Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

He stacked the boxes against the door in two piles and ran back to the car. He sent swift glances left and right. Nobody had seen him. The rain was still coming down and the streets were empty.

Back inside the car he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even turn the key in the ignition. He could picture the clothes inside the boxes: how they were slowly losing their warmth, how they were slowly growing cold. Somehow it was worse than seeing Dad in that chapel. It was worse than seeing him dead. He reached up, touched his face. It was wet. He couldn’t tell where the rain ended and his tears began.

He didn’t know what to do next. A drink, maybe. Wasn’t that what people did? He drove south through Blenheim. The main street widened into highway; water jolted in the harbour, the masts of boats duelled against a low grey sky. When the arrow showed overhead, left lane for HARBOUR BRIDGE and DOWNTOWN, he thought of Georgia and took it. On the city side he dipped into the shadow of the bridge and stopped outside the first bar he saw. He walked to the back and found a phone. He dialled Georgia’s number, waited. The window next to the phone was open. Some gutter must’ve snapped and rain was splashing down into the dark yard. It sounded like a massage parlour. Hands on fat.

Georgia wasn’t answering. He walked back through the bar. He wanted a drink, but not here. In the car he remembered the man on the promenade. What was his name? Reid. He looked at his watch. It was just after six. He could drive to Necropolis and have a drink. If Reid turned up, then he’d have someone to talk to. If Reid didn’t turn up, he could try Georgia again.

Necropolis was a blood-and-sawdust bar on the waterfront. High ceiling, low lights. Tables the shape of tombstones. Famous names cut into the marble. Nathan ordered brandy, a large one. He sat on a stool and looked around. Always a real mix in here, everything from whores to millionaires, but no sign of Reid. In a way, he was glad. He’d wanted the advantage of arriving first. This time, perhaps, he could do some watching of his own. Those few seconds before someone sees you, they can give you leverage, they can let you into secrets.

He was halfway through his third drink when the door opened and Reid walked in. There was a glimmer of gold as, pausing just inside the doorway, he placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. It would have been hard to mistake him for a priest again, and yet he had this presence, he shone around the edges, it was as if he’d been standing at God’s right hand on high and some of that power and glory had rubbed off. When he walked towards the bar he seemed to occupy the air above his head, you might almost have said that he owned it. He passed close to Nathan, brushing Nathan’s left thigh with the tail of his jacket. He ordered bourbon on the rocks. Then, on second thoughts, a double bourbon, no ice. He skimmed a hand across his short black hair. He was still wearing those gloves of his. Nathan felt a slow fizzing begin inside him, as if he’d swallowed sherbet: an effervescence.

‘I didn’t frighten you off then.’

Nathan finished his drink. ‘Did you think you might?’

Reid ordered him another. There are people who know exactly what you want, and when. There are also people who time their evasions perfectly.

‘You must’ve used binoculars,’ Nathan said. Then, when Reid didn’t seem to understand, he said, ‘To see me from your window.’

Reid smiled.

‘Do you make a habit of watching people like that?’

‘Habit? No.’ But the word prolonged Reid’s amusement. ‘Sometimes there’s distance, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Sometimes that’s as close as you can get.’

‘Not much distance any more.’

Reid was still looking at Nathan, still amused. He lifted his glass to his lips and drank. He set his glass down again. ‘Why did you come?’

Nathan shrugged and looked away. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been here for ages.’ He looked at Reid again. ‘I suppose I felt like a drink.’

‘What else did you feel like?’

Nathan smiled to himself. He didn’t need to answer that. It wasn’t the kind of question you answered.

‘I mean, do,’ Reid said. ‘Do you feel like.’

Nathan’s smile lasted, but he was thinking now. This was a risk he was taking. Out on a limb and what if it was amputated? The future? It could be reward, it could be punishment. He no longer knew what he deserved.

Afterwards he couldn’t remember how Reid achieved it — a jerk of the head? a gloved hand on his forearm? — but suddenly they were leaving together. Outside the bar the night felt padded. Air so rich and dark, you could’ve cut it into slices like a cake. He felt his veins swell. A limousine slid past. The lick of tyres. Through open windows came staccato laughter, music, smoke.

He was steered towards a low car. Black or blue, he couldn’t tell. It looked fast. It could split the air in two.

‘Get in.’

He obeyed. The perfume of new leather. And, faintly, cigarettes. Reid lit one, switched the engine on. The car hissed like a jet. Turbo. Money. Death.

They were heading west on Paradise Drive. They took the long curve inland at the Delta, the knitting-needle click as the gear stick shifted in its metal gate, the engine spitting, fighting the drop in speed. They approached the Palace Hotel from the rear, dipped down a ramp, it was like being swallowed by an open throat, they were underground.

They crossed the parking-lot, footsteps echoing on concrete. They reached an elevator. Reid turned a key in a silver panel. The doors slid open.

‘My back door,’ he explained.

Once inside, he pressed 14. They didn’t talk in the elevator. Nathan tried to see his reflection in the scratched stainless steel of the walls. All he could see was a blur. The doors lurched open on the fourteenth floor and Reid stepped out. Nathan followed. He stopped just outside, looked round.

Such quiet corridors. The carpet was a burgundy red, interrupted every ten feet or so by a black oval containing the letters PH in ornate red script. All the doors were black. Glass globes fizzed overhead, leaking a low-voltage yellow glow. In the distance, the word EXIT in weak red neon. He’d always wondered what the inside of the Palace looked like, but something seemed held back: it was as if, in the act of revealing itself, it had become still more mysterious.

‘Is something wrong?’

Nathan had almost forgotten he wasn’t alone. He turned, saw Reid standing ten yards away, one hand fitted casually into his jacket pocket, a man in a clothing catalogue. ‘No,’ and he smiled, ‘nothing’s wrong.’

It was a long walk to Reid’s apartment. Every time they turned a corner they were faced with the same view, the same silence; each new length of corridor was like an echo of the last. They stopped outside apartment 1412. He waited as Reid unlocked the door. Inside, the air smelt warm, slightly acrid, a smell that was like new dollar bills. Lamps bloomed in the corners, showed him the room. Sofas of dark velvet and walls papered to resemble marble and mirrors with no frames. There were windows on two sides. One looked down on the promenade: car headlamps, lights looping through the palms, a white line where the waves broke. The other faced west: the harbour bridge spanning the narrow stretch of water that separated the western suburbs from the city; a golden clasp on a head of smooth black hair.

‘Some champagne?’

Nathan took the offered glass. ‘Thanks.’ He moved back to the centre of the room. It seemed to contain nothing that was personal. No books, no pictures, no flowers. It was an expensive hotel suite, somewhere you passed through, somewhere you never actually changed or even touched. It went with the gloves. This man leaves no trace of himself behind, he thought, not even fingerprints. If he was a criminal, he’d never be caught.