The Five Gates of Hell

by Rupert Thomson

  Once he reached the stairs he felt safer. The walls were brick low down, then pale-blue and scarred with graffiti: SEX and a phone number. He smelt meat frying, then urine, then washing powder. On the second floor he turned left. The first door he came to had lost its number. He swore under his breath. The second door said 20. That was good. It meant that number 22 would be close to the stairs. He could still feel eyes on him, they were like fingers, they poked him in the ribs, the shoulderblades, the neck, it was hard not looking round. He reached number 22 and knocked with the flap of the mailbox. He took the gun out of his pocket and held it at waist-level. That way it would be invisible to anyone watching from the other side of the building. The door opened. A man in a white vest, grey flannel pants. Ears like Vasco’s. Less fat on him, though. No rings.

  Jed moved the gun one inch to the left and back again. ‘Out,’ he said. ‘Right now.’

  Gorelli blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re leaving.’ Jed grabbed Gorelli by the upper arm and spun him on to the balcony.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a face appear in the corridor. A girl in a yellow dress. Hands in the air beside her ears. Lives with his girlfriend. Girlfriend was about to scream. He slammed the door shut and shoved Gorelli along the balcony towards the stairs.

  Gorelli turned. ‘What about my shoes?’

  Jed shoved him again. ‘Keep moving,’ he said, ‘or I’ll blow your fucking kidneys out.’

  They reached the ground and the screaming began.

  ‘Francisco! Francisco!’

  The girl was swaying on the balcony above. Her yellow dress, her hands searching her black hair. For lice, Jed thought. Lice like Gorelli. His loyalty had come in a rush, like a drug, he had no doubts about which side he was on. They were all playing by the same rules. Gorelli, he’d won for a while, but now he was losing, and he was losing big. Jed had to hate him. It was the only way.

  When Gorelli turned his face up to the balcony, Jed hit him on the shoulder with the gun. Gorelli yelped. His arm shrank, hung against his ribs. The girl on the balcony was still swaying, screaming. You want to do something about it, Jed thought, why don’t you jump?

  He shoved Gorelli against the Chrysler with his gun and pulled the rear door open. He pushed Gorelli in. McGowan was still sitting in the back, Creed had moved into the front. Jed handed the gun to McGowan and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Nice work,’ Creed said. ‘Now drive.’

  Jed let the clutch out and the Chrysler took off. He swung right and took a bite out of the kerb. The car rocked, straightened up. He beat a red light and turned right again, on to the parkway that led along the river to the bridge.

  ‘The Crumbles, right?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, and slow down,’ Creed said. ‘We don’t want people smelling something funny.’

  Jed slowed to thirty. The lights of Rialto slid by on the right. On the left: the boatyards, wire-mesh fences, metal gates. Then a stone parapet and bright white globes on poles like giant pearl hat-pins. The oily swell of the river beyond.

  ‘Who are you?’ Gorelli said.

  ‘You don’t know who we are?’ McGowan said. And then to Creed and Jed, ‘He doesn’t know who we are.’

  ‘He doesn’t need to know,’ Creed said. ‘Where he’s going he doesn’t need to know anything.’

  ‘Nothing,’ McGowan said, ‘nothing at all,’ and Jed could hear the cocaine in his laughter.

  Jed glanced at Gorelli’s face in the mirror. It was grey, and strangely motionless, as if there’d been a sudden rush of concrete to his head.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Gorelli said.

  ‘Ah,’ Jed said, ‘he doesn’t understand.’

  ‘I think he’s going to start crying,’ McGowan said. ‘Anyone got a Kleenex?’

  Jed laughed.

  ‘Look,’ Gorelli said, ‘I’m sure we can come to some arrangement here.’

  ‘Arrangement?’ McGowan said. ‘What arrangement?’

  ‘We’ve already made all the arrangements,’ Creed said. ‘We’re funeral directors.’

  Gorelli lunged for the door, but it was locked. McGowan clubbed him with the butt of the gun. Blood bloomed on Gorelli’s head, a dark rose appearing from nowhere, a magician’s trick. He slumped back in the seat.

  ‘Any time you want a headache,’ McGowan said, ‘Doctor.’

