Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

A pretty accurate description, considering. But maybe the shock had burned his image into that girl’s memory. Certainly he’d never forgotten her: her long black hair, her yellow dress; her screams. Creed had sent him into the building knowing that he’d be seen. Knowing also, possibly, that he’d be remembered. His face twisted in a sour smile. Even six years later it’d been something of a gamble, perhaps, to drive back to the city in a black suit and a black top hat, to drive back to the city in the same dark car.

Every time he read the article he had to admire Creed’s strategy. Two things. One: the murder of Francis Gorelli had driven Vasco insane and insanity, surely, was a far more effective, far more exquisite punishment than death. Two: the killing (or, as the papers understood it, the abduction) of an innocent man was a crime with no motive. It forced the police to generalise. Their conclusion only scratched the surface of the truth. The crime was part of ‘a wave of violence’. Its context had become its cause. Nor had the body (or, for that matter, any other evidence) been discovered. Not even a murder then. Not necessarily. Just another missing-persons case. A poster in a police station. An appeal on the back of a carton of milk.

Jed dozed through the afternoon. By the evening he needed more pain-killers. When he left his room he noticed that all the videos had gone; Silence must’ve been busy. He heard voices in the kitchen, and went and stood in the doorway. Silence was sitting at the table with a man. There were small transparent plastic bags scattered all over the formica. Inside were watches, lighters, rings. Sensing something behind him, the man swung round. ‘Who the fuck’s this?’

Silence showed him a card: FRIEND.

‘OK,’ the man said, ‘OK,’ and he turned to Jed and said, ‘Sorry about that.’

Jed nodded. He didn’t want to risk speaking. Not yet. He shook two tablets on to a piece of silver foil and began to grind them up with the back of a spoon.

The man had sandy-gold hair and tiny red veins below his sideburns. His hands shook. He was smoking menthol cigarettes. ‘What’s this you’ve got?’ he said, tapping a maroon box with one finger.

Silence snapped the lid open. He took out a gold pocket watch and handed it to the man. Jed saw the watch over the man’s shoulder. Its face was ringed with gems.

The man nodded. ‘Nice piece.’

Silence reached over. He flicked the back of the watch open with his thumb and held it to the man’s ear. It played ‘As Time Goes By’.

‘Ain’t that something.’ The man stared at Silence. ‘How’d you know it played a tune, Silence, you being deaf and all?’

Silence wrote, SOMEBODY TOLD ME.

The man guffawed. ‘And you trusted them?’

Silence wrote, DID YOU HEAR THE TUNE OR DIDN’T YOU?

‘I heard the tune.’

I MAY BE DUMB, Silence wrote, BUT I’M NOT THAT DUMB. Then he tucked the rest of his cards back into his pocket. Clearly that was all he was going to say on the subject.

Jed opened the fridge. There was a six-pack of plain yoghurt on the top shelf. Silence had come through for him. He stirred his crushed tablets into a yoghurt, then he found a piece of paper and wrote, THANKS FOR THE YOGHURT. On his way out of the room he handed Silence the message.

Silence smiled. YOUR’E WELCOME, he wrote.

‘You’re weird, you are,’ the man said. ‘Just plain weird, the lot of you.’

Jed went back to bed.

The next day he left the apartment at noon. He stood at ground-level and looked around. Heat rippled on the concrete, the horizon seemed alive with snakes. He walked past his car and out through the housing project. Smells came to him: warm garbage, tar melting, dead fish. There was nobody about. Days like this most people stayed home and stood in front of the fridge with the door open or something.

He was heading for the thrift stores in Mangrove South. He’d decided that if he walked he’d be less visible. It was only twenty minutes. He took shortcuts and kept to the shadows. Every now and then he spoke to himself. He was testing his voice. There was no danger in it. He was east of downtown and the only people on the streets were old men with bottles of sweet red wine. They talked to themselves all the time. He fitted right in. Christ, it was hot, though. He could feel the heat of the sidewalk through the soles of his boots.

He was almost there when he heard somebody call his name. He ignored it. Then somebody came running out of the sunlight towards him. It was Nathan.

‘You sick or something?’ Nathan said.

Jed touched the scarf at his neck. ‘Sick? Heh.’ That was one way of putting it.

‘So how are you doing? Did you find a place?’

There’d always been something manic about Nathan. Behind those green eyes, that blond hair. Behind that tan. He was like a dog with training that nobody can use.

Jed nodded. ‘I found a place.’

‘Where is it?’

As if he was going to tell him that.

‘Round here.’

Then Nathan said, ‘I remember when you used to live in the Towers.’ Straight out. As if he could see right into the hooded part of Jed’s brain.

Jed stared at him. But Nathan’s eyes had misted over; he seemed to have lowered himself into his own memory.

‘I went there once. I looked for you.’ He smiled. ‘Couldn’t find you, though.’

‘Must’ve been years ago,’ Jed said, still watching him closely.

‘The place was like a maze,’ Nathan said.

Still is.

Jed chipped at the wall with his boot. And began to smile, because he’d thought of something.

‘By the way.’ He took out one of Mario’s hundred-dollar bills and smiled down at it. He’d kept it as a kind of souvenir. But now he had a better use for it. He held the bill out to Nathan. ‘Here’s the money I owe you.’

It was worth $100 just to see Nathan’s face.

‘But,’ he was stammering, ‘but I only lent you eight.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Jed said. ‘You were so kind, letting me stay and all.’

And his smile began to twist on his face, he just couldn’t keep the sneer out of it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘better be going.’

And just walked away.

When he reached the corner of the street he glanced over his shoulder. Nathan was still standing on the sidewalk staring at him. Had Nathan guessed where he was living? No, he was thrown by the money. That was all it was. Jed shifted his shoulders inside his jacket. So he used to live in the Towers once upon a time. So what. He hadn’t told Nathan anything, had he?

He walked on. Two blocks west he found the thrift store he’d been looking for. Inside he moved from rail to rail. He began to assemble a wardrobe. It wasn’t easy. These were all dead men’s clothes. Why was everyone who died so fucking fat? You’d think a few thin people would die sometimes, but no. It took him fifteen minutes just to find a pair of pants and even then they were three inches too big around the waist and he needed a belt to hold them up. Still, it was a start. In half an hour he was standing in front of a full-length mirror. This was what he had on: a pale-blue turtleneck (it hid the ghosts); a pair of chinos in a kind of rusty ochre colour; brown leather sandals with rubber soles (he’d learned a thing or two from that Sister in the hospital); a grey fake snakeskin belt; and a maroon leather jacket with black buttons and scoop lapels.

‘A bloody Christian,’ he whispered. ‘A missionary.’ And laughed to himself. Because, after all, he was on a mission, wasn’t he? A mission of a kind.

He heaped his own clothes on the counter and explained that he wanted to trade them for the clothes he was now wearing. The woman who ran the place wore a cardigan draped over her shoulders. She shifted her arms inside the cardigan and looked at him sideways. Her jackdaw eye swooped on his most valuable possession. ‘What about the hat?’