London Under Midnight (9 page)

    'Exactly.'

    The man squirted steam into a jug. 'Now that's what I call cunning.'

    'Did you catch the smugglers?' the woman asked.

    'No. My job was to write about the river and its tides and currents.'

    'And now you're investigating the Vampire Sharkz. Good luck, mate.' The man stacked the sliced bread. 'My opinion, for what it's worth, is that it's kids.'

    'You're wrong,' the woman countered. 'This graffiti's different. Vampire Sharkz. They're coming to get you. Don't you see? It's either a threat or a warning.'

    The man caught Ben's eye. 'Who am I to argue? The oracle has spoken.'

    She bustled into the back with the words, 'There's a storm coming; I want you to get the dog out of the cellar or he'll howl the place down.'

    

    

    Ben Ashton moved through the East End of London into the maze of streets around Spitalfields Market. This is the place that movies portrayed as being the fogbound haunt of Jack the Ripper. Where hansom cabs clattered along, and cries of 'Murder! Murder!' in a Cockney accent would be followed by the piercing note of the constable's whistle. The infamous London smog had gone now. Today, Ben strolled through the summer sunshine where the rows of Victorian townhouses were punctuated by modern buildings. A redbrick house with an ancient front door and extravagant cast-iron knocker that would be perfect as Scrooge's residence in
A Christmas Carol
might sit next to a glass-sided photographic studio. The reason for the mixture of architecture was apparent from the gouge marks in the old walls where they'd been scarred by Hitler's bombs. During the blitz of World War Two many properties had been literally blown off the map. Yet the street names were still there: Brick Lane, Chicksand Street, Fashion Street, Petticoat Lane, Whitechapel Road. Now Cockney sparrows lived side-by-side with middle-eastern families. Brick Lane exuded the mystique and aromas of a Damascus street market. Arabic music ran helter-skelter from cafe doorways. A heady mix of different nationalities thronged the streets. When Ben Ashton visited this neighbourhood it sent tingles down his spine. He loved how Eastern exoticism found a unique fusion with Cockney London. Although he noticed, regretfully, that it was only just mid-morning otherwise he'd be tempted to slip into one of the restaurants where he could enjoy the Moroccan flavors of lamb slowly cooked with almonds and honey.

    But everywhere he went he was haunted by that graffiti rendered in blazing red paint:

    

    
VAMPIRE SHARKZ

    ☺
They're coming to get you
☺

    

    Even though examples of the graffiti were easy to find in that distinctive script, the identity of its creator was going to be more difficult to uncover. Dangerous, too, if it was a criminal gang marking their territory. He passed offices built on the site of Miller's Court where Jack the Ripper's last victim, Mary Kelly, had been butchered. Even a rear wall of that building wore the blood-red lettering.

    So exactly what are Vampire Sharkz? A bunch of drug dealers? An R&B band? But why are they going to get us? How will they get us? What do they intend to do with us? Why the smiling face motif? Was the lettering the work of one artist? Or were there teams of them?

    Ben did what he was paid to do. He asked around. Had anyone seen the graffiti artist? Mostly, the responses were smiles, shakes of the head. Some people were annoyed by the vandalism of property. One kid declared it 'Cool', and gazed at the five-foot-high letters in admiration. A man with a shaved head told him he'd heard a Vampire Shark was the new narcotic that would replace cocaine. A stony-faced woman with bags full of oranges insisted that the Arts Council had paid some millionaire conceptual artist to violate her beloved city. So the rumor mill had begun to turn out fanciful stories. The graffiti was already acquiring its own mythology.

    The people he needed to speak with were the ones that watched the streets night and day. The security guards, the police, the paparazzi who lay siege to celebrities' houses at ungodly hours. He retraced his steps along Brick Lane in the direction of Whitechapel High Street. The sun blazed down on him; it made his back itch. The minutes were ticking away to the deadline next week. If he didn't deliver this high-profile assignment it was likely he'd be relegated to filler articles that the editor used when nothing newsworthy was happening.

    'Come on,' he muttered to himself. 'Make this good. Make an impression.'

