Pariah

by Thomas Emson

“She’s from the gutter, Ma. Just like the rest of us.”

  Bet and the baby lived in a cold, damp, dark room on the top floor of a tenement building. Beneath her, the neighbors rowed. Above her, the rats scuttled. She had to piss and shit in a pot, which stank the place out, because she rarely bothered to clean it. The kitchen reeked of rotting vegetables and sour milk. And now there was the baby—screaming and puking and shitting all night and all day. Life was hell. She’d been left in the abyss. No Derek, no hope. He promised mansions in Kensington. She was desperate enough to believe him. Nothing came of his pledge. She was left in the gutter.

  They should’ve carried on from where Hitler left off and flattened the whole of the East End.

  Bet hadn’t seen much of Derek during the war. He was away a lot.

  “Busy, darlin’,” he’d said.

  He argued that he was too sick to fight and duly failed a medical. But he kept himself occupied, although rarely in Bets company.

  He turned up when he wanted something—money, food, sex.

  It was a visit for the latter that got her lumbered with the kid.

  She dragged on the cigarette.

  “You ain’t showing any motherly inclinations, Bet,” said Mother. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

  “I don’t feel none.”

  “Shame on you. It ain’t natural. You behave like this, who knows how the little one will turn out.”

  “We don’t know anyway, Ma.”

  “You know that’s not true, Bet.”

  “Oh, Mother. We can’t see the future. We can’t see anything. If we could, we wouldn’t live in shit.”

  The baby cried.

  Mother rose from the armchair, tutting.

  Bet said, “Leave her,” and got up as well. “I’ll sort it.”

  She went to the infant and scooped her out of the crib. The kid stank. She needed changing. The idea sickened Bet. She never saw herself like this. She’d pictured herself on stage, in movies—she’d pictured herself glamorous.

  Another Derek promise. “Stick with me, sweetheart,” he’d said, “and you’ll be quaffing champagne and dressed in silk in no time.”

  No champagne, no silk. Only dirty water and threadbare cloth.

  Cringing, she set about changing the baby’s dirty napkin. While doing it, she thought about her grandad, who’d been on the stage. Not an actor. He’d go mad if you called him that. And so would Mother.

  “My dad, he weren’t no actor,” she’d say. “He was for real.”

  Grandad Jonas was a medium. He spoke to the dead. He looked into the future.

  Never looked into mine, thought Bet, safety pinning a clean cotton cloth around her daughter’s waist.

  Mother said, “That little girl deserves to know where she’s come from, Bet.”

  “I told you, she’s come from the gutter like the rest of us. And that’s where shell end up.”

  “She’s got the gift.”

  “Shut up, Ma. No one can speak to the dead. The dead are dead. They’re gone. We’ll all be gone in the end. What’s the point?”

  Mother’s face darkened. “Don’t you speak ill, my girl.”

  “I ain’t speaking ill.”

  The baby cried. Bet laid her in the crib again and went back to smoke her fag. She stared out of the window. The rain fell. Her chest felt heavy. The baby wailed. Mother cooed over it.

  Bet listened to her mother’s words.

  “Don’t you worry, little darlin’, Granny will tell you how special you are. Granny will tell you everything. You’re a special little girl, Gracie.”

  Tears filled Bet’s eyes.

  Chapter 47

  OLD TIMES SAKE

  “Why the fuck are you calling me?” said Allan Graveney.

  “Old time’s sake,” said Don Wilks. He switched the wipers on. The rain fell heavily now. He was parked outside the community center. He’d eaten a sandwich and drunk some tea. He wanted to be on his own, away from the commotion of the incident room.

  Graveney said, “That’s not a good reason. So what’s this about?”

  “You think it’s about anything, Allan?”

  “It’s always about something.”

  “We’ve got a mess here.”

  “These murders?”

  “These murders.”

  Graveney grunted. “You think it’s anything to do with me, you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think that, pal. You heard anything?”

