Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

‘Who let you in, Jed?’

‘Nobody let me in. I broke in.’

‘What’s the idea?’

Jed reached into his pocket and took out a piece of candy. He unwrapped the candy and put it in his mouth. He dropped the wrapper, watched it see-saw to the floor. He smiled. ‘How’s Creed?’

‘Creed?’ Nathan swallowed.

‘How’s Neville?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You don’t listen too well, do you?’ The candy grated against Jed’s teeth. ‘The first night we met I told you I used to work for a guy in the funeral business. I told you I did a job for him. I told you his name too. Creed.’

Nathan still didn’t see it.

‘Neville Creed,’ Jed said. He leaned back in the chair. ‘When I told you I’d killed someone, it didn’t seem to bother you much. I thought it was the coke, but it wasn’t that. You’d heard it all before, hadn’t you? You knew all about it.’

Jed stared at Nathan. There was a splintering as Jed bit clean through the piece of candy in his mouth.

‘It’s no use acting innocent. I know you’re sleeping with him. My hunch is, you’re working for him too. You’ve been working for him all along. You didn’t just happen to be in that bar that night. You’d been planted there. Old friend, small world, fuck,’ and Jed laughed, it was a bitter laugh. Nathan had heard Dad laugh like that on the night of the spaceship.

‘You’re not making any sense, Jed. I didn’t even know his name was Neville till a couple of days ago. I didn’t know he worked for a funeral parlour. He said he —’ And the whole thing came tumbling down, a set of dominoes stretching back into the past: that meeting on the promenade, the grey man under the umbrella, Reid’s casual questions about his ‘friend’. Maxie Carlo and his anagrams. All he could hear was one long, rippling crash as the dominoes fell. He’d been so fooled, so used. He stared down at the carpet. ‘Oh shit.’

‘Yeah,’ Jed said. ‘Oh shit.’

‘He really works for a funeral parlour?’

‘Look,’ and Jed’s voice softened with leashed rage, ‘I don’t want to listen to any more of your stories. It’s showdown time tonight. I’m meeting up with Creed and you’re coming with me.’

Nathan took a step backwards. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this.’

Jed reached into his coat. He pulled out a gun and laid it casually across the palm of his left hand. ‘Yes, you do.’

Nathan sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘What’s the time?’ Jed asked.

‘About eleven.’

‘All right. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to get in your car and we’re going to drive down to the West Pier and then we’re —’

Suddenly Nathan remembered Creed’s phone-call. ‘Listen, Jed, when I was with Creed last night —’

‘Where’d he take you? The Ocean Bed Motel?’ Jed leered. ‘Christ, I’ve seen a million like you.’

‘He made a phone-call late last night. He said something about the West Pier. You be there with the boat, he said. I think it was-’

Jed uncoiled from the chair. ‘I said no more stories. We’re leaving.’

It was dark on the landing, and Nathan didn’t bother to turn the light on. He thought of Harriet walking down the stairs in that movie Dad had made. His movements seemed like some kind of replica or echo. He saw himself naked, bars of thick white paint splashed across his chest, across his groin, as if he was taking part in a tribal ceremony, an initiation, even, perhaps, a sacrifice, and he saw Jed behind him, dressed in his true clothing again, the clothing he wore under his skin, that black suit with the shiny elbows, shiny shoulderblades, that voodoo hat perched on this head, a medicine man whose medicine made you ill, not well.

They left the house by the back door. As Nathan unlocked the car, a bird called from a nearby tree. One low, reverberating call; a rolled R. If nostalgia had a sound, that would be it. It reminded him of Dad, and he wondered what Dad would’ve thought if he could’ve witnessed this scene. The mere fact of driving somewhere at midnight. Mad. And yet they’d been deceived in such similar ways. A different setting, that was all. A difference of scale. Like father, like son. And suddenly he relaxed, stopped caring. He smiled as he reached across and unlocked the door on the passenger side.

Jed slammed the door. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing.’ Nathan fitted the key in the ignition. ‘What happened to your clothes?’

‘I sold them.’

‘You think if you change your clothes people aren’t going to recognise you?’

‘Shut up.’

‘They’ll still — ’

Jed touched the gun to Nathan’s ear. ‘Drive.’

Nathan shrugged. He reversed out to the street. He looked left and right. No grey man tonight. They didn’t need any grey men any more. All thoughts were read, all movements known.

Blenheim slept. Only one take-out place was still open: HOT CHICKENS. COLD DRINKS. White neon and stainless steel. Two drunks in the doorway, sucking on bones. A faint rasping in his ear and he glanced sideways. Only Jed scratching again. The inside of his forearm this time. His nails left long red smears on the pale flesh. Jed had swopped his clothes and dyed his hair. Nothing he could do about his skin, though.

He drove through Blenheim towards the bridge. Towards what, though, really? He saw the dead skin falling in the car, falling as softly as snow. He’d have to vacuum in the morning. He kept his thinking light, skimming thoughts like stones across the black water of events, but he knew that sooner or later, no matter how many times they bounced, they’d sink into those depths, depths that held the unknown, the unforeseeable, they’d sink and maybe they would never rise again.

They’d turned all the lights out on the bridge. After midnight then. He saw the last ferry creep towards the M Street Quay. As he came down off the bridge he took the South Side Highway to the promenade. The West Pier lay off to the right, crouching over the ocean, unlit. It had been years since there had been any life on the West Pier. He looked across at Jed and knew that it was Jed who’d chosen the place.

The turnstiles were shackled with chains, so they had to climb over. The city council had put up a sign: WARNING. DANGEROUS STRUCTURE. DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT.

They proceeded.

Nathan looked down through the gaps between the wooden slats. The ocean unrolled on the beach fifty feet below. He saw the water shatter into froth and then slide backwards fast, sucking at the metal pillars. He thought he felt the pier shake, but it was probably just that notice, the drugs still running in his blood, imagination.

‘Hands behind your back,’ Jed said.

Nathan stared at him. ‘What?’

‘You fucking deaf? Hands behind your back.’ Jed began to unbuckle his belt.

Nathan clasped one hand with the other, held them against the small of his back. Jed stood behind him. Nathan felt Jed knotting the belt around his wrists.

‘Why are you doing that?’

Jed slid the barrel of the gun against Nathan’s cheek. It was cold as toothache. It smelt of oil, his sleepwalking days. ‘We’re going to meet your lover,’ Jed hissed. ‘Don’t want you getting carried away.’

‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ Nathan said. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? I’m on your side in this.’

‘Oh yeah,’ and Jed smirked, ‘I forgot.’ Then the smirk vanished and he slammed Nathan against the wall of the ticket booth. ‘Now listen, golden boy, and listen good. I don’t want another squeak out of you. Do you understand?’

Nathan nodded. There was no way of getting through to Jed. He knew that now.