The Lost

Chapter 33

His head hurt. That was his first awareness, but other pains and discomforts quickly made themselves known. He felt sick and ached all over. He was lying on something hard and bristly. Carpet, brown and tufted. Not his. It seemed to move under him with a queasy, rolling motion that made his nausea worse. His arms were twisted behind him, and when he tried to move something thin and hard cut into his wrists. His ankles were bound as well.

Nylon ties.

‘Don’t waste your time. They aren’t meant to come undone like the last lot.’

Shock ran through Jonah at the voice. Then memory returned. Wilkes’s car, the big man slumped dead. The face staring back at him from the back seat. No. Not possible... He turned his head.

The sickly light from a wall lamp showed a long, narrow room with a low ceiling. There was a sour, unwashed smell, an odour of mildew and damp. The wood-panelled walls sloped inwards, and as well as the floor’s subtle movement he could hear a deep, hollow slopping of water. Not a room, he realised sluggishly. A cabin.

He was on a boat.

A broad-shouldered figure was watching him from a fitted seat a few feet away, leaning forward with elbows on knees. Through blurred vision, Jonah took in the shaved head and worn combat jacket he’d seen in the CCTV stills. At first glance it was Owen Stokes, but the features that stared back at him were all wrong. The stubbled face cracked in a lopsided smile.

‘Hiya, Jonah,’ Gavin said.

Jonah felt as if his thoughts were on ice, slipping without gaining traction. His mind insisted that this wasn’t happening, that he was still dreaming. But the pain in his head and body, the discomfort from his bound wrists and ankles, told him it was real.

‘I was starting to think I’d hit you too hard,’ Gavin said. ‘You’ve been out for ages.’

The face was older than he remembered, and without its dark curls the shaven head looked strangely alien. But it was unmistakably Gavin, the man who’d been his best friend and godfather to his son. The man whose body he’d found lying on the warehouse floor, head beaten to a bloodied pulp.

It took two attempts before Jonah could speak. ‘You’re dead.’

Gavin spread his hands. ‘Not yet.’

‘I found your body...’

‘That was just someone I found on a dating website. Right sort of build and hair but not as good-looking. My blood, though.’ He pulled back his sleeve, displaying a grubby white dressing on his forearm. ‘Had to be for the DNA, but I got a bit carried away. Bled like a stuck pig.’

The shock of seeing Gavin had robbed Jonah of all other thoughts. Now the rest of it came flooding back. Oh, Christ...

‘Where are the twins?’ Please let them be all right...

‘Asleep in one of the cabins. I put diazepam in their milk.’

‘You drugged them?’

‘Calm down, they’re fine. It was only a low dose to put them out for a few hours.’

‘You’re going to let them go?’

‘Of course I am! They’re only kids, what do you think I’m going to do?’ Gavin sounded offended. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t let them see my face.’

He had no reason to lie, and Jonah allowed himself to feel minimally reassured. Still groggy, he wriggled and heaved himself into a sitting position against the wall. It was awkward with his hands and feet tied, and the effort made his head and knee hurt even more. In the lamplight, the wood panelling and floral-pattern curtains covering the portholes gave the cabin an incongruously cosy look. It was a mess, with crushed beer cans and empty bottles scattered on the floor and dirty dishes heaped in a tiny sink. At the far end was a part-open door, through which Jonah could see a narrow passageway and steps, running up to the deck.

But between him and them was Gavin. The laptop case was on the floor at his feet, next to a half-full bottle of vodka. On top of it were both Jonah’s phones, his own and the one from Eliana Salim. Then Jonah noticed something that sent a jolt of adrenaline through him. On the seat cushion by Gavin was a thick leather cosh.

Beside it was a roll of freezer bags and black gaffer tape.

Tearing his eyes from them, he looked back at Gavin. ‘Where are we?’

‘Moored about a quarter of a mile from Slaughter Quay. You like it?’ He gestured ironically around the shabby cabin. ‘I “liberated” it, let’s say, from some former associates who used it for smuggling people across the Channel. Should get me back across there safely enough.’

