A Smaller Hell (12 page)

The only sound was the heavy breathing of the uniformed colossus and the hum and clank of the lift mechanism.  I felt an urge to tell the security guard everything: the Captain's Rest and the violent sex games, the disappearance of Emma's lover, the blackmail of Robinson, the cocaine parties, Rachel's father, Tanner’s murder and about her cruelty to Sean, the tailor.  Maybe he would join us in our plight to topple Doyle?

I tightened my grip on Rachel's hand as the lift pinged and the doors opened.  The security guard gestured to allow her to step out on to the floor where there were already fifty women giggling and fluttering around each other in anticipation of the party.  I let go of Rachel and she wandered into the middle of the crowd, greeting one or two of her friends along the way.  The security guard's breathing remained steady and constant as he pushed the button for Menswear.  He couldn't even afford me a glance in his sweaty, bitter contempt. 

‘Ms. Doyle asked me to tell you that all the exits are locked,’ he croaked, eyes still fixed on the brushed steel doors.

The lift pinged after what seemed like an hour-long journey downwards and the doors opened.  The male members of staff doddered around the men’s department, like murmuring moths.  Amongst them was Luke, who was more like a butterfly.  As had become customary, I went to shake his hand and he ignored the gesture, giving me a hug.

‘Alright, lad.  What's going on here, then?’ 

‘Well, if you don't know, I shouldn't imagine anyone else does,’ I said, smiling at him.

‘Are you saying I'm a gossip?’

‘Yes.’

Outside, there was darkness and only the sound of the snow falling.  The streetlamps blazed needlessly, for the roads and the pavements were deserted.  The last chance for late shopping had long since passed and it now felt as if we were the only living creatures in the town, save for the seagulls and the people who had no home to go to for Christmas. 

The Men’s Department speaker system crackled
.  Gentlemen, in return for all your hard work, there will be an extra Christmas bonus this year.  I am well aware that you were counting on returning home to get ready for your Christmas party tonight.  Instead, I would like to offer you all the chance to choose your own outfit for the evening.  Choose anything you like.  There is no spend limit.  The girls have already been offered the same and are pillaging as we speak.  The changing rooms and the showers will be available for you to use to get ready.  We will be making our way from the store in an hour in a convoy of limousines, each with a fully stocked, open bar.

Luke turned to me, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.  This was clearly a dream come true for him. 

Go and make yourselves beautiful.

He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me through the crowd of uncertain moths towards the Armani section of Menswear.

As Luke rifled through the suits, I looked for a chance to slip away. 

‘Luke, would you do me a favour?’  

I tapped him on the shoulder while he searched through the racks of clothing.
 
‘Luke … ’

‘Yeah?’ he said, his head still buried under a pile of very fine cotton.

‘I need you to cover for me if anyone asks.  I've got to go.’

‘Well, what do you want me to say?’

‘Just say that I'm not well or something.’

‘That's the worst excuse ever.  I'll think of something better.’

‘Whatever.  I'm off.’

‘Where are you going?  Don't you want your suit?  Don't you want your bling?’

‘You enjoy yourself, pal.  Fill your boots.’

Amidst the chaos, I made for the concealed room that Miss Allister showed me and texted Luke, asking him to create some kind of diversion for me.  He texted back immediately:
Drama level 1, 2 or 3? 
I texted back
2
and waited for Luke to do his thing.  I could see him and his group through a gap between a moleskin jacket and a cream linen suit.  Luke started his act by appearing unsteady on his feet, to which his colleagues responded by asking him if he was alright.  Luke nodded and attempted to walk away, clattering deliberately into the biggest, and most intricate display for maximum effect.  The excitable murmuring ceased abruptly in the room and all heads turned to the location of Luke's performance.  Bodies started pushing through the suit jungle to see what was going on.  In no time, there was a dense circle of bodies around Luke, all rubbernecking to catch a glimpse of the drama.  I took my opportunity and dashed across the opening to the door, entering the code quickly.  The door clicked and I entered, closing it behind me.  The corridor seemed longer and darker than I remembered, so I moved as quickly as possible to the square of dim light marking the door to Lay Away.  Upon entering the room, it seemed that the only light source was a small ornamental Christmas tree pulsing in the darkness.

Heaving the shelves out of the way brought on a sweat, despite being able to see my breath in the cold air of the room.  I rifled through all the items in Lay Away, first looking for something heavy with which to smash the lock from the wooden panel, then something that might grip it so that I could wrench it from its fastenings.  Giving up on this, I looked for anything which might cut it or saw through it.  There were one or two tools, but nothing heavy-duty enough.  Most of the Lay Away stuff was already wrapped up and lying under various trees all over town.

