Hell Is Empty Read online

  I wondered whether I should retrieve the sniper rifle, but it would be no good at close quarters. I thought about manning his post and waiting for Tann to pop his head out, but there was no knowing where he’d appear from, and no guarantee that Bullseye here wouldn’t come to and try to exact terrible revenge while I was waiting. I tossed the rifle into the trees.

  I left the tower and entered the prison proper. Or rather, what was left of it. The walls were pretty much gone and the bars on the cells, the metal walkways that connected them were so much buckled scrap. I trudged down the central corridor, close to where the entrance had stood, trying to picture some of these rooms as they had been before the fire. It was difficult to do. Here would have been the spot where I had visited Tann earlier in the year – here were the swivel bolts in the floor that had secured the prisoners’ chains – but everything else was incinerated, molten, black. Lengths of timber lay around, the moisture in them driven out by intense heat. All that remained were mackerel-striped chunks, filleted with huge gaps where the fibres had separated. Plastic chairs had become Dalí creations.

  In a building with no rooms or walls, how could you hide?

  I was beginning to think I’d got it wrong. Tann was no more here than I was in Barbados. He was hiding in some lackey’s spare room, unable to go out during the day, a prisoner still, really.

  I thought back to that day I’d come to visit him. I had been eager to get some kind of reaction out of him. I wanted to show him up as a petty, pathetic little man, and not the monster the tabloids would have people believe. But he rolled with my verbal blows, and when I lost my rag and tried to go for him, he brushed me aside as if I were nothing more than a troublesome gnat. Any dignity lost that day belonged to me. He had my measure. He knew I was weak.

  Parking the car, walking across the car park. Security clearance. There’d been a delivery van, I remember. A white one, with a shining sun and jolly orange livery. Sunshine Laundry. Something like that. A blue hopper had been lowered on a hydraulic lift at the back of the van and the hopper had been trundled over to a delivery hatch. Towels and bedding, perhaps.

  A utility area in a basement.

  I wondered if the hatch might have opened on to a chute that ended in a cellar of some sort. Maybe the cellar had been spared any serious damage.

  I stopped and stared at my feet and resisted the impulse to hop and dance away, as if I’d been walking on hot coals. It would make every sort of sense for Tann to be seeking refuge in the damp, black limbo of the cellar. A nothing man in a nowhere place.

  I hunted around in the vicinity of the entrance for some remnants of the hatch, but a large portion of the forecourt was under tons of rubble. Instead I moved deeper into the prison, trying to fathom the logical location for a cellar entrance. It would be out of the way, a room within a room, perhaps. A storage room of some kind. Electrical or mechanical. The place where they kept the truncheons and tear gas. But I couldn’t find anything like that and the one room that did show promise – what I guessed was some sort of mail sorting office – had no kind of door leading anywhere.

  I didn’t know what to do. What was also bothering me was the issue of the guards. I could see now that there were a number of additional cars parked nearby, along with the black Merc. I couldn’t imagine anybody leaving behind a motor in favour of Shanks’s pony, no matter how desperate the need to get away might be. Well, if I couldn’t find Tann then I was going to make sure this lot were stuffed if they did come back.

  I moved from car to car, slashing tyres. I finished with the Merc and took extra pleasure from ribboning his run-flats.

  When that was done, my arm was burning with effort. I thought I heard the whoop of a siren, and began to relax. The cavalry was in the vicinity. It meant Return to GO. But at least there’d be no more deaths this night.

  I headed over to the Portakabin. Empty, as I’d expected. A radio playing. The Carpenters. Who’d have thunk it? Tann’s hard-bitten flunkies liked a bit of easy listening while they picked the blood from under their nails.

  There were the remnants of some old meals. Pizza boxes in the main – somebody had been making a lot of meat feast runs – and a walkie-talkie battery charging dock. A copy of the Daily Mirror. A kettle and some tea-stained sugar solidifying in a bowl. A rug. And that was about it.

  I went back outside and thought, Hang on, who puts a rug down in a Portakabin?

  It was just a square patch of rubbish carpet – the kind of thing you’d find in a 1970s khazi. I lifted one corner and there was a hatch underneath it, crudely formed: the work of a box blade, maybe, and a couple of cheap hinges.

