The Hollow Men: A Novel

by Rob McCarthy

Harry ran on. Turn left, second jetty on the right. Berth twenty-nine. It was high tide, and a sixty-foot Fairline with a Norwegian flag was manoeuvring out towards the river, the sound enough to disguise his footsteps as he approached the boat.

  The Time and Tide pitched and rolled in front of him, the lights in the cabin dim. Harry grabbed hold of one of the mooring lines and swung himself forward, trying to land on the mooring rig and not the deck so as not to rock the boat and give away his presence. As he landed, the yacht blasted its foghorn. The fear inside Harry broke through its containment, and he swore under his breath. Inside, Lahiri had a TV programme on, loud; Harry could hear some muttered debate, the odd burst of canned laughter. He advanced along the port side of the boat, heading for the aft deck, where he’d stood and watched his friend smoke just the other night.

  What had Lahiri done after he’d gone? Ordered his friend, his colleague, to attack Harry? Texted him his address, and opened another bottle of sauvignon blanc?

  He reached the deck and tried to arch his head to look through the French doors. Lahiri was on the sofa, a steak dinner on his lap, a glass of wine on the table next to him. Red this time.

  Harry vaulted around the corner and kicked the glass.

  Not hard enough to break it, but the vibration reverberated through the entire boat, and Lahiri jumped up, the plate smashing to the floor, his mouth open in shock. Harry grabbed the door and pulled it open, the glass shaking as he slid it away. As he stepped into the light Lahiri charged forward, fists up and ready. He stopped about two feet shy, the look on his face a mixture of bewilderment and recognition.

  ‘Harry, what the hell?’

  Harry threw his punch, which was a good one. His first two knuckles hit the angle of Lahiri’s jaw just as he was coming forward, so he was off balance, his weight forward, and the momentum sent him down. Onto the floor, his hands coming up to his face. Then he was back on his feet and charging at Harry, but Harry was expecting it and went with the tackle, running backwards and gripping Lahiri’s shirt with tight fists, rolling him out of the door and onto the deck. He brought a leg up to lever Lahiri’s weight to one side, swinging him around until his back hit the rail at the boat’s stern.

  He had him. He pushed him back over the rail until his feet started coming off the ground, and his head was arched over. Cold bullets of rain pounded down on his head and shoulders.

  ‘Why the fuck did you do it, James?’

  Harry punched him again.

  ‘Tell me what’s going on, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Harry, listen, please, just—’

  Harry twisted his leg and flipped Lahiri so that he was face down, the rail digging into his friend’s abdomen, both their faces staring down into the black water. The rain was coming quicker now, individual plops landing in the water in front of them. Harry had one hand on Lahiri’s shoulder, pushing him down, the other digging into the back of his neck.

  ‘First-year anatomy,’ Harry said. ‘You remember the atlas, this thin piece of bone around your brainstem? All I have to do is squeeze, mate, and if you’re lucky, you die. If you’re not, you end up as a vegetable and your only glory in this world is as a case study for ethics lectures. Now I want the truth, alright?’

  Harry pulled Lahiri up by the collar and threw him against the half-open French doors, fracturing the glass into a kaleidoscope of cracks. Lahiri sat up against the window, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. He was down. Harry stood on the deck, leaning back against the rail, let the rain come down on him, and waited.

  ‘We gave him the money,’ Lahiri sobbed. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Ten thousand. At Christmas.’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty a week, as well?’ said Harry.

  Lahiri shook his head.

  ‘What was the money for?’ Harry spat. ‘To keep him quiet about the drugs?’

  Lahiri looked up at Harry, the only committed movement he’d made so far. The rain was pounding onto the deck now, so they had to raise their voices, but Harry didn’t feel the cold. He could feel the sweat under his arms, on his face. Lahiri’s face was sallow, defeated, with the expression of horror you get when you realise someone else knows something they were never meant to. An expression of abject failure.

  ‘Shit,’ Lahiri whispered.

  ‘The police are on their way,’ Harry said. ‘They’re coming for you, and believe me they are gonna rip you apart when they get here. I mean, you’ll get a great lawyer, I’m sure, but they will nail you to the fucking wall. So talk.’