    His eye caught a rack of newspapers outside a newsagent's. One headline ran with typical tabloid slickness: Boat Prophet Faces Boot. Then in smaller print: Mayor tells hermit his days are numbered.

    Ben clicked his tongue. 'There's your man.'

    

    

    'Ladies and gentlemen! You have ten minutes to save your lives. Quickly! How are you going to do it?'

    Ben approached the plywood dinghy that sat on top of its ten-foot pole in the park beside the river, just a short distance from the distinctive landmark of Tower Bridge. The huge structure of the bridge with its latticework of steel, along which red double-decker buses flowed, rippled in the heat haze as if the sun melted it.

    In the dinghy atop the pole sat a man with blue-black skin who called down to passers-by. He shaded himself beneath a black umbrella of the kind that used to be favored by London's office workers in the days of yore. A girl with bare, sunburnt shoulders walked by the boat-on-a-stick without looking up.

    'Madam! You have ten minutes to save your life. Quickly! How are you going to do it?'

    With her eyes down on the path she trudged through the hot air without responding.

    Ben shielded his eyes against the glare and peered up at the man, sheltering from the blazing sun beneath his brolly. The man was elderly yet his unlined face appeared astonishingly youthful.

    'Sir,' the man said. 'You have ten minutes to save your life. Quickly! How are you going to do it?'

    'Mr Kigoma?'

    The man moved his umbrella slightly as he leaned over the edge of the airborne vessel to look down. 'There's only one human being in the whole of London who lives in a boat on top of a pole; who the hell else could it be?'

    'My apologies, Mr Kigoma. I wondered if you would like to talk to me.'

    'Of course.'

    'My name is Ben Ashton.'

    'You from the Mayor's office?' There was a kind of wide-eyed innocence as the man gazed down.

    'No, sir.'

    'You're definitely not police.'

    'That's right. I'm-'

    'A reporter.'

    'Well, a feature writer for a magazine.'

    'That's not a reporter? Are you not writing for a publication?'

    'Yes, sir, I am.'

    'Writing a report about what you've been assigned to investigate?'

    'Ye-ess…' Ben conceded. The man in the boat wasn't hostile. Oddly, his manner suggested a child-like curiosity. 'Can I ask you some questions?'

    'Lord, yes!'

    'Thank you, sir.'

    'Call me Elmo.'

    'Elmo.' Ben nodded. His neck was beginning to ache from looking upwards. The old man was neatly dressed in a shirt, buttoned at the neck with a neatly knotted tie. How the shirt could be such a pristine white and the tie so uncrumpled, Ben couldn't begin to guess. With an air of youth, the man seemed to glow with cleanliness despite residing in the boat. Short silver locks of hair hugged his scalp and Ben couldn't avoid picturing those statues of Greek philosophers in the British Museum with the same crisp hairstyles.

    Elmo began to recite a speech that he must have given plenty of times before to TV crews and reporters. 'My name is Elmo Kigoma. Some dub me the modern Diogenes after the philosopher who lived in Athens four hundred years before Christ; there he resided in a wash tub, and reputedly he walked the streets in daylight with a lamp telling everyone he searched for an honest man. I was born in the Congo eighty-six years ago this very month. Two weeks ago my sons and I erected a pole in the park then set the boat on top. All this we did without the consent of the Mayor's office - she now wishes rid of me, and will send men to tear down my boat. But I have a mission. I am here to warn people that in order to save their lives they must abstain. To eat and drink frugally is the key to longevity.'

    Ben jumped in when Elmo took a breath. 'I'm interested in what you see from your boat up there.'

    'Oh?'

    'Well, that's some vantage point, and you're here night and day.'

    'I'll tell you what I see, Ben. I see humanity in danger. They are in peril. Death waits nearby.'

    'From overindulgence?'

    'Yes, Ben. But not only that.'

    Ben took in the park. It was peaceful enough. A man in a red bandanna walked his dog. Children sat in the shade to eat ice creams they'd bought from a kiosk beside the river. And Old Father Thames flowed at an untroubled pace toward the sea. When Ben couldn't identify any source of danger whatsoever, he returned to the serene expression of the man who gazed down on him.

