‘Fuck,’ said Taff.
‘Why did you do that?’ said Jacob, stunned.
A silver wraith appeared from the corpse of Gina. Screaming with pain, infected by the curse laid upon the silver bullet. And a howling, a terrible howling, was heard.
The wraith grew until it filled the entire square. All of them were within its damp touch, the slithery essence squashing against their bodies.
Then with a final silvery flash the dybbuk was gone. The great warlock Merlin had finally passed out of the world.
‘You called it, Doug,’ said Taff, over the radio link.
‘Merlin is gone,’ said Jacob, marvelling, yet sorrowful.
‘It’s over. Guv, it’s over. We won,’ said Catriona.
‘We won,’ said Dougie dully. ‘I know. I know that. We won.’
‘May she rest in peace,’ said Taff, blind drunk by now.
‘Rest in peace,’ said Cat hopefully.
‘Rest in peace,’ said Andy Homerton.
‘Rest in peace,’ said Lisa Aaronovich.
‘Rest in peace,’ said Tom.
This was their third wake of the day. Seamus Malone and Shai Hussain and Gina had been laid to rest in the same secular ceremony at St Giles’s Church near Tottenham Court Road. The wakes ran concurrently in different locales. A room off a mosque in Southall for Shai. An Irish pub in Kilburn for Seamus. And lastly, they were here, the saloon bar of the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel, seeing off Gina. Five Squad had hired a convoy of taxis to take them from one venue to the other.
Taff clapped a hand on his guvnor’s shoulder. ‘Dougie,’ said Taff, comfortingly.
‘Fuck off.’
‘Attaboy.’
‘Is that the dad?’ said Lisa.
They looked. Gina’s father was at the bar. Bald, pissed as a fart, his muscle-bound body deflated. A look of grief unmistakable on his face.
‘He’s a bastard. May he rot in hell,’ said Dougie. The words had a hollow ring.
‘She died a hero,’ said Tom and everyone turned and stared at him.
Wrong thing to say.
‘Sorry.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I was just trying to –’
‘Shut up.’
Tom shut up.
‘I can’t stick this any more,’ said Dougie.
He walked out of this, his favourite East End boozer. The scene of so many piss ups with Gina over the years.
He stalked past Gina’s brothers and her sister, who glowered at him with hate. Past her many uncles and cousins with their beer bellies and prison pallor. Eventually he walked by Gina’s dad. Armed robber; career criminal; the man who long ago had broken his daughter’s heart. Arnold Henderson said nothing. Dougie said nothing. Dougie left the pub.
He walked the streets, in despair.
For two hours Dougie strode the length and breadth of Whitechapel. Down Commercial Road. Past the ruins of Leman Street police station. He stood for almost half an hour outside the Arena Café, where he and Gina used to hang out and share chocolate muffins and talk. About their cases, his kids, why she never wanted children, though he knew she did. All sorts of shit they talked about.
As he stood, remembering Gina, Dougie savoured the depth and crippling power of his self-hatred.
Eventually he got a taxi home.
He let himself in and stumbled up the stairs and woke up his two little ones. His kids, his babies, as they once were, though not any more. His cheeky bugger Daniel. His gorgeous Jessica. His loved ones.
He picked up Jessica as she slept and smooched her with boozy lips until she stirred, then he carried her into Daniel’s room and laid her down beside her brother. Then he woke up Daniel. He cradled them both. Knowing he was drunk and maudlin and not caring, he wept with them in his arms.
They were both wide awake now, and wary.
‘Daddy you’re hurting me!’ complained Jessica.
‘What’s wrong, Dougie? Tell me,’ said Daniel, fearfully.
Eventually Dougie relaxed his grip. He was aware he stank of drink and reeked of rage, and he couldn’t be trusted. But he plunged in anyway.
‘There’s been some bad news, guys,’ he said.
Daniel sat up. His lip quivered. He shook his head; he didn’t want to hear this.
Dougie persisted. ‘When I went out today, I didn’t go to work. I went to - you see, your Auntie Gina – she’s –’ He broke off.
Daniel stared at him, his teeth biting into his upper lip, till he almost drew blood. His head shaking unconsciously as if to deny any bad news.
‘What?’ he said almost inaudibly.
‘She’s –’
‘Is she dead?’ Daniel asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s dead?’ said Jessica.
