by William Boyd
Jonjo wandered across the cracked dry mud of a grassless central courtyard, looking around him. He was in a wide, two-acre quadrangle, surrounded by four of The Shaft’s apartment blocks. He saw snapped-off saplings, a washing machine with its guts ripped out and its porthole window open, graffitied walls and doors. A few people looked down at him from the upper walkways, elbows resting on the concrete balustrades, smoking.
These places should be razed to the ground, Jonjo thought, and houses built for decent people. Take all the scum who live here, put them down with humane killers, like cattle, incinerate their bodies and throw their ashes in landfill sites. Crime in the area would fall by 99 per cent, families would relax, kiddies would play hopscotch in the street, flowers would bloom again in front gardens.
Three little girls were sitting on a bench, sharing a cigarette. As he approached, Jonjo saw that they weren’t so much little – just small. He looked at them: eleven? Or eighteen?
‘Hello, ladies,’ he said, smiling. ‘Wonder if you can help me.’
‘Fuck off, peedlefile.’
‘What’s the name of the main crew, round here? Who runs the area, you know? Number one gangsters. I’ll give you a fiver if you tell me.’
One of the girls, with bad acne, said, ‘Give me ten and I’ll flog you off.’
Another, a fat one, said, ‘Give me ten and it’s the best blow-job of your life.’
They all laughed at this – giggling, silly, pushing at each other. Jonjo remained impassive.
‘Who’s the big guy in The Shaft, eh? I got a job for him. He’ll be well angry you didn’t tell me.’
The girls whispered to each other, then Acne said, ‘We don’t know.’
Jonjo took a twenty-pound note out of his pocket and dropped it on the ground. He turned away from them and put his heel on it.
‘Let’s do it this way,’ he said. ‘I didn’t give you this, you found it. I just need a name and a place, then I walk away and I won’t know who told me. No one will know. Just tell me – and don’t play silly buggers, right? Because I’ll come back and find you.’
He crossed his arms and waited. After about twenty seconds one of the girls said, ‘Bozzy, Flat B 1, Unit 17.’
Jonjo walked away, not looking round.
Jonjo followed the signs to Unit 17 and found Flat B 1 – it was derelict, on the ground floor, the windows boarded up. For a second or two he wondered if those little bitches had conned him but then he saw that there was no padlock on the door and, peering through a slit at the edge of one of the boarded-up windows, he realised there were lights on inside.
He slid his 1911 out of its holster in the small of his back and held it loosely in his hand, butt first. Then he knocked on the door.
‘Bozzy?’ he said, in an anxious voice. ‘I need to see Bozzy. I got money for him.’ He knocked again. ‘I got money for Bozzy.’
After a moment he heard bolts being thrown and the door opened six inches. A bleary, stoned face looked out.
‘Give me money. I give it Bozzy.’
Jonjo smashed his gun, held flat, into this guy’s face and he went down with a yelp. Jonjo was through the door in a second, gun in both hands and put his big builder’s boot on the guy’s throat. His nose was broken, askew, and he was spitting blood, feebly.
‘Relax. I’m not the police,’ Jonjo said in a level voice, ‘as you can probably tell. I just want a word with Bozzy.’
The room was full of smoke and the strange smell of burnt rope hit Jonjo’s nostrils. He saw a couple of sagging filthy armchairs, three stained mattresses, some empty bottles and a litter of food wrappers and foil containers and, to his vague surprise, halved lemons, squeezed dry. Three other dazed young men were slowly rising to their feet.
‘Lie down on the floor,’ Jonjo said, pointing his gun at each of them. ‘Face down. Place your hands on the back of your heads. I just want a conversation with Bozzy, then I’ll fuck off.’ He smiled as the young men lay down on the floor. He lifted his boot off the sniffler’s face and with a few prods of his toe encouraged him to turn over also. ‘So … Which one’s Bozzy?’ Jonjo said.
‘I am,’ said a beefy guy with a hot, flushed face.
‘You’d better be Bozzy, mate,’ Jonjo said. ‘Otherwise you’re in deep shit.’