  Soft fingers, I thought, slipping it open. Smells leapt out. Paraffin, hot metal, human waste.

  Cigars.

  I strained for voices but none came. Yellow metal rungs descended, cut off into fangs by the shadows. Maybe they had really been dismantled – I wouldn’t put it past Tann – and I’d drop into a pit of fuel which he would then ignite.

  I thought of Danny when my breath started to hitch. Being scared is overrated. I thought of Sarah and Becs. Whatever lay ahead of me wasn’t what happened to her. Nothing could be like that. Which meant I could handle it. I swung my legs into the hatch and descended.

  23

  Pencil torch on: the beam revealed acres of crazy. It was a Health and Safety disaster zone. Washing machines disembowelled, parts strewn across the corridor. Strip lighting that hung from the ceiling, wires exposed. The heat from the fire had penetrated some areas. Plastic ducts and polystyrene ceiling tiles had melted and reformed into grotesque shapes. Water from the fire service hoses had deformed the walls; they were bellied and bowed. There was water underfoot still, in places up to a foot deep. A rat knifed through it, then darted into a metre-wide crack in the wall.

  I wondered if this obstacle course had been designed as a primitive warning system, a way of alerting Tann to visitors, because it was impossible to advance without making any noise. If he’s here, a voice said. And I had to go over again all the reasons why he would be here, why he couldn’t fail to be here and—

  So maybe he is here. But he could have watched you every step. It could have all been designed to get you to this spot, and even now he’s starting up the bulldozer to push a thousand tons of fuck you on to your own and only escape route.

  It’s been a great emotional help to me, that fucking voice. I love how it’s generated from within and yet only ever provides shit information. A bit of cheerleading wouldn’t go amiss from time to time.

  I waded through that evil-smelling water, slicked as it was with rainbows of oil and the contents of ruptured pipes. I thought I could hear music from up ahead but that could only be trickery. The beat of the rain on corrugated metal, the chuckle of water through the maze of shattered masonry. Mostly, though, I reckoned it was due to the exhausted lump of tissue at the top of my head. I was hungry and tired and, despite leaning heavily on what Danny Sweet had drummed into me, scared almost to a standstill.

  But then I heard something different up ahead. It was less random than everything else. There was purpose in it: it sounded like the opening of a door – a door that no longer sat squarely in its frame and whose hinges were gritted and old. I heard it catch against a sodden, carpeted floor. The judder as it hit resistance and would swing no further. I heard footsteps, light and quick, splashing towards me.

  I took out the gun and switched off the safety. It felt so tiny in my hand. I could have been holding a howitzer and I’d be convinced a shell from it would skid off Tann’s body with all the destructive power of a raindrop.

  My light picked out movement. Someone rapidly approaching. Someone else carrying a torch. The beams met and slashed across each other, finally pooling between us. My heart loud enough for her to hear.

  ‘Joel,’ she said.

  I wanted to raise the torch, to train the beam of light on her face. To touch it. To study it for hours. To make sure. But I didn’t have to. Not really. Because s
he had spoken my name and her voice was the same as it had been the last time I heard it, when she was thirteen. Strong, confident, amused. Just like her mum.

  I opened my mouth to say something but my tongue and lips had stiffened with shock. I’d imagined this moment so often, albeit in different surroundings, the beautiful tributes and apologies I would deliver, the wisdoms I would impart. Hopes and promises. But now it was here, my voice, if I could only find it, would not have been worthy of her or the situation. There was nothing I could say.

  She passed her torch to her other hand and swept her fingers through her long hair. ‘We’re just through here,’ she said, and turned and moved away.

  I could smell the perfume in her wake, but although I recognised that, and her posture, and the playfulness and the edge in her voice, I was convincing myself that it was an astonishing imposter, that it was all a brilliant ruse to put me off guard. Up ahead was a trap, and she was complicit.

  So, of course, I followed her through the doorway – how could I not? – my hand outstretched, aching to feel her warmth under my fingers once again, and her name trembled in my mouth.

