Pariah

by Thomas Emson

  He kicked and he bit and dished out some pain. But there were too many of them, and they were too strong.

  The wire cut into him. Blood turned him red all over, glistening and wet.

  From the back of the van, he heard his wife, pregnant with twins she’d lose because of the stress, scream in the street.

  “I promised I’d see her again,” he’d say when he told the story.

  And he did.

  An hour later.

  He staggered home with his throat cut from ear to ear, Ripper style.

  Doctors said he would die. Man cannot live without blood, and Roy Hanbury barely had a thimbleful left in his veins. But he survived. That bulldog in him—barge through doors, barge through borders, and barge through death.

  Old Bill came and asked what happened, but he said nothing.

  “Was it the Malones?” asked a detective.

  Hanbury stared at the carnations his mates had sent round.

  “Where are they, Roy?” the detective had asked.

  Hanbury switched his gaze to the piles of fruit a market trader had delivered as a get well-soon gift.

  “Where will we find them?” the detective had said.

  Hanbury looked him in the eye.

  He said, “You won’t.”

  And they never did. Neither Bobby nor Benny Malone, nor their five attack dogs, were ever seen again.

  Now Hanbury asked, “Tell me about your transformation from yob to yuppie.”

  “I ain’t a yuppie, Roy.” He shrugged. “You dumped me at Waterloo Station, told me never to show my face again.”

  “Or I’d cut it off for you.”

  “Yeah. That kind of thing. Well, I slipped into WH Smith, planning to nick something to eat. For some reason I found myself in the books section, browsing the travel guides. I saw this—”

  He reached into his bag and fished out a travel guide to the United States. It was scribbled on, creased, and well thumbed.

  He continued. “I got a train to Heathrow, and with the £500 you gave me, booked a ticket to Miami. I’d never been on a plane before. I had no passport. But I blagged myself on to the flight. Gave them some sob story about my mum being in Florida. She was dying, blah, blah, blah. Customs gave me the third degree. Immigration grilled me in the States. But that was nothing. I’d been fronting up to filth and teachers, social workers, anyone, since I was toddling. I didn’t give a shit. I made it through. They were taking me to some immigration center when I gave them the slip. They never saw me again.”

  “Weren’t they looking for you? You some kind of illegal alien in the US?”

  “No, I gave them a false name when I got there.”

  “Yeah? What’d you call yourself? Donny Osmond or something?” Hanbury smiled at his own remark.

  “No,” said Faultless. “I called myself Roy Hanbury.”

  Hanbury stopped smiling.

  Chapter 25

  BLOODBATH

  Paul Sharpley straddled Spencer and slapped him across the face.

  “Where’s my fucking console?” he said.

  Michael Sharpley stood over them, sneering. Lethal prowled the cellar, punching his palm over and over, spitting and mumbling.

  Spencer looked directly into Paul’s eyes.

  He got another slap across the face. It stung, but he didn’t care. Not anymore. He felt different.

  It happened when he’d fished the butcher’s knife from the briefcase. It was as if a surge of electricity had powered through him when he gripped the weapon.

  Acid pulsed through his veins. Darkness filled his heart. The devil had his back.

  “Where’s my PS3?” growled Paul.

  “Weren’t yours in the first place,” said Spencer.

  Paul gawped.

  “Smack him again,” said Michael.

  “Let me stamp on his head,” said Lethal. “When can I shank him?”

  Two years before, Lethal had killed a boy of fourteen. The kid had been walking home from the Barrowmore youth center with his ten-year-old brother. Lethal was walking the other way.

  “What d’you say to me?” he asked the boy.

  The boy had said nothing, according to his little brother.

  Lethal attacked him. He punched him. The boy keeled over and hit the ground. Lethal stamped on his head till it popped like a balloon.

  Lethal bolted. The brother named him. But Lethal was somewhere else. The Sharpleys said so. His mother said so. A girl he was screwing at the time said so.

  There is always a judgment.

