Ordinary Thunderstorms

60

IT WAS STRANGE SEEING YOUR PICTURE IN THE NEWSPAPER, JONJO thought, particularly if you’d never had your picture in any newspaper before. It was a photograph taken some fifteen years earlier, he calculated, when he’d been in the British Army, and was captioned: “John-Joseph Case, wanted by police to assist in their enquiries into the murder of Dr Philip Wang.” He crumpled the newspaper into a ball and hurled it at the rear window of his camper-van. It bounced off the angled Perspex on to the carpeted floor — where The Dog immediately pounced on it, picked it up and brought it back, dropping it at his feet and stood there waiting, tail wagging, for this new game to continue.

Jonjo picked The Dog up and heaved him into his arms, turning him on his back like a baby. The Dog enjoyed being held like this and he licked Jonjo’s face with his big wet tongue. Jonjo hugged The Dog to him, confused by the emotions he was experiencing and said out loud, “Sorry, mate, but there’s no other way,” and dropped him carefully on the floor again. It was two hours to high tide, no point in hanging around.

Disturbed by this personal publicity, Jonjo went into the camper-van’s tiny toilet and looked at himself in the mirror above the sink. The beard was coming on pretty well — the black still intense, though he might need to re-dye it in a couple of days if it kept growing at this rate and in a funny sort of way he thought that he suited being dark: he looked better than he usually did with his normal gingery-brown crew cut and it was an added bonus that his most recognisable feature, the cleft in his chin, was now obscured by the facial hair. Perhaps he should have grown a beard ages ago, he wondered, but at least he now looked nothing like the picture in the paper, he was glad to say. Following Kindred’s lead, he thought to himself, uncomfortably, taking a leaf out of Adam Kindred’s book of disappearance and evasion. Everything in his life had been running fairly smoothly — no complaints, thanks — until Kindred had arrived. He had survived the Falklands War, Northern Ireland, Gulf War I, Bosnia, Gulf War II, Iraq and Afghanistan — and only when the Kindred element intruded had everything gone arse-over-tit. He told himself to calm down.

He put his Clock in his pocket and picked up the spade.

“Come on, boy,” he said. “Walkies.”

He stepped out of the camper-van and inhaled. It was a fine afternoon — sunshine and thin high clouds invading the sky from the South — east — an English summer’s day with a cool breeze coming off the estuary. He had found himself a berth in a new caravan⁄campsite — not far from the seafront — on Canvey Island, Essex, a curious, sunken sea-walled enclave on the Thames between Basildon and Southend-on-Sea, a strange backwater of abandoned oil refineries with grassed-over concrete roads and rusting street lights, and huge functioning oil refineries and storage depots, gleamingly lit at night, venting steam and orange flares behind their diamond-mesh perimeter fencing, serving the vast tankers that docked at great steel jetties that poked out into the river estuary. Dotted along the Canvey sea wall were occasional neat art deco cafes that recalled the island’s past as a Londoners’ convenient holiday resort but that now, as far as he could tell from the few days he had been living here, kept their own bizarrely sporadic hours of opening and closing: sometimes you were lucky, sometimes you weren’t.

During his Canvey Island sojourn Jonjo had kept himself to himself, going for walks with The Dog, circumnavigating the island by way of the sea wall path twice, clockwise and anti-clockwise, deliberately not becoming over-acquainted with his camper-van and caravanning neighbours on either side, ensuring that any conversations were brief but friendly enough, all the same.

The problem was The Dog. Basset hounds, that was the problem — he couldn’t go ten paces without some kiddie stopping to pet The Dog; some mother saying, aw, what a lovely doggie; some bloke wanting to pontificate about breeds and breeding. He thought he might as well be carrying a placard: ‘WANTED MAN ON THE RUN WITH INTERESTING LOVEABLE DOG’. The Dog was exactly what you didn’t need when the fucking police were searching the country for you. He swore at himself for his sentiment: he should have left The Dog with Candy. Popped a note through the door asking her to look after him, saying he ‘had to go abroad’ or something for a few months. Candy would have been thrilled — it would have been so easy.

He and The Dog left the campsite, with no encounters, and headed east, walking through the town towards Smallgains Creek, where the marina and the yacht club were to be found. He walked up and over the sea wall, past the yacht club building and behind the boat yard, looking for the path that led through the tidal salt marsh — the saltings, as they were called — to Canvey Point, the flat easternmost promontory of the island.