  ‘Police?’ Lahiri squealed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they audited your log-in at the Ruskin, that’s why. They know what you did. They know you deleted that allergy.’

  ‘What?’

  Lahiri tried to stand up.

  ‘Look, Harry, that’s a mistake!’ he pleaded. ‘I never deleted any—’

  Harry charged forward, swung Lahiri around so that he bounced back off the rail and fell onto the deck. Through the rain, he saw two joggers in high-visibility jackets stretching on the other side of the marina, unaware of the men fighting a few metres away from them.

  ‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘The police know. Your log-in made the change. How the fuck could you, mate? What was it, you too much of a pussy to go and actually kill him?’

  Lahiri shrugged. ‘Well, the police are wrong, then. I’m being set up.’

  ‘I’ve got no idea if I believe you, James. You know that, right?’

  ‘Come on, you stupid prick! I know you’re nowhere close to the friend I thought you were, but do you really think I’d try to kill someone?’

  ‘You’ve killed people before!’ Harry spat. ‘And I’m sure that pressing a few keys on a computer’s a lot fucking easier than slotting some Taliban bastard.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Harry!’ Lahiri shouted, tears in his eyes again. ‘I didn’t try to kill Solomon, OK? Christ!’

  Harry rested back against the railing of the boat. Lahiri slid down the cracked door, running a hand through his drenched hair.

  A faint siren in the distance. Noble and the cavalry, the entire Metropolitan Police Service, so it seemed, descending on one boat. The studious watchman at the front gate had no idea what was about to hit him.

  ‘You called me here,’ Harry said. The rain rattled against the boat and Lahiri scrabbled to his feet. ‘Now tell me why. I reckon you’ve got two minutes.’

  Lahiri nodded, pulled a wet cigarette out from his shirt pocket and tried vainly to light it.

  ‘There was a bit of a scandal at the Saviour Project,’ he said. ‘We prescribed small amounts of recreational drugs to patients who used regularly, while they were trying to cut down. Only weed. It was to stop them having to buy from dealers, who were usually people from their old gangs. Obviously we kept it quiet, but somebody threatened to tell the press.’

  ‘Idris?’

  Lahiri nodded. GPs prescribing cannabis to teenagers, Harry thought. The whole of the Saviour Project’s model was alternative by its nature, but that was more left-field than anything he’d encountered before. The kind of thing an editor at the Daily Mail would have a wet dream over.

  ‘Is that what you didn’t tell me yesterday?’ Harry said. ‘That you paid Idris off to keep him quiet?’

  ‘No,’ Lahiri said. ‘He needed the money so he could move to Nottingham and start a new life. That’s what he told me. I said no, and then he pulled out his threat. Fucking clever for a seventeen-year-old kid, but there you go. I went straight to Whitacre, and he said he’d sort it. Next thing I know Idris had a job and an income, and I didn’t ask any more questions.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?’

  Rain harder still. Cold and unrelenting. Lahiri finally managed to light his cigarette.

  ‘You fucked my wife, Harry. You’ll forgive me for not opening up. A detective rang up the practice this afternoon, asked
if he could make an appointment. So it looks like it’s all going to come out now, and I’d rather have you on my side.’

  We’ll see about that, Harry thought. That might have been possible initially, but after finding out about the log-in, all bets were off.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the police before?’

  ‘They haven’t interviewed me,’ Lahiri said.

  Harry stared at his friend, smoking in his Barbour jacket, and wondered when everything had changed. At what moment he’d stopped implicitly believing everything that came out of Lahiri’s mouth. Even before Noble had called, he’d been suspicious. The sirens grew louder, and Lahiri stood up and came up to him at the railing, pressing his face into Harry’s.

  ‘I didn’t delete that allergy,’ he said. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure if I do.’

  Internally, Harry was taking every single one of Lahiri’s sentences apart, searching it for contradictions, assessing whether the passion in his denial was legitimate.

