Hell Is Empty Read online

  I slapped his fists away and slammed my forearm into his throat, pinned him to the wall. I planted my thigh between his legs so he couldn’t swing a limb at me.

  ‘Talk to me,’ I said.

  He struggled against it for a while, his little eyes bulging like dumplings that had failed to rise in a pale stew, but he wasn’t going anywhere. I felt his straining muscles suddenly crumple.

  ‘Get off,’ he said.

  I stepped away and he pulled back a chair and sat down. He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic bag. Inside was a large book, or what remained of it. It was partially charred.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Visitors book,’ he said. ‘Cold Quay.’

  I didn’t recognise it, but then the flames had been at it. My signature would be in there somewhere.

  ‘Quaint,’ I said. ‘What’s the story?’

  He didn’t say anything. He took the book out and pushed it across the desk. The sour smell of carbon. The cover flaked a little under my fingers.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It’s not evidence. Not really.’

  I opened it up. ‘What am I looking for?’ but I knew full well.

  He stood up and poured more coffee. He went to the window and looked down at Broadway. Sip and stare. He wasn’t saying anything else to me.

  I flipped through the book. It was a hefty tome and had been initiated three years previously. First-page visitors included deliveries from Parcelforce, a visit from a local politician and a dentist. I flicked through the rest of the book. I found my name from the visit I’d made earlier in the year.

  I turned pages. And here… of course. That date. That black anniversary. Sarah had come to Cold Quay prison.

  I stared at her name and her signature. Sarah Sorrell. I felt a hit of happiness, despite the horror and confusion and hurt, that she’d kept my name.

  ‘Sarah came to see him,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, she did. It wasn’t the only time.’

  Her name cropped up on the following pages. Weekly visits. ‘When did you find out about this?’

  ‘Not that long ago. You were still in hospital. When I came in to see you I overheard the duty sergeant talking to his shift replacement about a rumour that was knocking about. That Beauty was going to see the Beast.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’

  ‘It’s none of my business. She’s an adult. She can do what she likes.’

  ‘It’s my business though, isn’t it? I’ve been searching for her for years, Ian. My life has been put on hold.’

  ‘I thought I was doing the right thing in protecting you from this.’

  ‘You couldn’t stop her?’

  ‘I told you, she can do what she likes.’

  ‘Ian… Jesus Christ.’ I threw the book on the floor. All the strength had collapsed out of me. I felt hollow, carved open like a Halloween pumpkin. ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t… What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Is this you asking me for advice?’

  ‘No. It was a rhetorical question.’

  He put his shit coffee down and sat in his chair.

  ‘What a mess,’ he said.

  ‘What if he’s out there, looking for her? What if he’s found her? These visits… she could have inadvertently clued him up as to where she was living. And then the riot. He’s out and he’s got reciprocity on his mind.’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said. ‘We don’t know where he is. We don’t know where she is. Everything is ifs and maybes.’

  ‘What about his other visitors?’

  ‘He had one or two, over the years. Nutters and freakshows in the main. A couple who were after mementos. One girl hitched down from Hull, fresh from college, wanted to marry him. We checked them all out. No joy.’

  I sighed and the sound was the rattle of air through an old man. ‘What did she want from him? What could she possibly get out of visiting him?’

  I stood up. I had to get moving. That I didn’t know where only made me more restless. I felt as though I’d been chasing ghosts, stains in the air, bruises in the memory. People who’d experienced some tangential involvement with Tann, like the way a moth will leave a tracing of its golden dust on the skin if it brushes you. This dust was coal black though, and it settled in the soul, a mark of Cain.

  ‘I should get back to them,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Romy and Lorraine. I picked them up from Heathrow last night. They worry they’re being followed.’

  ‘Let me take you,’ Mawker said. ‘I’ll arrange for a plainclothes to hang about.’

