2009 - Ordinary Thunderstorms

by William Boyd

She breathed deeply, smelling the strange river smell. She liked working by the river, plenty of dark corners, very few passers-by at night. She didn’t like getting into cars—not after that last time, no fucking way—plenty of quiet places by the river and there was always Margo’s room—extra fiver to Margo—no problem. You get in a car they can lock the door—like that last time. Fucking hell. She paused and lit a cigarette, looking across the river to Wapping on the other side. A boat had gone by and the lights were dancing on the diminishing wake. Lights were pretty, she thought, like someone pulling them on rubber strings, always bouncing back…She unzipped her boot and slid her money in under her instep, zipped it up again, and headed up Southwark Park Road towards The Shaft.

  When she saw him she thought at first he must be a junkie or a drunko, lying under the stair by the car park, half his clothes off. She wandered over, cautiously. He ‘was wearing a shirt, underpants and socks—and there was a smear of blood on his forehead. He was moaning, trying to sit up. She walked a bit closer.

  “Oi. You all right?”

  “Help. Help me…”

  His voice was different, like on the telly, not from The Shaft, surely? She took her lighter from her bag and clicked it on. He had a beard and drops of blood were trickling from a kind of pattern on his forehead. Like a grill mark on a hamburger, she thought. She knew what it was, now, from the reinforced cleated front of a trainer: three bars and the blurred indentation of a logo. He been jumped, this guy.

  “You been jumped,” she said. “They take you clothes?”

  “I assume so.”

  Mhouse didn’t understand.

  “You what?”

  So he said, “Yes, they did.”

  “Where you live,” she asked, “what unit?”

  “I don’t live here. I live in Chelsea.”

  Chelsea, Mhouse thought…My lucky time, my lucky tonight.

  “Wait here,” she said, “don’t move, I help you to home.” She gestured to the man, shooing him back, encouraging him to move further under the shelter of the stairs and watched him huddle up in the darkness, folding his white, bare knees with his arms. She walked quickly across the parched grass of the wide quad formed by the stern rectangle of The Shaft’s many blocks, heading for her unit, and ran up the two flights of stairs to her flat. She looked in on Ly-on, but he was still fast asleep, spark out, and then rummaged in a cardboard box searching for some trousers that would fit the guy who had been jumped. Tall geezer, big man.

  On her way back she called Mohammed on her mobile. Got one, Mo. You be at South Bermondsey Gate, five minute. Then she picked up speed, trotting back to find him, praying he hadn’t wandered off somewhere. He was still there in exactly the same position; he looked up as she whistled. She handed him the pair of cropped cotton cargo pants and a pair of flip-flops.

  “Best I got,” she said. Then she offered him a cigarette but he didn’t want one. So she lit up herself, watching him pull on the trousers slowly, wincing. He took off his socks, stuffed them in the thigh pockets of the cargo pants and slipped on the flip-flops.

  “You come with me, I take you to Chelsea.”

  Mhouse led the man down the side of The Shaft—no one was about—to the South Bermondsey Gate where Mohammed was waiting in his Primera.

  “You got any money?” she asked the man. “Cash?”

  “They took everything—my mobile, my shoes, my credit cards, jacket, trousers, even my tie…”

  “No problem—we’ll get sorted.”

  She opened the rear door and helped him in—he was very stiff after his battering, she knew what it was like—then she slid in the front with Mohammed, who was trying to keep a broad smile off his face, unsuccessfully. She gave him a cigarette and he put it in his shirt pocket.

  “Where we go?” he said.

  “Chelsea. Where you live in Chelsea?” she asked the man.

  “Just drop me at Chelsea Bridge Road, right by the bridge on the Embankment. That’ll be fine.”

  “I take you Parliament Square,” Mohammed said. “You tell me after.”

  They headed off through the dark city, Mhouse glancing back at him from time to time to see how he was coping. He kept dabbing with his fingers at the imprinted shallow cuts on his forehead, looking at the smear of blood on his fingertips.

  “What happened?” she asked. “You remember anything?”

  “I was walking down the street—I was lost, I was looking for the Tube and then I felt this incredible blow on my back. I heard nothing.”

  “Blow?”

  “As if I’d been hit by a car on my back. I fell to the ground and then something hit my head. I don’t know—maybe I hit my head on the ground.”

  “No. They do like a drop-kick to your back—you know? Two feet. Bam. Then another bloke kick you head when you fall down. You never hear nothing.”

