Hell Is Empty Read online

  ‘It’s all tied together. The fitness. The fight. You know that. And that’s why you came to me, rather than Johnny Gym Kit. You need to rediscover the bloodlust. Because without it, you’re finished.’

  I knelt there feeling pain – proper, unregulated, unnamed raw pain – jogging through my meat and bones and it felt real. It felt good. I felt myself unwind into the moment, and into the spaces that the others populated. I ended up with a cut above my eye, and I’d have some bruising on the arms and chest, but all things considered I felt okay. Better than these clowns, I thought. I’d given each of them something to remember me by. Now my only problem was Danny Sweet, who was capable of boxing me until my pips flew out. But if he was miffed that I’d doled out some thrashings to his lieutenants, he wasn’t letting on.

  ‘They’re bottom-feeders,’ he said, when I asked him what he thought of my moves. ‘I’ve seen blind people move faster than those puddings.’

  ‘Still…’ I said.

  ‘I picked them so you’d get a workout without cracking a nail. You were okay, but I’d leave puffing your chest out for another day.’

  ‘So what now?’ I said.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Stop looking for brownie points and get on with it. Keep the exercise up, but you need to load up on calories too. You run, you burn more. And because you’ve been on your arse for weeks without proper fuel, you’re skinnier than a supermodel’s fart.’

  ‘I appreciate this,’ I said.

  ‘I look forward to the favour being returned some day. And if you want a sterner test, you know where to come.’

  We traipsed back to the park entrance. Mud on my legs was drying to a thick glaze that tightened the skin. I smelled sweaty, rank. I felt great.

  He slid behind the wheel of his Bentley. ‘I’d give you a lift,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want Sorrell juice all over my leather.’ Then he was gone.

  I walked down to Kentish Town and in a greasy spoon ate a massive breakfast that didn’t even touch the sides. I bought a couple of pastries to go – the waitress looking at me as if I was a trencherman in training, or more likely someone with a serious tapeworm problem – and caught a Tube home before I realised what I was doing.

  I bumped into an off-duty copper down there who gave me a wet wipe and advised me to dab off the blood on my face – that had been why the waitress was giving me odd looks – and I thanked her and bit down on the rejoinder I was about to let loose, something about what was life like when you had a few hours free from Mawker’s ring piece.

  When I got back I crashed out on the sofa and slept until dusk. I stripped and showered and dressed in my date-presentable wardrobe: jeans, unironed (but fairly high quality) shirt, Chelsea boots and the envy leather. Best knickers and socks, obvs. I stopped short of talcing my cods but consented to a cheeky dab of come-hither fluid at the back of each ear. I headed out and though it was hard to get over the threshold, I was thinking HOME>OUTSIDE rather than SAFE>BALLS-OUT DANGER. It was okay. I could do this. I’d broken the back of this particular monkey.

  Agoraphobia: ✓

  Alcohol: ✓

  Romy: ?

  By the time I got to the house in Islington, my legs and arms were stiffening. My chest pinged with little agonies every time I shifted position. But it was an agreeable range of discomforts, the kind of self-righteous pain that tells you you’ve worked hard, you’ve earned it.

  In a strange way, though, I also felt looser than I had for a while. I felt as though I was moving much like I used to before the attack, although the carvings in my flesh still felt tight and inflexible, like veins of gristle in an otherwise tender sirloin steak.

  I prevaricated outside the door for a while, as I knew I would, but once I realised what I was doing, I rang the bell and wished I’d bought some posh chocolates or a bunch of flowers. I had half a pack of Wrigley’s in my pocket and that might have worked in an ironic way once upon a time. But it would likely get me a slapped face or at best a look to shrivel any skin that wasn’t still clinging on tightly.

  She opened the door. She didn’t say anything. She left the door open. She went back inside.

  I left it a moment and then followed. I suddenly felt as vulnerable and on edge as I had when I entered the old Southwark factory a fit man and came out wanting for a shroud. It struck me that this might well be as much of a Damascene moment, albeit with slightly less bloodshed.

