The Lost

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.’