  Paul said to Spencer, “That was mine. I nicked it. It was above board. Fucking grabbed it off the shelf and legged it. It was me who took the risk, you wallad.”

  “I took the same risk coming into your flat.”

  They laughed. Paul said, “Too right, man. Big risk. Risk that’s costing you your balls.” He smacked Spencer again and then stood up. “Where’s your mate, Slow Joe?”

  “Back there in the shadows,” said Spencer. “He’s dead. I killed him. Go see. In the shadows.”

  There was a moment of silence, and Spencer sensed the trios fear. They were looking around in the dark, their eyes skating the gloom. They were tense, ready to leg it at any sign of danger.

  Then Lethal said, “You couldn’t kill the light.”

  “Go see, Lethal. Go see his body. Back there in the dark. I sacrificed him.”

  “You what?” said Paul.

  “Fuck, it’s gone cold in here,” said Michael Sharpley. “What is this fucking place?

  How’d you find it, Spencer?”

  “I think it found me,” he said.

  In one movement, he sprang to his feet and plunged the knife into Paul’s belly.

  The Sharpley boy folded. His mouth dropped open, astonishment in his eyes, his shirt soaked with blood.

  He gurgled and staggered, and his brother shouted, “You fucking bastard, Drake,” and lunged at Spencer.

  A shriek halted him.

  Spencer followed the noise.

  Lethal screamed again. But his cry was cut short. A darkness enveloped him.

  Michael said, “What the fuck is that?” Panic laced his voice. He staggered about.

  “Where’s Lethal? Paul? Paul, where’s Lethal?”

  Paul groaned, the knife in his guts. He fell to his knees. He made a noise that sounded like pleeeeeease to Spencer, but it may have been the air wheezing out of his body through the hole in his stomach.

  The darkness moved away from Lethal, as if a magician had whipped a cloak away to reveal his trick—a red raw grin widening across Lethal’s throat. His head tilted backwards. Blood poured from the ear-to-ear smile. The weight of his skull made him topple over, and his body hit the ground, hard.

  “Help me,” said Paul, squealing. “Bruv, help me, I’m dying. I want our mum. Get our mum.”

  But Michael backed away. Unlike Spencer, he hadn’t seen what was behind him. It was that darkness again.

  He retreated into it, disappearing. From within it came his screams.

  And then he stumbled out of the pitch-black, screaming still. He wheeled, and Spencer saw that his back, from nape to arse, had been sliced open. The skin had been pulled apart like a coat.

  Spencer gasped at the sight of the throbbing organs caged inside Michael’s ribs.

  Blood gushed from his cleaved body.

  He shrieked and twitched.

  Paul moaned. He called for his mother again. His brother died, his body arcing and spewing blood.

  Spencer stared at Paul. He wondered if he should help him. The Sharpley lad was groaning. He was obviously in agony. He clutched his belly. Blood soaked his shirt. His face was pale. He was crying and asking for his mum.

  “What part of him would you like as a memento of this occasion, Spen
cer?” said a voice.

  He looked up.

  It was Jack.

  The dark man bent down and plucked the knife out of Paul’s belly. He licked the blade.

  “Good knife, this,” he said. “Butcher’s knife.”

  Paul unleashed a scream that almost peeled the skin off Spencer’s face.

  Jack knelt.

  “Let me help you, bright eyes,” he told Paul.

  Jack eased Paul’s hands away from the wound.

  Black blood pulsed from his belly.

  “Help me,” wailed Paul.

  Jack plunged his hand into the wound.

  Paul shrieked, his body stiffening.

  Jack laughed and held him round the neck with his free hand. He dug around in Paul’s belly, the Sharpley boy twitching. His eyes were like an antelopes in the jaws of a lion.

  Jack pulled the intestines out of Paul’s belly. They coiled from his body, a blue-gray snake. The youth howled. He twitched. His face stretched. Yards of innards came out, and Jack piled them next to the boy, who screamed and screamed and took a very long while to die.

  Spencer smelled death and shit before he fainted.

