All Was Lost

The detectives looked through the glass. The glass was one-way and beyond was a purpose-built chamber. The chamber’s walls were concrete block fitted with ringbolts and against the far wall lay an iron-frame bed, thin mattress wrapped in plastic, headboard hung with manacles. Gazing down at what lay piled beside the bed on the poured concrete floor was the cold glass eye of a wall-mounted camera.

‘What are we talking here?’ Lynch said.

They were standing in the viewing room, a dark and narrow space that ran the length of the chamber, and maybe out of reverence for the dead or owing to the oppressive dimensions of the room, both men whispered when they spoke.

‘Communication breakdown,’ Carlin said. ‘Transaction failure.’

Male and female. Some barely adults. A death-camp pile yoked together by their necks with collars and chains. Their hands and feet manacled. At least three of them had fresh purple scars hacking across the sides of their torsos. All had track-marked arms. All had been branded. All had been shot in the head. The blood