CAFÉ ASSASSIN Read online

  I was thinking of Miss Mulrennan standing at the front of the class. I was thinking of you with your loving parents and your stable home. And I was thinking of my dad, stumbling up Peter Street, colliding with the lamp post, falling down, lying on the pavement. My mates around me laughing. You next to me, also laughing. Him passed out. Me laughing along, but inside wishing an assassin would come along and shoot a bullet through my skull.

  From the stage, it was hard to see where she was sitting. The lights were bright and the club was dark. But then I saw her. I beckoned her onto the stage. She looked sheepish but wended her way through the crowd. Then I was offering her a hand and she was on stage beside me.

  I just want to thank Liv for all the hard work and help she’s given me over the past few months. First finding a place, then getting it ready. Help with the menu, help with the bar, booking the acts, promoting our opening night. She’s been absolutely brilliant. So please, a big round of applause for Liv.

  Your wife had been extremely useful, Andrew. I’d spent over four months in her company. I was completely inexperienced in the beginning. I’m not sure I could have done it without her. Particularly things like setting up a website, a Facebook account, Twitter. These things were entirely new to me. That’s not to say some prisoners didn’t have access to these things. There were smart phones in prison with internet access. Smart phones that had been smuggled in up someone’s arsehole (it’s amazing what you can push through the orifice of the human anus), or wrapped in foam and thrown over the wall. Or even sewn into dead rats. But I never used them. I had no one to contact and nothing to say to the world. But it wasn’t just these things she’d helped with, she’d also helped me with the painting and decorating, and all the other work involved in turning an empty building into an inviting club.

  I poured us both champagne from the ice cold Jeroboam. There was an audience of students, hippies and bohemian types. It was great to see the place so packed on the first night. It helped that there was no charge and we’d worked hard handing out flyers all week. Liv had designed them. I felt that your wife was my partner, Andrew.

  I hadn’t asked her to do any of this. She’d volunteered her services. A little push from me was all it took. I wanted to bring in as many as possible so tickets were free. In money terms I was going to have to write this one off. Three acts – three of the best for the money we were paying. It was possible that I might make it back on the bar but my business model was to have two nights a week where members paid £6 and non-members £12. Membership was £25 a year. This meant I could easily control who came in and who didn’t. Anyone who became a pest would get the boot.

  I had two Polish student helpers going round from table to table with forms, Pawel and Socha. They were wearing specially printed T-shirts: black, with the Café Assassin logo in silver – a mid-nineteenth century typeface with an ornate frame around it. Just like the sign above the door and the sign behind the stage. Liv had designed the sign, with a single contribution from me: a final flourish, concealed in the last curlicue. It was surrounded by concentric circles, and it was a human skull. A grinning totem. In my mind, it was looking at you, and seeing right through you.

  It was the cellar bar Liv and I had seen that first day. I was surprised you never came to see it, but it seemed that your work consumed you. Liv helped me to gazump the other offer. It wasn’t difficult. Your wife is good at Risk. I wanted somewhere dark and cavernous. Somewhere you had to descend the stairs to get to. Really, Andrew, I was thinking of how The Venue used to be. I always got a thrill leaving the pavements and plunging into a hidden world beneath. The bar was at one end and the stage at the other. I had decorated the walls with an 1840s-style damask flock wallpaper – pink with a crimson pattern. Liv had helped me choose it. The effect was to create an environment suggestive of nineteenth century Paris. Black tables, black bentwood chairs, candles, black chandeliers. Gilt framed photos of Baudelaire, Gautier and Gerard de Nerval.

  I had quotations from their writing also in gilded frames. The photograph of Gerard de Nerval was staring out intently, looking a little mad. Theophile Gautier was dapper in a rather eccentric hat and cape. Charles Baudelaire looked a bit like a neo-romantic Anthony Burgess. The quote underneath: the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail.

