I stopped and shook my head. It was all just supposition. I had no evidence for any of this. There had to be some missing link—something that connected Phil’s disappearance to the subsequent removal of Raphael. And I had a feeling those bags of rubbish in Raphael’s house had something to do with it.
I turned on my heel and began walking back in the direction I had come. I needed to speak to somebody with a talent for sniffing out garbage, and I had a pretty good idea where I would be able to find him.
* * *
The Loaf and the Fishes was empty and the barman was just finishing wiping the bar when I strolled in and took a seat.
“My usual please,” I said to the barman.
He didn’t hand me a lemonade. Instead, he regarded me from over the cloth. “I’m sorry. We’re about to close.”
“Already? Is it early closing tonight?”
“This is the same time we close every night,” he said, hanging the cloth behind the bar. “Now if you’d be so kind, I’d like to lock up.”
“Regulations really are tough here.” I placed my finger down and traced out a circle on the freshly wiped bar surface.
The barman’s face didn’t change as he retrieved the cloth and wiped away the circle. “I’m afraid you’re wrong. We have no regulations in regard to closing times.”
“So why close so early?” This time, I traced a triangle.
“Do you see anybody left to serve?” he said as the triangle disappeared under his cloth.
“Okay, I get the idea,” I said, tiring of my geometrical exercises. “I need to speak to Alby. I’ve got a message for him.”
The barman couldn’t help chuckling. “Do you really think he wants to speak to you?”
He had a point. The last time I’d been here, Alby had responded to my gift of soda water by suggesting I insert my head into a particular part of my lower body, using words that had probably never been heard in Heaven before.
“I have a feeling he may be better disposed the next time we meet,” I said. “Can I have some paper and a pen?”
He handed them to me and I quickly scribbled a note. Then I turned away from the bar. Careful to avoid the barman’s scrutiny, I took the bottle of bourbon from my pocket. I removed the label from the bottle, folded it into my note, and turned back to the bar.
“I can’t stress how important it is that this gets to him,” I said as I handed the note to the barman.
“I will see that it gets delivered.” He placed the note on a shelf above the bar. “But now I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”
“And a very good night to you, as well.”
I stood up and left the bar. As I walked back towards my original destination, I noticed that The Loaf and the Fishes was not the only establishment closing up. Everywhere I looked, doors were being locked, lights were turning off, and the ranks of people in the streets were thinning. Heaven was shutting down for the night.
I quickened my pace. I couldn’t wait to get out of Heaven. I was utterly sick of the bland food in the uninteresting restaurants that closed before you were hungry anyway. Sick of the smiles and the general air of contentment that every resident wore like a treacle-coated cloak. Sick of the endless streets with the overly manicured trees and the absurd lack of litter of any kind. I could have gone on listing things I was sick of, but before I knew it, I had arrived. There before me was the grate in the wall, a welcome point of escape from the dreariness of Heaven. The fact that it was also the point of entry to somewhere that might turn out to be far worse was no longer a concern. From this moment onward, I was on my way down.
The grate wasn’t difficult to lever off. It was something of a squeeze to get into the hole in the wall, but eventually I managed to drag myself through. I reached back through the opening and picked up the grate, taking one last look at Heaven before I returned it into position. Then, barely a second after I’d wedged it into place, I pushed it out again to take another look.
The final item in my anti-Heaven diatribe had been incorrect. The street outside was not clear of litter. It wasn’t filthy, but it wasn’t spotlessly clean either. Even in the dim light, I could make out a number of small pieces of paper and plastic flapping in the wind. One flew past and became stuck in the grate. I pulled it off and tossed it away. Then I slammed the grate firmly into place. A few extra pieces of rubbish weren’t going to make me dislike Heaven any less. It was time to go.
I turned away from the grate to be faced by total darkness. I pulled out my lighter, and with the aid of its dim flame, I managed to make out what looked like either a very small storeroom or a very large closet. Just beside my feet, in the middle of the floor, a large hole gaped. I crouched down and peered into its depths, but the feeble beam from the lighter faded out well before it reached whatever was at the bottom. I moved the light around the top of the pit and a spark of metal caught my eye. Then I lowered the flame slightly until I detected another glint of metal, and another one below that. Here was the ladder Jessie had described to me. It was nothing more than a series of brass rungs wedged into the sides of the hole, descending in a helical pattern into the blackness.
They say two negatives cancel each other out, but as I stared down into that hole, my fear of heights wasn’t doing anything to cancel out my fear of darkness. Eventually, I took a deep breath and lowered myself in, reaching out with my feet until I found the first rung of the ladder. Then, slowly and carefully, I began to climb down.
For what seemed like hours, I continued my journey. The darkness enveloped me, like a giant bat enclosing me within its wings. With every step, I gripped the rungs above while my foot searched for the next rung below, not daring to breathe until it was firmly planted. My mind turned off to everything except the rhythm of my movements—right foot down, left hand down, left foot down, right hand down. My face was freezing. My hands had less feeling than a bank manager. Still, I continued. Right foot down, left hand down, left foot down, right hand down.
Finally, after I couldn’t tell how long, my hands had no more strength to grip the rungs. My fingers slowly unclasped and, too exhausted to even scream, I plummeted away from the wall and into the blackness.
I didn’t fall for long. Almost immediately, I landed on something soft. As it turned out, I had practically reached the bottom before I’d let go. I lay for about five minutes, recovering my strength and enjoying the marvellous fact that the ground at the bottom of the hole happened to be spongy and bouncy. Then I remembered Jessie telling me that she’d placed a mattress here to break her fall in case of such an accident. She said she’d never had to use it herself. I’m sure she’d be glad to know that it worked.
I stood up, shivering slightly. I’d dressed light, figuring I’d be dealing with extreme heat down here. I wasn’t expecting it to be more than a bit on the chilly side. I looked around. In the darkness, I could see little. But with the aid of a thin shaft of light coming through a crack in the far wall, I could just make out that I was in some sort of abandoned warehouse. As I walked towards that sliver of light, I became aware of a noise coming from somewhere beyond the room—an indistinct, dull humming. I couldn’t tell what was making the sound, but it seemed strangely familiar.
I reached the crack in the wall and discovered that it marked the outline of a door. I pushed the door open easily enough, walked through, and immediately it hit me.
It was the hum I’d heard in the room, only magnified five hundred times. At this volume, I was able to make out exactly what it was. It was people shouting and music blasting. It was engines roaring and car horns blaring. It was all the sounds I had grown to know and love, but which I’d almost forgotten about during my time in Heaven. If I hadn’t already been sure, it was the final confirmation that I’d made it into Hell.