Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

‘It’s powder,’ McGowan said, ‘for your nose.’

The tourist laughed.

Jed felt Creed’s eyes on him. He had two spoons, one for each nostril, and handed the vial back.

‘Good boy,’ Creed said.

‘You know Gorilla pretty well,’ McGowan said, ‘don’t you?’

‘Kind of.’

‘You’re a friend of his,’ Creed said.

‘I used to be. It was years ago. We were kids.’ It was so strange talking to Creed like this. They never talked like this. He felt as if all his teeth were stones.

‘You been seeing much of him recently?’ McGowan said.

‘Only in dreams.’

‘Only in dreams,’ Creed said, and laughed.

‘I’d keep it that way, if I was you,’ McGowan said.

‘Why?’

‘He’s been a bad gorilla.’ McGowan swallowed the rest of his drink. ‘He got a bit greedy. Too many bananas.’

‘That’s right,’ Creed said. ‘He’s been a bad gorilla.’ And he stared at Jed for a moment, then he smiled slowly.

Jed looked at McGowan, but McGowan was looking somewhere else. Riddles.

The tourist wanted to go to another club, but Creed insisted on a drink in his apartment. ‘You’re on vacation. Relax.’

At last the tourist gave in. Maybe he thought he was on to a good thing.

They took the scenic route back to the Palace. Down through the old meat-market streets, into the tunnel with its rows of lights like neon stitching and its shiny cream tiles, up into Venus, then round the western edge of the harbour and back over the bridge to C Street. The sliding glass panel was open for the first time ever.

‘He’s a romantic,’ Creed said. ‘He wants to see the sights.’

‘We’ll show him the sights,’ McGowan said, and he leaned back and laughed, and the city lights on his mirror shades looked like gold zips that had come undone.

The tourist laughed along with them. In his rear-view mirror Jed saw the vial being passed round. The tourist was sitting in the middle. He was getting twice as much as anyone else. No wonder he was laughing.

Slipping down into the parking-lot under the hotel was like being swallowed, the entrance a dark throat with the tongue cut out. Loyalty is silence. The tyres squealed as they braked, the concrete smooth as skin and slick with fluids that had bled from other cars. Jed parked next to the service elevator. He opened the doors.

And then Creed’s voice soft against his back. ‘Why don’t you come on up with us?’

Jed turned. ‘I ought to get some sleep,’ he said, but the coke had taken hold, it was lifting him, and he had such a good seat at the circus, he didn’t really want to leave.

‘Come on up,’ Creed said. ‘We should get to know each other better.’

The wallpaper in Creed’s lounge looked like zebra skin. The curtains, so blue that they were almost black, were drawn against the view. Creed gave Jed a drink. ‘After all, you don’t have to drive to get home any more, do you?’ and then he went and sat down next to the tourist. The tourist was talking about his homeland.

‘It’s not, you know, it’s not like here,’ and he waved a hand around to include the zebra-skin wallpaper, his new friends, the small brown vial on the coffee table. ‘It’s more like,’ and his face lit up as he remembered the word, ‘like a willage.’

Jed turned to McGowan. ‘Willage,’ he said.

McGowan tipped his head back. ‘He’s a long way from home.’

‘Maybe too far.’

Now McGowan turned to look at Jed and Jed saw his own face twice. ‘You don’t know how right you are.’

‘Don’t I?’

They stared at each other for another ten seconds, then McGowan smiled. There was nothing humorous or well-meaning about the smile. McGowan had simply chosen it from among a number of possible reactions.

‘You know something?’ Jed said. ‘I’ve never seen you without those glasses on.’

With one swift motion McGowan reached up, took the glasses off and tucked them in his pocket. His eyes seemed pinned wide open. Too much white. The irises looked oddly suspended.

Jed nodded. ‘Now I know why you wear those glasses.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘You’d frighten too many people with them off.’

McGowan liked that. He liked it so much that he decided to laugh. Jed laughed with him. He looked at Creed. Creed had just produced a pile of leather stuff and dumped it on the coffee table. Handcuffs, harnesses, ankle-holsters, studded chokers, and a mask with no eyes and a zip for a mouth.

‘Uh-oh,’ McGowan said.

Reaching forwards, Jed picked up a see-through zip-lock bag. Inside was an assembly of metal rings and leather straps. The label said THE FIVE GATES OF HELL. Five? Why five? he wondered. Wasn’t one enough? And then he put the bag back on the table.

Creed was showing some of the pieces to the tourist and explaining how they worked. His tone of voice objective, dispassionate, as if they were kitchen implements or gardening devices. Then, without altering his voice, he picked the handcuffs up, snapped them on the tourist’s wrists, and flipped the key through the air to McGowan.

‘Uh-oh,’ McGowan said again.

‘Hey,’ the tourist said, ‘you guys are choking, right?’

Creed didn’t appear to have heard. He was looking at McGowan.

‘Choking,’ McGowan said. ‘We’re choking.’

‘Hey, come on, you guys,’ the tourist said. ‘Get me out of this, OK?’

McGowan reached out and picked up the mask. He dangled it from one finger, swung it slowly backwards and forwards in front of the tourist’s eyes. ‘Only if you put this on.’

Creed was nodding.

The tourist was well built, stronger possibly than either Creed or McGowan, but there was a pleading look in his eyes now, like a dog that knows it’s going to be kicked. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I put this on.’

Jed left the room to go to the bathroom.

When he returned, the lounge was empty. He walked down the hall and stopped by a door. Through the crack he saw McGowan holding the tourist down on a bed. The tourist was lying on his stomach, his face twisted to one side. He was naked, except for the mask. McGowan had a gun in his hand and he was pushing the muzzle through the zipper and into the tourist’s mouth. Creed sat on a chair by the window, gloved hands in his lap, one wrist resting on the other. His face had switched to automatic. He looked up and saw Jed standing in the doorway.

‘Want some?’

The tourist might’ve been cake. Jed shook his head.

Creed smiled. Not so much a smile, perhaps, as a slackening around his mouth.

‘That guy,’ and Jed nodded at McGowan, ‘he’s a psychopath.’

‘But he’s loyal,’ Creed said. ‘He’s very loyal.’

Jed turned. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Suddenly Creed was standing next to him. So suddenly that Jed jumped. He wasn’t sure how Creed had covered the distance between the window and the door.

Creed slapped Jed on the shoulder, a gesture straight out of the boardroom. ‘Get some sleep. I don’t need you till eleven.’

It was seven-thirty when Jed climbed back into bed. Sharon was still asleep. There was shine in the wings of her nose. Her breath came in puffs, ruffling her top lip. He lay down under the single sheet and closed his eyes. Sleep slipped through his fingers. His body itched where the cotton touched it. He had to keep scratching. Always a different place.

‘Where’ve you been?’

His cock tightened at the sound of her voice. ‘I had to drive somewhere.’

‘What time is it?’

‘I don’t know. Eight.’

‘Christ.’ Both her eyes were still shut. One dark breast spilled sideways across the sheet.

He bent down. Bit the wide nipple. Tugged on that glossy skin until her eyes stretched wide and her chin tipped back. He slid between her legs.