  Creed turned to Jed. ‘Take the old coast road. Less traffic out there.’

  Jed left the expressway at the Baker Park exit and cut down through houses of clapperboard and dull red brick. The old coast road ran parallel to the shoreline. All shale and weeds and winds that picked up speed as they swooped in off the ocean, this strip of barren land prepared you for the final desolation of the Crumbles. Baker Park faded. They passed a used-car lot, a twenty-four-hour café, a gas station, then darkness closed round the Chrysler like a fist.

  After driving for about ten minutes Jed looked away to the right. The old gravel mine crouched against the sky. So still, so derelict, yet it looked capable of sudden movement. All those metal limbs and struts, all those tense right-angles. It could jump, land up fifteen miles away. It could carry fear with it, like disease. Some dead things seem more horribly alive.

  Creed told him to take a right turn, down a narrow track that led towards the ocean. A gate barred the way. A notice hung on the gate and he read the words in the beam of the headlamps: DANGER. NO ENTRY WITHOUT AUTHORISATION.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Creed said. ‘It isn’t locked.’

  Jed got out of the car and opened the gate. He thought of the children buried alive at the bottom of the mineshafts. He heard the click of small bones.

  The track beyond the gate was all potholes and ruts. He nursed the car along in low gear. After half a mile Creed told him to stop. He switched the lights and engine off. Wind pushed at the car with spread fingers, whispered across the hood.

  Creed inserted his voice gently into the silence. ‘Get him out of the car.’

  They walked Gorelli across the stones to the edge of a gravel pit. The moon dipped out of a cloud, and Jed shuddered. The walls of the pit were almost sheer, falling fifty feet to smooth, dull water that was jagged at the edges, like the top of a tin can. He looked into Gorelli’s face, the face he’d never seen, the face he’d only heard, and so many years ago. Gorelli was standing with his arms by his sides. He was looking at the ground, he seemed to be concentrating; he might’ve been trying to remember something. Then the moon went and Jed’s vision shut down. Then Creed’s voice:

  ‘Give him the gun.’

  McGowan handed the gun to Jed. A sliver of white that must’ve been teeth. McGowan grinning.

  ‘I can’t see,’ Jed said.

  Creed’s voice again: ‘Wait for the moon.’

  He waited. The night slowed down. Time like a clock with its hands tied. He felt the water in the pit rise up to meet him. Rise up all silver, spill across the land. Into the hands of the dead, the clawing hands and shifting bones. Into their hands and never to return. The moon came on. He raised the gun and fired twice. So loud suddenly, so bright. A choir in his ears, a furnace in his eyes. When he looked again he saw a black shape on the ground, another black shape crouching over it.

  He heard McGowan’s voice: ‘He’s dead.’ Then Creed’s: ‘Get the stuff.’

  Jed lowered his arm.

  McGowan walked to the car and returned with the long canvas bag and the cardboard box. He unzipped the bag and lifted out a chainsaw. A glimmer of silver as moonlight snagged on the serrated blade. Like holly, Jed thought. In two weeks it’d be Christmas.

  When the motor started, distant and ragged, Jed looked away. The wind blew soft across his face. He was shivering. He’d never in his life felt colder. It wasn’t until Creed took his arm and he looked into those black eyes that he remembered where he was.

  ‘Throw the gun,’ Creed said.

  He stared into those eyes.

  ‘The gun,’ Creed said. ‘Throw it.’
>
  He pulled his arm back and hurled the gun towards the pit. He saw it drop out of sight below the lip. He didn’t hear it land. Creed held a tiny bottle under his nose and the world turned white. He gasped and shook his head.

  ‘Can you drive?’ Creed asked him.

  Jed nodded. ‘I think so.’

  When he climbed into the driver’s seat he saw that McGowan was already sitting in the back. The cardboard box sat next to him. Everything seemed so bland and ordinary now.

  ‘Where’s the rest?’ Jed said.

  ‘In the gravel pit,’ McGowan said. ‘With stones to hold it down.’

  The clawing hands, the shifting bones.

  Jed turned to Creed for solid ground. ‘Where now?’