  ‘There’s more,’ Lahiri said. ‘I think Idris was involved in something else. I’m not sure what.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Lahiri’s eyes were red and wet now. He opened his mouth to speak, but the noise came first. A sound like a door slamming. Harry felt the tunnel in the air, and followed it with his eyes, fixing on the hole in the yacht’s superstructure, about two inches from Lahiri’s head. Next came sharp pain across the side of his face. That instant could have lasted for an hour, paralysed in time, and he wouldn’t have known any different. Harry watched water fall down the drenched hair on Lahiri’s forehead as his pupils dilated.

  The second shot sent them both down. Harry rolled onto his back, felt a spray of something wet hit his face. Warm, much warmer than January rain. When he rolled back, Lahiri wasn’t there. He’d fallen forward, his figure bent against the railing.

  ‘JAMES!’

  Then Harry was scrabbling. The third shot landed somewhere above him as he crawled across the aft deck, keeping close to the windows with the cracked glass. The shooter had to be on the jetty. It was the only place he could be, because the shots were loud enough to make out despite the rain. Harry kept on, around the starboard ladder, and edged against the short deck on the starboard side. It was about twelve inches wide. He spread-eagled himself against the hull, as flat as he could.

  How long did it take to drive from Dulwich to Surrey Quays? Harry listened out for the sirens, but they were gone.

  Then the pain in his chest came, starting behind his sternum, expanding to fill his chest, exploding out of his side. He closed his eyes. Tammas lay beside him, blood pooling underneath his head. The sky had turned purple. Harry was breathing twice per second now, and the world was starting to fade. He tapped his face and his neck and his chest, furiously. He hadn’t been hit. He scrabbled at his belt for his sidearm. Man down, man down.

  He had to get to him. Engage the threat, return fire, and reach the man. Reach James.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  The boat rocked. The shooter had come aboard. He could feel the movement with each step, and the shooter took about four, then stopped. Probably to step over Lahiri. Harry closed his eyes and prayed that he didn’t hear the coup de grâce, the point-blank shot into Lahiri’s skull that would send him into the eternal dark. It didn’t come. Harry considered his options. He could keep shimmying along the starboard-side deck until he reached the bow, clamber over it. Jump onto the jetty and run for land, but that was ten metres, he’d make noise, and abandon Lahiri. That was out. He could go back towards the aft deck, where the shooter was, and fight him. He looked around, searching for anything he could use as a weapon. Nothing. He looked down.

  There was a ladder, back and to his right, leading from the deck down into the black water. The steps resumed, louder and quicker, moving towards him. He had to get back to Lahiri, had to get pressure on the wound, get him treated.

  Harry inhaled deeply, closed his eyes again. Made his decision, and moved.

  Hang the fuck in there, James, I’m on my way.

  He made it in two strides, the first to the head of the ladder, the other swinging his body backwards, his hands gripping cold steel, holding on by instinct. Slowly, he let himself slide down. First his feet, then his legs went down into the water, the pain coming in brutal waves, and he bit hard on his lip to stop himself crying out. He heard the footsteps come closer and descended, the water up to his chest now, his legs floating free. Hands slipping down to the bottom of the ladder. A figure coming to the starboard side, above him.

  Harry took one last silent breath and sank under the freezing water, his eyes scrunched shut, every fibre of exposed skin screaming. He knew that he could stay underwater for eighty-four seconds, but that had been in a swimming pool at Sandhurst, nine years ago. This was at four degrees in the Thames. The urge to breathe burned in him, like an addiction, a voice in his head tempting him to come up to the light, break water, drink the winter air. He felt the ladder shake as the man came closer.

  He exhaled underwater and watched the bubbles rise to the surface. A keen-eyed gunman would spot that, he realised too late. He closed his eyes and waited for the bullets to come, cutting through the water, filling his lungs with blood. He could drown twice for his trouble.

  He’d talked and thought about this lots of times. What happened at the end, whether life would flash past in front of him, what he would see as the blackness came. Now he wondered if what he’d always known had been confirmed: that there was nothing. Nothing to think about, no one to treasure the sight of in his last moments. Just an image, burned into his retinas. Not of family, or a lover, but a friend, folded over on the deck of his boat, bleeding out into the varnished teak.