‘I’m Bozzy. And you fuckin’ dead, man. I know you face, now. You dead.’
Then, swiftly, Jonjo kicked the other three prone young men very hard in the ribs with his steel toe-capped bricklayer’s boots, feeling ribs give way, stave, splinter, yield. The men shouted and rolled around in serious pain. Every time they coughed or sneezed for the next three months they’d remember this encounter, every time they crawled out of bed or reached for something they’d think of me, Jonjo acknowledged with satisfaction.
‘Get out,’ Jonjo said. ‘Now.’
They left slowly, stooped, carefully, clutching their sides like old men while Jonjo covered them with his gun. Then he bolted the door behind them and turned to Bozzy. From the pocket of his jeans he took two plastic cuffs and first bound Bozzy’s ankles and then attached Bozzy’s left wrist to his ankles before heaving him into a sitting position.
‘This is very simple, Boz, me old mate,’ Jonjo said, taking his knife out from its ankle scabbard. He grabbed hold of Bozzy’s free hand and very quickly cut the web of skin between Bozzy’s third and ring finger – just a nick, really, about a centimetre deep.
‘Fuck!’ Bozzy cried out.
Jonjo dropped his knife and grabbed the pair of fingers on either side of the gash and gripped them fiercely in both fists. Blood was dripping now, welling up from the small cut.
‘We used to do this a lot in Afghanistan,’ Jonjo said. ‘The Al-Qaeda guys say they’ll never talk but they always do.’ He could see Bozzy looked blank. ‘You heard of Al-Qaeda?’
‘No. Who they?’
‘OK. They’re tough fuckers. One thousand per cent tougher than you. We did this to them to make them talk: cut between their fingers, then rip their hands in two, down to the wrist.’ He tugged – Bozzy yelled. ‘It’s like tearing a rag or a sheet. Only the wrist bone stops it, but you ain’t got a hand any more – you’ve got a flipper. And they can’t fix it, no doctor can. If you don’t tell me what I want to know I’ll rip this hand in two. And, if you still don’t tell me, I’ll rip your other hand in two. Then you’ll be drinking beer through a straw for the rest of your life and someone will have to help you piss.’
‘What you want to know?’
Jonjo smiled. ‘I’m betting, I’m having a wager with myself, that you jumped a guy last week on this estate. His name was Adam Kindred. You stole his phone and someone used it.’
‘I stole ten phones last week, mate.’
‘This one was different. You’d remember him.’
‘We jack a lot of mims. I can’t not remember what mim is like another.’
‘You would remember this one. Not your usual mim. What happened?’ Jonjo tugged gently on Bozzy’s fingers.
‘Yeah – aghl – yeah … We jumped him. Kicked him proper, took everything. Left him under the stairs. I thought he might of been fucked. But, when we come back, half an hour later. He gone.’
‘Gone? Walked away?’
‘We left him out cold, mate. Butcher meat.’
‘Somebody must’ve helped him.’
‘Prob’ly.’
‘Where’s the phone?’
‘I sold it.’
‘Get it back. Who could have helped him?’
‘Must of been someone in The Shaft. It was late, like. Only Shaft people round and about. That’s how I remember this mim. He was well lost.’
‘Find out who helped him,’ Jonjo said, letting go of Bozzy’s hand, picking up his knife and cutting the plastic cuffs from his tethered wrist and ankles. ‘Call me.’ Jonjo gave him a piece of paper with his mobile number on it. ‘Call me in a week. I’ll give you a grand if you find the person who helped him. A grand – one thousand pounds.’ He tossed a cou
ple of £20 notes on the floor.
‘If you don’t call me I’ll come back and get you. Cut off your head and send it to your crack-whore mother. Got it?’
‘Flat, bruv. Well flat.’
Jonjo unbolted the door and strolled out into the night.
