Chapter 42

REACH FOR THE SKY

Terri Slater felt safe with the cops here. She didn’t want to admit that, but it was the truth.

She hated the cops. They’d put Wayne in jail.

Bastard pigs.

Always picking on him, knocking on her door at all hours asking, “Is Wayne in, Terri?” just because he went out robbing.

Bastard pigs.

Then the social came round and discovered she and Wayne were living as a couple.

Terri had told them she was a single mum, living alone with her kids.

How else was she supposed to get all the benefits she needed?

How else could she buy Italy and Rome the Ted Baker, Nike, and Ralph Lauren gear they had to have?

How else do you get Dominos delivered every night and Sky Movies on tap?

The girls were thirteen and nine and wanted to dress up nice. They wanted the best food and the latest music.

Dole money was the only way.

But when they found Wayne was living there, they cut it.

Terri fumed. She’d had to get a job. Her clients wouldn’t cover the costs. So she ended up doing the early morning shift at Costcutter four days a week, including Sundays.

And then the cops picked Wayne up again. It was three weeks ago. He’d mugged a pensioner near the post office.

He’d barely touched her, but she put up a fight when he tried to snatch her purse. Why hadn’t she just let go? Stupid bitch. She tugged and wrenched and screamed, but you can’t fight Wayne off when he wants something. He kicked her in the belly, and she fell, hitting her head on the pavement.

A week later, the old cow died.

Wayne faced murder.

I hate the cops.

But thank God they were crawling all over Barrowmore today.

She knew the Sharpleys. She thought she might’ve sucked off the eldest one, Michael, a couple of years ago.

Wasn’t he the one who refused to pay after she swallowed the lot?

She threatened to call Wayne in unless the kid paid.

She hurried along the tenth-floor walkway of Bradford House.

Home to Terri since she’d been born.

Home to her parents before her and home to their parents.

In fact, her mother’s mum and dad were among Barrowmore’s first residents.

They’d lived in the slums that scarred the East End. They’d crammed ten kids into their hovel. They’d lived on bread and potatoes. Four of the kids died.

The authorities razed the tenements. They built swanky new tower blocks. They said, “Look at what we’ve made for you, and be grateful for it.”

Reach for the sky.

Terri’s gran and grandad moved in. Thousands more came with them. They crawled from their fleapits and scaled their high rises.

Reach for the sky.

Work dried up. Crime leached in. The benefits culture became the way of life. It was cool Britannia. The immigrants kept coming—Bangladeshis at first, before the East Europeans swarmed in.

“No white Englishman left,” Wayne would say.

It was nearly midday. With her shift at Costcutter over, she was planning to snooze for the rest of the afternoon. Italy and Rome were probably out somewhere. Terri should’ve stayed home as well. But Mr Khan was a bastard when it came to sickies. You had to come in even if you had a cold.

“Fucking Paki,” Wayne would say. “Thinks he owns the place. They never gave a white person a chance—just gave it to a Paki.”

Terri had thought about it and said, “Yeah, but it was shut for years, Wayne, ‘cause no one local wanted to open it.”

He said, “Shut up, slag. I wasn’t asking your opinion,” and he slapped her. “Fucking Paki lover.”

Mr Khan and his wife were actually Bangladeshi—but they were all Pakis, Terri supposed. The store had been closed for three or four years before the couple took it over and re-opened it as a Costcutter. Some people—like Wayne—moaned. But most people were happy to have a mini-supermarket on the estate.

And at least it gave Terri and some of the other girls a job.

Better than being slobbered over by a fat, violent drunk for twenty quid.

Thirty yards to her door. The walkway was empty. The wind whistled along the passage. A Pepsi can rolled back and forth on the ground. Litter fluttered on the breeze. Screams and shouts filtered from down below in the streets. Sirens blared. A police helicopter hovered in the west.

Terri bricked it. Her legs felt weak as she strode. Her chest was tight. The walkway suddenly became gloomy. She hurried along. Her door looked so far away. She wanted to be inside, drunk—all her troubles drowned in a sea of cider.

More sirens screeched.

Maybe the cops were on to the killer. They had him in their sights.

She felt sick.

Her heart pounded.

She remembered her mother speaking about the New Ripper. It was fifteen years ago. Four women butchered.

Terri had been thirteen.

No worries back then. Only where the next bottle of Thunderbird was coming from.

Even that wasn’t a heavy concern. A blowie for a few boys would get her some dosh, and then it was down to the offie.

But now it was different. She felt threatened. Now she knew what life was about, and death was very near.

She reached for her key. The bunch jangled in her sweaty fingers. They slipped. She gasped, flailed at them. They clattered to the concrete.

She bit her lip and whined.

She squatted to pick them up.

The shadow passed over Terri and made everything dark.

She became very cold, and a creepy voice said, “I can see you.”

She looked up slowly, catching her breath.

She tried to scream, but he was quick.

And then her world turned upside down, and she wheeled, and the clouds became earth and the earth, clouds, and she flapped and flailed and fell and found her screaming voice as she hurtled ten-floors down, thinking, Reach for the sky, reach for the—