The Hollow Men: A Novel

by Rob McCarthy

  Noble came back on the phone, and sat down again. She was talking in French, and went on for about a minute before she hung up.

  The choice of language suggested to Harry that she’d been making enquiries in George Traubert’s country of origin.

  ‘Switzerland?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, the federal police,’ she explained. ‘Like I said, the statistics say that Traubert’s offended before, but he doesn’t have a record in the UK. We’ve been in touch with both the Swiss and the Canadian police, to see if there’s anything they can use in court.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Harry. He remembered Traubert telling him how he’d given Whitacre the benefit of his experience in Toronto, doing something similar to the Saviour Project. Outreach work with disadvantaged teenagers. How many did they suspect from London? Noble had mentioned four, but maybe since then the Child Abuse Investigation Team had uncovered yet more lives which the man had ruined. The teenagers they’d already identified were undergoing testing for HIV, though thankfully none of them was yet showing symptoms. Further interviews with the Saviour Project administrators had revealed the first point of contact: in 2009, Solomon Idris had had five initial consultations, three with Duncan Whitacre. Two with George Traubert. Assuming the abuse had started not long afterwards, Idris had been a victim of the most horrifying crimes for nearly four years.

  ‘We ran his credit cards,’ Noble went on. ‘He took holidays to Thailand, twice a year. Alone. God only knows what he got up to over there.’

  ‘Well, you just make sure you put him away,’ said Harry. ‘You owe them that.’

  Noble looked up at him. ‘We will.’

  ‘And make sure that you tell everyone that James Lahiri’s an innocent man.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘Good. What about Idris, the charges?’

  ‘The guy I spoke to at the CPS peddled some bullshit about him having to cooperate with the police. You know what they’re like with guns, mandatory five-year sentences and all that.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Harry. The thought of Solomon Idris being dragged through a lengthy trial after everything he’d been through made him sick.

  ‘But it won’t happen,’ Noble said. ‘Even if they did charge him, he’d get a psych review and walk on diminished responsibility. And the Met aren’t keen on a trial either, what with the fact that he wasn’t actually holding a gun when he was shot.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Harry. ‘Anyway, I’d better go.’

  He looked at his watch and got to his feet. Noble rose with him, and they headed outside, into the cold. He walked her to her car, and kissed her on the cheek. As he did so, her hair came back over her ear, and he saw what was behind it. A tattoo, seven capital letters in Celtic lettering, hidden from all but the most intimate observers. He’d noticed it before, the second time they’d had sex, but hadn’t been able to see which word it was. Now he could.

  ‘Courage,’ Harry said.

  Noble looked up at him and then immediately away, and he realised he’d put his foot in it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I—’

  ‘If I’d had a tough day, Jack would hold me,’ she said, her eyes wet. ‘From behind. And whisper that to me. Courage. After he went, I got that done. So he’d always be there.’

  Harry nodded. It sounded like a good word to remember a man by.

  ‘I’d best be off,’ he said, turning towards the hospital.

  ‘Wait.’

  Noble unlocked the boot of her car, reaching in and pulling out a cardboard box stacked with the nondescript files common to every bureaucracy of the modern age. She hefted the box in her hands and passed it to Harry.

  ‘I want you to have these.’

  The file on top was marked ‘Kinsella, Marie Rachel. DOB: 19/03/1989’. Harry looked up at her in bemusement.

  ‘I called in a favour,’ she explained. ‘They’re all Caucasian women reported missing from central London in July and August 2011, aged seventeen to twenty-three. Just the top sheets, but it should be enough for you to rule a few out.’

  Harry smiled. For some inexplicable reason, he felt like crying. Noble opened her car door and stood in front of it.

  ‘Let’s see each other soon,’ she said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Let’s do something. I think it’d do you good.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Harry said.

  ‘As in, do something. Have a day out. Something that isn’t work, or chasing ghosts and victims. Something you enjoy. Christ, Harry, there has to be something.’

