Hell Is Empty Read online

  ‘Not for me,’ I said, but my voice wouldn’t back up the meaning in the words.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she said, and a harsh bark of thunder underlined her opprobrium. ‘When I drink, I never drink alone. And I’m going to have a drink. Gird your fucking loins.’

  ‘I’m off the sauce,’ I said. ‘Things got nasty. I got nasty. The booze got nastier. I’m out.’

  ‘You said it but your eyes haven’t come off this bottle since I whipped it out.’

  ‘So I’m a looker these days. I’m not a drinker.’

  ‘You want a drink. You could murder one. And you deserve it.’

  ‘I just want to go to sleep,’ I said. ‘I’ve been on the go since forever. Vodka’s just going to complicate matters.’

  ‘I won’t make any moves on you, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  It wasn’t. It was the moves the drink was making. The crack of the seal was like the shush of nylons being removed in a girlfriend’s room.

  ‘What happened to you, after you left school? Where did you go? Marbella?’

  ‘Christ, no,’ she said. ‘My dad lost his job and, like a good boy, did what he was told. He got on his bike and looked for another one. We ended up in Walsall. And stop changing the subject.’

  ‘I’m not changing the subject,’ I said. ‘You are the subject.’

  ‘Well if you want to talk about the past, you drink with me. Just one. It’s all I’m having.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘We don’t have any glasses.’

  ‘Where we’re going, we don’t need glasses.’

  I laughed. She laughed. The laughter was all wrong. It spiked and jagged and rebounded in the cold, sour room where meat had been cooked. Where magazines had been read. It was the laughter of lost people.

  She necked the vodka and took a hit of Coke. She handed the bottle to me. I hefted the vodka in my hand. It had weight; the glass was smooth and curved. It fit my hand like the warm thigh of someone giving herself to me gladly, utterly.

  ‘One,’ I said.

  ‘May the devil make a ladder of your backbone,’ she said. ‘And pluck apples in the gardens of hell.’

  I raised the neck to my mouth and let the rim dimple my lips. I caught that clean alcohol vapour at the back of my throat. A shitty day. A shitty job. Fuck it. I tipped the bottle and welcomed her home. I pushed away the Coke when she offered it. ‘One drink,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want an emetic.’

  ‘You’ve a gag for every occasion, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘And all of them slightly less funny than a kiddies’ cancer ward on fire.’

  ‘Like the vodka,’ I said, ‘that’s a bit harsh.’

  ‘So what’s your story?’ she asked. ‘What are you going to do when you grow up?’

  ‘I got married. I had a daughter. My wife died.’

  ‘Oh shit, Joel,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘It’s life, isn’t it? We all hang on this threescore years and ten business but I’ve known people who checked out in their twenties who lived richer lives than those who lasted four times as long.’

  I took the bottle when she offered it again, and eyed it warily. I didn’t recognise the label. I imagined someone whose only involvement with Russia was invading it during a game of Risk peeling potatoes in some shabby homemade distillery in Lewisham.

  ‘“Excelsior vodka”,’ I read. ‘Well, at least they tried.’

  I took another swallow. As always, with cheap booze, the second swig isn’t so bad, mainly because the first has destroyed your nerve endings and taste buds.

  ‘I know a guy who collected rare bottles of single malt whisky,’ I said. ‘He was surrounded by it, thousands of pounds of the stuff. Twenty-litre bottles of smooth ambrosia laying in their own wooden racks. But he never touched any of it. He poured himself a glass of Bell’s or Teacher’s, a blend, so he’d know he’d had a drink.’

  ‘I can’t tell the difference,’ she said. ‘So I buy shit. And anyway, you drink to get drunk. Well, I do. What’s the point of blowing your wad on something full of butterscotch notes, or whatever? It’s all just puke and headaches in the morning.’

  Rough or not, it was giving me a buzz. And I’d missed it. We talked about school for a while; people we remembered – the staff mainly: Mrs Ness, the English teacher, known as Sea Monster. Mr Biggins, the woodwork teacher, known as Bilbo. Mr Fives, the PE teacher, known as Bunchof. We were such an inventive lot.

