CAFÉ ASSASSIN Read online

  I was chatting away to mine and she was laughing at my jokes, it was all going so well. I kept having a sly glance over to you and thinking, wish I had yours. Mine was blonde and blondes were never my type. She had a nice body though. She was wearing a top which revealed an inch of cleavage.

  I can’t remember how it happened but the next thing I knew I was on a double bed with this blonde girl. She was naked and I was naked. We were about to fuck, the only light that of the moon through the window. Then the door burst open. The bloke whose party it was and about twenty of his friends surrounded us. This bloke hit the switch and the room flooded with light. There I was in all my ‘glory’. In a state of arousal. Twenty-odd people staring at me. The bloke whose party it was – it was his girlfriend. They’d had an argument. I was a revenge shag. I’d been set up again.

  I’d thrown my clothes across the room. I stumbled around. I managed to find a sock, then another sock, but I couldn’t find my T-shirt, or my trousers, or my underpants. He was coming at me. Red angry face. Fists bunched. I ran down the stairs and out the patio doors at the back. It was December. Freezing cold. I stood in a bush shivering in just my socks.

  You came looking for me. You let me in at the patio doors to reclaim my clothes. You helped me find my jeans, my shoes, my coat. We were laughing, giggling, drunk. Then he appeared, searching. I hid under the dining table. You said you’d seen me leave through the patio doors. He didn’t believe you but then there were screams from the next room. Pete Wardle had taken his clothes off and was sitting in the middle of the room playing someone else’s guitar.

  Pete saved my bacon. We both piled out, laughing into the night. I knew my dad would still be out so we went back to mine for a nightcap. A good party, we both agreed. That girl you got off with, was Liv, of course. You always did have all the luck didn’t you? You’d managed to get her number before we fled, so sharp of you, and you went on your first date the next week. I think you took her to see Blind Date, or was it Fatal Attraction? I stayed in and watched Cheers. Ted Danson’s character, Sam Malone, was trying to get off with Diane Chambers, played by Shelley Long, who would leave shortly after to be replaced by Kirstie Alley, playing Rebecca Howe. And he would spend the next few years trying to get off with her instead.

  I just remember watching it on my own – I watched a lot of television in those days, on my own. I was imagining you in the cinema with Liv. You’d buy her popcorn and coke, or maybe hotdogs. You’d sit at the back. You’d make a big show of yawning, stretching your arm round the back of the chair. Or you’d let your hand touch her thigh. A test. If she let it stay there you’d gradually move it closer, edging to the hem of her skirt, to the area of bare flesh. I could picture Liv’s face in my mind, but not the blonde girl I’d been so caught out with. I couldn’t even remember her name. I imagined that I was in the cinema with Liv and you were sitting on your own at home watching Cheers. I imagined it was my hand that stroked the soft flesh of her thigh, that it was my hand that cupped her breast, feeling the nipple stiffen, that it was my lips that kissed her. And I masturbated.

  I never went past that house again, the place where I had made such a fool of myself and where you had got off with Liv. I had to avoid Bellfield Close altogether. Turned out the host of the party was a headcase. One of the toughest guys on the estate, and a knifer. There was a rumour that he was coming for me. You were at college at the time doing your A levels. I was in the first year of my apprenticeship. Even up to the day of my conviction, I always had to keep my wits about me in case he was creeping up behind me with a baseball bat in his hand, or a knife in his pocket.

  I should have confronted my fear, instead of running scared. The city I lived in was not the same as the city you lived in. My city was full of people I had to avoid. It was a place of dark ginnels, doorways in a perpetual shroud of menace, black shadows and black nights. Your city was shrouded in light, with white beams and golden rays. Yours was a city of sunshine. Your city was white. It was a laughing beautiful girl. My city was a knife-wielding psychopath.

