by Thomas Emson
“What’s the book about?” she said. “The one you’re writing.”
He drank more coffee. It was cold. The way he liked it. Half an hour ago, when Tash put it on the kitchen table in front of him, steam had billowed from the mug. He’d balked and left it.
He was about to answer when she called, “Jasmine,” again.
Jasmine trudged into the kitchen. She wore a blue school uniform and a glum expression. She was a pretty girl. Natural selection had opted, wisely, for the Hanbury genes, rejecting her dad’s heritable traits.
“She looks like you,” said Faultless.
“And Rachel.”
He nodded. “Hello, Jasmine, I’m Charlie.”
Jasmine nodded.
“Say hello properly,” said her mum.
“Hello properly,” said Jasmine, giving a fake smile.
“Ha, ha,” said Faultless. “Have you got any more jokes?”
“Tons,” said Jasmine. “Are you mums boyfriend?”
“Jas—” Tash started to say.
But Faultless interrupted. “No, why? Doesn’t she have one?”
“She ain’t had one for ages.”
“Hasn’t, Jasmine, hasn’t. Charlie’s a writer, so speak proper.”
“What do you write? Stories?” said Jasmine.
“Yeah, stories.”
“Harry Potter?”
“No. You like Harry Potter?”
Jasmine shrugged and started making toast, getting butter and a knife.
Tash said, “It’s not cool, liking books. Jasmine, hurry up and drink your juice.”
Charlie looked at Tash. Twenty-nine and drained of hope. She had been about fourteen or fifteen when Charlie was dating Rachel. Both sisters had wanted to be models. Just like his mum. Neither made it. Just like his mum.
Tash said, “Put the knife down, Jasmine, or I’ll ring your grandad.”
Jasmine slammed the knife down on the table.
Faultless said, “How is he, then? Grandad. Your dad.”
“Godly.”
“Godly?”
Someone knocked on the front door. Faultless watched Tash leave the kitchen to answer it. He heard her open door and sigh.
“Morning, Hallam,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“You look lovely today, Tash,” said a man. Faultless couldn’t see him properly. He looked at Jasmine, who was eating her toast.
“You like school?” he said.
Jasmine curled her lip.
“Neither did I,” said Faultless.
“It’s boring.”
“I thought so, too.”
“I don’t want to go. I’ve been having headaches.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She scowled at him. “You’re doing the ‘I don’t believe you’ voice. Mum does it. But it’s true. My head hurts. And I get horrible dreams, too.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“Who are you, anyway?” Jasmine asked.
“I’m an old friend of the family. I knew your mum and her—”
Tash returned and interrupted him. “Jasmine, time for you to leave.”
“Me too,” said Faultless.
Tash said, “You going?”
Jasmine, gathering her things, said, “Yeah, mum would like you to stay. She’s in love.”
“Jasmine,” said Tash, scarlet now. “The light is turning red.”
Jasmine grumbled and headed for the door.
As she went her mum said, “And don’t forget you’ve got tae kwon do tonight, so no hanging around with Candice.”
“Whatever,” said Jasmine, and she was gone.
“She’s a lovely girl,” said Faultless.
“Most times.”
He looked at her and she looked right back.
“Tash, I just thought you’d need to get on—”
“On with what?”
“I don’t know—stuff. You work?”
“I do care work three afternoons a week.”
“Okay. Just thought you’d be busy, that’s all.”
“Yeah, my life is so full here. It’s all go.” She bit her lips. “I’m sorry. You know what it’s like. You’ve got to go, I understand. I’m just . . . ”
“What? Just what?”
She cried. “Fucking lonely and sad and desperate, Charlie.”
She fell into him, and he held her as she wept, stroking her hair. It felt like her sister’s hair. She smelled like Rachel too. He eased her away, because she was jazzing up his biology, and it was the last thing he needed.
“Where does your old man live?”
