2009 - Ordinary Thunderstorms (33 page)

“It’s not compulsory,” she said.

“No, I’d like that,” he said with a grateful smile. “Very much. That would be great.”

T
HE ITALIAN RESTAURANT WAS still there—why wouldn’t it be?—sitting in its Chelsea side street with its yellow awnings. A man in an apron—a waiter—was hosing down the pavement outside as Adam walked past and inside other waiters were setting up the tables for lunch. Adam goaded his memory, thinking back to that evening. It seemed to him as if it had taken place in another century, or in a parallel universe. But everything had started then—the fact that he was standing here now was all to do with that encounter with Philip Wang, his fellow diner. He had seemed preoccupied, ill at ease; he remembered him dropping things, at one stage dabbing his perspiring forehead with a napkin. And of course he left his file, hidden under the adjacent table. He had looked like a man with a lot on his mind. But what kind of stress—how acute? Had he done something wrong? Stolen something, perhaps? And yet when he’d called up to say he had the file and was bringing it round Wang had sounded relieved but relatively calm, had even asked him up for a drink…

Adam turned away and walked through the back streets towards the river. If it all began with Wang then he needed to find out more about the man and what he did. Did he work for the government? Was he some ministry whistle-blower? Perhaps he was linked to the secret services himself and had found out something he shouldn’t? Was he selling state secrets? Adam shook his head: conspiracy theories multiplied incrementally. Start with the facts: Philip Wang was a consultant at St Botolph’s Hospital—perhaps the trail began there.

Adam took a seat on the bench on the wide section of the pavement at the beginning of Chelsea Bridge, checking to see if there was any activity in or around the triangle. He wandered past the gate a couple of times, waiting for a gap in the traffic. All seemed quiet. A power-walking couple engaged in intense conversation marched by, and when they were well past, he climbed over the gate and pushed his way through the bushes to the clearing.

He felt strange being back, acknowledging the huge changes his life had undergone since he had first camped out there. So much had happened to him: it was as if he were packing years of living into fraught, dense weeks; determinedly racing through a whole life’s catalogue of experiences as fast as possible, as if time were running out. He stood for a while, hands on hips, taking things in, slowly, deliberately. There was more litter scattered around and he felt a sense of proprietorial outrage, picking up a piece of blown newspaper before crumpling it up and letting it fall. He knelt down and ripped back the turf that covered his cash-box and removed
£,200
and the Wang dossier. He paused for a moment, looking at the list of names and the incomprehensible jottings beside them. There was no doubt in his mind—this was where he should start next.

Sitting on the Tube heading back to Stepney, he found himself thinking about the policewoman, Rita Nashe. She was tall and rangy with a lean face—pretty, but one that looked almost mannishly strong when her hair was up. When her hair was down she seemed quite different—he remembered the frisson he’d felt when she came into the coffee shop—she didn’t look like a policewoman at all. And at this he rebuked himself: as if there were a generic template of looks that applied to policewomen. You might as well say he looked like a typical hospital porter. No, he realised, it was because he had seen her in a uniform first, that day at the MSU morgue—he had to remove the uniformed Rita from his memory bank and replace it with the image of the pretty, tall young woman in jeans and a fleece, with her brown hair down on her shoulders, sitting opposite him in the coffee shop, picking the beads of fruit from her muffin, leaning back and smiling. It had all seemed very normal and easy—being Primo Belem changed everything, the risks that he had worried about never materialised. He brought her face back into his mind—Rita’s face. Hard to tell what her figure was like under the fleece…He was glad she’d been the one to ask him for a drink—he wouldn’t have had the nerve, however much he might have liked the idea.

C
ITY AIRPORT DID NOT improve on further acquaintance, Jonjo reckoned, as he took his seat as close to the stairs down from the cafeteria as possible, had a sip of his cappuccino and began to do the puzzle in the newspaper. SREIBGMAR. Four-letter words, and longer, all with an ‘R’ in them; GRIM, GRAB, RAGE…He looked up to see Darren approaching. Jonjo’s smile of welcome was not warm and he noticed that Darren ventured no smile in return—more of a wince, a frown—the bearer of bad news, Jonjo guessed.

“Better make it quick, Dar, I got a lot on. I’m getting close.”

“This has nothing to do with me, Jonjo, you have to know that.”

“Yeah, of course. Spit it out.”

