The Hollow Men: A Novel

by Rob McCarthy

  ‘Yup,’ said Lahiri. ‘Initiation. They all had to. He didn’t do that much damage, thank God. Said he didn’t want to hurt the guy, aimed for his arm deliberately. Gave him a nasty scar but nothing else. A couple of the other guy’s mates caught up with him and gave him a bit of a hiding, but he managed to get away with only a broken rib.’

  The hospital visit in 2009, Harry thought. Solomon Idris had been treated in the Ruskin’s A&E for superficial injuries. When he’d read that earlier, Harry had assumed Idris had been the victim, not a perpetrator.

  ‘Idris told you all this?’ Harry said. ‘That he’d stabbed someone?’

  Lahiri nodded. ‘He had to. It was an initiation. That’s how it works with these guys.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But he trusted you enough?’

  ‘He told me everything. I’m his doctor. Everything we talk about is confidential. That’s why the Saviour Project works. Because the kids trust us not go to the police. Anything we’re unsure about, we go to Whitacre and he makes the call.’

  ‘I didn’t realise that.’

  ‘It’s the only way to make them trust us,’ said Lahiri. ‘Without that, kids like Idris wouldn’t come anywhere near us. And if they can’t tell us what they’ve done, and face up to their past, how the hell are we supposed to get them straight in the future? Do you know how many gang members under the age of nineteen have symptoms of PTSD? Forty per cent, Harry.’

  ‘It sounds like a good idea,’ said Harry. ‘But if that’s all confidential, then why did you tell me?’

  ‘Because you’re you,’ said Lahiri. ‘You get it.’

  Harry nodded his understanding. Took another gulp of wine.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lahiri continued, ‘two years ago Idris’s friend’s cousin got killed. Revenge attack after their gang switched allegiance. He ended up in the Ruskin for a week after he got stabbed. I think that scared him, ’cause that’s when he really started to engage with Whitacre and then with me. By the time I started working with him last September, he seemed improved. Out of the gang lifestyle, he had a plan.’

  ‘What kind of plan?’

  ‘He wanted to move out, not just out of the estate, but out of London. I mean, he was studying catering at college, he had this girlfriend, he was looking for jobs. He’d found this flat in Nottingham that he was obsessed with moving into, planned this new life for himself and Keisha.’

  The mention of the name sent the cold of winter rushing through the hole in Harry’s chest.

  ‘Keisha Best, was she your patient too?’

  ‘No. Don’t think she was at our surgery,’ Lahiri said. ‘Why, what do you know about her?’

  ‘Idris’s girlfriend, from the same block as him on the estate. She was HIV-positive, and it looks like she got it from him. She died last November. Climbed down onto the tracks at Peckham Rye and stared a train in the face.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Lahiri. ‘Sol didn’t tell me that. All I knew was that she died.’

  ‘How’d he take it?’

  ‘It devastated him. But he kept face, just said that shit happened, and that was what London did to people. I think it amplified his desire to leave. The first meeting we had after Keisha died, all he did was tell me about Nottingham. Tried to make conversation. But I could tell that it’d ripped him apart. He kept going on about how London was a bad place, how he just needed to get out. He seemed just as scared as he had been the weeks after he’d been attacked.’

  ‘What about the next time you saw him?’ Harry said.

  ‘We didn’t talk much. I only saw him once more after that, the first week of December. He said he was close to moving out, that he was saving up, he told me he’d found a job as a waiter in some restaurant around Westminster.’

  ‘You didn’t believe him?’ said Harry.

  Lahiri leant back, puzzled. Harry was feeling the warmth of the boat’s central heating, or maybe it was the wine. He resisted an urge to tug at his collar.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ said Lahiri.

  ‘You said he told me he’d found a job,’ said Harry. ‘Not that he had. You didn’t believe him.’

  Lahiri shuffled on his seat. Looked out at the sleet hitting the windscreen, stood up and stared across at the boats knocking against one another on black water, wine glass in hand.

