Chapter 94
I AM NOT OWED GOOD FORTUNE
Judgment, Faultless thought. This is judgment.
He hurt all over. He bled from his mouth, his scalp, and his nose. He bled inside too. He was sure of it. He felt death creep up on him.
For years, he thought he’d got away with everything. He thought he’d got away with murder. Tony Graveney’s murder.
But justice had been pursuing him. It had been a predator, lurking in the shadows, waiting for him to make a mistake.
And he made one.
He’d come home.
He lay on the bunk in the police cell and put his arm across his eyes. His head ached. He worried he might have a fractured skull. Although his attackers had focused their batons on his body, a few blows cracked him on the nut.
He vaguely recalled them dragging him along the ground and throwing him into a car. He remembered feeling sick. He might have puked. He had a bad taste in his mouth when he came around. He had blood in there, too. Blood and dirt.
When they took him into the police station, he heard Wilks say, “This fella’s been beaten up. He’s drunk. People are looking for him. We’re booking him in for his own safety.”
He had looked up at the desk sergeant, and the woman’s face had been creased with concern, and she’d said, “He needs a doctor, now.”
Wilks had said, “I’ve got one coming.”
Next thing Faultless knew, he was in a cell. Some bloke with bad breath was in his face, shining a light in his eyes.
Wilks’s voice nearby was saying, “Give him a cursory glance, Doc. And tell that cow on the custody desk that he’s all right.”
The bloke with bad breath had said, “Chief Superintendent Wilks, this man is gravely in need of hospital treatment, and—”
“And you, Doc, will be gravely in need of a divorce lawyer and a new reputation when I accidentally give the press the file on you and those under-aged Lithuanian prostitutes.”
“I . . . I thought they were eighteen, all of them.”
“The missus would be all right with that, then, will she?”
Then Wilks and the bloke with bad breath had gone and Faultless dreamed of being trapped in a furnace.
He woke up feeling sick. He had no phone, no watch. He had no idea what the time was. How long he’d been here. How damaged he was.
Again he thought, Judgment. This is what I had coming.
It was just a shame that Wilks had been his judge. But you had no choice. If you sin, you don’t get to choose your punishment—or your punisher.
He’d always known this day would come. He’d never felt he deserved the luck he’d had since leaving England.
Three years before, he’d won one of the US’s most prestigious journalism awards. He’d written a piece about two Detroit drug dealers, murdered by a police hit squad. It resulted in four policemen being jailed. But even as he accepted the award and his peers applauded him, a tiny voice in his head was saying, “You shouldn’t be here, you fraud—you should be in jail with those killer cops, rotting.”
Even on his wedding day to the lavish Cora-Marie Bryant, a former Miss Boston and a New York media lawyer, he was thinking, This is not what I deserve.
Two years later, when Cora-Marie left him because he spent all his time on assignments, he felt he did deserve to lose her.
I am not owed happiness, he told himself. I am not owed good fortune.
So every time it came his way, he did his best to send it packing.
Soon after Cora-Marie divorced him, Faultless had decided to come back to England. He had to face his demons. He had to face his judgment. But if he were going to be punished, at least he could get some vengeance.
So he would investigate his mother’s death, Rachel’s death, and write a book about the killings. He would find the killer and name him. And then, if the old Charlie insisted, he would punish the murderer as well.
It would make Faultless feel better about the murder of his girlfriend and the murder of his mother, and it would make him feel better for killing an innocent man.
Well, innocent of those murders. Graveney was hardly Francis of Assisi. He certainly deserved judgment. Just not for murdering Patricia Faultless.
Now he tried to work out the time. It was probably early evening. He wondered how long he’d been holed up in this cell. Wilks would certainly question him over Graveney’s murder, and he’d have him charged for beating up those coppers—despite the fact they’d got their revenge.
As he rested, breathing steadily, he started to smell something weird. He sat up quickly. Not a good idea. Dizziness overpowered him, and he was close to fainting. But he mastered his state and steadied himself, his vision clearing, his coordination returning.
He looked round the cell.
The odor was stronger now. It was sharp in his nostrils and made his eyes water.
He blinked, his eyes sore. But then he kept them open. He fixed on something. Something he thought at first was gas.
They’re poisoning me, he said to himself.
The gas smelled of bad eggs. It seeped out of the floor, from the crevices in the walls. It poured through the slats in the ceiling.
He tried to hold his breath. His chest tightened. He gasped. The bad odor filled his lungs. He felt sick. He felt queasy. Panic gripped him. He scrambled for the door, thinking, Bastard filth, and he clawed at the metal grille, trying to open it.
Then he jerked, as if the floor had actually risen.
He looked down, not believing it. But it was true.
The floor bucked again. Faultless was thrown off his feet. He staggered back towards the bunk. He had to breathe and sucked in the bad air.
It was rotten. It was decayed. He retched.
The floor kicked up again. Something was under it, trying to get out. Something big. It reared again, the concrete splitting now. The floor peeled back. It creaked and groaned.
Faultless rolled up into a ball on his bunk and watched with horror as the ground opened.
A shaft of light shot up through the crack, and it was blinding.
Heat filled the cell. Sweat poured down Faultless’s face. Sweat and blood. The earth cleaved. An eruption from below threw up soil and concrete. It rained over Faultless, and he covered his head.
The noise was deafening. The roaring of the earth tearing. The creaking of structures buckling. The sizzling of flames burning.
Faultless kept his head down. He shut his eyes. He gritted his teeth. He waited to die.
But only silence came. Everything grew still and quiet.
He panted, still cowering. The smell remained, but it was now mingling with other odors—smoke, wood, petrol.
He panicked and sat up, and standing at the edge of the abyss at the center of the cell, smoking a cigar, was Lew.
He smiled at Faultless and said, “I’ve come for you in your darkest place.”