“You’re off the Kindred case.”

This was a real shock—he hadn’t been expecting this—just more bollocking, more pressure. He kept his face still, somehow, though he felt his guts loosen. This was serious: no way he could go to the toilet now.

“You must be fucking joking me.”

“No, Jonjo. I told you: the heat on this one is massive. They can’t understand how some poxy university bloke is still out there. Why can’t you find him?”

“Because he’s
clever
, precisely because he’s a poxy university bloke and not some wanking loser,” Jonjo said with controlled vehemence. Then he added: “Who’s ‘they’, by the way?”

“I don’t know,” Darren said, pleadingly. “I never know—haven’t a fucking clue.”Jonjo believed him, but Darren went on, “There’s layer upon layer upon layer above me. I don’t know who’s sending me these messages, these instructions. I get paid—I just do what I’m told.”

“OK, OK. Cool.”

Jonjo sat for a while, thinking, letting his anger build. Then he said, “Well, the upshot is you’ll let Kindred go. I told that Rupert-arsehole, ‘Bob’, that I was close. Now, I’m even closer. You take me off of this and Kindred walks free. You tell ‘them’ that.”

“There’s another plan. Hold on.” Darren took out his mobile phone and made a quick
sotto voce
call.

“I told him to wait outside,” Darren said, apologetically. “I wanted to see you myself, first.”

A minute later Jonjo watched as a big bloke came up the escalator to the cafeteria: dark hair shaved close and a big drooping moustache, like he was in a ipyos western.

“This is Yuri,” Darren said.

Jonjo looked at Darren incredulously as if to say—
what?

“Yuri was in Spetznaz for twelve years. Chechnya, counter-terrorism—”

“Fanbloodytastic,” Jonjo said. “Does he speak English?”

“I speaking English,” Yuri said.

“Just tell him everything what you know,” Darren said. Jonjo could feel how uncomfortable and embarrassed he was. He looked down at his puzzle—the word AMBERGRIS formed mysteriously in front of his eyes. What the fuck was that? He looked up and told Yuri all he was prepared to let him know.

“Kindred was living on the Shaftesbury Estate, Rotherhithe—Flat L, Level 3, Unit 14—for some weeks with a prostitute who went by the name of ‘Mhouse’. Kindred now has long hair and a beard and he goes by the name of ‘John’. He isn’t there any more and the prostitute,” he paused, “has run away.”

“Thank you,” Yuri said slowly. “I go to this Shaftesbury. I asking questions—I get answers.”

“Good luck, mate,” Jonjo said coldly, standing. “Nice to see you, Darren. Good luck to you too.”

Darren looked a little hurt, unhappy with the guilt-by-association. He rose to his feet and slipped Jonjo a packed envelope.

“Half your fee. There are no hard feelings—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Move on.”

Jonjo strolled out of the cafeteria without looking back.

Bishop Yerni paused and looked out at his sparse congregation as if searching for some encouragement, some zeal.

“Imagine—imagine you are John, the true Christ, and the Romans are closing in, with their swords and their spears. What do you do? And then your disciple, Jesus, the carpenter’s son, steps forward. Lord, he says, let me pretend to be the Christ—I do it for the cause. While they arrest and torture me you can escape to continue the struggle, to spread the word.” Bishop Yemi paused. “It’s a superb plan, John says. Jesus is taken, he dies on the cross, the Romans think they have their man. Meanwhile John escapes to the sunny island of Patmos where he writes Revelation. It’s all there—read the book of John. Only the true Christ could have written this book. Only the real son of God!”

It’s a very interesting point, Jonjo thought, sitting in the front row with a ‘John 1794’ badge on his chest. Makes a lot of sense. Brave man, that Jesus bloke, sacrificing himself like that. Jonjo thought further: it must have helped you, also, while you were hanging on that cross, with nails through your hands and feet, knowing that your leader had escaped and outwitted everyone. The words ‘escaped’ and ‘outwitted’ chimed unhappily with his own recent preoccupations. He sneaked a look at his watch—the bishop had been going for forty minutes already. He felt a little exposed sitting in the front row—the only new ‘John’ that evening. He glanced behind him at his fellow Johns, a small congregation of scumbags and halfwits, so he thought, but was encouraged to think that Kindred had been here, in this very room—that Kindred had been a John also, only 191 places ahead of him in the John-queue. He was on to him, people here must have known him, must know where he lived—where he was living. He smothered a yawn with the back of his hand. The bishop had now moved on to the evils of short-selling and of risky speculation on global stockmarkets, quoting from the Book of Revelation to support his argument and bolster his scorn. He could certainly talk, that Bishop Yemi, Jonjo conceded—but bloody hell, how much longer?

