Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

Georgia had said ten, but he knew it wouldn’t be ten. She was out scoring something fast for them. He let her take care of that end of things. She knew the city better than he did, she knew the routines. No, it wouldn’t be ten. Nowhere near. She’d float in, midnight at the earliest. Flat eyes, numb lips. Head dipping left and right. What had she said once? ‘I’m like a chicken when I go in places.’ He smiled. There was no shortcut through this stretch of time and he wasn’t looking for one. He could wait for days, if need be. Mind on a slow burn, fingers cooled by the sweat of a glass.

He’d been there an hour when this guy pushed through the door. Tall, thin figure in black. Limbs you could fold away. Sort of creaky-looking. Just this one glance at him and something happened in Nathan’s mind, it was the same as when you put money in a pool table and all the balls come tumbling into the lip.

Nathan stared, but he couldn’t be sure. Someone he knew, or someone who looked like someone he knew? The tight black pants; the black jacket, too short in the arms; the black top hat. Like a drainpipe and a chimney-stack combined. The guy had Moon Beach tattooed all over him. Wrong end of the alphabet. Nathan watched as he ordered a beer, pushed small money around on his palm, lifted one curling finger to his ear and scratched. When the beer was set down in front of him, his lips reached out greedily for the rim of the glass. He gulped, sighed, wiped his mouth on his wrist. He’d been dying for that beer. Fingering those tiny coins all day. But then he must have sensed somebody watching him. His head veered round, he swivelled. Cold eyes, glasses, face as pale as ice. Now Nathan knew. And couldn’t believe it. All those years. Even the name came back to him. Jed Morgan.

‘Been a while,’ Jed said, ‘hasn’t it?’

‘I didn’t recognise you,’ Nathan said.

‘Maybe I changed or something.’ Jed sipped his beer. ‘You still swimming?’

Nathan smiled. The reference wasn’t lost on him. ‘I’ve been working up and down the coast. As a lifeguard, mostly.’

‘So what brings you back?’

‘Somebody died.’

Jed’s head reared and twisted on his stringy neck. ‘You shouldn’t joke about that.’

‘I’m not joking.’

‘Who was it?’

‘My father.’

‘Sorry to hear it.’ Jed wasn’t sorry, not even remotely.

‘The number of times I’ve heard that recently,’ Nathan said.

Jed shrugged. ‘Somebody dies, that’s what happens.’

‘What about you?’ Nathan asked.

‘What about me?’

‘You been away too?’

‘You could say that.’ Jed’s lips seemed to be travelling towards a grin, but they never got there. His eyes were motionless, behind glass, like something in the reptile house. ‘It’s a long story, you know?’

‘Not yet I don’t.’

Jed jerked a thumb in Nathan’s direction and told the barman, ‘We’ve got a sense of humour here.’

The barman was grinning. Nathan was grinning.

Grins all round.

Nathan thought it strange that he was talking to Jed like this. He’d never liked Jed in the past, and he wasn’t sure he liked him now. Those eyes, that skin. Other times it would’ve put him off, but right now he was in too big a mood. It was going to be a long night. He was waiting for Georgia. The moment she pushed through those swing doors he’d lift like a jet at the end of a runway.

And so he could turn to Jed and look him right in the face and say, ‘You going to tell me or what?’

Jed reached a finger down, scratched the inch of white skin between his sock and the leg of his pants. It was his way of cocking the trigger on his story. Then he eased off his stool and used the same finger to point at the bench opposite Nathan.

‘Sure,’ Nathan said. ‘Sit down.’

Jed leaned both arms on the table and his eyes moved out into the bar. ‘I used to work for one of the parlours.’ His eyes flicked back, checking Nathan for a reaction. There wasn’t one. ‘I used to work for a guy called Creed. Maybe you heard of him.’

Nathan shook his head.

‘It was Vasco got me the job. Remember Vasco?’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Some guy killed his brother.’ Jed sucked down some more beer. ‘Last I heard, he went nuts.’

‘Christ.’

‘He was kind of nuts already. That family, they were all nuts. His uncles. One of them, he used to lock himself in his room all day. I lived there more than a year, never saw him once. The other one —’ and Jed stopped suddenly. He dropped his head down to his beer and gulped.

‘This guy Creed, though,’ and he leaned closer, lowered his voice as if it was suddenly a church they were in. ‘It was six, seven years ago. Back in those days there was this loyalty thing. We were all locked into it, it made us feel valuable. It was like being gold. Everyone wanted a piece of us. We used to cruise the city in a stretch hearse, the ones where the front goes round a corner and the back goes round about five minutes later. I was the driver. Black top hat, red velvet cushion to sit on like a king, pair of dark-green lenses for the glare. We cruised the city, this whole gang of us. We put the fear of Christ Jesus into people.’

He was talking from the deep past now, his voice rose up from the quarry of his memories. It felt much later than it was.

‘One time we’re driving along the promenade and these kids start giving us shit. McGowan, he rolls the window down and leans out, with his head all shaved and mirrors on his eyes, and he says, “You’re going to die,” he says, real quiet but so they can hear. “You’re going to die and we’re going to bury you.”’ Jed grinned and drained his glass.

‘Nice guy,’ Nathan said.

‘McGowan,’ Jed said, and shook his head. ‘We used to call him the Skull.’

‘How come?’

‘It was just the look of him. We all had names. There was the Skull, there was Pig, and Vasco was called Gorilla, just like in the old days. Then there was Meatball —’

‘Meatball? Why Meatball?’

‘No neck. His head just kind of sat on his shoulders. So we called him Meatball. He was there for entertainment.’

I was your entertainment once, Nathan thought. But he pushed the memory back.

‘What about you, then?’ he said. ‘What were you called?’

‘Spaghetti.’

Nathan laughed. ‘This guy, sounds like he could’ve opened a restaurant.’ He held up his glass. ‘Want another?’

Jed nodded. Nathan went up to the bar and came back with two more beers.

‘It was real power.’ Jed scraped at his cheek with one long fingernail. ‘The things we did then, they were on a different level.’

‘So I don’t get it. Why did you leave?’

‘I did a job for Creed. Job like that, you get your hands dirty. I had to leave.’

Nathan nodded as if he understood.

‘I ended up in a small town in the desert, you wouldn’t’ve heard of it. I worked in an ice-cream parlour. I sold ice-cream.’ Jed’s face opened like a cave, and Nathan felt a chill pass through. Old bones and spiders, centuries of damp. ‘Fudge Ripple, Swiss Chocolate Almond, Pecan Buttercrunch,’ Jed said, ‘you name it. I sold them all.’

Nathan couldn’t see it, somehow. ‘You like ice-cream?’

‘I fucking hate the stuff.’

They laughed over that for a while.

‘And now you’re back,’ Nathan said.

‘That’s right.’

‘Got anything planned?’

‘Yeah,’ and Jed leered, ‘I got something planned.’

But when he asked Jed about it Jed just shook his head and, lifting his glass again, tipped his chin into the air and slid the beer down his throat, it lay straight and gold along the side of the glass, it looked as if he was swallowing a sword. Then he put his hands flat on the table, stood up, walked over to the jukebox.