  She was in the living room. The TV was on; she was watching a film, but she’d hit the pause button. Al Pacino was caught in the moment of destroying a TV of his own.

  ‘Good film,’ I said. ‘But not your thing, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Don’t presume to—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’

  She sighed. Worry or doubt or a combination of the two were dragging at her features and I moved fast to stay them.

  ‘I made mistakes,’ I said. ‘I won’t make any more.’

  ‘I want to believe you,’ she said. ‘Watching this film, how close to danger they skate every day. The wife at home whose place is always second. Second to his job, second to the evil scum he’s trying to put behind bars. I don’t know if… I don’t know how anybody…’ Her fingers toyed with the buttons on the remote. ‘Would you like a glass of… oh, shit. I’m sorry.’

  I smiled. ‘You see? How easy it is to fall into traps? I do it all the time.’

  ‘It’s not a trap, Joel. It’s something normal people do. It’s a social thing. But now I can’t do that. Because you can’t do that.’

  ‘You can. I’m not an alcoholic.’

  ‘Which is the first thing an alcoholic says.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. I’m not. I think I might be forgiven if I was.’

  She seemed shocked by that, or maybe that was just her default look these days.

  ‘I don’t like the life that’s gathered around me,’ she said.

  Pincers of guilt, but I had to stop beating myself up. I’d done my best not to bring her into the line of fire. I’d not made the mistakes I’d made with Melanie. I told her as much.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not the issue. I can take care of myself. I’m talking about you. The fallout from you. The blood and the knife wounds. The coma. The stitches. I don’t want to face each day not knowing whether you’ll still be alive at the end of it.’

  ‘This was an isolated incident,’ I lied. ‘Things very rarely get as serious as this.’ Another lie, but a white one.

  ‘And so you can walk,’ she said. ‘And fight again. And use that filthy, smart mouth of yours to get you in and get you out of trouble. All is well. But next time. And next time. If it’s not death it might be something worse.’

  ‘I’ll tell you now,’ I said, ‘if it is worse, then I don’t want to live through it. If I’m paralysed, or in a coma, I’m giving you permission to turn off the—’

  ‘I don’t ever want to be in that position,’ she said. ‘You make it sound so easy. But it’s not you standing there looking down at whatever’s left in the hospital bed. It’s not you staring at the coffin.’

  ‘I’ve been there,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  ‘I DON’T!’ She sighed and clapped her hands to her face as if shocked or disgusted by her outcry.

  ‘Then walk away.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘But I won’t do what I did again. I won’t come and see you in pieces in hospital.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘So now what?’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Joel… that filthy mouth of yours.’

  ‘Let me show you just how filthy it can be,’ I said.

  There was still anger in her eyes when she approached me. I felt the edge of teeth in her kiss.

  Later, in her bed, when the breathing had calmed down and the sweat was cooling against my skin, I reached out and cupped her warm breasts in my hands, felt the dance of her heart inside. I ki
ssed the inside of her thigh and smelled fresh seed and the hot, incredible musk of her sex.

  A muscle in my calf sang where I had pulled it as I reached my climax. She was on the edge of sleep.

  I said: ‘What if it’s you who puts me in hospital?’

  6

  It was that same tweaked muscle in my leg that wakened me, a few hours later. It was the middle of the night, or early morning, however you like to frame it. A.m., anyway, with a very low number in front. I hobbled out of the room, careful not to rouse Romy, and found a tube of Deep Heat in her bathroom cabinet. I slathered it onto my calf, working it until the burn had all but camouflaged the pain.

  I only meant to go for a stroll around the block, but once it became clear that the pain had not been caused by a tear, and was easing somewhat with my perambulations, I kept moving and found myself gravitating towards that square mile crowded with all the big stuff. The Splinter beyond the protective construction boards gleamed like something shaved and showered, ready for a night of hot, rampant skyscraping.

