CAFÉ ASSASSIN Page 23

  I glugged down the wine. Although it was sweet tasting, it was a bitter brew. Perhaps I was a chip off the old block. I thought about that time, only weeks into your first term at college, when you had come home dressed like Robert Smith. I knew you were only wearing those clothes, only backcombing your hair, forcing your feet into those winklepicker boots, for one reason: to impress Liv.

  You seemed foreign. A different species to me. I was in my machine-blue overalls, stinking of oil, in my scuffed steel toe-capped boots, my hands calloused, my nails chipped. I made us mugs of tea and we went into my bedroom. I put on Astral Weeks and we shared a spliff. It was a routine we performed many times. Sometimes it was Nick Drake, other times it was Bob Dylan, Lee Scratch Perry, Joy Division (never The Cure, never The Smiths). But it was Astral Weeks that time. And it was Astral Weeks that did it (such a departure from Brown Eyed Girl), particularly ‘The Way Young Lovers Do’. It was the rising horn section coupled with those strings.

  We both punched the air with our fists at the crescendo of the song. It was, we both agreed, not just Van Morrison’s best album, but the best album of all time. I listened to Astral Weeks the other day, Andrew. I haven’t played it since that night. The night when everything changed. Listening to it the other night almost killed me. You probably think I exaggerate, but you can always count on a murderer for a bit of hyperbole. I managed the title track, then Beside You, Sweet Thing, Cyprus Avenue. I turned it over and played side two. It starts with The Way Young Lovers Do.

  I put my head in my hands and I wept. I was weeping for the loss of our friendship, Andrew. I was weeping for the loss of innocence. For the loss of everything I once had. I was weeping for the love I had felt for you that I would never feel again, that I could never get back. I wept and I couldn’t stop.

  Anyway, there I was wandering the slacks, kicked out of heaven. A wretched creature. As I finished the bottle, it started raining, not just rain but a deluge. Everything was getting darker. The sky was black with angry storm clouds. Walking up Lorn Lane, the drops plashed on the flags like liquid spikes. I chucked the empty bottle in a skip full of old crap, the glass smashing on some bricks, the fragments scattering all around me.

  I wasn’t that far from Liv’s place. I remember seeing the attic light on, it looked so inviting, and I wondered if that was her bedroom. The rest of the house was in darkness. I didn’t really know her that well, but something drew me to her that night, it may have just been the orange glow emanating from her room, who knows, it seemed so warm and normal. Soft and safe. I knocked on her door. I was soaking wet by this point and more than a little drunk. Her parents were out. She let me in and we went into her bedroom.

  Nothing happened, Andrew. I didn’t betray you like you betrayed me. But how I wanted her that night. She made us both coffee and we sat on the floor of her bedroom with just a candle between us. Her skin seemed impossibly smooth, and her eyes had a wicked twinkle. Her jet-black hair shimmered. I looked at her slim neck, observed the curve of it as it joined her shoulders. Her arms were bare, a light covering of hair on the forearms, her long slender fingers. She was wearing a skirt and as she folded her legs behind her, sitting by the candle, I watched the skin around her thighs tighten, watched the flesh meet in the middle and darken.

  It’s my birthday, I said.

  There was a pause. I know, she said at last. There was another pause, but then she said, I’ve got you a present.

  And she went to a set of drawers by her bed and pulled out a box. I couldn’t believe it. I’d only met her a handful of times, chatted a bit, but not intimately.

  I’ve not had chance to wrap it yet, she said. I hope you don’t mind, and she handed over the box.

  I slid off the lid of the box and there it was. That black and silver knife with the Celtic knot on the front.

  I stared at it for a long time. Eventually, I said, It’s beautiful.

  I honestly thought it was the best present I’d ever had, better even than the boules set you bought me back from France. I held it and took out each implement one by one. I held it over the candle to examine its finery. I wanted to kiss her or at least hug her to show my gratitude. But I was sopping wet and drunk and inside I knew that it might go further if I did (see, I was thinking of you, Andrew, I was trying to do the decent thing – but where does that get you?).

  We sat for a few hours. She told me about her family. Her autistic brother who had made her life so difficult when she was a kid. But she wasn’t feeling sorry for herself, just being honest. Encouraged by her honesty, I opened up too. I told her everything about my own life.

  Tell me a secret, she said.

  I thought hard. I wanted to kill my dad, I said at last.

  How do you mean?

  When I was young, I wanted to kill him. I mean, I thought about how I would do it. I was going to wait for him to fall into a drunken stupor, a nightly thing, then gently place a pillow over his face, press down so he couldn’t breathe. Keep it there until he was dead.

  Really?

  I actually got as far as walking into his room, pillow in hand.

  Oh my God! What happened?

  I crept up to where he was lying, sprawled out on the bed, fully dressed. He still had his coat and shoes on. I held the pillow in front of me. It was only inches away from his face. I stayed there for, I don’t know, for maybe three minutes or more. But I couldn’t do it. I’m not a murderer.

  I know you’ll appreciate the irony, Andrew.

  That’s mad. How old were you? She seemed to be excited by this, rather than appalled.

