Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

The four men had lunch in the Palm Court Motel on Highway 23. Jed waited in the car. Ate half a chicken salad sandwich, threw the rest away. Read the paper and couldn’t remember a word of it. He had no appetite. Couldn’t concentrate.

At two-forty-seven the four men pushed through the glass doors and out into the motel parking-lot. They stood on the warm asphalt. Creed opened one hand like a fan, words spilling sideways from his lips. Morton dipped his head, his face pulled wide, excited. Carlo and McGowan stood on either side of the embalmer, he might’ve been in custody. They all wore suits. They all had clean shoes and neat hair. He watched them walk towards the car. They looked like evangelists, or politicians. When they were ten yards away they stopped talking, and they didn’t start again till they were safely behind glass.

I need you closer.

That was a laugh. He’d never felt further away.

And then Sir Charles Dobson died. Just ten days after his resignation. Suddenly, at home. The papers bristled with tributes to ‘a man who stood for tradition and dignity in a business that has recently been rocked by scandal and corruption’. Creed received a good deal of spin-off publicity. The Herald called him ‘Dobson’s understudy’ and ‘one of the new entrepreneurs’. The Tribune said he exhibited ‘the cutting edge and thrust of an aggressive businessman on his way to the top’. It was clear from the cumulative weight of these reports that Creed had already arrived. Many of the papers carried photographs of Dobson and Creed side by side, Dobson’s arm around Creed’s shoulder, as if Creed was not only heir to the business, but also a son.

On the morning of Dobson’s funeral a bellhop knocked on 3D and handed Jed a big square box. There was a card taped to the box: TO 3D. A GIFT FROM 1412. 1412 was Creed’s apartment. Jed smiled at the anonymity. All letters and numbers. Like convicts. Inside the box was a black satin top hat. He tried it on. It fitted to perfection, it even seemed to match his scarecrow face. He decided to wear it for the rest of his life.

When he pulled up outside the Palace, Creed was already waiting by the entrance with McGowan, Trotter and Maxie Carlo (still no sign of Vasco). In their black top hats and tailcoats they looked more like vultures than ever. They studied him from their position high on the steps. Creed turned to Maxie Carlo.

‘What do you think of Spaghetti, Meatball?’

Carlo scarcely had to look. ‘Dressed to kill.’

Laughter jumped from face to face. Creed, Trotter; even McGowan. Then, just as suddenly, they seemed to remember that this was a serious occasion, they were on their way to a funeral, the funeral of a great man, the chairman, their founder and benefactor, and they fell silent again.

The first two cars held the coffin (solid bronze with 24-carat gold-plated hardware) and several close members of the family. Creed rode in the third car, flanked by two of the Corporation’s top directors, with Jed at the wheel in his new top hat. The vultures travelled in the fourth car, packed tight into the back, like pieces of a game. Creed had organised the funeral himself. The funeral to end all funerals. A motorcade through downtown Moon Beach, a twenty-one-gun salute, a memorial service in the cathedral. Creed had requisitioned an open car, and he stood for the entire procession, as a mark of his own personal respect for the deceased. From time to time Jed tipped the mirror to the sky to look at him. Hands clasped behind his back, face as grave as stone. Jed could sense a question running like a breeze through the rows of people who lined the streets: Who’s he? If they didn’t know now, Jed thought, they’d know soon enough.

There was a clever piece of stage-management on the steps of the cathedral. The city’s funeral barons had turned out in an unprecedented expression of their admiration and their sympathy, and Creed took full advantage of the fact. He engineered it so that he was standing head and shoulders above his rivals when they filed past to shake his hand and offer their condolences. It was a symbolic moment, duly captured and enshrined by the massed bank of press photographers. In the papers the next day it looked as if the funeral parlour heads were sanctioning the transfer of power, as if they were acknowledging Creed’s pre-eminence, as if they were paying homage. The funeral had become a coronation.

After the service Jed saw Carol walking across the lawn in front of the cathedral. He hadn’t spoken to her since the day before her father resigned. She’d left Mortlake suddenly, without saying goodbye. She wasn’t limping today, he noticed; she must be wearing those special shoes of hers. At that moment she caught a glimpse of him through the crowd and came over.

‘Jed,’ she said, ‘how are you?’

He caught Creed looking at him, frowning.

‘I can’t talk now,’ he said.

‘Can I call you?’

He gave her the number. ‘I’m not there much, though. Pretty busy these days.’

‘You’re doing well,’ she said, ‘aren’t you?’

He shrugged.

Her face bent close to his. To kiss him, he thought, and he shrank back.

‘This whole thing’s a sham,’ she hissed.

He stared at her, not understanding.

She nodded twice, almost to herself. ‘A sham.’ Then she was stumbling, legs of china, to her car.

The left side of his head began to beat. What did she mean, a sham? He saw one of her heels sink into the soft grass, she almost fell. She seemed so exposed, so ridiculous, he wanted to point and laugh. What did she know? The loss of her father had opened her up like a can of something and tipped her out. There was nothing holding her together. He couldn’t deal with that.

In the event he didn’t have to. She never called.

Vasco called instead. At least he thought it was Vasco. The voice just said, ‘Watch the papers,’ then it hung up.

He forgot about the call until the end of the week when the story broke. It broke in the tabloids first, where it would do the most damage. The Mirror’s headline was a classic:

FUNERAL BOSS DIED TWICE

According to sources that couldn’t be revealed, the Paradise Corporation had pretended that Sir Charles Dobson was alive for ten days after his death so that the leadership of the company could be handed over without shaking public confidence. In a move variously described as ‘ghoulish’, ‘Machiavellian’ and ‘sick’, Mr Creed, it was alleged, had orchestrated this posthumous resignation, instructing expert embalmers to preserve the corpse and even arranging a photo session two days after Sir Charles’s death (Sir Charles’s lifeless arm around Mr Creed’s shoulders) so a picture could be released to the press along with a transcript of the letter of resignation. Only once the transfer of power had been smoothly effected and accepted by the general public, the paper claimed, had Sir Charles Dobson been allowed to die.

These were extraordinary allegations and they turned the city upside down. For the first few days after the story broke Creed lived in the car. He banished his vultures. In the present climate of opinion they could only damage him. Flack was his adviser now. As they drove from press conferences to radio stations, from radio stations to television studios, Creed and Flack huddled in the back of the car hatching strategies. Creed’s statement seldom varied: ‘This entire story is a monstrous fabrication, an attempt to smear the good name of the Paradise Corporation.’ In between the public appearances, they were hounded by the press. There were two or three car-chases a day, with Jed using every hidden fold and secret pocket of the city to lose some persistent journalist or camera crew. They ate in the outskirts, obscure highway diners, and cafés in bleak residential suburbs. They hid in the city’s petticoats. They stayed awake. One night they almost snapped an axle when Jed’s eyes fell shut and the car left the highway and began to lurch across dry yellow grass. A strange closeness developed, a shorthand, a kind of telepathy. Jed began to know where Creed wanted to go without a word being uttered. There was the afternoon when he drove out to the Crumbles and they slept for three hours, the wind pushing at the side of the car like a crowd. He woke suddenly and turned. Creed was sleeping with his eyes wide open. Jed saw Creed wake. The only difference was a subtle shift in breathing.