Pariah Read online

  He and Roy had come over half-an-hour earlier. At the door, Tash nearly threw her arms around his neck. He could tell she wanted to. Roy was happy to look after his granddaughter in the living room while Faultless and Tash had some privacy.

  She had wanted to tell him what she’d discovered. But first there were things she had to know.

  “What did they do to you?” she asked.

  “They tried to barbecue me.”

  She flinched. Her sapphire eyes welled up.

  “What happened?”

  He told her.

  She said, “You think it was the old geezer you saw when you arrived? The one outside the shop?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he brought you to my dad’s place?”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “And . . . and he killed Graveney?”

  “He had fire.”

  “Fire,” she said and touched his face.

  “Yes. Fire. He came with fire. From fire. I don’t know. I was fucked. Radio Rental. Probably hallucinating. But that’s what I saw.”

  She nodded. He held her hand and kissed her wrist.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” she said but made no effort to pull her hand away.

  “Tash, I’d seen him before. The old man.”

  “Yeah, outside the shop.” She shuffled closer, so her knee was touching his thigh.

  “No,” he said. “Years ago.”

  “How many years ago?”

  “Nearly thirty five.”

  She furrowed her brow. “What?”

  “I . . . I dreamt him bringing me here as a baby.”

  “A dream. Are you like me? Like Jasmine?”

  He shook his head. “What did the letter say?”

  “It said, ‘To my children’s children and those who follow,’ and it was written by someone called Richard Troy. He wrote it in 1666. I guess he was one of my ancestors. One of Jasmine’s. He said we are seers.”

  “Seers?”

  “We can see. Dream. Have visions. Psychics, I suppose. Do you believe someone can be psychic?”

  “I’ve heard loads of people claim they were.”

  “What about them that help the cops?”

  “They don’t help the cops. They say they do. When there’s a murder, they ring up and say stuff like, ‘I think the body’s here or there,’ and ‘I saw so-and-so. ‘Police have just got to follow up on those leads. No choice. A lead is a lead, no matter how shit. When they do, the psychic can say they helped the police—which isn’t a lie, despite being bollocks.”

  “You think if I see something I should tell the cops?”

  He thought about it.

  “You should, I guess.”

  “So you think I am psychic?”

  He said nothing.

  She looked away. “This Richard Troy, he says we go right back to the beginning of time. We . . . my ancestors . . . we were chosen to . . . to hunt this evil. Hunt it wherever it appeared.”

  He listened. He looked at her. He thought how beautiful she was. For the first time while gazing at her, Rachel stayed out of his mind. Instead, there was only Tash.

  “He says, this Troy, he says London had just burned down. A great fire, he called it.”

  “The Great Fire of London. Started by accident in a bakers in Pudding Lane. Not far from London Bridge.”

  Tash shook her head. “Not according to Richard. He says they were chasing this . . . this thing, this dark angel, he calls it. The fallen one. He’d got free. He wrote that, ‘Three had been ripped, and the evil sought out two more of my kind.’ It was this fallen one who started the fire. But they trapped it. This Troy fella says they burned the wounds of Christ into its body and locked it up in a coffin weighed down with lead. Tossed it into the Thames. Watched it sink.”

  “What’s that got to do with all of this?”

  “Charlie, don’t you see? It’s Jack the Ripper, ain’t it.”

  “You think Jack the Rippers come back to life?”

  “You found that briefcase.”

  “Montague Druitt’s come back to life?”

  “Neither, Charlie. It’s the fallen one. The dark angel. ‘Three had been ripped, and the evil sought out two more of my kind.’ That’s what Troy said. And in Jonas Troy’s notebooks, he says that the Ripper victims in 1888 in Whitechapel were seers, too.”

  Faultless narrowed his eyes. He was trying to link everything. Jack the Ripper. The fallen one. Dark angels. Seers. And the old man with the little tuft of hair on his chin. They were all pieces of information flying about, refusing to join up and make sense.