  In the dark water, Harry made his choice. As soon as the gunman moved, he would go up the ladder and rush him, and get to Lahiri. Even if it meant a bullet in the chest. He saw the purple sky, and knew again that he had been saved by the man who lay wounded above him.

  The ladder rattled and the whole boat shook. Fast steps. The gunman, running. Harry broke the surface with just his nose and mouth, his head still below the water, and took in one huge gasp, a painful rush of frigid air filling his lungs. He willed frozen hands and feet to bring him up the ladder. There was noise now, shouting. The boat jerking and moving. Harry made it to the top. Pulled himself over onto the side deck, slipped and almost fell again.

  I’m here, James, I’m coming. It’s alright.

  He thought he could see a beam of light, refracting through the glass windows of the boat’s cabin.

  ‘Is everything alright?’

  Harry recognised the voice, the Slavic inflections of the watchman.

  ‘Hey!’

  The swearword that followed was in a language Harry didn’t recognise, and it was cut off by the gunshot that followed it. The beam of light swung away and disappeared, the torch smashing as it hit the ground. Sounds of feet running down the jetty. Harry kept crawling towards the deck, but it was hard, every reach a battle. There was no pain from the cold any more, just numbness. He made it to the corner of the deck and kept going. If the gunman was still there, then fuck it. James Lahiri hadn’t worried about his own life when Harry had been down, bleeding into the dust with two collapsed lungs. He looked up once as he pulled himself to his feet. The gunman was gone, the watchman lying on the jetty, clutching his thigh, screaming.

  Harry was up now, scrambling towards Lahiri, still motionless against the aft railing.

  ‘It’s alright, James,’ he said through machine-gun breaths. Knelt at Lahiri’s side, grabbed the collar of Lahiri’s shirt, and unfolded him, slamming his torso down onto the decking, his numb hands searching the chest for the bullet wound. It wasn’t there.

  ‘James, it’s me, talk to me!’

  Harry’s eyes trailed up, the pressure in his chest unbearable, until he saw the small, puckered crimson diamond underneath James Lahiri’s left eye. The chunk of his skull that had com
e away when the bullet had exited it. The smear of shiny cerebral matter along the polished wood. The glaze in his eyes, like a slaughtered animal.

  Harry rolled over onto his back and lay down next to his dead friend. Tried to cry but hadn’t the energy. The sky looked darker than he remembered. Then he closed his eyes.

  They were ten minutes away from Surrey Quays, Wilson driving, Noble in the passenger seat with the A to Z, when the call came over the radio.

  ‘All units be advised, gunshots reported at South Dock Marina, Rotherhithe. Trojan 138 en route, confirm response.’

  ‘Did he say South Dock?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘Hit the lights,’ said Noble. Wilson did, the sirens came on, and he pulled into the bus lane. A marked patrol car was in convoy behind them with two uniformed officers and two detectives, ready to search Lahiri’s boat, and it too went on blues, scattering the traffic ahead. Noble grabbed the handset from the radio console between them.

  ‘Control, this is DI Noble with Southwark CID, any more details? Over.’

  Static on the line, competing with the sirens and the rain bouncing off the car roof.

  ‘Er . . . Multiple 999 calls reporting gunshots, at least one casualty, ambulance and HEMS dispatched, Trojan en route.’

  ‘Control, we are en route also,’ she said. ‘Four CID, two uniforms.’ As she spoke, she unconsciously reached to check the semiautomatic holstered under her armpit, a Glock 26 she carried as a leftover from her time in the Central Task Force. She’d go in alone if she had to, if there was active shooting. The words started to process. At least one casualty. Lahiri, she thought. Harry.

  ‘Fuck,’ she whispered. Wilson had his foot to the floor, the car weaving through the traffic, rush hour on the Old Kent Road. If Harry wasn’t dead, she’d fucking kill him herself. She wondered if it was a mistake, not bringing armed support. They knew a gun had been used behind the Chicken Hut, but it couldn’t have been Lahiri, he’d been in A&E.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said again.

  ‘You OK, guv?’ said Wilson.

  ‘Just fucking drive. Third exit here, A2208.’