  ‘I fell in with a bad crowd in Walsall. Weed, whizz, pints of snakebite for breakfast. I’d had three abortions by the age of sixteen, before I had Simon. I thought I’d never have kids. Clock was ticking so loud you could have used me as an egg timer. I wasn’t what you’d call mothering material. Sleeping rough. Crack. There was a guy said he’d put a roof over my head and three square meals in my belly if I went on the game but I had enough about me to not get involved in any of that.’

  ‘Your mum and dad still around?’

  ‘Died when I was in my twenties. Probably relieved to see the back of me. Nobody else to turn to. Shouldn’t really have had Simon but what can you do? You can’t prepare for how you’re going to feel. And I loved him from the moment I found out. Poor little fucker. I’m the worst thing that ever happened to him.’

  ‘Don’t speak like that,’ I said, going through the motions because I kind of agreed with her. ‘You’re doing your best, aren’t you? You’re here at least. Looking for him.’

  She was crying. She was silent. Her face hadn’t changed. It was as if she wasn’t even aware of it, as if it was something she’d done so often it had become second nature, like breathing.

  Within the hour the bottle was done and I was moving through the farm buildings convinced there was a chicken we could cook while Karen sung hymns we’d been taught at school. She had a high, quavering voice that threatened to ascend into dog-only frequencies whenever she was low on breath.

  Every step of the way, I was thinking, while I chased the chicken’s shadow. He was with us every step of the way. Rebecca/Romy would be so disappointed with me now. Tokuzo would stare and nod, hands on hips, and say, ‘UNSUR-FUCKING-PRISING.’ In an upstairs room I found a sofa wrapped in polythene. Brand new. I laughed out loud and collapsed on to it. An epiphany: there was no chicken.

  Wherever you travel I’ll be there, I’ll be there,

  Wherever you travel I’ll be there.

  And the creed and the colour and the name won’t matter,

  I’ll be there.

  Religion, I thought. Not too creepy.

  Every step of the way. And I blacked out.

  * * *

  I woke up and thought: Karen.

  I checked my phone. No signal. Because no juice. It didn’t feel like I’d been out long though. I moved off the sofa – not brand new at all. Not covered in polythene. It was rat-chewed and sodden. I was soaked too and smelling like something scraped out of the bottom of a fishmonger’s hopper. I squelched downstairs. How I hadn’t killed myself was some mystery: gaping holes in the stairs, beams and girders hanging out of the walls, fangs of broken glass. Slow combers of nausea rolled through me. My head felt as though it had been used for the past twelve hours by the drummer in a band called One Hundred Percent Drums.

  ‘Karen?’ I called out. My mouth felt as though it had been filled with glue and fur. She wasn’t in the tent. The vodka bottle pointed at me as if waiting to decide Truth or Dare. Truth: I’m a cunt.

  The car was gone too. I sat on the doorstep and tried to understand what was going on but it was like trying to undo knots in spaghetti.

  I stood up, determined to propel myself into some kind of positive action without knowing what it was I meant to do. I was still pissed. That is in my favour, I thought. So I crammed my fingers into my mouth and tickled the flood button at the back of my throat. A few minutes later, a few pounds lighter, the decor of the farm buildings enriched, I staggered up to the main road, eyes streaming, nose running – but feeling a whole lo
t better – and tried to get a grip on where the hell I was.

  You are in… hang on, let me just check the map… yes, here we are… THE MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOWHERE.

  Thanks for that, Bear Grylls. I need a comfy hotel. And a massage.

  Don’t we all? Just start marching, boyo. If I’d known you were going to be such a thundertwunt with your life I’d have taken you with me.

  That’s nice of you to say. How would you have done it? Suffocated me with your boobs?

  How long would it take for you to die if I was just kicking you constantly up the arse?

  A very long time, I’d imagine.

  That then. Up the arse with my boot.

