The Lost

Chapter 29

Jonah parked on the same stretch of road near his flats. The Volvo’s handbrake was stiff, an old-fashioned manual one, and he had to wrench on it several times before it caught. Switching off the engine, he sat in the stale, cigarette-and-dog atmosphere of the old car while he tried yet again to process what had happened at the quayside.

Even now, it was hard to adjust to the fact that Eliana Salim was alive. Wilkes had no reason to make up the story about her murder, and clearly believed the dismembered remains he’d identified were hers. But the ex-detective had also said the woman’s body found in the flat could only be identified by its severed head, and had been partly eaten by rats. By his own admission, he’d never seen Salim up close, except in photographs. And with everyone already convinced she was the victim, the identification would have been little more than a formality.

Except everyone had been wrong.

Climbing wearily from the Volvo, Jonah locked it and set off down the dark street. A fine rain was falling, but he was oblivious. The weight of Salim’s phone in his pocket felt like an accusation. He knew accepting it could have been a mistake, tying him to a woman who’d allowed another to die in her place, and whose ‘friends’ had access to confidential information from a murder enquiry. Jonah didn’t need the bruises forming on his arm from her bodyguard’s fingers to tell him that Salim was dangerous.

Yet she wanted Owen Stokes as badly as he did, and he’d instinctively felt he could trust her that far, at least. The discovery that Nadine was her sister threw a whole new light on what had happened at the warehouse. Including Gavin’s reasons for being there. Whether Nadine had somehow traced him or fallen foul of Stokes on her own, he must have found out and tried to do for her what he’d failed to do for her sister. Save her.

This time it had cost both their lives.

Which left Jonah with an impossible choice. Fletcher needed to know who Nadine was, yet Salim’s fear that Jonah might tell anyone about her had been real. If he betrayed her trust that would make him no better than Gavin.

So what did he do?

A wave of fatigue settled on him as the well-lit entrance to the flats came into view. Suddenly it was all he could do to put one foot — or crutch — in front of the other. In the past twenty-four hours he’d discovered Corinne Daly’s body, been arrested and released on bail, and come face-to-face with a woman he’d thought was dead. It was a busy day, by any standards. Right now, he needed food and he needed sleep. Whatever decisions he had to make could wait till tomorrow, he decided.

That’s when he saw the hooded figures across the street.

There were three of them, half hidden in the shadows of a shuttered shop doorway. Jonah didn’t need to see their faces to know it was the same young thugs he’d had trouble with before. Oh, come on. Not tonight. He could feel them silently watching him but kept going, as though indifferent to their presence. The illuminated foyer of the flats wasn’t much further. He listened for any footsteps behind him as he approached it. Almost there.

Then one of his crutches snagged the edge of a paving stone.

The stumble was only slight. He caught himself straight away, but it broke the steady rhythm he’d been keeping. As though they’d been waiting for it, he heard hurried footsteps on the street behind him.

‘Hang on, mate.’

Jonah ignored them and kept going. He wouldn’t make it to the foyer, but the forecourt in front of it was lit with security lights. At least there any attack could be seen, for all the good that would do.

‘I’m talking to you, bastard!’

Jonah knew then he wasn’t even going to make it as far as the forecourt. There was a wall at one side, though. Veering over to it, he stopped and turned round so it was at his back. The three youths halted in front of him. He recognised baseball cap and acne from the lift. The third he didn’t know, but he had a wired look that said he was on something as well.

The acned one grinned. ‘Got the time?’

Jonah said nothing. He shifted his weight on his crutches, bracing himself on his good leg.

‘I like your crutches,’ the third one said. ‘Can I have a go?’

There were sniggers. Jonah glanced around, hoping to see someone passing who might phone for help if this kicked off. But the four of them were alone.

‘I’m a police officer. You don’t want to do this.’

‘So where’s your fucking uniform?’

‘He’s part of the cripple unit,’ baseball cap said. ‘His crutches have got sirens.’

There were guffaws.

‘Come on, show us,’ the third one said, grinning. ‘Turn them on.’

The one wearing the baseball cap started making a siren noise.

‘I said fucking turn them on!’ the third one said, no longer grinning. ‘Come on, bastard, do it!’

