Pariah

by Thomas Emson

  “What do you want?” said the old woman. “I ain’t got no money. And I don’t know where the treasure’s buried, neither.”

  “Treasure?” said Tash.

  “She’s joking,” said dad.

  “I don’t joke,” the old woman said. “I take the piss, but I don’t joke.”

  Someone knocked on the door and entered without being invited. It was a care assistant. She said, “Good morning, good morning. How are we today, Mrs Cooper?”

  Bet looked away and mumbled something that Tash couldn’t hear.

  The care assistant was a heavy girl with black hair and an emerald stud in her nose. She wore a blue, nylon tunic and black trousers that were too tight around her hips. On the coffee table, she placed a tray containing three cups, a silver pot, and a plate of biscuits.

  “I’m Simone,” said the girl, “and if you want anything, just ring the bell, there.” She pointed to a switch near the door marked BELL in biro.

  After Simone left, Tash’s dad went on. “Bet, you got to tell us about your grandad.”

  The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Because,” said Tash, “me and Jasmine, we’ve started dreaming things.”

  Bet blinked.

  “It’s all nonsense,” she said.

  “You saw things,” said Tash’s dad. “Rose told me. She saw things too. And her mum.”

  Bet grimaced.

  Tash’s dad said, “This is important, Bet. You’re a grumpy old cow; you’ve always been one. But something’s up on Barrowmore.”

  “There’s always something up on Barrowmore,” said Bet.

  “You can see,” said Tash. “I can see, and my daughter can see. What are we?”

  Bet said nothing.

  “You know what I dreamed?” said Tash.

  The old women stayed quiet.

  After a moment Tash said, “I dreamed something to do with Jack the Ripper.”

  Bet looked her in the eye.

  “What do you know about Jack the Ripper?” asked Tash.

  “You want to know what I know?” said the old woman. “I know too much, darlin’. We all do. We’re cursed—me, you, your kid, my mum. My girl, too. My Grace. You know what it’s like to know your child’s going to die? You know what it’s like to see it’s going to happen and you can’t do nothing about it?”

  Chapter 51

  DEADLY VISIONS

  WHITECHAPEL—1957

  “What you seen, girl, what you seen?” said Bet, shaking her daughter by her shoulders. “Tell me what you seen.”

  Grace yanked herself free and said, “Nothing, Mum, leave me alone.”

  The girl, nearly fourteen now, threw herself on the bed.

  Bet said, “What did you see?”

  “I saw nothing.”

  “You dreamed something . . . or you had a vision.”

  “Mum, don’t . . . ” Grace curled up on the bed. She sucked her thumb and shut her eyes.

  Bet watched her daughter with horror. She knew what the girl had seen. She’d seen it herself.

  “You dreamt Derek, didn’t you darlin’?”

  “Mum . . . ”

  “You dreamt your dad.”

  “Oh God, Mum . . . ”

  Bet seethed. She cursed her gift. She damned her family. For so long she had rejected her visions. But they kept coming, flooding her brain and sending waves of panic surging through her. She only saw the bad, only saw death.

  The death of her daughter.

  Her heart raced. Cold sweat soaked her back. She grabbed her daughter and shook her again. Anger pulsed through Bet, and she couldn’t contain herself. She slapped Grace across the face.

  “It’s your own fault, you little tart, your own fault.”

  The girl screamed. Bet threw her back on the bed and wheeled away. She put her fist in her mouth and bit down to stop the tears. But they came. Her body trembled with grief, with jealousy, with shame.

  Behind her on the bed, Grace whimpered.

  When Derek came back in ‘53 and said, “This time it’s for keeps, darlin’’,” Bet thought everything would finally be all right. He’d been back and forth over the years, showering her with those promises he made, promises that were never fulfilled.

  “This time, darlin’’,” he’d said, standing on the doorstep, the rain pelting down. “This time it’s for keeps. I’m done with running around. I’m on the straight and narrow from now on, and I’ll make an honest woman of you. Country’s got a queen, now I want mine. And I’ll be a dad to that sprog of ours.”

