Ordinary Thunderstorms

by William Boyd

  She walked carefully back through the flat to the main door where she clicked on her PR and called the station duty officer at Chelsea.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ Vikram asked.

  3

  UNDERPANTS OR NO UNDERPANTS? Ingram Fryzer pondered to himself, staring at the long rank of two dozen suits hanging in the cupboard in his dressing room. He was wearing a cream shirt with a tie already knotted at the throat and his usual navy-blue long socks, socks that came up to the knee. Ingram had a horror of showing white hairy shin between sock-top and trouser cuff when sitting down, legs crossed – it was in some ways the besetting and prototypical English sartorial sin. Sartorial sin, he smiled to himself, or should that be sartorial shin? No matter, when he sat in meetings with rich and powerful men and saw them shift legs, re-cross their thighs and expose two inches of etiolated shank, he found he immediately thought less of such people – this kind of lapse said something about them. However, the matter of underpants was an irreducibly personal issue – it was unthinkable that anyone in his company would ever guess that their chairman and chief executive officer was naked beneath his perfectly tailored trousers, that his cock and balls hung free.

  Ingram deliberated further on this pleasant dilemma – underpants or no underpants – imagining the potential stimuli that awaited him that day. He loved the way the glans of his penis would rub against the material of his trousers, or snag itself for a second on a raised seam – at such moments you could never be sure that a semi-erection might spontaneously occur and of course this possibility raised the stakes, particularly if you were about to go in to an important meeting. The whole texture – every nuance – of the business day was immeasurably different if you were naked beneath your trousers. Une journée de frottis-frotta, as a French friend had termed it, and Ingram enjoyed the sophisticated pretension this title conferred on his little vice. He had made his mind up – no underpants it would be – and he selected a Prince of Wales check suit, pulled on the trousers, fitted his red braces to them and slipped on the jacket. He chose a pair of dark-brown, tasselled loafers and went downstairs to the full English breakfast that Maria-Rosa had waiting for him promptly at 7.30, Monday to Friday.

  On the way to the office he asked Luigi to stop the car at Holborn Underground station. He often did this – rode the Tube to work for a few stops while Luigi took the car on – particularly on days he wasn’t wearing underpants. He liked to mix with the ‘people’, look around him at the various types of human being on display and wonder what kind of lives they led. Not that he had any contempt for them or felt any comfortable superiority – it was simply a matter of anthropological curiosity, intrigued by these other members of his species – and he thought that, as a person, he was all the better for it, as no one else he knew in his social and economic class did the same. For ten minutes or so he became another faceless commuter on the Central Line going to work.

  He stood in the crowded compartment looking around him, curiously, innocently. There were two pretty-ish girls not far away, in suits, listening to their music, plugged into their tiny earphones. Smartly dressed, jewellery, quite heavy make-up … One of them glanced blankly at him, as if aware of his gaze, and then looked away. Ingram felt his cock stir and he wondered if this might be a day for Phyllis also. My god, what was wrong with him? Did other men in their fifty-ninth year think so constantly of sex? What was that expression, that term? Yes – was he an ‘erotomane’? Not the worst category of sexual offender in which to be classified but sometimes he wondered if there were something clinically wrong, or diagnosable, about his obsessions … Then again, he reflected, as he walked up the steps leading out of Bank Station and saw the glass tower that contained his company – CALENTURE-DEUTZ plc – on several of whose floors some 200 of his employees were settling down to their day’s work, perhaps such feelings, such urges, were entirely healthy and normal.

  He knew something was wrong as soon as he saw both Burton Keegan and Paul de Freitas waiting for him in the lobby. As he strode towards them he consciously began to run through the worst possible scenarios, preparing himself: his wife, his children – maimed, dead; an industrial accident at the Oxford laboratories, contamination, plague; some terrible stockmarket upheaval; a boardroom putsch – ruin …

  ‘Burton, Paul,’ he said, keeping his features as impassive as theirs, ‘good morning. It can only be bad news.’