  Harry nodded, embarrassed. Started thinking. He saw the offer for what it was, but he still resented the accusation at its core. That now was the moment of intervention, where his life could depart on a number of trajectories, and she wanted to return him to the one as close to normality as possible.

  ‘Football?’ he suggested.

  Noble laughed. ‘Not on your life.’

  ‘I’ll think of something, then.’

  ‘You do that,’ she said. ‘See you.’

  Harry was early to work. He didn’t need to pick up his bleep for an hour, so he dumped the missing-person files in his locker, changed into scrubs and refilled the empty aspirin bottle with white tablets. Maybe tonight would be a good night, and he wouldn’t need to avail himself in the early hours. He headed out of the changing room and over to the surgical wing of the hospital, passing through the same lift alcove that George Traubert had been dragged through the previous weekend. It was perfectly clean, he thought as he looked around. That was the odd nature of hospitals: human beings gave birth, lived and died in these rooms, these corridors. But once they’d gone, the cleaners descended, and not a trace of them was left.

  The lift arrived at the fourth floor and Harry followed the signs to the plastics ward, used his ID card to get in, and headed towards the burns high-dependency unit. As he did, he passed the consultant’s office, the door open, and the name Simon Hart, FRCS, engraved on the plaque. The consultant was at his desk, answering emails at half seven on a Friday evening. There was a picture of his wife and two daughters next to his in-tray.

  ‘Mr Hart, is it?’

  The consultant turned around.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I wanted to ask about Charlie Ambrose.’

  Hart slid his glasses down to the end of his nose.

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘I’m the doctor who treated him at the scene,’ Harry lied. ‘I’m a colleague of his down in A&E, actually.’

  ‘I thought you looked familiar,’ Hart said. ‘Close the door.’

  Harry did so, and Hart offered him a seat. From the consultant’s demeanour he worked out that the news wasn’t good. The burns unit at the Ruskin wasn’t big, and severe cases were usually moved to the specialist centre in Essex. The fact that Ambrose was still there suggested that they didn’t feel there was anything to gain by transferring him.

  ‘Mr Ambrose developed abdominal compartment syndrome,’ Hart said. ‘We performed a laparotomy to decompress it, but the CT scan shows an intra-abdominal catastrophe. I’m afraid that the prognosis is so poor that there’s nothing to be gained by aggressive management. I’m sorry.’

  Harry nodded. The burned skin across Ambrose’s abdomen and the fluid from the tissue swelling had crushed his internal organs until they had necrosed, and even the operation to open up his belly and relieve the pressure had been too late. At the end of the day, it had always been a question of how and when Ambrose would die, not whether he would.

  ‘Is he intubated?’ Harry said.

  ‘No,’ said Hart. ‘He’s ventilating pretty well, actually. We woke him up after our initial debridement. We’ll keep him comfortable.’

  Harry thanked him and headed down into the high-dependency unit, which consisted of three separate rooms. One was empty. In the second was a young girl, no older than five, with dressings all down her right arm, and a gathered family in traditional East African dress, some clutching
talismans, her mother kissing her hand. In the other room was Charlie Ambrose, asleep and alone.

  Harry entered, closing the door quietly. Ambrose was sat up in the bed, oxygen tubes in his nose, fluid running into a vein in his arm, a syringe driver of morphine connected to a button, each press delivering another dose. Ambrose stirred as Harry came to his bedside and looked down at the leathery, charred skin, cracked like the stones of a lava flow, the yellow, swollen flesh glowing beneath.

  ‘Harry,’ said Ambrose. ‘You’re the first to come. Not even my wife’s been, you know.’

  Harry folded his arms over the railing.

  ‘You know you’re dying, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ambrose. He had to catch his breath with every word, and it made him sound like someone else Harry spoke to a lot. ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘You’re ready?’ Harry repeated.

  ‘To be with God. I don’t want to live. In sin. Like this.’

  Harry found it difficult to disagree with that point of view, though he wondered what any God would think of the things which Ambrose had done.

  ‘I’ve asked for forgiveness. And I’m ready to face my judgement,’ Ambrose went on. ‘And God. Will judge me.’