  “I don’t hear anything about Barrowmore these days, Wilks. I’m well away from that shit-hole. Bad memories.”

  Wilks paused before saying, “I never offered you my condolences for the loss of your brother.”

  “I never expected you to.”

  “I should’ve sent flowers or something. He was my snitch. He was my boy.”

  Wilks could sense Graveney bristling on the other end of the line. To describe someone like Tony Graveney as “my boy” was disrespectful. And disrespectful got you killed in Graveney country. It got you killed if you weren’t Don Wilks.

  Before his death on July 26, 1996, Tony Graveney and his brother were in a cold war with Roy Hanbury for possession of the streets.

  Tony was found bludgeoned to death on waste ground. His face was pulped. His skull shattered. No arrests were made, mainly because the prime suspect did a runner a few hours after the body was found.

  But that prime suspect was back.

  Sounding tired of their brief conversation, Allan Graveney said, “If you’re only ringing up for a chat, I could do without it. I’m legit these days, you know. I got a few arcades going and run a cab firm.”

  “That’s what you were doing thirty years ago, Allan.”

  Graveney sighed. “Yeah, but I’m as white as a virgins knickers these days, I’m telling you. I don’t need Old Bill phoning me or coming round—it’s bad for business.”

  “You won’t hear from me again, Allan. Ever. Whether you’re straight or bent, whatever you do, you’ll never hear from me or any other filth. You hear me?”

  “Yeah . . . yeah, I heard you. What’s going on?”

  “I just got some news for you, that’s all. Just thought you’d be interested.”

  Wilks told him.

  Job done, thought Wilks, putting his phone away. He poured another coffee laced with scotch from his flask.

  He watched uniformed officers talking to residents. Door-to-door continued. It would continue till every flat, every house had been ticked off the list. They were already having to make a third or fourth visit to some properties because no one had been home earlier.

  They probably were at home, thought Wilks, and just couldn’t be bothered answering the door to cops.

  It was true they were getting a mixed response. But that wasn’t surprising. Everyone wanted the killer caught, but they weren’t sure if they wanted the cops to do the catching.

  And talking to the Old Bill was a no-no in places like this.

  Wilks’s eyes scanned the parking ground.

  Scum everywhere, he thought.

  It was time he took control.

  It was time real fear came back to haunt Barrowmore.

  It was time the law grabbed this place by the balls and crushed the life out of it.

  Chapter 48

  FEAR AND INTIMIDATION

  Hallam was furious. He trudged the tower blocks, plotting revenge and planning murder.

  Charlie Faultless’s murder.

  Faultless had stolen the briefcase.

  Faultless had embarrassed him in front of Tash.

  He’d kicked Hallam out of her flat.

  I found the case, he thought. It’s mine . . . it’s mine, and so is she.

  If he’d had the chance, he would have had her. He would have talked to her
and persuaded her. And if she hadn’t listened, he would have made her listen. But only if Charlie Faultless weren’t there. But he was.

  “Bastard,” mumbled Hallam as he moped through Bradford House. The Sharpleys had lived here. Spencer Drake had lived here. Jason Joseph Thomas had lived here. Hallam would find secrets here. He would find things to show Tash, things to tell her. Stuff that would make her worship him. Stuff that would make her go on her knees for him. And if she didn’t . . .

  That bastard Charlie Faultless, he thought. He spoiled everything.

  Hallam wished he were hard, tough, and fearless.

  He wasn’t. He was a coward and a softy, scared of his own shadow and terrified of other people’s.

  He walked up to the tenth floor of Bradford House. The lift was out. It always was in this tower block—it was the worst of the four high rises.

  Good people lived here. They lived everywhere. But the bad overwhelmed them.

  Fear and intimidation ruled the streets.

  You only needed a few, and the many would cower.

  They’re cowards, too, thought Hallam. The good are always cowards.

