The First Five People You Meet In Hell
by
Tom Leins
1. The Kerb Crawler
A charcoal-grey Lexus crawls past the Hellton Manor meat-market. Under a blood-red sunset, Paignton sweats.
You used to be able to see used needles glinting in the freshly cut grass, but no one has cut it for years and it sprouts up in unruly, discoloured clumps. I wipe a thick smear of dogshit off my boot and watch the Lexus.
It slows as it passes the most emaciated rent boys, its engine purring as the car navigates the rutted concrete alongside the playpark.
The kid on the swings is wearing silver hot-pants, angel wings and nothing else. His nipple piercings glint under the watery moonlight. His thin face is pitted with acne scars. He’s clearly the star attraction.
The wings are a cute touch. Last month, some fucking maniac started disfiguring local rent boys – carving crude, bloody wings into their backs and leaving them for dead. Five boys to date. All but one boy bled out before receiving medical treatment. The Herald Express dubbed the man ‘The Angel Maker’ – inflaming local hysteria until it reached boiling point.
The kid eases himself off the swings and struts across the park towards the Lexus. He glances at me briefly – a defiant mixture of hostility and curiosity. He’s either got a Stanley knife in his hot-pants or he’s really pleased to see me.
I hold up an index finger to my lips and melt out of the park and into the gloom. The passenger-side window rolls down and the boy leans in to start his well-honed negotiation.
I slip the pig-knife out of my boot and slash both driver-side tyres while the driver is distracted.
The kerb-crawler may or may not be The Angel Maker. Either way, he’s not getting out of Hellton Manor in one piece.
***
Behind the playpark, Hellton Towers looms large – a crumbling, asbestos-riddled mausoleum with a different horror story for each one of its 14 storeys.
As long as I’ve been alive it has been a blot on the landscape. A dark stain on the estate’s psyche.
The way people tell it, the tower-block was designed by a celebrated young architect called Arthur Hellton-Smythe. His previous builds had won international awards. Been praised for their innovative designs. The building that came to be known as Hellton Towers was commissioned by Devon County Council in 1965, but not finished until 1972. A bold vision of the future rendered immediately out of date.
A pebble-dashed monolith, it was quickly dismissed as a brutalist eyesore. Serious structural problems were identified in the 1980s, but the remaining residents refused to move out and there was never enough funding available for the building’s demolition.
After the backlash, Hellton-Smythe sank into despondency. Grew despondent and uncommunicative. Stopped taking on new work. On his 55th birthday he visited the building that shared his name. He drank half a bottle of Drambuie on the rooftop terrace and threw himself off the edge of the building.
Locals say that the tarmac where he landed still smells of brain matter on hot days. I take a deep breath as I probe the uneven ground with the toe of my boot. The only thing I can smell is my own rancid sweat.
2. The Landlady
I agreed to meet Heffernan in The Bat & Ball – the flat-roofed estate pub nicknamed the Wrecking Ball. The field behind the estate was earmarked for use as a multi-sport leisure facility, only for the plans to be derailed by a survey which found nine different toxic substances in the soil. The once-lush vegetation now looks withered and dead and not even gypsies use the field anymore.
Nowadays, the only bat you find in here is the cut-down baseball bat the landlady, Lorraine, keeps on a plinth behind the bar. She hammers a rusty nail through the bat every time she uses it on a rowdy punter. As I wait for my pint I count 13 savage-looking nails protruding from the wood at awkward angles.
Lorraine was an ex-Miss Teen Paignton. One of the first – long before my time. As a teenager, people say she was the most sought-after girl on Winner Street. She even appeared onstage at a Radio 1 Roadshow, clinging to the shell-suited arm of a northern disc jockey.
She’s 55, but looks ten years older. Her once-glossy hair looks like straw and her previously smooth skin contoured with age. After a brief modelling career – catalogues not catwalk – she married a safecracker and bought this place with his ill-gotten gains. The pub outlasted the marriage and he perished in a Torremolinos hospital – a parasitic gut infection ravaging his lower intestine.
“Busy night?” I ask.
“Busy enough,” she grunts. “Frankly, I’d serve the devil himself a pint of Carling if he had the right money.”
The one-liner is followed by a harsh bark of bitter laughter.
I pay for my pint with a fiver and get a fake pound coin in my change. I drop it in the collection box for the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary Benevolent Fund – not that you’d ever see a cop around these parts.
I sip my pint and check out the pub. It resembles hell’s waiting room – dozens of chronic old soaks drinking in silence.
In the far corner, Heffernan raises a liver-spotted hand to catch my attention. He used to be a dangerous man. Carried an undercurrent menace, even when he was being nice. Now his flesh is discoloured and he walks with a stick.
I nod and walk past the pool table. The baize hasn’t just been ripped – there’s a deep crack in the table itself.
3. The Client
Tony Heffernan is a foul-tempered drinker who runs a string of bony, jaundiced-looking whores from the safety of his aging girlfriend’s home. He’s notorious for running the kind of working girls that no one else wants. It’s like a Paignton fucking roulette – with venereal diseases instead of bullets. Spin the barrel and take the hit.
