The Fortune Men

by Nadifa Mohamed

  ‘Thanks, love,’ says Mary.

  ‘What can I do you for?’

  ‘Scarf, please, haven’t gone to the trouble of setting my hair only to look like a wet dog when I get to the pub.’

  ‘It’s a marvellous do,’ smiles Violet, looking at the peroxide halo around Mary’s head. ‘Come and pick one you like.’

  While Mary tries different styles in the mirror, Margaret approaches the counter. ‘You know, Miss Volacki, I might as well pick up a pair of shoes for me eldest, it’s like she sticks her feet in fertilizer every night.’

  ‘Leather?’

  ‘Oh no, canvas ones will do her, I expect she’ll be needing another pair before the month’s out.’

  ‘They’ll be towering over us soon enough,’ Mary says, chipping nail varnish from her fingers with a thumbnail.

  ‘What size is she?’

  ‘A one, I think, or a little less.’

  Violet’s girdle pinches her stomach as she bends over the boxes she has pulled down from the shelf. She hadn’t organized them, hadn’t found time to, and so now must check through the randomly sized plimsolls. ‘I’m not seeing a size one, Margaret.’ Violet straightens her back with a loud sigh and climbs to her feet. ‘But I’m sure I’ve got some in, come back in the morning and we’ll have found them for you.’

  Mary fixes her new headscarf around her face in the mirror and checks her teeth for lipstick before throwing a full-wattage smile at Violet. ‘I’ll grab some grips and a box of matches while I’m at it,’ she says, handing over the coins.

  ‘Alright, Miss Volacki, I’ll bring her in the morning and we can try them on, there and then. Sorry to have been a bother,’ Margaret calls out.

  ‘Don’t be soft, it was no bother at all. Be careful you don’t get soaked out there, girls.’

  ‘We’ll be alright, just going down the pub to meet our fellas.’

  They pull the door open and the night steps in: the splash of tyre on wet tarmac, the stink of sesame oil and broiling meat from Sam On Wen’s Chinese restaurant, the tinny clatter of calypso from a record player, the lean shadows hunkering near the bus stop.

  ‘Night, Miss Volacki.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘How much coal did you put on the fire, Diana? It’s like the tropics in here.’ Violet fans her face as she steps from the shop into the adjoining dining room.

  ‘Put this foot out first and then let the other one follow, oops, try again …’ Diana holds Grace’s hands as she wobbles in her mother’s high heels. ‘To get your balance you have to stand up straight, but don’t lock your knees.’

  Hank Williams plays loudly on the wireless and the fire crackles as a red-hot coal disintegrates and hits the grate.

  ‘I asked Mammy to teach me to line dance,’ Grace shouts over her shoulder as she trips over her mother’s feet.

  ‘Don’t do yourself an injury, Gracie, there’s plenty of time for you to be trotting around in all sorts of uncomfortable footwear.’ Violet squeezes past them to the kitchen and washes her hands.

  ‘Gracie, let’s stop to eat now.’ Diana lifts her daughter out of the T-bars and sits her on a chair at the head of the table.

  ‘Is there any of that beef left over from yesterday?’ Violet asks, wiping her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘No, sorry, I put it all in G’s sandwiches this morning.’

  ‘No bother, I’ll manage with what we have.’ The table is a little sparse tonight but there is custard powder in the pantry and some pears in the fruit bowl.

  As Violet sits down, the shop doorbell rings.

  ‘Oh, leave it. It’s ten past already. Let them come back in the morning.’ Diana sighs.

  Violet hesitates for a moment but then rises. That bell and that shop have a hold on her that she can’t resist. ‘It must be a regular. Let me just see who it is and what they want.’

  ‘Don’t let your food get cold.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Grace leans dangerously back in her seat to watch as her aunt strides across the dimly lit shop and opens the locked front door directly ahead. Diana catches the chair just before it tips backwards. ‘Sit properly and eat your food.’