  He plodded up the stairwell. It stank of piss. The Bradford House Crew moniker had been sprayed on the wall—BHC. They were a local crew. One of many. Mobs ruled the four tower blocks. Sometimes they fought each other, but mostly they were aligned under the Barrowmore banner to battle gangs from other estates. The majority were just kids with nothing better to do. Truants with no prospect of a job. Children whose parents had abandoned them to the streets. The gangs gave them a family. It gave them security.

  Fear and intimidation, thought Hallam. They were everywhere—even among those who spread them.

  Some senior members of the crews worked for local gangsters. Tash’s dad used to control the mobs on the estate before he went to prison and found God. He had dozens of thugs on his books.

  Charlie Faultless among them.

  Hallam’s hate for Faultless grew as he reached the tenth floor. He peeked around the corner to make sure the police weren’t loitering. They were everywhere now. You couldn’t stop and look over at a bunch of girls without some PC poking his nose in and saying, “Can I help you, mate?”

  Hallam edged along the walkway. He felt shivery. His nerves jangled. Fear made him feel sick.

  No one had seen Spencer Drake since the murders. The police had been round to his flat a few times. They’d hammered on the door and shouted through the letter box.

  “You sure he lives here?” Hallam had heard one cop say to another after he followed them up the previous day.

  The second cop said, “They say he squats here, that’s all.”

  The police would probably knock once or twice more. Then they’d smash the door down. They were already priming their battering ram. They liked smashing down doors. It happened quite often on Barrowmore. Hallam’s next door neighbor suffered an early morning raid a few months before. The 6:00 am wake-up call had been very effective. It got the whole eighth floor out of bed. They battered their way in, shouting and trampling over everything. They dragged the bloke out. They tossed him on the ground. They let an Alsatian growl and slobber six inches from his face. The fellow was a drug dealer. But they could have knocked.

  Hallam knew he had to be quick, or they’d ram their way into Spencer’s hovel.

  He knew if he could get into his flat, have a poke around, he would be able to go back to Faultless and Tash and claim some knowledge.

  The door was padlocked and caged. A strange smell came from inside the flat. Something wet drizzled from beneath the door. It looked like black water.

  Hallam cringed. He wanted to go home and hide. But his desire to prove himself was overwhelming. He wanted to impress Tash, to make her want him.

  Every morning he was round at her flat, saying hello and asking if she wanted anything.

  Every morning she wanted nothing.

  One day, he thought, one day.

  He was thinking about the hole he wanted drill in his floor so he could watch Tash and Jasmine. His mind whirled. Images cascaded through his brain. He stared at the caged door and thought of caged women and children—a caged woman and a caged child.

  Tash and Jasmine.

  His slaves.

  He groaned.

  Something hissed. He thought it was the serpent in his soul, the evil that lived in him. The evil that made him do what he did and think what he thought.

  But the noise didn’t come from inside him. It came from the flat. And from beneath the door, a fog billowed out. It was thin and wispy and swirled around Hallam’s legs. He stared at it and listened to its hiss. And behind the hiss, a word lurked.

  A word he knew.

  A name. His name.

  And as the fog crept up his thighs and spooled around his groin, it called to him.

  He answered.

  Chapter 49

  ATTACKED

  Faultless thought about Druitt’s briefcase while he walked.

  Hallam Buck claimed he’d found it at the murder scene. He’d hidden it before ringing the police.

  Why had he done that?

  According to what Tash said, Buck was besotted with her and might have taken the briefcase to impress her.

  The opportunity to do that arose when Faultless approached him earlier that morning.

  But was the briefcase authentic?

  Faultless found that difficult to believe—a Jack the Ripper suspect’s briefcase turns up at the scene of 21st century murder.

  He thought, Perhaps the case has been there since the 1880s.

  No, that was impossible. The lock-ups were only built in the 1950s. Before then, warehouses crowded the area. Warehouses and terraces fit for nothing but rats and cockroaches. Those old building had been flattened along with the rest of the slums. New homes had been built. And the lock-ups to go with them. Most of the garages were empty.

