by Thomas Emson
Every muscle in Faultless’s body tightened as Buckley moved towards him.
Chapter 58
SINNER AND SAVED
Standing in the middle of Tash’s living room, Don Wilks frowned. He held his shoulders back and his chest out, and his arms were folded.
Arrogant bastard, thought Hanbury.
Roy and his daughter were sitting. Tash was terrified. The last thing you need is a visit from the cops, especially one with a bad-news face on.
Tash clutched her chest. Hanbury put an arm around her shoulder. A big dad’s arm that should have been a comfort to his daughter more often over the years.
The two decades since Rose died had been tough. After her death, Roy got more vicious; he got more violent.
Maybe if he’d caught the hit-and-run driver, the valve on his hate would have opened and extinguished the bad feelings.
But that never happened. He was left with hate in his heart and two young daughters to bring up. To Hanbury, rearing children was woman’s work. Especially if they were girls. If he’d had a son, it would have been different. The boy would have been out with him. Learning the business. But girls had to be protected. Although he neglected to spend a lot of time with them, they were given the best care. He showered them with gifts. He paid nannies and chaperones. He cushioned them from the evil he wreaked and the evil he faced. Or he tried to. All his power, all his influence, had failed to protect Rachel.
Grief and fury turned him psychotic.
But a year later he was arrested over a botched armed robbery. Two of his troops made a hash of a Post Office raid in Stepney. They traced the pair’s getaway motorbike to Hanbury. The morons were supposed to have dumped the vehicle after a previous job.
You can’t trust no one, he thought.
One of the robbers folded under Old Bill pressure. He spilled his guts. He’d have lost them if Hanbury had ever got hold of him. The guy’s testimony put Roy behind bars for twelve years. Conspiracy charges. Not the first time he’d been inside, but it was the longest stretch. And it started badly. His anger grew daily. Fury towards the men who’d killed Rose and Rachel. He would take it out on his cell, punching the wall. He would take it out on fellow prisoners, time in the hole.
It would have continued, had it not been for Ernie Page.
Aged sixty-three, Page was a lifer. He’d been inside thirty years and was looking at another five before he was out.
“Not much point in them letting me go, to be honest with you,” he once told Hanbury.
Page went down for murdering three people. Piled on top of those charges were indictments for armed robbery (two counts), assault (four counts), and handling stolen goods.
But something had happened to Ernie Page inside. He got saved. He found Jesus.
“It’s a blanket, brother,” he told Roy. “A shield. To be honest with you, I can’t say if it’s the truth or not. But some of it sounds good. And a fear of God, or whatever’s up there in heaven, keeps us in check.”
Over three weeks of talking, praying, and reading the Bible, Roy moved from sinner to saved.
He grasped what Ernie had told him—believing a higher power could stop you doing bad things. Just like he’d used fear to hold people to account, God did the same. He was the ultimate scare-story. There was nothing like the threat of hell to keep you on the straight and narrow.
A probation officer had once asked him, “Are you telling me, Roy, that if you didn’t believe in God, you’d go back to being a criminal?”
“That’s about right, I’m afraid,” Hanbury said. “It’s in my DNA. It’s in my genes. It’s who I am. Like the scorpion, you know?”
The probation officer shook his head.
Hanbury said, “The frog offers to take the scorpion across the river. ‘Just don’t sting me,’ he says. ‘No problem,’ says the scorpion. But halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog. As they’re both drowning, the frog goes, ‘Why d’you do that?’ The scorpion says, ‘It’s what I am, and I can’t help it.’ See? I can’t help it neither.”
“But you can now.”
“Because I’ve got someone watching over me.”
Now, with his arm around his daughter’s shoulder, he looked another bad man in the eye. Another bad man who could have done with a dose of fear in his heart to have stopped him doing the things he had done.
Wilks, still standing there full of himself, finally said, “We believe that Charlie Faultless has been assaulted.”
Tash leapt to her feet: “No!”
Wilks said, “We found his top. It was covered in blood. We wanted to speak to him in connection with the killings, but unfortunately, unless he turns up, we have to assume the worst. Or, of course”—Wilks grinned—“he’s done a runner. Same as he did fifteen years ago.”
“Charlie’s not done a runner,” said Tash.
Wilks said, “Has he not? You know where he is, Miss Hanbury?”
“Fuck off, Wilks,” said Hanbury.
“Don’t tell me to fuck off, old fella.”
“I’ll tell you whatever I please. Fuck off.”
Wilks was about to say something else when his phone rang. He answered it by saying, “What?” loudly. But then his face paled. His mouth dropped open. He listened for twenty seconds. He put the phone down.
“Someone died?” said Hanbury.
“Yes, a kid,” said Wilks.
Roy’s blood froze.
Chapter 59
BURNING FLESH
They blowtorched him from his collar bone to the middle of his chest.
He smelled his flesh cooking.
The pain was appalling.
It felt as if his head was going to explode.
He was trembling, every muscle corded, every nerve wire-tight.
He clenched his teeth.
He thought his jaw would crack.
Sweat poured down his face.
His blood sizzled. His skin melted.