As the tree pulsed slowly to its maximum brightness, it illuminated a corner of the room I had not searched.  There, on its own, stood a black umbrella.  Upon closer inspection, the ornate ivory handle gave it away as Miss Allister's.  It seemed unusual that she would leave it here when it was still snowing so heavily outside.  I unscrewed the handle and retrieved the key for the padlock.  After I had passed through the opening, I did my best to pull the shelves back to the wall, but found it difficult to gain a decent footing to do so from the secret room.  I grabbed the umbrella, put the key back in the handle and screwed it back on, before using the hooked handle to pull the bookcase back again.  My tracks were now satisfactorily covered, so I stood up, brushed myself down and leant on the black brolly while I surveyed what was to be my hideout until the party was in full swing.

I let an hour pass to be sure that the building would be vacated, eventually using my legs to push out the bookcase again.  When I emerged into the darkness of Lay Away, there was absolute silence.   I stood up, noticing a sheet of paper had been slid under the door.  On one side was a mobile phone number and on the other:

Dear intruder,

Three options are available to you:

1.  Exit this room and set off the alarm system, which is directly linked to police headquarters.

2.  Wait in this room until 8 a.m. 27th December, running the risk of expiring from dehydration.

3.  Call me to discuss the terms of your release.

Yours sincerely,

D. Doyle

As I tried to wrench open the door leading back into the store, it became obvious that I had also been locked in.  

I pulled back the bookcase and crawled back inside the old Lay Away.  Feeling unwell, I struggled on to the Persian rug covering the centre of the room and lay flat on my back.  Unable to get comfortable, I removed the rug to examine the source of my discomfort: a bulky, ancient padlock holding shut a trap door.  I yanked on the door to see if it was ancient enough to have degraded to the point of being breakable.  No such luck. 

I sat atop the hatch for a few minutes before I had an idea.  Having retrieved Miss Allister's brolly from across the room, I tipped the key out into my hand from the handle.  It fit into the padlock, clunking the mechanism open as I turned it.  Lifting back the door, there was a warm gust of air and a certain smell: that of the ale in the Captain’s Rest.  There was another scent there too: more like the demon cellar, from which Rachel and I had been chased: the smell of decay.

The hole in the floor was of a decent size, and upon lowering myself into it, I found the rough rungs of an old wooden ladder.  Beneath me, I could hear the wind rushing through the tunnels, and yet I felt no significant breeze.  I was in complete darkness and the further I travelled downwards, the warmer the air became.  Eventually, my feet clanked against a grate, but I had no room to attempt to unhook or unlock it, so I kicked it through and it fell to the ground with a crash.  It seemed to take a while to fall, so I screwed Doyle’s note up into a ball and held my lighter to the corner of it, allowing it to catch before dropping it through the gap left by the forced grate.  It fell to the ground about fifteen feet below: far enough to break a leg.

The fall winded me, but I got myself back to my feet, listening to the lonely drip echo in the cavernous room.  Using my lighter, I scouted around for anything that might prove useful as I pushed forward into the unknown.  There was an ancient box of crumbling tools, several plates, clay flagons and pipes, like the Captain’s.  A bundle of rags in the corner of the room wiped in the sludge inside some old oil cans and coupled with a pick axe handle made an adequate torch.  I held it aloft as I searched for an exit of some kind, brushing my hands over the cold sandstone blocks of the walls.  It was bigger than I had first thought and there was a sturdy oak table running down each side of the room.  I held my torch up as high as I could, surprised to find only the smallest patch of damp in the seam where the ceiling met the wall.  Having wrapped some more rags around the flame, I began my journey to the ends of the tables.  There were massive wooden benches underneath, which led me to believe that this must have been some sort of dining hall for the workers.  Looking at the tables more closely, I found some ancient graffiti.  Most involved very basic sums, presumably concerning wagers between the workers.  Some names were scratched into the wood, and there were even some concise declarations of love.  I ran my fingers over
Fred + Margaret 1852
, and the heart encircling it. 

If it hadn’t been for the torch, I would have crashed into the trellis gate.  The iron was as black as the tunnel that lay beyond it. Wrapping my hands around the bars, I found them to be even colder than the icy wind blowing through them and had to peel my fingers off them. 

The half-moon shape of the trellis extended into the sandstone to prevent it being easily removed.  It stood about eight feet high and six feet wide and, judging by the thickness of the bars, would have weighed the best part of a tonne.  I imagined Commander Tanner's men defending from within the darkness with flintlock pistols and muskets against the invaders; the frustrated foreign curses echoing through the tunnels as their dead piled up, and the cheers of the English as they successfully defended their hideout.

