Hell Is Empty

by Conrad Williams

  There is only so much hiding you can do. There is only so much waiting you can tolerate.

  But I knew about him. His endless patience. The discipline he displayed. He’d sent me a card when I was in hospital for a spell after the fight I’d had with the Four-Year-Old. It contained a picture of Mount Fuji at sunset; I remembered the wording too, a death poem by Basho:

  On a journey, ill;

  my dream goes wandering

  over withered fields.

  How did someone harden their heart to be able to act against a kind-of ally? How did you anaesthetise yourself against the pain your wife would feel were you to die? And the word on the street was that Oka was pregnant. So what the hell was Henry doing playing silly buggers?

  I heard the soft collapse of dirt and stones. Grit under stealthy tread. Here we go.

  I heard the engine of a barge on the Thames behind me. He wouldn’t expect it. I wasn’t expecting it. I went for it. You stupid twat. Twat. Twat. Twatwatwatwatwatwatwatwatwatwat…

  I leapt over the wall separating Riverside Walk from ten feet of nothing and then up to my knees in silt and shit. I saw the barge pilot jerk his head towards me and then spread his arms as if to say, ‘What the fuck are you?’

  I couldn’t agree more. But I was still alive. I beckoned him over but he wasn’t having any of it, and why should he? From his viewpoint I was a cretin who couldn’t commit suicide properly. I struggled on towards the water and by dint of clumsiness and determination found myself suddenly swimming. In the Thames. I got out of this okay and the first thing I’d need to do was visit the doctor’s for a tetanus injection as well as a common-sense booster.

  I couldn’t tell if there were any more shots at me; the water was choppy, the sound of it slopping against the hull of the barge was louder than I’d expected. I reached it as the pilot was trying to turn away. Luckily the current was in my favour. It was comical, but if I didn’t get a hold of the damn boat, I’d be dead. Drowned or shot. Neither held any particular attraction to me.

  ‘Get the fuck off,’ the pilot yelled, as he saw me trying to clamber over the side. The water in my clothes must have doubled my weight. It was hard enough just to cling on.

  ‘Please,’ I gasped. ‘I’m in danger.’

  ‘You’ll be in danger if I have to leave this wheel and come and beat your fucking head in,’ he said.

  A shot splintered about a foot of wood from his starboard side. I felt some of them sting my face.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ he yelled, and instinctively threw the wheel away from the death being spat at us from the southern shore. I looked over my shoulder and saw a flash of exotic green: the lining in one of Herschell’s jackets no doubt.

  I scrambled on board and shambled up to the pilot who was casting glances around him as if he was being assaulted from all sides.

  ‘It’s only me you need to worry about now,’ I said, and turfed him overboard. ‘You can swim, yes?’ But I wasn’t paying much attention. I tossed a life ring over the edge and concentrated on getting across the water to Pimlico.

  No more shots. Which meant they’d either given up, found a boat of their own, or they were getting back to the car, knowing what I was up to. I reckoned they were intelligent enough for that latter option, so I kept my eye on the closest of the bridges – Vauxhall – for any insanely fast cars driven by a man who liked wearing Armani suits and patent-leather shoes.

  I ditched the barge at Westminster Boating Base, just south of Grosvenor Road. I was in a taxi within minutes and I got the driver heading east, as close to the river as possible at all times. I needed to keep an eye on it, and the road behind us. My clothes were sodden. I checked my phone and found it was still working – thank Christ I’d invested in a waterproof case.

  Fuck you, Henry Herschell. Fuck you and your so-called ninja skills. Iron fan? Iron fanny more like. I beat you. I got away. Comb your hair and fuck off.

  Nothing on the river. Plenty on the roads. But nothing I…

  Recognised.

  Hang on. Yeah. Here he came. Silver Skoda. He was like a cat with a moth. I told the taxi driver I’d give him a tip to remember if he could lose the cunt, but he drove like a grandma with glaucoma who’s had a few sherries. We crawled along Victoria Embankment while he hemmed and hawed about licences and speed limits. The Skoda was almost literally up my arse.

