Ordinary Thunderstorms

by William Boyd

  Raymouth took more notes as Rollins read out the details. Rita looked round as more colleagues came in and the swell of banter grew.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Rollins said. ‘One for you, Nashe. Reports of a man killing a swan at low tide by Chelsea Bridge yesterday morning. Your neck of the woods.’

  ‘A swan?’

  ‘It’s illegal. Don’t die of excitement.’

  ‘I’m in it for the glamour, Sarge.’

  She and Joey went back out to their boat and put on their buoyancy vests. Joey went through the checklist and started the engines while Rita undid the moorings, cast off and then stepped aboard as the Targa pulled away from the jetty into mid-stream.

  Because the tide was high the Thames looked like a proper city river – like the Seine or the Danube – the river broad and full, perfectly apt and proportional to the embankment walls and the buildings on either side and the bridges that traversed it. At low tide everything changed, the river fell between twelve and twenty feet, walls were exposed, weed draped the now visible piles of the bridges, beaches and mud flats appeared and the river looked like the Zambezi or Limpopo in times of drought. Correspondingly, the city suffered aesthetically, but this morning the river brimmed and Rita felt her moodiness begin to disappear and her heart quicken with pleasure. This was why she had transferred to MSU, she realised, hauling the fat rubber fenders on board as Joey accelerated off, the two big Volvo diesels firing up with a bass roar, heading up river, Bermondsey to the port side, Tower Bridge up ahead, the clear morning light making the windows of the City’s office blocks flash brazenly, the breeze whipping her hair. HMS Belfast coming up, then London Bridge, Tate Modern, the Globe Theatre. What a way to earn a living, she said to herself, widening her stance on the deck, gripping the guard-rail with both hands as Joey speeded up, the spume of their bow wave almost indecently white, drops of river water bouncing off her uplifted face. She held herself like this for a second or two, breathing deeply, feeling her head spin before she went down below to the forward galley to brew up two mugs of strong tea.

  The Chiswick fire had been intriguing. A barbecue on deck of a Bayliner cruiser had been left untended, sparks from which had set small fires going on the boats moored alongside. Lawsuits for damages were pending. Joey and Rita interviewed angry boat owners and took down details – but there was no sign of the careless cook. His Bayliner was now semi-burnt-out, sunk to the gunwales from the weight of the water from the fire brigade’s hoses. Piecing together the various accounts witnesses supplied, it seemed he had lit the barbecue, had a violent row with his girlfriend, she had run off and he followed, forgetting about their soon-to-be-chargrilled Sunday lunch. Joey was pretty sure it was illegal to have a barbecue on a moored boat anyway – no naked flames. Anyway, they had the man’s details – the Chiswick police could track him down while they would serve notice to remove his burnt-out boat within seven days or face further penalties.

  On the way upstream to Chiswick they had passed the Bellerophon and she had given the klaxon a toot but there was no sign of life on deck. In fact in the dozen or so times she’d passed her home since she’d begun at MSU she’d never seen her father. He was sulking below, she knew: somehow her new job with the river police irritated him more than when she’d been on the beat in Chelsea and elsewhere. She didn’t care – she was happy, she was enjoying her new job too much – he’d come round to it one day, or not. Up to him.

  As they motored under Albert Bridge, almost coasting downstream on the ebb tide, Rita remembered what Rollins had told her about a man killing a swan. She told Joey and he steered them over to the Grosvenor College stairs on the Chelsea shore.

  ‘You check it out, Rita,’ Joey said. ‘I’ll write up the great Chiswick barbecue fire.’

  She strode along the Embankment, back on familiar ground, past the Royal Hospital (where the Flower Show marquees were now all but dismantled) and stopped at the gate of a small triangle of waste ground on the west side of Chelsea Bridge. How many times had she come past here, she thought, and never noticed this place? The man who had phoned in the complaint had come through under Chelsea Bridge before he had seen the man with the swan, so the beach, as such, had to be on this side. The gate was locked so Rita climbed over the railings and went down some steps that led towards the river. At the base of the bridge she found the usual graffiti, and a fritter of condoms, needles, beer cans and bottles. Peering over the edge of the Embankment wall she could see the small mud beach exposed by the ebbing tide. She looked downstream – if she went down to the beach she would almost be able to see the Bellerophon from here. Why would anyone kill a swan? Some junkie out of his skull? Some drunk waking up, showing off for his drunken mates? She moved away from the bridge, pushing through bushes and low branches towards the apex of the triangle. She noted how dense the undergrowth was, a little sliver of rampant wasteland in douce Chelsea. She ducked under the branches of a sycamore, eased carefully by a holly bush, shimmied through a gap between two rhododendrons – and stopped.

