Chapter 48

FEAR AND INTIMIDATION

Hallam was furious. He trudged the tower blocks, plotting revenge and planning murder.

Charlie Faultless’s murder.

Faultless had stolen the briefcase.

Faultless had embarrassed him in front of Tash.

He’d kicked Hallam out of her flat.

I found the case, he thought. It’s mine . . . it’s mine, and so is she.

If he’d had the chance, he would have had her. He would have talked to her and persuaded her. And if she hadn’t listened, he would have made her listen. But only if Charlie Faultless weren’t there. But he was.

“Bastard,” mumbled Hallam as he moped through Bradford House. The Sharpleys had lived here. Spencer Drake had lived here. Jason Joseph Thomas had lived here. Hallam would find secrets here. He would find things to show Tash, things to tell her. Stuff that would make her worship him. Stuff that would make her go on her knees for him. And if she didn’t . . .

That bastard Charlie Faultless, he thought. He spoiled everything.

Hallam wished he were hard, tough, and fearless.

He wasn’t. He was a coward and a softy, scared of his own shadow and terrified of other people’s.

He walked up to the tenth floor of Bradford House. The lift was out. It always was in this tower block—it was the worst of the four high rises.

Good people lived here. They lived everywhere. But the bad overwhelmed them.

Fear and intimidation ruled the streets.

You only needed a few, and the many would cower.

They’re cowards, too, thought Hallam. The good are always cowards.

He plodded up the stairwell. It stank of piss. The Bradford House Crew moniker had been sprayed on the wall—BHC. They were a local crew. One of many. Mobs ruled the four tower blocks. Sometimes they fought each other, but mostly they were aligned under the Barrowmore banner to battle gangs from other estates. The majority were just kids with nothing better to do. Truants with no prospect of a job. Children whose parents had abandoned them to the streets. The gangs gave them a family. It gave them security.

Fear and intimidation, thought Hallam. They were everywhere—even among those who spread them.

Some senior members of the crews worked for local gangsters. Tash’s dad used to control the mobs on the estate before he went to prison and found God. He had dozens of thugs on his books.

Charlie Faultless among them.

Hallam’s hate for Faultless grew as he reached the tenth floor. He peeked around the corner to make sure the police weren’t loitering. They were everywhere now. You couldn’t stop and look over at a bunch of girls without some PC poking his nose in and saying, “Can I help you, mate?”

Hallam edged along the walkway. He felt shivery. His nerves jangled. Fear made him feel sick.

No one had seen Spencer Drake since the murders. The police had been round to his flat a few times. They’d hammered on the door and shouted through the letter box.

“You sure he lives here?” Hallam had heard one cop say to another after he followed them up the previous day.

The second cop said, “They say he squats here, that’s all.”

The police would probably knock once or twice more. Then they’d smash the door down. They were already priming their battering ram. They liked smashing down doors. It happened quite often on Barrowmore. Hallam’s next door neighbor suffered an early morning raid a few months before. The 6:00 am wake-up call had been very effective. It got the whole eighth floor out of bed. They battered their way in, shouting and trampling over everything. They dragged the bloke out. They tossed him on the ground. They let an Alsatian growl and slobber six inches from his face. The fellow was a drug dealer. But they could have knocked.

Hallam knew he had to be quick, or they’d ram their way into Spencer’s hovel.

He knew if he could get into his flat, have a poke around, he would be able to go back to Faultless and Tash and claim some knowledge.

The door was padlocked and caged. A strange smell came from inside the flat. Something wet drizzled from beneath the door. It looked like black water.

Hallam cringed. He wanted to go home and hide. But his desire to prove himself was overwhelming. He wanted to impress Tash, to make her want him.

Every morning he was round at her flat, saying hello and asking if she wanted anything.

Every morning she wanted nothing.

One day, he thought, one day.

He was thinking about the hole he wanted drill in his floor so he could watch Tash and Jasmine. His mind whirled. Images cascaded through his brain. He stared at the caged door and thought of caged women and children—a caged woman and a caged child.

Tash and Jasmine.

His slaves.

He groaned.

Something hissed. He thought it was the serpent in his soul, the evil that lived in him. The evil that made him do what he did and think what he thought.

But the noise didn’t come from inside him. It came from the flat. And from beneath the door, a fog billowed out. It was thin and wispy and swirled around Hallam’s legs. He stared at it and listened to its hiss. And behind the hiss, a word lurked.

A word he knew.

A name. His name.

And as the fog crept up his thighs and spooled around his groin, it called to him.

He answered.