Page 1 of The Lost Zone (Dark Water #3)

Chapter One

Josiah

Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter, robed in the long friends, the grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, secret by the unmourning water of the riding Thames. After the first death, there is no other – Dylan Thomas

Solange Alajika. When had her name last been spoken out loud? When had anyone other than Alex even thought about her?

His eyes dark, his chest heaving as if he’d run a marathon, Alex looked shattered. Josiah didn’t underestimate what this moment meant to him. He’d been on a long, solitary journey, but now all the years of carrying her name alone fell away.

Reaching across the table, he placed his hand on Alex’s arm.

“You’ve been very strong for a very long time. Solange would be proud of you.”

Alex looked unable to speak; he just nodded.

“A secret like this, a weight this heavy, would have broken many people,” Josiah told him firmly. “You’re a man of honour, Alex. You’ve done your duty by her. She couldn’t have wished for a truer friend.”

Alex nodded again, his eyes dark and wet.

“Now you’ve passed this weight on to me – you don’t need to carry it anymore. That’s my job now.”

Alex made a sound halfway between a choke and a sob. He looked down.

“Forgive me,” Josiah said gently. “You’ve already suffered so much, but now I must ask you to find a different kind of strength.”

Alex looked up, visibly trying to regain control of himself.

Josiah smiled at him encouragingly. “I hate to ask, because I know what it’s cost you to come this far, but this time I’ll be by your side, every single step of the way – and I promise you that I won’t let you down.”

“I know that,” Alex said shakily, finally finding his voice. “Ask me anything. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“It won’t be easy. You see, if I’m going to bring Tyler to justice for killing Solange, then I need to know everything: about her, about Tyler, and about the chain of events that led to her death.

I need much more than the broadbrush strokes you’ve given me.

I need to know every single thing. You can’t hold back on me anymore, Alex. You must trust me.”

“I understand.” Alex nodded firmly. “And you’re right, of course. I was expecting this.”

Even so, Josiah noticed that his hand was shaking as he reached out to pick up his mug of tea.

“I can’t help you if all you’ve got for me are the same kind of half-truths and evasions you’ve given me about Elliot. If you really want justice for Solange, then you have to tell me the truth, however ugly it is.”

“Yes. I know.” It was barely more than a whisper.

“I need names, dates, and details. You must tell me everything about your time with Tyler and how he operates – including details you don’t believe are important.

I need your honesty, even about those things you would prefer to keep to yourself because they don’t show you in a good light. Especially about those things.”

“Of course,” Alex said quietly. “I’ll tell you all of it. I hope you won’t judge me too harshly, but if you do, I’ll understand. Some parts of my story are humiliating, embarrassing, or just plain painful. But there are many other parts where I behaved badly.”

“I’m not going to judge you. Take your time. We have as long as you need.” Josiah sat back in his chair and sipped on his tea, waiting patiently.

It took Alex several minutes to begin. “I’m going to start with my first term at university,” he said at last. “I think that makes the most sense.”

“Was that when you first met Solange?”

“Yes, but that’s not where the story begins. It starts a little earlier – with the arrangement I made with Neil.”

“Neil Grant?” Josiah remembered the name from the trial testimony.

“Yes. Not a very nice man, but then I wasn’t exactly very nice to him, either.”

Alex told him about a foolish agreement between two young men, each blinded by their own needs, which ended up poisoning them both. Then his expression softened as he told Josiah about a beautiful, funny, kind woman who was not what she seemed.

“Solange was working for Tyler all along?” Josiah interrupted. “This is the woman you want justice for? Someone who betrayed you?”

“Yes,” Alex said firmly. He told of a series of vicious rows with his father, of his own blinkered obsession and self-delusion that led to his being sentenced to indentured servitude.

He pulled no punches in telling Josiah the unvarnished truth about himself, making no attempt to show himself in a more favourable light.

If anything, Josiah thought he was too hard on himself.

In an almost expressionless voice, Alex spoke of Tyler’s need to break him and of an endless succession of “guests” who treated him like a sex toy. His voice dropping to a low whisper, he related how one of these guests hurt him so badly he would have committed suicide if there had been a way.

Trembling, he recalled a terrible trip to visit his father at Lytton AV, where he was paraded around in a way designed to cause maximum humiliation. He lowered his head, his face pale, and told of being forced to tell his father about his mother’s affair. That was the only time his voice broke.

