The Lost Victim, page 1
Also by Robert Bryndza
KATE MARSHALL CRIME THRILLER SERIES
1. Nine Elms
2. Shadow Sands
3. Darkness Falls
4. Devil’s Way
5. The Lost Victim
* * *
STANDALONE CRIME THRILLER
Fear The Silence
* * *
DETECTIVE ERIKA FOSTER CRIME THRILLER SERIES
1. The Girl in the Ice
2. The Night Stalker
3. Dark Water
4. Last Breath
5. Cold Blood
6. Deadly Secrets
7. Fatal Witness
8. Lethal Vengeance
* * *
COCO PINCHARD ROMANTIC COMEDY SERIES
1. The Not So Secret Emails Of Coco Pinchard
2. Coco Pinchard's Big Fat Tipsy Wedding
3. Coco Pinchard, The Consequences of Love and Sex
4. A Very Coco Christmas
5. Coco Pinchard’s Must-Have Toy Story
* * *
The Coco Pinchard Box Set
* * *
STANDALONE ROMANTIC COMEDY
Miss Wrong and Mr Right
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Epilogue
A Note from Robert
Email signup
About the Author
Also by Robert Bryndza
For Heather and Les
Go where we may, rest where we will,
Eternal London haunts us still.
― Thomas Moore
Prologue
FRIDAY, 23 DECEMBER 1988
* * *
The air was bitterly cold as Janey Macklin hurried down the dark street that ran behind King’s Cross St Pancras station, past a stretch of lock-ups on the left side of the road, opposite the high brick wall running along the train tracks. Hunger gnawed away at her stomach, and the pound coin and fifty-pence piece her mother had given her to buy cigarettes were hot in her hand. The rumble of a goods train passing on the other side made the pavement vibrate.
Janey zipped up her thin jacket, almost as thin as her pleated blue school skirt, as she crossed the street with her head down against the cold. She passed the Golden Fry chip shop. The big picture window was steamed up, and the colours from its flashing Christmas lights caught in the condensation. It was busy inside, and a young mother sat at the table against the window, holding out chips to a little girl. The hot smell of frying fish hit Janey’s nostrils as she passed the door, and then it was gone, replaced by the cold, sharp smell of drains and pollution. The smell of London.
When she reached the bright street lamp outside Reynolds newsagent, Robert, the young assistant of the owner, Jack, was outside. He was packing away the empty newspaper stands, whilst being watched over by a solemn little brown dog with greying whiskers who sat patiently by the door. Janey liked dogs; she had always wanted one, but the high-rise flats where they lived didn’t allow them. She put out her hand, and the dog sniffed and gave it a hot little lick.
A stooped old man wearing a pork-pie hat and a long frayed sheepskin coat stepped carefully out the door and onto the pavement. He had a large brown paper bag, which Jack gave his customers for their top-shelf porno mags, under his arm.
‘Evening, love.’
‘Evening,’ said Janey. Through the brown paper, she could just see the faint image of a blonde woman with huge, pale breasts.
‘Come on, Whisky,’ he said. The dog looked up at him and blinked as a lone swirling snowflake landed in his eye. ‘Looks like it’s going to freeze tonight. Mind how you go, darlin’.’
It didn’t feel much warmer inside the newsagent’s, and a smell of mould and cleaning products were fighting against each other to be the dominant scent. She passed a man with his back to her, looking at the top-shelf magazines. Jack was hunched over a giant ledger with curled pages at the counter, totting up figures with a chewed-ended biro and fingerless gloves. A small three-bar electric heater was on in the corner. Janey felt the warmth on her bare legs.
‘Twenty Lambert and Butler, please,’ she said. Jack looked up at her through rheumy eyes. Janey was tall for her age but thin and birdlike, and she loved to dance. She was flat chested and hadn’t hit puberty yet, so she would never pass for sixteen, but Jack ran the kind of shop where this didn’t matter, as long as he knew who you were. He nodded, reached around, plucked a packet of cigarettes off the tall display behind him, and put them on top of a pile of Sunday Sport newspapers bound in twine.
‘One forty-five,’ he said. Janey placed the pound coin and fifty pence in his grubby gloved hand.
‘Can I please have the change as a five-p coin?’ He sighed, as if this were a great inconvenience, and fished around in the open cash-box, muttering until he found a new, gleaming silver five-pence piece. He put it down on top of the right naked breast of the model gracing the front of the Sport. ‘Thanks.’
