2009 - Ordinary Thunderstorms (27 page)

“Nothing, nothing,” Ingram said quickly, instantly regretting this course the diagnosis had taken. “Just wondering, perhaps, if a misspent youth was catching up with me.”

“Oh yes, the pox. No, no—we’d sort that out immediately. No mercury baths for you, laddie.”

Ingram left feeling weak and considerably iller than he had when he arrived. He also had a mild headache from the whisky. Fool.

T
HE TARGA CIRCLED THE small dinghy once and then Joey accelerated past it, downstream. The tide was ebbing and Rita heard the throaty change in the engine noise as the screws reversed and the Targa held itself immobile in mid-stream, stern to the tide, waiting for the flow of water to carry the dinghy down towards them. Rita took up position on the aft deck with a boathook poised. She saw a length of the painter that was attached to the bow of the dinghy trailing in the water and reached forward quickly to fish it out. She secured it to a cleat, hauling the dinghy in tight to the Targa’s side, making it fast.

They had been about to go off duty when they were alerted to the abandoned dinghy—it had been spotted floating past Lambeth Bridge—and they had cruised upstream, Rita in the bow with the binoculars, looking for it. She saw it emerging from the shadow cast by Waterloo Bridge—it was barely eight feet long, a stubby, beamy pram tender made of dirty pale-blue fibreglass, with low freeboard, designed for short ship-to-shore journeys or jetty-to-jetty work, with one thwart, two rowlocks but no oars, as far as Rita could see as she tied her final half-hitch. In the well was a bundle of grey polythene tarpaulin and two inches of brown water slopping about.

“Give me a second,” she shouted to Joey, picking up a length of dock rope. Feed out a little extra line, she said to herself, we can tow it in, don’t want this dirty old pram scraping our neatly painted sides. She knelt on the deck, reached down, slipped the end of the rope through the shackle in the bow and was about to knot it when the tarpaulin moved and she gave a short scream—more of an instinctive yip of alarm—but to her intense annoyance, all the same.

Something, somebody, was stirring under the tarpaulin and in a second it was flipped back to reveal her father.

It took only another split second to register that it wasn’t Jeff Nashe, at all—just another stubbly, gaunt-faced, elderly man with a frazzled grey pony-tail.

“What the fuck—” the man mumbled, in a daze, rising to a kneeling position, looking across the water at Somerset House, as if suddenly struck by the austere classical geometry of its river fafade. He swivelled round to stare at her and Rita caught the half-deranged gaze of a man near the end of his particular road. Rita stretched out her hand and helped him aboard, smelling that unique sour reek of the long-unwashed, the foetor of poverty.

“Thanks, darling,” he said, as she steadied him. Now she was close to him she saw that he wasn’t that old, really—late thirties, early forties—but toothless, the lower face squashed, jaws unnaturally close, lips making that unreflecting pursing and pouting that you see in very young babies. She sat him down in the cabin and re-rigged the towing-line, signalling Joey when he could safely move off. She took a blanket out of a locker and draped it round his shoulders, sitting down opposite him.

“I didn’t nick it,” he said. “Just crawled in for a kip. Stone the crows, got a shock when you woked me up.”

“Where was that, then? Where you started your kip.”

“Ah,” he thought, pouting his wet lips, rubbing his chin with the knuckles of his right hand. “Hampton Court.”

“You’ve come a long way,” she said. “Let’s save it for the station, shall we?”

“Ain’t done nothing wrong,” he said petulantly, hurt at the implication. He looked away from her, sniffed and tightened his blanket round his shoulders, freeing the rope’s-end of his pony-tail with one hand as he did so, a gesture that brought her father’s face back to her again. She felt a sudden worry-tug of melancholy in her chest, thinking of Jeff, old and vulnerable, then immediately consoling herself with the thought that she would always be there to look out for him, make sure he was safe and well. But that was no consolation, she realised, pondering the nature of this situation, as it spoke of a future she didn’t wish for in the slightest.

She stepped out on to the aft deck and needlessly resecured her towing-rope, looking at the tender lurching and sliding in the Targa’s wake. She didn’t want to think of herself getting older, still living on the
Bellerophon
. Thirty, forty…The longer she stayed the harder it would be to move out one day, however much she routinely threatened to do so when her father made her angry. Not being with someone, not having a relationship, inevitably brought these thoughts on. When she’d been with Gary she never fretted morbidly or fearfully about her future. Gary had asked her out on a date and she wondered whether she should go—things between them could start up again, she realised, as easily as she had brought them to a stop.

