The Lost

Daly heard the door close behind her. She carried on down the empty corridor to the lifts, jabbing the call button repeatedly when the doors didn’t open straight away.

‘Come on...’

The lift pinged and its doors opened. There was no one inside. Daly stepped in and pressed the button for the ground floor. Her shoulders relaxed minimally when the doors slid shut and she felt the weightless drop as the lift began to descend.

‘Shit, shit, shit!’

She’d blown it. She shook her head, grimacing. What the hell had she been thinking, quizzing him like that? But it was late and she was tired, and — surprise, surprise — it turned out Colley was a nice guy. There was definitely something about him, and she’d been unprepared for how readily she responded to it. She’d actually started to forget why she was there. She’d let herself get carried away, and then tried to make up for it by blurting out that question about McKinney. OK, so the beers hadn’t helped, but she couldn’t just blame it on that. If his phone hadn’t rung when it did...

But it had. Nothing happened. So get over it.

She rummaged inside her shoulder bag. Her phone was in there, still switched off. Ignoring it, she took out the digital voice recorder. The small red light was on to show it was running. She rewound it for a few seconds, then pressed play. Colley’s voice came from the tiny speaker, reedy and thin but recognisable.

‘... because he’d been suspended. Is that true?’

‘Where’d you hear that?’

‘... You can’t deny it, can you?’

Daly stopped the playback. At least the recording was clear enough. Even though she’d been careful to leave her bag open, she’d been worried that the microphone wouldn’t have picked up their voices from inside. But it had, at least until it had fallen onto the floor when the coffee table had been knocked over. Not that there had been much to hear after that anyway.

More’s the pity.

Still, maybe she’d got enough at that. Colley had obviously never heard of Daniel Kimani, but the way he’d clammed up when she’d asked him about McKinney told her what she needed to know. She’d only been fishing, making out the rumours she’d heard were more solid than they actually were. But he hadn’t been shocked or surprised. Or refuted it, which was as good as a confirmation as far as she was concerned. And he’d been reticent about McKinney even before then. She frowned, remembering Colley’s answer when she’d asked if they’d been close. He’d said they used to be.

As in, they weren’t any longer.

Daly felt a slow spread of excitement. God, what if there was some sort of history between McKinney and Colley? What if they hadn’t been at the warehouse on some sort of undercover operation? That could cast a whole new light on whatever had happened. Shit, it might even mean Colley was a suspect...

Her excitement died as she remembered when they’d talked about her daughter. He’d tried to hide it, but she’d seen the sadness on his face. And offering to walk her back to her car might have been patronising, but there’d been something... well, sweet about it. He’d been concerned for her, and when was the last time she could say that about anyone?

And in return she’d stitched him up.

Daly put the recorder back into her bag. Her reflection was framed in the glass panel set in the lift doors. It was scuffed and smeared, throwing back a distorted image of a no longer young woman with a sharp face. It didn’t look like her. Get used to it. It’s going to look less like you every year.

Her reflection gazed back, cynical and knowing.

The lift bumped as it reached the ground floor. The doors squealed open, revealing the fluorescent-lit foyer. It smelled of piss, stale alcohol and the sickly sweet smell of resin and hopelessness. She hurried out through the grubby glass entrance. It was cold outside, the concrete bridges and overhead walkways deserted. At least the gang Colley had warned her about had gone. There’d been some teenagers hanging around outside when she’d arrived, so perhaps that was who he’d meant. She’d made a show of ignoring their stares and sniggers. If anything, she’d walked more slowly. That was one thing she’d learned from her job: no matter how scared you were, never let it show. Daly had interviewed rapists and murderers, thrust her recorder in the faces of rioters and brazened her way through situations she’d have been terrified of any other time. It was all about attitude. And what had started out as an act had soon become ingrained, as though her laminated press card granted actual invulnerability.

She reminded herself of that now, as her footsteps rang out in the darkness. It seemed like every other streetlight was broken, creating pools of darkness she had to cross before the next patch of light. The only parking space she’d found was a couple of hundred yards away, and as she walked away from the flats, she hoped her car was still there and in one piece. Neither was a given, not in a neighbourhood like this.