He screamed.
His heart seemed about to burst.
Buckley stepped away.
The pain stayed. He looked down at his wound. A strip of black-red flesh, smoke coming off it. The skin still frying, still hissing away in the heat.
“You ain’t going to faint, are you?” said Graveney. “It ain’t going to be fun if you pass out—like a girl.”
“He ain’t begged yet, Dad,” said Ryan Graveney, loosening his grip on the rope tied around Faultless’s legs to stop him from kicking.
“He will, son. When we do his face, maybe.”
Faultless growled. Spit flew from his mouth. He was still shaking, his body in shock. His teeth chattered. But he managed to get words out. “ . . . kill you,” he snarled, “ . . . ’ckin kill you . . . ”
Graveney chuckled. His son smiled. Buckley stared. The big man was ready to go again—chomping at the bit to cook up some Charlie meat.
Graveney said, “Check the camera, Ryan. I don’t want to miss any of this.” The son went over to the tripod. The dad looked Faultless straight in the eye. “I never bothered to waste this amount of time on an enemy before. Bullet to the back of the head or a blade across the throat—it was enough. But the hate I have for you, I just got to unleash it, Faultless. You understand. You’d do the same thing.”
Faultless snarled again. He was sick with pain. He wanted to vomit. He wished he would pass out. He took in Graveney’s words and thought, I’d do it to you, you bastard . . .
His legs sagged beneath him now. His arms and shoulders took the weight of his body. They struggled with his 168 pounds.
His muscles were tearing. His ligaments were ripping. His nerves were fraying.
He was coming apart.
He was going to die without a fight—and that just wasn’t the Charlie Faultless way.
“Come on, you fuck,”
he said, his voice a growl, “finish me off.”
Graveney said, “Your finish is a long way off, Charlie.”
He gestured with his head to Buckley and shifted out of the way.
The black man and his blowtorch moved in on Faultless. The blue flame lit up Buckley’s eyes. They were bronze in color. The pupils were large. They reflected the flaring tongue of the lamp.
Faultless’s gaze skimmed quickly to Ryan. He was fidgeting with the camera. He’d forgotten his role—stop Faultless from thrashing about or kicking out while Buckley burned him.
Adrenalin coursed through Faultless, ramming his heart.
Buckley stepped forward.
Ryan played with the video camera, eye glued to the viewfinder.
Graveney rolled a cigarette.
Faultless brought both knees up sharply.
They smashed into Buckley’s elbow. His arm jerked. The blowtorch snapped up into his face. The flame melted his eye and the flesh around it in a second. He screeched and spun away, dropping the lamp.
Graveney gawped at the writhing Buckley as he shrieked and cupped his dissolving flesh.
Ryan said, “Fucking hell.”
Graveney lunged at Faultless, face knotted with rage.
Finding another dose of strength from somewhere, Charlie again lifted his legs and kicked out with both. They smashed into Graveney’s chest and sent him sailing across the room. He tripped over Buckley and smashed into the stairs.
Ryan Graveney rushed forward and bent to pick up the blowtorch. Faultless hooked Ryan’s neck in between his knees, and started to squeeze. He jerked his legs into his backside. Ryan’s neck was trapped in a slowly tightening vice. The man tried to ease the pressure around his throat. Faultless strained. He shook with stress. His shoulders felt as if they would snap out of their sockets. His legs were filling with lactic acid, weakening.
But still he tightened his grip around Ryan’s neck, and the man’s face creased with pain. He was turning red, the red deepening with every second.
Faultless’s knees viced around his throat.
Tighter and tighter.
Cutting off the air supply. Stemming the flow of blood to his brain.
Faultless quickly scoped the other two men. Buckley was on all fours, moaning and crying, his eye pulped. Graveney lay on his back, starting to move after being knocked out for a few seconds.
Ryan’s tongue popped out of his mouth. His eyes snapped open. His face had gone purple. He sagged. Faultless gave him another squeeze, then loosened his grip. The man hit the ground, dead. Faultless gasped, his energy gone. He slumped, all his weight again on his shoulders and arms.
Graveney started to get his bearings.
Faultless had no plan now.
He looked down. The blowtorch’s flame still burned. He kicked the lamp. It skidded along the floor. It struck Graveney flame-first in the arm. He shrieked, scrabbling away as the heat melted his skin. He leapt to his feet, crying out in agony, clutching his arm.
Buckley was screaming. He was calling for help. He was saying he couldn’t see and that his face was on fire.
Graveney looked at Faultless. His hate had gone up a notch again.
“You’re a fucking dead man,” he said.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” growled Faultless.
Graveney staggered about and picked up the blowtorch. He came towards Faultless, who braced himself.
At least I’ve done some damage, he thought. I’ve killed one of them, maimed the other two.
He was ready to suffer. He was ready to die.
Bring it on, he told himself and then shouted, “Bring it on!”
With Graveney three steps away, Faultless noticed from the corner of his eye that the door at the top of the stairs was opening.
As Graveney yelled out and drove the blowtorch directly towards his face, Faultless saw a pale-faced figure clothed in fire rise up behind his attacker.