  ‘The paper warehouse. Change cars.’

  When they reached the warehouse, he opened the door for Creed and McGowan as usual. They climbed out and stood still. He moved towards the Mercedes, and then stopped and looked round. Creed and McGowan hadn’t moved. The canvas bag and the cardboard box stood on the concrete by their feet. He could see the blood on McGowan’s clothes.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said.

  ‘You’re not coming with us,’ Creed said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ The words echoed. He wished he hadn’t said that. But it was too late.

  ‘You killed someone,’ McGowan said. ‘You best leave town.’

  Creed walked towards him and handed him an envelope. ‘It’s the going rate.’

  The going rate. Jed stared at the envelope.

  ‘But,’ how could he put this? ‘I thought we –’

  ‘We did,’ Creed said, ‘but it’s over.’

  McGowan was smirking.

  Jed walked to the door of the warehouse. He stared up into the sky, his vision pulsing. The stars floated free like buoys cut loose on a dark sea. No markings any more, no guidelines. Adrift.

  He saw the streetlights again. It seemed as if they were laughing now. Rows and rows of streetlights shaking with laughter. It’s funny, he thought, it’s just funny, and he thought it hard to keep the fear and rage away.

  A hand on his shoulder. A glove. ‘I’m asking you to do something for me. It’s the hardest thing I could ask you to do.’ A slight pressure from the hand. ‘I think you can do it.’

  McGowan still smirking.

  Lies. Not even clever. Not even beautiful. He felt the veins swell in his head. And cried, ‘Why me?’

  That soothing voice again. ‘There was nobody else. Nobody we could trust. Nobody,’ a pause, ‘close enough.’

  ‘What about,’ and Jed turned and pointed at McGowan, ‘what about him?’

  A sad smile on Creed’s face.

  ‘You used me,’ Jed said.

  The same sad smile. ‘You’d better leave now.’

  ‘You, me, and the chairman.’ Jed’s lip curled. ‘Like fuck.’

  McGowan took a step forwards.

  ‘You do this all the time, don’t you?’ Jed said. ‘Pick people up and throw them away.’

  He drew his arm back and hurled the envelope at Creed. Money showered through the yellow air. One note paused on Creed’s shoulder, then launched itself again, one long swoop sideways, a flip, and it was lying on the ground.

  McGowan positioned himself between Jed and Creed. ‘You better get going.’

  Creed stood with his gloved hands clasped behind his back. There was no warmth left in his face. He could switch it on and off like central heating.

  ‘And don’t come back,’ McGowan said, ‘not ever.’

  ‘What if I do?’

  McGowan took Jed by the arm and led him over to the cardboard box. He opened the flaps and reached inside. He pulled out a transparent bag and held it up in front of Jed’s eyes. Gorelli’s face stared at Jed through the bloodstained plastic.

  Jed pushed past him. He got into his car and switched the ignition on. Without glancing at the two men, he drove out of the warehouse, through the metal gates and back on to the street. He drove very calmly, the way he drove when he was working. He even indicated. He stopped at the Palace to collect a few things. It took about twenty minutes. By the time he left the apartment, it was raining. That soft sound on the rooftops and the grass, someone putting a finger to their lips.

  Instead of driving west, towards the expressway, he doubled back, crossed the bridge again, and cut down into Baker Park. He passed a police car on the bridge. It was parked in the safety zone with its headlamps off. His heart surged. The murder was still so fresh in his head, he felt that anyone could smell it. Some cop’s lucky night. But the police car shrank in his rear-view mirror, and the lights stayed off.

  He reached Sharon’s house and then he wasn’t sure. He drove past once, then he drove past again, going the other way. The last time he’d seen her she’d been drunk, they’d had a fight, he’d left her sprawling on the carpet. There was too much to explain to her, and nothing he could say. As he pulled away, the leaves on the trees shuddered and the rain began to fall so hard that it jumped back off the tarmac, turned to mist. He had to hunch over the wheel to see anything. It was almost three. He felt he had to speak to someone before he left for good. He thought of Mitch. Mitch was often awake till dawn. Mending his clocks and drinking beer. He couldn’t sleep when it was dark. Something to do with what he’d been through in some war.

