped watching her all the time, started letting her go out by herself, so Gav’s gamble had paid off. Christ, he was cock-a-hoop. I was supposed to go with him to meet her, but he said it was better if he went on his own. Unofficial, like.’

Wilkes stared down broodingly at his beer, the broad forehead furrowing.

‘With hindsight, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. But at the time... Anyway, that became the routine. Gav would drop me off in a pub while he went to meet her somewhere they’d prearranged, then he’d pick me up afterwards and brief me on what she’d said.’

Gavin obviously hadn’t wanted Wilkes getting in the way. ‘Did he tell you he was sleeping with her or did you guess?’

‘Well, Gav being Gav, I guessed.’ Wilkes didn’t meet Jonah’s eyes. ‘But I didn’t see the harm. I mean, Salim was giving us good stuff. Names, times and places, bits of information she’d overheard. All low-level but it was gold compared to what we’d been getting before. Suddenly Gav was the blue-eyed boy. Didn’t do me any harm, either, if I’m honest.’

What about Salim? This time Jonah kept the thought to himself. ‘So what went wrong?’

Wilkes’s face clouded. ‘He got too close. I thought he was just getting his leg over, I didn’t think it was serious. But he started acting distracted, like his mind was somewhere else. He was on a short fuse as well, and I mean short. He was under a shitload of pressure, so no one thought much of it at first. Then someone on the team made a crack about Salim, and Gav lost it. He’d have taken the poor bastard’s head off if I hadn’t pulled him away. After that it was obvious he’d got it bad. He started pushing to bring Salim out, saying she’d done enough. Trouble was, she was doing too good a job. After all the kicking and screaming the brass did, now we were starting to get information they didn’t want to turn off the tap. Just a bit longer, they said. Another couple of months and then she’d be pulled out.’

Wilkes drained the can and crumpled it, letting it drop to the carpet.

‘And then we lost contact with her. No phone calls, no messages, nothing. We’d had the flat she was living in under surveillance but suddenly there was no activity there either. Knowing the sort of bastards we were dealing with, that wasn’t good. Gav was beside himself. I was worried if we didn’t do something soon he’d go in there on his own.’

Jonah stiffened at that, thinking about the warehouse.

‘Did he?’

‘He didn’t have to.’

The flat was raided at dawn. The operation had been meticulously set up and planned so as to give as little warning as possible. The front door was broken in and armed officers surged in first, shouting warnings as they went from room to room.

But the flat was empty. It had been cleaned out, leaving behind bare mattresses on the beds and the bathroom stripped of any sign of human habitation. Eliana Salim and the other young women, as well as their guards, were nowhere to be seen.

‘The whole place stank of bleach,’ Wilkes said. ‘Every surface had been wiped down, all the drawers and cupboards emptied. I thought, thank fuck, because I’d been expecting to find a body and blood everywhere. It was starting to look like they’d just upped sticks and taken Salim and the other girls somewhere else. Gav was going spare, and I was about to say we should get out and leave it to forensics. Then there was this shout from the kitchen.’

Jonah waited while Wilkes reached down and picked up another can from beside the recliner. He opened it and drank half straight off.

‘There were people standing around the fridge, just staring inside. I can remember looking in and wondering what all the fuss was about, because there was just this white dinner plate with a lump of bloody offal on it. Then I realised what it was. The evil bastards must have found out Salim was an informer. So they’d cut out her tongue and left it for us to find.’

‘Jesus...’ Jonah had known it would be bad, but he was still shocked.

‘We found the rest of her in the bins behind the house,’ Wilkes continued, after another drink. ‘They’d dismembered her and wrapped the body parts in cling film. Put them in plastic bags and dumped them, like they were rubbish. Fucking animals. I tell you, I’ve seen some things in my time but never anything like that. She must have been killed a few days before and rats had... well, Salim’s fingerprints or DNA weren’t on the database, so the only way we could identify her was by her head.’

‘God, Gavin had to...?’ Even though there was no excusing what he’d done, Jonah wouldn’t have wished that on him. But Wilkes shook his head.

‘Christ, no, I couldn’t let him do that. I’d been her handler as well, so I volunteered. Gav was in a bad enough state as it was without that. I thought he’d get sacked or reprimanded at least, but that would have caused too much of a fuss. No one wanted to draw attention to a fuck-up like that, and Salim didn’t have any family here to cause trouble. So they swept it under the rug and Gav was put on paid leave for a few weeks. He came back when things had quietened down, but he wasn’t the same.’

The broad forehead creased as Wilkes struggled to articulate his thoughts.

‘He seemed... I don’t know. Sort of hollow. Like he was pretending to be who everyone expected, but he didn’t give a fuck anymore. That’s when he started hitting the booze. I mean, he’d always liked a good time, that was just Gav. But not like this.’

‘Was that when he started taking bribes?’ Jonah asked.

Wilkes stopped mid-drink. ‘What sort of a fucking question’s that? I told you, Gav got things done, even if it meant bending a few rules.’

‘Like sending Eliana Salim back to be killed?’

‘I thought you were his fucking mate?’ Wilkes’s face was flushed and angry. ‘Is this about putting the boot in because he fucked your missus?’

Jonah stopped himself from responding. Take a breath.

‘There has to be a reason for what happened in that warehouse. Why he was there, why he called me. I just want to find out what it was. I think...’ He hesitated, unsure how much to say. ‘I think it could involve something that happened years ago. I — my son disappeared. The inquest said he’d drowned, but I think Gavin might have found out something. Something to make him think they’d got it wrong.’

He couldn’t tell Wilkes too much, certainly not about Owen Stokes, not when his identity hadn’t been made public. But the ex-detective was the only person who could tell him about Gavin. Jonah wanted to keep him onside if he could.

‘Yeah, I’d heard about your son. Sorry about that,’ Wilkes said, gruffly. ‘But I don’t see what that’s got to do with any of this.’

‘It might not. I just need to know for sure.’

The big man’s colour was returning to normal, but he still looked far from happy.

‘Yeah, well, I don’t see how I can help you. But if you want to know if I was surprised when he got suspended, no, I wasn’t. What happened to Gav was a crying fucking shame, but if you ask me, a big part of him died before then, when he saw what was in that flat. And that’s all you’re getting. End of fucking story.’

He tilted his head back and drained the can. Crumpling it in his fist, he dropped it on the floor next to the others and stood up.

‘You can see yourself out.’