  I thought again about the man with the military-style hat. I went into the back room and sent Liv an email. It just said: I need you. I finished the whiskey and lay down on the sofa. I didn’t want to leave the safety of the club. Outside there were dangers. It was dark and cold. I was drunk. I was thinking about you, in your magazine home, safe behind the golden gates and the white pillars. You would be in bed with Liv, your arms wrapped round her soft body.

  Perhaps you had given her one of your persuasive speeches. Perhaps you had made it up with her and she had forgiven you. Perhaps you were having make up sex right now, while I lay on a hard sofa with a maniac waiting for me outside. Images of you fucking Liv came into my mind. I tried to block them out, but they kept coming, over and over. Your leering face, your contorted face, your pallid flesh, your cock entering and entering her. Your disgusting cock. I had no one, only Ray for company. You were fucking Liv. What fucking right did you have to your fucking life?

  19

  I fumbled for the phone ringing in my pocket. It was Pawel. I pressed ‘ignore’. I was in the back room of the club. There was an empty whiskey bottle on the floor and an overflowing ashtray. Grey light was pouring into the room from the high cellar window. It was morning. My head was pounding and my tongue was coated in thick silt. Ray was still sleeping. I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I drank some water and necked some speed. I rang Pawel back. He was down the cash and carry. They had run out of Peroni. What should he get instead. Use your initiative, Pawel.

  I have just been to Lidl, he said. They have deals on. Very good.

  Ok, well, get whatever you think.

  Two for one.

  I told him to get whatever he wanted. I put my phone away. I walked to a greasy spoon and ordered some toast and some coffee. I picked up a paper and pretended to read it, but really I was thinking about you.

  I don’t remember when I first became aware of you because memories of when I was three are rather vague. We both started at Saint Paul’s at the same time. My grandma Smith dropped me off, my dad’s mum. She was a stern woman but she had a big heart. Shame she died so young, perhaps she would have been able to keep my dad on the right track. He seemed to respect her more than anyone else. I’d anticipated school. Some kids a year older than me had told me you had to do sums, but I didn’t know what sums were. In my head they were some sort of punishment. I suppose they are.

  I do remember my first day. We were split into groups, six groups, one for each table, five or six kids round each table: Blue, Red, Green, Orange, Yellow and Purple. You were in Blue, I was in Red. I was sandwiched between Mark Longworth and Carl Lindley. The first task we were given to do was to draw a picture of our family: the house, the garden, our brothers and sisters, mum, dad, any pets. The teacher was called Mrs Fox. Someone must have told her my mother had died, because she corrected her list, ‘or if you’ve not got brothers and sisters, or a mum and dad, just draw the family you’ve got.’ Then she smiled at me.

  I didn’t see your picture. I can imagine what you drew though: white fluffy clouds, a perfect house, with curtains neatly tied either side of the window. A perfect door, coloured in with yellow or red crayon. A chimney with a plume of grey-white smoke. Green and brown trees with juicy red apples hanging from the boughs. Daffodils in neat little pots. Your cat and your dog lying down harmoniously together. The sun beaming down on you. Your perfect sister and your perfect father and your perfect mother.

  I looked at both Mark and Carl’s efforts with despair. They had drawn their family. A circle for the body, a circle for the head, lines for arms and lines for legs. I looked to Wendy and Lisa and Jane – they had all done the same. I drew my dad and my mum even though my mum had been dead a year. I still had a memory of her then. I don’t now. It looked like a normal family. It was a normal family, just without a mum. Not for much longer though. I wish I’d kept that
picture.

  Although we’d known each other since we were three (sharing the same nursery memory of dipping malted ‘cow’ biscuits into orange squash) we didn’t become close friends until much later. Perhaps three year olds are incapable of being close friends.

  It was break time but it was raining so we were staying in. We could do what we liked. Some kids played snakes and ladders, some kids played Frustration, some played draughts. There was a game of snap somewhere and two kids were playing noughts and crosses. You were on your own, reading a book with such concentration, it drew me to you. I asked you what it was. You lifted it up so I could see the cover, a book of fascinating facts.

  There’s a man here who’s eaten a plane.

