“Good school,” Wang said, distantly, then, “Yeah…” as if his mind was on something else, then, collecting himself, asked politely, “How did it go?”
Adam shrugged and said he could never predict these things. The three people who had interviewed him — two men and a woman with a near-shaven head — had given nothing away, being almost absurdly polite and formal, so unlike his former American colleagues, Adam had thought at the time.
“Imperial College. So, you’re a scientist,” Wang said. “So am I. What’s your field?”
“Climatology,” Adam said. “What about you?”
Wang thought for a second as if he wasn’t sure of the answer. “Immunology, I guess, yeah…Or you could say I was an allergist,” he said, then glancing at his newly adjusted watch said he’d better go, had work to do, calls to make. He paid his bill, in cash, and clumsily gathered up his papers, spilling sheaves on the floor, stooping to pick them up, muttering to himself — suddenly he seemed more than a little distracted again, as if, now the meal had come to an end, his real life had recommenced with its many pressures and anxieties. Finally he stood and shook Adam’s hand, wishing him luck, hoping he had got the job. “I have a good feeling about it,” Wang added, illogically, “a real good feeling.”
Adam was halfway through his tiramisu when he noticed that Wang had left something behind: a transparent plastic zippable folder under the seat between their tables, half obscured by the hanging flap of the tablecloth. He reached for it and saw that on the front was a small pocket that contained Wang’s business card. Adam extracted it and read: ‘DR PHILIP y. WANG MD, PhD (Yale), FBSI, MAAI’, and under that ‘Head of Research & Development CALENTURE-DEUTZ pic’. On the reverse there were two addresses with phone numbers, one in the Cherwell Business Park, Oxford (Unit 10) and the other in London — Anne Boleyn House, Sloane Avenue, SWs.
As he paid his bill, pleased to remember his new pin code, tapping it without hesitation into the handset, Adam asked if Dr Wang was a regular customer and was informed that he’d never been seen in the restaurant before. Adam decided he’d drop the file off himself — it seemed a friendly and helpful thing to do, especially as Wang had been so enthusiastic about his career prospects — and asked directions to Sloane Avenue.
Walking along the King’s Road, still busy with shoppers (almost exclusively French or Spanish, it seemed), Adam thought suddenly that perhaps Wang had deliberately left his file for him to discover. He wondered if it was a way of seeing him again: two lonely men in the city, wanting some company…Was it, even, a gay thing, a ploy? Adam had sometimes wondered if there was something about him that gay men found attractive. He could recall three precise occasions when he had been flirted with and another when a man had waited for him outside the lavatory of a restaurant in Tucson, Arizona and had forced a kiss on him. Adam didn’t think Wang was gay — no, that was preposterous — but he decided it would be wise to phone ahead and so eased Wang’s card out of its tight plastic niche, sat down on a wooden bench outside a pub, fished out his mobile phone and made the call.
“Philip Wang.”
“Dr Wang, it’s Adam Kindred. We just met at the restaurant—”
“Of course — and you have my file. Thank you so much. I just called them and they told me you had it.”
“I thought it’d be quicker if I dropped it off.”
“That’s so kind of you. Please come up and have a drink — oh, there’s someone at the door. That’s not you, is it?”
Adam laughed, said he thought he was five minutes or so away and clicked his phone shut. Come up and have a drink — perfectly friendly, no sexual innuendo there — but perhaps it was the American accent, professionally flat, giving away nothing, that made Adam think that Wang had been insufficiently surprised to hear he was on his way round…
Anne Boleyn House was an imposing, almost fortress-like 19305 art deco block of service flats with a small semicircle of box-hedged drive-in and a uniformed porter in the lobby sitting behind a long marble-topped counter. Adam signed his name in a register and was directed to Flat G 14 on the seventh floor. After his phone call he had thought over the necessity of seeing Wang again — he could have safely left the file with the porter, he now realised — but he had nothing else to do and he didn’t particularly want to go back to his modest hotel in Pimlico: a drink or two with Wang would kill some time and, besides, Wang seemed an interesting and educated man.
Adam stepped out of the lift into a wholly featureless long corridor — dark parquet, pistachio walls, identical flush doors differentiated only by their number. Like cells, he thought, or, in a film, it might have been a lazy art director’s vision of Kafkaesque conformity. And there was an unpleasant nose-tickling, odorous overlay — of wax polish mingled with potent, bleachy lavatory cleanser. Small glaringly bright lights set into the ceiling lit the way to Flat G 14, where the corridor made a right-angled turn to reveal another length of soulless, service-flat perspective. A glowing green exit light shone at its end.
Adam saw that Wang had left his door slightly ajar — a sign of welcome? — but he rang the bell all the same, thinking that it wouldn’t do simply to walk in. He heard Wang come through a door, heard a door close, but no call of “Adam? Do come in, please.”
He rang the bell again.
“Hello?” Adam pushed the door slightly. “Dr Wang? Philip?”
He opened the door and stepped into a small, boxy living room. Two armchairs close to a coffee table, a huge flat-screen TV, some dried flowers in straw vases. A small galley kitchen behind two louvred half-doors. Adam set his briefcase down by the coffee table and placed Wang’s file beside a fan of golfing magazines, all smiling men in pastel colours brandishing their clubs. Then he heard Wang’s voice, low and urgent.
“Adam? I’m in here…”
The next room. No, please, not the bedroom, surely? Adam thought to himself, urgently regretting coming up as he stepped over to the door and pushed it open.
“I can only stay five min—”
Philip Wang lay on top of his bed in a widening pool of blood. He was alive, very conscious, and a hand, flipper-like, gestured Adam towards him. The room had been trashed, two small filing cabinets up-ended and emptied, drawers from a bedside table tipped out, a wardrobe cleared with a swipe or two, clothes and hangers scattered.
Wang pointed to his left side. Adam hadn’t noticed — the handle of a knife protruded from Wang’s sopping sweater.
“Pull it out,” Wang said. His face showed signs of a beating — his spectacles distorted but unbroken, a trickle of blood from a nostril, a split lip, a red impact-circle on a cheekbone.
“Are you sure?” Adam said.
“Please, now…”
With fluttering hands he seemed to guide Adam’s right hand to the hilt of the knife. Adam gripped it loosely.
“I don’t think this is the sort of thing—”
“One quick movement,” Wang said and coughed. A little blood overflowed from his mouth down his chin.
“Are you absolutely sure?” Adam repeated. “I don’t know if it’s the correct—”
“Now!”
Without further thought Adam gripped the knife and drew it out, as easily as if from a scabbard. It was a breadknife, he noticed, as a surge of released blood followed the withdrawal, travelling up the blade and wetting Adam’s knuckles, warmly.
“I’ll call the police,” Adam said and placed the knife down, unthinkingly wiping his dripping fingers on the coverlet.
“The file,” Wang said, fingers twitching, moving, as if tapping at an invisible keyboard.