  ‘Week or so before Christmas, I was out for lunch. One of the places on the river between London Bridge and the Tate, you know ’em? Greek. Anyway, we were sitting by the door, and he comes in. Sol. I barely recognised him at first, he was in a shirt and trousers, a stack of CVs underneath his arm. But he saw me. I nodded to him, and he just turned around and ran out the door.’

  Harry looked at his friend’s face reflected in the boat’s sliding doors. Blank, as if the memory was baseline, neither a pleasant nor an upsetting one.

  ‘So if he had a job, and he was still at school, why was he putting his CV in at other places?’ Harry said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Lahiri said. ‘I didn’t think much about it. But after that he didn’t return my texts. I was worried about him.’

  Lahiri turned around, finished his glass and put it down, reaching for the bottle to pour another. Harry thought about what it could mean, Idris lying about whether or not he was working. It raised the question of what he was really doing with his time, and if he was still getting money from somewhere, where it had been coming from. Harry looked across at Lahiri, thought he could see moisture in his friend’s eyes, but he said nothing, waited for it to come out.

  ‘He always looked so fucking scared, man. I’d worked with him for months, all my other kids had been making such progress. But he still looked terrified every time I saw him. He reminded me of those Afghan kids we used to see round the camp in Helmand.’

  Lahiri took a long pull of wine, before resting the glass on the table and leaning forward.

  ‘He had this look in his eyes, you know,’ he said.

  Harry closed his own eyes and was back in the Chicken Hut, Solomon Idris’s hand resting on the gun on the table.

  ‘I’m going out on deck,’ Lahiri said.

  Harry rose from the sofa and went out to join him, pulling his coat from the sofa’s arm, sliding his arms through the sleeves. Trying to trap heat within. Lahiri leant over the boat’s edge, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘You should be working with us, Harry, doing this stuff,’ Lahiri said. ‘You’d be perfect, with your background. Much better than a Charterhouse boy like me.’

  Harry inhaled a little of Lahiri’s smoke and it mixed with his own breath as he blew it back out.

  ‘I’d get bored if I was a GP,’ he said.

  ‘Do it part-time, then,’ Lahiri said. ‘Traubert would give you the time; he helped out when Duncan set up the project.’

  ‘Well, I’m busy,’ said Harry. ‘I work with the police now as well. Since about last February.’

  ‘I still can’t get my head around that; you always hated the filth.’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Wanted to try something different.’

  Lahiri smirked. ‘Nothing to do with a young girl with pink hair, then?’

  Harry spun around, resting on the ship’s rim.

  ‘How do you know about her?’

  ‘Everyone knows about her,’ Lahiri said. ‘The whole hospital knows about Dr Kent’s little obsession. It’s admirable, really. You should hear how people talk about you.’

  Harry was silent for a while, gripping the boat’s aft railing with his numb hands.

  ‘How do people talk about me?’

  ‘They wonder what you do when you go home,’ Lahiri said, wrapping his lips around the filter. ‘They picture you sitting in that flat, making phone calls with a collage of newspaper articles on your wall like retired cops have in TV shows. And I don’t think they’re far off, you know.’

  Harry tried to stop his face going red. There was nothing worse, he thought, than being on the wrong side of someone who knew you intimately, knew exactly where to twist the knife
. He tried to think of a response, briefly considered pointing out one of the bones on his skeleton of a social life, then realised how pathetic that would sound. I don’t know what you’re talking about, me and Rafeek went to a comedy night back in October. So he went on the offensive.

  ‘What about you? Why did you stay in London, after Alice left? I thought you’d piss off back to the coast. Let’s face it, redeeming inner-city kids isn’t really you, is it?’

  Lahiri laughed.

  ‘I’ll give you that. It was all for the CV, I’m afraid. And maybe a little for the soul. Maybe I wanted to prove I’m a human being.’

  That fucking smile again, Harry thought. Lahiri flicked his cigarette butt into the black water but made no movement back inside, instead turning and leaning against the railing. Harry was sure that he either knew or suspected far more about Idris than he was letting on. He knew the man well enough to know when he was holding back.

  ‘Who were you out for lunch with?’ said Harry.

  ‘What, when I saw Solomon?’ said Lahiri. ‘Why does that matter?’