  Chapter 26

  TIME TO REPENT

  “I made peace with my enemies on your behalf,” Hanbury said.

  “I know,” Faultless said.

  Hanbury’s cold, lilac eyes measured him. “And you mocked me like that? Using my name.”

  “I owe you, Roy.”

  Hanbury stubbed out his cigarette. “Not me, Charlie. You owe the Lord.”

  Thank Christ, thought Faultless.

  Hanbury went on. “Everyone pays in the end. We have to. Our sins are too great. They stain creation. There’s no getting away with it.”

  “Many have.”

  “No they ain’t, son. What d’you think happens when you die?”

  Faultless said nothing.

  “I’ll tell you. You face the Lord your God, maker of heaven and earth, and you submit to his judgment.”

  “I thought he loved us. That’s what the Bible says. Why should we face his judgment?”

  “He does love you, Charlie. But he wants you to love him back.”

  “Or he’ll torture me forever.”

  “That’s right, son.”

  “So I’ve got a payment overdue.”

  “Not overdue. But when you die. The Lord will demand repentance on the last day. Repent or suffer burning hell. That’s why you need to do it now. Let Christ into your life. He saved me. Fuck knows what would’ve happened had the Lord not entered my cell all those years ago.”

  “You would’ve been hunting Rachel’s killer.”

  Hanbury looked him in the eye. When Hanbury looked you in the eye, you felt your brain boil. His cold eyes fired lasers into your soul.

  Faultless dropped his gaze and then looked at Jesus over the fireplace. His wounds flared red. The artist had mixed up a good shade.

  He said, “You on the straight and narrow these days, Roy?”

  “God’s path, son. None straighter.”

  “What do you do with yourself?”

  “I got my pension, you know. Enjoy my granddaughter. Little Jasmine. She’s a handful, but what kid isn’t. I was. You were. She’s a gem.”

  “I met her.”

  Hanbury nodded and went on. “And I try to keep the kids here out of trouble. You know how it is. Unemployment. Gangs. Drugs. The devil marches through Barrowmore. His works are increasing. The bad days are coming, Charlie.”

  “I thought they’d always been bad.”

  “You wait. You think what man can do is bad? You wait. Armageddon is around the corner. God’s wrath. You wait.”

  “I will.”

  Hanbury placed the python back in its vivarium.

  He said, “So you’re here to dig up the past?”

  “I’m here to bury it.”

  “Forgiveness is the key, Charlie.”

  “You telling me you’ve forgiven whoever murdered Rachel? Who opened her up and—”

  “Enough.” Hanbury’s face had turned crimson.

  Faultless said, “I want to know who did that to her, Roy. To her and my mum. I want to know.”

  “You thought you did know, son.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “You were wrong, and it cost a man’s life. You were wrong, and it gave me a serious headache.”

  Faultless shrugged. “It brought peace between you and the Graveney’s.”

  “Don’t try to be funny with me, Charlie. Humor was never your strong point. Being a little shit was your strong point.”

  The past reared up in Faultless’s mind—him running wild, feeling rage, and being a pain in everyone’s arse. But then he shut off the memories. He didn’t want to see what he’d been. He stowed the recollections away.

  1996 was 1996.

  You couldn’t change it.

  You could only . . .

  Repent?

  Hanbury said, “Had you stayed, Charlie, they would’ve killed you. And they’re still on the maps, the Graveney’s. They won’t have forgotten.”

  “I thought you made peace.”

  “I did. But part of the peace was that you would never be seen again. Charlie Faultless is gone, I said. He ain’t coming back. Christ, you were trouble, son. You were like a son to me. Especially when you were with Rachel. When you saved . . . ”

  He trailed off and crunched his knuckles. Veins swelled on his bulldog neck. He found his voice again. “But—Jesus forgive me—I sometimes thought of killing you myself.”

  “Once this is done, I’m gone.”

  “This book?”

  Faultless nodded. “Interviews. Photos. Can you help me? Be my point man?”

