William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

“Say again?”

Mr Quality did.

“What does that mean? 1603 is not a surname. It’s a date. A number.”

“This is how Mhouse introduce him me: John 1603.”

Jonjo looked over at Bozzy for confirmation that Mr Quality was one sandwich short of a picnic.

Bozzy shrugged. “I don’t know nothing, man.”

“Then you might as well fuck off.”

Bozzy left as haughtily as he could, offended.

Jonjo turned back to Mr Quality, who was lighting, as far as Jonjo could tell, a very thin spliff. This country had gone to the dogs, and the dogs were welcome to it. He kept his temper.

“What did he look like, this John 1603?”

“A white man like you. Thirty years. Long black hair. Thick black beard.”

Ah, thick black beard, Jonjo thought — that explained a lot.

“Do you know where he is?”

“If he no be for Mhouse — I don’t know.”

Mr Quality ambled off, £50 richer. He deserved a good kicking that one, Jonjo thought, arrogant bastard, laughing at him, smoking weed like that, middle of the day, public park, little kiddies playing on the lawn. Jesus. This place needed hosing out, pest control. He told himself to calm down. John 1603, he said to himself, what does that mean? There must be a clue here somewhere…Why would Kindred choose such a weird name? But as he thought on, he began to feel better and thoughts of local Armageddon receded: he was getting somewhere, he had one more piece of information — bland ‘John’ had turned into intriguing ‘John 1603’. He had a description now, he had met someone who had known Kindred, had seen him very recently, spoken with him. So much for the Metropolitan Police. He felt he was getting closer, drawing nearer.

He went back to The Shaft and wandered around the muddy square that Mhouse’s flat overlooked, watching The Shaft’s inhabitants come and go. He climbed the stairs to Flat L and knocked on the door, for form’s sake. He thought he might have another sniff around, see if he’d missed anything, but the door had been fixed: it was locked and firm again. Maybe Mr Quality had a new tenant—

“She’s not there. She’s gone.”

Jonjo turned to see an old woman in an apron leaning out of the front door of the next flat along. She had no front teeth.

“Sorry, Madam,” Jonjo said, smiling politely. “I’m looking for a friend of mine called John. I believe he lived here.”

“He’s gone too. I think the two of them run off — she’s gone off with him and left the little boy. Disgusting. Immoral.”

Jonjo approached. “Did you know John?”

The woman bridled. “Not ‘know’ exactly. I was what you might say acquainted with him.”

“Somebody told me he called himself John 1603.”

“Well he would, wouldn’t he?”

“Why would anyone call themselves that?”

“Because he was a member of the church,” she said with some defiance. “Though they’ve both gone and let us down something shocking.”

Jonjo smiled: he couldn’t believe his luck. What had seemed like a pig of a day was turning into a peach.

“And what church would that be? If I might ask.”

“The Church of John Christ, of course.”

TYPING ‘ITCH’ INTO HALF a dozen search engines, as he had surfed the Web that morning, had been no help at all. In fact it had been the very opposite of helpful, Ingram thought. Extremely unhelpful was a more accurate description, not to say creepily terrifying. A simple search for a piece of information, for an answer, had swamped him with massive over-information, provided tens of thousands of potential answers. He wished he’d kept away from the infernal computer and simply called Lachlan again and asked his advice — one human being to another. Now he was aware of having, maybe, one of a hundred nasty diseases — some of them flinchingly unpleasant, especially the sexually transmitted ones. He had had no notion that illustrations were so readily available online, either — it was appalling what could become of the diseased human body. He had no idea there were people wandering around with these degrees of purulence, pustulence, rash, swelling, decomposition…

Too much information — it was the curse of our modern times, most disturbing. But his itches seemed to be increasing — half a dozen biting, burning points of brief excruciation on his body per day, he now reckoned. Easily soothed with a bit of pressure, a quick and vigorous scratch, but with no discernible pattern at all. Head and foot, abdomen and elbow, earlobe and testicle. What was wrong with him? Could this be simple stress — could stress be tormenting him in this way?

Ingram tried to banish these unpleasant reflections as he prepared himself for his meeting with Burton Keegan. He had asked, him to be in his office at 10 o’clock — at 10 past 10 Mrs Prendergast buzzed to say that Mr Keegan had phoned and was running a little late. He finally arrived at 10.40, full of apologies — something to do with his son and the special needs school he was at, the boy having had a hysterical reaction to a new teacher. Ingram was surprised to discover that Keegan had a handicapped child with severe Asperger’s Syndrome and his simmering anger at being kept waiting quickly disappeared.

Keegan took a seat, coffee and water were ordered and served, chit-chat ensued about the company, the weather, Keegan’s forthcoming trip home to the US, then Ingram moved into attack mode.

“Something’s bothering me, Burton, that’s why I wanted to see you, face to face.”

“I thought there might be an issue.”

“It’s not an ‘issue’, it’s a simple question and it is this: did you have a meeting with Philip Wang at 3 o’clock on the afternoon of the day he was murdered?”

Keegan almost managed to disguise his surprise and shock. “Yes. I did,” he said.

“Yet you never told the police or me or anyone. Why?”

“Because it wasn’t important — the meeting was completely routine.”

“Why did you lie to me?”

Keegan looked at him. “I’d forgotten about it.”

Ingram could see him regaining his composure after the initial stumble. “What was the meeting about?” Ingram asked.

Keegan cleared his throat. “As far as I remember, Philip had been on a tour of all the UK hospitals we’re using for our third-phase clinical trials of Zembla-4. He was delighted with our progress and he just wanted to urge me to bring forward the PDA and MHPvA submissions.”

In every good lie, Ingram thought, there must be an element of truth. That was what they taught spies, wasn’t it? His knowledge of Philip Wang’s visits to the hospitals was no longer ammunition, now that Keegan had referred to them.

“How curious,” Ingram said. “That’s the complete opposite of what Philip told me two days previously.”

Keegan smiled. “I guess he must have changed his mind. He was very upbeat, very adamant that we move quickly.”

“We’ll never know, now, will we?” Ingram said, thinking that at least he had learnt what all this was about, finally. Keegan and Wang had obviously totally disagreed with each other, diametrically opposed. “Strange to think you were the last person to see him hungry.”

“What do you mean—‘hungry’?”

“I said ‘alive’.”

“You said: ‘the last person to see him hungry’. I’m sorry but I heard you.”

“All right. Slip of the tongue. You were the last person to see him alive.”

“Not so — his killer, Adam Kindred, was the last person to see him alive,” Keegan said with quiet logic and looked at his watch. “I’m sorry to break this up, Ingram, but I really have to go.” He stood.

“The meeting’s not over, Burton. I have more questions.”