  Not thinking too hard about what I was doing, I moved to the half-built skyscraper opposite and padded down the side of the boards until I found a lamppost I could shin up. When I was level with the barrier top, I paused and checked for cameras and motion alarms. It looked clear. Maybe they weren’t as security conscious as they might have been. Maybe they hadn’t been installed yet – I mean, what are you going to break into a building site for unless it’s to play in the sand? At least there was a stairwell. I wouldn’t have to climb up the scaffolding. I had no idea whether that was normal. I had no idea how you built a sandcastle, never mind a high rise. What went in first? The toilets? So I skipped up the first few flights but after ten minutes of stairs I found myself wishing that they put the lifts in first. Was that unreasonable? And then, just add rooms and walls around it. How hard could it be?

  A bit higher and the stairwell changed. The walls disappeared and London took over. I felt a squirming in my guts, my groin and my knees. Worms of ice. Strike that. Ice fucking snakes. So much space. So much height. I remember in the distant past, when I used to own a TV, never being able to not look when there was a documentary on about rock-climbing or mountaineering, even though it felt as though I’d sunk my junk into a pit of fire ants. I’ve got a ‘friend’ who likes to send me YouTube links on the laptop. I can’t help but click, even though I know it’ll be some sweaty palm viewing up a ravine or on a cliff edge. Mental Eastern Europeans dangling off bridges and cranes. Like a big bag of sweets I’d wolf it all down and then feel sick afterwards. Man on Wire. I went to see it the day it was released. And that epically grim documentary about people who throw themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge. I’ve woken up drenched in sweat thinking of a walk I made around the perimeter of a crumbling old tower, death hovering by the edge of my left foot at every step.

  I continued to climb. I heard the squawk and chatter of a radio and footsteps clanging on metal – gangway perhaps, or metal rungs on a ladder. Here was the reason for no technological defences. They had human security. I waited on the concrete steps listening hard for the guard’s intentions. I heard the crack of the radio broadcast button and a clear voice: ‘It’s colder than a nun’s quim up here,’ he said. Something unintelligible crackled the other way. Laughter. Another shot of white noise. Then footsteps fading.

  I left it a bit longer and proceeded up the steps. I was beginning to understand the language of the tower, its peculiar phrases. The way the wind caught in the brick netting secured to the scaffold. The distant skirl of cement dust as it played around the foundations. The metallic shiver in the girders as they incrementally relaxed and realigned.

  A stiff breeze, riddled with winter, tore through the exposed bones of the building. There were other giants rising in concert with this one. London, irked by the knowledge that it was a global shortarse, had decided to tilt for the heavens. Across the way the Splinter was nearing completion. Nearly 800 metres of glass and steel fitted together with the kind of top-level engineer-fu that ensured there were no visible joins. There seemed to be no window frames, just a uniform smoked-glass look throughout, as if it had been fashioned from one stupendous layer. It was beautiful and terrifying and it felt as though I could just reach out from where I was standing to touch its gleaming, polished shoulder. The summit of the Splinter would be a jagged thrust of reinforced glass. Something playful the architect had come up with, to offset the dreary pursuit of money that would go on in all the floors beneath it. He wanted to replicate the shattering of some boiled sweet or other that had caused him to lose a tooth. Work was ongoing; the building was due to open officially in the first quarter of the New Year.

  I admired it for a while and then tried to imagine a struggle and a person being thrown over the edge. Was there any chance, I wondered, that the Skylark had finally lost one of these skirmishes and plummeted to his death instead of his intended target? I made a mental note to check the details of the final victim, thinking that whoever had been in charge of the investigation back then ought to have done so as a matter of course.

  I got so high that I ran out of building. Steel rods reached up from concrete cores. A guy stood there, slouched against them, observing my trespass. My heart pounced but it was just a hi-vis gilet and a hard hat jammed on a strut. Christ it was cold. Wind buffeted the heights – it probably did so most of the time, no matter if it was completely still at street level. I was about to go – cursing myself for not rocking up in hat and gloves – anxious that Walkie-Talkie Man was going to be back up here before long, when I saw light on the uppermost levels of the Splinter.