  Remembering his words made the tears come harder, made her shake even more.

  I’ll be a dad to that sprog of ours.

  But he’d done more than that.

  During that time, Grace had grown. From ten to thirteen, she changed, showing the first glimpses of what she would look like as a woman. Men stared and saw that too. Some wanted to taste it early. And Derek Cooper was one of them.

  “I don’t feel much like her dad,” he’d told Bet one morning. At the time, Bet thought little of it. But a few months later she realized how significant his words had been.

  Nearing her fourteenth birthday, Grace became pregnant. And when Bet found out, Derek once again vanished.

  Then, the visions started to seep into her brain. They disturbed her when she was asleep and when she was awake. They came in nightly dreams and daily hallucinations. They made her faint in the street, the blinding white pain in her head overwhelming. They drenched her in sweat and gave her stomach cramps. They made her sick with fear. They were terrifying. They showed a terrible future—they showed Grace’s death in childbirth.

  And now, the girl was having them too.

  Grace dreamt her own destruction. And the worst thing was, she knew her dreams were real. She knew she had a gift, because her grandmother had told her. If Grace had thought they were merely dreams, it would’ve been bearable. It would have been horrible to think of her daughter suffering nightmares. But that was all they would have been—nightmares. But Grace’s visions were more than that. They were real. Just like Bet’s. Just like Bet’s mother.

  And just like her grandfather, Jonas.

  Now Grace said, “I’m not going to die, am I, mum?”

  Bet bit her lips. She said nothing.

  “Mum, please say I’m not going to die. Please promise me I’ll be all right. Please say my baby will be all right.”

  Bet stayed quiet. Hot tears ran down her cheeks. Cold sweat ran down her neck.

  Grace sat up and her face twisted with dread, and she screamed, “Tell me I’m not going to die, Mum, tell me.”

  Chapter 52

  THE SUITCASE

  BROMLEY, KENT—3:41 PM, FEBRUARY 27, 2011

  “And I never did tell her,” said Bet. “It would’ve been a lie.”

  “A lie that would have given her some comfort,” said Tash. She was crying and looked at her father. “Did you know this?”

  He shook his head, his face pale.

  “You let her die,” said Tash.

  “I never let her die, stupid girl,” said Bet. “And lots of women died in childbirth back then. She was young, remember. Her body not ready for it. And it was destiny. It was written.”

  “Written where?”

  “Wherever our futures are written, I don’t know,” cried the old woman. “You don’t believe this stuff. I can tell.”

  Tash glared at her, her mouth open.

  Bet went on. “Well I didn’t, neither. I hated it. It was all crap. My grandad, he made a few bob out of it. Séances. Psychic readings. But by the time the war came along, no one was interested. Everyone busy surviving. I tell you, if I thought it would’ve made me rich, I’d have been on that stage or in some posh cow’s sitting room, spouting bullshit about those who’d p
assed over.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  Then Tash asked, “Could my mother see?”

  “’Course she could,” said Bet. “We all bloody can. It’s a curse.”

  Tash thought about her mum, her birth so deadly. Rose coming into the world had caused her own mother to die. Her conception came about because Grace was raped by her own father.

  Tash shuddered. Her skin crawled.

  My great-grandfather’s my grandfather, she thought.

  “Where did he go?” she said.

  “Who?” said Bet.

  “Him. Derek.”

  Bet shook her head. “Never saw him again. Happy not to.”

  “He should pay for what he did.” Tash looked at her dad. “Don’t you think?”

  He said, “There’s always judgment. Maybe not here. Maybe in the afterlife. But there’s always a judgment. He’ll pay, darlin’. He’ll pay.”

  Tash’s eyes dropped to the coffee table. The biscuits were untouched. Seeing the food made her tummy rumble. But she would bear the hunger. It was nothing compared to Grace’s agony.

