The Five Gates of Hell

by Rupert Thomson

  Creed spoke to the Skull. ‘Keep him quiet.’ He left the cabin, closing the door behind him.

  A police voice came through a megaphone. ‘Cut your engines. We’re coming aboard.’

  The Skull sat on the bunk opposite Nathan. He drew a four-inch knife out of his boot and tapped the blade against his palm. He tilted his head towards the roof. A vein pulsed in his temple.

  The engines died. Only the slapping of waves and then a bump as the patrol boat tied up alongside.

  Creed spoke first. ‘Good evening, Sergeant.’

  ‘What’s your business out here, sir?’

  ‘We had a report that one of the buoys had come loose in Angel Meadows. We’ve just been out to check on them. Here’s my licence.’

  A silence.

  ‘That seems to be in order.’

  ‘If you need verification, just call Lieutenant Gomez down at O Street. He’s got the details.’

  ‘I don’t reckon that’ll be necessary. Sorry to trouble you, Mr Creed.’

  ‘No problem, Sergeant. Good night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  Nathan heard the sudden growling of engines as the patrol boat swung away. He listened to the growling turn to purring and then nothing. The police had been tamed.

  ‘You’ve got the fairy dust, Creed,’ came Angelo’s voice. ‘You’ve got the fairy dust all right.’

  ‘Those water cops,’ Creed said. ‘You could tell them it’s Tuesday, they’d believe you.’

  Then Angelo’s voice. ‘It is Tuesday.’

  And Creed’s laughter.

  The cabin door opened and Creed looked in. ‘Dress him, Skull,’ he said, ‘then bring him out.’

  The Skull hauled Nathan to his feet, then he pulled up Nathan’s pants. ‘You don’t smell too good.’

  He brought Nathan to within two inches of his face. Nathan could see himself twice in the mirrors of the Skull’s eyes, he could smell the Skull’s bitter breath. He saw one corner of the Skull’s mouth lift, as if the Skull had been hooked, as if someone was pulling on a line. Then he was pushed through the cabin door and up the stairs and out on deck.

  They were already in the harbour, no more than a couple of hundred yards offshore. He tried to get his bearings. A passing sign said VENUS ENGINEERING. It must be Venus Bay then. One of the remote backwaters. Angelo steered into the flat black water of a boatyard and threw the engines into reverse to bring the port side flush with the quay. The Skull jumped ashore. Once he’d secured the ropes, Creed and Nathan followed.

  They walked down the quay and out into a parking-lot. Creed’s black car waited by a high, wire-mesh fence. The Skull tossed a set of keys to Angelo, who bounced them on his palm. Angelo walked to the car on feet that seemed alert. Angelo would be the one to follow through a minefield; he’d always find the magic route. Nathan watched him unlock the car and climb inside. The engine crackled and spat, the headlamps lifted like eyes and lit the gravel. Nathan thought of Jed’s bad skin.

  Creed put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to find your own way back.’

  ‘So you’re not going to kill me?’

  Creed smiled. ‘You’ll keep your mouth shut. You’ve seen what happens to people who don’t.’

  The car drew alongside. The tail-lights turned their faces red. For the first time Nathan noticed the numberplate:

  3UR 1AL

  Creed saw where he was looking. ‘You like it?’

  Nathan didn’t answer.

  ‘Numberplates,’ Creed said. ‘It’s a little hobby of mine. Maybe you should come and see my collection some time.’

  Nathan took a step backwards.

  Creed laughed, slid into the car. The door clicked shut. The car trickled over the gravel to the gate.

  ‘What about my hands?’ Nathan shouted.

  The car turned left on to the road and vanished behind a warehouse wall. The sound of the engine faded.

  He walked to the gate. On the other side of the road there was a small park with trees and benches. That would do. All he could think of now was sleep. He crossed the road and lay down on the first bench he came to. The world went black, the stars shrank and vanished, his heart blew through his body like a bomb, again, again, again. He heard the shrapnel land on the ground around him, it came showering down like rain. He was so cold inside, and burning too. But he was feeling less and less. His eyelids closing, it was like dust settling, soon there was nothing.