  I set off with the road we’d travelled in order to get to the farmhouse at my back. The sky was a washed-out colour, like semi-cooked egg whites. It was sulking and miserable after the epic spanking the weather had given it. But it was cold and fresh and I needed that. I felt grimmer than a pan of overcooked cocks, but I’d nipped the vodka in the bud while it was still stewing inside me, which gave me a strangely heroic feeling. This brisk walk would drum some more of it out of me too.

  I lucked into a ride soon; a guy in a lorry who let me sit in the bed. He’d been filling in potholes in Mousehole, or mouseholes in Pothole, and his lorry was empty but for a bucket, some shovels and the faint smell of hot bitumen. He dropped me off in Falmouth and I went straight to a pharmacy where I bought disposable razors, a toothbrush and a box of co-codamol. There was a nice-looking hotel near Gylly Beach and I went in and booked a room, apologising to the receptionist, explaining I’d been the victim of a particularly vicious and unfunny stag prank and that I needed to be in London looking vaguely human by that evening or my wife-to-be would rearrange my internal organs. She put me in a room with a sea view and told me to leave my clothes in the laundry bag outside and they’d be express laundered and pressed within the hour.

  I showered and shaved and knocked back four painkillers after they’d dissolved in a glass of water. Then I ordered a full English and a pot of super-strength coffee. Soon I was back in my clothes – clean, fragrant, almost fully functional – and brimming with spunk, vigour and righteous fury. Someone was going to have a head ripped off today, and it wouldn’t be mine.

  My phone was still out of commission; but I stuck it on charge while I used the phone in my room instead, and started the laborious process of getting through the bland, automated voices at Scotland Yard in order to talk to someone with even less personality.

  ‘Mawker,’ he droned, eventually.

  ‘It’s Joel,’ I said.

  ‘Up and about? At this time of the day? You don’t sound pissed.’

  ‘Fuck off, Ian,’ I said. ‘There’s no need to get clever. I’m off the soup. What’s your big achievement? Opposable thumbs yet?’

  ‘If you listen very carefully you can hear the water slipping from the duck’s back.’

  ‘I didn’t call you for all this phone sex,’ I said. ‘This is important.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you, no matter how much you think it is.’

  ‘What? How do you know about it?’

  ‘It’s all over the fucking news, Joel. And I’m telling you to keep out of it.’

  ‘I’m in it up to my fucking neck, you mumbling cunt,’ I said. ‘I just spent all sodding night driving her around the south-west in a fucking Strepsils tin.’

  ‘Christ, you are pissed,’ he said. ‘I have no idea what you are blathering on about.’

  ‘Karen Leonard,’ I said. ‘Benjie Weston.’

  ‘I don’t know those names. If you’ve been in a threesome then congratulations but you’ll put me off my afternoon snack. I was going to have a cheese scone.’

  ‘Benjie Weston kidnapped Simon. Son of Karen Leonard. I spent last night helping her track them down.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘No. It was a wild goose chase.’

  The line went quiet for a moment and I thought he’d gone. But then he said, ‘I’ll look into it. You should have reported this yesterday.’

  ‘She should have reported it the day before yesterday,’ I said. ‘But she was bricking it over social services. That’s why she came to me.’

  ‘So you haven’t seen the news then?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Fucking Falmouth.’

  ‘Stay there for a bit,’ he said. ‘Go crabbing. Eat a cream tea.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Call me when you get back,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  He put the phone down and I realised I was holding the receiver as if it was keeping me alive.

  11

  I turned on the TV and was presented with a vision of hell. It took a while for the penny to drop but when it did I had to cling to the bed for fear of falling off it. Cold Quay was in flames. Red Row – I felt it was a somewhat theatrical and bad taste nickname given to the high-security division of the prison which harboured the hard nuts and psychos, including Graeme Tann – had been breached; seven convicts had escaped. There were no details yet as to who had broken out. Most of the other inmates had been rounded up and were in the process of being transferred to temporary accommodation, although there were a few stalwarts sitting on the roof, throwing tiles at the police and demanding prison reform.