  A small clearing. Trampled grass, flattened grass. Three rubber tyres set on top of each other to make a seat. She hauled a dirty sleeping bag and groundsheet out from under a bush, and from under another found a wooden orange box with a camping gas stove and a saucepan in it. She put everything back as she had found it. Kneeling, she found feathers and evidence of scorching on some of the longer grass stems. Gull feathers, not a swan’s, she realised: to some people all large white birds looked the same. She stood up: somebody had killed, plucked and no doubt eaten a seagull here in the last few days. She looked around – she was perfectly screened from the Embankment and from anything crossing over Chelsea Bridge. There was a view of the river between two of the bushes but no one looking back from a passing boat would see anything. She searched some more but found nothing except wind-blown litter – nobody ever came to this bit of the triangle, clearly. Whoever had been staying here would be perfectly safe from prying eyes.

  She made her way back to the road, thinking: ‘had been staying’? Perhaps, ‘was still staying’? This site didn’t suggest a homeless person dossing down for the night or two – this was more of a hiding place. Somebody was hiding on this triangle of wasteland at Chelsea Bridge, someone desperate enough to catch and eat a seagull at dawn one day. Perhaps it might be worth coming back one night and searching the place – see what or who they turned up. She’d run the idea by Sergeant Rollins. It was their case, after all, killing a ‘swan’ on the river was MSU business.

  14

  THE LIGHT OVER THE western sector of the Shaftesbury Estate was a milky blue, the early morning sun brightening the brickwork of the topmost storey – the sixth – and beginning its slow creep down the façades of the remaining five, casting sharp geometric shadows as it moved, making the apartment blocks look stark, but at the same time austerely sculptural – exactly the aim and purpose that the architect, Gerald Golupin (1898—1969), had in mind as he had drawn up his visionary design for this complex of social housing units in the 1950s, until someone else, to his abiding chagrin, had named it the Shaftesbury Estate (Golupin had proposed something more Bauhausian – MODULAR 9, in reference to its nine apartment blocks and three wide quadrangles – in vain). The Shaft, in certain lights, could still appear severely impressive: hard-edged, volumetrically imposing, a triumphant melding of form and function – as long as you didn’t look too closely.

  Mhouse, of course, was thinking none of these thoughts as she plodded up the stairs to her flat – Flat L, on Level 3, Unit 14. She was tired; she had drunk a lot of alcohol and had snorted many lines of cocaine over the last six hours or so as well as performing a variety of sexual acts with two men – what were their names? Still, she had £200 folded flat in the sole of her white PVC boot. It had been one of Margo’s specials. She and Margo showed up at this hotel in Baker Street at midnight where two men were waiting for them in a double bedroom (nice bathroom en suite) – Ramzan and Suleiman, that was it – and so the long night had
begun. Ramzan and Suleiman, that was them, yeah, old blokes, but clean – but which one was which?

  Luckily, Margo had called her at lunchtime and so she had been able to park Ly-on with her next-door neighbour, Mrs Darling. She was always happy to look after Ly-on (Mhouse gave her a fiver) but it couldn’t be done spontaneously, she needed a few hours notice, at least.

  Mhouse rang the bell and, after a two-minute delay, Mrs Darling opened it. She was in her sixties, with a misshapen, lumpy body and a thin head of dyed auburn hair. She had no front teeth.

  ‘Aw, hello, Mhousey, sweet,’ she said. ‘Tired out, eh?’

  ‘Them late shifts is killers, Mrs D.’

  ‘You want to complain – way that factory works you people. Why can’t they pack veg at a proper hour?’

  ‘It’s the early markets, see?’

  ‘Still: it’s a living, I suppose – in these sad times of ours. Here’s the little fella.’

  Mhouse crouched and kissed her son’s face – which was still blank and neutral with fatigue, roused from his bed so early.

  ‘Hello, baby,’ Mhouse said. ‘You been a good boy?’

  ‘Not a peep out of him. Slept like a log, little lambkin.’

  Mhouse slipped Mrs Darling her fiver.