  He woke, and it was light. He sat up. He wanted to rub his eyes, but he didn’t have any hands. He looked up and saw a policeman standing in front of him. A big solid policeman.

  ‘What’s the time?’ he asked the policeman.

  The policeman was wearing a big solid watch to go with the rest of him. ‘It’s seven-thirty.’ He seemed slightly annoyed Nathan had asked the first question. Policemen are supposed to do that. He had to be satisfied with the second question. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was just waiting till daylight,’ Nathan said. ‘Then I was going to hitch a lift home.’ Though how would he hitch, he wondered, with no thumbs?

  ‘Couldn’t you get home last night or what?’

  ‘No money.’ Nathan wanted to spread his hands in the air. Couldn’t, of course. All he could manage was a kind of shrug, a kind of grin.

  The policeman slowly leaned sideways, like a falling tree. ‘Something wrong with your hands?’

  ‘You guessed it.’ Nathan couldn’t help sounding smart. It was just to keep his head above water. If he didn’t say stuff, if he stopped and looked at his boots, he’d sink for sure. ‘I’m all tied up.’ He turned round, showed the policeman his hands.

  ‘How do you explain that?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘It was a joke,’ Nathan said. ‘Some friends of mine.’

  ‘Nice friends,’ the policeman said and, walking round behind Nathan, he began to untie the belt.

  Dead Ends

  He woke up and he was drowning. It was as if he’d been born blind into a world where the only element was water. He struck out with his hands and kicked with his feet, but the water wrapped all his movements up, stole all their strength. He struck out, kicked again. Rose to the surface. Drank the black air down. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his wrist. Now he could see. Black trees crowding over him. The night sky, one shade lighter, just behind. He turned in the water. A glimmer of white. Windows hooded like the eyes of owls. The house. He swam to the side of the pool and hauled himself out. He crouched, his head between his knees, retching.

  When the water had finished spilling from his nose and mouth, he huddled at the end of the pool, his toes hooked over the edge. A warm wind blew across his shoulders, drying him. He could only think of one explanation. He must’ve been walking in his sleep. He must’ve walked right into the deep end.

  Ever since that night on the boat he’d been buying the Moon Beach papers every day, scouring their pages for some mention of the name Jed Morgan. He wasn’t expecting front-page news. He knew Creed well enough to realise there’d be no mistakes, no clues. That was why Jed had been dumped in Angel Meadows and not some stagnant harbour bay. When those deep waters took you they took you for ever. But there had to be a paragraph somewhere, even if it was only six lines tucked away at the bottom of a page: MAN, 27, MISSING. Something like that. Surely someone would report him missing. He felt he needed evidence of what had happened. Some kind of proof. But almost a month had passed, and there’d been nothing.

  And now he was walking in his sleep again, for the first time in almost fifteen years. He remembered the rumours it had spread about him, the tall tales it had told. And yet he’d never said anything about it. That was the way he’d been brought up. You kept all your worries locked inside, in some attic in your head, like mad relations. Sometimes you met people who could hear the screams. You tried to cover up. Scream? you said. I didn’t hear a scream. Must’ve been the wind. Sometimes he thought that all his pain had come from biting his tongue, a
ll his pain had come from silence. And silence, once established, bred a new pain of its own.

  He remembered how Georgia had appeared behind the reinforced glass of the police-station window. Her face still smeared with sleep, it had been so early. Her eyes moving from his torn and filthy clothes to his scorched wrists.

  ‘Nathan,’ she said, ‘what happened?’

  It was in his head to say, ‘I’m all right, don’t worry, I’m all right, really,’ but that was what he’d been taught, white lies and twisted courage. There were no apologies to give her, no reassurances. Not this time.

  Her eyes silvered over with tears. ‘But,’ and she didn’t know quite how to put it, ‘but it’s me who’s supposed to do things like this.’

  ‘Just take me home,’ he said.

  She was right. In the past it had always been her who needed saving. Now, suddenly, it was him. He could hear the shock in her voice, it sounded almost petulant, like indignation. He could hear the fear.

