2009 - Ordinary Thunderstorms (19 page)

“Going to a party,” she said. “On a boat on the river.”

“Fabulous,” Adam said. “You look great.”

She looked at him sideways, quizzically. “Are you joking me?”

“No, seriously. You look great.”

“Thanking you, kind sir,” she said, rummaging in her handbag for keys. Adam looked at her hard cleavage and smelt the pungent chemicals of her scent, finding her suddenly extremely sexually desirable—recognising the simple efficiency of her outfit and the messages it was designed to send to people—to men. There was something impish, elvish about her—if you could imagine a sexually alluring imp, Adam thought—and her thin, hooded eyes added to this otherworldly effect.

She paused at the door. “You signing on?”

“Ah, not yet,” Adam said. “But I am making a bit of money, these days.”

“Tugging?”

“What?”

“On the game. Selling your arse?”

“No, begging.”

She thought, frowning. “I got a spare room here, you know. If you want. Twenty a week. Seeing as we go to the same church, like.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine for the moment. It’s a bit pricey for me, to tell the truth.”

“You can owe me.”

“Better not. Thanks all the same.”

“Suit yourself.” She opened the door for them both. “Thanks for bringing back the flip-flops. That’s kind, that is, that’s well nice.”

“It was kind and nice of you to lend them to me. And to tell me about the church. I don’t know what I would have done, otherwise.”

“Yeah, well…What’s being a Samaritan for, eh?” They stepped out on to the walkway and she closed and locked the door.

“Will Ly-on be all right?” Adam asked, unconcernedly, he hoped.

“Yeah, he’ll sleep to tomorrow lunchtime if I let him.”

They walked through The Shaft and then on to Canada Water Tube station. “See you, John, god bless,” she said when they parted and she headed off to find her platform. Adam watched men turn to look at her pass by, saw their eyes swivel and their nostrils flare. He thought he’d pop into the Church of John Christ—he was feeling hungry.

“Soon I getting passport,” Vladimir said. “When I getting passport, I getting job. I getting job then I getting apartment. I getting bank account. I getting credit card, I getting overdraft facility. No more problem for me.”

Adam listened to him almost as if Vladimir were a traveller returned from a distant, fabled land—a low-rent Marco Polo—telling of unimaginable wonders, of lifestyles and possibilities that seemed fantastical, forever beyond his reach. That he had once been a homeowner himself seemed laughable; that he’d had a wallet full of credit cards and several healthy bank accounts an intoxicated dream. He bowed his head and spooned a mouthful of chilli con carne into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully, thinking back. He was sitting at his usual table, Gavin Thrale also present, but no sign of Turpin.

“Where will you ‘getting’ this passport?” Thrale asked, offhandedly.

Vladimir then began a complicated story about drug addicts and drug dens in European Community countries—Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland—where, if an addict looked close to death, on his or her last legs, he or she was encouraged by ‘gangster people’ to apply for a passport. When the addict eventually died, the passport was then sold on to someone in the same age-range who vaguely resembled the deceased junkie. No forgery was involved, that was the benefit, that was the absolute beauty of the scam: they were impossible to detect.

Thrale looked highly sceptical. “How much do these passports cost?”

“One thousand euro,” Vladimir said.

Adam remembered he had once had a passport but he had left it in Grafton Lodge when he went for his interview. No doubt it had been impounded with the rest of his belongings.

“So,” Thrale continued, obviously intrigued. “You get one of these passports but you might have to pass yourself off as…as a Dane, a Spaniard, a Czech—”

“Is no matter, Gavin,” Vladimir said, insistently. “Most important thing is passport of European Community—we all the same now. Is no matter what country.”

“When do you get it?” Adam asked.

“Tomorrow, next day.”

“So you won’t be back here again.”

“Absolutely no!” Vladimir laughed. “I get passport, I get job, I finish with church. I was to training for
kine
, you know.”

“Physiotherapist,” Adam added for Thrale’s benefit.

“Of course. That was when your village in Ukraine collected all that money and sent you here for a heart bypass.”

“Not Ukraine, Gavin. Not bypass, new heart valve.”

Adam finished his chilli con carne—the servings in the Church of John Christ were copious. Bishop Yemi’s sermon that evening had lasted two and a half hours, expatiating further on this concept of John Christ as the leader of a small cell of freedom fighters struggling to liberate their people from the oppression of the Roman Empire. Jesus—loyal lieutenant—had sacrificed himself for John in order that the leader could disappear and the struggle continue. It was all there in the Book of Revelation if you knew how to decipher it. Then he had dozed off for a while—only the hungriest could sit the sermons out with full concentration.