She turned and looked at the toothless man, now berating Joey with his troubles, a dirty finger jabbing at his back from between the blanket folds. Gary wasn’t ever going to be right for her, she realised, that much was clear, and she would make a big mistake going back to him just for some temporary security and confidence. She was young and attractive to men, she knew. Some lucky bastard was out there waiting for her and she would know it when he showed up—wasn’t there a song about that? She searched her memory for the words and the melody and the prospect of her inevitable future happiness cheered her up, suddenly. She looked at the toothless man with pity, now—what brought a person down to that kind of state? He had been somebody’s sweet little baby, once, dandled on a loving knee, repository of maternal and paternal hopes…What terrible mistakes had he made? What tricks had fate played on him? How had he fallen so low and helpless?

She turned away and looked back at the river as they swept under Blackfriars Bridge. Shakespeare had had a house in Blackfriars, she remembered, someone had told her that. Only one bridge across the Thames in those days—lots of boats, though, packed with boats. She smiled to herself, glad that her spirits were lifting again, happy to be part of the river and its timeless traffic.

W
HEN ADAM WOKE ON Saturday morning, the smell—the smell of stale monkey smoke—almost made his stomach turn. Vladimir had found himself incapable of waiting until the weekend to party, especially with rocks of high-grade monkey in his pocket, and so Friday night had been designated the moment to celebrate his new name, his bank account, credit card, his sofa and TV, his salaried employment as a hospital porter at the Bethnal & Bow NHS Trust—and his new flat-mate and lodger, it went without saying. Adam hadn’t joined him in smoking monkey but had drunk a lot of powerfully strong lager in an attempt to show willing, to demonstrate that he too was happy to get shit-faced on intoxicants. They had watched TV in an increasingly bleary, verbose and incoherent daze (they both added free-associating commentary, simultaneously)—they were watching a documentary about mountain climbing, as far as he could remember—Vladimir smoking and drinking, Adam drinking and drinking—until Vladimir roused himself somehow and lurched off to his bedroom, pipe in hand.

Now Adam turned over, the leather sofa squeaking beneath him like a nest of fledglings, and he saw that the TV was still on, though soundless. Groomed, smiling people relaying news of world events. He sat up, immediately aware of his foul mouth and dull headache, and went through to the bathroom to wash his face and clean his teeth. He pulled on his jacket and put on his shoes before knocking on Vladimir’s door to let him know he was popping out for a spot of breakfast. He thought he heard Vladimir give a muted groan in reply, but couldn’t make out if anything intelligible had been said. He didn’t want to even try to imagine how Vladimir must be feeling this morning—he suspected there had been a few more pulls at the monkey-pipe before unconsciousness had claimed him.

Adam bought a newspaper, found a caff and ordered tea, toast and a Full English breakfast (two fried eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and chips) and duly consumed it. Replete, and feeling marginally better, he wandered off to Mile End Park and thought he might just lie down on the grass for a minute or two. Three hours later he woke up and staggered home to Oystergate Buildings.

Vladimir still wasn’t up and this time he didn’t reply when Adam knocked. Adam watched horse racing on TV for a while and made himself several cups of tea. The kitchen was marginally better furnished: Adam had bought a kettle, saucepan, two mugs, two plates and two sets of knives and forks—like an impoverished young couple setting up their first home, he thought. There was no fridge, as yet, so the milk was kept on the window sill.

He sipped his fourth mug of tea wondering, thinking about what to do. He could live on here in Oystergate Buildings, he supposed, certainly for a while, and continue his profitable begging life. He was earning more as a part-time beggar than Vladimir would in gainful employ as a hospital porter and, moreover, he had plans for some more audacious variations on the ‘lost blind man’ sting that served him so well.