16
ADAM WALKED FROM CHELSEA to Southwark - across Chelsea Bridge to Battersea and then round the back of the power station and along the river, most of the way. He had his little street-map paperback but he still stopped people – poor people, like him – to ask directions. He was guided past Lambeth Palace and the National Theatre, along Bankside and under London Bridge to Southwark. Something was leading him there, some unconscious urge – he wasn’t sure if it was wise but somehow he felt obliged to do it. Perhaps it was because Mhouse – his rescuer and tormentor – had suggested it. He felt that she had blurted out this potential sanctuary because, even as she attacked him, she recognised how needy and desperate he was. The scab on his forehead had finally fallen off, leaving only the faintest pink tracery of the trainer sole that had connected with his forehead. The time was right – he knew it was something he had to do.
In Southwark Street he asked a few people if they had heard of the Church of John Christ. He was corrected a few times – ‘You mean Jesus Christ’ – and was twice directed to Southwark Cathedral. Eventually someone told him there was a strange kind of church hall off Tooley Street, down on the river by Unicorn Passage and so he headed that way, realising he was leaving Southwark for Bermondsey.
In Tooley Street there were small signs with arrows attached to drainpipes and traffic signs – ‘The Ch. of John Christ, straight on’ – and he went further east, along Jamaica Road, turning left and then right, following the signs and arrows before finally arriving at his destination – on the edge of the river, he saw.
It looked like an old nineteenth-century brick warehouse with large sliding wooden doors and no windows on the façade. Behind it he could see the brown river flowing by. Above the doors in bright plastic lettering – blue on white – was printed: ‘THE CHURCH OF JOHN CHRIST. Est. 1998’. And below that: ‘Archbishop the rev. YEMI THOMPSON-GBEHO. Pastor and Founder.’ And below that, again, the promises: ‘NO SIN ENDURES’ and ‘ALL SINS FORGIVEN’.
There was a smaller door set in the large sliding one and Adam knocked on this, waited a minute, knocked again, waited another minute and was walking away when a woman’s voice called after him, ‘Was that you, dear?’
Adam turned. An elderly woman with thin, carroty-auburn hair and no front teeth stood smiling at the open small door with a steaming mug of tea in her hand.
‘I was told I could get help here,’ Adam said.
‘God will provide, darling. Service starts at six, see you later.’ She shut the door and Adam walked back to Tooley Street and asked someone the time – 4.30. He might as well wait, he thought. He was hungry, his feet were sore from his too-tight golf shoes and having walked all this way it would be as well to see what was on offer. He found a boarded-up doorway next to a newsagent’s and sat on its step, settling down to wait until the church opened. He closed his eyes, hoping he might doze for a few minutes, happy to have put his faith in John Christ, whoever he might be.
But he couldn’t doze: across the street was an estate agent’s and he watched a plump girl in a pale grey suit and very high heels step out of the door and light a cigarette. She blew the smoke up into the air over her shoulder as if directing it away from an invisible someone – an invisible non-smoker, Adam supposed. Just like Fairfield Springer, he realised with something of a shock – that was how Fairfield smoked. And he felt a cold guilt creep over him and another feeling which he decided to call remorse, rather than self-pity. He saw Fairfield in his mind’s eye – her thick, straw-blonde hair, her powerful, black-rimmed spectacles. She had a pretty face but somehow the mass of hair and the spectacles prevented you noticing that for a minute or so.
In their two intimate encounters – a sex act and a dinner three days later – she had smoked a cigarette exactly like that girl standing outside a Bermondsey estate agent’s, blowing the smoke up and away over her right shoulder, out of consideration for the non-smoker she was with …
As he thought about Fairfield his memories inexorably drew him back to that night in the cloud chamber. In fact it was late afternoon/early evening but they were doing a night-simulation cloud-seeding run so it might as well have been night. The cloud chamber’s lights had been dimmed and an artificial moonlight was glowing dimly. Fairfield was one of his graduate students, a promising, bright girl, a little overweight, short-sighted (hence the spectacles), serious, attentive. She had asked if she could accompany him to the very top of the chamber, nine storeys high – and he had said, of course, by all means, anyone else want to come? But none of the other graduates wanted to – they were more interested in seeing the rain falling. He supposed, now, with the bitter wisdom of hindsight, that she had planned everything. Adam and Fairfield had stood there, leaning on the viewing gantry, looking out over the grey, shifting cloud-mass, covering an area the size of two tennis courts, bathed in the bluey-white light of a notional moon. They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, elbows resting on the safety railing, watching the clouds billow gently beneath the acrylic-glass roof of the cloud chamber. Adam pressed the button to release the huge feeder-arms and they swung out, circling clockwise, over the clouds, releasing their tiny granules of frozen silver iodide.