  The thought of going back on public transport was pretty grim, grimmer than sitting next to Mawker and his collection of cheap food stains. But I thanked him, and I meant it, and we headed for the car pool. I was feeling pretty bad about strong-arming the guy, though I was sure I’d get over it pretty qui—

  The plainclothes was a woman wearing Gucci, Kevlar and a Glock 26. She introduced herself as Officer Stephanie Bradley. She was twenty years in the force and looked tougher than a dog toy. East London, mainly, with the Territorial Support Group and, later, with various crime and intelligence squads before her current position in SCO19. We all said hello as we piled into an unmarked Volvo S60 in the basement car pool. The car was being driven by a guy called Creamer, po-faced and fifty-something in a black leather jacket.

  When Creamer swung into York Way I told him to lay off the pedal.

  ‘Wait here,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Bradley.

  I led her towards the junction of Caledonia Street. There was a black Mercedes, a C-class coupé, positioned at the eastern end of it. Two figures inside.

  ‘I didn’t see them earlier,’ I said.

  ‘Black Merc,’ said Bradley. ‘Are you sure? There’s not a lot of them about.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, admiring her sarcasm. ‘Could be nothing. Black alloys though, see. Romy said the car had black wheels.’

  ‘Might be something, then. No harm in being ultra cautious.’

  ‘If they’ve been following me since Heathrow, why didn’t they follow me to Scotland Yard?’

  ‘Maybe they did.’

  ‘I took the Tube to St James’s,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe someone on foot.’

  ‘In which case we lost him coming back,’ I said. ‘Unless he followed us in a cab and that would mean he’d know which car we were in coming out of Plod Central… sorry.’

  ‘I’ve been called worse.’

  I just wanted to go up to the Merc and tap on the window and ask them to stop playing silly buggers, let’s all be friends and chat about what was up. If only life was so simple. If only I was so reasonable.

  ‘How do you want to play it?’ she asked.

  ‘We can’t let on that we’ve spotted them,’ I said. ‘They’ll lose us or we’ll catch them. Either way, they’re not leading us to Tann. So how about I go in, tell Lorraine and Romy what’s what, then you can watch them and the entrance while I drive the twit twins around town for a few hours till they get bored. Mawker and his chauffeur can keep tabs on them from behind. At some point one or both of them is going to have to knock off. Maybe they’ll go back to the place where Tann is hiding out.’

  ‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘But if they’re here for you, what’s to stop them gunning you down in the street?’

  ‘Broad daylight. Busy. I reckon they’re waiting for their moment. They’ve seen what happens when they come at me blazing. Tann’s running out of goons. He needs to make it count soon otherwise it’s just him and me.’

  ‘You hope.’

  ‘There is an element of that, I agree.’

  ‘Everyone would feel a whole lot happier if I was with you.’

  ‘Sudden girlfriend? Since when? They’d notice something was whiffy and scarper. Anyway, you’re here for them,’ I said, tilting my head at Tokuzo’s apartment block. �
��Let Mawker know what I’m up to. Tell him to get another car out here in case they split up. He won’t like it, but then he doesn’t like anything. And then come up to the flat.’

  ‘I’ll speak with him, but I’m walking up that road ahead of you first. I’d rather I was the human shield than some innocent bystander, just in case they do think fuck it and start firing.’

  ‘Done.’

  She moved off and I counted to ten and sauntered after her. She angled across the street and I followed, and then there was some more traffic turning in and a mother with a buggy and I was able to breathe easier. They were staying in the car. Unless they wanted tons of collateral and a shootout to the death, they were being careful. Which was nice to know. I could do with a break from legging it through construction sites.

  I turned into the apartment block entrance and took the lift up to Lorraine’s floor. I let myself in and they were sitting together on the sofa watching TV. Tokuzo had packed a case that stood by the door in case they had to bug out fast.

  ‘Good thinking,’ I said. I told them about Bradley, that she was nice and good. Much more professional than me, at least. I didn’t hang about. I saw questions crystallising in their eyes and to talk was to instil doubt. The less they knew, the less they could fret. It wasn’t ideal, but we were beyond that. Ideal was long gone, if it had ever even been here.