After another long pause, he looked up with a faint smile and explained how, in the midst of this nightmare, he’d found true friendship with the woman who’d betrayed him.

“She was a friend when I needed one most. She deserved so much more.”

It was Solange who’d risked everything to help him escape. Alex met Josiah’s eye as he told him about a nanocall to a woman named Elsie, and how he’d spent a week in a park avoiding Tyler’s black SUAVs as they’d prowled the streets.

Pausing shyly, he spoke of climbing into a beautiful Pre-R car and feeling an unexpected pang of envy about the relationship between the two men he met there, with their easy banter and obvious love for each other. Smiling, he explained how much he was drawn to one of them in particular.

“Peter?” Josiah asked.

“No, you idiot. You,” he retorted, as if Josiah was being deliberately obtuse.

Josiah could understand the terrified young man latching on to Peter, with his gregarious nature and reassuring smile, but not himself. “Why?” he asked, genuinely bemused.

“Because you made me feel safe. You have a sense of certainty that, as a terrified indie on the run, I found very attractive. It might sound contradictory, but I also sensed you were dangerous in a way that Peter wasn’t, and that turned me on a bit. Still does.”

Alex gave a little grin. Josiah grunted.

Alex’s expression darkened. “You know what comes next,” he warned. “Can you bear to hear it?”

“I think I must.”

Alex nodded and ploughed on, telling Josiah about Peter’s murder from his point of view, which was a whole new perspective.

He spoke in dry, precise tones, as a witness speaking to Inquisitus’s best investigator and not Peter Hunt’s husband.

Alex had seen his mother’s dead body lying in the road after the duck accident, but nothing had prepared him for witnessing Peter’s murder that night.

He revealed his guilt about not being able to save Peter, combined with despair at the loss of his escape route.

“Joe, there’s something else I must tell you,” he whispered. “It’s possible that all those black SUAVs looking for me spooked Lars. They might be the reason he was so jumpy that night. If so, I might have indirectly caused Peter’s death. I’ll understand if that changes how you feel about me.”

Josiah thought about it for a moment but found it made no difference. “Alex, it does no good to think that way. We can’t ever know for sure. What’s done is done.”

Alex shook his head. He wasn’t done confessing yet. “Also… I deeply regret not telling Elsie my real identity. I put you and Peter in danger just by getting into your car. I wrestled with it at the time, but I took the selfish way out.”

“I’d probably have done the same in your place,” Josiah said wryly.

“No, you wouldn’t.” Alex gave a pained shrug. “You’re a better man than me, Joe – you have a far more finely honed moral compass than I’ve ever had.”

“You were young, afraid, and alone,” Josiah said. “You’d been raped and abused. Peter and I knew what we were doing; we went into it with our eyes open. Don’t beat yourself up about that anymore.”

Alex let out a ragged sigh as he laid down another of the burdens he’d been carrying.

“What happened after that night?” Josiah coaxed.

There had been a walk to the coast, a good Samaritan who’d helped him along the way, and who Alex still wanted to explain himself to, even after all these years.

“I don’t want him to think I ran off with his money. He was kind to me,” Alex said earnestly. He recounted hearing the news of his father’s stroke and how he’d gone to visit him in hospital, which had led to Tyler’s men capturing him.

He took a sip of his cold tea and carried on, telling of a beating that lurched so out of control he almost died.

Josiah’s jaw tensed up so hard it twitched spasmodically. He could hardly bear to hear the wrongs that had been inflicted on this young man, but it was his job – his privilege – to help Alex with his search for justice, so he had to listen.

Alex was far more dispassionate about his own suffering than he was about that of the people he cared about. His voice was low and rasping, his fists clenched, as he spoke of Solange’s intervention, and how Tyler’s blind fury had caused her death.

He paused for a moment, collecting himself, and took another sip of his drink. Then he continued, explaining a deal Tyler had offered to an IS named Ted, and how they’d taken a trip out in the middle of the night with Solange’s body, wrapped in a rug.

“They gave her the Quarterlands Splash, and then she was gone, as if she never existed,” he said softly. “I wanted to die. I tried to die. It was only then that I found I had something to live for.”

“Justice for Solange?”

“Yes.”

“What happened after?”