  ‘Well, if you ask me, it’s not him you need to ask for judgement,’ said Harry. ‘It’s people like Solomon.’

  Ambrose rocked his head slowly, and the oxygen tube got caught on his neck, so Harry shuffled it free. Then their eyes met. Ambrose’s were pleading.

  ‘I never touched them,’ he said. ‘I promise you. I just liked the pictures. I wanted to look at them. They were so beautiful. I never touched them. You have to believe me.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if I believe you or not,’ said Harry.

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘George Traubert’s been arrested,’ said Harry. He had no idea whether the police had come to talk to Charlie Ambrose yet, though he suspected that there would be little point. He wasn’t going to be put on trial, nor would he be around to testify against Traubert. Ambrose stirred a little, pressed his morphine button, and then met Harry’s eyes again.

  ‘All he wanted to do was hurt them,’ Ambrose said. ‘I hated him for that. He never loved them, like I did. But I couldn’t stop him, because he said he’d kill me. I failed them. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You killed my friend,’ Harry said.

  ‘He told me I had to,’ Ambrose said. ‘I was scared. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want. Anybody to get hurt. The watchman. I just panicked. I saved his life, I didn’t want him to die.’

  Harry looked at Ambrose pitilessly. Here lay a man who’d been consumed by the choices he had made, the temptations he’d given in to. A man whose desires had eaten him up, and now he was facing the eternal, repentant in the shadow of inevitable death. Trying to justify the murder of one innocent man with the fact he’d saved another.

  ‘What about Wyndham Road?’ Harry said.

  ‘George told me Solomon was going to go to the police. Told me I had to deal with it,’ Ambrose said. ‘I followed him. From his house. I couldn’t do it. There in the street. Or in the shop. There were too many people. But then he pulled his gun out. And the police turned up. And I just panicked. Hid. And . . .’

  Ambrose didn’t finish the story because he was crying, or in pain, Harry didn’t know which. He didn’t need to hear it, either.

  ‘You believe in forgiveness, don’t you, Charlie?’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You believe in truth as well?’

  Ambrose nodded slowly.

  ‘OK,’ said Harry. ‘Tell me why you killed James.’

  Ambrose’s gaze turned upwards until he was staring, glassy eyed, at the ceiling, and Harry saw his lips tremble in prayer, like they had done when he’d been rolling around outside his burning house.

  ‘Tell me,’ Harry repeated. ‘You owe me that, you sanctimonious prick.’

  Ambrose finished his prayer and turned towards Harry.

  ‘OK, but you need to,’ Ambrose caught his breath, ‘do something for me.’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘You know that infusion,’ Ambrose went on. ‘I can only press my button once every. Three minutes. To stop me from overdosing.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Harry.

  ‘I just want it all,’ said Ambrose, ‘to go away. I don’t want to live. With this filth in my head. Promise me.’

  ‘OK. Why did you kill him?’

  Outside, one of the nurses looked in through the small window by the door to see what was going on, but saw the pink of Harry’s scrubs and turned back towards the main ward.

  ‘James knew that something was going on,’ Ambrose said. ‘With Idris. He was worried. He thought it was more than. Just the drugs. He thought that someone within the project was up to something with Idris. That Duncan might be involved, so he came to me. Asking for advice.’

  Harry looked up at the ceiling, a sick feeling rushing through his body, his hairs standing on end. Lahiri’s final words, before the bullet had crushed his skull, asking Harry to wait, to calm down, because he thought he knew what was going on. He’d been right from the start, and just as Harry had, he’d suspected Duncan Whitacre. But Lahiri had trusted Ambrose, had gone to him, and the reward had been death.

  ‘I knew if he told you the police would look into both of us,’ Ambrose said. ‘And George told me he’d set Lahiri up. That was the idea. To make it look like it was him and Duncan.’

  And that explained the phone calls in the past weeks, and the days after Idris got shot.

