William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

He checked the clips in both his guns and found himself a snug hiding place, a few yards from Kindred’s clearing. Kindred would be coming back in an hour or so — or whenever. He didn’t care how long he had to wait: sometimes in the regiment he’d hidden up for two weeks to slot someone. Kindred could take as long as he liked: now that he had found his secret home the Kindred chapter in Jonjo Case’s life was about to be concluded — with extreme prejudice.

LONDON’S VAST SIZE ALWAYS surprised him — cowed him, almost — Adam realised, even though he’d tramped its streets endlessly these past weeks. To walk from the Church ofjohn Christ in Rotherhithe to Chelsea Bridge took him well over an hour and a half, and yet on a map he would have covered no distance at all of the city’s great sprawling mass — a tiny, meandering trajectory, crossing the boundaries of a few boroughs: Bermondsey, Southwark, Lambeth, Pimlico, Chelsea. True, he’d stopped to buy himself a cup of coffee and a bottle of water and an apple for his breakfast but he was feeling footsore as he arrived at the Battersea end of Chelsea Bridge, glad to see its glowing chains of light bulbs, noting that the tide was ebbing, traces of his beach beginning to appear. Perhaps he might have a midnight bathe, he wondered: shirt off, sluice a bit of chill Thames water over the upper torso — maybe even heat up a saucepan of water and wash his hair.

He crossed the bridge and turned left just in time to see four policemen, all wearing stab-vests, unlock the main gate to the triangle and go inside. He ran across the Embankment and waited, half hidden by the war memorial on the corner of Chelsea Bridge Road, watching and waiting — nerves on edge, suddenly alarmed, very alarmed. Nothing seemed to be happening. He looked at a non-existent watch on his wrist and paced to and fro a bit, as if he were killing time, for the benefit of anyone who might have been interested in his presence there — he could have been waiting for someone to come out of the Lister Hospital opposite — and needlessly re-tied both his shoelaces. Then, about ten minutes after the police had gone into the triangle, he saw the four of them emerge with a fifth man, a big guy, handcuffed.

He saw one of the policemen calling for support on his personal radio and about two minutes later two police cars — sirens going, blue lights flashing — pulled up outside the triangle and the fifth man was pushed inside one of them. Conveniently, the police car was under a street light and Adam was no more than fifty feet away so could see quite clearly. Just before he was bent into the back seat of the police car, the big guy paused and seemed to say something to one of the policemen.

With a spasm of pure surprise Adam recognised him. He felt his body lurch as the shock of familiarity hit him. The weak, cleft chin, the crew cut, the blunt features — this was the man he had knocked unconscious with his briefcase the night of Wang’s murder.

The police car whooped off, one of the policemen stepped into the other car and it sped away, following. The three policemen left behind high-fived each other and clapped each other on the back before walking away down the Embankment. Adam watched them saunter off, following them discreetly a little way and saw them go through a gate in the Embankment wall and down some steps on to the river. Minutes later a patrol boat pulled away and sped downstream.

Questions yammered in Adam’s brain. What was the big guy doing in the triangle? Waiting for him to come back? Jesus Christ…How had he known about the triangle? What were the police doing there? Why had the police arrested him? Had there been some new lead in the Wang case? Was this arrest going to vindicate him, finally? Question tumbled after question, a small slithering avalanche of questions. He felt quite weak, all of a sudden, and he realised at once that he couldn’t stay in the triangle any more — the triangle days were over. He had to find somewhere else to hide.

Adam knocked on Mhouse’s door: it was very late, about 3.00 a.m. and this was the seventh or eighth time he’d called back to see if she had returned from her boat-party on the river. He’d kept to the shadows, avoiding the few people around: The Shaft at night, as he knew all too well, was not a welcoming place. He saw a light go on behind the door.

“Who the fuck is that?”

“Mhouse? It’s me — John 1603. I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to stay in the spare room.”

THE TARGA CRUISED INTO the new steel jetty at Phoenix Stairs and Rita sprang ashore and figure-eighted the mooring rope around the big cleat on the jetty edge. Joey threw her the stern rope and she secured it. It had been a quiet day on the river. They had taken a diver from the Underwater Search Team down to a wharf in Deptford to investigate a potential submerged dead body — but it turned out to be three weighted sacks of rubbish. Then they’d intercepted a barge coming down river from Twickenham with inadequate paper work and passed on the details to the Thames Harbourmaster’s office. Finally they had checked in with the RNLI station at Lifeboat Pier on the Victoria Embankment, collected the inflatable pathway they had borrowed and had a cup of tea. Almost a pleasure cruise, she thought: sunny day, out on the water, what could be nicer? She asked Joey if he could go to the end-of-day debriefing as she wanted an urgent word with Sergeant Rollins.

“Any news, Sarge?” she said, when she found him in his tiny office in Portakabin 3, next to the humming, refrigerated mortuary in Portakabin 4. You could hear the unit through the wall: she wouldn’t like her office next to a morgue, that’s for sure. She was trying to seem merely casually interested, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

“Yeah. They let him go.”

“ What? ”

Rollins shrugged, spread his hands. “That’s all I know. Kept him in overnight. Home free in the morning.”

“Let him go? No charge?” Rita felt a strange shock in her, an emptiness: this was the last thing she expected.

“You’ll have to go up Chelsea, Nashe. Find out what happened. You’re no longer required as arresting officer. There is no case.”

“He was carrying, for god’s sake. Two weapons and a six-inch blade. No ID. What’s going on?”

“An open-and-shut, I’d’ve thought, but there you go. There must be a reason.” He smiled fondly at her. “You’ll just have to arrest somebody else now, darling.”

“Please don’t call me ‘darling’, sergeant.”

♦

When she went off duty, Rita took the Tube up to Chelsea police station to find out if she could discover any answers. Sergeant Duke wasn’t on that night but she saw Gary going down a corridor, called and went after him.

“Hey, Rita,” he said, looking her up and down. “You all right? Looking lovely, as per. Great party, by the way.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“Just popped up from Belgravia. Paper work.”

She looked around, making sure no one could overhear. “We called in last night. Guy we arrested at Chelsea Bridge — two guns on him, no ident, wouldn’t talk, not a word. I came up here with him myself, filled in the IRB, then we handed him over to CID. Job done. Now, I just heard they let him go. What the fuck’s going on? Any idea?”

Gary looked up and down the corridor. “Yeah, I heard…” He tapped the side of his nose. “It was one of those calls, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

He lowered his voice. “Someone very high up in the Met rings up: “Let this bloke go now — I take full responsibility.” That kind of number.”