And everything became suddenly very hot, and the smell of sulphur laced the air.
Part Five
LOST SOUL
Chapter 60
A GIFT, A CURSE
WHITECHAPEL—11:59 PM, NOVEMBER 12, 1977
He came down among the people and brought something for them. A child wrapped in the wings of murdered angels. Their blood still stained the feathers. But he had no other swaddling for the child. And the baby cared nothing for flesh and blood. It was sleeping in the softness and the warmth of white feathers.
He came to a place where he could leave the child. Cradling the baby in his arms, he gazed around. He listened. Music boomed. Car horns blared. People shouted.
The middle of the night, he thought, and this place is still alive.
But behind the noises, he heard other sounds. Past voices calling out. Forgotten stories begging to be told. Old wounds opening up. Ancient hatreds rising again.
This place had a memory, and it was screaming to be heard.
He smelled the air, and all the earth’s odors came to him—death, decay, blood, pain . . .
They filled him, and he loved them all, including the great evil that lay buried under the concrete, the steel, the asphalt, and the glass.
In fact, he adored that evil more than anything.
Thinking of it warmed him. It made him feel love.
But even love dies.
A father must sacrifice his son.
There has to be a judgment, in the end.
And that end was getting closer.
There had been too much savagery. The game was tedious by now. The rules had to be changed.
He looked at the baby and touched its lips. The infant snorted. It slept deeply, swathed in blood-soaked, heavenly feathers.
He walked towards the door of the flat and crouched. As he eased the baby on to the concrete, he said, “One day I’ll be back for you, and then you’ll be ready. I will come for you in your darkest place. I will salvage you and give you a chance to save yourself for I am the redeemer and the judge.”
Gently, he removed the angel-skin wrapping from the child and left it naked on the doorstep. The cold made the baby writhe. It started to come awake. Already, its pink flesh took on a blue tint. The infant whimpered.
The one who had brought the child bundled up the angels’ wings and tucked them under his arm.
He gazed at the wriggling baby and smiled.
The baby opened its eyes and started to cry, suffering in the low temperatures.
By then his deliverer was leaving and going further and further away. But however great the distance between them, he could still see into the baby’s newly opened eyes, one brown, one blue, both staring up towards his departing father.
WHITECHAPEL—12:01 AM, FEBRUARY 28, 2011
Charlie Faultless came awake quickly. His eyes snapped open, and he sat up. He looked around, his gaze skimming the surroundings. He was lying on someone’s doorstep, on cold, hard concrete. He was naked and shivering. He tried to remember how he got there, and at first thought he’d been out and got drunk. But then it all came back to him. And it made him want to scream.
Chapter 61
HEARING THINGS, SEEING THINGS
WHITECHAPEL—6:02 AM, FEBRUARY 28, 2011
Her dreams were of fire. More fire. Just like before. Oceans of it. And a rainbow of colors. Flames of every hue. Among them, a blue tongue of fire brushed flesh. Human flesh. And the flesh melted, pink and red, running like wax. Bone showing and then bone charring. The blue flame liquefied the body and turned everything to ash.
Her eyes snapped open and she sat up in bed, panting.
Charlie, she thought. Charlie Faultless, burned.
Tears ran down her face. She whimpered and climbed out of bed. It was cold, and she shivered. Outside it was still dark, although light was just starting to seep into t
he night sky. She peeked through the curtain. Down in the quad, blue lights flared.
A blue tongue of it . . .
She flinched and moved away from the window. But she could still see the lights showing in the sky. Police cars filled the parking area. The whole place was lit up. Detectives and forensic officers had been trawling all night, looking for evidence. Two murders yesterday added to the terror leaching through Barrowmore and to the pressure mounting on the police.
She went back to bed and huddled under the covers. She was very scared and very confused.
She remembered her dream again.
Charlie Faultless, burned.
That’s what it was telling her.
And it was true.
Someone knocked on her bedroom door, and it made her jump. Her mother’s voice said, “Can I come in, darlin’?”
She said nothing.
“Darlin’, please let me come in.”
“Okay,” she said.
She cried when her mum entered the room.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” said Mum, hugging her.
She loved that feeling. Her mother’s warmth, her softness. She felt safe in her mum’s arms. At least she used to. Not so much any more. The world had become more dangerous in the past couple of days. And not even love could keep the peril at bay.
Mum stroked her hair and said, “Do you want to talk about what happened to Candice?”
Jasmine shook her head.
Mum said, “You can ask me whenever you feel like talking.”
Jasmine nodded.
It had been a scary few hours. When Jasmine ran home after leaving Candice, she’d bumped into a man standing right outside her door. He was tall and large, and he had a mean face. He said he was Mr Wilks, a policeman, and he was here to see Jasmine’s mum and grandad. Inside the house, Mum had told Jasmine to go to her room, but she listened through her door and heard Mr Wilks talk about Charlie Faultless. Hearing what he was saying made Jasmine’s nerves jangle. And when he said someone else had been murdered—“a kid”—she wanted to be sick.
She asked her mum now, “Why did . . . why did Candice get killed?”