  “It’s very kind of you to take me back,” the man said. “I’m most grateful.”

  “You English?”

  “Yes—why?”

  “I thought you maybe come from foreign—like asylum.”

  “No, I’m English…I was born and bred in Bristol.”

  “Where’s that then? London?”

  “No, to the west, about 100 miles from here.”

  “Right.” Mhouse smiled. “What’s your name?”

  “Adam. What’s yours?”

  “Mhouse.”

  She showed him the inside of her right arm: tattooed there, clumsily, unprofessionally, were the words ‘MHOUSE LY-ON’.

  “I’ll be for ever in your debt, Mhouse—my good Samaritan.”

  “Samaritan. I know that. I don’t pass by. I do it for the Lord.” Mhouse stared at him: Adam—young guy, nice-looking guy. The way he talk—like a book, like Bishop Yemi. He talk like that. What was this Adam doing round The Shaft at night? Asking for trouble and he got it. She turned and looked out of the window at the changing cityscape rolling by. They were all quiet in the car for a while.

  “Good driving, Mo,” she said.

  “I drive good, man,” Mohammed said.

  When they got to Parliament Square, Adam directed Mohammed on towards Lambeth Bridge and the Embankment. Mhouse looked out of the window at the river—she found it hard to imagine it was the same river she worked beside at Rotherhithe, it looked different here. Mhouse closed her eyes, tired. Maybe she’d let Lyon sleep until morning: she could smoke some chagga, yeah, call Mr-Quality-He-Delivers and smoke some chagga and sleep well, have breakfast with Ly-on.

  “Here is Chelsea Bridge,” Mohammed said.

  “Just go through the lights,” the Adam-man said. “This is close enough.”

  Mohammed pulled up and put his flashers on. A few cars whizzed by, it was getting late, quieter. Mhouse looking out of the window. Just trees behind pointed railings on both sides. She opened the door and stepped out on to the pavement. The Adam-man followed, awkwardly, stiffening up. Mohammed stayed behind the wheel, engine running.

  “It’s incredibly kind of you—” Adam began.

  “Where you live?” she said, interrupting, suddenly cautious. “Where you house, where you flat?”

  She took in his rueful smile, unaware of the ironies clustering around her innocent question. He gestured behind him at the triangular patch of waste ground between the roadway and the river.

  “Actually, I live there,” he said, still pointing. “I don’t have a home at the moment.”

  “You’re joking me.”

  “Alas, no.”

  Every suspicion stirred in her and came sharply alive.

  “You sleeping in there,” she said. “You gone rabbit.”

  “I’m…I’m in a bit of trouble. I’m hiding. Keeping out of sight.”

  This made sense now—he was lying. “I don’t fucking believe you,” she said. “You scatter my head.”

  “Honest. Look, I’ll show you if you like.”

  He helped her over the fence and he followed—then Mhouse let him lead the way, pushing throu
gh bushes and ducking under branches as her eyes grew accustomed to the strange electric darkness, charged with the cold glow of the street lights from the Embankment. They came to a small clearing between three large bushes and the man—Adam—showed her his things: the sleeping bag, the groundsheet tent, his raincoat, his briefcase, his stove. Mhouse walked around behind him as he explained, her brain going—yeah, typical, my fucking lucky tonight, yeah?

  He turned to her, spreading his hands and said, “Listen, believe me, if I had any money, you’d be welcome to—”

  She punched him—two-fisted—in the gut and then kneed him in the balls. He went down with a high cracked-voice sigh, like a girl. She kicked him.

  “You fucking gambling me, man. You fucking owe me.”

  He kept groaning, holding his groin, as she went through his possessions: sleeping bag, saucepan, gas stove, folding spade. Nothing—homeless shit. She took the raincoat and the briefcase and stood over him, the folding spade in her right hand.

  “You fucking gamble me, man, this is what you get.” She raised the spade.

  Adam stopped moaning and shrank away from her. She thought about hitting him with the spade, do some real damage, but he had called her his Samaritan. And there was something about him—something nice—that she responded to. He was an animal and he needed help.

  “You need help.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. You helped me. Please help me.”

  “I help you one more time. I’m your Samaritan, man, though I can’t not fucking think why after what you done, how you scatter me.”

  “Thank you, thank you.”

  “You go to the Church of John Christ in Southwark. They help you.”