‘Jesus, Gavin...’ The worst of the shock might have passed, but the enormity of the deception left Jonah winded. ‘Marie and Dylan think you’re dead! They held a memorial service for you!’

Gavin looked away. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

‘A choice? For Christ’s sake, you murdered innocent people!’

‘They weren’t all innocent.’ Reaching for the vodka, Gavin took a long pull before lowering it again. ‘I needed to disappear. The only way I could do it without anything coming back on Marie and Dylan was if everyone thought I was dead. It had to be convincing.’

Anger was replacing Jonah’s shock. Careful not to let Gavin see, he began testing the tie binding his wrists behind his back. ‘Why? Jesus, it can’t just be because of the suspension! Was it the money?’

‘You really think I’d put myself through all this crap over money?’ Gavin gave a sour laugh. ‘You really don’t have a clue, do you?’

‘No, I don’t! I knew you didn’t give a shit about anyone but yourself, but Jesus! What happened to you?’

A cold, set look had come over Gavin’s face. ‘You know, I’d forgotten what a self-righteous prick you are. Just remember I didn’t have to let you wake up. Don’t make me change my mind.’

Jonah’s eyes went to the cosh on the seat cushion. It was a vicious little weapon, and he already knew how effective it was. Yet it was the everyday mundanity of the freezer bags and gaffer tape next to it that frightened him far more. Looking back at Gavin, he saw a tacit acknowledgement in his eyes.

They both knew how this was going to end.

‘So why am I here?’ Jonah asked, straining at the tie behind him. ‘You could have killed me in the car, the same as Wilkes. I wouldn’t have known anything about it, so why didn’t you?’

‘Maybe because I wanted you to know.’ Gavin let that hang, then took another drink. ‘Anyway, it wouldn’t work if they found you with Wilkes.’

It took a moment for Jonah to understand. He was already under suspicion for Corinne Daly’s murder. If his DNA and fingerprints were found with Wilkes’s body in the car, it would look like he’d killed the ex-detective as well and then taken off with the money. There would still be unanswered questions, but they’d likely remain just that. Unanswered. For that to work it wasn’t enough for him to be dead.

He had to disappear as well.

Jonah applied more pressure to the tie behind his back, feeling the thin plastic bite into the flesh of his wrists.

‘Why me? I know we didn’t exactly end on good terms, but I can’t believe you’re still pissed off over the fight?’

Gavin gave a laugh. ‘You think this is because you caught me fucking Chrissie? Grow up.’

‘Why then? Why go to all this trouble to set me up?’

‘Why do you think?’ Gavin’s expression was almost lazy, watching to see how Jonah would react. ‘Owen Stokes.’

For a moment Jonah thought he might have got it all wrong, that Gavin really had discovered something about Theo. But then reality intervened. Whatever was behind this, Gavin wasn’t doing it for Jonah’s son.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘I told you, I needed a way out. Stokes provided it, but everyone had to think something else was going on. That’s where you came in. You’re so fucking predictable, Jonah. I knew you wouldn’t be able to see straight if you thought he was involved. And I was right, wasn’t I?’

Jonah felt an ugly burn in his gut again. ‘That’s it? That’s all? Stokes didn’t...?’

‘He didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Theo, if that’s what you’re wondering. Not a thing. But he did make a fantastic decoy.’

Twisting in his seat, he turned to let Jonah see the back of his neck. Above the greasy collar was the black tracery of a spider-web tattoo.

‘Only a felt-tip pen, but it does the job,’ he said, turning round again. ‘Enough to fool CCTV cameras, anyway.’

The strength seemed to drain from Jonah. He thought about the photographs Fletcher and Bennet had shown him. The ‘sightings’. A man with a shaven head, baseball cap pulled low and head tucked down, making sure the identifying tattoo on the back of his neck could be seen. All that time and energy wasted, chasing a mirage. And with that realisation came a sharper pain.

That his last hope of finding answers about Theo had gone as well.

‘Is Stokes dead?’ he asked, already knowing the answer.

‘Oh, yeah. I didn’t kill him, though. That’s on you. The poor bastard thought he was getting paid to shift stolen TVs, but you really fucked him up. I didn’t think you had it in you. All I had to do was get rid of the body.’