Or perhaps he should leave the city and go north, as he had told Mhouse—actually go to Edinburgh, to Scotland. They had blind people in Scotland—he could beg as well there as here. But there was something about London that he needed, he realised, something basic and fundamental: he needed its size, its great sprawling scale, its millions of denizens, the utter and protective anonymity it provided. He thought about the 600 people a week that went missing in this country, the boys and girls, the men and women, who walked out of their front doors, closing them behind them, knowing they would never return, or who climbed out of back windows and ran off into the night to join that vast population of living ghosts that were The Missing. Two hundred thousand missing people—and most of them would be in London, he reckoned, subsisting, like him, under all the categories of social radar—living underground, undocumented, unnumbered, unknown. Only London was big and heartless enough to contain these lost multitudes, the vanished population of the United Kingdom—only London could swallow them up without a qualm, without demur.

No, he thought, he would take it—in line with the cliche—one day at a time. As long as Vladimir kept his monkey habit under control (no police raids, thank you) he was safe enough in Oystergate Buildings. Life could continue in its reliably haphazard way. Thinking of Vladimir, he made him a cup of sweet tea and knocked again on his door.

“Vlad? I’ve made some tea, mate.” He pushed the door open. “Let’s go and buy some—”

It was immediately obvious that Vladimir was dead. He was lying on the mattress, twisted round, one arm flung wide as if reaching for one last time for his monkey-pipe and smoking gear. His eyes were open and so was his mouth.

Adam stepped back out of the room and closed the door. He was trembling so much that tea was sloshing out of the mug. “Fuck, no,” he groaned out loud, “no, no, no.” Cursing his misfortune, his stinking bad luck—and then guilt overwhelmed him: the horrible thought came to him that he might have saved Vladimir. When he’d gone out for breakfast he was sure he’d heard Vladimir moan something. Perhaps he had been alive then,
in extremis
, but alive and was calling for help. If he’d gone in at that point he might have been able to help—summon a doctor, call an ambulance. But all this retrospection was pointless, he realised. He set the mug down and went back into the room. He knew he should leave Vladimir’s body untouched but, all the same, he closed his eyelids with a fingertip, pushed his mouth shut and straightened him out, positioning him supine on the mattress with his arms by his side. Now he looked as if he were sleeping—sort of. The complete and total inertness was the give-away: the absence of even the tiniest movement, the chest rising and falling, nostrils flaring, the little physical tics of vivacity we all produce unreflectingly, inadvertently, that show we are alive.

Adam supposed that Vladimir must have monkey-smoked his way to a massive cardio-vascular trauma: his weak heart succumbing to an attack brought on, perhaps, by one hit of the pipe too many, one final, dizzying, drug-buzzing, adrenalin surge that had overwhelmed him. The faulty heart valve that his kind, generous neighbours and fellow villagers had thought they had paid to have replaced, now fatally malfunctioning. And so Vladimir in his beatific drug-stupor had passed on. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad way to go, Adam thought, as he covered him with a blanket and went out for a long reflective walk.

It should have felt stranger living in a flat with a dead friend lying in the next-door room, Adam considered, but once Vladimir had been ‘laid out’, discreetly covered and the door firmly closed, Adam found that hours could pass without him once thinking about the corpse in the bedroom.

He had decided not to do anything hurriedly or rashly—just wait and think, plot and plan, take his time—in order to see if he could come up with a course of action that would allow Vladimir’s body to be properly removed and buried and, at the same time, not draw anyone’s attention to the fact that he, Adam Kindred, on the run and wanted for murder, had been staying in the flat. Not easy. He thought all through Sunday and the only notion he developed was that of simply walking away and later making an anonymous telephone call to the authorities. Vladimir knew none of his neighbours in Oystergate Buildings, not even in the two flats on either side of his—he hadn’t been there long enough, so no one would miss him or come unexpectedly calling. Adam himself reckoned that ‘community spirit’ in Oystergate Buildings was on the low side, anyway, not to say moribund. Sunday passed by, slowly. Adam walked the streets of Stepney, went to the cinema and saw a bad film, bought a pizza and took it back to the flat where he ate it while watching television.

On Monday morning, having come up with no new bright ideas, he decided to leave and packed up his few possessions again in their plastic bags. He wondered where he should go: he was tempted to return to the familiar security of the triangle by Chelsea Bridge but was immediately aware that however familiar the place was, its security was no longer on offer: the police had raided it; the ugly man from Grafton Lodge mews knew about it. No, he would simply have to find somewhere similarly secure—there must be somewhere else in London where he could hide up.