What Happened in London by Kim M. Watt

Author:Kim M. Watt [Watt, Kim M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780473668112
Publisher: Kim M. Watt

12

In the dark & the mist & the lost places

Zahid was being irritating.

“I’m not staying here,” he said, staring at the sagging wooden doors that filled the arched gateway of a derelict warehouse. The address scrawled on the brownie bag had been vague, but clear enough to lead them here, to the harsh, austere lines of a three-storey building that took up most of one block by a small waterway. There were no identifying signs to suggest what it might once have been, but Adams would have put money on a timber yard of sorts, loading milled wood onto barges to be taken down the tributary to the Thames. The windows were small and high, boarded or broken or both, and opportunistic plants were growing out of the roof and chimney stacks.

“I won’t be long,” she said.

“You’re not going in there on your own.”

She scowled at him. “Cam didn’t even want to talk with you there because you have the air of someone who’s going to start spouting things about people just needing to put the effort in. How d’you think that’s going to play with Jack? You’ll scare him off.”

He gave her an unimpressed look. “He’s not some delicate bloody forest faun. And you walking into abandoned warehouses alone is so far against SOP it’s not even funny.”

“You’ll be right outside. I can shout if I need to. He’s not going to talk if you’re there, and this is the only lead we have.”

“It’s not even to do with the kids!”

“I think it is. And the DCI said I could run this my way—”

“She didn’t mean go gallivanting into warehouses with junkies—”

“Stay here.” She snapped the last words with the sort of finality that would have impressed her mum, swinging out of the car and slamming the door without waiting to hear his response. A few strides took her to the gates, and she hoped they weren’t locked. It’d kind of ruin the grand exit if she had to go back for the bolt cutters, or get Zahid to help her over the top.

But the gates were open, the chain slung through gaps sawn in the wood and the padlock neatly severed, used just to hold them in place. She glanced back at the car as she let herself through, seeing Zahid had climbed out and was standing next to it in that familiar, wide-legged stance she’d used herself so many times, hands tucked into his coat pockets.

He scowled at her. “If you get mugged, I’m saying ‘I told you so’ at least twice before I help you.”

“Only twice? That’s positively empathetic.” She ducked through the gates and left the world behind.

Inside, the space was cavernous, running away from her in a vast open hall with a high, vaulted roof that was still mostly intact. The loom of streetlights spilled through the few unboarded windows, drawing everything in shadows and strangely hued shades. The light ran across the heavy wooden beams that still cross-hatched the space, then poured through the mysterious metal frames that clung to them, dangling precariously overhead.

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