The Hollow Men: A Novel

by Rob McCarthy

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Fitzpatrick repeated.

  ‘A client,’ he said. ‘A potential one, anyway.’

  ‘You alone?’ Fitzpatrick said.

  Harry nodded. Fitzpatrick said nothing and turned his chair around, wheeling into the apartment with the shotgun between his thighs. The flat was silent but for the scraping of the wheels on the hard floor and the wind howling through the damned walls. Inside, there was a workbench with a vice, some files, and several hand drills Harry assumed were for altering the firearms Fitzpatrick made his income trading. Removing serial numbers, converting between calibres. Underneath the bench was a pile of cans, Skol Super.

  Fitzpatrick turned to face him.

  ‘Sit down,’ he offered, waving to a mouldy sofa opposite a desk with a plasma television set, plugged into a DVD player. Whoever said crime didn’t pay had obviously never been south of the river. There were box sets of Band of Brothers and The Pacific spread beneath the TV. What a life, Harry thought. Drinking, selling guns, and watching war series.

  He remained standing. ‘What you got for me, then?’

  ‘Nine-mil automatics, mostly. A sawn-off if you’d like, but you’ll have to pay for that. Extra, I mean. If you’re happy to wait, I could get you something special.’

  Fitzpatrick coughed and spat some dark bile onto the floor. Harry thought about Solomon Idris, coughing in the Chicken Hut, with that look in his eyes. Wondered if it would be better if he’d never known what had given it to him, and reminded himself why he was here, freezing his arse off in a place where if the man in front of him decided to shoot him dead, he’d likely not be found for months. Not until the asbestos removal men came to rip down the walls.

  ‘What kind of nines?’ Harry said.

  ‘The fuck do you care?’ Fitzpatrick grunted. ‘You don’t look like no collector to me. In fact, you don’t look like my normal clientele, either. I bet yer wife’s off with some geezer, and you’re gonna do them both, aren’t you? Or her and the kids, and then yourself.’

  ‘I just want something reliable, that’s all.’

  ‘All my gear’s reliable,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘Take my word for it, or piss off.’

  ‘How much for a nine, then?’

  ‘Twelve hundred. You bring it back unfired, and I’ll give you five hundred back.’

  ‘Ammo?’ said Harry. Twelve hundred was pretty cheap. That much for the life of James Lahiri, and maybe Solomon Idris, too.

  ‘A full clip,’ said Fitzpatrick, reaching onto the workbench with one hand and pulling a can of Skol Super to his mouth. ‘You want any more, you can pay for it. Only two clips, mind you. I’m not selling my shit to some weirdo who’s gonna run into a school and get on the news.’

  ‘What’s your ammo?’ said Harry.

  ‘Fucking good shite, alright!’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘Now buy summat or fuck off.’

  Harry tried not to appear flustered, even though his heart felt like it was close to bursting out of his chest. He needed to stay calm, to keep his peripheral vision on the gun between Fitzpatrick’s stumps, but not let on that he was looking. He scanned the chair, looking for the wheelchair brake. Spotted the serrated metal lever by Fitzpatrick’s right foot.

  ‘I’m buying,’ said Harry. ‘Maybe. Let me take a look first.’

  Fitzpatrick grinned, revealing brown, broken teeth, and put his left hand to the left wheel of his chair, spinning like a basketball player. Reached to open a drawer beneath his workbench, and then used both hands to lift up a weathered Browning. That was his second mistake, though he hadn’t yet realised it. The first one had been underestimating the exhausted, broken-looking man who’d knocked on his front door.

  Harry’s first move was to rush up behind the wheelchair and stamp his foot on the brake, before wrapping his left arm around Fitzpatrick’s neck and grabbing the sawn-off with his right, holding it by the breech and pulling it up into the air, sliding his hand downwards as he did so that the trigger guard ended up in his right hand, the twin barrels directed at Fitzpatrick’s head.

  ‘You fucking piece of—’ Fitzpatrick spluttered, his hands scrabbling for the gun on the worktop after they’d tried, and failed, to spin the chair’s wheels.

  ‘Shut up,’ Harry shouted. ‘And let me see your hands. You ever seen what a shotgun does to a skull at close range, Niall?’

