Ordinary Thunderstorms

37

CANDY’S FACE WAS A parodic mask, a bad caricature of shock, eyes wide, mouth formed in an ‘O’.

“No,” she said.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes, ‘fraid so.”

“The Dog? Never.”

“I can’t explain it either, Candy-babe,”Jonjo said, trying to look both mystified and hurt. “I bent down to put his bowl of Bowser Chunks in front of him and he just snapped — caught me.” Jonjo was extemporising, attempting to provide a convincing reason as to why his left cheek was covered by a three-inch square of gauze held in place by strips of sticking plaster. He felt a bit guilty blaming The Dog — there was no more placid creature on earth — but it was all he could think of on the spur of the moment. Candy had wandered into the garage as he was loading his golf clubs into the back of the taxi and, on seeing him, had gone into her oh-my-god-what-happened routine.

“He’s never snapped before,” she said. “I mean, I kiss him—”

“Shouldn’t kiss a dog, Cand.”

“Just a little peck on the nose. No, no — something must have triggered it, something must have spooked him. Poor old Jonjo.” She reached out and ran her hand over his cropped hair and nuzzled up against him, kissing his unplastered cheek. “You come round to me tonight — I’ll make you a nice bowl of soup.”

She kissed him again on the lips and Jonjo flinched, as though in pain. Everything had changed since their intimacy the other night — since their supper a deux and the sex that had followed, as predictable as the postprandial brandy and box of chocolates. She had moved into his life with all the tact of a suspicious social worker, he thought: calling, texting, popping over without warning, buying him presents he didn’t want — clothes, food, drinks, little ornaments.

“Busy tonight, love. Sorry.” Don’t have it off with your neighbour — he’d remember that in his next life.

“Shall I take The Dog? Where is he? I’ll take him for a walk, give him a right talking to — biting his daddy, well I never.”

He delivered The Dog to her and drove off to Roding Valley golf course for a calming round. He took a nine at the first hole, five-putted the short par-three second and then shanked his drive off the third tee into the Chigwell sewage works. He walked straight back to the club house, abandoning his round, tense and angry, wondering what had made him think golf was the palliative to the swarming can of worms that was currently masquerading as his life.

He sat in the members’ bar with a gin and orange, trying to calm down and take stock. His scratched cheek was throbbing as if it were infected. Bitch. Bitching whore bitch. He would have just left her lying there and walked away but he knew she had four fingernails crammed with his skin, blood and DNA — so she had to go in the river.

He ordered another gin. He should have just stayed at home today, drinking medicinally, that would have helped. But then Candy would still have come round…He took out his score card and wrote down the words ‘KINDRED = JOHN’ in the hope that this might get his brain working. He hadn’t meant to kill the little tart — she would have told him everything in the end — but he’d overreacted, following Sgt. Snell’s rules, when she’d punched and scratched him like that. He just hadn’t thought — it was a reflex — and had given her the old backhanded haymaker (they never see it coming) and she went flying, head first into the brick wall. He thought he’d even heard her neck snap but, whether he did or not, there was no doubt from the funny way she fell limp to the ground and lay there that she was dead, or as good as.

He had paced about cursing for a while, staunching the blood from the scratches with a tissue, and then strolled casually out to check what was going on riverside — nothing. So he picked her up and held her as if she were an unconscious drunk and walked with her to the embankment wall. He leant her up against it and slapped her face gently, talking to her, making it seem as if he were trying to revive her in case anyone was looking, all the while searching for CCTV. No sign — and there was no one about. The tide was high and ebbing fast, he saw, so he just threw her over the wall into the water and she was gone in a second.

♦

Jonjo sat on a park bench with Bozzy and a tall thin man he had been introduced to as Mr Quality. They were in a small public square not far from The Shaft — Bozzy had brought Mr Quality there and Jonjo had been obliged to pay him £50 for this ‘consultation’. A few tired young mothers and their wailing toddlers were gathered at the far end and an old bloke was methodically searching the rubbish bins.

“I no go charge you VAT,” Mr Quality said, pocketing the notes and then he laughed wheezingly to himself as if at a private joke.

“I’m looking for a man named John,” Jonjo said, keeping his temper. “He was staying with a hooker called Mhouse in a flat that belongs to you, I believe. Stayed with her for some weeks.”

“I know Mhouse,” Mr Quality said. “We are good friend.”

“Wonderful — so who is this bloke, John, then?”

“John 1603.”

“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.”