Hell Is Empty

by Conrad Williams

  The light flickered back on. Tann had given up on his escape plan, knowing that he had me at his mercy. He was standing a foot away from me. The muzzle of the FAMAS was five centimetres from my left eye. Close enough to smell the grease that the weapon had been packed in. But the dynamic in the room had all changed and I couldn’t work out why. It wasn’t just that Tann had the upper hand. Sarah was reaching out to pick up my gun. Her smile was so wide and liquid that I had the awful conviction that her entire jaw was going to slither out from her mouth and crack against the floor.

  Christ, do it, I thought. Kill me now rather than suffer any more thoughts like that.

  Light. Three figures. Dark.

  Light. Four figures. Dark.

  Tann said: ‘Rest in hell. Writhe in agony. Bitch.’ The light stuttered on again.

  And Mawker shot him in the back.

  Tann arched and the hand holding the FAMAS jerked wildly. It sprayed bullets. Several of them slammed through Mawker’s jaw, snapping his head back, splintering bone through the rest of his face.

  Darkness. Someone groaning. Someone gurgling. I heard someone shifting through the blood and glass, coming towards me. Tann at the last, finishing it. I was losing blood, but not at any great rate of knots. But I was kitten weak, undone by shock and fear.

  I fished in my pocket and found the torch. I switched it on and Tann was looking at me. He was lying on the floor and looking at me. Blood ringed his mouth. He was dead. But no. He grinned and I saw the wash of blood on his teeth, like a vampire that has just fed. He shifted the muzzle of the gun so that it was trained on my heart. I’d given him enough light to finish his job. I’d authored my own demise. It might have been funny if it wasn’t so fucking tragic.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, but it was an effort. It was air. I could see the fight in him, the struggle to keep death away long enough for him to pull the trigger and take me with him.

  ‘Why did you kill Rebecca?’ I asked him. ‘Why did you do what you did?’

  ‘If I couldn’t have her…’

  I switched the torch off and there was a pop and I thought, Is that it? What a pathetic sound to check out to. That’s the noise that Death makes? Christ, someone lend Him an amp. And while we’re at it, Death, what’s with the continuous pain? My arm’s giving me agony. Is this part of eternity’s punishment? Is this—

  And then the room filled with an explosion of light so bright I had to shield my eyes and I thought, Well sod me with a spatula: I made it to Heaven after all.

  Figures filled the light. Armed officers. Mawker was on his back, choking on blood. I got to him and rolled him on to his side. His eyes fastened on mine. I said all the right things, but they were all wrong. His lower jaw was gone. I gripped his hand and then I thought fuck that and I pulled him to me and held him tight and bollocks to the pain it caused me, and I held him until he stopped convulsing and he was gone.

  Minutes later the paramedics arrived. I’d been shot clean through the arm. The shell had nutmegged the ulna and radius and politely avoided the artery before wiping its feet on the way out. They told me they had never seen a cleaner exit.

  I was plugged and wrapped and I didn’t keep my eyes off Sarah while they tended me. She’d been cloaked in one of those silver foil capes they give out to marathon runners. And they had magicked a drip from somewhere. Someone administered a shot. Something to combat the Largactil perhaps, or a sedative. A good sedative. I don’t know. It seemed to do the trick though. She lost that manic look. For the first time since I’d lost her, she looked like my daughter. I could still see the child in her face.

  25

  I went looking for him.

  My arm was in a sling, and I don’t know if you’ve tried it, but climbing hundreds of steps with one arm is a sod of a job. It would probably be easier with one leg instead. I don’t know what it is that makes it so knackering. Maybe it’s to do with balance. Or maybe it’s nothing to do with balance and all to do with posture. In any case, both things rate very low where I’m concerned.

  I went up a couple of days before Christmas. There were festive lights on all the cranes. There was one guy on duty, the poor sap, a policeman because of what had happened. And he wasn’t making an effort. He was sitting in a squad car with a radio playing Perry Como, sipping from a cup. ‘Christmas Dream’. I hoped there was a nip of something other than coffee in that. I silently sent him best wishes and got myself up the damned skyscraper.

