Title Page

Epigraph

Her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.

Milton, Paradise Lost

Contents

1. Title Page
2. Epigraph
3. All Was Lost
4. Available and Coming Soon From Pushkin Vertigo
5. About the Author
6. Copyright

7

All Was Lost

67

The detectives looked through the glass. The glass was one-way and beyond was a purpose-built chamber. The chamber’s walls were concrete block fitted with ringbolts and against the far wall lay an iron-frame bed, thin mattress wrapped in plastic, headboard hung with manacles. Gazing down at what lay piled beside the bed on the poured concrete floor was the cold glass eye of a wall-mounted camera.

‘What are we talking here?’ Lynch said.

They were standing in the viewing room, a dark and narrow space that ran the length of the chamber, and maybe out of reverence for the dead or owing to the oppressive dimensions of the room, both men whispered when they spoke.

‘Communication breakdown,’ Carlin said. ‘Transaction failure.’

Male and female. Some barely adults. A death-camp pile yoked together by their necks with collars and chains. Their hands and feet manacled. At least three of them had fresh purple scars hacking across the sides of their torsos. All had track-marked arms. All had been branded. All had been shot in the head. The blood under them flowing off into the trench drains had dried brown and begun to crack at the edges.

‘No sale, kill the product,’ Lynch said.

‘Don’t call them that. Just because they were treated like meat doesn’t mean we talk about them like meat.’ 8

‘I know. Sorry.’ Lynch gestured to the small metal desk beside them where a high-end laptop linked to the chamber’s camera had been shot through its keyboard. ‘Wonder if we can pull anything off that.’

‘We’ll see.’ Carlin opened the steel door that led upstairs and looked back at Lynch, waiting for him to follow. ‘Let’s go.’

Lynch didn’t move. He stood staring through his reflection in the glass at the murdered who lay callously exhibited in the dead fluorescent glare. One young woman naked from the waist down, sweater ridden up exposing the thin smile of a fresh caesarean scar. He guessed he was no more than five years older than her. His fists whitened.

‘Lynch.’

He came to and followed Carlin out of that bleak cubbyhole and up the concrete steps to the hallway where polished oak boards creaked under their shoes. Below brass picture lights, framed paintings of foxhunts hung from the burgundy walls of the hallway. A hooded forensic scientist in white coveralls approached carrying a clear plastic bag containing an old Nikon F camera and several 35mm film canisters.

‘These were found under the console table,’ she said.

‘Outside the living room?’ Carlin pointed down the hallway. ‘Right there?’

‘Yep. Maybe nothing.’