  Keegan glanced at de Freitas – who would be the messenger? Keegan stepped forward on de Freitas’s nod.

  ‘Philip Wang is dead,’ Keegan muttered in a low voice. ‘Murdered.’

  4

  ADAM WOKE AT DAWN. Seagulls chanted and screamed in the air above him, flying low, swooping aggressively overhead, and for a brief moment he thought – oh, yes, of course, I’m dreaming, none of this happened. But the cold in his legs, the overall feeling of dampness and the itch of uncleanliness made him remember, forcefully, the fraught conditions he was in. He sat up, feeling depressed and almost tearful as he reflected on what had happened. He looked out at the river and saw that it was at full tide, brown and strong. He felt hungry, he felt thirsty, he needed to piss, he wanted a shave … The urination requirement was easily satisfied – and as he zipped up his fly he recorded bleakly that this was the first time in his entire life that he had ‘slept rough’. It was not to his taste.

  He pulled on his raincoat, picked up his briefcase and pushed his way through the dewy bushes towards the Embankment and watched the first commuters whizz by on the near empty road, beating the rush-hour. He jumped over the fence, snagging his raincoat on the railings and – once freed – wandered off. It was cool this early in the morning and Adam felt the chill, as he paused and brushed the leaves and grass off the skirts of his already stained raincoat. He had to eat.

  In a café on the King’s Road he ordered a ‘Full English Breakfast’ and quickly consumed it. He checked his wallet – notes and coins to the value of £118 38 pence. He thought that if he were going to turn himself in he should at least look presentable and so went to a chemist where he bought some disposable razors and shaving foam – now his hunger was satisfied he found he wanted to shave, more than anything – and rode the Underground from Sloane Square to Victoria Station where he paid £2 for admission to the new ‘executive washrooms’. He shaved carefully and closely and combed his hair, sweeping it back from his forehead so that it sat thickly in place, the scores from the tines of the comb visible like corduroy – it already seemed unpleasantly greasy after his night in the open. On the station concourse he asked a transport official where he could find the nearest police station and was given directions to one close by on Buckingham Palace Road, a few minutes walk away.

  Finding it easily, he paused a moment to gather his strength before confidently climbing the steps to what seemed a newish police station – all angular caramel brick blocks and bright blue railings. He had deliberately not thought about what was about to ensue – or what would be the immediate consequences of his inevitable arraignment. There was too much unhelpful, damning evidence against him, that was obvious, indeed that was why he had run away last night. He bleakly assumed he’d be arrested and kept in cells, before he was assigned a lawyer. He knew that he looked far too conveniently like the perpetrator – they wouldn’t just listen to his version of events and let him go back to his hotel and wait for their call. And then, thinking of a telephone call, he suddenly remembered the job, the senior research fellowship, that he’d been interviewed for yesterday afternoon. They had promised to phone him … There had been no call on his cellphone – rather, his ‘mobile’ – since the interview. He checked his phone for a second and saw there were no texts, other than spam messages from the phone company. His texting life had been more or less moribund since he had left the States – no banter or chatter from friends, colleagues or students any more – the silence of guilt … Still, he was curious to know about the Imperial College job. Had he been selected, he wondered, did they want him? He felt
rueful, hard-done-by: whatever happened to him next was hardly going to look impressive on his curriculum vitae.