  Tash said, “Jonas Troy says that Jack—that’s what the newspapers started to call him—failed to rip Elizabeth Stride properly. She wasn’t the fifth. There were only four. He was looking for a fifth victim, so he could be freed from a curse. It says in the notebooks that . . . the five wounds of Christ bound this evil figure. Only blood can unbind him, it says. And five deaths will free him.”

  Faultless stared into space.

  Tash carried on talking. “Jonas says this is how it’s always been—this evil thing hunted by . . . by the seers, and the seers themselves hunted by him in return. They’re caught in a vicious circle. He can’t be killed, though; he can only be contained, it says.”

  “Everything can be killed.”

  “It . . . it says he can’t.”

  Faultless looked her in the eye. She was terrified. Her confusion and dread was obvious in her face.

  “So what’s the point if he can’t be killed?”

  Tash swallowed. She was pale. She said, “Jonas writes that if this evil he hunts kills five seers and takes . . . takes what he calls ‘the gift’ from them, he will rule the whole world, and it would be hell on earth.”

  After a while, Faultless said, “How does he get free in the first place? If this Richard Troy flung him in the river in the 17th century, how did he get out of the coffin to kill in 1888?”

  Studying the notes, Tash said, “Blood can unbind him . . . that’s what it says.” She flicked through the pages of one of Troy’s notebooks. “Here . . . here, it says that a woman called Martha Tabram was killed on August 7, 1888—about three weeks before the first Ripper victim, Mary Ann Nichols, was killed. Jonas says here that . . . ” She tailed off and licked her lips, then coughed.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, just scared.”

  He stroked her arm. She held his gaze for a few seconds. Then he said, “Tell me about Martha Tabram.”

  She looked at the notes again. “J-Jonas says she was found at somewhere called George-yard-buildings in Whitechapel by a laborer. She’d . . . she’d been stabbed—oh my God, Charlie—she’d been stabbed thirty-nine times. Jonas says she was killed to free this evil from the curse. He says this thing, this spirit, can . . . can call to the evil in men’s hearts. He is always calling out to it, says Jonas here. Even while he’s trapped in the curse. He reaches out to anyone who approaches his place of burial, tempting them, urging them to spill blood for him. Blood can unbind him. And then, when he’s free, he comes after the seers.” She looked up at Faultless. “You . . . you think those lads in the lock-up freed this . . . this thing from its curse?”

  He shook his head. It was difficult to accept Jonas Troy’s ramblings. Faultless liked evidence. Just because there wasn’t any, you shouldn’t immediately leap to a supernatural conclusion.

  “Charlie . . . Charlie, if this is true, and he’s looking for seers to kill, he’s looking for me and Jasmine. He’s going to kill us.”

  Chapter 66

  JACK’S LETTERS

  Roy Hanbury was purple with rage.

  Times like these, Jesus turned a blind eye. Or maybe Hanbury’s cold heart became too hot for the Almighty to handle. Because if anyone tri
ed to lay a hand on his daughter or his granddaughter, he would murder them. Just like he should have murdered the one who killed Rachel. He had wanted to. He was going to hunt him down and torture him to death.

  But then the Old Bill nabbed Hanbury over the Stepney raid.

  Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was heavenly intervention. Maybe it was two pillocks who failed to follow orders.

  Whatever it was, he’d ended up doing time and Ernie Page came along with his Bible and Hanbury’s hate dwindled.

  But now it was back. And it was volcanic.

  The eruption occurred when Jasmine told him the killer stalking Barrowmore intended to kill her and her mum.

  At first he had tried to comfort her. They were sitting on the sofa together, and he put a big arm around her small body. “You been watching too many scary movies, babe.”

  Tash had taken a batch of old letters and notebooks with her into the bedroom, but some remained in the living room, scattered about. And Jasmine had showed them to Hanbury.