  “We have to go,” she said. “I have to pick up Jasmine.” She rose and looked at Bet, sitting in her armchair. For the first time since they’d arrived, the old woman looked her age. She looked fragile. She looked near death. Maybe she was ready for it. Maybe she’d wanted to reveal this terrible secret, a confession before her passing.

  Tash told her, “Thank you,” but there was very little warmth in the gratitude.

  Tash’s dad matter-of-factly kissed Bet on the cheek.

  He came to Tash, waiting by the door. Bet stared out of the window.

  Her dad told Tash, “Come on, let’s leave her to it.”

  They turned to leave.

  “Hang on a minute,” said Bet.

  Facing her again, Tash saw the old woman lift herself out of the chair and toddle over to a large, white wardrobe. She opened its door and said, “Come over here and help me, for Christ’s sake.”

  When Tash went over, Bet pointed to the bottom of the wardrobe.

  “In there, underneath those shoeboxes,” she said.

  “What am I looking for?” Tash squatted and reached into the wardrobe. It smelled musty. The odor of mothballs.

  “Shift a few of those boxes; you’ll see it.”

  Tash obeyed, piling the shoeboxes to the side. She saw something and took it out, laying it on the carpet. It was a red suitcase. It looked ancient. Rust covered the hinges. The casing was split and torn. One of the clasps was missing.

  “It was my grandad’s,” said Bet. “I got no need for it. Nor the terrible old things inside it, neither.”

  Chapter 53

  BIRTHDAY PRESENT

  WHITECHAPEL, LONDON–3:52 PM, FEBRUARY 27, 2011

  Allan Graveney had reason to celebrate. Not only was it his forty-third birthday, and to mark the event he was getting his forty-third tattoo, it would also be the occasion of Charlie Faultless’s death.

  “The spineless, gutless, attack-from-behind, murdering bastard,” he’d said an hour earlier when his son, Ryan, called him to say they had Faultless.

  Graveney was sitting in the tattoo parlor. His skin burned with fresh ink, which had been drawn in to the shape of Death. The cowled, sickle-wielding figure reached from Graveney’s belly button to his solar plexus.

  He had planned to have an angel done. He already had one—a golden-haired figure with a halo, its wings spread as if ready to fly. Graveney was also adorned in scarier images. On his back, a samurai warrior brandished an uchigatana sword. Across his upper chest, a dragon breathed fire over his shoulder. Down his thigh, a snake coiled, its tail wrapped tightly around Graveney’s knee.

  The snake had been his first. He was fifteen. During that same year, he was tattooed another fourteen times. His elder brother, Tony, rest his soul, had said, “Now you got one for every year you been on this earth, kid.”

  And that triggered the idea—he’d get one every birthday from then on.

  When Tony was murdered, he had a portrait of him inked right over where his heart beat with fury. Beneath Tony’s image, the words RIP, My Big Brother, Tony, 04.24.66–07.26.96 were written.

  Finally, he would be avenged.

  I’m going to slit you open and send you to hell where you belong, Faultless, he thought.

  At the time of Tony’s murder, a war had threatened to break out on Barrowmore. Faultless was one of Hanbury’s pit bulls. He was a name in the gangster’s organization. Despite being a teenager, Faultless was highly regarded by the big guns. He planned heists. He dealt drugs. He ordered beatings.

  And he dished them out. Plenty. Charlie Faultless was a hard case.

  But Hanbury and the Graveney’s had a pact. Trouble always simmered, but Allan and Tony’s dad, Arthur Graveney, had made peace with Roy Hanbury in the 1970s. And that peace held—until Faultless murdered Tony.

  Charlie blamed Graveney for his mother’s murder. Pat Faultless had been butchered by the killer the newspapers called the New Ripper. At the time, she was seeing Tony off and on. Faultless hated that, but there was nothing he could do. The pact was in place. No cross border raids. No hit-and-runs against Graveney’s men. Sleeping with the enemy was approved from on high.

  “Old Roy’s told him there ain’t nothing he can do,” Tony once told his brother. “I’m screwing the little bastards mother, and that’s all there is to it.”