  I got back to ground level and sneaked a peek. Car still there. Figures still seated in the front. Too long now for them to be waiting for a mate who just wanted to nip to the cashpoint or buy a paper.

  In the unpopulated basement I walked to the Saab, head down, thinking about Romy. For some reason, by the time I was at the door, I was fantasising about her in a green and yellow bikini, beckoning to me from a sun lounger, loosening the ties at the back, asking me to rub sun cream on her.

  When this was over I was dragging her off on holiday with me. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Tokuzo too, if she wanted to come and nobody thought it too weird. I went to grab the handle. And stopped. A spasm in the watch-it gland. Something. Not. Right.

  I’d not believed a word of what I said to Bradley, about the people after me – the killers – and how they might not want to create a scene. I was trying to convince myself of something that they wouldn’t think twice about. Why was that? Maybe they were innocents after all. There were any number of reasons a car would hang about on the street. Maybe it had broken down and they were waiting for help. They were picking up their mum to take her to the seaside and she was still getting ready. Hell, they could be undercover cops themselves and we’d all laugh about this later over pints at the Two Chairmen.

  I looked behind me, hoping to see a shadow duck down behind another car, but as I’d already observed, there was nobody around. The car park was empty. Something wrong with the Saab then. But it looked fine. I walked its length, running my hand over its lines. What was itching at me?

  I peered through the windows into the back seat. I’d seen enough horror films to warn me about unwanted visitors lurking in the rear footwell, ready to pop up and have their wicked way before third gear.

  I took a breath and walked back to the lift. When I got down here I was fine. By the time I got to the car I was edgy. Re-enactment.

  Romy in a bikini. More curves than a pure maths textbook. Green and yellow fabric. I’d never seen her in a bikini before, let alone one that looked like a lemon and lime confection. A bit like that tiny piece of earth wire sleeve lying on the floor. Hello.

  I picked it up and returned to the car.

  I got to my knees and had a look underneath. I went at it from every angle. Couldn’t see anything attached. There was no obvious tampering going on there. I thought about the wheel arches and checked those, feeling softly with my fingertips. Passenger side front, nothing. Driver’s side front… fuck.

  Something metallic that wasn’t meant to be there. Something that felt like magnets. Wires looping. I withdrew my hand and smelled my fingers. Oily, plasticky. I was put in mind of hot bitumen. But there was something sweet underneath it that reminded me of ripe plums. Whatever the fuck it was, it wasn’t supposed to be in the wheel arch of a thirty-year-old Saab.

  I don’t know much about bombs, but I know they get very hot and very loud very quickly and tend to instantaneously shred anything meat-based within the immediate vicinity. I guessed the stooges in the car outside were waiting for some kind of evidence that their IED had me DOA. I guessed that the reason the bomb was on the driver’s side as opposed to, say, under the fuel tank, was because it was a focused device meant to detonate in a localised area, i.e. pretty much right under my arse, in order to ensure I wouldn’t survive the blast.

  I called Mawker and told him my happy news. He swore for a while and I heard his muffled voice while he put the phone down and barked at Creamer, or someone on the other end of the police radio.

  ‘I say we go in hard on those clowns in the Merc,’ he said. ‘Get them in solitary and sweat some info.’

  I thought about that. It might work. It might not. If it worked it might not be instantly; it might take hours that we didn’t have. And that was allowing for a peaceful capitulation. There was every chance an armed unit squealing on to the scene would be met with heavy resistance and possible injury to innocent bystanders. And at the end of it all I’d still be so far away from Sarah and so far away from Tann. I was in a perpetual state of running towards or running away. I was sick of running. I hated cross country at school and I didn’t see why I should still be doing it now, when I was a grown-up able to make decisions for myself.

  ‘Maybe I should die,’ I said.

  ‘Music to my ears,’ Mawker said, ‘but I don’t follow.’