    Elmo turned his head to scan the river. 'You won't see it now but the signs are there.'

    Ben admired the man, and his fearless expression of his beliefs, not to say his devotion to helping humanity, though Ben guessed the threat Elmo identified might be difficult for most people to understand - Ben included. What Elmo uttered next bore this out.

    'Ben, I've laboured to explain the danger, but people's minds are tuned to a different wave-length. Their minds are incapable of understanding when I tell them that Edshu has returned.'

    'Edshu?' Ben echoed the unfamiliar name.

    'Edshu the trickster god. Whose sole aim is to bring about conflict and disharmony. For Edshu, spreading strife is his eternal joy.'

    'I'm sorry, Elmo, I've never heard of Edshu.'

    'He's a deity from my homeland. When Edshu wishes it he can make all kinds of mischief. Listen, how can I explain it more clearly? When you drop a slice of bread. If it falls with the buttered side down on to your rug, that's the touch of Edshu. You know your dog has been touched by Edshu if your pet becomes lost and you spend hours searching for him. But when you find him, instead of the pleasure of being reunited the dog bites your hand. That's the touch of Edshu. The trickster god doesn't confront you with an enemy; he turns your friend into your enemy.'

    'Just as food can change from a source of nourishment and pleasure into your enemy, too.'

    'Ha!' Elmo threw down the umbrella and stood up in the boat. The post quivered alarmingly. 'Ha!' Elmo pointed down, his eyes wide. 'I like you, Ben. You are the first person to understand my message. Food and drink in moderation gives you life. Excess is death. I like you very much!'

    Ben found himself grinning up at the man. While Elmo was in the process of thinking so highly of him it might be fruitful to ask that key question. 'Elmo, you've lived in this park for a while, so perhaps you can solve a mystery for me?'

    'I like you, sir, so I will try my hardest.'

    'My employer has instructed me to find out who is painting a message all over London. You can make out the lettering on that fence across there.'

    Elmo nodded. 'I've seen it.'

    'Vampire Sharkz. They're coming to get you.' Ben shielded his eyes against the sun's glare. 'Did you see who painted it?'

    'The identity of the individual isn't important.'

    'That's what I've been asked to discover.'

    Elmo Kigoma's voice rang out with a sudden power. 'You must write about the warning. Soon Edshu will test the men and women of London. If they're strong enough to survive the enemy he has created then the gods will permit you all to live. If you are weak the gods will wipe out the city. I have seen the Dead-bone Woman kill a man on that very path. She's a creature of the sticky hair. When I was a child they would lash out at my people from the darkness of the jungle. Now the same creatures will lash out at people from the river that flows through this city. Write down the warning in your magazine. Tell everyone that they must be on their guard because the battle they will soon fight will make all the battles of the past seem like nothing!'

    'I'm sorry, Elmo, I don't understand the exact nature of this threat. You say there's something dangerous in the water?'

    'You understood what I meant about abstinence and excess. Think about what I told you - you'll make sense of it!'

    The sudden outburst of emotion exhausted the old man. He raised the umbrella over his head to shade him from the sun. In the distance clouds bubbled up on the horizon. Those thunderheads promised the arrival of a storm.

    

    

    'Come back, you're going to get electrocuted.'

    'The power goes through that third rail. The electricity goes nowhere near the bridge.'

    'You're still too close, bro.'

    'Stop your worrying, Mickey. Look, safe as houses.'

    Ped proved the gantry that ran beneath the bridge was solid by jumping up and down. Not that it would reassure Mickey for long. Mickey dreaded electricity. When the tube train ran under the bridge the contacts brushed against the live rail, triggering blue-white flashes that were dazzling. Ped held a paint aerosol in one hand; the other arm he draped across his brother's shoulders.

    'Listen, it can't hurt you, Mickey. The juice's down there. We're up here.'

    Mickey's wide eyes tracked the train as it ran along the surface line. 'Look at them flashes, bro. All them sparks. The electric's getting out!'