If Janie was lucky, her mother would let her keep the change to play on the Space Invaders table machine when she returned to the pub. And often, when her mum saw she was playing it and keeping her little sister, Maxine, occupied, she’d buy them a glass of Coke and a bag of crisps.
Janey stuffed the box of cigarettes in the pocket of her coat. The shop was now empty, and Jack followed her to the door, where Robert was collecting his backpack. He was a few years older than Janey, with thick, greasy, shoulder-length black hair and small brown eyes. Janey and Robert stepped out the door, and Jack closed it behind them and turned the sign on the door to ‘Closed.’ The light under the awning went out, and they were plunged into darkness.
It was now snowing heavily, and the cold seeped across Janey’s back through the thin material of her coat.
‘Do you want a lift? I’ve got my van,’ asked Robert, eagerly, indicating a big white van parked opposite. Janey hesitated. The unlit section of the road with the lock-ups now seemed longer. It was a ten-minute walk back to the pub, and she wanted to be in the warm with salt-and-vinegar crisps and a game of Space Invaders. ‘It’s okay. Where are you going?’ Robert always seemed nice when she came to buy cigarettes. But his desperation was off-putting.
‘The Jug.’
‘Are you a little boozer?’ he said laughing. He had tiny, sharp teeth. Like his baby teeth still hadn’t fallen out.
‘My mum’s waiting for these,’ she said, holding up the box of cigarettes. Janey could feel the weight of the wet snow landing on the top of her head, and a rogue snowflake found its way under her collar, smarting as it hit the skin between her shoulder blades.
He laughed again. ‘I can drop you outside? I’m driving that way.’
The door to the newsagent opened again, and Jack stepped out with a folder under his arm. He was now wearing a thick woolly hat and a scarf over his long grubby coat.
‘Haven’t got homes to go to?’ he muttered with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.
‘I’ve offered Janey here a lift, but she’s worried I’m a stranger. I’m not, though,’ said Robert.
‘He’s stranger than most people,’ said Jack, flashing a rare smile, pleased with his joke. ‘No. He’s fine.’
There was something about the way Jack said fine which seemed like an insult.
‘Merry Christmas, boss,’ said Robert.
Jack peered at him. ‘What? Oh. Yeah, same to you.’ He gave them a vague wave, then turned and walked away. The colossal gas towers loomed above him in a cloud of swirling snowflakes.
‘So? I can give you a lift, yes?’ asked Robert. Janey bit her lip. Her shoes were now soaked, and she was shivering.
‘Okay. Thank you.’
They crossed the road to the van. There was a layer of dirt and grime on the paintwork, and the sides were covered in a grey, frozen slush.
‘Do you want to sit in the front or back?’
‘I’m old enough to sit in the front.’
‘It’s a van. There’s no back . . . It was a joke.’
‘Front,’ said Janey, now irritated by him.
Robert unlocked the passenger door and helped her up the small step. The
‘That’s the pub,’ said Janey.
‘Do you fancy going for chips?’
Janey watched as they passed the swinging sign above the pub door.
‘The chip shop’s back there,’ she said, beginning to panic as the glow from the pub receded in the passenger-door mirror. ‘My mum is waiting for me.’
At the end of the road, Robert took a sharp left, barely slowing down, and then they were in the derelict area, speeding towards the canal and the giant gasworks.
Janey tried to open the door, but the handle only flapped uselessly.
‘Let me out. Please.’
Robert switched on the radio, and ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ by Slade boomed out.
‘What do you think? Boom box speakers! Don’t they sound awesome?’ he shouted above the music.
Janey wanted to be back inside the warm pub with her mum and sister, even if she spent the night hungry and bored with clothes stinking of smoke. She scrabbled at the door lock, trying to pull it up, but Robert slammed on the brakes. Janey wasn’t wearing a seat belt, so the abrupt stop threw her against the windscreen.
‘Why are you trying to get out?’ Robert cried. His face was now red and angry. ‘I’m going to take you for chips. I’m being nice!’
He put on his hazard lights. Janey, in shock from the force of hitting the window, now lay in the footwell of the passenger seat. The side of her head throbbed, and when she put her hand to her temple, it came away with blood on it.
‘Shit. You’ve cut yourself,’ said Robert. The opening bars of ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ started to play. He turned down the volume and then leant over. Janey flinched as he helped her back up into the passenger seat. He pulled the seat belt across her and fastened it with a click.
