The Five Gates of Hell (56 page)

Within hours of Harriet's departure, Yvonne called. She asked if she could come and say goodbye to the house. And take some of Dad's paintings to remember him by.

‘As if you need to ask,' he said.

She drove down the next day in her station-wagon. When she opened the car door, clouds of smoke poured out as if she'd been lighting fires of her own. She stood on the driveway with her legs astride and a cheroot stuck in the side of her mouth, her copper hair tied back with a piece of paint-stained silk. They ran to her and wrapped their arms round her. She smelt of the inside of cupboards, long journeys, kindness.

Nathan spoke for both of them. ‘We've missed you.'

Later that day, walking in the garden, she said, ‘It's funny, you've risked your life so many times saving all these people you don't know,
and all along the only person you ever really wanted to save,' and she looked at him, ‘but you know that, don't you?'

He nodded. ‘I know.'

In that moment he also knew that he'd been asking the impossible of himself. He couldn't have saved Dad. He couldn't even save Jed. You lose people sometimes. It was one of the laws of the surf. The captain had told him that. Sometimes the ocean's just too strong, the captain had said. Spring tides, a rip, whatever. There's someone in trouble, you go after them, they're there, they're still there, and he snapped his fingers, then suddenly they're gone. Don't pretend it never happened. They were there, you did your best. You live with that. You carry on.

Nathan looked at Yvonne. Her bent teeth stained by cigars, her hair as crunchy as a horse's mane.

‘You loved him, didn't you?' he said. ‘Harriet was right about that.'

She looked away into the lowest part of the sky. It was a look that was both longing and resigned. It was as if she could see all the things that had never happened to her.

‘Love?' she said. ‘I don't know. There was just a feeling I got sometimes, when I looked at his hands.'

He took her arm and they crossed the bright grass without another word. They walked up the stone steps and back into the house. It's one of the hardest things, he thought, when life is miserly to those you care for.

On her last night they barbecued some chicken by the pool. It was so still; they lit candles and ate their dinner under the stars. Yvonne had brought some wine down from the Cape. It was that pale white wine that looks almost green in the glass. They drank to the future of the house without them. They drank to Dad and to themselves. They drank to so many things that Yvonne had to open a third bottle.

‘So tell me,' she said finally, ‘what are your plans?'

Nathan and Georgia looked at each other. They'd hardly discussed it. It had been enough to move from one day to the next, to feel the days forge links and pick up speed.

‘Summer's on the way,' she said. ‘Maybe you should come and stay at my house for a while.'

He didn't have to look at Georgia this time to know the answer. They watched Yvonne drive away the next day, the back of her station-wagon stacked with paintings, Dad's red chair strapped to the roof, and knew that they would see her soon.

He leaned back, stretched. It was almost morning. The wind blew
some pale blossoms against his thigh. He'd been through hard water all his life, but there was no water harder than the water of the last few weeks. He'd come through, though, he'd been strong enough, and he could build on that. He could learn from Dad too. Not the carefulness, the wariness; not the silence. But the sheer determination, that iron grip on life. Death had brushed past, snatched half each lung and a handful of ribs. But Dad had clung on. What had that nurse at the hospital said? ‘Your father's been living on borrowed time.' Crap. Dad didn't borrow it. He took it. He laid his hands on it and said this is mine. That's what you do with time. The thought of Dad as some kind of thief brought him to his feet with a smile. He walked towards the house, the lawn warm under his heels, still warm from the day.

The next morning he left the house at around eleven. He was halfway down the hill when he met Mrs Fernandez, the lady who used to clean for Dad sometimes. She put a hand on his wrist. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your father,' she said. He thanked her. There was sweat on her top lip, he noticed. It was a hot day, but not the thick, wet heat of summer. Not yet. He said goodbye to her and walked on down the street towards the newsagent's. A breeze picked up. The dry branches of the palm trees clicked and scraped. It was a Tuesday.

