Raging, bruised thunderheads approaching from east of the city and breaking upon its streets as people scuttled home on the Tube or flagged down a bus, its windows steamed with condensation and finger-smear.Carrigan stood under a low bridge of the Regent’s Park Canal, suspended ten feet below the city streets, trying to get out of the worst of the rain. He felt like a bit-part character in a bad late-night film, the one who always gets killed a third of the way through. Joggers ran past him, their faces staring into the distance, oblivious of all around them, their sneakered feet beating out a rhythm on the concrete embankment. The pleasure boats and guided taxis were mostly gone for the day, the residents of the numerous houseboats all battened down and behind closed shades. Ducks sailed by, gleaming like wooden toys; leaves twisted and fluttered and gathered at his feet.Some days the Regent’s Park Canal could look like Amsterdam. Some days Venice, if you squinted hard enough. But today it looked like something from another century, a world of coal-laden tugboats slowly inching their way up the water, bedraggled mules pulling them along; a ghost of London past shimmering out of the drizzle and then just as quickly dissolving.