“If I tell you,” she said, eyes wet and red, a smile on her face, “will you stay for another coffee? I’ll make it cold this time.”
Chapter 16
DREAMS
“I don’t know how you cope,” said Tash. “I mean, you lost Rachel and your mum.”
“How do you know that I do?”
“Don’t you?”
“Not always.”
“You’re not needy though. Like me.”
“You’re not needy, Tash.”
“I begged you to stay and keep me company. I blubbed like a baby.” She laughed. “God, I’m so stupid. I’m just jumpy lately.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been having dreams. Weird dreams. Dreams . . . dreams about . . . I don’t know.”
“Jasmine said that, too.”
Tash smiled. Pride shone in her eyes. “She takes after me. Tries every trick in the book not to go to school. She knows I’ve been having headaches, so she says she has them, too.”
“How do you know she doesn’t?”
“She’s my little trickster princess. She’s her mother’s daughter. It’s what I did. My mum used to have headaches, so . . . so I used to say that I suffered, too.” Tash creased her brow. “Thinking back, I did, though. I think I did. The past is so . . . I don’t know . . . vague and unclear. No . . . no, it’s a scam. A ‘get-off-school’ scam.”
“That’s a bit cynical of you.”
“You get cynical in a place like this, Charlie. You should’ve stayed. You’d have been a right laugh.”
“I’d’ve been dead.”
She was looking at him, her head canted.
“You think they’d still come after you?”
“Are they still around?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t. I try not to know what’s going on around here anymore. I’d leave and take Jasmine somewhere else, somewhere decent. But . . . but I can’t. Council says there ain’t nothing available.”
“If you feel threatened, they should move you.”
“I don’t feel threatened. I feel trapped. Trapped doesn’t get you another house in a better area. I want to have a chance, Charlie. I want to leave all this behind. It’s like a stain on you, Barrowmore. Poisons you for life.”
He said nothing.
She went on. “Doesn’t it stay with you? Isn’t it still in you, the poison of this place?”
“Maybe,” he said, knowing it was. He asked Tash about the old man he’d seen the previous night. “He’s got long, white hair and a tuft of hair, here, on his chin—Satyric tuft, they call it. Like a goat’s beard. He wears a leather vest, smokes cigars.”
Tash furrowed her brow. “Five thousand people on Barrowmore, Charlie.”
“I know. I just thought you might have seen him round. It’s just . . . I’ve seen him before, I’m sure of it. He says he’s not been here that long. I don’t know . . . something weird about him.”
“Weird like my dreams?”
He looked at her and shrugged. A cold sensation snaked down his spine and he shuddered.
She bit her lip. “Lately, you know, I just feel . . . unsettled.”
“Is it Barrowmore?”
“I’m a Barrowmore girl. No. something else. Like . . . like something’s coming . . . something . . . ” She trailed off.
“What?”
She didn’t answer; she just looked down at her hands and fidgeted with them. Then she spoke. “Just before Rachel was . . . was killed, she was dreaming, Charlie. Did she tell you?”
He searched his memory. Those days were hazy. He was running wild. He loved Rachel, but his attention tended to be elsewhere. Drugs, thieving, assault. He was climbing the ladder. He was marking his territory. He was making his name. He seemed to remember his mum dreaming, but she drank a lot, so it had probably been the booze.
He told Tash, “Everyone dreams.”
“Not like this. Real and vivid.”
“She never told me.”
“What are you writing about? You didn’t say.”
He looked her in the eye. He didn’t have to say anything—she must have read it in his face.
“Oh my God, you can’t be. Charlie, why?”
“Catharsis.”
“Are you . . . are you trying to find out who killed them?”
“I hope to.”
She looked away. “Why are you digging this up?”
“I’m trying to bury it, Tash. Four women killed, mutilated—”
“I know how they were killed.”
“Okay, sorry—but it was my mum, my girlfriend—”
“My sister—”
“I have to do this. That’s the poison in me, Tash. That’s the stain Barrowmore left on my soul. I have to purge it.”