  They glance for a couple of seconds at the coloured man standing in the rain on the porch before Diana slams the dining-room door against the cold draught.

  FOUR

  Afar

  ‘Missus, do you mind turning the music down?’ asks a uniformed policeman panting at the dining-room door. He holds his black helmet close against his stomach and his eyelids flutter as he speaks.

  ‘Turn off the wireless, Gracie. How can I help you? Is that burglar alarm playing up again?’

  He looks confused. ‘No … there’s been an incident. Your sister.’

  ‘What?’ Diana looks past him and sees other men inside the shop. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, gently pushing him out of the way.

  Grace kicks off the high heels and in her white ankle socks follows behind her mother.

  ‘What is going on?’ Diana looks from one unfamiliar face to another.

  The men turn and seem to size her up. ‘Mrs Tanay, my condolences. We’ve just arrived. She was discovered by this gentleman who was after a pack of cigarettes.’ The detective points to an ashen-faced old man in a flat cap.

  The front door swings in the cold night air and it’s only after Grace has walked around her mother towards the till that Diana notices the blood on the floor, seeping up the sides of Grace’s frilly socks. ‘Stop!’ shouts Diana.

  She pulls Grace back and then marches around the corner to the north side of the shop. Violet lies face down, illuminated by the low light from a glass cabinet, blood sprayed up the white walls around her. ‘Violet, get up! What’s happened, love?’ Diana reaches down to rouse her sister, thinking she has hit her head and swooned, but as she brushes the hair away from her face she catches sight of the wide cut to her throat. She falls back on her heels and screams, ‘Who did this?’

  The uniformed policeman pulls Diana up and asks her to take Grace back to the dining room. ‘Did you really not hear anything, Mrs Tanay?’

  ‘No! No!’ Diana searches around frantically to find Grace in the crowd, but she is still by the till counter, picking one foot up and then another to examine the red on her feet. ‘Don’t look, baby, don’t look!’ She covers Grace’s eyes but cannot help looking back herself, to the smear of hand- and kneeprints leading back to the alcove where the shoeboxes are kept, where Violet’s own thick-soled shoes lie upturned.

  Be careful, Gwilym, you’re tramping through the blood you are. Time of death estimated between 20:05 and 20:15. First man on the scene goes by the name of Archibald. No, make that A.r.c.h.b.o.l.d. Came for a packet of cigarettes. Not a peep heard from the next room. Her sister is a bit deaf and there is a seal around the dining-room door to keep out the draught. Bloody forensics taking their time again. Ah, we’ve got the Detective Chief Inspector pulling up. Put an embargo on any ships that think they’re leaving the docks tonight. Next of kin eating dinner through it all. Thinks she saw a black man on the doorstep just after eight. A few break-ins recently. No men in the house, you see. No shout, must have let him in. I only saw her a couple of days ago. May the Lord rest her soul.

  HaShem! HaShem! Maggie, Maggie, look what they’ve done to our Violet. They’ve cut her throat. Where’s Grace? Here, Diana, she is right here. There’s too many bloody police in there. Why won’t they let us see her? How did you not hear anything? Go upstairs and get brandy from the cabinet. On the right side. Drink this, Di, please. Stop rocking. Violet. Violet. Violet. Violet. Violet. Violet. Violet. Violet. You must come to stay with Daniel and me tonight. Never, never, never. How could this happen? God turned his back, didn’t he?

  There’s a crowd outside rubbernecking, Chief. Push ’em back. The family saw some darkie in the porch just before it all happened. Visit all the coloured boarding houses. Stop any ships from leaving the port. They ain’t half keening next door. It’s their way. Have you
got all the photos you need? She tried to get away, look at these smears. We got a real mean bastard on our hands. They’ll want to bury her tomorrow, you know. Autopsy first. No real mystery though, is there, Chief? Great big slashes to the neck. Anything missing? Can’t tell yet, but must be. The car is here from the mortuary.

