Chapter 72

DARK OF HEART AND COLD OF BLOOD

At least he’d pissed off Don Wilks. It made Faultless feel better. He was ready to run. But then the detective had stopped and tried to wind him up. And it was the DCS who ended up being taunted.

Faultless saw something in Wilks’s eyes when he’d stopped. It looked for a moment like fear. Or shock.

Why did he ask me if I’d seen Graveney? thought Faultless.

He stopped. He was near to where Ryan Graveney and Buckley had ambushed him.

How did they know I was back? he wondered.

He looked in the direction Wilks had driven, and he knew the answer.

Fuck you, Wilks, he thought. I’ll deal with you later. For now, he was going to find the old man. He was going to find out who he was. He was going to get answers.

As he walked, he thought of his mother’s death. He thought about how he’d killed Tony Graveney. He remembered the fury. He could still taste it.

“You got evil in you, son,” Roy Hanbury had told him at the time.

Roy wondered long and hard what to do with him after he’d battered Tony to death.

He said to Faultless, “We are both in mourning, Charlie, and for that reason, I am going to spare you. You were blinded by hate. So am I. The death of my daughter has opened a fucking volcano in me, and hate and rage is just spilling out, hot and deadly. In a way, son, you’ve done me a favor. My enemy is dead. But there will be a war now. You have to go, if you want to live.”

“I ain’t going,” the young Faultless had said. “I’ll fight them. They won’t kill me.”

“I didn’t mean them,” Hanbury had said. “If you don’t go, I’ll have to kill you. There was an impasse, son. There was peace. Deadlock, you follow? Means no killing. Sadly, you killed. The way round here is revenge, you know that. But you are like a son to me. You’ve been hurt bad. So I’m offering you deliverance. Here it is.” Hanbury had tossed a padded envelope on the table. “Now fuck off, and don’t ever let me see you round here again.”

Now he walked for a good while, strolling past low-rise blocks. They were four-story flats. Red-brick boxes built in the early 1990s to accommodate the growing population. St George crosses flapped on the breeze. Two youths watched a rottweiler and an English bull terrier go at each other. The dogs snarled and salivated. The lads laughed and pointed. Across the road, next to a boarded up shop, a police car was parked. The Old Bill had been a heavy presence on Barrowmore these past few days. But the two cops in the vehicle ignored the dog fight.

Faultless walked on. More boarded up shops. Buildings unused for years. A community center decorated in graffiti—legit graffiti.

It was a blast of color in the gray grimness of Barrowmore. Faultless admired some of the art. It was excellent. He imagined the smiling, laughing youth at work on the display. There were good kids on the estate. Good people. Not like him.

Not dark of heart and cold of blood.

Shame rose up in him. In his youth, he’d been destroying creativity like this. He’d be mocking the teens responsible. The kids who tried to make it better. Not like him.

Scum, he thought. You were scum, Charlie Faultless.

As he walked, the shadow of the four tower blocks fell across the road. He glanced up at them as he passed. Monsell House loomed above him. He thought about Tash. His heart flipped. But then thoughts of her brought Rachel to his mind. And the pain uncoiled in his chest.

What would’ve become of them, had she lived? Would they still be together? Married maybe, with little Charlies and Rachels running around.

Perish the fucking thought, he told himself. One of you is enough.

And anyway, they would probably have split up. Time kills everything in the end. Nothing lasts. It all dies. Especially love.

Only hate thrives, he thought.

Hate and darkness.

And its profusion in Faultless’s life fifteen years ago would have killed him in the end.

Someone would have shot him or stabbed him. A deal gone wrong. Revenge. Bad blood. Something . . .

If he had been lucky, he would have been banged up.

And then God might have saved him like He saved Hanbury.

He closed his eyes and shriveled into himself when he realized what had actually saved

Rachel’s death. Patricia’s death. Tony’s death.

They got him out of here. They got him exiled. They got him saved.

He came to the lock-ups where the first murders had occurred. It seemed like an age ago now. But the police tape still crisscrossed the entrance. Bollards blocked off the road. A police car was parked on the pavement, two cops inside.

He sensed that he would find the answers in that old lock-up where Montague Druitt’s briefcase had been found.