  ‘Any time, dear,’ Mrs Darling said, ‘such a quiet, well-behaved little chap.’ She paused and ruffled Ly-on’s hair, then looked meaningfully at Mhouse. ‘Haven’t seen you down the Church, recent.’

  ‘I know, I know. I need to go. Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘God loves you, Mhousey, never forget. He doesn’t loves us all but he loves you and me.’

  Mhouse led Ly-on along the walkway to their flat and unlocked the door. Inside she filled the kettle to make a cup of tea, then switched it off. She felt the urge to sleep encroaching on her like onrushing night, a tiredness so acute she could hardly stay on her feet.

  Ly-on had turned on the television and was searching the channels looking for a cartoon.

  ‘You want some happy-flakes, baby?’ she asked, thinking: please say yes.

  ‘Yeah, Mum.’

  ‘Yeah, Mum, what?’

  ‘Please happy-flakes me.’

  Mhouse filled a bowl with sugar-frosted cornflakes, added some milk and a few glugs of rum. Then she crushed a 10 mg Diazepam under the blade of a knife and sprinkled its dust over the flakes. She handed it to Ly-on, who was now curled up in a nest of cushions on the floor in front of the TV. She sat down beside him and watched him eat his happy-flakes. When he’d finished she took the bowl from him and stuck it in the sink with the other dishes. She slipped her £200 into the stash under the floorboards in the toilet and, when she came out, saw that Ly-on was now fast asleep. She turned the TV down and settled him more comfortably on the cushions, then went into her room, took two Somnola and smoked a joint – she wanted to be out for twelve hours, minimum.

  When she woke it was four o’clock in the afternoon. Ly-on was still sleeping but he’d wet himself.

  That night, Mr Quality-He-Delivers knocked on the door at about 8.00.

  ‘Who is it?’ Mhouse said, through the letter-box.

  ‘Quality coming,’ was the reply.

  ‘Hey, Mr Q, come on in,’ she said, unlocking the door. Mr Quality was perhaps the most important man in The Shaft, for all sorts of reasons, none of them particularly violent. No one who dealt with Mr Quality wanted him to be angry with them so he very rarely resorted to main force. He was very tall and thin and Mhouse knew that his real name was Abdul-latif He stepped into the room, seeming twice as tall as Mhouse, and anyone might have thought he was about to go off running as he was wearing a dark maroon track suit and very new trainers, box-fresh. Only the fact that he had silver rings on all eight fingers and two thumbs made this supposition less than likely.

  Mr Quality lounged against the kitchen wall, looking around him, proprietorially – it was his flat, after all. He was always lounging, was Mr Q, Mhouse thought, as if he supposed it made him seem not quite so embarrassingly lofty.

  ‘Hey. Ly-on, man. How it hanging?’

  Ly-on looked up from his TV. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I fit like new car.’

  Mr Quality chuckled. ‘Sweet-sweet. You keep chillin’, man.’

  Mhouse beckoned him away from Ly-on. ‘Where we at?’ she asked.

  ‘Saktellite TV, rent, gas, water, electric …’ he pondered. ‘£285, I say.’ He smiled at her, showing small perfectly white teeth in mottled pink and brown gums. ‘You dey get problem?’

  ‘No, no,’ Mhouse said, thinking thank the good lord for Ramzam and Suleiman. ‘Everything working. Sometime the light he go out but I know it’s not you fault.’

  ‘The electric he go be difficult. We have many problem. Gas easy, water easy, but electric …’ he winced, tellingly. ‘We done get wahallah. They chase us – ah-ah.’

  ‘Yeah. Bastards.’

  She went into the bathroom for her stash, then pretended to rummage in the cardboard box beside her bed and opened and closed the cupboard doors before coming back with his £285. That left her with about £30 – and she owed Margo … she’d have to go out again tonight. Still, the good thing about Mr Quality was that he could provide you with anything – anything – as long as you had the money. In Mhouse’s flat the gas, water and electricity had been cut off months ago but Mr Quality had reconnected her within hours. Every now and then Mr Quality paid to have sex with her – or rather, ‘paid’ in the sense that he always offered her money that she always declined.

  She handed the £285 over and Mr Quality paced about the flat, checking it out as if he were a prospective buyer. Mhouse kept it as clean as she could – she had very little furniture, but she had a broom and she always kept the floors swept.

  ‘You have spare room, here,’ Mr Quality said, opening a door into the second bedroom. There was a mattress on the floor and a few cardboard boxes with clothes and old toys in them. ‘I can get you lodger – £io a week. No worry, clean nice person. Asylum, no speak English.’