“Rey, right?”
I nod and he places a Somerfield carrier bag on the table I front of me. I slip it into my pocket without counting the contents.
He plucks a John Player Special out of his pack with yellowed fingertips.
“Ciggie, son?”
I shake my head and he shrugs.
“You might be too young to remember, but smoking used to be considered good social etiquette.”
Now it’s my turn to shrug.
“I never was big on etiquette, mate.”
Heffernan has a lumpen, oversized skull and deep-set eyes that bore into mine.
He takes a puff on his cigarette and rests it in the groove of the scarred plastic ashtray.
He leans forward and removes a creased photograph from his wallet.
“Sheila’s been gone 48 hours,” he says.
48 hours?
“Shit. She could be anywhere by now.”
He shakes his head.
“No, she couldn’t.”
He gestures vaguely over his shoulder with his thumb – in the direction of Hellton Towers.
“She’s in there.”
I take a swig of my pint.
“You seem awfully confident of that, Heffernan.”
It’s a hot evening and the fire exit has been propped open with breezeblocks, meaning I have to raise my voice to be heard over the cacophony of car alarms, burglar alarms and rape alarms outside.
He offers me a decayed smile.
“Sheila has just got out on licence. If she leaves Hellton Towers after 6pm it would set off her offender monitoring tag, and she’d be back inside.”
I finish my pint and stand up.
“Why don’t you look for her yourself?”
He grips the handle of his walking stick.
“The stairs play havoc with my ruddy knees, Rey. And anyway, people say you’re good at this shit.”
I say nothing.
“I’ll double your money if you bring her out alive,” he says earnestly.
“And what if I don’t?”
He takes a thoughtful puff on his JPS. The ghost of a smile flickers across his wide, ruddy face.
“I’ll drag you onto a patch of waste ground and burn your fucking body.”
***
Outside, the beer garden comprises a row of fire-damaged patio chairs and a couple of upturned crates bearing the names of discontinued beers.
I sit on the least charred chair and count the money. Heffernan is about as trustworthy as a hooker’s smile, but his money folds as well as anyone else’s.
I take out my hip flask, drinking until it’s dry. I brought vodka, as I knew it would go down easy. These jobs are starting to take more of a toll. Queasy, thankless tasks given to a suburban savage with a grisly reputation. I redistribute the cash, randomly, into my various pockets and toss the faded Somerfield carrier bag into the weeds.
I check my watch. It’s still early. Early enough for almost anything in Paignton. I haul myself out of the chair and trudge down the covered walkway towards Hellton Towers.
4. The Grass
The lift is working, but I take the stairs up to the fourth floor anyway. The concrete stairwell is pissy, but not too pissy.
I bang on the door with the flat of my hand and take a step back. After a couple of minutes, it cracks open.
“Hello, John.”
“Sod off, Rey. You’re bad for my frigging health,” the man grumbles. His eyes look milky. Inscrutable.
I hold my hands up to show I mean him no harm and smile awkwardly.
He deflates beneath his ludicrous hairpiece when he realises I’m not going anywhere. I wedge my 10 ½ boot in the doorway to stop him slamming the door on me, but he’s already shuffling down the corridor towards his dingy living room.
Back in the day, John Munson used to be employed as a ratcatcher by Torbay Borough Council and had a sideline playing a Bontempi electronic organ in the Conservative Club on Monday afternoons. This – together with the wig – earned him the nickname ‘Hellton John’.
Five years ago, he was banged up for mutilating a girl with a promise of a ‘designer vagina’. The business cards he had printed off at the petrol station used the brand ‘Gash Converters’. The girl barely spoke English, but John videotaped the whole grubby affair – damning himself in the process. I’ve heard he was actually watching the video back when the cops came to arrest him.
***
I follow Munson into the living room. Like the man himself, it has a dank, malodorous quality.
“Drink, Rey?”
I nod.
He fetches two tumblers from his small, greasy kitchenette and dries them on his grotty pullover.
“Drambuie alright?”
“It’ll have to be.”
He pours us both a glass and I raise a silent toast to Arthur Hellton-Smythe and his ugly building.
Munson eases himself into his armchair gently, like he doesn’t want to rupture anything. He fumbles for a pair of Ventolin inhalers – one brown, one blue – on the fold-out card table next to his armchair but uses neither.
He drains his drink and grimaces.
“What can I do you for?”
“You’ve lived here a while, right?”
He nods proudly.
“Most of my life. My mother and my grandmother were the first tenants on the fourth floor back when it first opened.”
“So, you know everyone here?”
He nods.
“Pretty much. Not the squatters, but we don’t get too many of them these days.”
“Anyone here capable of abducting a sex worker?”
He squirms in his armchair, his breathing growing increasingly ragged. I prise the inhaler out of his hand and stomp it under my boot heel.