  I was very pleased with the overall effect. It was exactly as I’d envisaged. In fact, looking around the room, I was filled with immense satisfaction. I had dreamed about this place many times. It was a world I had disappeared into when the reality of prison life was too much. And now I was inside this world and what’s more, it was a world entirely of my own making, helped along the way by your wife and, financially, by you. Now I found myself in the space I had dreamed of, dreaming of the space I had escaped.

  I had my own place and it was an anti-cage. Steve had knocked together a stage. It was quite small and only elevated by about twelve inches, but it represented freedom. It was a portal, a gateway. It was draped in crimson velvet curtains. There was a simple lighting rig (that Richard had set up) which bathed it in a warm glow. Steve had also built the desk that Richard was sitting behind. In the background was the Café Assassin logo. I nodded my approval to Liv.

  I wish you hadn’t done that, she said.

  Done what?

  Invite me onto the stage. I felt like a right tit.

  Don’t be daft, I shrugged, Credit where it’s due.

  Well, you do have a lot to thank me for, she said, and smiled.

  It’s a shame Andrew can’t be here, I lied. Because, although I wanted you to see the club in all its glamour and finery, I wanted Liv all to myself. You were a man who could not think beyond the bars on your pinstripe suit.

  I instructed Pawel to fetch four glasses for the others and I poured out the champagne. They joined us at our table. We all chinked glasses. True happiness induces a generosity of spirit, it wants to share itself with others – it doesn’t sit on its own in its study. Pawel seemed thrilled to be drinking good champagne. He quaffed it with relish, spilling some of it down his scraggly beard.

  I have always detested facial hair of any kind, particularly beards, but I liked this Pawel character. I don’t think I have ever been more content before or since than I was then, sitting drinking champagne with your wife on the opening night of my club. Paid for with your money.

  I knew I could do it, I said. I knew I could make a go of it.

  Yeah, right, rent-a-crowd.

  What do you mean?

  It’s only the first night, Nick, and we’ve enticed the audience with free entertainment. Wait until they have to pay for it.

  You shouldn’t be so cynical.

  Look, I’ve put a lot of my own time into this. Andrew has invested a lot of dosh. You’re not the only one with something at stake here.

  Don’t you think I’ve got what it takes? I said.

  Probably not, but luckily you’ve got me. You’d be fucked otherwise.

  Flipping cheek! If you’re so smart, what happened to the catering business?

  Long story, she said. Not now.

  You were the real problem, Andrew. I knew you well enough. Your scepticism did not surprise me. Really, it was a form of cowardice. I had fully anticipated it. But despite what Liv said, I could tell she thought I could make a success of it. That is what I had been missing all my life. Someone to believe in who I was and what I was doing. It takes guts to believe in someone. You have to put yourself on the line. Anyone can doubt, anyone can deny, anyone can piss on someone else’s fire.

  I waited until the bulk of the crowd had been served then I mounted the stage to announce the last act. They were a comedy punk band – Liv’s idea. The band played for half an hour before announcing their final song. I waited for them to finish then went into the back room behind the bar, where the safe was. Pawel was in there, fetching some more ice from the machine. I pulled the key from under my
shirt, where it was suspended around my neck by a silver chain, and unlocked the safe. I had been to the bank that afternoon and had all the money for the three acts in cash.

  What is this for? Pawel said.

  He was holding an iron bar which I’d concealed behind the settee.

  In case we get any trouble, I said. But I had no intention of ever using it. He examined it briefly.

  In Poland I see a man have teeth out, he said.

  He weighed it in his fist, then put it back. He picked up the now full bucket and left.

  I counted out the money and folded the notes. They were nice and crisp. There was a mirror above the safe and I caught my reflection. I was wearing a suit and an open-necked shirt. The suit was off-the-peg, but I promised myself that as soon as the money came rolling in I would be travelling down to London to get myself a tailor-made Savile Row number.

  I paid the acts then went over to Liv, who was chatting with a young couple sitting at the adjacent table.