Thinking back, he understood now what the plan would have been. They would have come for him, as Darren had warned. Having removed his weaponry earlier, they would have simply taken him away and quietly slotted him, then hidden his body, never to be found or seen again — end of problem, Plan A. However, because he wasn’t there when they came, because he’d done a runner (thanks, Darren) they had resorted to Plan B. The newspaper article had told him everything: in his house, when the police searched it, acting on an ‘anonymous tip-off, they had found a photograph of Dr Philip Wang and blueprints of Anne Boleyn House, Chelsea. A gold watch that had belonged to Dr Wang had also been retrieved. DNA samples in the house had been matched with fibres found in Dr Wang’s flat.

You’re not stupid, Jonjo had told himself as he plodded along the path away from the boat yard, and that was why he knew he was well and truly reamed, royally shafted. Even if, supposing he was caught and arrested, he told them the truth, everything he knew, he would still take the murder rap. There was no connection that could be made between his freelance jobs and the Risk Averse Group — and whoever it was who had employed Risk Averse to employ him. Everything he said would be interpreted as wild, desperate accusations. Perhaps there might be a bit of embarrassment for Risk Averse (he could see Major Tim making a rueful face, expressing his total shock and surprise) but a disgraced ex-soldier, recently dismissed — who could say what paranoia might build? What fantastical plots might form in a traumatised brain?

No — there was nothing for it, he had to run and hide, that was all. Like Kindred — Jonjo acknowledged the irony again but did not savour it. Luckily he had been well trained; luckily he had concocted plans for unforeseen eventualities and worst-case scenarios. He had made one telephone call on his unused mobile phone to his friend Giel Hoekstra, who lived near Rotterdam. He and Giel had met during the Bosnian tour, found themselves in a few scrapes together, rubbed along and, in the way you do, in the way all the special forces guys did, fully recognising the risky and dangerous nature of the post-army lives they would be living, they had made plans for mutual help and emergency aid should it be required: parachutes provided, potential exit doors left ajar, safe houses identified, friendly ports available in stormy seas. He could have telephoned Norton in St Paul, Minnesota, Aled in Aberystwyth, Wales, Campbell in Glasgow, Scotland, or Jean-Claude in Nantes, France or half a dozen others — but he had decided Giel was the handiest man of the moment and had called that marker in.

All he had said to Giel was that he had to leave England, now, immediately, clandestinely. By boat. Giel had decided what to do after a moment’s reflection: find a small provincial seaside town with a functioning harbour. Canvey Island, Jonjo had said instantly, recalling his childhood holidays — that’s where you’ll find me: Canvey Island, the Thames estuary, Essex. They had chosen a date and time and Giel had outlined a notional plan. From Canvey Island to another small seaside town with a harbour and a busy marina, boats coming and going all the time — Havenhoofd, it was called, near Rotterdam. Then from Rotterdam to Amsterdam to a flat Giel’s sister owned. “Be a tourist for a few weeks,” Giel said. “I have many friends. There’s a lot of work for someone like you, Jonjo. You can be as busy as you want, we get you new passport, become a Dutchman.” Thank god he kept the stash of money aside, Jonjo thought. He had dumped the taxi and had bought a fourth-hand camper-van for £2,000 cash and had driven out of London heading east through Essex for the coast and freedom.

He had parked up in Canvey and waited for his appointed rendezvous with Giel Hoekstra. He felt both pleased at his resourcefulness and mounting anger that he had been obliged to rely on it. What was going to happen to his house, his stuff? Don’t even think about it, he told himself, you’re free, the rest is history and junk. Major Tim Delaporte, move to the top of the shit-list. No, not quite the top — the number one spot was permanently reserved for Adam Kindred.

Jonjo stopped: he had come a few hundred yards from the yacht club and the boatyard, now, it seemed quiet enough. He led The Dog off the coastal path, let him off the lead, and picked his way through the coarse brown grass of the saltings and stepped down on to a small beach. He turned through 360 degrees and saw no one. The Dog was bounding about on the sand, sniffing at sea-wrack and chasing sand crabs, his tail a blur of excitement. Jonjo looked across the river estuary and saw the tall chimney of the Grain power station on the Hoo Peninsula opposite. That was Kent over there, he thought idly, a mile or so away. He walked back to the grassy humps at the edge of the beach and, with his spade edge, measured a rectangle in the thin, shell-choked shingle and began to dig down quickly and easily into the moist, sandy loam beneath, excavating a neat dog-sized hole, two feet deep, with an inch of water in the bottom. He whistled for The Dog and soon heard him panting up from the beach.