  It wasn’t just the once. I don’t remember how many times I did it. I lost count.

  Why did you want to kill him?

  I told her about the night with you and the others, when we’d seen him stumble 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. Not even recognising his own son. About me laughing to hide my shame. I could feel my thoughts turning melancholy. And I didn’t want that. I wanted to enjoy every moment of Liv’s company.

  Eventually I said, Your turn.

  What?

  You’ve got to tell me your secret now.

  I don’t have anything. I’m a good girl, she said, and she gave me a wicked smile. God she was so sexy that night.

  She paused, she was thinking. I could tell she was on the cusp of confession.

  I told you mine. Fair’s fair, I said.

  I do have a secret … but I can’t tell you.

  Liv, I’ve just admitted to planning the murder of my own father.

  Ok, I’ll tell you. But you’ve got to promise me you’ll never tell anyone, ever.

  I promise, I said. Cross my heart. I was going to say, on my father’s life. But, hey …

  We looked at each other and laughed.

  So what is it, this big secret?

  I don’t love him … I don’t love Andrew.

  I stared into her eyes. We held eye contact for a long time. The candle flickered, casting dancing shadows around the room. The light drew a daddy-long-legs. It moved haphazard, like a drunk making his way back from the pub.

  He told me that he loved me, and he looked so needy. I had to lie, and say I loved him too.

  Why don’t you love him?

  Fucking hell! How can I answer that? How can anyone answer that? It’s not something you choose. I don’t know. We’re so different. And I know he’s changed for me.

  How do you mean?

  The clothes he wears, the music he listens to, I know he’s only doing that to impress me. I don’t even like The Cure. The Cure, The Cramps, for fuck sake, how can you mix them up? They’re totally different bands. I mean, I’m flattered by it. But I’m also a bit, I don’t know, I don’t respect him for it. I wish he had the balls to stand up to me. He never does. If we ha
ve an argument, he backs down. He’s so scared of getting into a fight. When we have sex, it’s nice, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s not … I don’t know what I’m trying to say really, it’s just not the fuck of a lifetime.

  She looked at me, and I looked at her. Then she burst out laughing. We both laughed. It felt so good that laugh, like it was joining us, like we were becoming one person through that laughter. I realised that I understood Liv better than anyone ever would and that the same was true for her about me. It felt like I was shedding all the shit in my head, chucking it in that skip outside.

  She told me about her friends at college, about one of the teachers coming on to her. We were quiet for a while. We watched the daddy-long-legs.

  ‘Daddy-long-legs’, she said at last. It sounds like a Harlem pimp.

  A molten pool had formed. We watched it spill and trickle, slowing, cooling, to shape veins along the candle. We sat still as the daddy-long-legs flew into the candle flame. Its wings hissed and shrivelled, then it fell into the pool of wax.

  What makes them do it? Liv said. Why aren’t they wiped out?

  We talked about so many different things. She wanted to know about me, about my dad, about my childhood. She even wanted to know about where I worked – something you had never even mentioned.

  Not much to say really, it’s boring. I’m not allowed to do anything yet. I just have to stand there and watch. Sometimes I get to pass the spanner or the hammer. I’m not allowed to even put my hands in my pockets.

  Why not?

  Don’t know really, but if the foreman catches you, you get bollocked.

  That’s so funny, she said. So when are you allowed to do something?

  Another year.

  Fuck. That’s harsh. There must be some characters though, she said, drawing it out of me.

  I told her about the bloke I was working with.

  Old Tom they call him. He has the most ridiculous hair I’ve ever come across. It’s ginger and frizzy and he can only grow a thin line of it just above each ear. He’s grown it into these massive ear flaps.

  I did an impression. We laughed some more. She found my anecdotes funny. I felt myself grow and shine. I felt a weight I hadn’t even known was oppressing me, lift completely off me. She was rapt by my words. I could make her smile, I could make her laugh. It was a beautiful evening and just the best way I could have spent my eighteenth. I felt like we had left the usual world and were floating above the surface of it.

  Then there was a knock at the door. Loud and harsh and most unwelcome. Liv disappeared. I watched the wax melt. When she came back she was with you.

  What’s he doing here? you said. You were more than a little drunk too. Your ludicrous Robert Smith haircut was plastered to your face and dripping rain water.

  Not ‘Hello Nick, pleased to see you’, or even a ‘Happy birthday’, just an accusatory stare.

  I was just walking past, I said. I was wet.

  Don’t be silly, Andrew, Liv said. Listen, I’ll make us all a cuppa.

  Liv’s bought me a present, I said. And I showed you the knife.

  You snatched it off me.

  What’s this? you said. This is my knife.

  I didn’t know at the time that Liv had bought it for you, that she was just being kind by pretending it was for me. Perhaps she intended to replace it the next day.

  You opened the blade and were examining it. Were you thinking of stabbing me with it?

  No it’s not, Andrew, it’s mine.