  I’m nipping upstairs for a smoke, I said.

  Can I cadge one off you?

  You don’t smoke.

  I know.

  We went upstairs and stood in the doorway. Ray joined us. I rolled, first Liv’s cigarette, and then my own. I torched them. My first memory of Liv was of her cadging a cigarette off someone at that party, before she even saw us. I wondered if she’d been clocking me then as she’d wandered round the room. I also wondered about what she said in The Venue that night, ‘I chose the wrong one’. She was something else you had stolen from me.

  I’m glad we got back in touch, I said.

  Me too.

  I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed you.

  Well, it’s been a blast helping you out with this place.

  It wasn’t always easy to read her, but I think she meant it.

  Did you ever give Andrew that note? I said.

  What note?

  The one you wrote from him to you. The one you showed me. Remember, that day we saw this place for the first time.

  No, of course not.

  So you sorted everything out then?

  You know–

  Go on.

  Things are fine, really.

  But I didn’t think things were fine. Not with you and her, not with you and the kids.

  And you’ll stay on?

  You’d be screwed without me.

  You’re not just here to keep an eye on Andrew’s money, are you?

  I couldn’t give a fuck about Andrew’s money.

  She finished her cigarette and threw the butt in the gutter. She stamped it out.

  Let’s go back inside.

  I took the last few puffs from my own cigarette and trod on it. As I did, I noticed a man in a doorway across the other side of the road. He was staring at me. Half his face was in shadow, but he was mouthing something at me. I tried to lip-read. I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. Then he was holding up his hand and waving at me. He waved in an exaggerated way, a sort of sarcastic wave. Something unnerved me about this. I didn’t recognise the man, but perhaps he recognised me. As he waved at me, I felt a chill trickle down my spine. I turned to Liv.

  What’s that bloke doing over there?

  She looked across to where I was pointing, but a van had parked in between us and when it drove off there was no one there. I explained to Liv what I’d seen.

  Don’t worry about it, she said. Just a nutter, more than likely – the world is full of them.

  You have been sentenced again. This time you are guilty of your crime. You are about to cut yourself. You reach for the jagged half razor blade that you have concealed with packing tape under your bed. You watch the light gleam along the metal. It looks so clean and pure. So beautiful. You have tourniqueted your arm with a ripped piece of bed sheet. You are twisting it tighter and tighter, so that it brings veins to the surface. You think about the makeshift noose that Keyop made from torn bedding. You see him in your mind, how you found him, bent over, as though he were praying, the noose like a leash, tied to the radiator behind him. Above him are the four sheets of wallpaper with the poems you both wrote on them, staring back at you: ‘what might have been and what has been point to one end.’

  You watch the blood in your veins coalesce and pump harder, the green-blue tubes swelling up, roots of a tree breaking through the earth. You take the blade and in one quick move, you slice through the most prominent vein on your wrist. Red is pumping everywhere. As the blood pours out you can feel the pain of losing Keyop leach from your body. As the vivid red blood gushes, you feel dizzy. You see the yellow spear and the torn bed sheet noose. It is Paddy you see now, gasping his last breath. A yellow spear in his chest. Standing over him watching him bleed. Images swim. Now it’s all reds and whites and yellows.

  You feel hot. You feel cold. You think about that night in Liv’s bedroom. Blood like red paint dripping into the white paint of the milk jug. A towel around your finger. You feel the blood seep. Flowing from your muscles, flowing from your brain. You feel numb. You are finding it hard to breathe. You see the spear and the noose dance in front of you. You wish he was holding you. You wish you were in his arms. You feel like you are on the edge of sleep. You are falling to the floor. You are going down. You are hitting the cold stone. You hear your body hit the ground. You feel no pain. You are a minute from death.