  There were the leftovers of a party on the summit. There were windows too now, presumably put in especially so some pissed labourer didn’t take a dive off the thirty-third floor. The wind howled outside as if complaining at its banishment. A skip full of empty Brew Dog bottles. Crumpled foil bags of dry roasted peanuts.

  I found a candle, warm and soft at the business end; and there was the hot, plasticky odour of recently extinguished flame. I called out to him.

  ‘That’s not my name,’ he said.

  ‘But it’s who you are.’

  ‘According to some. To people who can’t cope. Who think that giving a name to something they don’t want to think about makes it more manageable.’

  ‘It’s the way we’re hardwired,’ I said. ‘When you’re a kid you fear what’s underneath the bed if you don’t know what it is. But as soon as you find out it’s a zombie or a vampire, you have the upper hand. You can deal with it. You can prepare.’

  ‘So, fifty storeys high, how do you prepare for me?’

  ‘You saved my life,’ I said. ‘I wanted to thank you.’

  ‘We did all that,’ he said. ‘You’re here to turn me in.’

  ‘To ask you to give yourself up,’ I said. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘I stopped. Years ago.’

  ‘And that’s supposed to mean anything? The passage of years? People forget, scars heal, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You said you were the architect.’

  ‘I was an architect. Of sorts.’

  ‘Of death.’

  He smiled and walked to the window. Teeming lights everywhere. Traffic surged across London Bridge like something molten.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Whittaker,’ he said. ‘Struan Whittaker.’

  ‘Why did you stop, Struan?’ I asked. ‘Jesus, why did you start?’

  He rubbed his face and I heard the hiss of stubble in the open space like water thrown on a hot plate.

  ‘I was young and angry,’ he said. ‘I used to be able to see things from my bedroom window. Tower block on the High Street in Stratford. I used to be able to see park space. A view down the river. And then the skyscrapers came and started blocking out life. I could no longer see the river. Or the parks. Just sheets of steel and glass. Shining columns of money.’

  ‘You lived in a tower block.’

  ‘Yes. And well loved, it was. Well used. The residential blocks being thrown up now in London… who can afford to live in them, other than the stratospherically rich?’

  ‘The people building them… the people you pushed off the upper floors… they weren’t stratospherically rich. They were construction workers. They were dads and brothers and sons. Why did they deserve to die?’

  ‘You’re right,’ he snapped. His voice quivered with some kind of emotion I couldn’t discern. Anger, guilt? It seemed defensive and belligerent in equal measure. ‘And that’s why I quit. I took a step back. It was a protest but I couldn’t see what it was I was really doing. When I understood, when I saw the newspapers and the faces of the people who died – not just shadows in hard hats – I stopped. That and the birth of my son. I recognised the monster I’d become.’

  ‘You recognised it but you did nothing about it. You can make up for that now. You can give yourself up.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘I won’t grass. Not tonight. But tomorrow the police will be here. And I’ll give them your name. I’ll give them a description.’

  ‘If you walk away from here.’

  �
�You’re an old man now, Struan.’

  ‘I kept myself fit.’

  ‘Maybe. But the truth is, I don’t want another fight.’

  ‘My son died, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Really, I am.’

  ‘He was killed on a train track. Dicking about with his mates. Playing chicken with InterCity 125s. One of his mates told me later that he never looked like leaving the tracks. He wasn’t poised, ready to jump out the way. He just stood there. He was thirteen.’

  ‘Why did you come back to these buildings?’ I asked. I was getting cold. The ache in my arm was intensifying. I needed some co-codamol and a glass – one glass – of something warming.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘You weren’t going to—’

  ‘What? Reignite my reign of terror?’

  ‘Jump. You weren’t going to jump, were you?’

