William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

As he walked away from the police station — briefcase in hand, raincoat flapping, feeling hot, almost feverish with alarm — Adam realised he had come to a crossroads. No, not a crossroads — wrong metaphor — it was a forking path and, moreover, as dramatic a forking path as anyone could encounter in their life. He could:

(a) turn himself in and submit himself to the due process of law — charged, held, bail refused, on remand, trial, verdict — or he could:

(b) not turn himself in. He was a naturally law-abiding person — he held in unreflecting trust the legal institutions of the countries he had lived in — but now, suddenly, everything had changed. It wasn’t ‘respect for the law’ that seemed to him paramount and fundamental, any more. No: it was freedom that governed this instinctive choice — his personal freedom. He had to stay free, at all costs, if he were to save himself, somehow. To remain free seemed the only course of action he could and should take. It was odd, this philosophical epiphany, but he was immediately aware that the individual freedom he currently possessed was unbelievably precious to him — precious because he now realised how tenuous and vulnerable it was — and he did not propose to surrender it to anyone, even temporarily.

And besides, he told himself, as he trudged along, feeling hotter with each pace, he was innocent, for god’s sweet sake. He was an innocent man and he did not want to be accused of a murder he had not committed. How simple the situation, how clear the choice he had made — had to make — the only choice possible for him. He felt no dilemma, no doubt — anyone in his hideous, rotten position would have done the same. And there was this other factor, this ‘X’ factor, that had to be considered. Who was the man in the mews who knew his name and who had the pistol with the silencer? He must have been the killer, surely? The man on the balcony whom Adam had frightened off when he came into Wang’s flat…

He passed a pub on his left and was tempted to go in and drink something but, along with his new belief in personal freedom, he was aware of how expensive everything was in this city — he had to hoard his remaining funds as he figured out what to do next while he waited for the real guilty man to be identified and apprehended.

He sat down on a bench in a small leafy square and looked blankly at the statue of the boy Mozart. What had Mozart to do with this part of London?…Adam forced himself to concentrate: perhaps the best course of action would be to lie low for a while — a few days, a week — in order to see how the case was developing. What was that expression? Go ‘underground”—yes, what if he went underground for a few days and let the other leads in the case receive their proper follow-up? He could cover events through the newspapers, or on TV and radio — then the thought came to him abruptly: what if Wang had been gay? Wang and Adam met in a restaurant, struck up a conversation and were witnessed there, Adam went to his apartment, Wang made a pass, they quarrelled, fought — everything got shockingly, terribly out of control…He felt a weakness come upon him again, looked at the boy Mozart and tried to summon up a Mozart aria, any tune to distract him, but the words that came into his head were of a rock song, from his youth: “Going underground, going underground ⁄ Well the brass bands play and feet start to pound’.

The lyrics were prescient, he decided, he would go underground rather than meekly surrender himself at a police station and be accused of a crime he hadn’t committed. Give it a few days, he told himself, other clues will emerge, the police will consider other scenarios and suspects. The Mozart came to him, finally, the overture to Cost Fan Tutte — it always cheered him up. He rose to his feet, humming the overture quietly to himself: time to buy some essential provisions for his new life.

♦

Later that day, as dusk was gathering, Adam threw his three bags of possessions over the railings of the Chelsea triangle and swiftly followed them. He sought out the area where he had slept the night before and examined it more closely: there were three large bushes here and some mid-sized trees, a sycamore, and some kind of holly, near the sharp apex of the triangle — the western end, furthest from Chelsea Bridge — forming a small clearing, and one of the bushes seemed almost hollow at its base, he could easily crawl in beneath its lower branches. He crouched down — yes, if he slipped in here he’d be effectively invisible from the Embankment’s traffic, Chelsea Bridge and any passing boats on the river.

He emptied his carrier bags and contemplated what he had bought: a sleeping bag, a groundsheet, a folding spade, a small gas stove with extra gas canisters, a torch, a metal cash-box, a knife-fork-spoon set, two bottles of water, a small saucepan and half a dozen tins of baked beans. He had been frugal in his purchases, buying only the cheapest items and those on sale — he had £72 left and some small change. He could hide here in the triangle during the day and venture out at night, as required, to scavenge — he could live, after a fashion.

He made a shelter in the hollow bush, breaking a few branches to clear a bigger space around him and draping the groundsheet over other branches in an inverted ‘V, creating a squat, rough tent-shape. He unrolled the sleeping bag and pushed it in under the raised groundsheet — yes, he would be dry, protected from all but the heaviest rain. He looked round, suddenly, hearing a police car shriek by on the Embankment, siren whooping, and smiled to himself — all of London’s police would be looking for him, CCTV footage would be being studied, further calls would be going out to his ex-wife and his family in Sydney, Australia, distant relatives and old acquaintances would be hunted down. Anybody seen anything of Adam Kindred? How they would laugh about this adventure once it was over! He was a wanted man but he was nowhere to be found. Having made his bed he lit his gas stove and heated up his baked beans. He spooned them into his mouth from the saucepan, hot and succulent — delicious. One day at a time, Adam, he said to himself: keep your mind as empty as possible. He had gone underground.

OIL OF CLOVES, JONJO CASE reflected: who would ever have guessed, who figured that one out? Picking up the small bottle, he dripped a few beads of oil on to his forefinger and massaged it on and around his damaged tooth — he felt the sharp pain dull, almost instantly. The big filling had fallen out when that cunt, Kindred, had hit him in the side of the head with the briefcase. The other tooth had shot out clean, as if a dentist had pulled it. When he came round fully he saw it there on the cobbles and picked it up and put it in his pocket — evidence.

Jonjo looked at his face in the mirror. He’d never liked his looks, as such, but Kindred’s briefcase had given them a turn for the worse. His nose wasn’t broken, at least, but it was swollen and he was going to have ear-to-jaw contusions. But what most upset him was the weal caused by some hinge or strengthening bracket of the briefcase that had stamped itself, in the course of the blow, on his right temple. He turned to find a better angle in the mirror. There it was, in the clear shape of an ‘L’, an angry blood-red weal. “L for Loser,” Jonjo thought. It was bound to scab and he would probably be left with a white L-shaped scar there. No. No, that was not on, well out of order: he’d muck it up with a knifepoint, later — disguise it. He wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life walking around with an L-shaped scar on his forehead — no fucking way, mate.

He strode to his drinks table, pushing The Dog gently out of his way with his foot. The Dog looked at him, plaintively, as Jonjo searched the crowded bottles for his favourite malt whisky. What had possessed him to take a basset hound puppy off of his sister, he asked himself — taking a slug of whisky straight from the bottle — those big brown eyes, full of accusations? That face in a permanent anxious frown, the preposterously long velvet ears…It wasn’t an animal, it was a toy, something to put on your bedspread, or block draughts coming in under the door. He grimaced as the malt mingled unpleasantly with the powerful taste of cloves in his mouth. Nasty.