‘It’s so fucking beautiful,’ Fairfield whispered. ‘It’s like you’re playing god, Adam.’
He turned to face her, to correct her – this was a scientific, climatological experiment, not some protonuminous ego-trip – and almost immediately they were kissing, her spectacles pressing hard into his cheeks and brow.
‘I love you, Adam,’ she said, breathing heavily, breaking apart to remove her clothing, ‘I’ve loved you since the day I saw you.’
They made love on the viewing gantry at the top of the cloud chamber – above the clouds – with a quickness and urgency that did not inhibit his orgasm in the slightest. Adam came with a gasp of surprise at the unparalleled, animalistic sensation of release (the next day he found his knees scratched and his elbows and legs bruised). When it was over they replaced whatever clothing they had removed and sat beside each other on the metal floor of the gantry in silence, regaining their breath and thoughts, and Fairfield smoked a cigarette, blithely ignoring the no-smoking signs, blowing the smoke considerately away from him, up and away over her right shoulder.
Fool, Adam said to himself, now, bitterly – it had been an almighty risk; any one of the other students might have taken the elevator up to the viewing gantry and surprised them. Had that moment with Fairfield been the fatal catalyst that had led him here, to this doorway in Bermondsey – the throw of the destiny-dice that found him sitting on his arse on the threshold of a derelict shop, wanted for murder, penniless, bearded, filthy, hungry, wearing cast-off clothes? But no, he reasoned, get real, Adam – you could trace the causal chain back to the day you were born if you had a mind to. That way led to madness. But then why, as a relatively happily married man in a respected and secure job, with a growing academic reputation, had he chosen to have sex with Fairfield Springer, one of his graduate students? What had possessed him? Why had he not simply said, ‘No, Fairfield, this cannot happen, please,’ and pushed her gently away? Their lovemaking, if that was the correct expression for something so instinctive and unrefined, must have lasted barely a couple of minutes, before he collapsed, gasping, and rolled off her. They had adjusted their clothes, sat for a while in silence, then Fairfield had kissed him, her tobacco-y tongue deep in his mouth, and she had taken the elevator down to the laboratory to rejoin her fellow students. That was it – the act, the sex act, had never been repeated.
Damage control, Adam had thought the next morning over breakfast, sitting opposite his smart and pretty wife as they both prepared to go to their respective jobs. Yes, damage control, t
hat was what was required: a meeting with Fairfield, sincere apologies issued, a moment of madness conceded, his fault entirely, affection expressed, a rueful comment on this unseemly breakdown in professorial–student relations. It would never, never happen again. But by then the first streams of texts – explicit, not obscene; passionate, not crazed – had already started arriving on his cellphone.
‘Fucking hell,’ Adam said to himself and opened his eyes to see a man staring at him a few feet away. Big guy, burly, built like a forward in a rugby team, fifties, with a square, lived-in face, semi-bald, longish hair, wearing a blazer and grey flannels and carrying a small leather bag over his shoulder.
‘You all right?’ this man said.
‘Yeah, fine, thanks,’ Adam said, managing a vague smile. And the man smiled back and went into the newsagent’s next door. He came out a few minutes later with an armful of newspapers and magazines and leant forward towards Adam, with something in his hand.
‘Good luck, mate,’ he said.
He gave Adam a £i coin.
Adam watched him stroll away. Adam thought: what’s going on here? He looked in some amazement at the small heavy coin in the palm of his hand, experiencing a kind of revelation. He had money now – and it had been given to him. He didn’t need to steal, he realised – he could beg.
When the Church of John Christ opened its doors at six o’clock Adam was the only potential parishioner waiting. The small door was ajar so he stepped through it into a vestibule where the toothless woman sat behind a desk.