Chapter 64

LOOKING FOR AN EXIT

By now Spencer was very scared. He was so scared he had to puke every few minutes. His nerves were shot, and his head was messed up.

Hallam Buck had killed a kid.

Jack just told him to, and he did it.

Killed a kid.

Just like he told Spencer to kill Jay-T.

But worse. Candice Daley was a twelve-year-old child. And Hallam had assaulted her and then strangled her.

I’m in over my head, thought Spencer. Way over my head.

He wanted a way out. But he guessed there wasn’t one. Unless he topped himself or Jack finished him off. He swallowed. That option might not be pleasant. Dying, full-stop, would be unpleasant.

Hallam had only just come back. After killing the girl, he’d holed up in his flat. “I had to spend time getting used to what I did,” he’d said, his eyes glittering.

Dirty, sick bastard, thought Spencer. Hallam Buck, child-killer and kiddie-fiddler, had been re-living what he’d done to Candice. Dirty, sick bastard.

Spencer sat against the wall of his flat. The place had gotten worse. The policeman had died overnight, and flies buzzed around his body. The squat had started to smell of shit and blood. It had grown darker there, too.

He knew they’d have to leave soon. There was no way the cops were going to hold off from smashing down his door. No way. It was hard to believe they hadn’t done it already. He was certainly a suspect in the first four killings, including Jay-T’s murder.

And he was missing.

First place they’d look would be where you lived. That made sense. Or it did to Spencer. Maybe the filth thought differently these days. Maybe they’d gone to the wrong address. To his mum’s. To his auntie’s place. His cousin’s or his mate’s.

This place wasn’t really home. It was one of the places he crashed.

They stuck a lone copper outside the door, hoping he’d turn up, and he had—with something from hell behind him.

But they’d be round again, for sure. They’d smash the door down and ransack the place. Confiscate the TV and the PS3. All his games.

He looked over at Jack and Hallam.

Hallam had handed Jack a hoodie. Something he took off the girl. A gift.

At first, Jack was angry.

“I meant something from inside her, you insect,” he raged. “Her heart. A lung. A kidney. Not this piece of—”

He had smelled the hoodie. And he still smelled it, rubbing it all over his face.

Finally he said, “Seer.” He pressed it to his face again. “Seer. I can smell her. I can smell it on her. Did you kill a seer?”

Hallam gawped.

“If you did, you’ve got to find the body,” said Jack. “Where have they taken it? Find it and . . . and cut it out of her.”

“Cut . . . cut what?” asked Hallam.

Cut what, for Christ’s sake? thought Spencer, retching again. No more cutting. No more stabbing and killing. He groaned.

Jack looked at him. “Do you know if she was a seer?”

“I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you want me to kill you, Spencer? Have you had enough?”

Despite earlier thinking of death as an option, having it offered up made him decide against it.

“N . . . no, Jack.”

Jack tossed the hoodie at Spencer. It hit him in the face.

“Find out if she was a seer,” said Jack.

“How do I do that?”

Jack glared at him. Even in the gloom, the terrible glow emanating from him blinded Spencer.

“Do it, Spencer. Do it or I will dismember you.”

Spencer wanted to cry. He felt weak. He bundled the hoodie up into a ball. He started to pull it inside out, his panic growing.

Jack said, “We have to relocate. Hallam, we’ll join you.”

“Me?” said the dirty, sick bastard.

“You think I want to move from hovel to hovel, living with low-life such as yourselves?” said Jack. “I need to find my ripper. I need to find the seers. A woman and child. The ones who dreamed me.”

Spencer had turned the hoodie inside out. It had a name tag in the hood. He said, “This wasn’t Candice’s.”

They turned to face him.

“It says here it was Jasmine Hanbury’s. You know her, Hallam. Don’t you fancy her mum?”

A silence fell. It grew even colder. Spencer shivered. He thought ice was forming now in the flat. He could see his breath.

Then, cold and cruel, Jack’s voice came hissing out of the gloom. “She’s the fifth. This Jasmine. The fifth. Hallam, you’ll rip her if you have to. You shall stand in my ripper’s place. You shall be a ripper, too. She’s the fifth, and then London will be bathed in blood.”