The Five Gates of Hell by Rupert Thomson

for a necklace or a watch, something they could pawn at Mr Franklin’s establishment on Central Avenue. Just for a moment, as he prodded and jabbed at one particular rock with his sharp stick, Vasco looked younger, looked the age he actually was, an age that Tip and Scraper were never allowed to see. The three tombstones on his left shoulder, that was how old people thought he was. Jed looked into the tattoos as if they were windows and suddenly, standing in the stench of the river, he had the feeling that he could see into Vasco, see what was coming.
    Then Vasco straightened up. ‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘How did you get the idea?’
    Jed shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It just came to me.’
    â€˜You’re dangerous,’ Vasco said. ‘You need watching.’
    â€˜Lucky I’m on your side then, isn’t it?’
    Vasco scooped up a handful of river-mud and flung it in Jed’s direction. Jed ducked and, grinning, showed Vasco his crimson devil’s mouth. But the grin faded as his thoughts turned to his mother, the last four years, their uneasy truce. She was still bringing men home with her, but defiantly now, as if she wanted him to witness it and disapprove. To Jed, these men of hers were all one man, their boots shifting on the carpet, their bodies too big for the rooms; they reminded him, curiously enough, of his brother, Tommy. He stared at them and ignored them, both at the same time. He’d become an expert at the look. Ten years later it would serve him well.
    â€˜It’s not easy living there.’ He took Vasco’s stick and jabbed at a rock.
    Vasco looked at him sideways. ‘Why don’t you move out?’
    â€˜Where to?’
    â€˜Plenty of room at my place.’
    It was winter and the air was sharp. Everything you looked at seemed cut out with scissors. The light fell in blue-and-yellow twists on the surface of the river. Jed could see Sweetwater on the far bank, a plane scorching the air as it lifted over the rooftops. He could almost feel the house shake. He could almost smell the nail polish.
    He looked at Vasco. ‘What about your parents?’
    â€˜I haven’t got any.’
    â€˜You must live with someone.’
    â€˜My sister, but she’s hardly ever there. Otherwise there’s only Mario and Reg. But they’re both senile.’
    â€˜Senile? What’s that?’
    â€˜Means when you’re nearly dead. You’re still alive, but only just –’
    Jed stopped listening. He was thinking of the men who were all one man doing one thing. He was remembering his mother’s face in her dressing-table mirror. He was imagining her toss his radios casually into oblivion. And he knew then that Vasco was right. But still something reached across the river, something stretched out like arms and tried to claw him back. He didn’t know what it was. He took a step backwards, slipped on the mud and almost fell.
    â€˜Course there won’t be anyone for you to record fucking. My sister does all her fucking at her boyfriend’s. And Mario and Reg, they’veprobably never fucked in their lives.’ Vasco spread his hands. ‘So what do you say?’
    Jed nodded, grinned. ‘Does it need saying?’
    Vasco bought a bottle of vodka to celebrate and they drank it in the old sailors’ graveyard in Mangrove South. This was where the funeral business had first put down its roots. Over the wall, between two warehouses, Jed could just make out the Witch’s Fingers, four long talons of sand that lay in the mouth of the river. Rumour had it that, on stormy nights a century ago, they used to reach out, gouge holes in passing ships, and drag them down. Hundreds of wrecks lay buried in that glistening silt. The city’s black heart had beaten strongly even then. There was one funeral director, supposedly, who used to put lamps out on the Fingers and lure ships to their doom. Times had