He kicked out, intending to take one of Jonah’s crutches out from under him, but Jonah had been waiting for that. He snatched the crutch out of the way, hooking it under the youth’s foot as it swung past. He was hoping to sweep it up so he’d fall, but the crutch didn’t have the heft. The youth was caught off-balance, but before Jonah could follow up something slammed into him from the other side.

The air was driven from him as he smacked down onto the rain-wet tarmac. Pain lanced from his knee as he abandoned the crutches, curling himself into a tight ball. He knew what was coming next.

And then the kicking started.

‘Bastard! Fucking Bastard!’

Jonah was buffeted as kicks and stamps rained down. He tried to keep his back wedged against the wall to protect his kidneys, ignoring the pain in his knee as he focused on covering his head and groin. A kick got through his forearms to glance off his jaw with a thock. Jonah snatched blindly at the foot and pulled. There was a shout and a heavy body crashed down on top of him, winding him again. But it gave a respite from the kicking, and before whoever had fallen had the chance to recover, Jonah grabbed hold of him. Twisting round so the fallen body was in front of him, he wrapped arms and legs around the thrashing limbs and clamped down.

‘Fucker! Fucking get off!’

The voice was only inches away, loud and panicked. A sour, acrid smell of sweat and cheap deodorant filled Jonah’s nose and mouth as his captive bucked and thrashed. Jonah kept his head tucked down and held on. With the wall at his back there was less of him to target now. That didn’t stop them trying. Someone stamped on his shoulder, trying to force him to let go. Refusing to, Jonah twisted away and there was a yell as his human shield took the next blow.

‘Fuck, that’s me, you stupid fuck!’

Jonah felt his foot seized. He kicked out with his good leg, connecting with bone and prompting another cry.

‘Fuck this!’ a breathless voice panted from above him. ‘Move, let me stab the fucker!’

Jonah’s stomach coiled. He looked past his captive’s shoulder, saw baseball cap reach into his pocket and pull something out.

And then he was dazzled by headlights.

‘Police! Drop the weapon!’

The night was suddenly full of squealing tyres, flashing blue lights and slamming car doors. As more headlights converged on them, the two attackers still on their feet took off like sprinters. Relief flooded through Jonah, but the third youth was struggling even more frantically, bucking and thrashing as footsteps pounded towards them. Jonah tried to cling on, then a flailing foot struck his knee. Pain erupted from it, and as his hold loosened his captive wrenched free. Jonah grabbed at his legs as he scrambled away, only to catch another foot in the face. His head snapped back, teeth clicking together, and the next moment the youth had gone.

Jonah slumped onto the wet tarmac. Footsteps pounded past him but he was too exhausted to care. Closing his eyes, he rested his head on his forearm, laying in the grit and dirt as his chest heaved for breath.

‘You OK?’

He recognised the voice. Raising his head, he looked up as Bennet knelt beside him. Behind her, police cars were skewed at angles by the concrete bollards blocking the road, their silently strobing lights turning the night blue. Christ, it looked like a full-scale op.

‘Are you stabbed? Do you need an ambulance?’ Bennet asked.

Jonah shook his head. He hurt all over and fresh aches were announcing themselves every second. His face felt weird and his mouth was filled with the coppery taste of blood, but it could have been worse. A lot worse. He began to struggle to sit up.

‘Stay there,’ Bennet said, putting a restraining hand on his shoulder.

‘I’m all right.’ But he didn’t try to stand. Leaning back against the wall, he took in the swarming police uniforms and cars. ‘What’s going on?’

Bennet didn’t answer, and the effort of sitting up had made Jonah feel light-headed. He closed his eyes and put his head back. Dimly, above the other sounds filtering through to him, he heard more footsteps approaching. Unhurried, this time.

They stopped in front of him. Jonah opened his eyes and looked up. Backlit by the police cars’ lights, DI Fletcher stared down at him.

‘Congratulations, Colley. You fucked up again.’

Wrapped in a towel, the bag of frozen peas looked like a giant poultice on his knee. It still throbbed but the ice was helping, and it didn’t feel any more swollen than usual. Apart from cleaning the worst of the cuts and abrasions on his face and hands, Jonah hadn’t had a chance to examine any of his injuries yet. But nothing seemed broken and he’d declined the offer of paramedics. Everything hurt, though, and he felt so tired his head swam. What he wanted to do was strip off his clothes, take a stinging-hot shower and then collapse into bed.