‘Please. Let me out,’ she said, clutching her temple. There was quite a lot of blood. Robert opened the glove compartment. It was filled with old crisp packets, paperwork, and a red scarf. ‘Is that my scarf?’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled and handed it to her. There was a small printed label on the end of the thin material with her first name.
‘Why have you got my scarf?’ she said. She held it up to her bleeding cut.
‘You dropped it a couple of weeks ago when you came to Reynolds.’
‘Why didn’t you give it back to me?’
The sound of the hazard lights blinking ticked loudly in the silence. They were now by the canal, with the gasworks directly in front of them. The round towers obscured the light, so everything glistened black, like tar.
‘I like you, Janey. I thought you liked me?’
Janey could hear her heart hammering in her chest. She was confused. Robert looked hurt.
‘I do like you.’
‘You must be hungry? Why don’t you let me take you to get chips?’ Janey took the scarf away from her head. The bleeding had slowed a little, but her temple still throbbed. She eyed the lock in the door-frame under the window. If she pulled it up quickly, could she get the door open and run for it? Robert flicked on the fog lights, illuminating a wall of snowflakes that had begun to whirl across the canal path.
‘Why don’t we go to the Golden Fry?’ said Janey. She knew if they went back, she could run for it. The Jug wasn’t far.
He laughed. ‘If I do that, you’re going to run off, aren’t you? You’re a cheeky monkey.’
‘No,’ she said in a small voice. She was really very frightened now.
‘The chip shop near where I live is much better than the Golden Fry. When you taste the chips, you’ll agree. They’re the best in London.’
When Janey dared to look at Robert, his face had changed. He looked like a hungry wolf. His brown eyes burned in the glow of the headlights, and his tiny razor-sharp teeth glistened. The snow was now falling thick and fast, obscuring the windows with a blanket of white.
‘Look at that,’ said Robert. ‘Jack Frost is giving us some privacy.’
1
Thirty Years Later
THURSDAY, 27 DECEMBER 2018
* * *
Private Detective Kate Marshall stared at the wide channel which had been carved into the earth by the rainwater run-off from the previous day’s storm. It cut a swath through the empty static caravans dotting what had been a grassy slope down from the main road above.
‘It’s good it didn’t take out the caravans,’ said Tristan Harper, Kate’s partner in the detective agency. He took a photo of the wide earthy trench where water still poured down from the road.
‘Is it? We could have claimed on insurance for new ones,’ replied Kate. Tristan crouched close to the edge of the channel with his phone to take another photo, and the soil started to crumble. He jumped back just as another chunk of turf broke away and fell into the channel with a splash.
‘It’s a good job no one was mad enough to stay in the caravans over Christmas,’ he said, shaking the mud off his wellington boots. He took a picture of the silver vintage-style caravan which sat closest to the trench, next to a small brick building that housed the communal toilets and showers.
Kate had inherited the caravan site, and a small building which housed the campsite shop, and the offices above for their struggling detective agency, from her friend Myra. Kate and Tristan had spent the past few years working hard to make the agency a success, and the caravan site provided a much-needed income to fill the gaps. However, they often felt more like caravan site managers than private detectives.
A cold breeze was coming off the sea, making Kate’s eyes water. It was midmorning, but storm clouds hung low in the sky, and the town of Ashdean’s lights, a few miles away, glowed on the horizon. Kate’s house sat just below the campsite on the cliff edge, where waves pounded the beach. Thurlow Bay was a hamlet of six houses; four of them were owned by people from London, who used them for only a few weeks a year; the fifth had been abandoned several years ago and was in a state of disrepair; and Kate owned the sixth.
‘Come on, let’s have a cuppa. We should get these photos sent off to the insurance company, and I’ve got something else I need to talk to you about,’ said Kate.
They followed the trench back down to the road running parallel to the cliff, where the water was leaving a muddy slick over the tarmac and pouring onto the beach.
‘How has Olivia enjoyed Christmas in Thurlow Bay?’ asked Tristan. ‘The south coast of England must be a culture shock compared to all those palm trees in Los Angeles.’
Olivia was Kate’s son Jake’s girlfriend. Jake had met her whilst studying at university in California.
‘She joined me for a swim on Christmas morning.’
‘How did she get on?’
‘Her lips went blue.’ Kate gave a snort of laughter. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.’
‘Olivia must be serious about Jake.’
‘We’ll see about that. He’s taken her today to visit the Crystal Path Mine Experience – that’s what they’ve rebranded the Ashdean Caves as. I don’t know what a tour in a damp cave in December will do for their relationship.’