  11

  Steve was putting the ‘pain’ in Spain. He’d taken the family on holiday to Torremolinos. His absence gave me some club time. The club was slowly building up a clientele. I was able to open up Mondays and Wednesdays for an open-mic night and Fridays and Saturdays for paid-in entertainment. I wasn’t making enough yet to pack in the labouring, but it was getting there, ticking over, word going round, and I had faith that I’d soon be able to give up the day job. It was hard keeping both jobs going. I’d started using speed as a pick-me-up, not to get off on it you understand, Andrew, but just so I could function with the long hours.

  Mondays and Wednesdays were the toughest. Locking up at two o’clock. Getting home for half past. In bed and asleep for three. Three hours sleep. Nine hours of graft. It was a killer, but I kept telling myself it was still better than being inside. And it was. Even if I had done that every night, surviving for the rest of my life on three hours, keeping two demanding jobs going, it would still be better than being locked in a cell all day.

  I spent over ten years in Wakefield. Probably the longest I did in one prison. Twenty-five hours of either education or work every week. Have a guess what the inmates chose to do? The vast majority chose work over education. How about that. I always chose education. I’d like to think I managed to educate myself to a reasonable level. Enough to hold my own with the likes of you, Andrew.

  I had a burning urge to see you in action, and so on Wednesday, with King Steve still in Spain, I made my way to the Crown courts in Bradford where you were prosecuting. It was a retrial, Regina v Reaben Kareem and Jwanru Osman. Regina. How archaic it all sounded, quaint even. Kareem and Osman were two Iraqi Kurds who had conned their way into a student house and spent six hours robbing and torturing the three occupants, murdering one. There were three students involved. Two from Hong Kong and one from Poland. You had already seen this through once, last summer, but the judge suffered a heart attack on the final day and the whole thing had to go again in front of a new jury. You were going through the motions really, but I suppose it was easy money for you.

  I’d left the knife at home this time, where it was safe with Ray. Ironically, the Bradford courts were more opulent than Leeds. Opulent not quite the right word, but you understand what I’m getting at – at least some attempt at decoration. Squares on the walls, squares on the carpet, squares on the ceiling. Squares within squares within squares. The lion and the unicorn dominating one wall, positioned high above human height so that it imposed itself over those passi
ng. The royal coat of arms. An animal that has never lived in this country and an animal that has never existed. I smiled at this, as it seemed rather fitting as an emblem of our legal system.

  I was sitting in the public seating area, but I had a very good view of Kareem. He looked scared. He was shaking. He was wearing a white shirt and a plain tie – the uniform of the ignoble. He was pleading guilty to causing harm to Sally Ho, one of the Hong Kong students – grievous bodily harm. He was pleading guilty to stabbing Gavin Stolarczyk, an eight centimetre stab wound that just missed his vital organs, but he was claiming this was an accident. He was not pleading guilty to murder. I could see that the jury were already measuring the rope, loading the gun, sharpening the axe.

  Kareem’s team was blaming Osman for the murder of Tony Ho, Sally’s brother. There were no witnesses to this as Sally and Gavin were downstairs at the time. But there was a body with eighteen stab wounds, several of them fatal, including a slashed throat. You wanted to get both Kareem and Osman for murder.

  There were six barristers in court, a judge, a jury of twelve, various legal people. Six barristers at three hundred pounds sterling an hour. £1,800. Plus a judge, plus a jury and all the rest. I worked it out to be in the region of at least £4,000 an hour to run this court. There was a court like this in every city. Then there were the solicitors, the security companies, the constabulary, the prison officers, the prisoners. The thousands a week it cost to keep each and every one of them locked up. Hundreds and hundreds of millions a year. Crime costs. Crime pays. Police and thieves. Barristers and murderers. Big business.

  Liv told me that the cost of sending your kids to private school was thirty grand a year each. Sixty grand between them. You don’t fork out that sort of dosh for nothing. What are you getting? A guarantee of power. A guarantee of being one of the elite. The rich feed off the poor. The poor get angry and steal from the rich. The rich lock them up and make more money. It’s a good system. For the rich.