But that wasn’t happening yet either.

‘Are you rearresting me?’ Jonah asked, for the third time.

He was in his living room, left leg propped up on the sofa with the frozen peas strapped to it. Blue lights flickered through the window from the street below, though not so many now. Fletcher stalked around the flat, eyes probing everywhere as though the flat hadn’t already been searched.

‘If I was arresting you, we’d be at the station instead of up here,’ he said, picking up a paperback novel and riffling through its pages.

‘Then are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

‘I’d have thought it was obvious. We saved you from getting your arse kicked by teenagers.’ Fletcher tossed the book down onto a chair. ‘I take it they were the gang you told us about before?’

‘Three of them. They jumped me as I was coming home.’

‘So I saw. Remind me what you did to upset them?’

‘Refused to be mugged in a lift. After that, just breathing seemed to do it.’

‘You have that effect on people.’ Fletcher gave his parody of a smile. ‘Could be they didn’t like what they found in your garage.’

‘Do you honestly think they’d come anywhere near me if they’d broken in and found Daly’s body?’

‘Rough justice, perhaps.’

‘Right, because they’re so civic-minded. Or perhaps they didn’t know anything about it, because Stokes stage-managed the whole thing.’

Jonah expected Fletcher to sneer as he had before, but this time the DI let it pass. Going to a chair he sat down, hitching up his trouser knees before crossing his legs.

‘Where were you earlier?’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m asking.’

‘If you’ve had me under surveillance you already know. You don’t need me to tell you.’

It was the only reason Jonah could think of for the covert police presence outside the block of flats. He’d been released from custody on some pretext in order to see what he did and who he met. In which case Fletcher would know full well where he’d been. And who he’d seen.

But the DI gave no sign of that. ‘If you’d been under surveillance, I wouldn’t be asking,’ he snapped. ‘So you can either tell me here or back at the station.’

Either he was playing some game, or else he really didn’t know. Jonah couldn’t tell, but he didn’t see that he had any choice.

‘I went to Slaughter Quay.’

He had the satisfaction of seeing the DI silenced for a few seconds. ‘OK, then I’m sure you can guess my next question. Why?’

‘There’s an old barge for sale. I was thinking of buying it.’

‘Bollocks. Try again.’

Jonah felt himself on a knife edge. If he didn’t tell Fletcher about Salim and her sister, he’d be withholding evidence, pure and simple. Yet if he did, he’d be setting in motion events he couldn’t begin to predict. Salim clearly had access to the investigation through her ‘friends’, so he had to assume she’d find out if he told Fletcher about her. That in itself wouldn’t have stopped him, but she’d seemed genuinely scared of anyone discovering they’d met. And she didn’t seem the sort to scare easily. Jonah could take the decision to put his own life in danger, but not hers. Not after she’d trusted him.

That would make him no better than Gavin.

Fletcher was waiting. Time to decide.

‘I thought Stokes might be there,’ Jonah said.

There was no thunderclap, and the earth didn’t split open. The DI studied him. ‘And was he?’

‘No.’

‘There’s a surprise.’

It was hard to read the scarred face, but if Fletcher was pretending then he’d missed a promising career on the stage. Jonah felt encouraged and guilty at the same time.

The sound of the front door opening came from the hallway. A moment later Bennet came into the living room.

‘No sign of the attackers, but we found a knife in the gutter,’ she told Fletcher.

The DI nodded. Turning to Jonah, he cupped a hand behind an ear.

‘What’s that, Colley? Thank you for saving my life?’

‘I owe you one,’ Jonah said flatly. ‘So are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

The DI tapped his hands in an alternating rhythm on the chair arm. ‘We’ve come across CCTV footage from the night Corinne Daly disappeared,’ he said at last. ‘The street cameras immediately outside the flats had been deliberately knocked out, but she was picked up by an internal security camera in a shop as she walked past. We had to clean up the image, but it’s her. She was heading in the direction of her car just before eleven o’clock.’

That explained why he’d been released on bail. He felt anger as well as relief. ‘How long have you known?’

‘None of your business. It doesn’t prove you didn’t still go after her, so don’t get carried away,’ Fletcher said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re still a suspect.’

