The Lost

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It was when he smelled the blood that Jonah realised he was in trouble.

The quayside was pitch-black. None of the streetlights were working, leaving the crumbling warehouses in darkness, abandoned relics from a different era. In the old Saab’s headlights, the scene resembled an industrial ghost town. Staring out through the windscreen, Jonah was reminded that, even though he’d lived in London most of his life, there were still corners of it he didn’t know existed. And didn’t want to know, if this place was anything to go by.

The quayside hadn’t been easy to find. It was part of a desolate stretch of the Thames, an undeveloped area of riverbank that wasn’t even shown on his phone’s map. The directions he’d been given were vague, and several times he’d been forced to backtrack when some rutted road proved to be a dead end. Now he was parked on a patch of weed-choked wasteland, facing a long brick wall. Across the river, the sparkling lights of high-end apartments, bars and restaurants were strung out like jewels. Here, though, all was darkness. The sprawling redevelopment that had engulfed the rest of the docklands had, for some reason, bypassed this watery cul-de-sac. Although that wasn’t surprising, given its name. Jonah had thought it must be a joke, but no. The proof was right there in front of him, a rusted street sign:

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