  Hours before she died, Patricia rowed with Tony. It was a public spat. They swore and fought in the pub. She smashed a bottle over his head. He smacked her, slicing open her lip. She stormed out of the pub. Later that evening, she died. Her killer cut her throat, ear to ear. Then he sliced her open and scooped out her guts. He cut her breasts off and took her kidney as a souvenir.

  Faultless went ballistic. He nailed Tony. The cold war became hot.

  Arthur Graveney told Roy Hanbury, “I want the little fucker’s balls on my breakfast table.”

  Roy Hanbury said, “His balls, your arse, Artie.”

  “He’s broken the code,” Graveney’s father had said.

  “And he’ll pay for that.”

  “Blood for blood, Roy.”

  “You’ve got to give the kid a break. He’s lost his mother, and Tony smacked her, Artie.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t kill her.”

  Allan had been there, watching the two bulls going head to head. You never messed with Hanbury, but that day Dad was close to going bare-knuckle with him. He wanted blood. Charlie Faultless’s blood.

  “I’ll give you something else,” Roy Hanbury had said.

  In business terms, it was a good deal. Hanbury handed over his cannabis trade. It was big money, and it came with Dutch contacts and street dealers. It came with Charlie Faultless’s exile.

  At the time, Allan urged his father to reject the deal. His blood was up. He wanted revenge for his brother.

  But Arthur Graveney saw the commercial value in accepting Hanbury’s terms.

  Faultless disappeared. The Graveney’s made money. Hanbury went to prison. But still, the rage burned in Allan’s heart. And when his old man died in 2004, he pledged to break the pact made with Hanbury if he ever got the chance. He pledged to kill Charlie Faultless.

  He was about to fulfill that pledge.

  On his phone, he dialed Ryan.

  His son answered.

  Allan said, “What state’s he in?”

  “A fucking state, Dad,” said Ryan.

  “Good, I’ll be there in ten.”

  Chapter 54

  EVIL PLACES

  Hallam sat on the mattress in the Spencer’s squat. He looked around. The place was worse than his flat. At least he had furniture. And dishes and cutlery. Spencer seemed to eat mostly out of pizza boxes. They were scattered around, bits of food
going green in some of them. One thing Spencer had that Hallam coveted was the TV. It was huge. Hallam’s was an old-fashioned one with a tube. It was a big, lumpy thing. Not lean and cool like these flat screens everyone had these days.

  His eyes went round the flat, and they rested again on the one thing Hallam was glad he’d never had in his flat.

  A policeman crucified on the wall. That was definitely something to avoid.

  Hallam stared at the officer. He wondered if he were dead. But then the man spluttered, and blood dribbled from his mouth. He groaned and trembled.

  Seeing him nailed to the wall reminded Hallam of Paul Sharpley hanging on the door of the garage as it swung open.

  The difference was that Paul Sharpley was dead.

  Lucky him, thought Hallam. I’d rather be dead than alive if someone nailed my hands and feet to a wall.

  Looking at the dying policeman made Hallam excited. He should’ve been scared. He should’ve run away the moment the door opened and the fog surrounded him and the voice called him inside. He should’ve known that the evil in Spencer’s flat would possess him.

  But it was what Hallam wanted.

  He wanted to serve. He wanted to belong. He wanted to see things like the crucified cop. He wanted to be part of the culture that fashioned such horrors.

  He’d been nothing all his life. An outsider. A joke. Someone to laugh at. But he knew deep in his sick, dark soul that he surely belonged somewhere. Others must have felt what he felt. He wasn’t alone in the grim and cruel world. And when the fog slithered all over him, crawling inside his clothes and chilling his flesh, he knew that finally he was close to home.

  Spencer, his face white with fear, his whole body shaking, had said, “If it was anything to do with me, there’s no way you’d be here, Hallam. You’re a pervert, and everybody knows it. But it ain’t got nothing to do with me, so you’re here, and that’s that.”