Hell Is Empty Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Conrad Williams

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: Kishi Kaisei

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Part Two: Gunsels

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Part Three: Guet-Apens

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  Also available from Conrad Williams and Titan Books

  DUST AND DESIRE

  SONATA OF THE DEAD

  DEAD LETTERS: AN ANTHOLOGY

  Hell is Empty

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783295678

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783295685

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: November 2016

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © November 2016 by Conrad Williams. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  For Nicholas Royle

  1

  I used to own a book of Irish jokes when I was a kid. You know, the kind of casually racist collection you’d be hard pressed to find on the shelves these days. And a good thing too. This one joke, though, has been preying on my mind.

  Have you heard the one about (Paddy/Mick/Seamus) who fell down a flight of stairs while carrying a crate of Guinness but didn’t spill a drop? He kept his mouth shut.

  I thought of that joke while I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness for six months, tubes in, tubes out, stapled, stitched and – in all probability – superglued. I thought how much like Declan/Ardal/Liam I was, only I had spilled plenty, and it wasn’t Guinness but ‘claret’. And it wasn’t a crate but a body full. Two bodies full if you count the transfusions.

  How did I survive?

  I almost died, and I would not have been conscious to appreciate it. I was put into a medical coma. I suffered kidney failure and underwent dialysis. I lost weight. When I revived I was scared to check my body in case there were any limbs missing. All I could think about was the way Ronnie Lake’s blade slid into my thigh like a rat through a shitter. Eventually, one night, when all the lights were out and my sheets were on for a change, and not soaked through with fear sweat, I took my fingers exploring. Everything present and incorrect, as usual. Plus added bandages and splints and scar tissue. I was building up quite a collection of scar tissue. It twisted and turned under my fingers like cooled molten plastic. It was me but it was not me.

  Doctor, please, tell me how I made it.

  I was visited often while I was in hospital. Romy, mainly, but Lorraine Tokuzo came to say hi too, as did Henry Herschell, sort-of friend, martial arts expert, flashy dresser, doorman (which was a bit of a surprise), and even Mawker popped his head around the door on occasion, to ask me how I was doing, and to tell me how easy policing was these days with me out of action. He ducked out before I could pin him down with questions. Everyone was doing that lately. Avoiding, evading, ignoring. Why was that? Did someone else die that night? Someone that I cared about?

  Nurse, I was bleeding to death… did she save me? Did my daughter—

  Strength returned, incrementally. I gritted my teeth through months of physio. Apparently Lake’s knife had sliced through any amount of nerves and ligaments as well as my femoral artery. Walking, I looked like newborn Bambi hobbling across hot coals while pissed. But things kind of improved. Physically, that is. I was taken off dialysis. I gained a little weight back. I found the strength in me to smile when someone displayed a kindness.

  I was allowed home in December. The first thing I did was register with the supermarket and do some online grocery shopping. Here’s the list I compiled:

  Vodka

  It turned up within a couple of hours. I signed for it and the delivery guy went off with a distasteful look on his face. It’s not as if I ordered a packet of butt plugs, I thought, and then realised I’d answered the door wearing only a T-shirt and my woolly bobble hat.

  That first drink stole away any embarrassment, and scoured my innards clean of all the overcooked vegetables and claggy desserts that I’d forced down over half a year of horizontal life. I was home. I had another drink to celebrate.

  Later, half cut, I phoned up the Indian restaurant in Lisson Grove and ordered a chicken jalfrezi to be delivered. When the bell went I buzzed them in without asking and fished some notes from my wallet. But there wasn’t a bag of curry and naan on the other side of the door. It was Romy. She held Mengele in her arms. He was folded over them like some big cat scarf, gazing up at me with a sanctimonious look on his face, as if to say: This is all mine. I made a mental note to ensure I left out a bunch of leaflets from the vets about neutering, and stalked to the kitchen.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked. ‘I’ve only got vodka. Or water. So, you know, at least there’s a choice.’ I didn’t want her here. I wanted her to dump Mengele and leave. I didn’t like her open scrutiny of me and the way I had changed in her eyes. I felt like a new addition to the zoo. She followed me into the kitchen.

  ‘You shouldn’t be drinking,’ she said.

  ‘I shouldn’t stop drinking,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve only just come off the dialysis machine. Your kidneys are weak.’

  ‘And this vodka is strong,’ I said. I chugged a couple of mouthfuls straight from the bottle and sucked in some air between my teeth to show her just how strong it was.

  The look of shock on her face pierced me, but only for a second. She moved past without touching me (and that’s some feat, in a kitchen where every turn is greeted by the threat of a braining from some unit or other).

  ‘What are you—’ I began, but then she started opening and slamming cupboard doors, cutting me off. I took the bottle and a glass – I’m not a total heathen – on to the balcony. Pigeon shit everywhere. A trio of the feathered dorks queued up on the roof to give me the blinking eye. I flapped at them and they flapped back. The rain would wash away the guano eventually, and Mengele’s returning face at the window would keep those flying rats at a distance.