  When Jed drew up in the alley behind Mitch’s place, he saw an oil-lamp glowing in the kitchen window. He parked his car and walked in through the yard. He knocked on the back door. Then waited, shivering, as the rain tipped off the brim of his top hat and spattered on the ground. He had to knock twice more before Mitch heard and opened up.

  Mitch stood under the light in a tartan shirt and jeans that hung off his buttocks. Jed had turned up without knowing what he was going to say, but now he knew.

  ‘I know it’s late, Mitch,’ he said, ‘but could you do me a tattoo?’

  ‘What’s wrong with tomorrow?’

  ‘I won’t be here.’ He saw Mitch hesitating. ‘It’s a pretty simple job,’ he said. ‘No dragons or anything. No fish.’

  Mitch stepped back from the door. ‘You better come in.’

  Jed followed him into the kitchen. He was still shivering.

  ‘Go sit by the fire,’ Mitch said. ‘I’ll get the stuff ready.’

  Jed took off his hat and sat down by the fire.

  Taped to the wall above the mantelpiece was a large-scale map of Moon Beach. Mitch knew the city better than anyone. Jed had seen a street in Westwood that was called Success Avenue, and he’d told Mitch about it. Mitch said there was a street called Failure running parallel. The next time Jed drove through Westwood he looked for Failure, but he couldn’t find it. He reported back to Mitch. ‘There’s no such street,’ he said. Mitch just looked at him. ‘Of course there isn’t,’ he said. ‘Who’d live on a street called Failure?’

  Mitch returned. ‘So what do you want done?’

  ‘You got a pen and paper?’

  ‘Hold on.’ Mitch rummaged in a drawer. ‘Here.’

  Jed scribbled seven numbers on the piece of paper. ‘I want these seven numbers,’ he told Mitch. ‘I want a gap between the second number and the third, and another gap between the third number and the other four.’

  ‘What’s it supposed to be?’

  ‘It’s my birthday.’

  ‘Today’s your birthday?’

  Jed nodded.

  ‘Happy birthday.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Mitch didn’t ask any more questions. They moved to the tattoo parlour. Jed sat on the green plastic chair while Mitch selected the needles.

  ‘Blue all right?’

  ‘Blue’s fine.’

  ‘Where do you want it?’

  ‘Here.’ Jed pointed at the inside of his right wrist.

  ‘It’s more painful.’

  ‘That’s the idea.’ One small pain to hide the larger one.

  Mitch switched on the needle-gun. A buzzing. McGowan and his tools. Zeb
ra walls and all that talk of loyalty. Why hadn’t he seen through it? But then, how could he have seen through it? There hadn’t been any cracks.

  Mitch began to talk. About his time with the Angels, about the day he met his old lady, about tattoos. This was unusual, he almost never talked while he was working, but maybe he sensed that Jed wanted the silence filled and knew that Jed couldn’t do it on his own. Jed wasn’t really listening. Odd words and phrases came to him but, like sticks dropped into rapids, they were quickly whisked away. Sometimes he felt himself wince and it was strange because he couldn’t tell whether it was the needle or his memory. In his head he was already driving through heavy rain to a life he couldn’t imagine.

  Cats for Drowning

  Nathan had been living at India-May’s for almost three years when Donald moved in. Donald was about forty-five, with short hairless arms and a belly that looked hard. His face had an unpleasant shine to it, the kind of shine you get on the walls of places where they’ve been cooking in cheap fat since for ever. He just showed up out of the blue one day while Nathan was working. He’d taken a taxi out to Baby Boy’s grave, and then he’d walked the rest of the way. ‘Five miles along a dirt track in his city shoes, can you imagine?’ India-May had that glazed look, as if she was describing a miracle, a miracle that she’d witnessed with her own eyes. The arrival of somebody new, perhaps it was always a miracle to her. Donald sat beside her, listening with a modesty that seemed sly. A bandage round his head, a cup of tea in his blunt hands, he looked like the only survivor of some great catastrophe, and Nathan could understand exactly why he’d been able to move India-May to tears and why he’d been given a room on the first floor, one of the large ones, for nothing.