They were served steak and kidney pudding for supper and remarkably tasty it was, Jonjo thought. Excellent grub for a hungry man. In his pocket he had Kindred’s reward poster with a heavy beard shaded on to the photograph with a felt-tip pen. He showed it to the other three junkies sharing his table but they claimed not to recognise him.

“Never seen him,” one of them said.

“He’s a John like us. Friend of mine,” Jonjo said. “He used to come here—I’m trying to find him.”

“Never seen him,” the junkie repeated.

“Nah,” said another.

As the meal ended and, as people began to leave, Jonjo mingled with the departing Johns, showing the picture to as many as he could, but had no success, just shrugs of apology and shaken heads. He stepped outside the church: there had only been twenty or so in the congregation that night; if he was the 1794
th
John then he was canvassing only a tiny number. He strode off, unbowed—he’d just have to come back and try again.

He sat behind the wheel of his taxi-cab and started the engine. He was still feeling anger, he realised, a sense of betrayal, shocked at the peremptory way he’d been removed from the Kindred case, a case that should belong to no one else but him. A clear vote of no confidence—he was a failure in their eyes—whoever ‘they’ were…

And what was that mustachioed berk, Yuri, going to achieve? He might tip Bozzy off that Yuri would be prowling round The Shaft. Bozzy and his mates could lead him a merry dance while Jonjo Case, in the meantime, quietly and thoroughly followed his nose and brought them Kindred. In the same way, it struck him, that Jesus had taken the heat for John. A nice analogy, he thought: then gratitude would follow, certain reinstatement, a significant cash bonus. He smiled to himself as he pulled away from the kerb—he should just firm up, the Kindred trail was warm and getting warmer and one day one of these arsehole Johns would recognise him. It was simply a matter of time.

T
HE PURPLY-TAUPE, ALL-IN-ONE, ZIP-UP ‘action suits’, as they were known in St Bot’s, were a great improvement on the 1980
s
-style commissionaire look of the epaulettes and matching ties of Bethnal & Bow, Adam considered. In his action suit Adam felt like a paramedic, someone empowered, who might have sprung from a hovering helicopter or a skidding 4×4, ready to administer first aid, give help, rescue, save a life. The fact that he was going up to the de Vere Wing to pick up a file of invoices to deliver to the medical secretaries in Accounting didn’t diminish his vague sense of himself as a significant, albeit minor, cog in the great machine—the medical Leviathan—that was St Botolph’s. All the staff secretly liked their funky jumpsuits, whatever shade they were. The design guru who had come up with the scheme clearly understood human psychology better than most psychologists. Even the cleaners took more pride in their work, thanks to their acid-green overalls, as they fought the good fight, the unending battle, against MRSA, C.
difficile
and other bacterial infections.

As the lift approached the de Vere Wing’s floor, Adam told himself to concentrate. This was his sixth or seventh visit to de Vere in the two weeks he’d been at St Bot’s—Philip Wang’s domain—and he was beginning to be recognised by the staff and develop the bantering relationship with them of a familiar, even though there were over a hundred porters at St Bot’s—theatre, departmental and outpatient—on duty at any one time. “Hey, Primo,” people were starting to say; “Prime’s here.” He’d been offered a cup of tea on his last visit. The aim was to become a routine presence, part of the transient furniture, someone that no one was surprised to see.

The transfer from Bethnal & Bow had been surprisingly easy to effect. Rizal, one of the senior porters, had a brother, Jejomar, who worked at St Bot’s. It was one of the facts of British medical life that all hospital portering services were understaffed, hence the reliance on agencies to make up the shortfall. Primo Belem had been warmly welcomed: as a trained porter with good references and a CRB clearance he had already benefited from a marginal salary rise (another £200 per annum) and hints had been dropped by management that there was a clear promotional route available to him, should he wish to pursue it. A few evening courses to follow, some basic administrative training in human resources and he could move up several levels with ease—the portering world was his oyster.