  ‘Yes you do. Think about it. That bomb goes off, and we cart a body bag out to the ambulance. Let Laurel and Hardy think it’s me. Maybe they’ll go hurrying back to Master for their pat on the head.’

  ‘We can’t let the bomb go off,’ Mawker said. ‘People die when bombs go off. We have no idea how powerful it is.’

  ‘It can’t be that powerful otherwise they wouldn’t be sitting fifty feet away in a tin box twiddling their fingers. If they have anything to do with it. We still don’t know for sure.’

  ‘Then we channel the blast somehow. Angle it so it’s away from the street. Or time it so there’s no passersby, so the fucking ceiling doesn’t fall in.’

  ‘But we have to do it soon while the car park’s empty,’ I said.

  I heard him on the blower, summoning bodies. ‘We’ll meet you in the basement,’ he said, and ended the call.

  I was hopping about, unable to relax. I’d never been in close proximity to so many pounds of boom before, unless you counted the arse of Curryboy Caxton, who was an accident waiting to happen during my years at college. I tried to relax. Everything was in hand.

  Presumably Mawker would get on to Bradley and have the concierge close off resident access to the car park and ensure the apartments above were cleared out. No vehicles to come in the front way unless IQs suddenly plummeted and helicopters swooped into the main drag carrying abseiling muppets wearing Bomb Squad T-shirts. Everything would arrive at the service bays to the rear.

  The bomb couldn’t be on a timer because there was no knowing when I’d return to it. Ditto a remote trigger because they couldn’t see the car, unless they’d set up a camera or a microphone – and they hadn’t because they’d have pressed the button as soon as they heard me on the phone to Mawker. Which meant it was primed to explode when the door was opened or the engine was started or maybe when the accelerator was depressed or a certain speed was attained. If it was the latter, then this little ruse would fail. Maybe they were in the car in order to follow me, waiting for that magic number to be reached. Otherwise they might as well sit on a roof, or watch from across the street, anonymous among the dozens of pedestrians buzzing around St Pancras.

  I wiped sweat away from my forehead and waited.

  Mawker was the first to arrive. ‘You
touched anything?’

  ‘I had a fondle, yes.’

  ‘And you’re sure it’s a bomb?’

  ‘On second thoughts it could have been an armadillo holding some marzipan.’

  ‘You touched it. Well that was fucking stupid. It could have gone off.’

  He went on about various things, such as responsibility and keeping a cool head. I let him have his rant because he’s one of those people who needs to fill space with his Ian-ness, whether it be gob or gabardine. He wasn’t paying attention to me or what he was saying. His eyes were flicking all over the place as if he’d been given a thirty-second pass to the room of a hundred nude women.

  Half a dozen EOD technicians in bomb suits filtered into the parking area. I was shepherded away with Mawker to the upper floor and told to wait while they were briefed with the plan. I watched various pieces of equipment disappearing through the doors including blasting initiators, protective blankets, bomb chambers, mirrors and detectors. A robot was wheeled in looking none too chuffed. A voice squawked on the radio that an ambulance was standing by. I saw a body bag stuffed to appear as if it was filled with a corpse dumped in the corridor, waiting to go on stage. A chill swept through me.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Mawker said.

  We went to the ground floor and moved through service areas to the rear of the building where Creamer was waiting across the street in the Volvo.

  ‘What if there’s a third man watching out?’ I asked. ‘It would make sense.’

  ‘We have to assume not,’ said Mawker. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it now.’

  I recced the drag nevertheless, as we hurried over to the car and got in. We drove around to the west end of Caledonia Street. The black Merc was still positioned at the other end. Patience of saints, or more likely ultra-thick yes-men.

  Another ten minutes and Mawker got a call from the EOD guys that the bomb had been identified. It wasn’t a whopper. It wouldn’t bring the building down. But it would take my legs off given half a chance. They had taken the necessary steps to channel the blast so that it caused minimal internal damage without stifling its effect. They were waiting for Mawker’s signal to detonate.