She stood. “I don’t know what Dad will say.”
“That’s why I want to see him.”
“He told you never to come back.”
“I know he did.”
“Usually, when my dad tells someone not to come back, he means it.”
“He did mean it,” said Faultless.
“Then why are you here?”
“Come on, Jasmine, yeah, or I’m going to miss Tyler, yeah, and I want to see him, see if he’s got a hickey, yeah, ‘cause he was with that skettel, Italy Slater, last night, and she was saying she was going to do it with him, yeah . . . ”
Candice strode down the road. Jasmine trudged behind her. The rain fell. Kids screamed. Mums shouted. The bus roared by. She’d catch the next one.
“Come on, Jasmine,” Candice called out again, wanting to see her ex, Tyler, who was now fancying Italy Slater because she was one year older, at thirteen. Candice was already twelve. Jasmine couldn’t wait to turn twelve in two months time. Being eleven was boring. It was like still being in year six, in primary school.
Her head throbbed. Her mum didn’t believe her. The dreams scared her. Mum still didn’t believe her.
She’d cup Jasmines face in her hands, smile her beautiful smile, and say, “I know every trick in the book, princess—I wrote the book.”
She wondered about the man in her mums flat. Charlie Faultless. He looked cool.
Maybe Mum would go out with him. Maybe he could persuade Mum to believe her about the dreams. Maybe he could be her dad. But that didn’t matter so much. Not many of her friends had their dads. The only person she knew who had their dad was her mum.
The bus stop heaved. Boys fought. Girls gossiped. The smell of cigarettes hung in the air. Some of her classmates smoked. One kid—Kain Sharpley—was drinking from a can of Carlsberg. Kain was year eight. He had two older brothers. They were bad news.
Kain caught Jasmine looking. She stared right at him. He told her to fuck off and asked her what she was looking at. She stared him down. Jasmine did tae kwon do at the community center. Nothing scared her.
Nothing except for the dreams.
Kain Sharpley looked away.
Chapter 17
SITTING IN JUDGMENT
Roy Hanbury, a python draped over his shoulders and Bible verses inked on arms, said, “You think a judge would let you get away with that, Spencer?”
Spencer Drake, seventeen, with close-cropped ginger hair, said, “I ain’t got a clue, Mr Hanbury.”
The snake coiled. Hanbury sipped mint tea. His lilac eyes fixed on the youth. The stare was usually enough. But that was twenty years ago. It was different today. The young tended to need more encouragement than a dark glare. Maybe not this one, though. He had the jittery look of a coward about him.
Hanbury told him, “You’ve stolen something, and you should give it back.”
Spencer shuffled in the armchair. He looked around the living room. His eyes fell on an image of the Crucifixion, a dazzling light behind the thorn-crowned head. The picture hung over the mantelpiece, which was lined with family photos and religious icons.
Hanbury said, “It’s not my favorite thing, Spencer, being asked by your mum to have a word. She’s very kindly, your mum, and you disrespect her.”
“I . . . I don’t, Mr Hanbury.”
“Thou shalt not steal, son. By stealing, you disrespected her. She’s very concerned for you. For your soul. You steal, you go to hell.”
“But I’m going anyway, so makes no difference.”
“Repent, son, and the Lord will wash away your sins. He washed mine away, and I had a fuck load more than you.”
Spencer squirmed. “It was just there, Mr Hanbury. The door was open. It was just sitting there. I couldn’t resist.”
“A judge wouldn’t see it like that. God won’t neither. But God’s got a get-out clause for you. He sent his only son to die on the cross, bleeding like a pig, to cleanse your sins. See up there? The picture of him dying—for you.”
“I don’t get it. If he’s died for my sins, why do I have to repent?”
