The Burning Hill Read online

  All he had to do was avoid getting taken for a clueless day tripper with a pocketful of cash, just pass himself off at a glance. And yet he wanted to get in deeper, disappear altogether. He had reason enough, but sometimes it was hard work. A night out in Copacabana was easy.

  Most of the time.

  Over the noise of music and talk in the bar, he hadn’t caught what the Dutch girl had said. He leaned forward.

  “I said, give me a break,” she shouted into his ear in her perfect English.

  He tilted back to look at her face, trying to decide whether or not she was messing around. Pale-skinned, her cheeks were flushed with alcohol, her face screwed up. Had she misconstrued what he had said?

  What had he said?

  She was certainly fresh off the plane, ready to start ticking off her South American tour list. He wasn’t sure if she’d told him that or if he’d made the assumption.

  Copacabana was meant to be easy. Drinking caipirinhas was easy. Sweet and sharp, sugar and lime, masking the strong cane spirit beneath.

  He was too many in to come up with a winning response, but he had to do something. He cracked out his best smile. She scowled and turned away, moving off through the crowd.

  He wasn’t big on smiling and forcing one didn’t seem to have landed it anywhere near the mark.

  He drained his glass self-consciously. He would get another. What was her problem anyway?

  He joined the knot of people waiting to get served at the bar. He had exchanged a few words with a handful of locals in this place before, and he knew the girl behind the bar by name. She was at the other end of the bar but he managed to catch her eye, nodding and giving her a wave. She turned to serve someone without acknowledging him. His skin prickled. He told himself she probably just hadn’t seen him.

  The Brazilian hip hop thrashing the speakers and the white noise of shouted conversation around him were beginning to grate. He had less tolerance for noise these days.

  He drummed his fingers on the bar. He wasn’t near to getting served. Turning his head, he looked around the place, and then spotted the Dutch girl coming back through the crowd. She didn’t look so annoyed now. It was only when he moved into her path that she noticed him, checking, the scowl returning. She made to step around him.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She kept on going.

  He just wanted to apologise. For whatever it was he had said. He held her arm, clumsily.

  “Get your hands off me, asshole.” She threw the remains of her drink in his face, whipped her arm away and marched off.

  A few people looked on, nudging and chuckling. He wiped a hand across his face, the alcohol stinging his eyes.

  “Okay, you must go now.” It was a short Brazilian guy, speaking in English. The bar manager. He had an armful of empty bottles and a stack of dirty glasses in either hand.

  “What?”

  “You upset girls in my bar, you must leave,” the manager said. Lots of people were looking now.

  “You’re kidding. I didn’t do anything.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Everyone’s drunk.”

  “Go now or I get the security to make you.”

  Jake’s angular features were unusual, they might belong here or there, difficult to place. In a nation of endless variety, he should have fitted in, but he felt alien.

  He didn’t belong in this place, or in Copacabana or Ipanema or anywhere. It was stupid to think he could just turn up, rent a place and make it his home.

  “Okay, you win,” he said. He stepped back, pushed his empty glass across the bar and walked out.

  The day had been a winter hangover interfering with the start of summer: torrential rain in the morning, the afternoon cloudy and grey. Drains overflowed and raw effluent ran down from the favelas into the sea, turning it brown. Bathers and surfers replaced with a dirty froth and turds and sanitary products.

  Colours that were more England than Brazil. That was unexpected. He had escaped England before, but not to get away from colours or even the shithole town he had grown up in. The place he had gone to then was a lot sweatier than Brazil, and not just because it was hotter. His short time there was made up of immovable slabs of poke-yourself-in-the-eye boredom, a healthy slice of exhilaration and a squirt of terror. He had thrived on the mix, until the day it had gone belly up. He could have returned to England a minor hero. Instead, he had chosen notoriety, before cutting out to Brazil to wash all that stuff away. Tonight, he had picked exactly the wrong place to do that.