  Romy came out to join me. ‘I’ve put a tin of food in a bowl for your cat,’ she said. She refused to call him by his name. ‘And some water.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. My voice was flatter than an ironed pancake. ‘Thank you for looking after him. While I was. You know. Dead to the world. Pissing through a straw.’

  ‘What else would I do?�
�

  I was staring at the back window of the pub opposite. A man vacuuming a bedroom. A woman on the phone flipping the pages of a newspaper. Chef in the kitchen, funnelling strained cooking oil – the colour of tea – back into the bottle. He paused for a moment and cocked his leg up, pulled his left buttock away from his right. Then he went back to his task.

  I could feel the heat of her gaze. She was waiting for something I couldn’t give to her. I suddenly realised where I was, and balked at the acres of nothing vaulting away from the rooftops. It was as if I could feel the weight of all those miles of nothing that reached into deep space pressing down on me like a thumb at a ball of plasticine. I moved back against the floor, flinching at the light. My eyes had been closed for too long.

  ‘Joel?’

  ‘You’re still here?’

  ‘Where else would I be? I’m here because I want to be here. With you. I want to help you. I thought we had something.’

  ‘Emphasis on “had”.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t see you any more, Romy.’ I moved inside. The rising panic was checked. Here was the ceiling. I was enclosed. Limited. I could no longer look at her standing outside, her eyes raptor-round. She looked too much like the shape of my dreams. Haunted and windswept. Denuded. Defeated. And it was my doing. And it had to stop. I tended to transfer any of my damage to those in my sphere of influence. If I stayed away from people no harm could be visited upon anybody. Furthermore, I wouldn’t have to deal with my own wounds reflected back to me in any number of sad, sorrowful eyes.

  I think she left then, but I didn’t move to the living room until I’d shifted a quarter of the bottle. Christ. Half a year without booze had seriously lowered my tolerance threshold, unless they’d fortified the stuff while I was getting my cods flannelled and my kidneys jacuzzied. I sat on the sofa and Mengele yelled at me. He’d never done that before, preferring instead silent disdain, but this was a full-throated yowl, the kind of noise a witch might make as the flames lapped at her petticoat. He kept on at me. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was happy to see me or disgusted by my behaviour or if there was something wrong with him.

  My curry arrived. I paid for it and ate half of it without tasting a thing. Mengele pressed and repressed a spider into the nap of the rug, then went to the bedroom to do whatever it is cats need privacy for. To lick his nuts, or cough up something unspeakable. Not that he’d ever been shy before. Maybe he wanted to invoke Satan and give him some tips.

  The curry was just getting in the way of the bottle. I put the leftovers to one side for the fridge with the fanciful notion I might reheat them for lunch in the next day or two. Then I sat in the dark by the window playing James Stewart staring out at back-yard Marylebone until I’d finished a bottle and the sense of feeling was utterly numbed.

  When I went to bed, Mengele remained where he was sitting, sending me off with a baleful glare.

  Sleep flashed its tits at me, that’s all. I surfaced with a dream revolving around and around my head like a tornado failing to touch down. The streets were damp and my stitches and scars snarled at me when I hauled myself upright. A dull ache pulsed under the oysters of flesh at the base of my back. My kidneys complaining at the bully-boy antics of the vodka? Or humming with pleasure at being called up for duty once more? I decided to press the issue and poured another glass. Instantly it misted with cold. Vodka is lighter than water. Only marginally but there you have it. I like that, for some reason. I kid myself that I can tell, when I roll a slug of it over my tongue. I touched the glass and the chill transmitted itself to my fingers.

  A spit of red light above St James’s. A helicopter or a Cessna, some small aircraft flown by a sober pilot. More fool them. I tossed the vodka back and held it at the base of my throat for a moment, relishing the cold and the heat, the smooth sting of it. I watched the oily dregs settle in the drained glass.

  Alcohol is a seduction. It is its own fetish. The virgin clarity. The come-hither tinkle of ice cubes. The dryness. You go through childhood sucking down sweet soft drinks, unaware of this incredible dryness that awaits you, and when you finally sample it, nothing else will do.

  Most nights, if I can’t sleep, I’ll head out. I might drive over to Shepherd’s Bush or take a walk if I’ve had a skinful. Now, the thought of going outside made my guts cinch tight and my forehead break out in sweat zits. I drank another shot to distract me. For some reason I was thinking of a cucumber martini I’d once enjoyed at a bar in Islington, and now I wanted one. The only green in my fridge was the kind you scrape off the Mesozoic-era cheese sitting at the back. Why was I thinking of cuketinis? And then I realised.

  Romy’s eyes were that shade of green. Such a paleness to them you could barely call it colour. She had a dark brown mole, just one on her body, near the nipple on her left breast. Her body was like the map of a country I’d never visited.

