CAFÉ ASSASSIN

PUT OUT YOUR FIRES

How many ways had I thought about killing you, Andrew? And now I was coming for you. I was standing in a queue, waiting. The guard was staring at me. I could feel the acid of fear and hate burning through my insides. Twenty-two years of fear. Twenty-two years of hate. I was sandwiched between a man with a mullet and a woman with a butterfly tattoo, and the guard was staring at me. I was gripped with dread. He was Saint Peter holding the keys to the gate.

He did not say good morning. Instead, he thrust a scratched black tray in my direction. I’m sure you would have got a very different reaction, Andrew: a ‘please’ and a ‘thank you’ – perhaps he would have even called you ‘sir’. No one has ever called me ‘sir’. Ever. I emptied my pockets. First money, then keys, followed by a packet of tobacco, a lighter and some cigarette papers. He picked up the papers and examined a tear in the card with suspicion.

I didn’t have any filters, I said.

Why was I explaining myself to him? I emptied the rest of my pockets. The final item was a knife. Not just any knife – but the knife. Yes, I forgot about the knife: Liv’s knife, your knife. My knife.

How could I forget about the knife? I’m sure you’re wondering, Andrew. I’d had it for twenty-two years. The guard reached into the tray and took out the knife. He held it between his massive thumb and index finger, making it look tiny, almost like a toy, certainly not a threat.

You can’t take this in, he said.

You know its dimensions, probably not even three inches long. He used his other hand to open out the tools, first the bottle opener and then the nail file. Then he turned it over and pulled out the blade. He let the blade glimmer in the harsh light.

You know how that knife can injure. You were there that evening when I received it as a gift. As I recall, you were the one who stuck the knife in, Andrew. You’ll remember the wound gushing with blood. Two towels wrapped around my hand, the blood dripping red all over Liv’s cream carpet. The blood dripping into the milk jug, fresh shock on Liv’s face.

I’m going to have to take this off you. You’ll need to fill this in.

The guard handed me a form and a disposable pen.

You’ll have to write to the courts to get it back.

Why can’t you put it behind reception and then I can get it when I leave? I said. An obvious point, I thought.

Because we don’t do that, he said.

But the reception is just there, I said, pointing to the counter.

You have to make a request in writing to the court manager. It’s all in there, he said and handed me an information sheet. Behind me the queue was lengthening and I could tell he was becoming hot and agitated. Good, I thought, let him roast.

I persisted. When can I get it back?

It’s all in there, he said.

I folded up the form and put it in my pocket. I stepped through the metal detector. It went off and immediately I panicked. My palms were sweating and my legs weak. Stay calm, you’ve done nothing wrong. Another guard frisked me. I held up my arms and he worked around my body.

Turn round, he said, and frisked me from behind.

It was the assumption of guilt. I was a crook. He was looking for a weapon but it was just my belt. I went over to the listings in the corner, looking for your name: Andrew Honour. I always liked your name, in contrast to my own which, still to this day, I despise. It seemed to be a name that was going places. A name with promise. But I couldn’t find your name on any of the lists.

There were clocks everywhere. I imagine the walls of hell are lined not with vents gushing fire and brimstone but instead with an array of timepieces. I watched them tick. I waited.

At 10am I was looking for you in Court One. A woman in her forties was crying, her mascara running down her face in inky rivulets. It was the woman I’d seen in the queue with the butterfly tattoo. The man with the mullet was hugging her as he ushered her in to the court. I sat down in the public seating area. Four men and a woman in black gowns and wigs were standing at the front clutching files tied with ribbons. One of the men was on crutches. They looked like a gathering of hooded crows. I scanned their faces. None of them looked like you, Andrew, as I imagined you after twenty-two years. The same age as me, forty. Fat? Bald? Grey? It didn’t matter. I’d know you as soon as I saw you.

What happened? said the woman in a wig and gown to the man in a wig and gown on crutches, gasping in mock-horror.

Skiing, he said, and mimed the action of skiing with the crutches, scrunching his face up in what he clearly felt was an amusing way.

Oh no! You poor thing, she said.

The woman with the butterfly tattoo was sitting down now, still crying. The mulleted man was still trying to console her. The judge entered, we stood up. He sat down, we sat down. I wonder why these people never get shot. It would be easy to do, wouldn’t it? All the fuss over security at the door and yet they walk out of the building unguarded – almost asking for a bullet.

Are you Jamie Turnbull? the clerk to the court said to the man in the dock. For a moment, I thought he was addressing me. I wanted to stand up, plead my innocence and tell him he had the wrong man.

I am, said the man in the dock.