  Baruch dayan ha’emet. Patience, Diana, the Lord will console you. You really believe that? Grace, come here, sit on my lap. Your skin is so clammy, darling. Close your eyes and rest on me. I’ve called them all, they’re all coming. Oh God. Rabbi Herzog is on his way from Rhymney. They’ll drown me. I won’t be able to keep them away. There’s someone at the back door. It’s the cantor, Joshua.

  ‘May the Almighty comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.’

  ‘I can tell when a man be hypnotized.’

  ‘How, Doc?’

  ‘You should know, Monday! Don’t be a damn fool. You got obeah men in your country, de Gambia, don’t you? Can’t be just bongos and jungles.’

  A flash of annoyance lights up the Gambian’s slanted eyes. He is the best-educated man in this house, having left his missionary school at sixteen, yet Doc won’t stop talking down to him. He exhales and rubs the lumpy keloid scar on his neck where stray wiry hairs have grown inward, spiralling into his skin like miniature drills. Monday’s head in the low light appears covered in a dense brown cap; the hairline trimmed into severe angles around his temples and neck, and broaching his forehead, until it stops abruptly a few centimetres above his unruly brows. ‘Me thought hypnotism were different. Something those geezers in white coats do.’

  ‘It don’t need be. It can be a vaudeville ting or a white-coat-strap-you-down-and-make-you-confess ting, you see what I’m saying? It’s a mighty powerful ting. When you under, you under.’

  ‘So, how can you tell, Doc?’

  ‘De paper have it ’ere in white and black. “Pallor, a moonstruck visage, enervated responses”, and I’ve seen men at sea who just about do any ting and after dey can’t explain dem selfs for fudge and now dis Frankenstein doctor trying to bring it to de New Theatre.’ Doc Madison reaches over to the bedside table for his clutch of 8 p.m. tablets. His iron-post bed piled high with pillows and floral quilts has the look of an oriental throne, a still point of majesty and judiciousness, while his purple silk pyjamas just add to his regal air. He had left the merchant navy, bought this run-down terraced house in the street behind the prison, and then taken to his bed; brazenly flouting the white man’s law by taking public assistance while renting out the rooms. Doc lives and sleeps in the front room with Jackie. The tenants joking that the two of them in bed must be like cadavers in a medical school: this is what a young heart looks like, this is what happens to an old sailor’s liver, here is a plump healthy womb, and an ancient woebegone scrotum.

  ‘What they tell him?’

  ‘Take it someplace else! Dey ain’t crazy.’

  ‘You could hypnotize a fella or lady into doing anything, handing over their pocketbook or the keys to their house, get into a girl’s drawers without her saying her daddy kill her or asking how much you got. Mighty powerful.’

  ‘He think he a real tap-a-di-tap too, cos he a medical doctor to boot, but what doctor asks for money at door and want an interval? A shyster, dat who. Put another coal on de fire, bwoy, me feeling a chill with dis damn rain falling all night.’

  Monday shoves the poker through the orange embers and then takes a large cube of coal and tosses it towards the back of the grate.

  The slam of the front door beside Doc’s room shakes his thin sash windows and sends a fierce draught through the rotting wood of the Edwardian frames. The whole house is as sickly as its owner: creeping damp crawling up the peeling walls, the bowels of its plumbing congested and rumbling, the leaky and bandaged pipes exhaling gas.

  ‘God damn him to hell! Why he need to thump de door so?’

  Monday kisses his teeth contemptuously and squirms back into the spaces his muscles had pressed into the red velvet armchair, his body concealing its threadbare and skeletal parts. With footsteps on the bare pine of the hallway, both men look to the door with glares in their eyes.

  As expected, the brass handle turns and Mahmood steps in, his black wool coat glossy and sequinned with rain, his homburg trickling droplets on to the only carpeted room in the house.