  I had to get out of the flat. I knew that. I didn’t want to become that sad, forgotten recluse who nobody sees for years and then is discovered dissolved into the sofa with the TV on and a foot of mould on every surface. But I knew I wasn’t getting outside under all those billions of cubic feet of fuck all without some kind of anaesthetic. I went at the vodka like a newborn at the breast. I emptied shot after shot into my belly until the angles of the room lurched like Cubism on crack, and my brain felt as if it was surrounded by buffers of soft bubbles. I opened the door, checked I had my keys and that I was wearing something vaguely socially acceptable, and weaved downstairs. I heard Mengele miaowing and it was the ribald cackle of a Bond villain. If I went back up there he’d have a little Donald Pleasence in his claws, and he’d be stroking it with malicious glee. I didn’t need to worry about him while I was out. If his Fishbitz bowl was bare, he’d eat whatever was sitting on the balcony – insect, rodent or bird – and there was always water available in the blocked guttering.

  I opened the communal front door and waited for something to happen. My nerves felt knotted and tangled, like something you’d find in the fuck-ups drawer at a marionette factory. It was quiet here now, if I ignored my own little cardiac timpani orchestra. I didn’t know what time it was and I couldn’t sufficiently focus on my watch face to find out. I heard the soft, comforting sounds of domesticity. The murmur of a TV. The churn of a washing machine. The rhythmic clack of plates being rinsed in a sink.

  I heard a door close down the street and a woman jangling her keys before slipping them in her purse. I kept my eyes on the wet, orange-blue footpaths and told myself to just make it to the corner, where Luigi’s sandwich shop stood. One foot after the other. Christ. What I’d thought were a pair of trousers were actually my pyjama bottoms. Never mind. This was London. I could have worn cardboard loons and neon pasties and barely garnered a double take. At least my bollocks were covered for a change. My awkward baby steps were not solely down to the gallons of voddie I’d ingested; the countless miles of nothing on top of my head were checking my progress too. It was difficult to describe. It was like an inverted kind of vertigo, a feeling that I was untethered and that nothing so grand as gravity was going to keep me pinned to this stretch of gum-studded concrete.

  I thought of Luigi while I walked (inched, actually) along Homer Street, my hand holding on to the guardrail that shielded the drop down to the basement. Luigi, who made a mean ham and cheese sandwich. He was in his late fifties and sang Frank Sinatra songs while he sliced and buttered and layered. On the walls were dozens of pictures of him crossing various half-marathon finishing lines around the world. I’d asked him once if he’d ever attempted a full marathon and he shook his head. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but that he suffered from jogger’s nipple if he ran too far. ‘I have the man breast, no?’ he said, before segueing into ‘Mack the Knife’.

  I was on Crawford Street without knowing it. I risked a look left, in the direction of Baker Street, and the long straight avenue of bright lights turned to fire in my mind. The sky, a deep black-blue, leapt away from
me like a startled cat (I thought I saw… no, I’m sure I saw… the sky where that leap had originated stretch and begin to separate, like damp toilet tissue). I collapsed, sobbing, to the hard, gorgeous ground, close to shitting myself with fear at what such a tear might reveal.

  I heard the squawk of a police siren and saw a carnival of blue and red lights chase each other across the brickwork of adjacent buildings. I struggled upright and staggered back to the flat, eager not to have to tolerate an interrogation. I shut away the screaming black acres and climbed the stairs. I felt calmer and more justified with each riser. When I got back to my rooms, I felt somewhere near normal again, although I screamed when Mengele leapt at me from the darkness of the bedroom, his claws flashing out at the belt hanging loose from my bathrobe.

  2

  Insistent knocking. I thought it was my booze-scarred heart for a moment, going berserk before seizing up for good. But no, it was the door. I yelled ‘fuck off’ until my throat was hoarse but whoever it was didn’t take the subtle hint. I answered it wondering which of my cack-brained neighbours had given this knock fiend access to the building. Their lives wouldn’t be worth a comma of worm shit once I was through with them.

  ‘This had better be worth me getting vertical!’ I shouted. ‘If you aren’t Eva Green then prepare to return to street level at a velocity much higher than the one at which you ascend— Oh, fucking Nora. Mawker. Fuck off back to your throne, King of Bellends.’

  ‘I hardly hear this shit of yours these days, Sorrell, you do know that, right? I’ve assimilated it. You’re like white noise. I can tune you out. You’re there, but you’re not there.’

  ‘Well “hardly” works for me,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep it up for “hardly”.’

  ‘How are you doing?’ Mawker asked. He’d had a haircut. The skin around his hairline was dry and red. What a place to suffer from eczema. Unless it was something else. I wondered if perhaps Mawker was bald and that this thing on his head, this over-greased pudding of a hairstyle was, in fact, a wig. And it was chafing him. Or he was allergic to it. I imagined him at home, gingerly removing it, like Darth Vader’s skull-cap, while whatever passed for his life partner cried in a corner, too horrified to watch.