“Anyone see Turpin?” Vladimir asked.

“Probably loitering by some nursery school playground,” Thrale said.

Bishop Yemi appeared at this moment and beamed down at his Johns.

“How’s life, guys?” he said, his smile unwavering, clearly indifferent to their reply.

“Fine, thank you,” Adam said. He felt a strange warmth towards Bishop Yemi: the man and his organisation had clothed and fed him after all.

Bishop Yemi spread his hands. “The love of John Christ go with you, my brothers,” he said, and wandered off to the next table. The congregation had been sparse tonight, barely into double figures.

“Why does the word ‘bogus’ suddenly come to mind?” Thrale said.

“No—he a good man, Bishop Yemi,” Vladimir said, standing. He looked at Adam and made a smoking gesture. “Adam, you want come? I have monkey.”

“Ah, no thanks, not tonight,” Adam said. Vladimir routinely asked him to go and smoke monkey after their evening meal—he must like me, I suppose, Adam thought—and Adam routinely declined.

Later, at the church door, Adam and Thrale stood together for a second, both of them looking up at the evening sky. There were a few fine clouds, tinged with an apricot glow.

“Cirrus fibratus,” Adam said without thinking. “Change in the weather coming.”

Thrale looked at him, curiously. “How on earth do you know that?” he said, intrigued.

“Just a hobby,” Adam said quickly, but he felt his face colouring. Fool, he thought. “Some book I read once…”

“How come people like you and me end up here?” Thrale said. “Hiding behind our beards and long hair.”

“I told you: I had a series of nervous break—”

“Yes, yes, of course. Come off it. We’re both highly educated. Intellectuals. It’s obvious every time we open our mouths—we might as well have ‘BRAINS’ tattooed across our foreheads.”

“That’s all very well,” Adam persisted. “But I cracked up. Everything fell apart. Lost my wife, my job. I was in hospital for months…” He paused. He almost believed it himself, now. “I’m just trying to put my life back together, bit by bit, slowly but surely.”

“Yeah,” Thrale said sceptically. “Aren’t we all.”

“What about you?” Adam said, keen to change the subject.

“I’m a novelist,” Thrale said.

“Really?”

“I’ve written many novels—a dozen or so—but only one has been published.”

“Which was?”

“
The Hydrangea House
.”

“I don’t rememb—”

“You wouldn’t. It—I—was published by a small press: Idomeneo Editore. In Capri.”

“Capri? In Italy?”

“The last I heard.”

“Right,” Adam said. “At least you were published. No small achievement. To hold a book you’ve written in your hand, your name on the cover:
The Hydrangea House
by Gavin Thrale. Great feeling, I would have thought.”

“Except I was writing under a pseudonym,” Thrale said. “Irena Primavera. Not quite the same frisson.”

“Was it in English?”

“It wasn’t called
La Casa dell’Ortensia
.”

“Got you. Are you writing another?”

They had wandered away from the church and were heading up Jamaica Road.

“I am, since you ask. It’s called
The Masturbator
. Somehow I doubt it’ll find a publisher.”

“Hasn’t that been done already?
Portnoy’s
—”

“My novel will make
Portnoy’s Complaint
read like
Winnie the Pooh
,” Thrale said with some steel in his voice.

“But,” Adam said, “if you’re a published novelist, what are you doing at the Church of John Christ?”

“Same as you,” Thrale said, meaningfully. “Lying low.”

Both of them went silent for a while. Adam paused to remove a sticky coin of chewing gum from the sole of his right shoe. Thrale waited for him.

“I used to make a fair living for years,” Thrale said, musingly, “stealing rare books from libraries. Maps, illustrations. All over Europe—posing as a scholar. Some of them extremely rare. Then I was caught and had to pay my debt to society.”

“Ah.” Adam stood up.

“My big mistake, once I was released, was to think I could bamboozle the ladies and the gentlemen of the DHSS—or is it the DWP now? Whoever. Anyway, I was signing on, but simultaneously working at various menial jobs. Somebody ‘shopped’ me, I was spied upon—it’s a nasty world out there, Adam—and my benefits were stopped. I am being searched for—charged with fraud. I don’t intend going back to prison.”

“Hence—”

“Hence my enthusiasm for Bishop Yemi’s fascinating conspiracy theory.”

They had arrived at Adam’s bus stop.

“See you tomorrow,” Adam said.

“How are you getting by?”

“Begging.”

