Adrian Magson - No Tears for the Lost

The box contained a severed finger.

It lay on a bed of cotton wool like a grisly jewel, dark in colour and slightly curled, the nail torn and rimmed with dirt. The amputation had been made just forward of the main knuckle, the separation ragged and crude, a flap of skin hanging on one side.

‘Who delivered this?’ He couldn’t take his eyes off it, his voice barely above a whisper. A faint smell of chemicals hung in the air, overlaid with something he didn’t recognise. The unstamped brown envelope which had contained the box lay discarded, the front bearing three simple words in bold print: Sir Kenneth Myburghe.

‘I don’t know, Sir Kenneth.’ The man in the smart grey suit spoke respectfully, his voice a deep rumble. He stood in the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame. ‘It was on the doorstep.’ His face, all angles and crags, stayed carefully blank. ‘There was nobody about.’

‘Go check. Search the grounds.’ Myburghe brushed at a stray lock of distinguished grey hair above one ear. A faint sheen of perspiration had appeared on the mottled skin above his cheekbones, adding to the already unhealthy appearance of a gaunt face.

The man departed silently, leaving Myburghe alone with the object on his desk. It took a moment for him to realise that the finger in the box was a small one — a pinkie — and in studying the cut, he’d been ignoring something else lying alongside it.

It was a gold signet ring.

He took a tissue from a drawer, wet it and dabbed at the ring’s rim. Beneath the film of dirt — he tried not to think about what it might really be — was a crest, worn down by time and use. When he saw what it was, he felt sickened and sank into a nearby chair.

The ring had been commissioned and manufactured over a hundred years ago, barely twenty miles from where he was now sitting. Originating with his great-grandfather, it had been passed down the line of what had once been a noble and honourable family.

But that, he reflected, had been a long time ago. And the last person seen wearing this ring was barely nineteen years old.

His son, Christian.

‘Die, you time-wasting bitch!’ Riley Gavin stabbed the keyboard to eliminate another batch of spam. The focus of her attention today was someone calling herself Morwena, no doubt a pseudonym for a pimply youth in a sweatshop computer room somewhere in deepest Michigan. Thirty-three junk mails, most of them cheap offers of Viagra for those suffering from something called an ‘unflatering erectoin’. ‘And,’ she added, ‘try learning to spell.’

As she sat back and sipped her coffee, which had gone cold, the email tone announced another arrival. This time the name of the sender was Tristram. Untypically, the message box was empty, but the subject line contained a single line of type.

Sir Kenneth Myburghe has a nasty secret.

Lucky Sir Kenneth, thought Riley. Whoever he is. She stabbed delete and sent Tristram’s missive winging off to join all the others. At least this last one was a little subtler in his sales pitch. So subtle, in fact, there was no pitch at all. Maybe he was having an off day.

She glanced at the on-screen clock. It was almost ten and so far the morning had produced little in the way of interesting new work other than a vague rumour of an alleged call-girl racket operating out of a government building in Croydon. The girls were being run, her contact had insisted in her email, by a manager in the Immigration section, and featured teenagers from Nigeria, Uganda and Romania, all being supplied with papers and accommodation in return for ‘favours’.

It didn’t need much imagination to guess what those favours might be.

She wondered if the story had legs, or whether it had already been picked up by other hacks and was now doing the rounds in search of a home. She’d stumbled over two others like it within the past month, and each time they had led nowhere. But it had taken time and money to reach that conclusion. If she didn’t come up with something soon, she was going to have to fall on the tender mercies of Donald Brask, her sometime agent, who played the airwaves with Svengali-like expertise to seek out stories and places to sell them.

Not that she begrudged going through Donald for work. With his uncanny nose for business, he knew more people in the media, government and police than anyone she’d ever met. But her innate independence meant she preferred to find her own assignments whenever possible, and set the terms accordingly. It made the work all the more satisfying, somehow.

Coffee, she thought. I need another belt of coffee, only stronger. It wouldn’t magic up another assignment, but it might sharpen the thought processes and help get things moving with a bit more determination.

As she stood up, the computer beeped again.

It was Tristram. Again?

Sir Kenneth Myburghe isn’t what he seems.

Riley sighed. Was she supposed to be impressed? If the mystery sender was hoping to draw in a gullible user, why not include a hyperlink on which to click? And who the hell was Sir Kenneth Myburghe, anyway? If there was one thing she hated, it was anonymous informants who dribbled information as if they were passing out gold dust. She hit the delete button with a hiss of irritation and shut down the machine.

It was the signal for the cat to appear. She hadn’t seen it since yesterday, when it had gone walkabout. It had evidently decided that it was Riley’s day to play maidservant.

‘Good timing,’ she congratulated him. Walking obediently into the kitchen and taking a tin of meat from the fridge, she spooned some into a dish. He responded with a chainsaw buzz and dropped his face into the food with the grace of a born binge-eater.

The cat, a solid and confident tabby with a broad head and the shoulders of a bruiser, had arrived courtesy of a former neighbour, adopting Riley by default and nominating her as a provider of food, comfort and convenience. It responded to her largesse carefully, with a strictly rationed show of affection, and strictly on its own terms.

When it wasn’t using her first floor flat to crash in, located in a quiet house off west London’s Holland Park Avenue, it toyed with the affections of Mr Grobowski, Riley’s Polish neighbour on the ground floor. Unlike Riley, who hadn’t felt able to saddle the animal with a name, Mr Grobowski called it Lipinski, in honour of a Polish musician, and fed it vast helpings of his native food, which he cooked for a nearby community centre.

Half an hour later, showered and changed from her house sweats to comfortable jeans and a jacket, and having run a quick brush through her collar-length blonde hair, she was immersed in the morning newspapers and an industrial-strength latte at her local Caffé Nero.

Then someone dropped heavily into the seat next to her. She caught a strong smell of mints and aftershave, rising over the warm aroma of roasted coffee beans.

‘Why, if it isn’t Riley Gavin, journo extraordinaire,’ said a dry male voice. ‘Just the person I was looking for.’

The newcomer was tall and broad-shouldered, with brush-cut greying hair and high cheekbones. He wore a well-cut pinstripe suit and a crisp, white shirt and dark tie.

Matthew Weller was something high up in the Metropolitan police. Riley wasn’t sure of his current rank, and was surprised to see him. Senior officers from the Met didn’t normally cruise the coffee bars of London in search of journalists, not when a beckoning finger would get most hacks running to them in the hopes of a story and glory. She wondered what he wanted.