  He crossed the road and the famous black and white waves of the beachfront paving. The beach had been deserted all day. It would be deserted now. He wasn’t sure of the time but it was after midnight when he had last looked at a clock, and that had been well before the evening had started to go south.

  He held on to his Havaiana flip-flops, cool damp sand beneath his feet as he walked toward the crashing surf, wandering beyond the glare of the beachfront floodlights. The dark side of Copacabana beach was in his top three places to avoid, but there was a knot of anger that had festered in his gut for as long as he could remember. And he was letting it tighten. He wanted to push at the world a little, to see if it would push back.

  He kicked at the sand, watching the breakers for a while. He decided it wasn’t such a bad place to be. Maybe he just needed to avoid people. In a city. He smiled, and it felt genuine, even if it maybe didn’t look it. The smile broadened. The knot of anger was softening and he turned for the light and beauty of the city.

  Two young guys strode out of the gloom, trying to screw down the tension that was crackling off them into menace. There was no mistaking what they were, where they were from – the kind of favela kids Jake was in the habit of crossing the road to avoid. But there was no road to cross, no crowd to absorb him. The world had pushed back.

  Jake knew nothing of the Candelária massacre but, eleven years after Vilson and Babão had survived it, after surviving everything thrown at them since, the world had driven them onto Copacabana beach on this night in search of an easy target. Grafting, hustling, begging, stealing – they had done it all to work themselves off the street, ground it out to make themselves a home in the favela. And, still, they were never far from the next beating, the next cop or gang member coming for them.

  If Jake had known Vilson as a child, he would probably have recognised the same skinny, round-shouldered kid with the shock of hair. But all he saw was a pair of random favela kids coming at him, the skinny lead kid pulling a revolver from the waistband of his baggy shorts.

  Jake’s blood instantly ran cold, the salty breeze slipping over his skin as he rapidly sobered. He was scared and his legs turned to rubber. His mind wasn’t working, just berating him for being out here, for not making a run for it the moment he had seen them. He might have made it back to the clean, safe light of the beachfront, with its untroubled stream of bar-hoppers and loose traffic. Stupid, stupid.

  And then he was through it. Like a plane climbing through a storm, engines screaming, bursting clear of the black cloud. The lightning was all around, every nerve end in his body fizzing, but he was calm, clear. Sighted. He dropped his Havaianas in the sand and raised his hands to shoulder level in surrender, palms turned slightly inwards. Ready to strike.

  He saw Vilson’s skinny hand shaking as he pointed the revolver at his face. Jake could sweep the barrel away with one hand, chopping the other into the kid’s wrist, and he would be disarmed before he even had a chance to think about pulling the trigger. Action is quicker than reaction. They had drummed that into him. And he was stronger than this kid, but there was also the one behind him.

  The revolver was a spindly relic. Serious players, the kind that might pull the trigger just because there was no good reason not to, would at least carry something chunkier, more likely a semi-automatic. This kid was no psycho. Let it play out a bit more. No need to go hero yet.

  “Passa a grana,” Vilson rasped, scragging the front of Jake’
s shirt as he rammed the revolver into his cheek and then forced it into his mouth. The sight on top of the barrel chipped a front tooth and gouged the roof of his mouth. A flare of pain. He felt the sliver of tooth on his tongue and caught the taste of the barrel, sour metal and salty dirt, before the blood doused it. Jake’s eyes narrowed. Anger. Always there, like a dozing pack of dogs ready to stir. But he had to hold onto the dogs. Just let them pull a little. That was when he functioned best. Right on the edge.

  The kid looked maybe seventeen or eighteen, less than a decade behind Jake. His bootleg Flamengo AFC shirt, with its horizontal red and black stripes, smelled of cooking oil and smoke. His partner stood back a little, shorter and twitchy-looking.

  “Passa a grana,” Vilson repeated, followed by a helpful translation in a thick Carioca accent: “Give the moh-ney.”