  He released the pressure on Fitzpatrick’s neck and backed away, putting both hands on the shotgun. Now he was shitting himself. Fitzpatrick still had a gun on the table in front of him. Maybe it wasn’t loaded, but he had to assume that it was. If he went for it, Harry couldn’t pull the trigger. Couldn’t shoot a man in the back of the head. The pain behind his sternum came back and the cold wind rushed through his chest.

  ‘How the fuck do you know my name?’ Fitzpatrick said.

  ‘I know a lot of things about you,’ Harry said. ‘First things first, that gun there on the table. Pick it up by the barrel, with your left hand.’

  Fitzpatrick did so.

  ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘I know people who’ll make you pay for this. You won’t even see ’em coming. They’ll stick a knife in your skull and you’ll be dead before you hit the floor.’

  ‘Throw the gun away,’ Harry ordered.

  The gun hit the wall at the side and cracked the plaster, leaving a long rip. Harry kept his eyes on Fitzpatrick, whose hands hung in the air, shaking. Whether the tremor was from fear or the liver failure Harry wasn’t sure.

  ‘You’re filth, aren’t you?’ Fitzpatrick said.

  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘I’m not. No rules for me.’

  ‘You’re gonna regret this, you cunt. Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘I’m army, like you,’ Harry said. ‘256 Field Hospital. You deployed, didn’t you?’

  ‘Me and a thousand others,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘Don’t try that brothers-in-arms crap on me.’

  Harry couldn’t see his face, so it was hard to tell whether the attempt to build rapport had been in any way successful, though he suspected it hadn’t. He decided to cut straight to the chase.

  ‘Look, mate,’ he said. ‘I feel sorry for you. You shouldn’t be in a shithole like this. Maybe I can help you out.’

  ‘What the fuck d’you want?’ Fitzpatrick said. Harry was writing the sentences in his head before he said them, and a lump was forming in his throat. Before he knew it, the words were coming out strained.

  ‘I had a friend,’ he said. ‘He was a medical officer, too. Saved my life and God knows how many others out in Helmand. Last night someone went onto his boat and shot him dead with Radway Green nine-mil, 2004 batch. Sound familiar?’

  Fitzpatrick swore loudly.

  ‘I just sell the gear,’ he said. ‘I dunno what people are gonna do with it. ’S not my problem.’

  ‘I know,’ said Harry. ‘That’s why I’m not here for you. I want the guy you sold it to.’

  ‘No way,’ said Fitzpatrick.

  ‘You don’t look like you’re in a position to negotiate,’ Harry said. Fitzpatrick’s foot was repeatedly striking the wheelchair brake. Eventually it gave way, and he started to turn around.

  ‘Stay fucking still!’ Harry yelled.

  The sound echoed around the room, and in the silence that followed Harry realised that his hands were so sweaty they were slipping around the shotgun. His fingers were nowhere near the triggers, but Fitzpatrick didn’t know that.

  After a while, Fitzpatrick said, ‘How am I supposed to know who it was who killed your friend? I don’t ask no questions. An’ I’ve sold three or four nines these last few months.’

  ‘Anyone seem out of place?’ Harry said. ‘Like me? Older guys, seemed like they might be professionals?’

  ‘You think hitmen buy their guns from me?’

  ‘Not professional killers,’ Harry said. ‘Professionals. Like lawyers, or doctors.’

  Fitzpatrick shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I dunno. There was an older guy.’

  ‘White guy, wit
h a beard?’ Harry asked. ‘In his fifties?’

  ‘Not that I remember,’ Fitzpatrick said.

  Harry switched the sawn-off to his left hand and reached for Wilson’s phone with his right, brought up the internet browser. It took him a while to type using only one hand, so he stalled.

  ‘Think! Anyone out of place?’

  He could hear Fitzpatrick’s breathing, fast and laboured, and see it too, quick pulses of white air into the room. Soon enough, Harry had managed to type Saviour Project into the search engine. The first hit was a press release from the project’s own website, and it came with a picture, which was what he needed. The photo had been taken at an awards ceremony at City Hall, the mayor standing with assorted figures: Lahiri, some of the youth workers, Kinirons, Traubert, Josh Geddes and some of the other staff from A&E. Duncan Whitacre front and centre, beaming ear to ear.