  ‘It probably doesn’t,’ said Harry. ‘But you stumbled when you talked about it. Who was it?’

  Lahiri folded his arms, a flake of snow falling from the covering above them and landing in his hair.

  ‘Georgia Henderson.’

  The name was familiar, and he rolled it around in his brain for a while. Maybe a member of staff at the hospital, a mutual colleague. Then it clicked.

  ‘Gavin Henderson’s missus?’

  Henderson had been a corporal with the Royal Anglians, the regiment with which Harry and Lahiri had been embedded on their first deployment. He’d been part of the firefight which had put Harry and Tammas in hospital, and he was one of the few men from the Anglians who’d volunteered to go back out after their tour had ended, just like Lahiri had. As it had turned out, going back had been the worst decision Henderson had ever made.

  ‘She’s a midwife,’ Lahiri went on. ‘Works over at Colchester General. I met her at the funeral.’

  ‘You’re seeing her?’ said Harry.

  Lahiri nodded, his teeth gritted. Harry wondered if he was glad because his friend had moved on, or because it partly assuaged his guilt.

  ‘And don’t you fucking dare judge me,’ Lahiri said. ‘When me and Gav got blown up, you know where you fucking were.’

  Henderson had died fourteen hours after Lahiri had dragged him into a helicopter in a field outside their forward operating base, sixteen hours after stepping on the IED. Harry had been at Lahiri’s house, in his bed, with his wife.

  ‘Well, if you’re happy,’ Harry said weakly. ‘That’s the most important thing.’

  Lahiri strode back through the open doors into the boat’s living compartment and picked up the wine bottle, emptying what was left into his glass.

  ‘I went back to try and do right. Because I wanted to be part of the team that got those bastards back for what they did to you and to the boss. And then I got home,’ he paused, downing the glass in one, ‘to find I’d lost my wife. And my house.’ He looked up and held eye contact with Harry. ‘And my best friend. And you know what? I deserved every single bit of it.’

  ‘James, you can’t—’

  ‘Oh, fuck it, Harry! Me and Alice were nothing! I cheated on her so many times I can’t remember.’

  Harry almost threw up. He remembered when Lahiri had found out about him and Alice. She’d told her husband one evening in September, two days after Lahiri had flown back from Afghanistan. He had flown into a fit of rage, she’d sobbed to Harry over the phone. He’d smashed up their kitchen, thrown a chair through the window, kicked a door off its hinges. Her infidelity had apparently sparked in him a primeval anger Harry hadn’t even seen on the battlefield. Harry’d asked if Alice wanted to come over. She’d said she needed space. Turned out she’d been in the taxi on the way to the airport, and it was the last time Harry had spoken to her.

  And now Harry realised that all of Lahiri’s hate, all of the anger, was directed inwards. Living on a boat, engulfing his sorrows with cigarettes and fine wine, James Lahiri hated himself more than anyone else. Harry thought about his conversation with Tammas the previous night, when he’d lost it. James fucking brave fucking Lahiri. Well, maybe he was only brave enough to hate himself rather than transfer it onto someone else.

  ‘When?’ Harry said.

  Lahiri stared into his wine glass.

  ‘Loads of times. Conferences, mostly. Nights out.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘That night we got back the first time, when we flew you and the boss back to Birmingham. I spent one night up there before I came back down to Alice, pulled some civil servant in a wine bar, and took her to my hotel room, and fucked her in the same shower I’d used to get the shite out of my hair and the blood off my face. You know how it feels, right? Same reason funerals make you want it. When you survive something like that, you just want to shag the living daylights out of anything you see, so you can prove you’re still alive. You can understand that, can’t you?’

  ‘I guess,’ said Harry. He wasn’t sure that he could. The one time he’d survived something like that he’d woken up in the ICU in Birmingham, the other side of the world, a week and a half later. The drugs had made him see a purple sky above him and smell lavender from his bed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Lahiri said, still staring into the glass. ‘Me and Alice, we were a sham. She wanted the status of being a doctor’s wife, and then the pity of being an army wife. Didn’t want to support me, just wanted me around, someone to fall back on. And she knew I resented her for it. She knew that was why I went back to Afghan, just to get away from her. I suppose, in some warped way, I should thank you really. For finally giving me a reason to leave the bitch.’

