The Five Gates of Hell by Rupert Thomson Read Free Book Online Page A

could you do a thing like that?’
    Easy.
    â€˜You threw my radios away.’
    The embalmer began to snore.
    Lunging at the tape recorder, she snatched up the spool and tore the tape to shreds. When she tired of that she threw it down and stamped on the top of the tape recorder. Then she bent down and picked the tape recorder up and hurled it against the wall. It dropped to the carpet and the casing came away, fractured in two places. There was a dent in the wall where it had hit.
    Jed watched all this impassively, as if he could change channels any time he pleased. He didn’t care what she did. The tape recorder had already served its purpose, and he had wrapped his spare copy of the tape in industrial plastic, then he’d locked it inside an old metal toolbox, and he’d buried the toolbox halfway up the garden on the right, next to the fence. There was nothing she could do to hurt him. He felt one side of his mouth grinning where she had cut him. He watched her turn to him and scrape the hair back out of her eyes.
    â€˜You won’t do that again,’ she said.
    He said, ‘I don’t need to.’
    â€˜What d’you mean?’
    â€˜I’ve got a copy of that tape,’ he said, ‘and if you ever touch any of my stuff again, I’ll send it to Pop.’ He paused; it didn’t sound enough. ‘And the neighbours,’ he said. ‘And that shop where you work.’
    Her eyes were blank now, and her cheeks hung, slack and looped, from the bones of her face. She turned and walked out of the room. He heard her bedroom door click quietly shut.
    His first taste of revenge. Sweet.

The Womb Boys
    A light rain was falling on the city, so light it sounded like rats. Jed turned into the alleyway that ran behind the school and stopped to wipe the flecks off his spectacles. Looking up again, through clear glass now, he saw four figures arranged in front of him. Their stillness had an urgency to it and he knew right away that it was him they’d been waiting for.
    Three of them perched high on dark-green garbage dumpsters. He knew their names: José PS Mendoza, Scraper O’Malley and Tip Stubbs. The fourth leaned his shoulderblades against the wall, hands folded on his chest. He wore a black leather coat and a moustache. It was Vasco Gorelli. Known as Gorilla, though never to his face. He’d had the moustache since he was ten.
    Near silence.
    Only the light rain scurrying across the rooftops, and the tss-tss-tss of PS Mendoza’s headphones.
    It was strange. Normally you couldn’t talk to Vasco, you couldn’t even get close to him. You had to wait for a summons or an audience. He was like a sort of pope. He had lieutenants – O’Malley, Stubbs, Mendoza – then he had a whole string of runners: Thomas Baby Vail, Slim Jimmy Chung, Cramps Crenshaw and Tip’s younger brother, a deaf-mute known as Silence. When you saw Vasco walk down the street you saw the petals of a flower and suddenly a flower seemed strong, a flower seemed dangerous. A small gang, but tight. A flower that closed up for the night. A furled umbrella. And when the rain came, which it did sometimes, one snap, a flick, and the gang sprang open, kept him dry. That was how it worked.
    So why the sudden interest?
    Jed was used to isolation. His face was like some kind of cul-de-sac. It said NO THROUGH ROAD to most people. Confronted with him, they always turned round, backed away. He wasn’t wounded exactly. No, not wounded; not any more. It had planted the seeds of scorn inhim. It had bred a curious arrogance. You don’t know what you’re missing, he would think. If only you knew.
    And now this.
    Maybe the boys were bored that day. Just lookng for some poor bastard to pick on. And he came along with his pitted skin and his glasses and his knees put on the wrong way round and they thought: This one’ll do. Scraper and Tip eyed him from above with a strange, dislocated