  ‘No, I’m fine at the moment. Keeping busy, business is good,’ she said, trying to appear casual. ‘Things are OK, going fine. Yeah, fine.’

  ‘You go let me know.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Thanks, Mr Q.’

  After Mr Quality had gone she gave Ly-on his supper – mashed banana and condensed milk with a slug of rum. She crushed a Somnola into the mix and mashed it further with a fork.

  ‘Mummy’s got to go out to work tonight,’ she said as she handed him the bowl.

  ‘Mummy working too hard,’ he said, spooning the banana pabulum into his mouth.

  ‘You go to toilet if you need pee-pee,’ she said. ‘Don’t do it in you pants.’

  ‘Mum – don’t saying that.’ His eyes were on the screen.

  She kissed his forehead and went to change into her working clothes. No point in waiting, she thought, might as well get the cash as soon as possible. She put on a cap-sleeved T-shirt with a red heart across her chest, wriggled into her short skirt, pulled on her zip-up white boots, picked up the umbrella, checked her bag for condoms and fastened the keys on the long chain to her belt. She locked the door on a sleeping Ly-on – she’d be back in a couple of hours or so, she reckoned, no need to alert Mrs Darling, and headed along the walkway to the stairs.

  As she was leaving The Shaft, heading out to the Rotherhithe shore and her usual beat, she saw a black taxi-cab pull up, its light off. No one got out while it sat for a minute or two at the kerb. Who’s ordering a black cab at The Shaft? she wondered as she made towards it. Brave fool.

  The driver stepped out as she walked past – big bloke, ugly face with a weak, cleft chin. She glanced back to see where he was going and saw him lock his cab and wander into the estate.

  15

  THE VET HAD BEEN – what was the word? – contemptuous, yes, almost contemptuous when Jonjo had told him what The Dog’s routine diet was. He was a young fellow with a square of beard under his bottom lip and a single dangling earring – some
thing Jonjo didn’t expect to see in a Newham veterinary surgeon.

  ‘He eats pretty much what I eat,’ Jonjo had said, reasonably. ‘I tend to cook for two – scrambled eggs and bacon, curries, sausage rolls, pork pies – he really likes pork pies – biscuits, crisps, the odd bar of chocolate.’

  ‘This is a pedigree bassett hound,’ the vet said. ‘Anyone would think you were trying to kill him.’

  Jonjo sat quietly as the vet berated him for his neglect, then told him the sort of food The Dog should and must eat and wrote a list down on a piece of paper and handed it to him. Smug bastard, Jonjo thought.

  He touched his breast pocket and felt the crinkle of the vet’s folded list. The back of his cab was full of tins of special dog food and paper sacks of dog biscuit and fibrous additives; there were pills and suppositories and other types of medication should symptoms appear and complications occur. Bloody expensive too. He’d hand it all over to Candy in the morning. He wondered whether he should give The Dog back to his sister …

  He stepped out of the cab and locked it, contemplating the tall blocks of the Shaftesbury Estate. He ran through his checks: the small Beretta Tomcat between his shoulder blades, snug in a rig he had designed himself; the larger 1911 .45 ACP holstered in the small of his back, one round in the pipe, cocked and locked; knife strapped just above the left ankle. He was wearing an extra roomy leather blouson jacket that perfectly concealed the small prints of his weapons. He had loose, pale blue, stone-washed jeans and yellow builder’s boots with steel toecaps. He eased his shoulders and rotated his head, remembering the last time he’d experienced this adrenalin buzz – when he had knocked on Dr Philip Wang’s door in Anne Boleyn House.

  He walked into The Shaft completely unafraid, calm, ready for anything.

  Jonjo could hear Sergeant Snell’s voice in his ear. ‘The Three O’s, youse cunts!’ Over-arm. Over-react. Over-kill. Number one: you can never have too many weapons. Number two: somebody calls you a name – you knock him down and kick him senseless. Number three: – you don’t just wound, you permanently disable. Somebody tries to hit you – you kill him. Somebody tries to kill you – you destroy his family, his house, his village. Snell always made sure you got the picture. True, these instructions were tailored for violent combat zones but Jonjo had always regarded them as pretty sound counsel for life in general and, by and large, adhering to the Three O’s had served him well, only a few of his overreactions landing him in trouble with the police – but they tended to understand once they learned of his background.