The Lost

He was going to have to go in.

‘Jesus, Gavin...’ he muttered.

There was a large metal gate set in the middle of the wire fence. It was secured by a sturdy-looking padlock, but further along Jonah found a gap in the fence big enough to squeeze through. Crossing the broken asphalt to the warehouse, he pushed through the polythene sheets to a pair of huge, hangar-like doors. They were locked but to one side of them was another door. When he tried it, it swung inwards with a creak of stiff hinges.

Jonah shone his torch through the open doorway. The light disappeared into a cavernous space, broken by girder-like iron pillars that disappeared up to a high ceiling.

‘Gavin, you in there?’

His voice rang out before being swallowed. The air in the warehouse was cold and dank, heavy with a churchlike silence as he stepped inside. Taking out his phone, he called Gavin’s number. The answering ring from the darkness seemed shockingly loud. It came from further inside the warehouse. Going towards it, he saw a faint glow behind one of the iron pillars. The phone was lying on the ground behind it, Jonah’s name illuminated on the screen. It winked out when he rang off.

Christ, Gavin, what the hell have you got yourself into? And me?

He shone the torch around. Rough-cut timber, bags of lime and cement and rolls of translucent polythene were stacked haphazardly at one side, but there was no sign of Gavin. Then the torch beam caught something else lying on the floor. A police warrant card, lying face up to display a tiny photograph next to the owner’s name and rank.

Gavin McKinney, Detective Sergeant.

There was a dark smudge on it, and Jonah felt something turn over in him as he realised what it was. It was then he noticed the dark splashes on the stone flags nearby. They glistened like oil, but Jonah knew it wasn’t. He could smell it now, only faint but unmistakable.

The coppery tang of blood.

The black spatters formed a trail that vanished into the shadows. Heart thumping, he began to follow it. The splashes ended at a pair of double doors set in a bare brick wall. A sign reading Loading Bay was stencilled onto the peeling paintwork of one of them. It stood slightly open, a large, unfastened padlock hanging loosely from a hasp. Jonah hesitated. The smart thing to do would be to go back, to call for a blue-light response and let uniformed officers and paramedics find out what was on the other side of the door.

But by then Gavin could be dead.

He gave the door a soft push. It swung open with a groan, and he quickly stepped through, tensed for an attack as he fanned the beam around. None came. The light from his torch showed he was in a long, narrow room. Heavy chains hung down from a rusted winch fixed to a rail in the ceiling. Behind them was a huge, sliding door made from old timbers and black metal brackets. Jonah guessed it would open on to the quayside, where boats would have come to load or unload.

‘Gavin?’

Water dripped somewhere in the darkness with a musical plink, but there was no answer. The smell of blood was stronger in here, mixed with something else. A cloying, animal reek. Jonah aimed the torch at the floor to see where the blood splashes led. Its beam passed over lengths of scaffolding poles and a pile of wadded-up polythene before coming to rest on something else.

A pair of legs.

Jonah rushed over, then stopped. In the torch beam, a man’s body was lying face down on a large square of polythene sheeting. His arms had been fastened behind his back with a plastic tie, and another bound his feet at the ankles. Jonah couldn’t see his face, but even after ten years he recognised the lean build and curly dark hair. Hair that was now matted with blood. Black in the torchlight, a viscous pool of it had spilled over the translucent sheet and onto the stone flags, fanning out like a dark halo.

Jonah found his voice. ‘Gavin...?’

Nothing. Gavin’s body had an eloquent stillness. Pale shards of bone and pulped tissue were visible in the dark hair, but Jonah could see that the blood was no longer flowing. It had begun to set on the polythene sheet and flagstones. Even so, he had to make sure. Careful to avoid the blood, he bent down and felt the side of Gavin’s throat, below his jaw. The skin was cold and flaccid, bristly with a day or two’s growth of whiskers but unmoved by any pulse.

Feeling numb, Jonah straightened and stepped away. A sound made him wheel round. There was no one there, and a moment later the plink of dripping water came again. He breathed out. There was no longer any question of what to do. This was a murder scene. He needed to get out of there and call it in without contaminating it any more than he had already.

Trying to close his mind to what was lying on the ground, he tried his phone. There was no reception. Gavin’s phone had rung in the main warehouse, so the loading bay’s thick internal wall must be blocking the signal. He’d started back for the door when another noise stopped him. It was too faint to place, but this time he was sure it wasn’t dripping water. He stood, listening. At first all he could hear was the blood pulsing in his ears, then the sound came again. Clearer, this time.