  Harry wanted to believe every word that his friend said. He stood up and circled the table, coming over to Lahiri’s side. His emotions, as always, were muddied. He hadn’t loved Alice, and when she’d disappeared from their lives, like a tornado dissipating into dust clouds, he hadn’t missed her, either. But he had a deep desire to know what had happened to her, and that gnawed at him.

  ‘Have you heard from her?’ he said.

  ‘Alice?’ said Lahiri. ‘No, but I found her on LinkedIn. Staff nurse at Christchurch Hospital. Couldn’t find any trace of her otherwise. She won’t call either of us. And I’m thankful. The other side of the world is a bloody good place for her to be, as far as I’m concerned.’

  The place behind Harry’s sternum expanded and ached as cold wind from outside passed through it. Lahiri kept talking, the wine glass’s rotations increasing in speed.

  ‘Let’s hope that it’s some poor Kiwi bastard who gets strung along now, eh?’ Lahiri’s head rolled down to his lap and he began to sob. ‘Four years of fucking marriage. And she wasn’t worth a fucking day. Lord, she really wasn’t.’

  Harry pulled Lahiri’s head close into his shoulder and held him. They hadn’t spoken once after it had all happened. Harry had been too much of a coward to call and had spent the week sitting in his old house with a bottle of Jameson’s, waiting for the furious knock on the door.

  ‘You’re a bastard, Harry,’ Lahiri said. ‘I’m just glad she fucked you over as badly as she fucked me.’

  And that’s God’s honest truth, Harry thought. Rain or snow or sleet hit the window and rolled down it behind them, and all he could feel was the cold.

  The westbound tunnel between Bermondsey and London Bridge, the noise and vibration fighting to get into Harry’s head. He stared at the Standard’s pages, and tried to forget the conversation he’d just had. He was far too exhausted to attempt processing it. The last words Lahiri had said to him, as he’d disembarked from the Time and Tide, circled in his head.

  ‘Don’t let this drop, Harry,’ he’d said. ‘Solomon Idris deserves someone like you.’

  Harry felt the train slow as they approached the station, and boun
ced a little in his seat. One of the usual announcements cut through the noise.

  ‘There is no southbound Northern line service from this station. This is due to a person under a train at Moorgate. Customers are advised to continue to Waterloo and change for the alternative branch of the Northern line for stations to Morden.’

  A person under a train, Harry thought. Like so much in life, the tragic had become routine. He looked around him as he rose from his seat and headed for the doors, the tutting, the head-shaking. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ grumbled his neighbour. Perhaps an extra fifteen minutes to their journeys, that was all. Harry had treated people pulled from under trains when they survived, which was more often than one would think. He’d seldom wondered what had motivated them to take that jump, much less so when he was delayed because of such a desperate act.

  Jumping was one thing. Climbing onto the track and waiting for the train to hit you was another. The pathologist’s voice in his head again. She would have had a chance to save herself.

  Harry thought about Keisha Best as he rode the escalator out of the station. Normally he would have taken the tube down to Borough, but there was little point taking a bus half a mile, so he’d walk. This part of London at this time of night, at this time of year, wasn’t bad. It had an edge, Harry thought, watching a train thunder over the bridge against the backdrop of the cathedral, still far enough north to be free from the dirty reality that crept in south of the river.

  Harry wasn’t even sure how he’d managed to find the phone in his pocket, let alone dial Tammas’s number with numb fingers. He was almost home.

  ‘Marigold House.’

  ‘Hi. Room one-oh-nine, please.’

  There was the usual sequence of clicks and whirls as the call was connected. Harry crossed over, passing a couple having an argument outside Borough station.

  ‘Hello?’

  Tammas had a telephone on his bedside table, which responded to voice-activated commands, with a microphone perpetually taped to the side of his mouth. He often joked that the sci-fi stuff was only available to quadriplegics.

  ‘Sorry to call late, boss.’