A guilty plea for dangerous driving. Dangerous driving – I almost laughed. That’s not a crime. That’s just over-excitement. The judge seemed impatient, even though they’d only just started. Probably anticipating lunch in one of the fine eateries that surrounded the courts.

I was wondering whether other barristers would be involved. What was the best thing to do, sit tight and wait for you, or move around and risk missing you? It was a dilemma. I decided to sit it out. What would I do when I saw your face? Would I be able to resist putting my hands round your throat and squeezing the life out of you?

Jamie was imprisoned for nine months. Next was a robbery. The boy standing in the dock barely looked eighteen. He’d gone up to a student and asked him for the time, then he’d grabbed his phone and punched him in the face. The student ran away, but this lad, who caught up with him, dragged him to the ground and then kicked him repeatedly in the face. In the face, Andrew, in the fucking face.

He was given eighteen months in a young offenders’. I left the room and walked across the hallway to Court Two. Perhaps this was where I’d find you, Andrew.

Vinnie Howell, commercial burglary. Vinnie was a smackhead but he’d been off opiates for three months, according to his legal representative, who also wanted it known that Mr Howell had served queen and country in the armed forces. I scrutinised the barristers in their archaic raiment. They were not familiar. Surely a man cannot change beyond recognition? Had I changed? I still had the same build, though I supposed I’d filled out a bit – I hadn’t overdone the weight-training but still, it showed: thirteen stone. Waist: 32. Chest: 46. Neck: 16. No grey hair. No receding hairline. Forgive me, Andrew, for rubbing it in.

Vinnie Howell was fined and given community service. He seemed relieved, the tightness around his shoulders eased. The expression on his face was one of defiance. He had a tattoo on his arm, I couldn’t make out what it was. He pointed to it and stared at the judge with even greater defiance.

Next up was another smackhead; the one after him also a smackhead. What was the judge’s drug of choice? Port? Cuban Cigars? Brandy? Champagne? Vintage wine? Cocaine?

You were not there, Andrew. I stood up again and left the room, making my way to Court Three. Another commercial burglary. Another smackhead. It was 10.57 and still no sign of you. I went to the next court, Court Four.

This time I thought I saw you, but it was hard to tell from where I was. It was your profile. The same straight nose and weak chin. But there was too much reflection from the screen separating the barristers from the public. I saw my own outline projected onto the glass like a ghost. I could see the court beyond but it was hard to make out the faces, just the wigs and black gowns.

Perhaps you liked wearing the costume, Andrew, in the same way some people enjoy fancy dress parties, or dressing up as the opposite sex. The barrister spoke. He had a Belfast accent. It wasn’t you. Bollocks.

How many times had I thought about killing you? How many ways? Killing you was the easy part: knife, rope, gun, poison, a staged accident. Perhaps the most satisfying would be to kill you with my own hands and watch you gasp your last breath. There were no end of ways. The difficult part would be getting rid of the evidence. I could dig a grave and bury you deep in the earth, let the worms feast on your flesh. I could use acid to dissolve your corpse. I could feed you to the pigs – apparently they leave only the hair and teeth. I would then burn the hair and grind your teeth into a fine powder. There would be nothing left of you. No trace whatsoever. But some time ago now, I cooked up a better plan.

I was feeling queasy. I hadn’t found you and I didn’t want to give up on you, but I was finding it hard to breathe. My chest was constricting, nausea building. There were another seven courts to go, but I was not going to get round them in an hour. I could come back another day. It wasn’t as though I had anything else to do. I went downstairs and out the door.

I stood near the entrance of the courts, breathing deeply. I leaned against the concrete wall. I was trembling, lightheaded, as though I could pass out at any moment. I needed a cigarette. I used up the last of my tobacco as I rolled one and lit it. What now? I sat on a wall on the other side of the road and waited. I read the form I’d been given by the guard. To get my knife back I would need to make a request within twenty-eight days. I put the form in my pocket.

After a while, they started to come out of the building: the men in pinstripe suits pulling cases on wheels, the cases filled with gowns and wigs and bundles of files tied with ribbons. They all had short hair, they were all well groomed. But none of them were you.

Then I saw you. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. Was it? Yes, it was – it was you. And you were walking towards me, pulling your case. Hair thinner and greyer, face fuller. You were wearing glasses and you had a paunch, more jowly, your neck thicker, but it was unmistakably you. I pulled my hood up, moving back into the shadows. Out of the two of us, you’d aged the worst. The extra weight around your cheeks had made your cheekbones lose definition and your weak chin was weakened further by the flab beneath. The beer belly didn’t suit you at all. You didn’t have enough muscle on your shoulders to carry it off – it turned you into a pear. I was by far the superior specimen. And that knowledge filled me with joy.

