Chapter 20

THE VOICE IN THE DARKNESS

WHITECHAPEL—8:47 AM, FEBRUARY 26, 2011

How had they ended up here?

Spencer had no idea.

They’d been running hard, the brothers tailing them.

Lethal brought up the rear and was shouting, “I got my shank out, Drake. You’re gonna bleed, cunt.”

Spencer ran. Blinded by fear. Blinded by rain. The sky like lead. The terror heavy in his limbs. His heart nearly bursting. Jay-T behind him, wheezing.

They ran along the roads. Down the alleys. Over parked vehicles. In front of moving vehicles—brakes shrieking and drivers cursing. Plowing through pedestrians. Weaving past cyclists. Flipping over a pram—the mum screeching and threatening death.

Running till Spencer saw hope.

One of the garages—the padlock unlatched, the door slightly ajar.

As they entered the building, they looked back. No sign of Lethal and the Sharpleys.

Spencer could hear them, though—pounding the pavements a few dozen yards around the corner.

“What is this place?” Jay-T asked.

“Just get inside,” Spencer told him.

Into darkness. Into cold. Into stink.

“Jeeee-sus,” said Jay-T. “It goes way back down there, way back. Can you see?”

Just, but it was pretty dark. Light seeped in through gaps in the ceiling. But very little. Barely enough to show them the way.

But the way where?

“Where are we going?” Jay-T said.

“I don’t fucking know.”

At the back of the warehouse, they found an office. The door hung off its hinges. Cobwebs curtained the entrance, but the boys waded through.

Rats scuttled. The place smelled old. Yellowing papers curled on a table. Spiders crawled over a typewriter. A coffee mug was half full of something green and thick.

A wooden door at the rear of the office, marked Do Not Enter, looked tempting.

“Let’s go,” said Spencer. “They’ll never find us.”

They nearly tumbled down stone stairs that led into pitch black.

“Not sure about this, Spencer,” Jay-T said.

“Lethal’s going to cut you,” Spencer replied.

They went down into the dark.

Their eyes adjusted to the gloom, and a little light also filtered from a crack where the wall and the ceiling met. It helped them see enough of their surroundings.

Wooden crates, rotting and stinking, were piled around the walls. The floor was littered with debris—pieces of wood, bricks, chunks of cement.

Damp soaked into everything. It smelled fusty and old. It smelled dead.

How did we end up here? Spencer thought.

How? By having itchy fingers and failing to walk past an opportunity, that’s how.

Like he told Mr Hanbury, he had never meant to nick the PS3.

But when he’d swaggered past the Sharpleys flat in Bradford House the previous afternoon, he couldn’t resist poking his head through the open door.

Paul was fighting with his dad, reeling around the living room. They swore and shouted. Both sounded drunk.

The PS3 sat by the door. It was still in its box. It had a price tag on it. One of the Sharpleys had probably nicked it from somewhere. A house or maybe even somewhere in town.

With his brain telling him not to do it, Spencer had reached out and grabbed the box.

He thought he’d got away with it. But just before he legged it, he’d looked up and Paul caught his eye. He hadn’t said anything, only carried on laying into his dad.

And when Spencer finally bolted, he was pretty sure he’d got away with it.

But something had slowly uncoiled in his belly during the rest of the day.

It was fear.

And it became fully unfurled when news rifled through the tenements that the Sharpleys were looking for the bastard who nabbed their PS3.

Spencer had been up all night on the games console. If the Sharpleys were coming to get it back, he was going to make the most of it.

Jay-T had also been up all night—smoking dope with his sister.

The mates had met at 8:00 am.

“Come over to the squat; I got a PS3,” Spencer had said.

“Yeah, and the Sharpleys want it back,” Jay-T had said.

“Better hurry up and play it to fuck, then.”

They’d nicked some cereal from Costcutter and ate it from the box, heading back towards Spencer’s squat. Then, as they strolled past Roy Hanbury’s house, a voice had called out, “Spencer Drake, you heathen bastard, get in here, child of God.”

Spencer had frozen. His balls had shriveled. That happened when Roy Hanbury spoke to you. He was a legend. Not the fearsome figure he used to be when Spencer’s dad was a dealer round the estate. But he still had that reputation. You respected Roy Hanbury. He’d earned it. Now in the cellar beneath the garage, Spencer regretted ever setting eyes on the PS3.

“Look at this,” said Jay-T.

“What the fuck is it?” said Spencer.

It was an area of concrete floor that had been bricked off. Ten feet wide and six feet deep, the red of the bricks stood out against the dark stone of the cellar floor.

“Can you smell something?” said Jay-T.

Spencer felt dizzy. There was a drain set in the middle of the brickwork. He stared at the hole, narrowing his eyes.

“It’s coming from the drain,” said Jay-T. “And . . . and can you hear that noise?”

Spencer listened. He sniffed. He heard rushing water and smelled dirty river.

He listened to a cold voice whisper, Blood . . . blood . . . blood . . .

It chilled him. Froze his bones and made his brain hurt.

“What . . . what was that, Jay-T?”

Jay-T crouched at the drain and said, “Sounds like a river down there.”

Pick up a brick . . . crack his skull . . . make him bleed . . .

Spencer trembled. He felt dizzy, a bit sick.

Jay-T was saying something about a smell and a river and maybe something about treasure, but Spencer wasn’t sure. By then he’d bent down to pick up a brick and was lifting it above his head.

Do it, came the voice again, like acid in Spencer’s veins. Like a hammer in his skull. Do it and be my witness—be the instrument of my savagery. Do it . . .

Spencer saw white light.

With all his strength, he brought the brick down on the back of Jay-T’s head.