A new wound opened in Jonah’s soul when he heard that. ‘Where?’

‘At the bottom of the river, with my body double from the warehouse.’ Gavin’s eyes were fixed on him, soaking up every reaction. ‘You’ll be seeing him soon.’

Jonah almost gave up then. Jesus, it was too much. Then anger began to return, and with it a new determination. There was still something else going on here, something he didn’t know about yet. Gavin might need him to disappear, but that didn’t explain why he was still alive now.

He wants to talk. So let him.

Ignoring the pain from his torn wrists, Jonah began working harder at the tie. ‘What about Corinne Daly? And Wilkes?’

Gavin reached for the vodka and took a swig. ‘You’re the one who dragged Jim into this. I was happy for him to carry on thinking I was dead until you started knocking on his door. After the journalist, I’d started getting twitchy about how much you knew. Jim never could keep his mouth shut after a drink, so I had to find out what the pair of you were talking about. Christ, he nearly shit himself when he saw me again.’

‘He was your friend!’

‘He was a gobshite who would have sold his own mother. Anyway, I wouldn’t shed any tears over him. Who do you think he called about the gun?’

He grinned at the expression on Jonah’s face.

‘A Glock 17 you wanted, wasn’t it? Nasty. Have to admit, I didn’t see that coming. Poor old Jim was bricking himself. He didn’t know about the twins and he was still getting over me being alive. I’d fed him some guff about being stitched up, but after that I had to promise to cut him in.’ He shook his head. ‘Stupid bastard. How much did he tell you the gun was going to cost?’

Jonah remembered listening to the one-sided conversation when Wilkes had left the room, trying to make out what was being said. He’d assumed he’d been calling some old contact. Christ, how stupid could you get?

‘A thousand,’ he said, disgusted at his own gullibility.

‘Yeah?’ Gavin gave a snort. ‘Cheating fuck. He told me he’d said five hundred.’

Taking another drink, he settled back onto the seat. He was hitting the vodka hard now, as though he was building up to something. Jonah’s wrists were slick with blood where the nylon tie had broken the skin, but it didn’t feel any looser. He kept on working at it.

‘Corinne Daly had a young daughter, did you know that? Maddie.’

Gavin grimaced. ‘Don’t start. I saw her talking to you at the memorial service—’

‘You were there?’ Jonah broke in.

‘Parked further down the road. You don’t think I’d have missed that, do you?’ The bottle was raised again. ‘You got your feet under that table pretty smartish, didn’t you? Can’t say I blame you, but she was a nosy bitch. She wasn’t going to stop digging until she’d raked up all the shit about me. I couldn’t let her do that.’

Jonah remembered the woman who he’d shared beer and pizza with, the life and animation in her face. Then he thought about that same face, still and lifeless inside a plastic bag, and wanted to throw himself at the man in front of him.

‘So you murdered her and used her to frame me,’ he said, twisting at the tie behind his back. He thought there might be a little more give in it, although with all the blood it was hard to tell.

‘Well, you know. Two birds and one stone.’

‘Jesus, can you hear yourself?’ Jonah yelled. ‘What about the people in the warehouse? What did they do to you?’

Gavin made a show of linking his hands over his head, stretching till his joints cracked. It meant he didn’t have to look at Jonah as he answered.

‘Nothing. They were just nobodies I picked up off the street. If it was going to work, everyone had to think Stokes was an evil bastard. I had to make him look like one. Why do you think I chose somewhere called Slaughter Quay?’ He gave a scornful laugh. ‘I mean, come on.’

Slowing his breathing to control his anger, Jonah continued to strain at the tie around his wrists.

‘Was Daniel Kimani just a nobody as well?’

Gavin stopped mid-stretch. He lowered his arms, staring down at Jonah with a new watchfulness.

‘Daly told you about him, did she? What else did she say?’

‘That he was a PhD student, a human rights activist. You didn’t pick him up off the street, did you?’

‘Maybe I didn’t know who he was.’ Gavin sounded indifferent, but his eyes were wary. ‘I didn’t bother to check his CV.’