I waited for you to pass, then followed some distance behind, up the road. We walked a quarter of a mile. At one point you turned around, but you didn’t recognise me. Why would you? I was just another man in jeans and a hoodie – one of the invisible people. A shadow.

Eventually you arrived at your chambers, climbed the steps at the entrance and disappeared inside. I waited for you. What now? How long would you be in there? Perhaps that was you done for the day. Would you go straight home? Would you have a game of golf? Surely not golf. Please don’t let him be a golf player, or someone with a yacht, I prayed to a dead god. It must have been nearly an hour before you reappeared. You made your way to a Jaguar and drove off.

A car. I should have thought of that. I was convinced you’d take the train. I’d pictured you in first class, reading The Telegraph or hunched over case notes, with a servant pouring another espresso. I should have driven across in my dead dad’s car, but after all this time there was no sense in rushing things. I would go back to my new flat and write to the court. I would get my knife back. The main thing was, I’d found you.

2

The next day I did a hundred press-ups, a hundred sit-ups and five minutes of shadowboxing. I showered and dressed, had toast and scrambled eggs, half a cup of black coffee. When I got to the job centre it was already busy with those signing on and those making fresh claims. I sat on one of the newer-looking chairs.

It was all new to me, my first time in a job centre. They used to call it the dole office, or the DHSS. Now it was called ‘jobcentreplus’. A single lowercase word with ‘job’ and ‘plus’ in white and ‘centre’ in yellow with a background of verdant green, to make it appear fresh and wholesome, a living thing – it was certainly thriving.

A voice, crackly with interference, announced the next claimant.

Nicholas Smith.

I stood up with more forms to fill in, boxes to tick, walking over to the illuminated desk.

It’s Nick, I said.

I’m sorry?

The woman was facing a computer screen. She was dressed neatly and was tapping away at the keyboard.

Please, call me Nick.

For the first time she looked at me. Her eyes gave nothing away. She wasn’t bad looking. Medium-length straight brown hair, probably in her late twenties. Her low-cut neckline was just on the right side of respectable, so that your eye was tempted, yet at the same time you blamed yourself for looking.

Have you filled in the forms?

Most of them.

She took the forms from me and started to leaf through them, ticking some of the boxes in the ‘to be completed by staff only’ columns.

What do you do?

Do?

Was this to be an existential enquiry? I wondered.

What is your normal employment?

Oh, I see. I’d anticipated this question, rehearsed my response in my mind many times, but still it jolted me. I shrugged, Whatever’s going. I smiled at her but she frowned.

Office work or manual work?

I don’t mind.

Any qualifications? She turned back to her screen.

It’s all there, I said, pointing to the form. She read on.

So you’ve got two degrees, one in English and one in Combined Social Sciences?

Yes.

From the Open University?

That’s right.

She looked at me again, as though searching for something. I smiled back. Was I more acceptable to her now she knew I was educated? Perhaps I was more qualified than she was and she resented this.

Do you own any land abroad?

Let me think … No.

Do you collect a war widow’s pension?

I leaned back, not in a cocky way, I hoped, but an endearing one. I smiled again.

Well? she said.

I mean, what do you think?

She tapped something into the machine.

Are you a share fisherman?

A what?

A share fisherman.

I’d never heard of a share fisherman.

You don’t own your own boat?

Correct.

Look, it may seem like a silly question but I have to ask it.

That was the nature of her employment: to incuriously ask strangers farcical questions. She tapped away for some time. I looked around. The room was still full but quiet, like a library without the books.

How much are you prepared to work for?

I turned to the woman again, Money? I don’t know. What’s normal?

She glanced at me once more. Perhaps my question had seemed sarcastic but that wasn’t my intention. I attempted a smile but she had already turned away.

I meant the minimum … per hour.

I was surprised by this question. I’d expected them to dictate this. I don’t know really. How about ten pounds?

The woman seemed vexed. She pinched the top of her nose. You’ll severely limit your ability to find work.

I sat back in the plastic chair and recalculated the sum. How about a fiver an hour? How does that sound?

The woman turned from the computer and confronted me across the table. The minimum wage is set at £5.93 per hour for workers aged twenty-one and over.

How about £5.93 then?

She tapped again at the keys and then hit the return button. You’ve not filled in some of the information regarding your previous employment.

I’d been preparing for this. I’d rehearsed my answer and was playing it over and over in my head.

You did the first two years of a fitting apprenticeship at a motor factory.

Yes.

But that was twenty-two years ago.

Yes.

Well, what have you been doing for twenty-two years?