He only bought one newspaper that morning. As he left the store he tore the front page out of the paper and dropped the rest in a trash bin. He walked back to the house without lifting his eyes from the front page once. And by the time he did he was home again, sitting at the kitchen table, and he put the page down and moved his head slowly from side to side, all the blood drawn out of his face. Then he picked the page up again and read it through once more:

DEATH KING BRUTALLY MURDERED

Escaped mental patient found in victim's apartment

Mr Neville Creed, chairman of the prestigious Paradise Corporation, was found dead in his apartment in the Palace Hotel last night.

In what is already being called the ‘John the Baptist' murder, Mr Creed, 43, was stabbed fourteen times and then decapitated.

Police have arrested Mr Vasco Gorelli, who was found in Mr Creed's apartment. Mr Gorelli escaped
from the Westwood Hill Clinic last Friday where he was held in a ward for the dangerously insane. He was still unavailable for comment yesterday.

Mental

The ferocity and bizarre nature of the killing have drawn comment, even from police working on the case.

‘It's a horrific crime,' said Det. Sergeant John Lopez of Moon Beach Homicide. ‘I understand the suspect has a history of mental illness and maybe that explains it.'

The body was found by Mr Al Cone, a night porter at the Palace Hotel, when he received complaints of a disturbance on the fourteenth floor and went up to investigate.

A visibly shaken Mr Cone told reporters how he had found Mr Gorelli sitting in an armchair covered in blood while the headless body of Mr Creed lay beside him on the floor. Gorelli had smashed the television screen and put his victim's head inside.

Mr Cone went on, ‘He was watching it, like it still worked. You know what he said to me when I came in? “Ssshh,” he said, “it's the news.'”

Charmed

Neville Creed was one of the city's most distinguished funeral directors, with a record few could match. Marble Grove, his uncle's funeral business, was on the brink of receivership when Creed took it over, at the age of 22.

Seven years later he merged with the Paradise Corporation, who bought Creed's company for an estimated $30m. Creed was made a member of the board.

‘It was a meteoric rise,' said an old partner of Creed's. ‘Some people truly seem to lead charmed lives.'

Private

Like many rich people, Creed was intensely private. He didn't mix in Moon Beach society and he had few friends. He lived a life shrouded in mystery in his penthouse apartment on the top floor of the exclusive Palace Hotel.

The circumstances of his death are no less mysterious. Police are still trying to establish a motive for this seemingly senseless killing, but, so far, they have come up against nothing but dead ends.

Nathan folded up the front page and looked round for the waste bin. His eyes moved through the empty room, found nothing. They must've already thrown it away. He looked out of the window. A thin column of black smoke rose above the hedge. Georgia must have built another fire early that morning. One last fire. The neighbours would be complaining again.

He left the house and walked to the end of the garden. He stood looking down into the fire. He could identify various objects. An empty box of cheroots, the video of Harriet. Several dozen bottles of stale pills. Smiling, he dropped the newspaper article into the core of the blaze. He stood over it, watched it begin to turn yellow, then brown, watched it begin to burn. Then stepped back, startled, as it rose out of the flames, rose past his face, and flapped away through the clear blue air, its wings black at the edges, its body still on fire.

During the past three years several people provided me with places where I could live and work. I'd like to thank Jean Bedford and the girls, Prue Hawke, George Papaellinas and Cathy Murphy, Polly Whyte, and Martha Crewe. I'd also like to thank Rod Parker, and this book is, in some sense, dedicated to his memory.

Lastly I'd like to thank Imogen for all the support and encouragement she's given me since the beginning, and for the use of her bath when mine was unexpectedly destroyed.

RUPERT THOMSON
is the author of eight highly acclaimed novels, of which
Air and Fire
and
The Insult
were shortlisted for the Writer's Guild Fiction Prize and the
Guardian
Fiction Prize respectively. His most recent novel,
Death of a Murderer
, was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Novel Award. His memoir
This Party's Got to Stop
was published in 2010.

Fiction

Dreams of Leaving
Air and Fire
The Insult
The Book of Revelation
Divided Kingdom
Death of a Murderer

 

Non-fiction

This Party's Got to Stop

First published 1991

Copyright © 1991 by Rupert Thomson

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable

to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

The moral right of the author has been asserted

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

eISBN 978 1 4088 3317 9

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