  You’re kidding me?

  You showed me the page. He was called Mr Eat-All and he was French. He had eaten eighteen bicycles, fifteen shopping trolleys, seven televisions, and a plane. The plane had taken him two years to eat. There was a photograph of him in front of a plane. In his hands he held an engine part and he was biting through it.

  That’s amazing, I said.

  It’s fascinating, you said. A fascinating fact. And you pointed to the book title on the cover.

  How witty you seemed to me then. How clever. How different to the simpletons with their happy game of snap. I liked you instantly, I admired you. I sat down beside you and you showed me other fascinating facts. There was a plant that had eaten a bird. There was a photograph of a brightly coloured flower the size and shape of a bucket with the back end of a bird sticking out. Buckingham Palace had over six hundred rooms. It was impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. We were friends from that day.

  Your mum would always pick you up at the school gates. At first my grandma used to pick me up but within two years she was dead. For a few months my dad would be waiting for me, parked up by the gates, with his name on his van. But then he lost his licence. Without his van, he couldn’t work. Without his work there was no income. He became a full-time drinker. In those days, if you declared yourself an alcoholic, you got signed off. You didn’t have to go to the dole office every fortnight to sign on, you were given some form of disability benefit and also an allowance for alcohol. The state actually paid you to drink.

  Some days he’d forget to pick me up. I’d be standing at the gates with all the others. We’d be chatting and laughing, but gradually, all the other mums and dads, older brothers and sisters, grandparents, would come to collect them. We’d thin out until I was the last one there. It wasn’t just the sense of being abandoned, it was the humiliation of everyone else seeing me being abandoned. Eventually, the head teacher would come out to her car. Miss Pilkington. She had a red sports car which was at odds with her frumpy image. She drove me home a few times, made sure my dad was in.

  One day while I was waiting by the gates, I saw your mum approach Miss Pilkington. They were chatting and looking over at me, so I knew they were talking about me. After that I used to go home with you and your mum. You’d hold her right hand and I’d hold her left hand. I’d pretend that your mum was my mum. She’d make us a beaker of Vimto or sometimes pour us a glass of milk. Do you remember that milkshake we made by mixing Vimto with milk? I shudder at the thought now, but we believed we’d discovered penicillin or pasteurisation at the time. We even asked your dad about how you patented something. He humoured us, explaining about the patent office and the process that was necessary. Your mum would bring us a plate of biscuits. We’d eat the pink wafers first, then the custard creams. We would always leave the Garibaldis. You had a cupboard full of brightly coloured Matchbox cars. We’d drive them round the carpet. The lines of the carpet were the roads. We were not just close friends, we were brothers.

  Your mum couldn’t have been kinder to me. And your dad was always warm and friendly when we saw him, although he was normally at work. Even your sister, who was a good three years older than you, always made time for me to ask how I was.

  It was a proper family, like the ones you see on TV. You sat down for breakfast together in the morning. You sat down for a hot meal in the evening and talked to each other about what you’d done that day. You went on shopping trips. You went to the seaside. You went for walks in the park. You fed the ducks. They read you bedtime stories. How I envied you. At night, in my bedroom, I would kneel at the foot of my bed and pray.

  Please God, make Andrew’s parents adopt me. If you do this, I won’t ask for anything else and I will do anything you say.

  We broke up for the summer holidays. You were excited because summer holidays meant a holiday in France. It was a family ritual. For weeks you would leave me. You’d send me postcards, brief notes, to let me know how you were getting on. You would always put some minor detail in to amuse me or make me feel less alone – ‘I’m in a French café full of French people. The woman next to me smells of onions’, ‘they eat frogs legs here, yuk!’ You’d come back tanned and full of stories. You’d always bring me back a present. One year it was a boules set. There were eight steel balls and one white plastic jack, and they came in their own box with a carrying handle.