Inspecting the small doorway in the trellis, I found it to be secured with an ancient chain, the heft of which I had never seen before.  The links were an inch thick, and as black and cold as the rest of the gate.  I found Miss Allister's key and tried it in the lock.  It came undone with an unexpected smoothness, given the serious, antique nature of these security measures.  Pushing open the tiny door with a creak that echoed deep into the tunnels, I managed to squeeze myself through, suddenly grateful for the time I had spent living in the abandoned house, eating little more than Twiglets. 

As I wandered further into the tunnel, I heard water and saw that in the walls every fifteen feet or so, there were nooks big enough for a man to take cover.  Every nook made me nervous enough to illuminate it first with the torch before passing by it, but all I found were a few flagons with rotted corks lying next to them. 

I walked for ten minutes, experiencing no change in the nature of my surroundings and seeing no sign of any exit.  There was no other path to follow, so despite my burgeoning claustrophobia, I pressed onwards, my footsteps echoing long into the darkness both behind me and ahead.  When my torch finally went out, I threw the charred stump to the ground.

I must have covered a good kilometre in darkness before the lantern appeared.  My breath was clouding in front of me, obscuring my view, so I closed my mouth for a few seconds as I approached. I caught sight of a crumpled black blazer on the floor and soon after, sparks of light and the taste of blood.  The blow had been hard enough to buckle my knees, but I managed to get myself back on my feet before any more punches landed.  My assailant had retreated a good ten feet, towering in front of the lantern as he rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and tightened his braces.  His voice was thick and deep, removing any doubt as to who he might be:

‘Come with me.’

‘Where’s Rachel?’ I asked.

‘Down here,’ Graziano said, looking further down the tunnel. 

As he turned his head, I stepped forward with the heaviest overhand right I could.  It landed squarely on the side of Graziano’s jaw, and although he staggered, I might as well have been punching a breezeblock.  He didn’t fall over and start having a seizure, as Chapman had done.  His speed in countering was shocking, and I was suddenly in the middle of a storm of bloodstained white cotton and dangerous giant fists clobbering my arms which were only just protecting my face.  There was little opportunity to use my feet to move out of his way because of the dimensions of the tunnel, so I fought dirty, reaching down for a handful of the sandy grit beneath my shoes.  I could hear Graziano’s heavy breathing, giving me a clear idea of his position until he suddenly fell silent.  I listened intently, holding my own breath so that I might hear the slightest movement.  I heard the faintest intake of breath from the nearest nook, so I threw the grit where I guessed his eyes would be and aimed a right hook into his trunk, hoping that his arms would be raised up as he rubbed his eyes.  It was like thumping a dense bale of hay, but I heard his breath escape in a rush.  I continued my assault with both fists until I could feel the blood and spit on my knuckles.  He forced out another breath and collapsed sideways on to the floor of the tunnel.  My right hand was on fire, probably broken.  I picked up a large stone which had fallen from the wall of the tunnel and crept towards Graziano’s shuddering body.

‘Get up.’ 

Graziano did not respond.  He simply continued to shake gently whilst lying on the ground.  A noise began to emanate from the mound of expensive cotton, silk and leather lying before me.

Well aware that this could be some kind of tactic, I approached with the broken stone held above my head.  I grabbed hold of his blood-spattered shirt and rolled him over with my other hand.  What I saw made me drop the stone on to my foot and recoil not in pain, but in horror at what I had done.  Graziano sobbed and held his shaking hand to the wound above his eye, as a child might clutch a grazed knee.  Blood flowed quite freely from the wound.  I manoeuvred his vast, limp frame against the wall of the tunnel, his face screwed up with pain and his lip trembling.  I panicked that I might not be able to undo what I had done and quickly kneeled down to staunch the flow of blood. As I wiped the blood from his face and drew the lantern nearer, it became obvious that he had suffered some much more devastating injury in the past. 

‘Thank you,’ he mumbled, looking down at his shaking hands.

I cleaned the last few bits of grit and blood from his face and loosened his tie, which he had kept tied tight throughout the battle.  His neck relaxed and he let out a sigh of relief.

‘Ms. Doyle will be angry if I take it off,’ he murmured, pressing his hand to the loosened knot.

I removed the tie completely and turned it into a compress for his wound.  He held it there while he looked at me with a confused expression, before leaning forwards and resting his heavy head upon my shoulder.  I thought of Graziano’s admission to me, blurted out in Doyle’s office the first time I laid eyes on him:

I … killed a man.