‘Was she killed in the line of duty?’ Daniel asked.
Dougie thought about it. ‘Yes, she was.’
‘Auntie Gina’s dead?’ said Jessica, confused.
‘Yes,’ Daniel told her.
‘But she’s all right, though?’
‘Don’t be silly! She’s dead,’ Daniel explained carefully.
‘Gone to heaven?’ said Jessica hopefully.
‘There is no heaven,’ said Daniel firmly. ‘God is dead, Jessica, there’s no redemption, and that’s that.’
Dougie was impressed at his words. ‘You’re right, son,’ Dougie said. He wiped away his tears. ‘You’re blinking well right.’
‘But you can bring her back though, can’t you?’ said Daniel cheerfully.
Dougie was thrown by this. ‘I’m sorry, son?’
‘You can bring her back? Auntie Gina? You can bring her back to life?’
‘Really?’ Jessica’s face was lit by a smile.
‘No I can’t,’ said Dougie. ‘Don’t be stupid, boy. She’s not gone away. She’s not on holiday. Auntie Gina is dead.’
‘Yes but – you’re important, aren’t you?’ Daniel reasoned. ‘And everyone knows that if you’re important enough, you can –’
‘I can what?’ said Dougie grimly.
‘You can resurrect her,’ said Daniel.
Dougie slapped him.
Dougie had never hit his son before. Not even during the worst days of Daniel’s temper tantrums. Not even when Daniel had deliberately pissed and shat in Dougie’s bed. Not even when his son threw plates and cups at him; not even when Daniel tried to put a knife in his daddy’s eye and instead lopped off part of Dougie’s ear. Dougie’s own father had belted him often. But as a point of honour, Dougie had never laid a finger on either of his children. Not a blow, not a slap, not even a hard pat. Never.
Until now.
The slap was a powerful one. Daniel’s head jerked back. His cheek turned red, marked by the fingers of Dougie’s hand. Jessica stared at Dougie in horror.
Dougie was appalled at himself. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Daniel looked at his father.
‘I’m sorry,’ Dougie repeated. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so very – Oh Jesus! What have I – I’m so -’
‘It’s okay,’ said Daniel.
‘It’s not okay, it’s –’
‘I understand,’ Daniel said, gently. ‘You’re stressed. You’re in grief. You loved Auntie Gina and now - it’s a displacement thing. I don’t mind, it didn’t really hurt. If it makes you feel better to hit me, then you can –’
‘No!’
‘I don’t mind, I really don’t. ’Cos I love you, so get a grip, okay Daddy?’ said Daniel.
Dougie caught the moment. This was the first time his son had called him ‘Daddy’ since Angela’s murder.
Daniel turned to Jessica, using his hand to wipe away his tears. His young voice was thin and shaky but his tone was calmly reassuring. ‘Dad’s really unhappy, okay? Do you understand, Jess? So you and me, we have to make allowances.’
‘I’m unhappy too,’ she protested. ‘Most of the time I am!’
‘This is not about you,’ Daniel said firmly. An old man’s wisdom in
a thirteen-year-old body.
Daniel reached out and hugged his father. Awkwardly at first, then with a desperate intensity. Finally he let Dougie go. ‘Now your turn,’ he instructed Jessica.
Jessica hugged Dougie too.
‘Love you, Daddy,’ said Daniel.
‘Love you too, kiddo.’
Dougie thought his heart would burst. He’d never before been so ashamed.
Or so bloody proud.
Magnus knocked on the wooden door of the ghetto. It was good timber, he noted approvingly. English oak, pillaged from the trees in local parks no doubt.
A demon answered. He was short, and barely came up to Magnus’s waist. His face was red, his six eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth was twisted in a permanent snarl. He stared at Magnus: a huge muscled Viking with a bushy moustache and extravagantly large sideburns.
‘Yes?’ the demon gatekeeper said mildly.
‘I’ve come,’ Magnus said, with courtesy, ‘to see a friend. Will you let me in?’
‘Can you pay?’
‘Oh yes. I can pay.’
‘With money?’
‘With gold.’
The demon gatekeeper considered the matter.
‘Then I will let you in.’
The door swung open. Magnus stepped inside, and looked around. The Viking was not easily impressed; yet even he marvelled at the sight before him.
