Chapter 58

SINNER AND SAVED

Standing in the middle of Tash’s living room, Don Wilks frowned. He held his shoulders back and his chest out, and his arms were folded.

Arrogant bastard, thought Hanbury.

Roy and his daughter were sitting. Tash was terrified. The last thing you need is a visit from the cops, especially one with a bad-news face on.

Tash clutched her chest. Hanbury put an arm around her shoulder. A big dad’s arm that should have been a comfort to his daughter more often over the years.

The two decades since Rose died had been tough. After her death, Roy got more vicious; he got more violent.

Maybe if he’d caught the hit-and-run driver, the valve on his hate would have opened and extinguished the bad feelings.

But that never happened. He was left with hate in his heart and two young daughters to bring up. To Hanbury, rearing children was woman’s work. Especially if they were girls. If he’d had a son, it would have been different. The boy would have been out with him. Learning the business. But girls had to be protected. Although he neglected to spend a lot of time with them, they were given the best care. He showered them with gifts. He paid nannies and chaperones. He cushioned them from the evil he wreaked and the evil he faced. Or he tried to. All his power, all his influence, had failed to protect Rachel.

Grief and fury turned him psychotic.

But a year later he was arrested over a botched armed robbery. Two of his troops made a hash of a Post Office raid in Stepney. They traced the pair’s getaway motorbike to Hanbury. The morons were supposed to have dumped the vehicle after a previous job.

You can’t trust no one, he thought.

One of the robbers folded under Old Bill pressure. He spilled his guts. He’d have lost them if Hanbury had ever got hold of him. The guy’s testimony put Roy behind bars for twelve years. Conspiracy charges. Not the first time he’d been inside, but it was the longest stretch. And it started badly. His anger grew daily. Fury towards the men who’d killed Rose and Rachel. He would take it out on his cell, punching the wall. He would take it out on fellow prisoners, time in the hole.

It would have continued, had it not been for Ernie Page.

Aged sixty-three, Page was a lifer. He’d been inside thirty years and was looking at another five before he was out.

“Not much point in them letting me go, to be honest with you,” he once told Hanbury.

Page went down for murdering three people. Piled on top of those charges were indictments for armed robbery (two counts), assault (four counts), and handling stolen goods.

But something had happened to Ernie Page inside. He got saved. He found Jesus.

“It’s a blanket, brother,” he told Roy. “A shield. To be honest with you, I can’t say if it’s the truth or not. But some of it sounds good. And a fear of God, or whatever’s up there in heaven, keeps us in check.”

Over three weeks of talking, praying, and reading the Bible, Roy moved from sinner to saved.

He grasped what Ernie had told him—believing a higher power could stop you doing bad things. Just like he’d used fear to hold people to account, God did the same. He was the ultimate scare-story. There was nothing like the threat of hell to keep you on the straight and narrow.

A probation officer had once asked him, “Are you telling me, Roy, that if you didn’t believe in God, you’d go back to being a criminal?”

“That’s about right, I’m afraid,” Hanbury said. “It’s in my DNA. It’s in my genes. It’s who I am. Like the scorpion, you know?”

The probation officer shook his head.

Hanbury said, “The frog offers to take the scorpion across the river. ‘Just don’t sting me,’ he says. ‘No problem,’ says the scorpion. But halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog. As they’re both drowning, the frog goes, ‘Why d’you do that?’ The scorpion says, ‘It’s what I am, and I can’t help it.’ See? I can’t help it neither.”

“But you can now.”

“Because I’ve got someone watching over me.”

Now, with his arm around his daughter’s shoulder, he looked another bad man in the eye. Another bad man who could have done with a dose of fear in his heart to have stopped him doing the things he had done.

Wilks, still standing there full of himself, finally said, “We believe that Charlie Faultless has been assaulted.”

Tash leapt to her feet: “No!”

Wilks said, “We found his top. It was covered in blood. We wanted to speak to him in connection with the killings, but unfortunately, unless he turns up, we have to assume the worst. Or, of course”—Wilks grinned—“he’s done a runner. Same as he did fifteen years ago.”

“Charlie’s not done a runner,” said Tash.

Wilks said, “Has he not? You know where he is, Miss Hanbury?”

“Fuck off, Wilks,” said Hanbury.

“Don’t tell me to fuck off, old fella.”

“I’ll tell you whatever I please. Fuck off.”

Wilks was about to say something else when his phone rang. He answered it by saying, “What?” loudly. But then his face paled. His mouth dropped open. He listened for twenty seconds. He put the phone down.

“Someone died?” said Hanbury.

“Yes, a kid,” said Wilks.

Roy’s blood froze.