Then it started to rain.
Kit picked up his speed as the rain poured into the alley from low, swirling clouds overhead. He hunched his shoulders, put his head down, and ran. A wind rose out of nowhere and whipped down the length of the blank brick canyon, driving the rain into his eyes.
He stopped.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, he flipped open the screen. No signal.
“Bloody useless,” he muttered.
Drenched to the skin, water dripping from the ends of his hair and tip of his nose, he shoved the phone back into his pocket. Enough of this, he decided. Abort mission. He made a swift about-face and, shoes squelching with every step, headed back the way he had come. Good news: the wind ceased almost at once and the rain dwindled away; the storm diminished as quickly as it had arisen.
Dodging one oily puddle after another, he jogged along and had almost regained the alley entrance at Grafton Street when he heard someone calling him-at least, he thought that is what he had heard. But with the spatter of rain from the eaves of the buildings round about, he could not be sure.
He slowed momentarily, and a few steps later he heard the call again-unmistakable this time: “Hello!” came the cry. “Wait!”
Keep moving, said the voice inside his head. As a general rule it kept him from getting tangled in the craziness of London’s vagrant community. He glanced over his shoulder to see a white-haired man stumbling toward him out of the damp urban canyon. Where had he come from? Most likely a drunk who had been sleeping it off in a doorway. Roused by the storm, he had seen Kit and recognized an easy mark. Such was life; he prepared to be accosted.
“Sorry, mate,” Kit called back over his shoulder as he turned away. “I’m skint.”
“No! Wait!”
“No change. Sorry. Got to run.”
“Cosimo, please.”
That was all the vagrant said, but it welded Kit to the spot.
He turned and looked again at the beggar. Tall, and with a full head of thick silvery hair and a neatly trimmed goatee, he was dressed in charity-shop chic: simple white shirt, dark twill trousers, both sturdy, but well-worn. The fact that he stuffed the cuffs of his trousers into his high-top shoes and wore one of those old-timey greatcoats that had a little cape attached to the shoulders made him look like a character out of Sherlock Holmes.
“Look, do I know you?” asked Kit as the fellow hastened nearer.
“I should hope so, my boy,” replied the stranger. “One would think a fellow would know his own great- grandfather.”
Kit backed away a step.
“Sorry I’m late,” continued the old man. “I had to make certain I wasn’t followed. It took rather longer than I anticipated. I was beginning to fear I’d missed you altogether.”
“Excuse me?”
“So, here we are. All’s well that ends well, what?”
“Listen, mate,” protested Kit. “I think you’ve got the wrong guy.”
“What a joy it is to meet you at long last, my son,” replied the old gentleman, offering his hand. “Pure joy. But of course, we haven’t properly met. May I introduce myself? I am Cosimo Livingstone.” He made a very slight bow.
“Okay, so what’s the joke?” demanded Kit.
“Oh, it is no joke,” the old man assured him. “It’s quite true.”
“No-you’re mistaken. I am Cosimo Livingstone,” he insisted. “And anyway, how do you know my name?”
“Would you mind very much if we discussed this walking? We really should be moving along.”
“This is nuts. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Ah, well, I think you’ll find that you don’t have much choice.”
“Not true.”
“Sorry?”
“Listen, mate, I don’t know how you got hold of my name, but you must have me mixed up with someone else,” Kit said, hoping to sound far more composed than he actually felt at the moment. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t know you and I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Fair enough,” replied the stranger. “What would it take to change your mind?”
“Forget it,” said Kit, turning away. “I’m out of here.”
“What sort of proof would you like? Names, birth dates, family connections-that sort of thing?”
He started off. “I’m not listening.”
“Your father is John. Your mother is Harriet. You were born in Weston-super-Mare, but your family soon moved to Manchester, where your father worked as a managerial something or other in the insurance trade and your mother was a school administrator. When you were twelve, your family upped sticks again and resettled in London…”
Kit halted. He stood in the middle of the alley, wrestling with the twin sensations of alarm and disbelief. He turned around slowly.
The old man stood smiling at him. “How am I doing so far?”
Even in the uncertain light of the alley, the family resemblance was unmistakable-the strong nose, the heavy jaw and broad brow, the hair that rippled like waves from the forehead, the broad lips and dark eyes, just like his father’s and obnoxious Uncle Leonard’s. It was all of a basic design that Kit had seen repeated with greater or lesser variation in family members his entire life.
“Since university-Manchester, Media Studies, whatever that is-you have been working here and there, doing nothing of any real value-”
“Who are you?” demanded Kit. “How do you know these things?”
“But I’ve already told you,” chuckled the old gentleman. “I am your great-grandfather.”
“Oh, yeah? Would this be the great-grandfather who went down to the shops for a loaf of bread one morning and never came back? The same who abandoned a wife and three kids in Marylebone in 1893?”
“Dear me, you know about that, do you? Well, lamentably, yes. But it wasn’t a loaf of bread; it was milk and sausages.” The old man’s gaze grew keen. “Tell me, what did you go out for this morning?”
Kit’s mouth went dry.
“Hmm?” replied the stranger. “What was it? Tin of beans? Daily paper? This is how it always happens, don’t you see?”
“No…,” said Kit, feeling more unhinged by the second.
“It’s a family proclivity, you might say. A talent.” The older man took a step nearer. “Come with me.”
“Why, in the name of everything that’s holy, would I go anywhere with you?”
“Because, my dear boy, you are a lonely twenty-seven-year-old bachelor with a worthless education, a boring no-hope job, a stalled love life, and very few prospects for the improvement of your sad lot.”
“How dare you! You don’t know anything about me.”
“But I know everything about you, old chap.” The old man took another step closer. “I thought we had already established that.”
“Yeah? What else?”
The elder gentleman sighed. “I know that you are an overworked drone in a soul-destroying cube farm where you have been passed over for promotion two times in the last nine months. The last time you don’t know about because they didn’t even bother telling you.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“You spend too much time alone, too much time watching television, and too little time cultivating the inner man. You live in a squalid little flat in what is referred to as a no-go zone from which your friends, of whom you see less and less, have all fled for the suburbs long ago with wives and sprogs in tow. You are exceedingly unlucky in love, having invested years in a romantic relationship which, as you know only too well, is neither romantic nor much of a relationship. In short, you have all the social prospects of a garden gnome.”
Kit had to admit that except for the low crack about his love life, the old geezer was remarkably close to the mark.