  The man said, “You mean ‘Jesus’ Christ.”

  She hit him on the leg with the spade and he cried out.

  “John Christ, you wanker! John Christ. You say Mhouse sent you.”

  She threw the spade at his head but he managed to duck and it glanced heavily off his shoulder. She spat at him and pushed her way through the bushes to the road, climbed the fence and jumped into the Primera beside Mohammed. He sped away.

  “Nice Bumberry raincoat for you, Mo. Leather and golden briefcase for me.”

  “Safe. Super safe, Mhouse,” Mohammed said. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, whatever. He was a wanker, he had no money. Homeless wanker. Let’s get back to The Shaft.”

  10

  EVEN THOUGH HE DROVE a taxi, a black London cab, his motor vehicle of choice—ubiquitous, unremarkable and there was no law against it—Jonjo liked to steer clear of other black-cab taxi-drivers, particularly when they were present in significant numbers. He wanted no impromptu solidarity, no leading questions. So he parked up some distance from City Airport and its long line of taxis waiting for their clients and walked a good half-mile to the neat little terminal building.

  Inside, he took a tour around, checking the available exits. He was an hour early for his meeting—he was always an hour early, just in case, you never knew—and he rode up the escalator to the first floor and selected a seat in the corner of the cafeteria with a view of the escalator and the small concourse and settled down with his coffee and croissant and his newspaper and contentedly did the puzzle for half an hour before deciding that the time was right for some more vigilance.

  Fifteen minutes before the appointed time for the rendezvous—10.00 a.m.—he saw his contact come in. He could spot them a mile off, other soldiers. He could go into a crowded pub and in three seconds could have picked out the men who were Tags or Blades, Crap Hats, Toms, Jocks, Squaddies, whatever they called themselves or each other. Funny that, he thought: like an instinct, like we give off a spoor, a smell. We’re like Jews and Scotchmen, Roman Catholics and Freemasons, ex-cons and gays. They spot each other, they know in seconds, split seconds.

  Funny that—as if we’ve got some sign on us only visible to our kind.

  He watched this young guy—thirty-something, short cropped fair hair, burly—come in and check the terminal as he had and then come up the escalator to the cafeteria. He stepped in and on his first sweep of the tables Jonjo knew he’d clocked him. He stayed bent over his puzzle: how many four-letter words could you make from the letters LFERTA? Tear, fart, leaf—

  “Excuse me. Are you Bernard Montgomery?”

  Jonjo looked up. “No.”

  “Apologies.”

  “I’m often mistaken for him.”

  The young guy sat down.

  “We got news,” he said.

  “From our friends in the Met?”

  “Yeah.”

  “About bloody time.”

  The young guy seemed edgy, on the tense side.

  “Kindred’s phone has been used,” he said. “Few seconds.”

  “Not by Kindred, obviously,”Jonjo said. “He’s not that daft.” He leant back, putting down his pen as the word ‘FERAL’ came into his head. Must remember that.

  “No…It was used only once, in Rotherhithe—someone on an estate: the Shaftesbury Estate. Then they must’ve changed the sim-card.”

  “Someone stupid, then.” Jonjo thought for a second. “So, his phone was stolen or he sold it. I suppose we don’t know who made the call.”

  “No.”

  “Lovely-jubbley. I’ll check it out.”Jonjo smiled. “I’ll need paying by the way. For the last job.”

  The young guy pushed a thick envelope across the table. Jonjo scooped it up and stuffed it in the inside pocket of his leather jacket. The young guy was staring at him intently.

  “You’re Jonjo Case, ain’t you?”

  Jonjo sighed. “You’re breaking all the rules, mate.”

  “I knew it was you,” the young guy persisted. “You were a friend of Terry Eltherington.”

  “Terrible Tel,” Jonjo reflected, bitterly. “Great shame. Fucking shame…”

  “Yeah…My brother-in-law. I saw you in his photos.”

  “Those cunting LEDs. How’s Jenny coping?”

  “She killed herself. Couldn’t face it. Three days after the funeral.”

  Jonjo took this news in, sadly, sagaciously: he remembered Jenny Eltherington—blonde, big, jolly girl. He nodded to himself: soldier’s wife—worst fate on earth.

  “You must be Darren, then,” Jonjo said, stretching his hand across the table. “Blues and Royals.”

  “That’s me.” They shook hands.