  I got out at a red just as it was changing for green and skipped up Farringdon Street. I heard car horns sounding. I heard car doors slamming. I heard leather slapping on pavement.

  I shot through a sandwich shop, vaulting the counter and body-charging any number of white-aproned salami jugglers out of my way. Through kitchens, through stock rooms, out into car parks, across quiet roads and into noisy loading bays and warehouses. Now a hotel laundry. Now a taxi rank. Pushing and pulling. Trying to reach top speed and failing due to traffic – human and car varieties – failing due to slow muscles, injuries, tired blood, tired minds. But that meant he was too.

  Someone tried to rugby tackle me coming out of a pub on Pancras Lane; not the people hunting me, some have-a-go hero attempting to show me the errors of my frantic ways by delivering some of his own. I kicked him in the shoulder and told him to piss off. I could hear footsteps charging across concrete. People shouting. Maybe Henry didn’t care about stealth now. He just wanted me in the ground and he didn’t care how artful it looked any more. I got onto another main road and sprinted for height. All the skyscrapers here for me. Hungry for company. Staring down on this pathetic, sweaty, Thames-stained curiosity.

  I U-turned and switchbacked and feinted and swerved. By the time I reached the Splinter it was getting dark and I was half-crippled with a stitch. I slowed down, though, and tried to remain mindful while my lungs bellowed like a bagpiper’s arm.

  Up.

  I tried to be quiet, but I was knackered. Every step felt like a challenge, every breath a chore. Gravity was pulling my feet down as heavy slaps on the poured concrete. I heard the chitter of radios, but my luck was in: they were always from a distance. Footfalls passed where I had been moments ago, or where I was due to tread.

  I couldn’t hear any sounds of pursuit. Not that I would. I had to presume, despite the hours of dodging, that I was still in jeopardy. I could not underestimate Henry Herschell.

  This time I did not go as high as possible. I didn’t want to leave myself with only one direction of escape. But I also didn’t want to put my architect friend in any kind of danger.

  I found a room that was full of the clean, slightly scorched smell of freshly sawn wood. There was a table in here covered in blueprints and coffee cups. I wedged it into a corner and positioned heaps of waste – swathes of heavy-duty polythene wrap, lengths of stripped electric cables, spent containers of silicone grease, bulk containers – and equipment such as ratchet straps and pallets against it so it looked like a conscientious worker had gone to great lengths to make the room tidy and accessible.

  I got underneath the table and rested my head against a wall of chipboard. It felt as if my pulse was trying to dent it. My heart was playing merry hell, but I didn’t worry too much about that. It meant I was alive, violently nerve-shreddingly alive.

  I didn’t think I’d sleep. I was shattered – I must have run five miles in world-record time – but my nerves were jangling like a piano in an earthquake. Sleep I did, though, despite everything, and it was deep and untroubled, which is why I was instantly on my mettle when I came to, because I was still tired, and it was still dark. My wet clothes were drying. Something had roused me. What was it? Wind fluting down through the gaps and ginnels? A mouse scampering through its opulent penthouse? I felt sweat break out at my hairline. The merest scuff of a foot?

  He was just outside the room. I’d been tired when I put together my little den. Now I saw it for what it was. Not a conscientious worker’s pile at all. A hiding place. A dumb, obvious hiding place. If you were looking for someone and walked into a room and saw a man-sized pile of j
unk, you’d check it out. I’d been lazy and careless. I heard the light touch of a shoe again, and knew it was Henry. He seemed to be stalking around just outside the room, as if reluctant to come in here and finish it. Perhaps he was a vampire, and needed an invitation to cross the threshold.

  There was no point in trying to jump him. No point in trying to run away. I’d be wearing that fan like a coxcomb before I got to the doorway. I was at the end of everything. Suddenly I didn’t care. I just wanted some kind of answer before the long, dark underscore.

  I stood up.

  I saw a figure move just past the black oblong of the doorway, moving in a crouch, and he was elegant and lethal.