  Harry gripped the railing at the side of the bed, and thought of how everything might have changed if he’d just had two more minutes to speak to Lahiri on the night he’d died. Or if Lahiri had trusted him enough to tell him everything on the Monday. Or maybe the point of divergence was further back. Maybe, if Harry hadn’t betrayed him, Lahiri would have come to him with his suspicions instead of to Ambrose. And maybe if Harry had walked into the Chicken Hut and persuaded Idris to walk out of there and into an ambulance, all of this would have been prevented. People were defined by the choices they made. He thought about that for a long while, until Ambrose pressed his button again.

  ‘You know what I’m asking you to do,’ Ambrose said quietly.

  Harry looked across at the syringe driver. The infusion was set up so that it would only accept a low flow rate, therefore it would be difficult to overdose him without it taking hours, and by that time a nurse would notice for sure. There were other options. Injecting the morphine directly into his IV cannula, perhaps. But none of them was acceptable. Harry stood up straight and started washing his hands in the sink by the door.

  ‘You promised me!’ Ambrose protested, his pathetic voice as loud as it could go.

  ‘You quoted the Bible at me, when we were in the taxi,’ Harry said, turning back around. ‘What was it again?’

  He leaned closer. Ambrose’s face scrunched up.

  ‘A man reaps what he sows.’

  Harry went to the handover meeting in the doctors’ office on the ICU, but it had been a quiet evening and there were no urgent tasks waiting. He nodded as he half-listened to vignettes about sick patients on the wards who might need reviewing, his thoughts elsewhere. He stared at the date on the wall calendar. A month of the year was gone already. He finished the handover and headed away from the ICU, passing Idris’s room as he did so.

  Solomon Idris was sat up in his bed, still connected to a few wires and lines, but free of the breathing tube in his neck, a dark scar across his throat. His colour was good, though he still looked sick: the bones prominent, the hollows either side of them deep. Beside him, his mother was asleep, slumped over Idris’s bed, while Junior sat on the other chair in the room, playing on a Nintendo DS.

  Idris took off his oxygen mask, and looked up at Harry, who smiled back.

  ‘Hello, Solomon,’ he said.

  Idris tried to form words, but he was too weak to talk, and Harry rested his hand o
n the teenager’s arm.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘You’ll be talking soon, and you’ll have plenty of time to talk if you want.’

  That seemed to pacify him, and Harry leant against the side of the bed. The speech and language therapists had already started an intensive regimen of rehabilitation, as had the physiotherapists and the dieticians, the people who would really manage Idris’s recovery now the doctors had done their bit.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Harry asked. ‘Good?’

  Idris formed an expression that was close to a smile, and nodded. His movements were sluggish on account of the pain relief he still required, and it reminded Harry of what he had seen in the video. He tried to shake that thought, but maybe it was closer to the real truth – while it would take Idris months to recover from his physical injuries, his psychological wounds might need longer to heal. The first psychiatrist was going to visit on Monday, when hopefully they could start the journey to something resembling a normal life.

  Idris had fallen asleep. Harry had a bizarre, almost selfish desire to be there when the psychologists told him that Traubert had been arrested, that the man who had hurt him and Keisha would be going to prison for a long, long time. But that wouldn’t be for many weeks, not until he was psychologically ready. Likewise, Idris didn’t yet know that he was HIV-positive. That revelation could come later, too.

  Joy Idris had woken, and came to stand beside Harry.

  ‘How is he, Doctor?’ she said.

  Harry considered everything he’d just thought about, how close Idris had come to slipping into the void, how far he had to climb towards normality. But perhaps all that mattered was that the gradient would be upwards now. He looked back at Solomon and smiled.

  ‘He’s doing well, Mrs Idris,’ Harry said. ‘All being well, he should go to the adolescent ward on Monday. I’ll leave you in peace.’

  He headed to the door and looked back as he shut it. They were a family close to being at peace, despite everything they had been through, and all the people who’d died, one way or another, because of what had happened to Solomon. Just like how the city outside his living-room window always carried on. Harry watched them for a while, then let them be.