  He stepped through automatic doors into a small lobby with a reception desk facing him, empty. A running red illuminated sign above it informed him that ‘the station officer will be with you shortly’. A man and a woman sat waiting, also, staring silently at the floor. Adam stayed standing and turned to check his reflection in one of the glass-covered noticeboards – full of warnings, instructions about domestic violence complaints, job opportunities in the Metropolitan Police, legal notifications and photofit pictures of various villains. His eye swivelled instantly, uninstructed, to find his own name displayed there: ‘ADAM KINDRED – WANTED. SUSPICION OF MURDER’. Even more alarming than seeing his name was seeing his face – a familiar image of himself, cropped from another photo (there was a stranger’s shoulder in the bottom right-hand corner). Adam immediately knew where the photo had been taken as he contemplated his younger, smiling self – at his wedding to Alexa. He knew, also, that he was wearing a tailcoat, a grey waistcoat and a silver silk tie, in the English tradition, even though the wedding had taken place in Phoenix, Arizona, and all the other men present were wearing dinner jackets and bow ties. There had been some gentle mockery. He looked at his younger self: the smile was broad, his hair was considerably longer and a thick forelock, displaced by the buffeting desert wind, hung over his brow, rakishly. Self-consciously, Adam smoothed back his shorter, greasier hair. He looked different now – leaner and more worried. Then he thought: where in Christ’s name had they found the picture so quickly? His father? His father was in Australia with his sister. No … He stepped back, shocked – it must have come from Alexa, his ex-wife. He thought through the chain of events again, bitterly: no wonder they were on to him so fast – the name and address in the ledger at Anne Boleyn House led them straight to the Grafton Lodge Hotel (Seamus and Donal knew all about the job interview); then emails, telephone calls to his former employer, family members. A photo provided by the ex-wife (‘Adam? Are you sure?’ – he could hear her voice, just not quite protesting enough), then scanned and sent electronically to London in a fraction of a second. Maybe they’d contacted his father as well? … He began to feel sick. He could see it from the police’s point of view – they were only looking for one man, the man who had signed himself in to Anne Boleyn House, the last man to see Philip Wang alive, the man whose fingerprints were on the murder weapon – an open and shut case. Find Adam Kindred and you have your murderer.

  Adam felt his chest tighten and clench as he first outlined and then built the compelling circumstantial case against himself once more. He could be placed in the murder room at the hour of death – at the very moment of death. His fingerprints would be everywhere. His clothes were flecked with the victim’s blood. He was the obvious suspect – anyone, everyone, would think he had killed Philip Wang. But where was motive? Why would he have wanted to kill this eminent immunologist? Why? … Crime of passion was the explanation that came unhappily to mind. Later, he reasoned that it had been the sight of his young guileless face that had made him act as he did. Something about his evident blamelessness was enshrined in that photograph and he could not voluntarily sully it. He told himself to stop thinking and turned away from the image of this happy, smiling, carefree, younger Adam and walked through the sliding doors, back down the steps (past three uniformed policemen, ascending, who were talking animatedly amongst themselves) and headed west, turning right along Pimlico Road towards the notional safety that Chelsea offered.

  As he walked away from the police station – briefcase in hand, raincoat flapping, feeling hot, almost feverish with alarm – Adam realised he had come to a crossroads. No, not a crossroads – wrong metaphor – it was a forking path and, moreover, as dramatic a forking path as anyone could encounter in their life. He could (a) turn himself in and submit himself to the due process of law – charged, held, bail refused, on remand, trial, verdict – or he could (b) not turn himself in. He was a naturally law-abiding person – he held in unreflecting trust the legal institutions of the countries he had lived in – but now, suddenly, everything had changed. It wasn’t ‘respect for the law’ that seemed to him paramount and fundamental, any more. No: it was freedom that governed this instinctive choice – his personal freedom. He had to stay free, at all costs, if he were to save himself, somehow. To remain free seemed the only course of action he could and should take. It was odd, this philosophical epiphany, but he was immediately aware that the individual freedom he currently possessed was unbelievably precious to him – precious because he now realised how tenuous and vulnerable it was – and he did not propose to surrender it to anyone, even temporarily.

  And besides, he told himself, as he trudged along, feeling hotter with each pace, he was innocent, for god’s sweet sake. He was an innocent man and he did not want to be accused of a murder he had not committed. How simple the situation, how clear the choice he had made – had to make – the only choice possible for him. He felt no dilemma, no doubt – anyone in his hideous, rotten position would have done the same. And there was this other factor, this ‘X’ factor, that had to be considered. Who was the man in the mews who knew his name and who had the pistol with the silencer? He must have been the killer, surely? The man on the balcony whom Adam had frightened off when he came into Wang’s flat …

  He passed a pub on his left and was tempted to go in and drink something but, along with his new belief in personal freedom, he was aware of how expensive everything was in this city – he had to hoard his remaining funds as he figured out what to do next while he waited for the real guilty man to be identified and apprehended.