  But she took him home. Ran a hot oil-bath for him. He sank into that water with such gratitude. He felt his body slow, his thoughts cut out. He lay back, let the seconds ripple, drift. Through the perfumed steam and the half-open door he saw clean sheets billowing across a room.

  Later, as she tucked him into bed, she said, ‘We’ve got to look after each other. Like that dream you had. Like the jets.’ He smiled. She had the measure of the simple things. She knew what they were.

  Time passed, and that simplicity attached to everything. They sat down at the kitchen table and made decisions. First they arranged for the bank to execute Dad’s will on their behalf; it would put Nathan out of Harriet’s reach. Next they accepted an offer on the house. It meant they had just one month to clear the place, but to Nathan that kind of urgency seemed welcome now, intended, even crucial. Apart from anything else, it took his mind off the continuing silence of the newspapers. Working together, they began to sift the past, and they sifted it with an exuberance that bordered, at times, on delirium. One afternoon they built a fire out of all the worst things they could find: carpets, mattresses, hose-pipes, tyres. Black smoke gushed into the air, it looked as if a plane had crashed in their back garden, and some neighbour called the fire department. But they just laughed when the red trucks lined up in the road, it had the look of a joke, they were children answering to nobody. The days ran like clean cold water from a tap. Not even Harriet had any power any more.

  Though she made one last attempt to wield it.

  It was late one afternoon. The distant beat of helicopters circling above the harbour bridge. A fringe of shadows on the lawn. He was down in the empty pool, scrubbing the tiled sides, when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned round. Harriet was standing in the shallow end. She was smiling with her crimson lips. She thought she’d made an entrance.

  ‘Well?’ she said, and the empty pool took the word and played ball with it. ‘Have you been thinking about what I said?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘What did you decide?’

  ‘If you have any questions about the will,’ he said, ‘you’d better contact the bank. They’re dealing with it now.’

  He watched her lips tighten on her teeth. He had to be careful or she would turn him into someone like her. That was the one power she still had left. And so he bore her no ill will, he showed no malice. He simply told the truth. And smiled.

  ‘I thought they might do a better job,’ he said. ‘I thought they might be more,’ and his smile widened, ‘trustworthy.’

  She walked back up the steps, her head set so stiff on her shoulders that it might’ve been glued. It’s hard to make a dramatic exit when there isn’t any door to slam. She had to be content with the screeching of her tyres on the drive. That was the last they’d heard of her.

  Within hours of Harriet’s departure, Yvonne called. She asked if she could come and say goodbye to the house. And take some of Dad’s paintings to remember him by.

  ‘As if you need to ask,’ he said.

  She drove down the next day in her station-wagon. When she opened the car door, clouds of smoke poured out as if she’d been lighting fires of her own. She stood on the driveway with her legs astride and a cheroot stuck in the side of her mouth, her copper hair tied back with a piece of paint-stained silk. They ran to her and wrapped their arms round her. She smelt of the inside of cupboards, long journeys, kindness.

  Nathan spoke for both of them. ‘We’ve missed you.’

  Later that day, walking in the garden, she said, ‘It’s funny, you’ve risked your life so many times saving all these people you don’t know, and all along the only person you ever really wanted to save,’ and she looked at him, ‘but you know that, don’t you?’

  He nodded. ‘I know.’

  In that moment he also knew that he’d been asking the impossible of himself. He couldn’t have saved Dad. He couldn’t even save Jed. You lose people sometimes. It was one of the laws of the surf. The captain had told him that. Sometimes the ocean’s just too strong, the captain had said. Spring tides, a rip, whatever. There’s someone in trouble, you go after them, they’re there, they’re still there, and he snapped his fingers, then suddenly they’re gone. Don’t pretend it never happened. They were there, you did your best. You live with that. You carry on.

  Nathan looked at Yvonne. Her bent teeth stained by cigars, her hair as crunchy as a horse’s mane.

  ‘You loved him, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘Harriet was right about that.’

  She looked away into the lowest part of the sky. It was a look that was both longing and resigned. It was as if she could see all the things that had never happened to her.