  ‘Turn around,’ Harry said. ‘Keep your right hand in sight.’

  Fitzpatrick did so and Harry crept closer, keeping the shotgun back. He held the screen forward, zoomed in on the picture. Fitzpatrick leant in and squinted, trying to make out the faces.

  ‘You recognise anyone there?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘I sold a gun to Boris.’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ said Harry. ‘Look at all of the faces.’

  Maybe Whitacre had disguised himself somehow when he’d come to buy the gun. Shaved, and worn a wig or a cap.

  ‘Oh, shite,’ Fitzpatrick said. His eyes widened, and he coughed again, more bile spluttering over his camouflage jacket. Harry turned awkwardly, rotating his body so he too could see the screen, follow Fitzpatrick’s line of sight.

  ‘Someone there?’ Harry said. He felt as if every blood vessel in his body were about to burst, every molecule of his concentration focused on the alcoholic amputee in front of him. A Trojan team could have burst into the room behind him and he wouldn’t even have noticed.

  ‘Three weeks ago,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘I sold him an old Luger.’

  ‘Who?’ Harry said, leaning in. Tapped the screen with his thumb, just above Whitacre’s face.

  ‘No, not him,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘Him.’

  Harry’s eyes followed Fitzpatrick’s finger straight to the smiling face of Charlie Ambrose, in a purple shirt and dark suit, and he felt a stone sink into the space inside his chest. It made sense. Ambrose, the man who’d first converted Idris to the hope of a better life, who sat in his office in A&E, unseen by the rest of the staff. Went into the school, engaged with the kids on their level. The eyes and ears of the Saviour Project.

  Shit, Harry thought. Backed away slowly, sliding the phone into his pocket, until he was in the doorway. Eyes fixed on Fitzpatrick, he opened up the shotgun’s breech and let the cartridges fall out, threw it on the floor, backed out of the door and started running.

  He ran until he found the covered walkway he’d entered the estate from. Kept going up onto a ramp that would take him over the New Kent Road and into the housing block on the other side, except it was boarded off, a large white plastic barricade stopping him. He almost ran straight into it, slipped on ice as he tried to turn, and ended up with his back there, sliding down it. He was breathing too fast now, sweat gluing his clothes to his skin like some terrible sclerotic disease. He scrunched his eyes closed and punched the barrier until his knuckles were numb and blood ran in smeared trails down the white plastic. He fell forward and the tears came, and when he opened his eyes Lahiri was there, carrying him from the battlefield as he bled out from his wounds.

  I’ll get the bastard, don’t you worry. I’ll get him.

  Harry fumbled in his pocket for Wilson’s phone. Wiped his bleeding knuckles on his trousers, then unlocked the phone. It went straight to the broswer page, Ambrose’s face smiling back at him, and he retched before he went to the contacts and called Noble.

  She replied immediately.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘I know who did it.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  He took a deep breath. He didn’t care what they did to him any more, as long as somebody picked up Charlie Ambrose and put him a cell.

  ‘The Heygate,’ Harry said.

  ‘What the hell are you doing there?’

  ‘Niall Fitzpatrick lives here. I’ve just paid him a visit.’

  ‘Who?’

  On the other end of the line, Harry heard anxious static. He wondered if he’d been put on speakerphone.

  ‘The gun dealer. Fitz. He sold a gun to Charlie Ambrose,’ Harry continued. ‘About three weeks ago. He’s sure, Frankie. ID’d him from one of the pictures on the Saviour Project’s website.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks,’ Noble said. Now it sounded like she was moving, and quickly.

  ‘What is it?’ Harry said.

  ‘Get on the New Kent Road,’ Noble said. ‘By the traffic lights. I’ll pick you up. Don’t do anything stupid.’

  She hung up, and Harry got to his feet. He didn’t even think about running, just walked towards the road. It was snowing again, and he looked up, let the grey flakes cool his face. He briefly thought about Fairweather’s warning, but if the cavalry came for him and threw him away, then so be it. He’d had enough.

  Noble made it to the New Kent Road ten minutes after he called, not bad going from Lewisham, her unmarked Volvo skidding to a halt, the blue lights in the front grille reflecting off the bus stop where Harry was waiting.

