The Lost

Chapter 21

The room didn’t seem big enough to conceal anything. There weren’t any obvious hiding places except for a few kitchen cupboards and the wardrobe. But Dylan had rushed over there in a panic when he’d thought there was a chance the bedsit might be broken into as well. And whatever he’d wanted to check, it was more important than his stash of dope.

So what was it?

Jonah knew he was entering dangerous territory. The bedsit was part of a murder enquiry, and he was still a police officer. The sensible thing would be to lock up, go back to his car and phone Fletcher.

Yet once he did that he’d be cut out of the loop, told only what the DI felt he needed to know. Gavin had to have had a reason for keeping the bedsit’s existence a secret, and this was Jonah’s only chance to find out what it was. Stokes had been looking for something when he’d broken into Marie’s, and from the kick marks on the door someone had tried to break in here as well.

If there was even a small chance Gavin had hidden something in here that concerned Theo, then Jonah had to know what it was.

Wishing he’d brought gloves, he used the cuffs of his jacket to avoid handling anything and began to search. It didn’t take long. Whatever Gavin had used this place for, he hadn’t bothered with many home comforts. The shelves inside the wardrobe held only a few pairs of socks and underwear, and all he found on top of it was a broken button and a thick layer of dust. The bedside cabinet yielded a spare set of keys but nothing else, while there was nothing inside the grease-clogged oven or under the sink but a collection of crusted pans. The small bathroom cubicle was equally disappointing, with nothing inside the toilet cistern except limescale and water. Next Jonah looked under the mattress before lowering himself awkwardly to the floor to see under the bed. After that he checked outside the roof window, standing on a chair to make sure there was nothing on the slates or in the gutter.

There wasn’t. Climbing down, he considered what to do next. Dylan had hidden something before he’d let opened the door, and he hadn’t had long to do it. So where was it?

Jonah looked at the keys Dylan had left. There were five of them on a simple ring. One for the external door downstairs, one for the central lock on the bedsit door, and one for each of the two additional locks.

So what was the fifth one for?

The extra key was smaller than the others, more like one that fitted a padlock. Maybe it fitted a garage somewhere, Jonah thought. It couldn’t be for anything in the room or he’d have –

He stopped, looking at the bed. He’d checked underneath, but now he noticed how the headboard was pushed up against the wall, covering the area immediately behind it. He didn’t have to move the bed far before he could see there was something behind it.

A rectangular hatch set in the wall.

There were hinges on one side, while the other was held in place by a padlock hooked through a steel hasp. But although the padlock had been looped into place, it hadn’t been locked. In his hurry, Dylan hadn’t fastened it when he’d pushed the bed back.

Gotcha.

Unhooking the padlock from the hasp, he opened the hatch cover. Cold air wafted from the black hole cut in the plasterboard wall. Easing himself to the floor, Jonah peered inside. The hatch opened into the loft space under the eaves. It was dark and the smell of dust and damp brickwork tickled his nose. There were little chinks of light in the darkness where daylight leaked through cracks between the roof slates, though not enough to see by. Taking out his phone, Jonah switched on the flashlight and aimed it inside.

A white skull stared back at him.

‘Fuck!’

He recoiled, dropping his phone as he banged the back of his head against the hatch. The phone had fallen onto the rafters below the hatch, but its flashlight had stayed on. A blizzard of dust motes whirled in its beam, which was canted to shine almost directly onto the pale oval shape that had startled him. It was wedged in the angle of a sloping timber roof beam, and Jonah gave a sour laugh as he saw what it was.

A wasp’s nest.

It was the size and shape of a misshapen rugby ball, with hollows and concavities in its papery surface that gave the vague appearance of a face. The striped husks of dead wasps were littered all around it, and Jonah couldn’t hear any buzzing coming from inside. It looked old, and even if it wasn’t, he didn’t think wasps would be active so late in the year. Even so, he still waited to make sure there was no sign of life before leaning through the hatch to retrieve his phone. The flashlight’s beam dazzled him. It had landed just out of reach, forcing him to lean in further as he groped for it at full stretch.

His hand touched something that crinkled.