  “He wants to kill us, Grandad,” said Jasmine. “Mum and me, we’re seers. Just like Bet Cooper. Just like Jonas Troy. And Jack the Ripper, he’s going to kill us like he killed all those women in 1888.”

  Hanbury felt the hate bubble up, and it nearly made his head explode. He read a copy of a letter supposedly sent by Jack the Ripper to Central News Limited, a news agency, on September 25, 1888. The sheet on which it was written was turning yellow. The letter had been typed. The ink smudged. The words said, “The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly . . . ”

  Hanbury trembled with fury.

  An image stained his mind, and it was there to stay—this fucker slicing little Jasmine’s ears off, her shrieking, and him too far away to save her.

  Hanbury read on.

  “My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance.”

  He put the letter back on the coffee table. A pile of them were stacked there, along with a notebook and clippings from old newspapers

  “You’re very red, Grandad,” said Jasmine.

  “I’m angry, darlin’.”

  “With me?”

  He stroked her hair. “No, sweetheart, never. With . . . with this fella. This man who . . . I tell you, if he tried to hurt you or your mum, he’s going to feel my wrath. No more Mr Nice Roy. No more.”

  “Well be okay, won’t we?”

  “You will, darlin’’ girl, you will.”

  He reached for another letter. This one had been sent once more to the news agency and was dated October 5, 1888. His eyes skimmed the words.

  “ . . . for the women of Moab and Midian shall die, and their blood shall mingle with the dust . . . ”

  Hanbury cursed.

  He could feel his trust in God, his faith in Jesus ebb, away.

  Ernie Page’s words came back to him.

  “It’s a blanket, brother. 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.”

  He could feel Christ in his heart. He was convinced Jesus was there, making him good. Saving his soul. Believing in God made it easy for him to accept what these letters suggested—that there was a supernatural element to what was happening. Accepting the true God made it easier to accept other gods, and also ghosts, UFOs . . . and psychics.

  Seers.

  He’d always known his wife had a gift. She could see things coming. Often she’d warn him, “Don’t go to the meet tonight, Roy; there’s going to be trouble.”

  He’d ignore her concerns, her tears, and keep the appointment. It would usually be with another villain. Settling debts. Buying drugs or weapons. Exchanging prisoners. Things would normally go without a hitch. But when Rose warned him there would be trouble, she was right. She had foresight. She had a gift. And because he was a bastard back then, he’d disregarded her and her knack for prediction.

  He should have got her to forecast some winners for him, because he always lost on the horses.

  But then she was gone. The fury came again, rising up from somewhere deep inside him. The place where sin still lurked. He quelled the rage by thinking about Jesus. He tried to feel his savior’s warmth. He’d known it before. It had healed him. It had cleansed him of malice. Or so he thought.

  He’d been right when he told the probation officer that evil was in his genes.

  It only needed a trigger to reactivate it.

  And here was that trigger.

  A threat to his family. And a determination not to back down like he did when Rachel had been killed.

  Forgive me, Lord, he thought, but you and me are finished for the time being. Get me through this, I might come back. Fuck it up and let my babies die, I’ll fucking hunt you down to heaven and crucify you again.

  He got up and strode over to the bedroom door to get Faultless.

  Chapter 67

  THE CREATURE FROM THE GARDEN

  “So according to Jonas Troy’s notes, this fallen angel had to be . . . ” said Tash, tailing off to check the notebook, flicking through the pages. “Had to be bound by the five wounds of Christ. And then he says only blood can get him out of the curse. And five deaths will free him. What does that mean?”

  Her dad, his face red with rage, said, “Didn’t Jack the Ripper kill five women? Ain’t that five?”

  Faultless stepped forward. He looked down at all the stuff piled on Tash’s coffee table. He skimmed the material quickly and then picked up an old newspaper clipping. It was covered in words. Not like today’s newspapers, he thought. Big tits, big headlines. But one thing that a red top in 2011 and an 1888 rag had in common was sensationalism. Sketches portraying some kind of evil figure stalking Whitechapel replaced the paparazzi-snapped photos of the present day. Images of the terrified poor were on every page. Words like “terror”, “horror”, and “fear” were peppered all over the pages.

