Chapter 49

ATTACKED

Faultless thought about Druitt’s briefcase while he walked.

Hallam Buck claimed he’d found it at the murder scene. He’d hidden it before ringing the police.

Why had he done that?

According to what Tash said, Buck was besotted with her and might have taken the briefcase to impress her.

The opportunity to do that arose when Faultless approached him earlier that morning.

But was the briefcase authentic?

Faultless found that difficult to believe—a Jack the Ripper suspect’s briefcase turns up at the scene of 21st century murder.

He thought, Perhaps the case has been there since the 1880s.

No, that was impossible. The lock-ups were only built in the 1950s. Before then, warehouses crowded the area. Warehouses and terraces fit for nothing but rats and cockroaches. Those old building had been flattened along with the rest of the slums. New homes had been built. And the lock-ups to go with them. Most of the garages were empty.

As a youth, Faultless had seen them used to stow class-A drugs, hide pinched motors, hoard stolen cash, and interrogate kidnapped grasses.

It was impossible that the briefcase had just been sitting there for more than a 120 years.

Faultless walked along a street of red-brick houses. Toys littered front gardens. Dogs barked. Music blared from an open window. Two men sat talking in a silver BMW up a side road. A wheeless red Toyota, with its engine on the pavement next to it, perched on piles of bricks.

The lock-ups lay up ahead. Trees draped over them, as if protecting the garages from prying eyes.

He stopped walking and looked around. The streets were pretty empty. A group of boys rode their bikes on a grassy slope. Two teenaged girls waited at a bus stop. The silver BMW appeared at the end of the junction and stopped. There was no traffic, so the driver could have pulled out. For some reason, he stayed where he was, the engine still running.

Faultless clocked the guy behind the wheel. Then he turned away and kept walking.

The driver’s face stayed in his mind. He tried to place him. But then the scar under Hallam Buck’s eye suddenly flashed up in his thoughts, and then the bearded old man came to his head.

I’ve seen these people before, he thought.

He heard the car scream up the road, and he turned to see it skid to a halt next to him.

Faultless cocked his head. He wasn’t scared. He’d never been scared.

The passenger leapt out—a big black guy wielding a baseball bat.

Before he could defend himself, something hit Faultless on the back of the head.

Dazed, he staggered towards the black man who struck him across the face with his club.