  As a youth, Faultless had seen them used to stow class-A drugs, hide pinched motors, hoard stolen cash, and interrogate kidnapped grasses.

  It was impossible that the briefcase had just been sitting there for more than a 120 years.

  Faultless walked along a street of red-brick houses. Toys littered front gardens. Dogs barked. Music blared from an open window. Two men sat talking in a silver BMW up a side road. A wheeless red Toyota, with its engine on the pavement next to it, perched on piles of bricks.

  The lock-ups lay up ahead. Trees draped over them, as if protecting the garages from prying eyes.

  He stopped walking and looked around. The streets were pretty empty. A group of boys rode their bikes on a grassy slope. Two teenaged girls waited at a bus stop. The silver BMW appeared at the end of the junction and stopped. There was no traffic, so the driver could have pulled out. For some reason, he stayed where he was, the engine still running.

  Faultless clocked the guy behind the wheel. Then he turned away and kept walking.

  The driver’s face stayed in his mind. He tried to place him. But then the scar under Hallam Buck’s eye suddenly flashed up in his thoughts, and then the bearded old man came to his head.

  I’ve seen these people before, he thought.

  He heard the car scream up the road, and he turned to see it skid to a halt next to him.

  Faultless cocked his head. He wasn’t scared. He’d never been scared.

  The passenger leapt out—a big black guy wielding a baseball bat.

  Before he could defend himself, something hit Faultless on the back of the head.

  Dazed, he staggered towards the black man who struck him across the face with his club.

  Chapter 50

  GREAT-GRANDMOTHER COOPER

  Bet Cooper, eighty-six years old, her bones marrowed with hate and vitriol, said, “Did you bring that bastard with you?”

  Tash’s
hackles rose.

  Bet laughed, seeing Tash’s discomfort. “She is a bastard, ain’t she—born out of wedlock.”

  “Shut up, Bet,” said Tash’s dad. “We came here to talk nicely.”

  “Fuck you and nicely,” said the old woman. “You put me in this home, Roy Hanbury. You ain’t even family.”

  “Rose was my wife.”

  “Shut up,” said the old woman. “Locked me up in here. I never put my mother in a home.”

  “No,” said Tash, “you locked her in the bedroom and let her starve to death.”

  Bet’s blue eyes flashed coldly. Tash stared into the old woman’s hate-filled eyes.

  Why was she so bitter, so twisted?

  When Tash had brought Jasmine to meet her—”Say hello to your great-great-gran, Jasmine”—Bet Cooper had spat in the child’s face.

  “She’s a cow, that’s all,” said Tash’s dad at the time. “She’s a hateful old woman. Has to have something to hate or she doesn’t feel alive. When you and Jasmine visited, she hated single mums and their kids—bastards, as she calls them.”

  Tash glared at the old woman now and remembered her dad’s words. “She stores up every hate she hates,” he’d said, “and plucks them out now and again.”

  Just like now, calling Jasmine a bastard.

  Tash bristled but controlled her fury.

  “Let’s all sit down and take it easy,” said Roy, dressed in a blue shirt and a red tie.

  Tash never saw him dressed up. He was always in his vest with his tattoos and his muscles on show. His hair was nicely brushed too, and his brown, leather shoes polished. Tash thought he looked like a grandfather, and she felt love for him in her heart.

  She scanned the room where Bet Cooper vented her fury and spat out her hate.

  It was decorated in floral wallpaper. Red carnations sat in a vase on a chest of drawers. The room smelled of soap and flowers.

  There was a television set and a stereo, with CDs of Andrea Bocelli and Russell Watson piled on a table. A large window looked out on to a garden. Winter had stripped the trees of their leaves.

  The residential home was in Bromley, Kent. Tash’s father had been paying Bets keep at the institution for fifteen years. In the past, he could afford it. Crime paid. But when he left prison, he gave most of his money to charity. He stored a pile of cash in a trust fund for Jasmine. And now Tash wondered how he funded Bets stay in a floral-wallpapered room with a garden view.