  I tried calling Mawker again but the fucker had gone out. I thought of calling Cold Quay but all the phones would be shapeless lumps of molten plastic judging by the pictures. I caught myself hoping Tann had been trapped in a cell when the fire reached him but I knew that wasn’t the case. I knew he was one of the seven. I knew he was behind all of this. Luckily for him I had been out of the picture while he fiddled with his box of Swan Vestas. I’d have been up there like a shot as soon as the inmates started kicking over their slop buckets, and he knew it.

  He knew it.

  I switched the TV off and stared out of the window. Sweat was a tickle in the small of my back. I pulled my boots on. My breath was coming in hot, short stabs. Impatience crawled under my skin.

  I checked out, expecting to pay a heavy surcharge but the receptionist – an engagement ring on her finger – let me off and wished me a happy wedding day. I gestured at her rock and said the same thing. Then I ran to the station and caught a train to Paddington. I had to change at Truro. Five and a half fucking hours. I wanted to tear my hair out and my skin off every minute of the journey. I managed to steer clear of the service car and topped up only on painkillers to stem the thud of post-drink fear shaking my core. I splurged on a taxi to take me the half mile back home but once there I resisted the temptation to go charging in. I checked out the entrance and the cars in the street and waited a good quarter of an hour. Nobody went in. Nobody came out. I was cautious going up and quieter than a ninja’s fart when I opened my door. Nothing.

  I fended off Mengele with my leather-jacketed arm while pouring Fishbitz into his empty bowl. ‘Miaow’ can mean I love you. But it can also mean – and it does, usually, where I’m concerned – I’d rip your throat out if my paw was just a little bit bigger, you bipedal shit-gannet.

  I got outside again quick. Late afternoon. I’d been away from London too long, but not long enough for him to have discovered where I lived. I took Mengele around to Keepsies where I dropped him off with Keith. He’s always happy to see Mengele, putting him on mousing duties. Mengele was happy too because Keith rewards him with titbits from his packed lunch.

  I took the opportunity to open the safe in my cubicle – as I usually did whenever I was in a pickle – and agonised over whether to take the gun. I hate guns. People invariably die when they are in the vicinity. That is, after all, their raison d’être: taking life. You can get cute little pistols with pretty pearl grips to fit inside a purse. You can get high-powered rifles described as sports models. This is all camouflage to deflect people from the thought that what they hold in their fists are extreme blood-letting death devices. I neve
r met a person – a right-thinking person – who shot someone with a gun and kept their weapon. If you see what a bullet can do up close and then choose to use it again you are every shade of shit known to man.

  I shot someone once. And it led to death. Not something I’m proud of. I don’t ever want to do it again. But this city. These times. It scares me to think of society falling one day. Eco-catastrophe; class war; a meteorite crashing into the heart of London; North Korea emptying its nuclear load all over the face of the capitalist planet. The people with the immediate advantage will be those with a gun tucked into the waistband of their pants. The criminal minority will hold sway. Who gets the food when food becomes a scarcity? Is it divvied up by a committee or does the guy with the cocked Heckler take it all?

  A bit dramatic. A bit J.G. Ballard. But I think about it a lot. It’s bad enough now. It could easily get a lot worse.

  I took the gun and put it in my jacket pocket. If Tann was out (if… oh, he’s out all right) then I wasn’t taking any chances. It might increase the likelihood of my own body becoming riddled with holes but it did his too, and that sounded like a good trade-off to me.

  I checked Google to see if Karen Leonard’s name was listed but if she was there, she was buried among about a bzillion other Karen Leonards. She hadn’t given me her address and her phone went straight to voicemail. She’d vanished for the second time in my life. I tried Mawker again and he answered around a mouthful of food.

  ‘You noshing off the Superintendent again?’ I said.

  ‘Only if he’s turned himself into a cheese bap,’ he said.

  ‘Karen Leonard. Tell me you’ve put the word around.’

  ‘Her and the other one. Chap with a dog’s name.’

  ‘Benjie,’ I said. ‘Benjie Weston.’

  ‘Yes. A big fat fuck-all for both of them.’

  ‘What about the car? Mini. Old and ruined like your penis. UEK 603S. Same colour as the panda cars you used to frot against when you were a nipper.’