Chapter 14

NEW DAY, OLD WOUNDS

7:20 AM, FEBRUARY 26, 2011

Breakfast at the window. A gray sky spitting drizzle. Those residents with a Saturday job off to it. Driving away in cars and vans, lucky if they hadn’t been burned, stolen, or damaged overnight.

I wouldn’t keep a car there, thought Faultless.

Too much of a target for kids—a kid like he used to be.

From his window, he looked down into the square of concrete hemmed in by the tower blocks. It was a car park. It was somewhere to have a kickabout. A place to hang out, smoke, and drink. A battleground to settle differences.

It was anything you wanted it to be because here, on Barrowmore, there was no one to tell you what it shouldn’t be.

He tuned in to the headlines on the radio. Murder, betrayal, and corruption. War, famine, and plague. Sex, celebrity, and sport.

He yawned and rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t slept well. It was cold in the flat. The mattress was hard, his sleeping bag thin. And when someone tapped on the front door at 6:32 am, he sat straight up and came completely awake.

It was an assistant from his agent’s office. He looked twelve. He might have been fourteen. But he was clearly scared and cold, standing on the threshold with Faultless’s suitcase. A youngster on work experience who’d been landed with the a job because a top client needed looking after at the weekend.

“Mr . . . Mr Faultless?” said the youth.

“You’d better hope so,” the top client said.

“Oh . . . are—”

“Yes, I am.”

“Oh yes, I . . . I recognize you now. From the cover of . . . of Graveyard Of Empires.”

“Nice. Is that my case?”

He offered the kid a coffee with a caveat. “I guess Mike will want you back at the office, so I better not hold you up.” And then with sincerity he added, “When you’re walking out of the estate, try not to look like a potential victim.”

The youth gawked.

“You look like the proverbial rabbit, son. Try looking more like a wolf. Swagger, don’t slump. Head held high. Shoulders back. You should be okay.”

The youth left, still looking frightened despite the advice

Faultless sorted his clothes before sitting down for coffee and toast.

Now dressed in a hooded top, low-slung jeans, and trainers, he carried the dishes to the sink and left them to soak.

Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he left the flat and looked right and left along the walkway. He locked the door, double-locked it, padlocked it, and then gave it a wrench—just to check.

A man in his thirties ushered a child out of the flat next door. He wore a Motorhead t-shirt, and mythical beast tattoos decked his arms. The girl was six or seven, wearing a pink coat and pink ribbons in her hair.

“Put your hood on, darlin’,” said the man. Then he looked up and saw Faultless, and he froze. “All right,” he said, suspiciously.

“Good, thanks,” said Charlie.

The fella was looking Faultless in the eye. Fifteen years ago, the little girl might have been an orphan by now. Her dad’s eyes narrowed as he stared, and then he said, “Do I know you?”

“I don’t know, do you?”

“The eyes . . . ”

One blue, one brown. Once seen, never forgotten.

The dad said, “You moved next door?”

Faultless nodded.

The child said, “Dad, please . . . ”

The dad said, “Okay, darlin’,” then to Faultless, “Lots of families on the tenth floor, mate.”

“That’s nice.”

“We don’t want trouble.”

“That’s nice, too.”

“Okay, well . . . I’m—”

His daughter said, “Come on, Daddy,” and tugged him away before he could introduce himself. The dad nodded a farewell. Faultless was glad he didn’t have to say who he was. The guy might have recognized him. And who knew who he saw down the dole office or on the building site? Gossip galloped round Barrowmore. And if the Graveney’s still had their ear to the ground, it would have quickly been filled with tales of Charlie Faultless.

It took him twenty minutes to make his way to Monsell House, the northeast tower block. On the seventh floor, he stopped outside her door.

Rust caked the number. Red paint peeled. He swallowed, his throat dry. His palms were wet with sweat, and he wiped them on his jeans. He knocked on the door. Her words reached him before she did. “Hurry up, Jasmine, I want you ready.”

But when she opened the door, she stopped talking. Her mouth fell open. Her sapphire eyes blinked, and she said, “No way.”