‘But you knew who Nadine was, didn’t you?’

The indifference vanished. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nadine, remember her? You covered her in quicklime and left her to suffocate. She was in agony when I found her,’ Jonah said, pressing his advantage. ‘Did you know she was still alive?’

‘I made a mistake. That’s why I started using these.’ Gavin picked up the roll of freezer bags from the seat next to him, holding it up to show Jonah. ‘They’re really good. You’ll see for yourself soon.’

The threat sent a chill through Jonah but he didn’t let himself be deflected. ‘How come you only made the mistake with her? Was it because she reminded you of someone?’

Gavin went very still. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard. What do you think Eliana would say if she knew you’d murdered her sister?’

Shock drained the blood from Gavin’s face. In the light from the lamp he looked corpse-like.

‘Who told you?’

Jonah knew he had to be careful. He only had one card to play. He couldn’t afford to push Gavin too far.

‘I can’t remember. Maybe it was Wilkes. If you hadn’t killed him you could ask him yourself.’

‘Bullshit! Wilkes didn’t even know her sister was in the country!’ Gavin was poised on the edge of his seat, the cosh clenched in his fist. ‘No one did. And there’s no way anyone from the enquiry could have made the connection, so how the fuck did you?’

‘Why’d you kill her?’ Jonah asked, ignoring the question. ‘How did Nadine even find you?’

‘Tell me how you knew they were sisters, or I’ll beat it out of you.’

‘What were you scared of? That she’d find out you’d forced her sister back into prostitution? That’s not enough to—’

Gavin lunged from the seat and lashed out with the cosh. Jonah tried to twist away as the lead-filled leather smacked into his thigh.

‘Who told you?’ Gavin yelled, swinging it again. ‘Tell me, or I’ll fucking—’

‘She did!’

Silence. Gavin stood over him, chest rising and falling. His face was ashen.

‘What are you talking about?

‘She’s not dead.’ Jonah’s breath came in gasps. ‘It was someone else’s body at the flat. Sound familiar?’

Pain exploded in his arm as Gavin swung the cosh again. And again. ‘I fucking warned you!’

‘I saw her yesterday!’ Jonah yelled, trying to evade the blows. ‘She’s alive!’

The beating stopped. Cautiously, Jonah uncurled himself. Gavin still held the cosh raised, but now he lowered his arm as though he’d forgotten about it.

‘You’re lying,’ he said, but it was a reflex.

‘Then how did I know she looked like Nadine?’

Gavin took a step backwards. He half fell back onto the seat.

‘She can’t be. It’s not possible, I saw...’

He trailed off. Jonah pushed himself upright, shaking from pain. He felt only a small compunction at telling Gavin about Salim. She’d told him not to tell anyone, but even she couldn’t have foreseen this.

‘It wasn’t her body at the flat,’ he went on, relentless now. ‘You all assumed it must be her and Wilkes screwed up the identification. But she’s alive. I know how to get in touch with her.’

The look Gavin gave him held a wild hope, but also fear. ‘No. No, that’s... How?’

Jonah kept his eyes away from the phone Eliana Salim had given him. ‘Cut me loose and I’ll tell you.’

Gavin gave a broken laugh. ‘Do I look fucking stupid? Why shouldn’t I just beat it out of you?’

‘You can try, but then you won’t know if I’m lying or not. And if you kill me, you’ll never find out.’

Jonah could feel the rapid beat of his heart. He tried to stay outwardly calm as Gavin thought it through.

‘I’m not going to let you go,’ Gavin said at last. ‘We both know that’s not going to happen, but I’ll make you a deal. I kept you alive because I was in two minds about something. So let’s swap. You tell me what you know, and I’ll tell you something in return.’

Jonah had always known it was a long shot. But this wasn’t what he’d expected. Gavin’s confidence had returned. There was something knowing, almost cruel about the way he was looking at Jonah.

He felt the first presentiment that this was about to get even worse.

‘What?’ he asked, afraid to hear.

Gavin’s smile was a travesty.

‘I know what happened to Theo.’