“Oh dear. Desperation.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve taken up my old trade. I steal books—to order, for students.” He frowned. “I just mustn’t get caught again.” His frown turned into a fake smile. “I go this way. I live in a squat in Shoreditch with an intriguing mix of young people.”

Adam watched him saunter off, then he searched his pockets to see how much money he had left. It was a fine evening: he might as well walk home to Chelsea—save a few pennies.

T
HE BURBERRY TRENCHCOAT LAY ON THE CRACKED CONCRETE OF THE Shaft’s N°2 underground car park. Mohammed stood looking down at it, concernedly.

“Don’t get him dirty,” Mohammed said.

Bozzy picked it up and placed it on a gleaming oil spill and then stamped and ground the trenchcoat into the muck with the heels of his shoes. Then he tried to set it on fire with his lighter.

“All right, all right,” Jonjo said. “Take it easy.”

Small flames burned palely on the familiar tartan lining of the trench.

“Fucking kill you!” Mohammed screamed at Bozzy.

“You already dead!” Bozzy screamed back. “How you going to kill me? Suicide bomb?”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Jonjo bellowed—and everyone calmed down.

Jonjo approached Mohammed, who flinched away from him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jonjo said. “Not yet, anyway…How did you get that coat?”

“Like I tell Boz,” Mohammed said. “Three, four weeks ago—I got minicab, right? I minicab driver, yeah?—it was late, I was just going down to the clubs, yeah? Then I sees this geezer, I thought he was pranged—but I see he got cut on his head, yeah?” Mohammed went on to tell his story: how this geezer said he lived in Chelsea and he needed to get back there, and Mohammed, liking the idea of a long journey and a big fare, told this geezer to step aboard. But, when they got to Chelsea, the geezer said he had no money, so he offered his raincoat instead as payment. Mohammed had been very happy to accept it.

“We drove to Chelsea, like. When he says he has to get his raincoat we was a bit suspicious—him being in the waste ground—thought he might be jerking us, thought he might do a runner. But he come back with it and I could see, like, it was a Blueberry raincoat. Class, man, no worries. One hundred quid, easy.”

Bozzy stepped forward and pointed his finger at the small space between Mohammed’s lush eyebrows.

“Lying cunt.” He turned to Jonjo. “We stripped the mim. He don’t have nothing left but a shirt and his knickers.”

“He had cloves on, man. I don’t take no naked man in my cab.”

“Lying cunt!”

Jonjo punched Bozzy extremely hard on his shoulder. Bozzy gave a sharp wheeze of pain and backed off, his arm dangling limp, dead.

“So you dropped him in Chelsea,” Jonjo said to Mohammed. “At a house?”

“Nah. He was sleeping rabbit, next by a bridge.”

Now Jonjo grabbed Mohammed by his throat and lifted him off the ground, his toes just able to touch the stained concrete. Mohammed’s hands gripped Jonjo’s iron wrist, desperately seeking purchase.

“Don’t lie to me, Mo.”

“I swear, boss,” he whispered, eyes bulging.

“Torture him,” Bozzy said.

Jonjo let Mohammed down. He coughed, raked his throat and spat.

“I drop him off. He go into this bit of like waste ground. He come out with coat and give it me.”

Jonjo felt a warmth spread through him. A patch of waste ground by a Thames-side bridge in Chelsea: Battersea Bridge, Albert Bridge or Chelsea Bridge—had to be one of those. Living rough, hiding out—no wonder Kindred had been so hard to find. He looked at Mohamnied, still spitting as if he had a fish bone in his throat.

“So he was sleeping rough by a bridge, was he?…” Jonjo said, benevolence making his voice go ever so slightly husky. He wasn’t going to hurt Mohammed any more. He didn’t need to. “Now, you tell me exactly what bridge you’re talking about.”

Jonjo parked his cab in a small square and walked the half-mile back to Chelsea Bridge. He stood for a while at the railings surrounding the thin triangle of overgrown waste ground, checking to see if there was any movement, any sign of somebody hiding. When he was sure there was no one there he waited for the traffic on the Embankment to slacken and then vaulted over the iron railings. He roved through the triangle quickly—it was bigger than it appeared from the road, and along the bridge side there was a huge old fig tree, of all things. Approaching the triangle’s apex, moving away from the bridge, Jonjo found the undergrowth grew even thicker. He ducked under low branches and pushed through dense bushes and shrubs to find a small clearing. Three tyres were set on top of each other forming a rudimentary seat; under a bush he found a sleeping bag and a groundsheet; under another an orange box with a gas stove, saucepan, a bar of soap and three empty baked bean tins.