William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

Arriving at the Felicity de Vere Wing — the sign writ bold above double doors, and some sort of ornamental, curtained plaque on the wall — Adam encountered a recognisable reception desk manned by a crisply uniformed nurse, not an overalled apparatchik. He saw a doctor with a stethoscope round his neck, he saw porters with a trolley — this was familiar. The atmosphere was hushed, as if people were whispering, ‘illness’, ‘sickness’—and for the first time Adam felt he was in a hospital and recognised the need for some caution. Not a good idea to mention the name of the recently murdered Dr Wang here, he concluded.

“Hi,” he said to the nurse, improvising, “I’m looking for Dr Femi Olundemi.”

She frowned. “Olundemi?”

“Olundemi. Femi Olundemi.”

“We’ve no Dr Olundemi in this wing.”

She went and asked another nurse and they both came back shaking their heads.

“I must have the wrong information,” Adam said. “This is the immunology department, isn’t it?”

“No, no,” said his first nurse, smiling now that the error was confirmed as his, and whose name, he noticed, was Seorcha. “Immunology’s on level three — I think. This wing’s for children with chronic asthma. Only children.”

“My mistake,” Adam said. “Thanks for your help.”

♦

Adam wandered out of St Botolph’s wondering if he was any wiser — if this trip and the expenditure of a few valuable pounds had been worth it. He supposed so: Wang was on the main-frame computer but his death had yet to be registered, and the wing with which he was associated dealt exclusively with children suffering from chronic asthma. That Wang’s death was so far unremarked in this vast sickness factory seemed to indicate he was not a familiar or regular presence. But chronic asthma?…What was the name of the company Wang worked for — the eager reward-givers? Calenture-Deutz — yes. Adam repeated the name as he walked away from the luminescent strata of the hospital buildings: Calenture-Deutz, children with chronic asthma…How had Wang described himself? An ‘allergist’—maybe there was something there…

Adam had come out of a different lift and had left through a different door and, quitting the grounds of St Botolph’s, he turned and walked along a street wondering where Rotherhithe Tube station was. Outside a kebab shop he asked directions from a young guy sitting on a small-wheeled bike, eating a kebab.

“You what?”

“Tube station,” Adam repeated. “Rotherhithe.”

“You got Canada Water, mate. Close. Go up there, then down there.”

“What? Straight on, then right?”

The young guy looked blank. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Adam set off thinking hard, thinking that maybe he had proved his point, that maybe it was time to turn himself in. He was dirty, bearded, almost penniless, sleeping under a bush on waste ground at night, living off baked beans and cheap sandwiches, defecating and washing in public lavatories. And yet, something at the back of his mind kept saying insistently — no, no, stay free at all costs. Only this way can you retain any vestige of control over your life. The minute he re-entered society all freedoms would be curtailed. Who was the man with the gun in the mews behind Grafton Lodge? And who was to say that he, Adam, would be any safer in police custody than he was on his own in London, living underground? That man had come to kill him and had doubtless killed Wang. Only while he was free and undiscovered was he safe — as soon as he was corralled, penned-in, then anyone could find him. Something very big was at stake here, something he had blundered in on — something currently unknowable, unimaginable. Adam Kindred standing up in open court protesting his innocence, testifying about a man on a balcony, a man with a gun, might draw down other fatal dangers on himself. And what, if anything, did it have to do with the Felicity de Vere Wing of St Botolph’s Hospital and chronic asthma in children? It was all hideously complex and worrying — perhaps a few more days in the triangle wouldn’t make any more difference now. He stopped…

He was lost. He hadn’t been paying attention.

He looked about him. Tall, crude blocks of apartment buildings, concrete stairs, walkways. A few lights on. He walked up to a sign badly defaced with graffiti: “THE SHAFTESBURY ESTATE — UNITS 14–20.” He peered around again: 19505 public housing — a few trees, a few functioning street lights, a few clapped-out cars and, fifty yards off, a group of kids sitting on the low wall around a playground — a slide upended, some rubber tyres hanging from chains, a roundabout. Looking up, he saw some people leaning on their elbows, gazing out from the zig-zag stairways that gave access to the higher terraces.

He turned and walked back the way he had come, purposefully but not with any sense of panic. Suddenly his three bushes in the triangle by Chelsea Bridge seemed like home to him — he wanted to be there, settling down in his sleeping bag under the inverted V of his groundsheet — and he felt tears well in his eyes as he realised how pathetic, how abject, this yearning was. No, it was becoming impossible: he had to go to the police, he had to go through whatever ordeal was waiting for him, there was no altern—

All Adam felt was a massive blow to his back — as if he’d been hit by a sledgehammer or a silent car — dropping him to his hands and knees, and then, almost immediately, another blow, to his head this time, provoking a spiralling supernova of light. And then everything went black.

HE WAS A REGULAR THAT ONE GUY, YEAH, ANYWAY SAID HE WAS — she remembered. Then she thought, maybe not: fat, white, small moustache…One them guys just want tugging but no handkerchief no tissue nothing don’t mind the mess. Mhouse was muttering to herself, goading her reluctant memory as she walked along the river from her usual beat. She couldn’t remember: they all blurred into one generic punter — male. He was the one keep saying he was a regular, she continued to herself. What he wanting, discount? Fuck.

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?”