"Rainmaker" Chapter 2
Dominic took a step forward, immediately plunging his shoe into the cascades of water that rushed down the streams between the cobblestone road and the pavement. He could feel the water seep through the broguing and moisten his socks - his teeth were forced on edge. The rain kept coming, lavishing each individual cobblestone in a glaze of dew; it likened to something precious, like ganache on a cake. He produce another plume of smoke, inhaling the tobacco to ease the feeling of wet sock. The man on the other-side waited patiently, chin nestled into the breast of his coat whilst hand clutching his tweed cap to his hair, battling the whipping November winds. A flash of lightning flickered in the distance, shortly answered by thunderous rumblings. Dom withdrew his identification from his top pocket and held it so the man could see. The bakelite lamps caught the laminated picture of Dom on the inside, creating a fluorescent halo around his photo.
‘Dominic Ode.’ he said, stowing his identification back once the man had a proper look at it. All he needed to see was the badge. ‘Private Investigator. I’ve been hired on behalf of Mrs Andorra to locate her husband’s killer. The boys at the office told me you knew something about it?’
The man opened his mouth but was immediately struck by a paralysing coughing fit - t’was common nowadays. When he spoke it was in a grisly tone, like he was churning gravel with his teeth as he formulated the words. Yet, he also had this liveliness about him - an effeminate timbre which bounced on some of the words. Scouse, Dom suspected. Once, eons ago perhaps, this man would have been young and spritely, but now his voice reflected the withered nature of his soul.
‘Aye.’ he said.
Now closer and in a stronger light, Dom could see the contours of the man’s face. From his voice, one would expect his skin was dry and weathered like a chamois, but in fact the skin was taught to the skull, swelling rosiness beneath the surface of his cheeks. He was young; Dom had half-expected that. Just from his Identag, Dom knew the man was born in 1964, making him just over twenty. He must have smoked a pack of fags every waking hour of his life, he thought, to be left with a voice like that. His eyes seemed odd too, dark and alien, feline almost. It was like that ‘uncanny valley’ physiologists are always raving on about; something that did not fit with its surroundings. Perhaps he was from the colonies, a creole, as the ENG had deemed them. It was amazing he was still alive if he was. There was a blonde curl of hair underneath his tweed cap.
Dom watched as the man’s eyes shifted to his mouth, eyeing up the cigarette that hung from his lips.
‘Can I bum a smoke?’ he asked.
Dom rolled his eyes, taking the packet of Frederick’s from his jacket pocket. He placed the new cigarette in the same groove in his lip as the first was rested. He cupped his face, igniting the second cigarette with his lighter. He then took the second cigarette from his mouth and handed it to the man. He looked at it hesitantly, probably taken back by the solvent of saliva that tainted the tip.
‘So it didn’t get wet.’ Dom reassured.
The man took the cigarette and placed it to his own lips. His hands seemed petite, with spindly long fingers best apt for card tricks - there were enough of those conners on Fleet Street. Now it seemed, he was ready to talk about what happened to Andorra. From another of his many pockets, Dom withdrew his LARC-approved tape recorder.
‘You got a name?’ he asked.
‘Robin.’ he said. ‘Robin Cawthon.’
‘Alright Mr Cawthon. Please explain to me what information you have on the murder of Mr Q Andorra on the night of November 19th 1983’
Cawthon exhaled the smoke and cleared his throat with further coughing.
‘I saw Andorra crossing Vicarage Road late Thursday night. I was in New London, with a couple of mates. We had just grabbed a round at a pub - I work from Sundays to Thursdays so I celebrate the weekend early you see? Anyway, the bloke was just standing there in the hue of the neon lights. I knew it was him from the gaunt face.’
‘Did he appear strange at all to you?’
‘Not that I can recall. He looked the same as he looks on TV. He was even wearing the bright blue suit he always has on when he’s announcing the national finical figures. He was a splitting image as what you’d expect. Although, that being said, his face didn’t seem to have the same cheery disposition as the media lets on. He looked troubled’
‘Troubled?’
‘Yeah, I don’t know why though. From what I hear the man has it all; beautiful wife, a big penthouse up near the Northern Line, stacks of cash and a secure job - it is more than what people round these parts could dream of.’
‘And what was he doing?’
‘Nothing much initially. He was just standing around outside the hat store, not looking in or anything, rather he was just gazing out at the street. He seemed to be looking for something or waiting for somebody. As soon as I knew it was Andorra I turned back to tell my mates, but by the time I had turned around he was vanished without a trace.’
‘And his disappearance, do you think it was prompted by you?’
‘No, it couldn’t have been. He was looking away when I first spotted him.’
‘You said he ‘vanished’. How so?’
‘Well, as I said; he was there one second and gone another. Vanished.’
‘Did you see a car? Did anyone that you are aware of make contact with him?’
‘No car. I didn’t see nor hear any car. There was something though - a train, an overground service had just gone by as I turned back. If there was a car, the sound of the train might have drowned it out. But I didn’t actually see anything, that’s the thing. There’s no way I car could have remained invisible next to that streetlight - I would have seen the light reflected in the paintwork.’
‘How can a man vanish?’ Dom pondered aloud.
‘People vanish.’ Robin said, a slight hostility in his gravely voice. ‘People vanish all the time. We all know the culprit behind their disappearances, don’t we detective?’
He subtly alluded to the wall behind Dom, more specifically at the large poster that covered every inch of brickwork in it’s propaganda. It was the usual - the art-deco depiction of Saint George slaying the dragon. The iconic image, which was plastered on every available space in the public’s eye-line was supposedly painted by the Pole, Tamara Łempicka - it certainly demonstrated her distinctive, geometric designs. She had been commissioned by ENG to paint it for their movement, and when she refused, she was held captive along with the other impurities at the Holloway Camps - an ex-prison apparently. Now, her work acted as a constant reminder of ENG’s rule. Each district of the country had their own version of the poster, each with its own idiosyncratic slogan. In Old London, and therefore on the poster above, the slogan was as follows: “Work. Freedom. Bread. What more could a true nationalist desire?” The concept of a ‘true nationalist’ was common. During the early stages of The Reformation, a popular variant was: “A true nationalist has nothing to fear from Excalibur”.
‘That’s heresy.’ Dom hushed.
‘What isn’t?’ came the sarcastic response.
This was true, of course. However hard it must have been to implement, anything that was damning to ENG doctrine, whether it be spoken, written or even conceived in thought, was deemed heresy and punishable by execution, most often via the use of inhibition. Quite paradoxically, ‘heresy’ was deemed heresy at this point - to say the word was to put one’s self at risk, but its penalty was not as bad as a direct condemnation of ENG. What they preferred nowadays was the notion of ‘NeoLollardism’, a synonymous word-replacement for the curse.
‘What are you going to do about it detective? Arrest me?’ Robin pressured.
‘Nothing.’ Dom paused. ‘I’ll do nothing at all.’
Copyright © Tomas Heasman 2017