  The menace was sliding away from the kid, the tremor in his hand rattling the barrel against Jake’s teeth. He had guessed right. This kid just wanted to get his money and get home. Jake’s eyes softened a little. The dogs quietened. He was going to be okay.

  Babão spoke for the first time, “Puxa o gatilho, ‘lek! Mostra pra ele que ‘cê tá falando sério.”

  Jake’s alcohol-fugged brain had to extract the words and reassemble them, Vilson catalysing his translation as he pulled back the hammer with its double-jointed click. Babão had instructed Vilson to show he was serious, and he was becoming more agitated. But if he was carrying a gun he would have pulled it by now. It was still okay.

  The blood was still surging around Jake’s body but rationality was in full control. The dogs lay down. He almost felt regret. He went for his pocket, slowly, and pulled out his scruffy fold of notes for the skinny kid to snatch. It was an acceptable amount and there was no one else silly enough to be out on the beach to panic them.

  Vilson turned slightly to address Babão over his shoulder, the gun barrel rasping over Jake’s teeth. Adrenaline was twitching Jake’s muscles, but he resisted the urge to make any movement, even swallowing. Blood and saliva were pooling at the back of his throat. He was struggling to control his gag reflex, the overflow dribbling from the corner of his mouth. He swallowed.

  The gun went off.

  A brutal kick, Jake’s world exploding in a violating blitz of colour and noise. Blackness.

  Swirling light. He was coming to, his grip on consciousness weak.

  This was death, or the very last moments of life.

  Hollow, sick ribbons of vertigo only anchored by the cool sand he found himself lying on. Burning snaps and sparks tracing across the dark, cloudy sky. His ears were ringing.

  The right side of his face was pulsing, throbbing, burning. He could smell cordite. He moved a hand toward his face, the nausea hitting before he even touched the slick of sticky, hot blood and smashed flesh.

  Faces were looking down at him. People. Gasping. Shocked. Rapid talking. Talking amongst themselves. Gringo. Talking to him.

  A calmer face. A bright light shining in his eye. “Você está me ouvindo?” Can you hear me?

  He thought he could hear gunshots, distant, from an unreal world. Shouting. More shots. Screaming.

  The sounds rolled and stretched. It was all very far away now. He was dropping away into darkness, the light no more than a distant star. He was going.

  Chapter 3

  Vilson

  The two boys ran in the shadows along the beach for a couple of hundred metres, before dinking back up onto the beachfront paving.

  “Stash the piece, man,” Babão hissed.

  It was only then that Vilson noticed its weight in his hand. He was in shock. He hooked the revolver into the back of his shorts.

  “And slow down.” Babão tugged at his shirt. “We’re out for a walk, just like anyone else.”

  Vilson Bonfils Lima knew they weren’t fooling anyone but he forced himself into a stroll alongside his lifelong friend, his trusted friend. Jose Carlos Machado da Silva, better known by his nickname, Babão. Babão – the dribbler – because of the spittle that came from his mouth as he spoke.

  There were shouts behind them, people stopping to see what had happened on the beach, giving other people the confidence to stop and stare. Brake lights flared in the loose traffic as people started to stream across the road from the bars.

  Rolling along the beachfront toward Vilson and Babão was a worn-out 4×4, a police patrol truck marking a beat along Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon. A nice, quiet evening for the three cops riding in it. Bright lights and pretty girls.

  “Christ, it’s the cops,” Vilson said. The patrol truck was less than a hundred metres away, approaching the braking traffic, the supply to the opposite carriageway now choked off.

  “Don’t stare,” said Babão. “They haven’t got the lights on, they don’t know. They’ll just pass.”

  Vilson kept his eyes fixed on the little mosaic tiles of the Copacabana paving, the black and white waves drifting and swelling in his nausea. He had to keep his eyes down.

  The truck must have passed now. He couldn’t help himself, glancing up. It was drawing level. The big cop in the passenger seat wasn’t looking him in the eye, he was focused on the uneven bulk at the back of his shorts, where the butt of the pistol was just poking out from under his football shirt.