“Next time I break those fat fingers of yours, and you won’t be playing with anyone’s organ anytime soon.”
“Vinnie!” he splutters. “Vinnie’s got her!”
I place my half-finished drink on the carpet and lean towards him.
“And where exactly can I find Vinnie?”
5. The Pornographer
The 13th floor is where I can find Vinnie. I take the lift this time. It smells worse than the stairwell.
Vinnie AKA Vinnie Porno. Vinnie Videos. VD Vinnie. The name changes depending on who you talk to, and how much they like him.
I’ve never met the fucking bloke, but his reputation definitely precedes him. John Munson told me that Vinnie used to go to Amsterdam three times a year to stock up on new wank-fodder. When the requests started getting more … esoteric, he started making his own movies.
As I bang on the door with my fist, I notice that the ‘8’ in the flat number ‘138’ is hanging loose from one rusted screw. I snap it off and clench it in my fist like a rudimentary set of brass knuckles.
“Who is it?” a voice calls.
“Ganges Curry House,” I shout. “Got an order for Vinnie Videos.”
“I didn’t order any fucking takeaway,” he shouts back, opening the door so he can debate the fact.
To my surprise, he’s wearing a gimp mask and a posing pouch. Ominously, he also has the physique of a power-lifter.
“Oh, sorry, Vinnie. My mistake.”
I lift the fake knuckleduster and punch him where his mouth should be – hard enough to shred gum and splinter teeth.
***
“Where’s Sheila?” I ask him.
Sat on his arse, he moans wordlessly through the mask.
I kick him down the hallway, repeating my question, louder this time.
“Where’s the fucking girl, Vinnie?”
I have kicked him as far as the lounge, when I stop to take a breath.
There’s a heart-shaped bed in the middle of the room and he has tens of thousands of pounds worth of recording equipment and editing hardware stacked against the wall. The room smells of disinfectant and piss, but considering most local porno set-ups involve stained mattresses, Transit vans and second-hand camcorders, Vinnie seems like a pro by comparison.
I slam a sharp elbow into his face, then yank off the gimp mask. Vinnie has a receding hairline with a tufty widow’s peak. He has purple bags under his eyes and saggy, pale skin. His eyes look like deep, dark pools of blood – or some other liquid that won’t come out. No wonder he wears a mask – this shit-bird has the perfect face for radio.
“Come on, Vinnie – don’t fuck me around.”
He gargles hopelessly – blood-streaked syllables sticking to his lips.
Then he clambers to his feet, spitting out loose teeth and clots of viscera as he does so.
That wasn’t part of the plan. Most times they stay down.
His thighs are so meaty they rub together as he shifts position.
I feel my spine pop as he roars and wraps me in a bearhug – his sweaty arms squeezing the life right out of me.
I feel a rib crack. Then a second.
That’s the problem with maniacs – they are about as predictable as a Paignton summer…
***
I club him with my fists, splitting the skin on my knuckles as I make contact with his thick skull.
Despite the blood-loss, the only thing I can really smell is the stink of my own cold sweat.
Eventually, I manage to wriggle free – writhing in a mix of blood and sweat. Vinnie grabs me by my sweatshirt and tosses me down the corridor like a ragdoll. I crash through the bathroom door shattering the black mould-streaked tiling. I slide down the wall into the bathtub, covered in broken tiles and ruined plaster.
Vinnie’s laughter is relentless, mocking, as he follows me into the room. I try to regulate my breathing as I work out my next move, when I hear a dull, thudding sound coming from underneath me.
A flicker of surprise crosses Vinnie’s sinister face. This definitely wasn’t part of his plan.
I clamber out of the bath and remove the lid of the toilet cistern before he has chance to close the gap. I swing the ceramic lid into his cranium and it shatters on impact.
Vinnie sways like a Wetherspoons wet-brain on a bank holiday, before face-planting into the edge of the bath, shattering his remaining teeth.
Thank fuck for that.
I crouch down and remove the side-panel from the bath.
Sheila has been stashed under the bathtub – her scrawny body contorted around the leaky plumbing system. She has been gagged with her own pantyhose. I drag her out of the confined space, into the mess of blood, bone and broken ceramics.
She looks horrified as she takes in my blood-splattered visage.
I try to offer her a reassuring smile, but it hurts when I move my face.
“Don’t worry,” I groan. “I’m one of the good guys.”
She slips in spilled viscera as she scrambles out of the room.
Fuck it.
I roll Vinnie’s meaty, unconscious body under the bath and replace the panel.
My work here is done.
Bio:
Tom Leins is a crime writer from Paignton, UK. His books include Meat Bubbles & Other Stories, Boneyard Dogs and Ten Pints of Blood (all published by Close to the Bone) and Repetition Kills You, The Good Book: Fairy Tales for Hard Men and Sharp Knives & Loud Guns (all via All Due Respect). For more details, please visit: https://thingstodoindevonwhenyouredead.wordpress.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/tom-leins
https://www.amazon.com/author/tomleins1
Punk Noir Press 
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