  He said, “Elizabeth Stride, who was found on September 30, hadn’t been ripped open. She’d been killed. Her throat cut. But not . . . ”

  He trailed off, glancing at Jasmine. The girl was curled up on the sofa, reading one of Troy’s journals.

  Tash looked at him and nodded.

  He went on. “Thing is, these women were all seers.”

  Tash paled. Her gaze settled on her daughter. Hanbury must have read her expression. “It’s all right, darlin’,” he said. “He won’t get to you, Tash. Neither of you. Not while Charlie and me are around.”

  Faultless said, “And when he killed them, he got something from them. That’s why they were all cut open. There was something he needed.”

  “Organs were missing,” said Tash, shivering.

  “You think . . . ” started Hanbury, before losing his words somewhere.

  “What?” said Faultless.

  “You think he was a cannibal or something?” said Hanbury.

  Faultless shrugged.

  Hanbury continued. “Was he killing them for food? Christ almighty.”

  Faultless started to think about something. This was enough to make you mad. How could it be true? Everything he trusted—rationality, evidence, skepticism—were being tossed out and replaced by an unquestioning acceptance of supernatural things. But the transition felt normal. It was painless. It became perfectly natural to believe that an evil being stalked the Barrowmore Estate and that certain people had a gift enabling them to see this presence. And those people included some he loved, some he’d lost.

  After a while, he said, “Rachel was a seer. Just like you, Tash. Like the rest of your family.”

  This was a declaration of acceptance from Faultless—and acceptance of the bizarre. A statement revealing that he acknowledged everything and rejected nothing. All explanations, howev
er irrational, were valid from now on.

  He went on. “Rachel . . . Rachel was . . . ” He couldn’t finish the sentence. She had been ripped open. Her kidney removed. He felt cold, and he saw the fear in Tash and Hanbury. “Were you related to Susan Murray and Nancy Sherwood?” he asked.

  Tash shook her head.

  “Were you related to my mum?”

  “You saying,” said Hanbury, “that this Ripper was around fifteen years back?”

  Faultless shook his head firmly. “I just don’t accept that. It’s got to be a copycat killer.”

  “Are we all related, then?” asked Tash. “Your mum, too?”

  Faultless stayed quiet for a few moments before he said, “She weren’t my mum.”

  “It was only a dream,” said Hanbury.

  “I don’t think it was. He brought me to your door yesterday, Roy. I didn’t get there by myself, not in my condition. And he laid me at my mother’s door when I was a nipper. I’m not her son. I’m a waif and stray, mate. An orphan. But who’s he? Who’s the old fella?”

  “Maybe he’s the killer?” said Hanbury.

  “No he ain’t,” said Jasmine.

  They all turned to look at her.

  “He ain’t the killer,” she said. “And neither’s this Jack fella.”

  “What do you mean, babe?” said Tash.

  “It says it here in Jonas’s book,” said her daughter. “It says this fallen angel—‘the creature from the Garden,’ Jonas calls him—this thing, he can’t kill the seers. He ain’t allowed to.”

  “Go on, Jasmine,” said Faultless.

  The girl looked at the old notebook. “It says there’s evil in everyone, right. Deep inside. Sometimes it hides itself. It’s . . . ” She narrowed her eyes, studying a page. “Dor . . . dormant, it says.”

  “What else does he say, sweetheart?” said Hanbury.

  “He says, right, that this creature speaks to the evil in men. It’s only their evil part that can hear him to begin with, then he infects every bit of them. He loves to kill, to cause carnage and mayhem, but he needs to persuade someone else to kill the seers. Jonas calls him ‘the lord who gapes,’ ‘ the lantern of the tomb,’ ‘the moth eating at the law’.”