  I might not have been so surprised at that of course, in this metropolis of megawattage, but for the way the light arrived, and the nature of it. It bloomed into being and was softer, a buttery light next to the harsh burn of the halogen. It flickered and leaned as it was moved across the floors. A security guard whose torch had let him down, relying on a candle? Highly unlikely. Kids then. BASE jump researchers. I kept my eyes on the flame. Now it ascended. When it had risen as far as it was able I thought I saw something just beyond its reach: the pale round of a face most likely, looking out, as I was, on the yawning muddle of roads and buildings that meant home. I fancied, with a chill of recognition, that he, or she, was looking straight at me, though surely I was concealed by the dark. It didn’t stop me from moving back into deeper shadow, or whomever it was from suddenly extinguishing the flame.

  * * *

  It was there again, that weird feeling of invasion, the tingle I’d known when I’d gone to meet Danny Sweet, as soon as I’d vaulted the fence back on to Bishopsgate. I couldn’t spend enough time trying to understand it, or the direction from which it was coming, because already that agoraphobic press was recurring and I felt the urge to retreat. Every car on the road was a blunt-nosed trauma delivery device. Every person carried with them an arsenal. There were fingernails sharpened and shaped into scimitars. Watch straps that could be reversed and made into knuckledusters. Windsor knot garrottes. Engagement ring gougers. All these ugly faces of intent. There was grim potential in every one; and I felt eminently targeted.

  I leapt into a taxi on London Wall and was back home before I realised I was supposed to be spending the night with Romy. I sent her a text describing the agonies I was suffering and that I didn’t want to keep her up all night, ruined old man that I’d become.

  I took the radio through to the bathroom and languished in water slightly cooler than that needed to poach an egg. Mengele sat on the toilet lid and gazed, rapt, at the patterns the reflected light made on the wall. For a smart-looking cat he behaved sometimes as if the space between his ears was filled with nothing more substantial than pickled shit.

  After twenty or so minutes of meandering tunes by chilled Scands that sounded as if they’d been composed on a frozen xylophone in a cathedral of ancient ice, I noticed the letters that had been shoved out of the way by the door as I’d entered the flat. I don’t often ge
t anything delivered directly but since being out of action and newly afraid of open spaces I’d asked Jimmy Two to pick up any mail for me and drop it off before he went off to fix my car or attend his twerking workshops or whatever it is he does to keep out of trouble.

  I got out of the bath and dried myself on a towel that was so rough it snagged on the various fissures and creases of my skin. I looked up to see a framed photograph of Becs when we first started seeing each other. I wondered what she’d make of my body now, if she could see it. Probably nothing. I ought to know for sure, but I don’t. You get married, you spend all that time together, you think you know a person inside out, but there’s always that capacity for surprise, isn’t there? No, I didn’t know her completely. She knew me better than I know myself.

  I raised my hand to my face and smelled traces of a variety of Romy perfumes on my fingers. For a moment I was back in her bedroom, watching her take her clothes off, feeling various parts of her fill my hands, listening to her breath catch and fall against my throat. The heat of her.

  We are in this game for one throw of the dice. You have to play it as best you can, even if you don’t know the rules. No time for regret. I wish I could latch on to that and relax. Forget. Live a little.

  I picked up the post from the mat and leafed through it. One letter was addressed by hand. And I realised straight away that I knew its author.

  7

  I remembered the handwriting, that was the strange thing. Well, another strange thing, given the content of the letter. I thought about it for a while and a face lifted from the internal directory. I saw it as I last had, twenty-five years or so ago. Fresh, attractive, dark brown hair in bunches. Dark brown eyes. We called her Spanish because she holidayed in Marbella every year with her family without fail… What about a name then?