  I moved too. Nowhere near as elegant, nothing like as lethal, and watched him disappear into the grainy dark. A chance. I started in the opposite direction. I don’t know why I didn’t head down the stairs. I guess because it meant more running away, more hiding, and that kind of life is too demanding, physically and mentally. So I kept climbing, desperately hoping that whoever was after me – Henry, you know it’s Henry – might give up, feeling as tired and cold as I was (although perhaps not quite as damp), or as jittery where heights were concerned.

  I tripped over the body of the security guard on the penultimate floor. There was a lot of blood but it wasn’t immediately obvious as to what had drawn it.

  What it might mean was that Henry had done a check of the uppermost storeys and was now making his way down, in which case I’d given him the slip. What it also meant, though, was that he’d been to the summit, where the architect was probably holed up.

  I climbed the final flight, certain I was going to find him dead. Henry was no mass murderer, I was sure. But he would leave a clean canvas; he couldn’t risk anyone identifying him. That he’d killed one innocent told me that he’d get rid of whoever crossed his path, contract or not.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of being pursued again, but I guess I had to force the issue. Otherwise it might recur at some unknown future date once Henry had refuelled and repaired. Not knowing what was coming was unbearable.

  But then, his tread again. Searching, indefatigable, catsoft. I had underestimated him. I had thought he might go. But no. He was here.

  All of London stretched out before me.

  ‘Joel.’

  I turned and he was there, six feet away. The fan in his hand opening and closing like the deliberate certainty of a crocodile’s jaws.

  ‘Henry,’ I said. ‘What do you think of my new place?’

  ‘You led us a merry dance today, Joel.’

  ‘What is this? Why?’

  ‘Money,’ he said. ‘It’s always money.’

  ‘I’ll give you money,’ I said. ‘Tell me who’s paying you.’

  ‘You can’t pay what he’s paying.’

  ‘Tann.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Have you thought about where Tann’s money is coming from? He was a handyman in a leisure centre, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘I don’t care where the money comes from. The down payment seems real enough,’ he said. ‘I can hold it in my hands. And I can spend it in the shops.’

  ‘I thought we were friends,’ I said. ‘Kind of. You’re better than this. A contract killer? Really?’

  ‘There’s nobility in any form of work.’

  ‘Fuck off, Henry,’ I said. I was getting angry now, and that was good, because it was putting some iron in my voice, and taking the shake out of my muscles. ‘Don’t try to justify what you’re doing. You make it sound like something worthy.’

  ‘Kishi kaisei,’ he said. ‘Wake from death. Return to life.’

  I was so tired. And I was bored of this man’s Wapanese schtick. ‘Fuck’s sake, Henry,’ I said. ‘Put your miso paste away. You’re from fucking Tulse Hill.’

  His fan was catching the city lights. Bamboo and steel. It was beautiful and lethal. I guessed that his killing stroke would not come from that. He was married; she was pregnant. He didn’t want any kind of evidence of a fan wound to the head on my body; he’d go away for years. He wanted this to look like an accident.

  ‘I studied for years,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t interested in karate or jujutsu or kendo. I wanted to do something unconventional. And I liked the idea of the war fan. The idea of carrying something seemingly innocent into an arena of death where swords were not allowed.’

  ‘But you’re attacking me,’ I said. ‘How noble is that? Doesn’t your art have something to say about aggression? Isn’t it all to do with self-defence? I’m sure your sensei would be disgusted with you.’

  That stung him, and I was glad. It meant maybe a notch up on the rage monitor, which meant possible clumsiness, which meant that I might have some window of opportunity to counter.

  ‘What do you know?’ he spat.

  ‘I’ve dabbled,’ I said. ‘I know a little karate. Silat. Krav Maga.’

  ‘Diluted,’ he said. ‘Lesser forms. Jack of all trades.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said, but my voice was claggy with fear. I felt a sinking inside me. My hands shook like a wet dog. I was back in Silex Street in the dark, footsteps echoing all around. A dark figure coming for me, arm raised, a machete gleaming at its summit, the polished blade sucking in all the light available and reflecting it right into the meat of my heart.