The Walworth Ghetto. A township so crowded and frantically busy that it made Oxford Street look like a barren wilderness. He could see at the heart of it the bright blue Elephant and Castle shopping centre and the Arno Goldfinger skyscrapers looming above the other buildings. And the Strata Tower, soaring high like an upright domino, capped by non-functioning wind turbines; washing lines dangling from every window.
At the lower levels there was a whole world of jumble and chaos, cluttered with jerry-rigged buildings that had no right to stay standing, but somehow did. Thousands of these crudely built wooden shacks were stacked up, like Jenga bricks, forming a termite’s nest for the dead people of London. Mostly built out of wood from recycled front doors and office desks and stolen railway sleepers and chopped down trees. Transforming what was once a drab part of South London into a bustling Pandemonium, as densely packed as a Victorian rookery and with less morality.
There were houses too upon the roof of the shopping centre, like multi-storey sheds. Rickety rope ladders with planks for rungs connected the shopping centre with the neighbouring streets; and hammocks dangled from these ladders, making nests for humans.
The resurrected humans who strolled or strode along these pavements and high walkways represented, more or less, every nation and ethnicity in the world. They were African and American and Native American and Caribbean and British and European and Chinese and Japanese and Inuit and South Asian and white Australian and Australian aboriginal and Maori and Malaysian and Celtic and Saxon and even, dotted here and there, Neanderthal; they had been plucked from every epoch in history, from the Stone Age to Roman times to the recently deceased. And all of them were loud. Talking, or shouting, or selling, or quarrelling, or (Magnus smiled at this) clandestinely wanking, or openly fucking each other; and the sounds merged into a permanent roar that screamed LIFE.
Such was Damnedville.
Magnus was struck by the absence of smell. No perfumes. No incense. No petrol, because there were no cars. Just odourless dead people, and many of them.
His people lived here. The dead and the damned from all the millennia of human history; self-governing and, in a limited but real sense, free.
Magnus liked it. It reminded him of his village in Norway. Perhaps because there were no cars, and no skyscrapers except for the Strata Tower.
He wondered for a moment if he should try living in this place, amongst his own kind. Away from crooked humans and corrupt deals and endless murders. He could live a quiet life here. A farmer’s life, even, if he could acquire or steal some land. Just like the old days.
Yes, Magnus decided: he liked that idea. The war-mongering Viking could become a man of peace once again! He might find himself a wife or two. Or even adopt a child.
But that would only be possible after he had fulfilled his contract to the man in grey. By extirpating that bitch, Fillide. A deal, after all, was a deal.
‘Well? Are you going in?’ asked the gatekeeper standing beside him; who belonged, Magnus knew, to the subspecies known as Threshold Demons.
‘In a moment,’ said Magnus. He took out a colour photocopy of a painting by Caravaggio of the martyred Saint Catherine. A radiant beauty in soulful repose. A halo hovered above her curly brown locks; her eyes were fixed forward, her head turned to one side, her long fingers clutched a thin sword. A richly blue cloak sprawled around her as she leaned upon the wooden wagon wheel on which she would soon be broken. ‘Do you recognise her?’
The Threshold Demon looked. ‘Saint Catherine?’ he said in tones of utter contempt. ‘Sirrah, it appears thy eschatology leaves a great deal to be -’
‘The model, not the saint,’ said Magnus impatiently. ‘Do you know her?’
The Threshold Demon looked again. For some considerable time. His six eyes blinked, though not all at the same time. ‘No,’ he eventually said.
He was lying, Magnus decided. But no matter. Early days.
Magnus nodded at the Threshold Demon, to bid him good day. Then he strode with his usual overflowing energy into the hustle and the bustle and clamour. Past the shopping centre, and into the back streets. Up on to a crowded walkway; stepping over the sleeping bodies of the drunk or the drugged or the clinically indolent. Weaving a route through the wooden tunnels that connected different houses that were occupied by members of the same families, or clans, or gangs; roughly nailed into place. Through random gateways, and under washing lines, and past gambling games and market stalls selling stolen gear.
Until daylight itself vanished; and Magnus was deep inside the heart of the Ghetto of the Damned.
Copyright
Copyright © Philip Palmer 2017
Cover illustration © Jim Burns 2017
The right of Philip Palmer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Published by Hell Books in 2017
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Hell on Earth Page 90