  It was the best present I’d ever had. There were two weeks of the holidays left and we’d take the set to the park and play boules there. The other kids would want to play too and we’d have tournaments. We started back at school but we carried on with those tournaments after school and at weekends. We were popular and the tournaments were a great success. We started to have leagues and tables – ranking players. We even had a little betting syndicate running.

  Until one day I came home from school and the boules set had gone. At first I thought I’d misplaced it. It wasn’t under my bed where I kept it but perhaps I’d put it in the wardrobe. It wasn’t there either. I searched the house, every room, but it had gone. When I saw my dad I asked him if he’d seen it. He said he hadn’t.

  Then one afternoon, I was walking home from school. I went past the The Black Bull, and I saw two men playing boules. I watched them. The set looked just like mine. I recognised the men. They were men I’d seen drinking with my dad. Then I realised what he’d done. That was the end of the boules tournament.

  I was careful walking back to Richard’s, checking out each person that I passed, especially anyone in a hat, checking out each car that passed me, especially if it was black. I took Ray for a walk through the woods. There was a mist that hadn’t lifted. I tried to shed the grogginess of the night before – a combination of too much whiskey and a night on the sofa – by focussing on positive thoughts. The club was doing well. It was really taking off. I could quit the speed now, I didn’t need it. I’d finish off this batch, then call it a day, I decided. I was making progress with you too, Andrew: a very interesting meeting with Officer Leadbeater.

  As I walked down the path, as the light dimmed, and the leaves thickened, I saw the outline of a man in the distance. He was leaning against a tree. I couldn’t make him out, just the shape. He appeared to be wearing a hat. I could feel anxiety claw in the pit of my stomach. It felt like a rat. Don’t be a dick, I said to myself, keep your cool. Just walk past him. But as I got closer, all I wanted to do was run.

  I stopped in my tracks. I pretended to answer a call on my phone. I took it out and faked a one-way conversation. My hand was shaking so much, I nearly dropped my phone. The man was still leaning against the tree. I put the phone in my pocket and said to Ray, Come on, that was Pawel, he needs a hand, we can go for a walk later.

  I walked back with the rat in my gut scratching at my insides. I wanted to see if the man was following me. But I didn’t want him to know I was concerned. I couldn’t stand not knowing. I stopped and turned round. There was no one there. I looked to see if he’d walked further up the path. Nothing. I strained my eyes to see through the mist. Then he appeared from behind a tree. He was closer now and I realised he wasn’t wearing a hat as I’d thought. It was a coat with a large hood – a parka with a snorkel.

 
I tried not to panic. I was almost running, getting faster and faster, my heart thumping. The rat frantic. Then I was running, I didn’t care anymore about keeping cool. I ran until I was clear of the woods and halfway across the park. I stopped to check where he was, but he hadn’t followed me. I took deep breaths, trying to stifle the panic in my gullet. I made my way to the club.

  20

  Black Art was playing through the PA and I was clearing up from the night before – sweeping the stage of glitter and feathers, tidying the bar area, re-stocking the fridge – when there was a banging on the door. It made the hairs on my arms stand on end. I went to answer it, my breath rapid and shallow. I stood behind the door for a moment, collecting my nerves. I wished there was a peephole, and I made a mental note to buy one. I unlocked the door and opened it a fraction. But there was no wolf. Standing there, in her school uniform, was your daughter.

  Megan, what are you doing here?

  I’ve been excluded.

  I paused for a moment to gather my thoughts.

  Come in, I said.

  I locked the door behind her. I made us both a coffee and we went into the back room.

  Sit down, I said, Tell me what happened.

  She sat on the arm of the sofa. I sat in the armchair opposite.

  I got caught, she said.

  Doing what?

  Smoking skunk.

  Have you talked to your mum?

  Not yet.

  Does she know you’re here?

  I want to work for you.

  You’ve got to be eighteen to work behind a bar.

  No you don’t, they’ve changed the law. Sarah said. Her dad’s got a chain of pubs.

  It’s complicated.

  I rolled a cigarette, lit it.

  Can I have one of those?

  I don’t think that’s a good idea.