  “Tel and I were in the Regiment, went through Hereford together. Fucking nutter, Tel.”

  “I know. Yeah, he used to talk about you a lot: Jonjo this, Jonjo that…”

  They were both quiet for a few seconds thinking about Terry Eltherington and his sudden violent death in Iraq, victim of an unusually powerful roadside bomb. Jonjo felt his neck stiffening and eased it side to side.

  “What happened to you?” Darren said, indicating the now star-shaped but still livid scab on Jonjo’s forehead.

  “You should see the other guy,”Jonjo chuckled, then said, “Anything you want to tell me, Darren? On the Q-T? Off the record?”

  Darren looked grim for a moment. “This is as hot as I’ve ever seen it, Jonjo, believe me. Blazing hot. No idea why, but they’re going train-wreck.”

  “No pressure, then?”

  “Find Kindred, priority ‘A’. Call in any time—you can have every resource: Metropolitan Police database, back-up, tools, intel, Centurion tank. Anything you need.”

  “Good to know,” Jonjo said, feeling his guts squirm, and becoming slightly worried, all of a sudden—not like him at all.

  “What happens when I find Kindred?”

  “They need to know what he knows—first. Then they’ll tell you what to do with him.”

  “Cool.”

  “I’d better get going.” Darren made as if to get up but Jonjo gestured him back into his seat.

  “Nice meeting you, Darren. Do me a favour, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Keep me in the loop. Just you and me…” He paused to let Darren understa
nd the full implications of what he was asking. “Sorry to hear about Jenny—my condolences.”

  Darren nodded.

  “I better give you my number. Like they said—anything you need. Call me, twenty-four-seven.”

  “Write it on the newspaper. I don’t think I’ll need you. Only last resort, yeah?”

  “Anything.” Darren wrote down the number.

  “You’ve obviously got mine. Call me if you need me. Terry Eltherington, one in a million—if his sixteenth cousin called me, I’d be there. If his stepsister’s adopted son’s mate’s mate called me. Know what I mean?”

  Darren nodded, visibly moved. Good to know someone in the chain of command, Jonjo thought, might give him a bit of time if it was needed. Darren wouldn’t know any more about this Wang-Kindred thing than he did, but an ally was an ally, every little helped.

  Jonjo stood. “I’ll leave first,” Jonjo said. “You wait here for ten minutes.” He picked up the newspaper. “It was a pleasure, Darren.”

  “Copy that.”

  Jonjo walked back to his taxi-cab, his mind busy. These freelance jobs were usually so straightforward: you were told to slot someone, you did it and you were paid. You didn’t know anything more. He took the envelope from his jacket pocket and briefly contemplated the packed, mint wad of 200 £50 notes. Ten grand on completion. At least they weren’t punishing him for the fuck-up, though by rights he should have had a further 10K advance on the new Kindred job. Still, the full twenty grand would be all the sweeter once that was done and dusted. Wang was dead, he’d been paid his money, now on to the next one. Busy, profitable month.

  He continued on his way, heading for his taxi, thinking about Wang for a moment, the last man he’d killed. Strange, that, he thought: he had no idea exactly how many people he’d killed in his life—thirty-five to forty, perhaps? It all started in 1982 with the Falklands War when he knocked out that bunker at Mount Longdon. He had been an eighteen-year-old paratrooper firing a Milan wire-guided missile, steering it right into the sandbagged sangar on the hillside. When he went to look after the battle all the dead were laid out in a row, like on parade—he looked for all the burnt and mashed-up ones and counted five.

  Then he’d killed a Provo in a car on the outskirts of Deny but three other Paras had opened fire that night so they had to share the kill. It wasn’t until he joined the SAS and went through Hereford that the tally began to climb. Gulf War I, after the Victor Two fire-fight when the prisoners ran off—he slotted three. Then in Afghanistan, in 2001—his last operation—at the fort, Qala-I-Jangi. He lost count at Qala, all those rioting Taliban prisoners down below and our guys up on the battlements. Terry Eltherington had been there also. Shooting fish in a barrel, Terry had said. Jonjo could see his big, stupid, smiling face, chucking him ammo. Prisoners running around in the big overgrown courtyard, all the guys up on the battlements blasting away—SAS, SBS, the Yanks, the Afghans. Incredible. They just laced the whole courtyard, hosed it. He must have got a dozen or so, just picking them off as they ran around.