  Vilson was already moving as the cop pushed his arm out of the open window, twisting around as the truck rolled past. The cop fired without issuing a challenge. The angle was awkward and the shot snatched, fizzing harmlessly into the soft sand somewhere between the road and where the big Atlantic rollers were crashing into the beach.

  Vilson and Babão split wordlessly, running into the three lanes of traffic that were backing up to a halt. The truck swung around, bouncing violently over the kerb, scattering a handful of pedestrians, who were yelping and screaming having shrunk to the ground at the sound of the gunshot. There was no space for the police truck to weave through the oncoming vehicles. It was stuck. The youngest of the three cops burst out the back of the vehicle and came after Babão. The big cop booted open his door and got off another shot at Vilson.

  Less wayward than the first, it thunked into a car radiator a few strides behind Vilson’s legs, steam blowing from the cracked grill.

  Vilson jinked through the oncoming traffic, running a line between the second and third lanes. Cars swerved and crunched into one another like crazed bullocks in a pen.

  He scrambled over a bonnet blocking his way, a bullet buzzing close by his head. Another punching into the windscreen. Dropping low, he made fifty quick metres, almost at the outer range of the cop. He was able to run flat out now. The dread of the thump of a round in his back charging him.

  He cut across the wide, tree-lined central reservation and the emptying lanes of the opposite carriageway, and he was away, sprinting down a street alongside the Copacabana Palace Hotel.

  Four hundred metres of hard running got Vilson to an entrance to the favela, an alleyway at the end of a street of expensive apartment blocks, with their high, spiked railings and security guards. He waited for as long as he dared, but there was no sign of Babão. He had maybe taken a different route into the favela.

  Panting for breath, he slowed to a walk on the hard dirt of the alleyway, a pungent mix of urine and rotting garbage on the cool evening air. There were still lights on in some of the shanty homes with their corrugated-iron roofs and ramshackle hollow-brick-and-concrete construction, the bright slabs of light only serving to deepen the surrounding shadows. The needs-must housing sprawled up the lush hillside above the city in a shambolic pattern. Sanitation and water supplies were rudimentary, with electricity tapped off the grid, crazy tangles of lumpy wires twisting away from electrical arteries on the fringes of the favela.

  Vilson passed one or two people in the dark alleyways. Sheathed in sweat, it was a struggle to control his breathing as he laboured up the steep path. He couldn’t have any gang members seeing him looking like he had run from something. But no one challenged him, t
here weren’t even any kids on lookout duty.

  He passed some of the better places, satellite dishes and water tanks on the roofs, air-con units lodged in the walls. They would have more good things inside, fridges and cookers maybe. These people most likely had jobs down in the city. A wage. This was the good stuff that Vilson and Babão might one day be able to buy – something real sitting above the city with its untouchable riches, a fantasy place.

  They talked all the time about making a better life. “You’re a worker,” Babão would say. “Man, you’re a worker.”

  Vilson would take on anything to make a wage. Babão stuck to collecting his cans and bottles and cashing them in for recycling, while he dreamed up bigger ideas. They thanked God for the good days and got through the bad, always scraping the pennies together. And it was never enough. Babão could never quite break with his need for crack.

  “Quit bitching and nagging at me. I’ll get a wife if I want that,” he would say. “I work long hours, man, I only do a little bit to kick me on.”

  Always a little bit.

  Their shack was amongst a collection that was the lowest of the low. The irony that they were perched at the very top of the favela with the greatest views of the city was not lost on them.

  Vilson flopped inside, not even making the pile of old sacks they used for bedding. They were beyond the reach of electricity up here, a makeshift paraffin burner their only source of light. There were a couple of ruined pans and a tin of cooking oil in one corner. Alongside them was a plastic washbowl that contained a thick tablet of soap. The door was a scuffed plywood board that was pulled across the entrance.