  He looked at me thoughtfully, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Your life falls apart when you lose a child,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘My wife walked away. I lost my job. Drink, you know. But I made some progress. Maybe I come up here because, ironically… the view…’

  ‘It is spectacular.’

  ‘To fly above this,’ he said. ‘To soar over the city. Imagine that.’

  ‘Imagine.’

  ‘Give me this evening,’ he said.

  I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t know how to phrase what I should have said next.

  I left him, remembering the fire in his eyes when he saw Henry Herschell step across the threshold, and I went home.

  In the morning it was on the news.

  26

  I an Mawker was cremated at Mortlake the next day. There was a thin mist tangled in the treetops, but you could tell the sky was bright beyond it. Everyone was wondering whether the sun would be strong enough to chase it all away.

  A couple of people spoke at the service. One of them was a sweet old guy who had been in the police back in the 1960s. A more civilised time, according to him. The villains were polite, apparently. Called you sir. Mawker used to go to him for advice. And to gain a sense of perspective.

  After the curtain had slipped open to receive his coffin and the organ had gone quiet, I headed off. I didn’t want to listen to the stories over sandwiches and warm beer. I’d been a part of them. I also didn’t want to lock horns with some of the Mawkerites who’d been giving me the beady while the hymns were being sung. I hadn’t always seen eye to eye with Mawker, but I’d be damned if I buggered his funeral up by brawling with his bum-polishers.

  Someone collared me, nevertheless, as I was getting into the car Jimmy Two was letting me use (a Ford Mondeo, if you’re interested, with an automatic gearbox to help me with my gammy arm) while I went about finding a replacement for the Saab. It was the sweet old guy, as it happened. He introduced himself as Stuart Frobisher and shook my hand. His skin was soft and yielding, but his grip was firmer than you’d expect. He gave me an envelope.

  ‘I’m executor of Ian’s estate,’ he said. ‘That was in his drawer. Sealed. Addressed to you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘I doubt it’s money,’ he said. ‘And I doubt it’s a card of any sort. Because you’re a cunt and a half, son. He used to tell me all about you. He could have filled a pint pot with stomach acid on a daily basis because of you. If there’s any justice in the world it will be an invitation to join him in the fucking furnace.’

  There wasn’t an awful lot I could have said to that. I watched him walk back, the sweet old man. Stuart Frobisher in his cardigan, with his candy-floss hair. He was received by a gaggle of old dears who cooed and laughed at something he said.

  I got in the car and opened the envelope. There was a photograph of Mawker standing in his kitchen, a glass of whisky in one hand. The other hand was outstretched towards the lens, and he was sticking the Vs up at me. I started laughing and couldn’t stop. The laughter turned to tears and returned to laughter. People walked by and gave me funny looks.

  I got myself under control, drove home and attached the photograph to the fridge door.

  27

  Sarah was staying with me. She had the bed, I had the sofa. Mengele went to sleep with her every night. I heard him through the wall, purring his nuts off. Maybe it was because she’d renamed him. Was it that easy? I don’t know. Does the deed poll count where cats are concerned? Anyway, she was calling him Deano because he was cool, like Dean Martin, like James Dean, but also because… sardines. I’d never fed him sardines, but I got where she was coming from. It didn’t stop him behaving like a Nazi overlord with me, mind.

  She was hungry but there was nothing in the kitchen. I said I’d take her out for dinner. She suggested I contact Romy and invite her too. I said I would. But not tonight. Soon.

  ‘She likes you,’ she said.

  ‘And I like her.’

  ‘So do something about it. Mum would want you to.’

  ‘I know. I know.’

  I watched her slip into her suede jacket and tie the laces of her sixteen-hole oxblood DMs. No make-up. She was pale and beautiful. She was tired and beautiful. We traipsed downstairs to the ground floor and I thought of the gift I’d bought her, wrapped as best as I could, hidden in my underwear drawer. I hoped she’d like it. It had cost a lot of money, but I reckoned all these Christmases I’d been unable to get her anything, well, this was payback for those.

