LONDON SHARK: CHAPTER FOUR

you can find the prologue and all previous chapters here

C h a p t e r F o u r

THE MAN WALKS WITH PURPOSE, his hair (slightly shaggy, definitely auburn dashed with peroxide tips, I see now) lightly bouncing on an exposed white shirt collar that’s peeping out from his peacoat. The purpose in his gait is one of freedom, of vigour. This is because he . . . he has the remnants of Hannah’s fingerprints still wrapped around his own digits, while the loveless clamminess I feel balled up in my fist is probably sweat, although, with the pressure I’ve been squeezing my fingernails into my palms, it’s quite possibly blood.

After a minute, the man crosses the road and walks up to a large, light-stone-coloured building. He lingers outside of it while searching through his coat pockets. I draw to a stop, careful to keep my distance for the moment. The knife remains in my inner pocket, heavy as an anvil. I recognise the LSE sign from the Language Centre beside its entrance, but as I’m thirty or so feet behind him, and with the gelid morning air poking thorns of ice into my eyes, invoking tears, I have to blink a few times to read its name: Old Building. Above the door, sculpted into the building’s fascia is a scene of men, dressed in roman-style robes, alongside shelves stocked with books and bottles. Some of the men are climbing these shelves. It has a powerful, quasi-religious air. The man is now bent, apparently attending to a shoelace. I can’t stand to look at him too much, so look higher, above the shelf scene. Here is a coat of arms with a small mammal in it; a beaver or an otter or somesuch, above the words RERUM COGNOSCERE CAUSAS .

The words imprint themselves as irrepressibly upon my mind as surely as they have been etched in the stone. I guess it is to do with cause and cognisance.

The man has finished retying his shoes and is pushing his way into the Old Building. I assume he is a student or employee of the LSE. I am neither, and not sure whether members of the public are expected or indeed allowed in, decide to let my emotions settle and take stock of the last quarter of an hour. I circle back to the top of Portugal Street, join a lonely queue in a busy café and, as café servers are wont to serving up hot drinks in thin containers designed to superheat its contents to way above boiling, I request a cup of very milky tea to go. I sip it as I gravitate back to the Old Building, still unsure of what my plan is. But there is a plan which has a life and mind of its own, and it throws my almost-empty cup into a bin near the Old Building, and powers me through its doors, a smile slit across my face, my hands wrought with power, my heart filled with Hannah’s love. If another is trying to win her heart, it is my duty to stop him, and inside my coat pocket is the tool with which to do just that.

Inside, a welcome blast of warm air paws at me. It diffuses my inner coldness and cloaks me with its heat. There is an unmanned reception desk, and corridors and staircases lead in different directions. The man has disappeared along or up one of these, but I have no inkling as to which one to follow. A thrum of human life is apparent; footsteps recede and near around and above me. Too many to track. And then a man approaches, from the corridor to my right. His trousers rub together as he walks. Cheap polyester, is what the insistent friction of his trousers sound like.

Not the man; this male must be deep into his fifties, and sports the harried look of one who has worked far too long in a public-facing role for someone who seems to carry a resentment of the public around with him as surely as I am carrying my knife. He is just taller than me, grey hair whipped like ice cream atop his head. He wears glasses with thick, black frames, and a trouser, shirt, and time combo that I can tell he has many replicas off at home, with slight, pointless differences in hue and age. His expression is as grey as his hair; is as set and resigned to its life as his cheap clothes. An ID, though. It is attached to a lanyard, hangs lop-sided around his neck, caught on one of his shirt buttons. It is topped with LSE and a staff number. But I can read his name, and I take it in with a glance.

M I K E

K N O W L E S L Y

Librarian

If a glance is all it takes to lead me to the treasure chest of information, and the man in the pea coat has one dangling under the coat then I can, I MUST, learn this information, stash it in my mind. Work out if a knife is what is needed to solve the aching tearing through my heart.

But first, to find him. And to eschew Mike Knowlesly. I saunter towards to where Mike has emerged, avoiding eye contact while establishing a confident, unremarkable sense of myself as we pass. I pick up on a dank smell, as our bodies share space for a split-second. Like my father, Mike is at the age where his skin desiccates and dies quietly, accompanied by the gently pungent aroma of death.

I avoid eye contact and carry on, looking straight ahead, but I can tell that Mike has come to a stop; his trousers have ceased their fractious anguish.

“Help you?” he calls out. His voice is steeped in a politeness that’s nearly eroded entirely, but he is determined to cling to. It sounds like it was painful for him to let me, a stranger in his building, go by without initiating a cordial interaction.

But can he help me?

The plan says I can. I turn to Mike, smile as reasonably as I can, while also giving a small frown. The plan, or I-he-it-whofuckingever, says, “Uh, sure. There was a man who entered the building, just before I did. Think he dropped something.

Mike regards me. “Okay. What did he drop?”

Shit. I giggle, like I was stupid to not say what it was he dropped, although I’m really giggling at the stupidity of the plan.

“Uh, some money.”