  Henry darted in then and I found it hard to counter because of the doubt backing up inside me. I blocked and retreated as best I could. But I was weak. He was liquid fast, strong, sure. I bet the fucker did yoga. Henry had taken sides, and it seemed the weight of the green in his bank account mattered more than anything. I was utterly spent, but I had to hope that he was too, to a greater or lesser extent, despite these pyrotechnics now. He’d been on the go, maybe when I was kipping, and so I might have some kind of sleep oneupmanship. But there was always his fan, flicking between us like a cast-iron cobra.

  ‘You’re married, Henry,’ I said. ‘What if you don’t come home today?’

  ‘Don’t underestimate me,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t,’ I said, trying to remember the moves. When you only go at it half-arsed like me, you can’t ever expect for it to become instinctual. He thrust the fan at my face and I countered with jodan age uke. But I was slow and uncommitted. I was a poor-quality YouTube demonstration. He moved into the space below my upraised arm and slammed an elbow into my floating ribs. Searing pain. I wondered if he’d broken one.

  ‘What’s her name again?’ I grunted. ‘Oka? I heard she was up the duff.’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said.

  ‘What would she say if she saw you tonight?’ I asked. If this rib was broken and had punctured my lung I’d not get much joy out of him. It would be a one-way fight. ‘You have regular work, as far as I see it. A way forward. You don’t need the easy way out. Not at the expense of a friend.’

  ‘I don’t have any friends,’ he said. ‘I have opportunities.’

  I tried a snap kick to his groin but I only ended up looking as if I was trying to flick something unsavoury from the sole of my shoe. He was greased elegance. He countered with a kick of his own and it caught my thigh and I felt the whole side of my leg turn numb. He followed up with a chop to my neck with the fan and I ducked, but not so fast that I could avoid what felt like a scalping. Fire raged across the top of my skull, and I felt blood leaking immediately down the back of my neck. Maybe I was wrong about his intentions with that fan. Maybe Phil Clarke would lay me out on his post-mortem slab and see the fatal wound and nobody would have any idea where it had come from. I wondered if I’d have enough time before I died to write the word ‘fan’ and draw an arrow to the hole it had made in me.

  I just wanted to talk to Henry, to hammer out some kind of agreement, but I was too exhausted to speak and these exertions, the pain flaring in my side every time I moved or breathed, were reducing me further. That and the black dog, the lack of confidence or belief. The conviction that Death was watching this fight from the shadows, egging Henry on while it wide
ned the mouth of the shroud in which it would tote my soul to Hell.

  Happy thoughts. That’s right. Stay positive.

  I concentrated on staying upright and hoping that he’d make some kind of positional error that would allow me to strike and send him over the edge of the skyscraper into eternal night.

  He came again, feinting to kick and then flicking out the fan in the direction of my eyes. I’d estimated the feint and sunk low to combat it, but I hadn’t expected the finesse. I felt the iron blades connect again, skimming across my forehead but although there was blood, I hadn’t been skinned to the bone.

  I hit back with some unsophisticated moves of my own that had found traction in confrontations in the past: an inside chop to the calf; a palm heel strike to the groin; mawashi geri… It gained me some space, a little time; it in no way incapacitated him. There was no backbone to it.

  ‘I train three hours a day, seven days a week,’ he said. ‘I eat a lot of protein and fresh vegetables. I’ll have one drink a week, if that. I’ve seen you put away a bottle of vodka in one evening. How do you think we compare on the scale of fitness, of physical possibilities?’

  I tried to not listen to any of his shit. Instead I threw a bracket of metal at him, not knowing where it was from or what it was for. All I knew was that it would give him pause if it hit his bollocks or his brainbox. I didn’t think of the ramifications of allowing the metal to fly out of the skyscraper and into clear air above the houses and flats and offices below. Luckily for me it hit him, but nowhere vital. He let out a yelp of pain anyway. And I thought, I got him in the forearm or the wrist: target those, and make it matter.