  We stepped out on to Homer Street and the air was brittle and fresh and good. I wanted to ask her so many questions. I wanted to talk to her about her mum. I wanted to grill her about Tann. I wanted to tell her how much I was sorry and I wanted to show her too. I wanted to hug her. My God, I desperately wanted to hug her.

  But there was plenty of time for all of that. Whenever she was ready.

  ‘I fancy moussaka,’ she said.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ I said. ‘I hate Greek food.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And, insult to injury, you’re paying for the bastard.’

  It was drugs, I’d told her, at the hospital later that night. She was tired. Drifting. Drugs and duplicity. That’s all. He’s good at that. He’s a puppeteer. A string puller. He wanted to get at me through you. But I know your mum. And I know you. And I know me. You are me. Of me. I’ll take any test. I know your mum. Sarah. Sarah. Sarah.

  We headed towards Edgware Road. As we crossed Crawford Street, she slipped her hand into mine.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks again to Mum and Dad, Rhonda, Ethan, Ripley and Zac, and all the readers and writers I’m lucky to call friends. Thanks to Mary and Tim for good food and company in a series of interesting houses. Thanks also to Paul and Helen Lomax for excellent karate tuition over the past couple of years – Joel wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for you. I’m grateful to David Carrier for risqué jokes and for looking after my stuff for too many years: RIP, sir. Thanks to Adèle Fielding for her medical prowess, and for introducing me to London. I’m grateful too to Miranda Jewess for kicks up the arse and arms around the shoulder, to Cat Camacho, and to Julia Lloyd for stunning covers.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Conrad Williams is the author of nine novels, four novellas and a collection of short stories. One was the winner of the August Derleth award for Best Novel (British Fantasy Awards 2010), while The Unblemished won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel in 2007 (he beat the shortlisted Stephen King on both occasions). He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer in 1993, and another British Fantasy Award for Best Novella (The Scalding Rooms) in 2008. His first crime novel, and the first Joel Sorrell thriller, Dust and Desire, was published in 2015, with Sonata of the Dead following in 2016. He lives in Manchester.

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  THE JOEL SORRELL THRILLERS

  CONRAD WILLIAMS

  DUST AND DESIRE

  Joel Sorrell, a bruised, bad-mouthed PI, is a sucker for mi
ssing person cases. And not just because he’s searching for his daughter, who vanished after his wife was murdered. Joel feels a kinship with the desperate and the damned. So when the mysterious Kara Geenan begs him to find her missing brother, Joel agrees. Then an attempt is made on his life, and Kara vanishes… A vicious serial killer is on the hunt, and Joel suspects that answers may lie in his own hellish past.

  SONATA OF THE DEAD

  Even as he recovers from his encounter with an unhinged killer, PI Joel Sorrell cannot forget his search for Sarah. He receives a tip that photographs of her have been found at a murder scene, where a young man whom Sarah knew when they were children has been killed. Finding a link between the victim and a writers’ group, Joel follows the thread, but every lead ends in another body. Someone is targeting the group, and it is only a matter of time before Joel’s daughter is run to ground.

  PRAISE FOR THE SERIES

  “Gritty and compelling”

  Mark Billingham, bestselling author of Rush of Blood

  TITANBOOKS.COM

  THE BLOOD STRAND

  A FAROES NOVEL

  CHRIS OULD

  Having left the Faroes as a child, Jan Reyna is now a British police detective, and the islands are foreign to him. But he is drawn back when his estranged father is found unconscious with a shotgun by his side and someone else’s blood at the scene. Then a man’s body is washed up on an isolated beach. Is Reyna’s father responsible? Looking for answers, Reyna falls in with local detective Hjalti Hentze. But as the stakes get higher and Reyna learns more about his family and the truth behind his mother’s flight from the Faroes, he must decide whether to stay, or to forsake the strange, windswept islands for good.