  I went to take the knife off you. You pulled away. We had a bit of a drunken tussle. I grabbed the knife off you, its new blade slicing right through the top of my finger. Blood everywhere. Gushing red blood. Liv took a towel and wrapped my hand in it, but the blood kept pumping. She fetched a second towel. I held the knife in my other hand. I wasn’t going to let it go. I still have a scar where that knife cut me. Your knife technically, I suppose.

  So here’s my theory, and it doesn’t put you in a very good light, Andrew: another reason you dobbed me in, the main reason you dobbed me in, the only reason you dobbed me in, is because somehow I’d managed to keep your knife and you suspected that there was something between me and Liv. Twenty-two years because I took your knife. That’s heavy, Andrew, even by your standards. As you are no doubt finding out. Of course, you weren’t to know I’d end up being incarcerated for twenty-two years, none of us could have suspected that. Perhaps you thought I’d do eight or nine – ten at the most. As you will if you keep your nose clean.

  For the record, I did amass a dossier of evidence to prove you guilty of something. I had the video of you insufflating class A chemicals for instance, alongside a few other incriminating artefacts, although I’m not sure anything would have really stuck. Luckily, in the end, I didn’t need any of the dossier. Thanks to Officer Leadbeater, who I eventually managed to track down. See what happens when you upset someone? They bear a grudge.

  You probably want to know how I convinced Officer Leadbeater. It was very easy. I merely provided the opportunity for him to get even. The victim’s shirt was re-examined using modern DNA profiling, not the old blood typing they did in 1989, one of the advantages of living in 2011. And would you believe it, it showed samples of your blood as well as the man’s blood, but not mine. And that is how I ended up back in court. This time watching you in the dock, smelling your fear, feeling your dread.

  The judge was sitting at the front of the court. He seemed a little less bored than they usually do. I wondered if you knew him. I looked at the barristers, the court clerk and the usher, and wondered if you knew them too. I’d watched each of your parents enter the witness box and lie under oath. I’d watched each of them address the prosecuting barrister, unruffled by her questions. Neither of them looked at me. The jury sat and listened. In the end they were persuaded by science rather than anecdote.

  Then I watched you standing in the dock. You seemed less assured without your robe, without your wig, although you were still wearing one of your many pinstripe suits, the lapels of which you clung onto like you were clinging to the edge of a precipice – which I suppose you were.

  I’d like to say I found the experience satisfying, but really I’d be lying. Unlike you, Andrew, I actually find the business of condemning a man rather depressing, even if that man is guilty of the crime he’s accused of. It is hard to see prison as anything other than a waste of human life.

  I will tell you about my meeting with Officer Leadbeater though. It’s rather amusing. He refused to meet me in the pub, you’ll see why in a minute. In the end, I went round to his house. He was very civil and we drank tea in the conservatory which overlooked his garden. He has a nice house. He has two cats he bought from a pet sanctuary. The conservatory made me think of Steve, who works for me permanently now. We’ve both left the world of constructing conservatories behind us, but I thought I saw in the neat handiwork – the pristine lines of filler, the perfectly fitted joints – the very stamp and signature of Steve Taylor.

  Thanks for agreeing to meet with me, Paul. I hope you don’t mind me calling you Paul, I said.

  I didn’t know if he’d prefer to be called Officer Leadbeater.

  Actually, I’d prefer it if you called me Alhamdulillah.

  He must have seen the surprise on my face, though I deliberately tried to conceal it.

  I converted to Islam eight years ago.

  I found this interesting.

  Really, why’s that then, if you don’t mind me asking?

  It was an officer I was working with. I knew he was a Muslim but I didn’t really know much about it. It was during the month of Ramadan. I saw the sacrifice he would make every day. He talked to me about the Koran. Every day I was seeing the worst dregs of humanity. I suppose I’d been questioning things for a long time. He was very patient with me, really I knew nothing at all, but every day h
e’d go through things with me. It all made sense. There was nothing mystical about it. A lot of it was common sense. He had a sick mother who lived with him and the rest of the family. I saw how he cared for her. I thought about my own mother, who was living in a care home, being looked after by kids on the minimum wage who didn’t even know her name.

  He stopped talking and stared out of the window.

  We used to do the weekend shifts in town together. All the drunken men and women. All the fighting we saw, the women dressed like prostitutes. I hated my own culture. It was full of sleaze and corruption. It was immoral and licentious. I was searching for another way. Do you want some more tea?

  I’m fine thanks, I said. It’s a nice cuppa.

  One night we were called to an incident outside a club. A girl had been thrown out for giving oral sex to six men in the corridor of the club. Six men. She was so out of it. I think they’d spiked her drink with something. She was trying to get back into the club by giving oral sex to the security staff. I thought, that’s it, and I accepted Islam into my heart. I took my shahada five years ago. Praise be to Allah.

  He went silent for a while and we watched two male blackbirds hunt for worms on the lawn.

  Please, have some more tea.

  I watched the tea pour from the spout of the teapot into my cup.

  Anyway, you haven’t come here to listen to my story of conversion. So why have you come here?

  And I told him the reason. I told him about you and me and about that night. I told him about the shirt. He listened and he nodded. He told me how mixed profiling might now be able to convict you, and he smiled.

  Do you know in the Koran there is the story of Cain and Abel?