  24

  There was power in this room. Portable LED lights hung from hooks in the walls. The music I thought I’d heard in the corridor was an album being played on a turntable. Old-time music. The Ink Spots. Sarah went over to it and returned the carriage to the first track.

  ‘I didn’t know you liked this kind of music,’ I said.

  ‘That person has changed, Joel,’ she said.

  She was my Sarah, but she was not my Sarah. Her eyes were glassy. Tann was sitting on a chair in the corner. She smiled at me, but it was filled with distance. She went to him and sat on the floor by his feet. I pointed the gun at his face. End it now. Nothing he can do or say can save him.

  But Sarah got to her knees and positioned herself between us. ‘Don’t shoot him,’ she said.

  ‘Put your gun away, Joel,’ Tann said. I realised what it was about Tann’s voice that nagged at me. It wasn’t just that it was oily and sly, more confident than he had any right to be. It was because there were no rough edges to his speech. No fillers, no pauses, no false starts. Every word was enunciated and no word was wasted. I don’t know what that meant, if anything. Perhaps only that he was precise and economical.

  ‘This will all be a lot smoother for you if you don’t complicate matters with a weapon.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said. Ever the diplomat. ‘There have been quite a number of people in my vicinity holding guns lately, and I don’t want to feel left out.’

  But my grip on the gun had already loosened. Sarah’s words, not his, had seen to that. I felt the urge to ignore everyone and blow him to kingdom come when he placed a proprietorial hand on her shoulder, and began to stroke her skin.

  ‘Get. Your. Fucking. Hands. Off. My. Daughter.’

  ‘We need to talk,’ they both said at the same time. They looked at each other and laughed. I felt I’d stumbled into a room being used by lovers just before or just after the act. I felt unwelcome, intrusive.

  ‘Sarah,’ I said. ‘He killed your mother.’

  She didn’t seem to understand. She wore the smile of a person indulging in another’s fantasies. Her eyes were preternaturally bright and intent. Her movement, though, was languid, as if she were encased in aspic. A table was littered with cups and plastic bottles of water. Twisted foil blister packs. Largactil. The liquid cosh. He was keeping her docile.

  ‘What is this, Tann?’ I said. ‘You’re drugging her? Why? You’re working some kind of Stockholm Syndrome?’

  Tann stood up. I could see that he too was armed. But whereas my Glock was subtle and understated, he was carrying a FAMAS. It didn’t matter that his gun was louder than mine, or that it carried more ammunition and delivered it faster. One bullet was all you needed.

  ‘Sarah suffers from anxiety and headaches. I’m helping her to get better,’ he said.

  ‘Bullshit,’ I said. As if to underline his importance in her restoration, Sarah squeezed his hand and took another two tablets from the stash on the table. I resisted the urge to go over and slap them out of her hand. I had to play this with care.

  ‘Why didn’t you slip away when you had the chance?’ I said. ‘You could have made it to the coast, got a boat to the Continent… way before anyone realised you were out.’

  ‘My life is here,’ he said. ‘Home is where the heart is.’ He gave Sarah another tender, longing look.

  ‘If you’ve touched her I’ll kill you,’ I said.

  He turned his attention back to me and his face was twisted with disgust. ‘I’m not a monster, Joel,’ he said, without a hint of irony. The light slid around the neatly cut planes of his face as if it was something that had been applied, like lotion. ‘But I’ll tell you something that is monstrous.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘Killing the wife of a man who couldn’t really cope that well without her. Who subsequently lost touch with his daughter. And has suffered a couple of attempts on his life in the past week. On your orders.’

  ‘That’s not monstrous,’ Tann said. ‘That’s bad luck. What’s monstrous is seeing the woman you loved, the woman you devoted every minute to, cut you off in her prime, take everything from you. Leaving you to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘We were to be married,’ he said.

  In my head I was shouldering closed a door to a room that was packed to the rafters with NO. But I didn’t have the strength.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I said. ‘You stand aside and let me take my daughter with me or I finish you right now.’

  ‘I asked her. Of course I asked her. She was, after all, carrying our child.’

  ‘Tann.’ My voice was baby soft. I was finding it hard to breathe.