  ‘Get in!’ Noble said. She was wearing a dark police polo shirt with a black tactical vest, a parka over the top to keep out the cold.

  Harry pulled open the passenger door and slid into the car. He clicked himself in as Noble raced forward, turning the siren on and heading to Elephant & Castle.

  ‘You need your head examining,’ Noble shouted over the noise. Harry’s vision went briefly grey, and he leant forward, expecting to pass out or vomit, but he didn’t.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Harry looked up to meet her eyes. Everything hurt. Noble came up against traffic at the roundabout, slammed on the airhorn, and waited for the buses to move out of her way.

  ‘I’m alive,’ Harry told her. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘We’re up shit creek,’ Noble said. ‘But thanks to you, we might have a paddle.’

  Noble swerved left and leant over the dashboard as they approached a red light, checking they were clear before she jumped it. They had to shout to hear each other over the siren and the noise of the traffic. Noble took the south-west exit from the roundabout, towards Kennington and Clapham. Made Harry wonder where the hell they were heading on blue lights.

  ‘What’s the rush?’ he yelled.

  ‘I called Marsden after you called me. This afternoon, we had the team work up everyone in the Saviour Project, ready to split into pairs and question all of them tomorrow. Half an hour ago, one of her DCs rang Charlie Ambrose to ask him to come in tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Shit,’ Harry said, realising what it meant. ‘So he knows we’re on to him.’

  ‘Maybe. With luck, he doesn’t know we’re coming now,’ Noble said. ‘But he knows his days are numbered. We’ve got to get to him before he runs.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Pulross Road,’ Noble said. ‘Brixton. Jesus Christ, Harry, you’d better be right about this.’

  ‘Fitzpatrick picked him out from a photo,’ Harry said. ‘I was trying to find a picture of Whitacre, for God’s sake.’

  The radio squawked from the car’s central console as they flew past the Imperial War Museum, an inspector with a Trojan call sign asking for Noble. Harry picked up the conversation: Ambrose was known to be armed, so they would hold at the house before getting an armed response team to go into the house and arrest him. They were coming in two vans from Whitechapel, and would arrive in twenty minutes.

  ‘They know about us,’ Harry shouted once Noble signed off on the radio.

  ‘I know,’ Noble shot back, ‘Fairweather wants me done for misconduct.’
>
  ‘Shit,’ said Harry. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Noble swerved onto the wrong side of the road and then cut into the traffic as it merged into a junction. They had to be covering ground faster than Harry ever had in London before.

  ‘You should’ve told me about the affair, Harry,’ Noble said. ‘You made me look like a right fucking idiot.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said. ‘I didn’t think it was important.’

  ‘What, that you had an obvious motive for doing in Lahiri? Christ, if you hadn’t just broken my case, I’d be letting you sweat in a cell, you bastard.’

  He sat back in his seat and watched a group of tube passengers scatter as they ran the traffic lights opposite Oval station. They were closing now – Harry didn’t know where Pulross Road was, but they were approaching Brixton. He wondered if Ambrose would come quietly or try and make a run for it. Or worse, fight his way out. Wondered what was about to unfold. They passed another branch of Chicken Hut on the left, and Harry thought back to Sunday evening, when everything had started. Perhaps everything ended here.

  ‘Shit, that’s Mo calling,’ Noble said. ‘Answer it, will you.’

  Harry reached forward and took the call on Noble’s phone, which was plugged into the car’s hands-free system. Wilson’s voice filled the car, too quiet to hear.

  ‘Speak up, Mo!’ Noble yelled. ‘Hang on.’

  She reached down and killed the siren. They were approaching Stockwell station now, and Harry realised that they were close enough that Noble didn’t want Ambrose to be forewarned by the sirens.

  ‘I’ve got background on Ambrose, guv,’ Wilson’s voice said. ‘He sounds like our guy. I checked his record with LAS. He was never a paramedic, just an ambulance technician. Left the service back in 2007 with a clean record. But I just got off the phone with his old line manager. She said a teenage boy he was driving to hospital claimed Ambrose groped him while his crewmate was out of the vehicle. Ambrose resigned rather than face the investigation.’