“Go on,”Jonjo said, “get in.”

The Dog sniffed around the edge of the hole, clearly not sure about this game. Jonjo put his boot on his rump and pushed. The Dog plumped down.

“Sit,”Jonjo said. “Sit, boy.”

He sat, obediently.

Jonjo took out his Clock. He held it close to his leg and checked the area again, in case any ramblers were heading for the point across the flat, dark brown humps of the saltings before the tide rose, but there was no one. Opposite, on the far side of the mouth of Benfleet Creek, were Southend’s crowded streets and the long arm of its pier. He felt oddly alone, a man and his dog on the extreme, bleak, salty tip of a small island in the Thames estuary and, simultaneously, oppressively suburban — all Essex was out there, just across the water, half a mile away.

He looked down at The Dog and began to experience very odd sensations, all of a sudden, as if his head were fizzing. He pointed the gun at The Dog.

“Sorry, mate,” he said. “I love you, you know that.”

His voice had gone weird and croaky and Jonjo realised he was crying. Fuck! He was falling apart — he hadn’t cried since he was twelve years old. He was past it, well and truly washed up, over the hill, pathetic, disgusting. No wonder Risk Averse had kicked him out. He swore at himself — get a grip, you pathetic girl, call yourself a soldier, some kind of fucking warrior, you are. He levelled the Clock at The Dog’s head. The Dog looked up at him, still panting slightly from his exertions, blinking, unperturbed. Squeeze the trigger. Slowly.

♦

At high tide, as they had arranged, Giel Hoekstra was waiting for him on the quayside at Brinkman’s Wharf on Smallgains Creek where visiting boats were allowed to moor. Giel was standing on the quayside, pacing around, smoking, a squat, burly man with his longish hair in a small pony-tail. He’d put on weight, had Giel, since they’d last seen each other, Jonjo thought, quite a gut on him now. They embraced briefly and slapped each other’s shoulders. Giel showed him the powerful cabin cruiser moored by the quayside that he’d crossed the Channel on: white, raked, clean lines, two big blocky outboard motors on the stern.

“We be in Havenhoofd in three hours,” he said. “Nice little marina. No questions. I am friend for the harbourmaster.” He grinned. “Let’s say — new friend.”

“I can pay for all this,” Jonjo said, handing him a wad of notes. “Look, they’re all euros.”

“No need, Jonjo,” Giel feigned being offended. “Hey. I do this for you — you do it for Giel Hoekstra, one day. No need, please.”

“It’s your money, Giel.”

There was something different about his tone of voice. Giel took the money.

♦

Jonjo stood in the cabin with the wheel in his hand — Giel had gone down to the head to take a leak — and enjoyed the sensation of steering this powerful boat, with its creamy boiling wake, away from England towards his future. The remorseless vibration of the twin engines drumming through the deck reinforced this idea of steady purpose, of smooth untroubled progress, of the inevitability of their arrival at their destination.

He took a deep breath, exhaled. He had hoiked The Dog out of the hole, fitted the lead to his collar and walked back towards the yacht club and the boat yard. Then he had removed the collar (with his name and address imprinted on the dangling steel coin) and had improvised a noose, of sorts, and tied The Dog to the railings by the boat yard. He gave The Dog a pat, said a hoarse goodbye and strode away. He looked back, of course, and saw The Dog sitting on his haunches, licking at something on his side, completely unperturbed. Jonjo had tossed the collar into Smallgains Creek and had walked on. A bark, a yowl — was that too much to hope for? Somebody would take charge of that dog in ten minutes, that was the thing about basset hounds — they were irresistible.

Still, he felt reassured, obscurely pleased at his weakness, not condemning himself, concentrating on the feeling of the engines thrumming through the decking, the vibration travelling up his legs, almost sexually arousing, in a funny sort of way. Quiet, steady purpose. Yes, that would be his motto, now he was free, now he was shot of everyone and everything. And his quiet steady purpose would be directed, he decided, towards one end: he would find Adam Kindred. He had the scooter’s licence plate number — he had paid that piece of filth £1,000 for the scooter’s licence plate number — and that was all he needed. That had been Kindred’s downfall: there was a trail now — electronic and paper, from the scooter to its owner — where there had never been a trail before. When it all went quiet, when the toxic dust had settled, when everyone had forgotten about John-Joseph Case, he would come back from Amsterdam to England, secretly, silently, find Adam Kindred and kill him.