  ‘Love?’ she said. ‘I don’t know. There was just a feeling I got sometimes, when I looked at his hands.’

  He took her arm and they crossed the bright grass without another word. They walked up the stone steps and back into the house. It’s one of the hardest things, he thought, when life is miserly to those you care for.

  On her last night they barbecued some chicken by the pool. It was so still; they lit candles and ate their dinner under the stars. Yvonne had brought some wine down from the Cape. It was that pale white wine that looks almost green in the glass. They drank to the future of the house without them. They drank to Dad and to themselves. They drank to so many things that Yvonne had to open a third bottle.

  ‘So tell me,’ she said finally, ‘what are your plans?’

  Nathan and Georgia looked at each other. They’d hardly discussed it. It had been enough to move from one day to the next, to feel the days forge links and pick up speed.

  ‘Summer’s on the way,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should come and stay at my house for a while.’

  He didn’t have to look at Georgia this time to know the answer. They watched Yvonne drive away the next day, the back of her station-wagon stacked with paintings, Dad’s red chair strapped to the roof, and knew that they would see her soon.

  He leaned back, stretched. It was almost morning. The wind blew some pale blossoms against his thigh. He’d been through hard water all his life, but there was no water harder than the water of the last few weeks. He’d come through, though, he’d been strong enough, and he could build on that. He could learn from Dad too. Not the carefulness, the wariness; not the silence. But the sheer determination, that iron grip on life. Death had brushed past, snatched half each lung and a handful of ribs. But Dad had clung on. What had that nurse at the hospital said? ‘Your father’s been living on borrowed time.’ Crap. Dad didn’t borrow it. He took it. He laid his hands on it and said this is mine. That’s what you do with time. The thought of Dad as some kind of thief brought him to his feet with a smile. He walked towards the house, the lawn warm under his heels, still warm from the day.

  The next morning he left the house at around eleven. He was halfway down the hill when he met Mrs Fernandez, the lady who used to clean for Dad sometimes. She put a hand on his wrist. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your father,�
� she said. He thanked her. There was sweat on her top lip, he noticed. It was a hot day, but not the thick, wet heat of summer. Not yet. He said goodbye to her and walked on down the street towards the newsagent’s. A breeze picked up. The dry branches of the palm trees clicked and scraped. It was a Tuesday.

  He only bought one newspaper that morning. As he left the store he tore the front page out of the paper and dropped the rest in a trash bin. He walked back to the house without lifting his eyes from the front page once. And by the time he did he was home again, sitting at the kitchen table, and he put the page down and moved his head slowly from side to side, all the blood drawn out of his face. Then he picked the page up again and read it through once more:

  DEATH KING BRUTALLY MURDERED

  Escaped mental patient found in victim’s apartment

  Mr Neville Creed, chairman of the prestigious Paradise Corporation, was found dead in his apartment in the Palace Hotel last night.

  In what is already being called the ‘John the Baptist’ murder, Mr Creed, 43, was stabbed fourteen times and then decapitated.

  Police have arrested Mr Vasco Gorelli, who was found in Mr Creed’s apartment. Mr Gorelli escaped from the Westwood Hill Clinic last Friday where he was held in a ward for the dangerously insane. He was still unavailable for comment yesterday.

  Mental

  The ferocity and bizarre nature of the killing have drawn comment, even from police working on the case.

  ‘It’s a horrific crime,’ said Det. Sergeant John Lopez of Moon Beach Homicide. ‘I understand the suspect has a history of mental illness and maybe that explains it.’

  The body was found by Mr Al Cone, a night porter at the Palace Hotel, when he received complaints of a disturbance on the fourteenth floor and went up to investigate.

  A visibly shaken Mr Cone told reporters how he had found Mr Gorelli sitting in an armchair covered in blood while the headless body of Mr Creed lay beside him on the floor. Gorelli had smashed the television screen and put his victim’s head inside.

  Mr Cone went on, ‘He was watching it, like it still worked. You know what he said to me when I came in? “Ssshh,” he said, “it’s the news.’”