Mike smiles. “Right. Well, I know most of the staff here and it’s a little early for many of the students . . .”—Mike laughs, rather sadly—so I’d guess it’s one of the staff. Could you describe him?”

“Tall, taller than me, which is most people!” I say. “He had a dark blue coat on. Quite a lot of . . . hair.” I say this while gesturing towards my own head. I’m very glad I’ve kept my woollen hat on. A bald, young man is much more distinctive than a young man in a woollen hat.

Mike smirks at this, tickled, I think, by my mime and use of the word “hair.”

He places a finger to his lips. “Hmm. Right. Sounds like one of the other side’s lot.”

What other side, I think.

“Yep, I think that could be Mark.”

I smile. Mark.

“Mark . . .” I ask. Mike frowns, and I realise it’s a bit much to give away the full name of a colleague to a stranger who has walked in from the street with a tall tale about dropped money.

Mike bats away this question and just stands there, his death-skin scent all the more apparent, along with the bitter odour of coffee breath, both old and fresh.

“Well, I can take it to him,” he offers. I consider this. I already know where he works, and his first name. But the improvisation I’ve used during the plan has furnished me with an ace that I play now saying, “Oh, I should probably check if I recognise him, maybe he isn’t the right man.”

“Hmm,” says Mike. He exhales long and hard, clearly wishing he’d not encountered me at all. “Right.” He weighs things up. I do, too—it’s not as clean an ace as I thought, only seconds ago. He didn’t drop any money. “Well, tell you what,” says Mike, after a pause. “Come along with me, I’m heading that direction, kind of. Let’s see Mark together, and if it is the right chap you can reunite him with his ten-pound note.

I nod and smile. “Sounds good!”

Mike lingers a look at me. Under his layers of cut-price clothing, under his dying skin, he is sharp. Razor sharp. Then he picks up his path, the one I interrupted. “Follow me,” he announces curtly and passes the now-manned reception desk, issues a warm, “Good morning, Sarah,” to a dark-haired, early 40’s woman busily arranging herself into her day, and with surprising dexterity takes a staircase leading to the other side of the building. I follow, my short legs almost needing to run to keep up with Knowlesly. He turns on a landing on the staircase, regards me with amused suspicion. There are paintings and artefacts on the walls and sensing something is awry, I keep my eyes on these as he asks,

“You said he had dropped some money, but I said you could give him back his ten-pound note.” From the corner of my eyes that I’m trying to keep fixed on a painting of an ageing couple and a small terrier in front of a brick fireplace, I can see that Mike’s are narrowed with suspicion.

“Oh, well,” I say. The woman is sat in a chair and the man is stood up, on the other side of the fire to her. He has a look of a butler about him. At the least, he seems to hold only a diminished power in the relationship. Even the dog seems to be looking up at him with indifference.

Mike Knowlesly has crossed his arms. I turn to meet his gaze. “It . . . I didn’t . . . Sorry, I don’t really know. I think it was ten pounds. It definitely came from him, I’m sure of it.” I delve into my coat’s inner pocket. The handle of my knife is cool to my touch. I consider pulling it out and . . . No.

I smile, tut, and reach inside the pocket on the other side of my inner coat. Pull out my wallet. I present it to Mike—ta-da!—as some kind of proof that I’m an honest and honourable man, intent on doing a good deed. He nods, unsmiling. I delve inside the folds of my wallet, my hands starting to shake, my cheeks starting to redden. “Uh, I think it’s . . .

Before I have time to panic, or to dig deeper into my own burial plot, or turn and run, or pull out my knife, a shower of footsteps clatters towards us from higher up.

Mike and I turn to a not-even-out-of-breath man in a dark blue peacoat, shaggy hair bouncing on his shoulders, a light sprinkling of stubble artfully arranges across his jowls and cheeks.

“Ah, Mark! Just the very man,” says Mike, fixing me with a knowing grin. Mark stops. Raises his eyebrows at Mike. “Oh, hi, Mr . . .”

“Oh, Mike’s fine,” says Mike, dismissing Mark’s deference with a swish of a wrist.

Mark smiles at Mike. Then at me. His teeth are pearly white and even. His blue eyes are honest and genuine.

Our eyes meet. His are suns, mine are black holes. Mine flick down to his ID. Under the LSE sign and a staff number, is:

M A R K

T U D O R

Assistant Librarian

As I welcome Mark Tudor into the hell inside me, he extends a hand for me to shake. “Hi, pleased to meet you,” he says, pleasantly. I reciprocate and let this man’s hands who for all I know have HELD A NAKED HANNAH JUST THIS MORNING touch with mine.

Our skins entwine, our salts mingle. I'm wary that there could be blood on my hands, but Tudor's face doesn't display any revulsion. Mike says, “This chap’s got a tenner for you, Mark.” He raises his eyebrows and pulls out a look of mock-euphoria. “Really?!” says Mark.

“Really,” I confirm, with a tiny, inexplicable giggle.

“Then I’m very pleased to meet you!” laughs Mark, turning to Mike.

Likewise, I think. But probably not for the same reason.