It was well past midnight but the fire still blazed in the old oil drum in Stinger’s overgrown backyard. The air was cold and a fog was forming, but the heat radiating towards the four figures slumped on two decrepit sofas served to incubate the occupants. Stinger’s younger brother had gone to his room to play computer games, shortly after Stinger’s mum and her boyfriend Ryan had staggered off to bed. Stinger, Banger and Grets were close to coma and stared unblinking at the hypnotic flames.
Jason would have liked to turn off the boom box but that wasn’t a runner — Stinger was on a major wreck and Jason knew from experience that he’d not let up until every drop of booze was drunk and every ounce of dope smoked.
‘Turn it up, blood. This track kicks ass,’ slurred Stinger, head lolling back on the bigger of the two sofas.
‘Turn it up yourself, bitch.’ Banger leered at the others, waiting for them to acknowledge the comic genius in their midst.
‘It’s pretty loud already,’ observed Jason, regretting his comment at once.
‘So? The fuck are the neighbours gonna say?’ said Stinger, stumbling to the boom box nestled on the bonnet of his dad’s demolition derby car. It was rotting on bricks in the backyard until someone on the estate took a chance and bought new wheels for their own vehicle. ‘The last time Osama came round to complain, Ryan gave him a right slappin’, innit?’ Stinger turned up the gangsta rap a couple of notches and slumped back down as they all started nodding to the beat.
‘Bet he weren’t happy though,’ observed Banger before dissolving into hysterics — he was on a roll.
‘And granny next door never puts her head outside after dark no more,’ added Stinger. He threw another fencepost onto the fire. Sparks flew off into the night sky.
‘Not unless she wants croaking like that other old bitch,’ nodded Grets. They all laughed but there was a tension in their throats, and each felt the need to run his drunken eye over the others to make sure it hadn’t been noticed. The moment passed and they were able to reposition their masks of invulnerability. But there was disquiet in their demeanour as each reflected on the night Jason’s family had been slaughtered just a few doors away, the night the four of them had murdered an old woman for money and drugs but awoke to find their thunder stolen by The Reaper, Annie Sewell’s death a mere footnote. Narked at first, each had since come to realise that the sensational events at the Wallis home had kept the Sewell murder out of the limelight and left them free to continue numbing their lives.
Jason stared into the flames and remembered that night with something approaching shame. The face he could never forget — the old woman begging for her life, or at least a little dignity. That night she kept neither.
Thank Christ nobody knew. Not true. That leng, DI Brook knew. He’d come round his aunt’s, got him loaded on cheap whisky. Brook had warned him, tried to make him ’fess up and name names. Had he imagined it? But he hadn’t imagined being tied up. Being threatened. One thing Brook said, Jason would never forget. The Reaper was still out there, waiting for his chance — unfinished business. Trouble was, he didn’t seem keen to finish it. Well, maybe tonight was the night and Jason was ready. Ready to make payment. Ready for an end to misery and fear. Ready to stop being a victim and start being a player. Ready for fame and a place in history.
Banger took a long draught of cider and offered the dregs of a two-litre bottle to Jason. He held a hand up to refuse, so Banger drained the rest, and threw it into the oil drum.
‘It’s late. I should peg it,’ said Jason, trying to sound casual.
‘Chill your beans, man. It’s early. Don’t be dread. This party’s for you. You can crash here. I asked my mum.’
‘Cheers, Sting. It’s been sick. But I got stuff to do tomorrow.’
‘So what? I got college. Ain’t going though. It’s boring.’
‘Me neither,’ piped up Grets.
‘Yeah, but I promised my aunt.’
‘So? Anyway, you’ll never get a white cab this time o’ night.’
‘I was gonna walk.’
‘Oh my days. It’s bloody miles to Borrowash. And you’ll be crossing enemy blocks.’
‘Yeah, well. When you’ve done time, walking outside at night, when you’re locked in … well, it’s something you think about.’
‘Thought you said it was easy time,’ accused Grets.
‘Look, I’m bladdered…’ began Jason.
‘The fuck you are,’ spat Stinger. ‘You’ve hardly had a drop. And you passed the spliff after one draw. We used to have to taser your ass to get it off you. Innit, Bang?’
‘No doubt.’
‘He might not be used to it,’ explained Grets.
‘That’s no excuse.’
Jason eyed Stinger. ‘Can’t yer take a joke, bredrin?’ he said eventually, finding his party face again. ‘Pass me that bottle. Let’s get this party started, fam,’ he said, downing a litre of rust-coloured liquid in one go.
‘That’s the Jace we know. Don’t neck it all, bitch.’
Chapter Nine
Brook looked at his watch. One am. He was early. Good. Another hour and he would know. The chill wintry air had turned to fog and clung to the potholed roads and bald grass verges of the Drayfin Estate. The noise of his car cut through the still air with a deliberation born out of Brook’s desire to move quietly through the streets, as though not being noticed meant that he was somewhere else. He didn’t want to be here, that’s for sure, revisiting his past, a past that he thought he’d conquered once and for all. But The Reaper was calling him. Even in death, Sorenson would never let go. Brook should’ve known.
He turned slowly onto the road he’d been on so many times in his dreams, eased past number 233, not looking at the Wallis house, just knowing it was there. It had a presence even now.
Parking around the corner, he stepped from the car and gingerly closed the driver’s door, leaving it unlocked — a rare deliberate act on the Drayfin. He walked back through the gathering fog to the scene of The Reaper’s last atrocity — a path that perhaps The Reaper himself had once taken — and ran his eye over the former home of the Wallis family, as it materialised out of the gloom like a ghost ship.
The house was boarded up and, unusually for the Drayfin, had stayed that way. No need for the council to brick up the doors and windows. Nobody came near the place — no kids, no tramps and certainly no neighbours. The house was a lure only for passing ghouls, unlikely tourists who craved a glimpse at infamy, assuming they could find the place in this sprawling, redbrick jungle. Even then such visits were made only in daylight.
Brook stood before the house and turned again to see if his presence was being monitored. It appeared not. All neighbouring houses were dark, all streetlights inert and broken. Even the faint light of the moon had taken the evening off. Brook felt himself in the grip of a black hole, being drawn towards the Wallis house, unable to pull away, his orbit decaying, his body and mind hurtling towards the stench of evil that still lurked there.
As he stepped over the splayed front gate, Brook pulled his dark coat tightly round him and yanked up his collar. He approached the front entrance slowly and, as he moved, he heard something that the deep recesses of his memory had warned him to expect: music. Brook stopped to listen, glaring at the house to search for an opening. The years began to melt away, and Brook remembered standing at the front door of Sorenson’s London home, minutes before their first meeting, listening to the aria from La Wally leaking out of the window in his study above.
Then he realised that the music was not coming from the Wallis house. Nor was it a song for The Reaper. The pulse of this music came from elsewhere. Brook looked around, sensing the direction — a neighbouring home, maybe even a garden. Some kind of rap music. The music of violence and confrontation, guaranteed to irritate and cow anyone over thirty, especially at this time of night and in this place. Even this late the self-centred who blighted the urban landscape saw fit to inflict themselves on long-suffering neighbours.
