Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

Mitch worked without speaking. There was only the buzz of the needle-gun and the hiss of the disinfectant spray. About halfway through, a guy in a sleeveless leather jacket walked in. He showed Mitch his tattoo: a hooded man with a double-sided axe.

Mitch only took his eyes off Vasco’s tombstone for a moment. ‘It’s shit. Who did it?’

‘I got it when I was drunk. Can you fix it?’

‘Yeah, I can fix it. For a hundred bucks I’ll put in some background too. Make it look real killer.’

‘What about tomorrow?’

Mitch nodded. ‘Don’t come in here drunk.’

The guy grinned foolishly and left.

Mitch looked at Vasco. ‘There are too many of those.’

Otherwise it was silence. Homage to Scraper.

Vasco didn’t speak to Jed until they left the place. Then he said, ‘One day I’ll probably be covered with tombstones.’ He turned to Jed, laughing. ‘One of them’ll probably be yours.’

Jed looked at him, just looked at him.

Vasco pushed him in the chest, trying to jog the needle that was saying the same thing over and over. ‘No need to get all fucked up about it. It was only a joke.’ He ducked into a doorway, lit a cigarette, then stepped out on to the sidewalk again.

Jed watched the wind bend the smoke out of Vasco’s mouth and off into nothing. So you’re going to wear my tombstone, he thought. So tell me something. Who’s going to wear yours? Tell me that. Don’t talk to me about I’m fucked up.

He looked through the tattoos the way you might look through church windows, but before he could see Vasco all laid out like some martyr carved in stone he shook the picture loose and hit Vasco on his arm, the arm that wasn’t a graveyard, hit Vasco so hard that he fell against a store-front and the glass bulged inwards, creaked and almost gave.

‘What’s that for?’ Vasco said.

Jed grinned. ‘Let’s go get a beer or something.’

Scraper’s funeral was discount. Special offer. Free silver crucifix pendant thrown in. You could always tell. It took place in one of the cemeteries that ringed the northern suburbs. You could see them from the freeway, bare hills covered with a stubble of crosses, bleak places even in the famous Moon Beach sunshine. The poor were buried there. The lost. The forgotten.

The Womb Boys arrived early and sat on stones at the top of the slope. Vasco had taken his bandage off, and his memorial to Scraper looked painful; the new bright blue of the tattoo had raised a raw red welt (though, according to Mitch, this only ever lasted a day or two). They watched the hearse trickle along the gravel avenue. Bald tyres, dented fender. A thin squeal as it braked. Vasco scowled and lit another cigarette.

Two men in moth-eaten black lifted Scraper’s coffin on to a stainless-steel trolley and wheeled it across the grass. They looked like waiters in a cheap restaurant. And then the ultimate insult. Scraper was buried at the bottom of a slope. He wouldn’t even have a view. There were only two people there who hadn’t been paid. A man in a brown suit and a woman in a veil. Scraper’s parents. They looked guilty and ashamed, as if death was a crime their son had committed.

‘For Christ’s sake.’ Vasco stood up suddenly. ‘This isn’t a funeral,’ he said, ‘this is a charade.’

That night Jed and Vasco sat up late, working on a plan of revenge. It was Jed’s first active contribution and he was gratified to find that Vasco backed almost every one of his suggestions. The following evening Vasco called a meeting in the house on Mangrove Heights. The gang assembled in the dining-room at nine o’clock. Tall white candles burned in the two silver candelabras that Tip had stolen from a church the week before. Mario rolled overhead like distant thunder.

Vasco rose to his feet.

‘This time we’re taking extreme measures. This time,’ and he smiled grimly, ‘it’s Gorilla warfare.’

So he’d heard the whispers with those ears of his. So he knew his name. Laughter shook the room.

‘What’ve you got in mind?’ Cramps Crenshaw asked.

Vasco passed his hand across a candle’s flame, then looked down at his blackened palm. ‘Another fire.’

Two nights later they met outside the construction site of a new funeral complex in Meadowland. It was on the far side of the river, just south of Sweetwater. Standing by the security fence, Jed suddenly remembered this area as fields. When he was young, Pop had taken him for walks here and, together, they’d given names to things. There was an old dead tree that Pop had called Winchester because it was the vague shape of a rifle and because he couldn’t be called Winchester himself. Jed peered through the fence at the levelled ground, he peered at the yellow bulldozers, the colour of cowardice, and suddenly he felt the anger Vasco felt. A different root, but just as strong.

After appointing a sentry to keep watch, Vasco scaled the fence. He climbed close to the support stanchion so the wire mesh didn’t sag or buckle. The rest of the gang followed, dropping lightly into the weeds on the other side. Dark mounds lay on the ground. Cramps Crenshaw had done a thorough job of poisoning the dogs. Vasco began to hand out pieces of paper. Every piece was printed with the same slogan: DEATH TO THE FUNERAL BUSINESS.

‘What are these?’ Tip asked.

‘They’re curses,’ Vasco explained. ‘Look.’ Running into the nearest building, he climbed a series of ladders to the roof. He held up a piece of paper and let it drop into the gap between the still-unfinished walls. ‘This building is now damned.’

When the curses had been sealed into the walls of every building on the site, he gathered the gang around him once again. ‘Who’s got the lighter fluid?’

PS stepped forwards and handed Vasco a small yellow can.

‘We’re only doing one,’ Vasco said.

‘One?’ PS sounded disappointed.

‘One.’ Vasco’s eyes moved across the faces of his gang. ‘The power’s in the curses.’ he said. ‘Burning a house down, that’s just our calling card.’

It took PS a moment to see it. The things Vasco came out with, it often took his gang a while to see. Then PS nodded and he fitted his phones over his ears and his music started up.

They watched as Vasco climbed high into the rafters of the main office and sprayed the new blond wood with lighter fuel. He lit the end of the trail of fuel the same way you light a fuse. The central roofbeam was a sudden ribbon of fire. It made the same sound a clean sheet makes when it’s snapped out over a bed.

Vasco slid back down the ladders, dropping the last ten feet. He stood in the front entrance, wiping his hands on his coat. Sombre now, he surveyed the faces of his gang.

‘This is for Scraper,’ he said.

The gang responded, and one word was stamped on the quiet air. ‘Scraper!’

Then they were running towards the fence, the rest of the curses spilling from Vasco’s hands, streaming out behind him, scattering across the mud. They split into groups, according to plan, just as the sirens started in the distance.

Two hours later each one of the gang-members reported in by phone, as arranged. There’d been no arrests. Lying in bed that night, Jed played the whole thing back. One picture stuck. It was Vasco walking out of the door in his leather coat, the roof on fire above his head.

He woke early the next morning. It was still cool, but he opened the window and, leaning on the ledge, looked down at the river. A ship slid by. Then another. Years later, in exile, he would watch the railway trucks from his hotel, and it would sink a well in him, and he would taste the same calm water.

One night Nathan woke and he was falling. He landed at the bottom of a flight of stairs. It was dark. He reached out, touched a wall. It felt like brick. This was the second time it had happened. The other time he hadn’t woken up. He’d just walked round the house turning all the taps on and Dad had walked round after him and turned them off again. He wasn’t at home now, though. It didn’t feel like home. It was too cold. Too big. He sat still on the cold floor. He tried to work out where he was.