  He sat down on a bench in a small leafy square and looked blankly at the statue of the boy Mozart. What had Mozart to do with this part of London? … Adam forced himself to concentrate: perhaps the best course of action would be to lie low for a while – a few days, a week – in order to see how the case was developing. What was that expression? Go ‘underground’ – yes, what if he went underground for a few days and let the other leads in the case receive their proper follow-up? He could cover events through the newspapers, or on TV and radio – then the thought came to him abruptly: what if Wang had been gay? Wang and Adam met in a restaurant, struck up a conversation and were witnessed there, Adam went to his apartment, Wang made a pass, they quarrelled, fought – everything got shockingly, terribly out of control … He felt a weakness come upon him again, looked at the boy Mozart and tried to summon up a Mozart aria, any tune to distract him, but the words that came into his head were of a rock song, from his youth: ‘Going underground, going underground / Well the brass bands play and feet start to pound’.

  The lyrics were prescient, he decided, he would go underground rather than meekly surrender himself at a police station and be accused of a crime he hadn’t committed. Give it a few days, he told himself, other clues will emerge, the police will consider other scenarios and suspects. The Mozart came to him, finally, the overture to Cost Fan Tutte – it always cheered him up. He rose to his feet, humming the overture quietly to himself: time to buy some essential provisions for his new life.

  Later that day, as dusk was gathering, Adam threw his three bags of possessions over the railings of the Chelsea triangle and swiftly followed them. He sought out the area where he had slept the night before and examined it more closely: there were three large bushes here and some mid-sized trees, a sycamore, and some kind of holly, near the sharp apex of the triangle – the western end, furthest from Chelsea Bridge – forming a small clearing, and one of the bushes seemed almost hollow at its base, he could easily crawl in beneath its lower branches. He crouched down – yes, if he slipped in here he’d be effectively invisible from the Embankment’s traffic, Chelsea Bridge and any passing boats on the river.

  He emptied his carrier bags and contemplated what he had bought: a sleeping bag, a groundsheet, a folding spade, a small gas stove with extra gas canisters, a torch, a met
al cash-box, a knife-fork-spoon set, two bottles of water, a small saucepan and half a dozen tins of baked beans. He had been frugal in his purchases, buying only the cheapest items and those on sale – he had £72 left and some small change. He could hide here in the triangle during the day and venture out at night, as required, to scavenge – he could live, after a fashion.

  He made a shelter in the hollow bush, breaking a few branches to clear a bigger space around him and draping the groundsheet over other branches in an inverted ’V, creating a squat, rough tent-shape. He unrolled the sleeping bag and pushed it in under the raised groundsheet – yes, he would be dry, protected from all but the heaviest rain. He looked round, suddenly, hearing a police car shriek by on the Embankment, siren whooping, and smiled to himself – all of London’s police would be looking for him, CCTV footage would be being studied, further calls would be going out to his ex-wife and his family in Sydney, Australia, distant relatives and old acquaintances would be hunted down. Anybody seen anything of Adam Kindred? How they would laugh about this adventure once it was over! He was a wanted man but he was nowhere to be found. Having made his bed he lit his gas stove and heated up his baked beans. He spooned them into his mouth from the saucepan, hot and succulent – delicious. One day at a time, Adam, he said to himself: keep your mind as empty as possible. He had gone underground.

  5

  OIL OF CLOVES, JONJO CASE reflected: who would ever have guessed, who figured that one out? Picking up the small bottle, he dripped a few beads of oil on to his forefinger and massaged it on and around his damaged tooth – he felt the sharp pain dull, almost instantly. The big filling had fallen out when that cunt, Kindred, had hit him in the side of the head with the briefcase. The other tooth had shot out clean, as if a dentist had pulled it. When he came round fully he saw it there on the cobbles and picked it up and put it in his pocket – evidence.