Ordinary Thunderstorms

21

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.”