The Lost

‘They never told me exactly what—’

‘Did they kill him?’

‘Of course they fucking killed him!’ Gavin yelled, slamming the cosh down on the seat arm with a heavy thwock. He paused, breathing heavily, then went on in a flat voice. ‘He was a four-year-old kid, what else were they going to do? These fuckers buy and sell people like livestock. You think they’d care about a child?’

Jonah felt his heart stutter, as though it was trying to stop. He thought he’d been prepared. Thought he’d accepted long ago that Theo was dead. But he hadn’t. The physical hurts were nothing compared to this ache of fresh loss. He sat immobile, stunned by it.

‘They didn’t say how, and I didn’t ask. But they were never going to let him go, not once that stupid bitch had taken him. I could’ve spared myself a lot of grief if I’d realised that earlier.’ Gavin took another drink, then raised the vodka bottle in a salute. ‘Happy now? You wanted answers, you’ve got them.’

Jonah had thought he’d hated Owen Stokes, but that was nothing to what he felt as he stared at the stranger in front of him. He began working on the tie behind his back with a furious resolve.

‘Ten years,’ he said, emotion making his voice unsteady. ‘You knew what happened to him for ten years, and you said nothing.’

‘You think I enjoyed it? Having to live with something like that? Jesus, why do you think I fucked Chrissie? I wanted you to find out, because at least then I could stop pretending!’

‘You fucking coward!’

‘Oh, here we go! Because this is all my fault!’ Gavin’s grin was savage. ‘You wanted to know why I dragged you into all of this? Well, this is why! It wasn’t only your life you fucked up! You think we’d be sitting here now, on this shitty boat, if you’d not fallen asleep and let a crack whore walk off with your son? Thanks to you those bastards owned me! They said jump, I jumped!’

A cold anger was spreading through Jonah. ‘You got well paid for it.’

‘Oh, fuck off! I earned every penny in that bedsit! Every fucking penny! Jesus, some of the things I had to do... And you even fouled that up as well. Three quarters of a million gone, because you stuck your fucking nose in! Now look.’ He gave the laptop bag a derisory kick. ‘A lousy hundred grand. How far is that supposed to get me?’

A preternatural calm seemed to settle over Jonah. The pain from his torn wrists seemed distant and unimportant as he continued working at the tie.

‘Tell me their names.’

‘Why, what good’s that going to do?’ Gavin waved the bottle at where Jonah was bound on the cabin floor. ‘It’s not like you’re going to do anything about it.’

‘Then there’s no reason not to tell me,’ Jonah said. In that moment nothing else mattered. ‘I want to know who killed my son.’

Gavin sat back, pretending to think. ‘OK, well, let’s see. The local boss was Lee Sissons, who ran things with his sons, Patrick and Jez. The order to have you followed would have come from one of them. Except — no, hang on. That’s right, he disappeared not long afterwards. And his sons not long after that. In fact, pretty much everyone involved with them either died or disappeared. Inside six months all their operations had been taken over by their rivals. Funny that, isn’t it?’

The vodka sloshed as Gavin swigged from the bottle. Lowering it, he looked at Jonah with contempt.

‘When they said the people responsible would be punished, they didn’t just mean the junkie who took Theo. Snatching a police officer’s kid is bad for business. And that’s what this is. The drugs, trafficking, prostitution or whatever, it’s a business. Big business. The people behind it don’t just own gangs, they own politicians and bankers as well. It’s an international industry, a giant machine. And if someone throws grit in it, then it gets cleaned out. So if it’s payback you’re wanting, you’re too late.’

Whatever had happened to them, it wasn’t enough. Jonah felt no satisfaction, only a seething frustration that the people who’d murdered his son were out of reach. Except for this man.

‘What about the woman who took Theo?’ he said, unmindful of the blood dripping from his hands as he struggled with the tie. ‘The one with the pushchair?’

‘Oh, she was the first. They wanted to make an example of her, so they cut off her hands and dumped her body in an alleyway.’

Jonah stopped, the nylon tie momentarily forgotten. ‘What was her name?’

‘It won’t mean anything to you—’

‘Was it Ana Donauri?’

Gavin’s surprise was confirmation enough. ‘Who told you?’

Jonah didn’t answer. He couldn’t begin to guess how Eliana Salim could have known, but now there seemed an inevitability about it. Gavin leaned forward, gripping the cosh.