The Lost

Chapter 24

Jonah was hardly aware of the journey back to his flat. He drove without conscious thought, body and brain functioning automatically while his mind sifted through what he’d heard. Part of the picture, at least, was becoming clearer. What had happened with Eliana Salim must have affected Gavin deeply. It had been his decision, his actions, that had led to the young woman’s death, and the knowledge must have eaten away at him. And Jonah knew how poisonous the combination of loss and guilt could be. In the early days after Theo disappeared, it had been Gavin who’d counterbalanced those darker impulses in him, pulling him back from the brink. And later, after their fight, Miles had done the same. There had been no one to pull Gavin back, though.

And it had claimed him in the end.

Parking on the street near his flat, Jonah wondered if Fletcher was aware of the disastrous operation. Possibly not. Although it would be a matter of record, it had been years ago. It might not be thought relevant unless the enquiry team knew about Gavin’s emotional involvement with Eliana Salim. And who would have told them about that? According to Wilkes, not many people realised even at the time.

But Jonah didn’t think the impact of Salim’s murder on Gavin could be underestimated. If nothing else it provided a context for his later actions. Her death had been a turning point, setting him on a self-destructive path that ultimately ended at the warehouse. It was even possible there was a link between the organised crime gang who’d murdered Salim and the warehouse killings as well. That might be stretching things too far, since Fletcher had said Owen Stokes had no known OCG associations.

Even so, there was no knowing what had been going through Gavin’s mind at the time. Maybe he’d found out about the victims inside the warehouse and it had brought back what had happened to Eliana Salim. Maybe the memory of how he’d failed her had goaded him to act on his own, to go rushing in regardless of consequences.

Walking back to the flats, for the first time Jonah felt he was finally beginning to get a sense of what had gone on that night. Not all of it, not by a long shot. He was still no closer to fathoming Owen Stokes’s involvement, or his relationship with Gavin. Still, it felt good to have found out something. It might even be enough to convince Fletcher he actually was telling the truth.

Don’t get carried away. You shouldn’t expect miracles. But as he reached the flats he felt more positive than he had in weeks, and his good mood lasted the rest of the evening.

Until Stan phoned to say his garage had been broken into.

The row of garages was deserted when Jonah got there just after midnight, a low, featureless block in the darkness. There was no sign of Stan. The BMW’s cabin light wasn’t on, preventing Jonah from seeing if anyone was inside. Switching on the Maglite he’d taken with him, he went over and peered through the driver’s window.

‘You took your time.’

Jonah spun around, almost overbalancing as a figure emerged from the shadows behind him. Stan raised an arm, squinting against the dazzling beam.

‘Get that bloody light out of my eyes!’

Jonah lowered the torch. ‘Jesus, Stan...’

‘Can’t see a fucking thing,’ the old man grumbled, blinking. He held a heavy wrench in one hand.

‘I thought you were waiting in the car.’

‘You thought wrong.’ He set off past Jonah towards the darkened row of garages. ‘Come on, bring that searchlight over here.’

Jonah shone the torch around them as he followed Stan, driving back the shadows to reveal run-down brickwork and shuttered doors. He pointed to the bottom of the garage door.

‘I saw it when I was putting my own car away. Look what the bastards did!’

The padlock lay in pieces on the ground, its U-shaped locking bar smashed out with enough force to leave broken metal scattered all around. It looked like someone had taken a lump hammer to it, and the door was little better. Where it had been secured by the padlock, the sheet metal was buckled from repeated blows.

So much for this being a random break-in, Jonah thought. He turned to shine the torch behind them again, making sure no one was there. Some of the locks on the neighbouring garages were little more than window dressing, easily snapped off. Yet instead of going for one of them, someone had been to a lot of trouble to get into his. Remembering the bottle smashing at his feet the night before, and his feeling that the teenage thugs were building up to something, Jonah thought he could guess who. Either they’d seen him going to his garage or somehow they’d found out it was his.

Bastards.

‘You going to call your mates?’ Stan asked.

He meant the police. But the only thing of any real value Jonah kept in the garage was the Saab, and, fortunately, he’d parked that on the road. The damage was too minor to be an insurance claim, and there was no point wasting police time for a dented door and broken padlock.

‘Let’s take a look first,’ he said. ‘Give me a bit of room.’

He didn’t expect anyone would still be inside, but if his work had taught him one thing, it was not to take anything for granted. As the old man moved away, Jonah went to one side of the door and leaned both crutches against the brick column separating it from the next garage. Bracing himself on his good leg, he took hold of the door’s bottom edge and tried to lift it. The door resisted, warped from the hammering it had taken. Then, with a screech of twisted metal, it slid up.

Stan tutted. ‘Just look at that. Bastards made a right mess.’

It looked as though every box had been upended and its contents scattered over the oil-stained floor. And while there might not have been much there to steal, the thieves had helped themselves to what there was. Jonah saw that the power tools he’d kept on a shelf fixed to the back wall were missing. A drill, a small band saw, an angle-grinder. None of them worth very much, but they’d taken them anyway.

‘Looks like they busted into your locker, as well,’ Stan said.

Jonah shone the torch onto the old metal cabinet that stood in the far corner. Its doors had been forced and now stood slightly ajar. There hadn’t been much inside, mainly boxes of old papers that he hadn’t got around to sorting but wasn’t ready to throw out. They’d been unceremoniously dumped in front of the locker, spilling papers across the concrete.

‘Hope you hadn’t got anything important in there,’ Stan said from behind him.

Jonah gave one of the part-open doors a listless push with the end of his crutch. The door started to swing shut, then met resistance. With a faint squeak of dry hinges, it slowly swung open again.

Shockingly white in the torchlight, a hand slipped out through the gap.

‘Jesus God Almighty!’

Jonah barely heard. The hand was resting palm up with its fingers curled, as though in supplication. It was small and smooth, and lay with an awful, heavy limpness. Using his crutch, he eased the door further open. There was another oath from behind him. Jonah put his crutch back onto the floor, suddenly needing its support.

The body had been loosely wrapped in polythene. The sheet had come unfastened at the top, revealing a lolling head encased inside a transparent plastic bag. Black gaffer tape had been wound around the neck to seal the bag shut, and the plastic lay slack and still over the nose and open mouth. The inside of the bag was beaded with condensation, and the hair compressed inside the bag further obscured the face. But not so much that Jonah couldn’t recognise the woman wedged like a broken doll inside his cabinet.

It was Corinne Daly.