Hanbury curled his lip. “God demands it. After his sacrifice, it’s the least we can do. Repent and choose the path of righteousness. That’s how He will judge us, Spencer. Righteousness. There is always a judgment.”
He rose. Spencer looked up, scared. Hanbury put the snake back in the vivarium and stroked it. The serpent was six feet long. It slithered away from its owners hand and coiled itself.
“I hate snakes,” said Spencer.
“God’s creatures,” said Hanbury and faced the youth. “There’s always a judgment, Spencer. Someone has to pay. You can’t get away with things. I learned that. Spent twelve years in prison learning it.”
“Prisons soft. It’s easy.”
Hanbury’s tree-trunk arm shot out and grabbed Spencer by the throat. He lifted him off the seat. The teenager’s face reddened. He tried to prize Hanbury’s fat hand away from his windpipe. No chance. Hanbury was bull-strong—twelve years lifting weights and pushing floor in jail added muscle to the already bulky frame.
Hanbury said, “Attitude like that’ll get you hurt, Spencer.”
The youth spluttered. He kicked. His feet sliced thin air. His balls shriveled. His eyes were going blurry. He was off the floor by a good twelve inches. He was only five-six, while Hanbury was six-four. It was a long way down.
“I’m not going to do anything bad to you, Spencer; I’d hate myself—I’m good with my Lord these days, and pain is not what I do. But I demand respect, lad.”
He released his grip on Spencer, and the teenager slumped in the armchair, croaking.
Hanbury offered him a glass of Coke and slapped his back.
“You’ll be all right, son. Show a little respect. Prison ain’t easy. Not if you do it properly.”
Hanbury sat down. His heart raced. Not in good shape like he used to be when he was running Barrowmore or when he was inside. In stir he did 500 press-ups a day, and 1000 squats. It made him strong and fit.
And Spencer was right—prison weren’t too bad. But Hanbury wasn’t about to share that with the boy.
“Now, Spencer,” he said, calming himself down with another sip of mint tea,
“when are you going to give this property back?”
Spencer spluttered.
Hanbury switched on a big flat-screen TV bracketed to the wall. He clocked Spencer’s eyes lighting up. On screen, thousands of black people in a church were singing hymns. Hanbury’s heart lifted. He started humming.
“Here’s the Word of God to inspire you,” he said. “When are you giving it back?”
“Uh . . . ”
“I’ll tell you when. Right after you leave my house. Is that good for you? It’s certainly good for me, Spencer.”
“Yeah . . . yeah, that’s . . . good.”
“Good lad,” said Hanbury. He settled on the couch, relaxed. “Twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have got to this stage, Spencer. Twenty years ago, I would’ve cut your right hand off.”
Spencer paled.
Hanbury went on. “But I don’t do things like that anymore. It’s ungodly. I let God punish. He’s crueler than I could ever be. You know he had a man stoned to death for picking up sticks on a Sunday?”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. Fear the Lord, Spencer. He’s a right bastard. He loves you, son, but if you don’t love him back, He’ll burn you forever. When you return the stolen item to its rightful owner, God will be happy.”
“And . . . and he won’t burn me?”
“You’ll have to repent for your other sins—the lusting, the lying, the greed, the taking your-mum’s-name-in-vain. All that shit. You have to repent.”
“So . . . did you repent, Mr Hanbury?”
He stared at Spencer. “That’s why you’ve still got your balls, son. Otherwise, they’d be on a silver platter now.”
Hanbury cracked his knuckles and stood up. He went to the mantelpiece, where there was a packet of menthol cigarettes. He took one out and lit it.
“Can I have one?” said Spencer.
“Fuck off, son, and go with God.”
Chapter 18
RUNNING INTO TROUBLE
Jason Joseph Thomas, known to himself and his only friend Spencer Drake as Jay-T, said, “You’re still alive, Spence.”
“Looks like it.”
Jay-T, known to everyone else as Slow Joe, said, “Twenty years ago, you wouldn’t have made it.”