I felt tired. The invented scenario in my head was still playing. Several years abroad, working in Spain in a bar, café work in Amsterdam, picking grapes in France, then years of self-employment as a handyman, but it all went out of my head and I just came out with it.

I’ve been in prison.

For twenty-two years?

Sort of, yes. One way or another.

What for?

It’s complicated.

Go on …

I looked at her.

Yes?

Murder.

She stopped tapping at the keyboard and looked away from her screen. She turned to me. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me and narrowed her eyes, as if I was something she was trying to read from far away. Did she perhaps think I was joking? She raised her eyebrows, staring at me with renewed interest. Not horror, or even fear, just curiosity.

Don’t suppose there’s anything on your system for murderers, is there?

Outside the sky was bright grey. The air in the job centre had been dry and sterile and I was thirsty. It was only ten o’clock but early enough for the pubs to be open. One of the noticeable differences. You might think that I would have been more at sea in this new world, given the length of time I had been away. But you get to watch a lot of television inside and there are new people coming in all the time, so I was prepared for most of the changes I encountered. But pubs opening at eight in the morning was not something that had occurred to me. It was a welcome novelty. I bought a newspaper, rolling tobacco and more Rizlas. I walked through the city centre.

It was March, cold but crisp, clean on my skin. I’d shaved a few hours ago and the chill tickled my cheeks. I walked beneath the inner ring road, via the subway. I skipped over a rivulet of piss intersecting my path. The air was tangy. It wasn’t a particularly salubrious scene or indeed an inviting one, but this was freedom and, although freedom stank of piss and incarceration stank of piss, this piss still smelled sweeter than prison cell piss.

The landlord was just opening up. He nodded ‘hello’ as I approached the bar. A plump and friendly barmaid served me a pint. I sized her up. It was good to gaze on a real woman and not the uniformed simulacra of womanhood the female screws represented. I sat in the corner. There were already a few postmen at the bar and some old alkies in flat caps and oil-stained overcoats. I drank from my glass and, for a moment, I felt normal.

Beer is the one thing you can’t get inside. Some prisoners attempt to brew their own beverage. The preferred method is to use orange juice, sugar and cream crackers (for the yeast content). The result is a very unpalatable, albeit lethal, ‘poteen’ style concoction. You can easily acquire skunk, crack, smack, Valium, Mogadon, Subbies, any drug you like, but a pint of real ale … I’d fixated on it many times. I would close my eyes and I’d be there at the bar, some curvaceous barmaid with plenty of cleavage pulling the pump. The froth flowing over her hand, like some cheesy beer advert. A pathetic male fantasy, but the sort that’s necessary when you’re banged up and clinging to the fine threads of your sanity.

I took hold of the glass and consumed the beer in four sups. I went back for a refill. How do the purveyors of alcoholic beverages view their clientele? With pity, scorn, disdain? Rarely with affection. But they should reassess this relationship, for what they sell is all the goodness of the world. That pint of beer tasted to me of laughter and innocence. It was golden and glowing with life. Like an eighteen-year-old girl dancing and singing, spinning round, her hair bouncing, her eyes sparkling. I was thinking of Liv. A mess of black hair down over her shoulders, smoke-grey eyes, framed by thick black eyeliner. Curves, calves, clavicles.

The TV was on in the corner. Twenty-four hour news. Bombs, tanks, Libya. Gaddafi railing against foreign imperialism. He looked confused. A few months ago he’d been laughing and drinking champagne with the very people that were now dropping bombs on his head. You’ve got to watch that. Your enemy is the man standing next to you, smiling. Your enemy is the man who pats you on your back and says, well done, mate. Your enemy is neatly dressed in a charcoal suit, a plain tie and a crisp white shirt.

The footage changed. Cuts. Cuts in spending. Police, the arts, the NHS. No one escaping the axe except the bankers and the barristers. There was an anonymous suit trying to justify funding the arts by explaining how it feeds the economy. I can tell you how to justify it. You justify it like this: first, picture a man locked inside a white concrete box, with a bright light in his eyes, with no sense of hope. Picture this pitiful creature lying on his bed, repeating a line of poetry over and over again. Why is he doing this? He’s doing this to feel human. He is doing this to feel connected to something outside of his own hell. He is doing this because if he doesn’t the water will pour in and he will drown.

Rising crime, rising unemployment. An old man in a flat cap nursing a half, turned to me. It’s like the eighties all over again, he said and stared at the screen.

There was a band on the radio sounding just like The Pixies. He was right, the eighties all over again, and I was transported in my mind to that club on that night.

You were at the bar, Andrew, and I was dancing with Liv on the floor. She was wearing the red and blue