Jonah didn’t bother to argue. It was no use, and he felt there was more to come. Radiating unhappiness, the DI scratched the angry skin of his neck.

‘We also found this on the same security camera, taken a couple of minutes later. You might as well show him, Bennet.’

Taking out her phone, the policewoman tapped a few keys, then held out the screen for him to see. It looked like an enlargement from a bigger image taken through a shop window, with vague shadows that could have been shelves in the foreground. Framed walking past on the street outside was a tall, gangly figure, frozen mid-step. The image was grainy and the face was obscured by a baseball cap, but both cap and jacket were familiar from the other CCTV photographs Jonah had seen, showing Owen Stokes outside Gavin’s flat, and later on the road where Marie lived.

Jonah’s anger was growing. ‘You knew Stokes had followed her? Jesus Christ, is that why you released me?’

‘You were released because new evidence came to light.’

‘Bullshit! You knew Stokes had been here, so you staked out the flats hoping he’d come back! You were using me as bait!’

‘Good job we did, otherwise you’d be bleeding out in a gutter by now.’ Fletcher’s chin came up pugnaciously. ‘We saw an opportunity to bring Stokes into custody so we took it. We just hadn’t planned on you and your little friends royally fucking things up. After tonight’s farce Stokes won’t show his face again within a mile of here.’

‘I didn’t fuck anything up, I didn’t know!’ Jonah realised he was shouting. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Fletcher snarled back. ‘We’re not on the same side, you’re not part of the team. You’re a suspect! You think we’re going to run it by you first?’

That stopped Jonah in his tracks. He looked from Fletcher to Bennet. She at least had the decency to look away.

‘Still? Even after this? You still think I might have killed Corinne Daly?’

‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re as dirty as McKinney until we prove otherwise.’

Giving Jonah a last glower, he stood up and headed for the door. As Bennet followed, Jonah felt his anger wither and sour. The DI’s words were close enough to the mark to strike home. Not in the way he’d intended, but Jonah’s conscience was far from clear right now.

‘Wait.’

The two detectives paused. Jonah found it hard to meet their eyes as he picked his words.

‘The past few days, I’ve been asking around. I heard... I heard Gavin was involved with a case that went bad. Five or six years ago, a police informer was killed. A Syrian woman.’

Fletcher looked at Bennet, then back at Jonah. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The young woman from the warehouse. Nadine.’ Jonah ploughed on. ‘There might be a connection.’

‘Might be a connection? With a dead informer from years ago?’ Fletcher’s stare was angry and penetrating. ‘You know something, don’t you?’

‘I just think you need to look into it, that’s all.’

‘Bollocks.’ Fletcher came back into the room, finger levelled at Jonah. ‘Whatever you’re holding back, now’s the time to tell me, Colley. Because I will find out, and when I do, I promise I will hang you out to dry.’

Jonah almost told him. The words were in his mouth, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to say them. Fletcher stared at him, then gave a nod.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

He turned and went out. Bennet paused in the doorway to look back at Jonah. She shook her head.

‘You really are a glutton for punishment.’

When he’d heard the front door close behind them, Jonah sagged back into the sofa. Shit. He hadn’t wanted to compromise Eliana Salim but he’d had to say something. At least now they’d check back through Gavin’s records, and one look at Salim’s photograph would show the resemblance to her younger sister. They should be able to join the dots themselves from there.

He just hoped he’d done the right thing.

God, he hurt all over. Gingerly, he reached for his crutches. They were badly scuffed and one was slightly bent from the fight, but he was too tired to do anything about it. Too tired to do anything but take a hot shower and then go to bed.

He slept for eight straight hours, a record by his usual standards. When he woke he still felt sore and stiff, but not much more so than after a heavy training session. And his knee seemed none the worse for what had happened. The sun was shining through the flat window, and as he ate breakfast he felt his spirits lift. Things were starting to come together. Despite what Fletcher had said, the CCTV footage cleared him of Corinne Daly’s murder. Without that hanging over him he could start to dig deeper himself. Maybe follow the same trail she had to Daniel Kimani’s friends, and hear what they had to say himself.

He was still planning how to do that when his phone rang. It was Chrissie, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. She was hysterical.

‘Slow down, I can’t understand you,’ he told her.

Then her words took shape, and all Jonah’s plans fell apart.