  “No, I can’t. I helped you once before.”

  “You know you were a suspect.”

  Hanbury narrowed his eyes. “I don’t mind being accused of the things I’ve done—and I’ve done bucket loads—but telling me I did things I would never do, that’s injustice. I hate that, son. You put that in your book, I may have to forget I’m a Christian for an hour or two.”

  “God wouldn’t be happy.”

  “I’m saved. The Lord keeps me from harm, Charlie. And he keeps me from harming others. Remember that.”

  Hanbury rose. His knees clicked. He went to the mantelpiece, kissed his finger and touched it to the stigmata on Christ’s foot.

  “I don’t want old wounds re-opened,” he said. “Rachel’s or yours. I don’t want revenge.

  I don’t want nothing, Charlie. Only peace on earth and goodwill to all fucking men. Even the Graveney’s. I love seeing you again, son, it makes my heart sing, it does. But it’s not a good thing. And it makes me look like a liar.”

  “Fair enough. But I ain’t going.”

  “You’re a bastard, Charlie. If things were as they were, I’d have to kill you.”

  “My mum deserves justice. Your Rachel deserves justice. Their killers deserve judgment.”

  “All killers do. Don’t they, Charlie.”

  “I know. Maybe my day will come.”

  “It will. Count on it.”

  Hanbury sat down again and poured more coffee into his cup.

  Faultless said, “Is Wilks still around?”

  “Don Wilks.” The name came out of Hanbury like a growl. “Cunt,” he cursed. “The Lord forgive my foul language. But cunt. Wilks. The bastard. He’s a detective chief superintendent, now. Heads up some serious crime squad. Bollocks, he was. You’d have thought he was on the side of the killer back then.”

  “He liked you for Rachel’s killing.”

  “The bastard. I’ve known some useless filth in my day, but he took the fucking digestives when it came to being a crap copper. He should’ve been a villain. H
e is a fucking villain. Bent as Larry Grayson. Bent and twisted. I thought I was a mean bastard. But Wilks. You ain’t seen nothing.”

  “I did see.” He rolled up his sleeve. A scar, four inches long, sliced across his forearm. The skin was withered—a burn mark.

  “Hot poker,” said Faultless. “I was thirteen. He caught me with some of your dope, Roy.”

  Hanbury grimaced.

  “I kept my mouth shut, and this is what he does,” said Faultless.

  “You were a good boy, Charlie. I should’ve killed Wilks for that. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe ‘cause he gave me back the dope. I still wanted to do him, though. That’s why I need God, see. If I didn’t have the Lord, there’d be blood, Charlie. Blood and vengeance.”

  Chapter 27

  AN ITCH TO SCRATCH

  “I speak to the evil in men’s minds,” said Jack. “I spoke to yours, Spencer. I reached out to you. See what you did?”

  Spencer surveyed the bloody carnage. Mutilated bodies everywhere. The Sharpleys and Lethal Ellis dismembered. Jay-T brained. He said, “I never did nothing to them.”

  “You battered your friend with a brick. And you stabbed that fella in the gut.”

  Spencer’s head ached. He felt dizzy. When he had come round after fainting, Jack was in his face. It scared him even more. He’d scrabbled away, right into Michael Sharpley’s remains. Now he was covered in gore.

  “You have a lodging house?” said Jack.

  “A lodging what?”

  “A place to stay. A doss-house.”

  “It is a doss-house.”

  “Take me there.”

  “Are . . . are you staying at mine?”

  “I am sheltering there, Spencer. I have work to do. One more must be ripped. The walls around this place, they cage me. I must be free of them. One more must be ripped. London will be mine.”

  “You’re off your head.”

  “So would you be, trapped where I’ve been trapped for more than a hundred and twenty years. I had one hell of an itch, Spencer. And now”—he gestured to the bodies—”I’ve scratched it.”

  Spencer looked at Michael Sharpley, whose body had been opened up like a box. He bit his lip. He thought of something.

  “Can I keep the PS3 now?” he asked.