Part 6 (1/2)

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 ident.i.ty of its creator was going to be more difficult to uncover. Dangerous, too, if it was a criminal gang marking their territory. He pa.s.sed 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 unG.o.dly 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 a.s.signment 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.'

NINE.

'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 pa.s.sers-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 s.h.i.+elded 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 astonis.h.i.+ngly 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 h.e.l.l 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 a.s.signed to investigate?'

'Ye-essa' 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 s.h.i.+rt, b.u.t.toned at the neck with a neatly knotted tie. How the s.h.i.+rt 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.