  ‘But she said no. And she said she had taken the appropriate steps. She didn’t like my… temper. She wished me well. She walked away.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear this shit.’ But all I could think of was sitting on a sofa while Rebecca got ready for her visit to the doctor and the file containing her medical notes was right next to me. It only took a moment to nudge the cover open and see what was written inside.

  How did I feel about that? I felt a little sneaky that I’d looked in the first place, because what was I expecting to find? Nothing good comes of that kind of curiosity. But there it had been. Evidence that Becs had been pregnant before she met me. Stark word: termination. But so what, really? We all make mistakes. She’d done what she felt was right. An abortion for someone who wasn’t ready to be a mother. She’d have thought long and hard about it. I hadn’t given it a second thought. An old boyfriend. A torn condom. A forgotten pill. Shit happens.

  Tell me it wasn’t him

  …

  Becs. Tell me it wasn’t him.

  But Becs wasn’t talking to me any more.

  I wanted to say that it didn’t matter. So what if he’d been on the scene one time, many, many years ago? Before he was a cunt, or as much of a cunt as he had become. We all learned by fucking up and Becs had fucked up, but had come back from it. She’d met me. We’d had Sarah.

  ‘And so,’ he said. ‘I raped her. I raped Rebecca. I raped your wife. And this was after you two had got together. She never said a word. And I know why. Because she still loved me. She wanted to be with me and she was too fucked up to realise.’

  ‘You’re living in a fantasy world if you think my wife—’

  ‘I WAS THERE FIRST!’ he screamed. Sarah jumped, but the smile remained. She looked as if she couldn’t fathom why she’d reacted.

  The light twitched a little, as if affected by the ferocity of Tann’s voice. I heard the buzz and grumble of loose ballast in the fluorescent tubes. I heard the trickle of soil as it repositioned itself in any number of cracks and chasms.

  ‘You’re a sick fuck,’ I said. ‘She’d have told me.’

  ‘She was protecting you.’

>   ‘SHE’D HAVE TOLD ME!’

  Sarah jumped again. Her gaze flickered between me and Tann. There was the slow collapse of the smile and panic building.

  ‘Sarah is my child,’ he said.

  ‘She would have aborted again, if she suspected it was you.’

  ‘You hear that, Sarah? Your so-called dad thinks you should have been vacuumed from the womb. There’s familial love for you, right there.’

  ‘Sarah, he’s lying,’ I said.

  The lights went out and then came back on again. There was a deep groaning sound. Maybe the cellar was giving up the ghost after the damage caused by the fire and the subsequent tonnage of water. Call me strange, but I really didn’t fancy being in here if the ceiling caved in. Tann and I looked at each other and there was a kind of amused irritation on his face, as if he was saying to me, I didn’t plan this, can’t pin this on me. And then the lights stuttered again. I saw Tann had taken a couple of steps towards the door. He looked as if he’d been caught in a lewd act; the amused look remained, but there was a challenge in his eyes too. Sarah was no longer playing human shield. I didn’t need asking twice. I loosed a couple of shots his way just as the darkness leapt back into the room. He responded in kind, already on the move, and the room filled with tracer, picking out snapshots of him and his creased eyes, his gritted teeth. Wood splintered and glass shattered as the shells from the FAMAS crashed into the surroundings. In my haste to get out of that hail of fire, I tripped over a chair leg but that pratfall saved me: bullets slammed into the walls above.

  I returned fire but I was blind to some extent. I knew Sarah was to my right, still on her knees, and as yet she wasn’t moving. I heard her, very clearly, scream out: ‘Daddy! Please! No!’

  If she did move she was liable to get her head blown off.

  ‘Stay down,’ I yelled.

  The lights buzzed back on. Tann was at the doorway. He was leaving. I raised an arm to shoot but he was quicker. The lights went out. I felt a blow to my arm as if a silverback had taken a running jump at it while wearing steel toe-capped boots. I could no longer feel the Glock in my hand. I reached with my other, convinced I would touch only a splintered stump, but my arm was intact, albeit very hot and wet. It suddenly felt too heavy to keep upright and my shoulder failed, the arm hanging by my side, utterly useless. I felt fear creeping into me, while the blood pooled out.