  ‘Eh-eh, ’ere he come, like da Grim Reaper heself.’ Monday stares at Mahmood, from the fine hairs of his receding hairline down to the sabre points of his winkle-pickers.

  ‘You gonna keep smashing my door till it break? You know how much it cost to replace door?’

  ‘Relax yourself, Doc, that piece of wood ain’t going nowhere.’ Mahmood’s long strides cut through the room and he takes a seat on a small tweed sofa. He has to strain sometimes to understand Madison’s strong Jamaican accent.

  ‘Mind you don’t get that cloth wet!’

  Mahmood shoots a look at his landlord before removing his coat and placing it, inside out, on the armrest beside him. ‘You got the Echo?’

  ‘You ’ave any luck today?’ Doc asks as he throws the newspaper to him.

  ‘A little.’ That is all he ever says to that question; he doesn’t want any man’s nose in a business so delicate as his nasiib.

  ‘A little mean you can pay upfront for next week’s rent.’

  ‘No, that would be if I win a lot.’ He moves slowly from page to page, looking at the pretty girls in the adverts, moving from the back page to the front as if it were an Arabic journal.

  ‘That a new coat.’ It’s a statement rather than a question as Monday’s eyes turn from Mahmood to the coat. He puts the floral saucer in his hand to his mouth and slurps the over-spilt tea.

  ‘It be old.’

  ‘I thought I saw you go out this morning in that little sports jacket of yours?’

  ‘I changed.’

  ‘You be like Cinderella, all you need do is twirl around and you got a fresh suit of clothes on your back?’ Doc chips in.

  Mahmood smiles. ‘What you make of tomorrow’s races?’

  ‘Interesting horse at fourteen hours, sired by Old Tabasco, good Scotch jockey and all.’

  Mahmood scrolls down the list; he can’t read much English, but he likes to pretend, and can recognize a few familiar names and all of the numbers.

  ‘That rascal Rory Harte was in the paper again, on a drunk and disorderly charge,’ Doc rolls out all his crocodile teeth, ‘he tell de judge that he ’ad only wanted to push de boat out,’ he laughs through his nostrils, ‘and de mighty judge ask him, “What’s to stop you pushing it out again?” and you know what Harte tell him?’ the laugh explodes out of his mouth and hits the walls, ‘de boat’s sunk. De. Boat’s. Sunk.’

  All three men laugh at the docker’s wisecrack.

  ‘Man, it take an Irishman to say that to the judge!’ Monday whinnies and chokes on his tea.

  Collecting his coat, Mahmood uses the distraction to leave the room before Doc starts on again about the rent, or the door, or the coal that doesn’t walk in by itself off the street, or the milk splattered on the kitchen table.

  In his bare bedroom, Mahmood strips off his pinstripe suit, before manipulating jacket and trousers on to a misshapen wire hanger. His fine socks are wet at the toes and heels but he keeps them on in dread of the cold bed, which always seems to have been doused in ice water. He had tried to meet that Russian woman earlier, the raven-haired thief who had caught his eye in the Bucket o’ Blood pub. She is older than him, wiser and meaner, and there is a dangerous chemistry between them. He had promised himself he wouldn’t see her again but then he’d ended up at her red door. She wasn’t home anyway; probably out courting some other fool. He needs to just cut it off and make sure that Laura never hears about her.

  Taking a deep breath, he dives under the woollen blankets, his sinuous arms and legs shivering as the cotton sheet tries to steal what little body heat he has. He pitches around in the bed, trying to get his blood going, but the cold is
stronger than him. Punching his musty ancient pillow into a decent shape, Mahmood is startled by a loud rat-tat-tat-tat on the front door.

  Too late for anything good, too insolent for anyone but the police.

  Monday’s heavy steps and then the creak of the door.

  ‘Hello, hello, apologies …’

  ‘Inspector! Please, please.’

  They haven’t got anything on me, can’t have, thinks Mahmood. It must be something to do with that new Jamaican upstairs – Lloyd, or whatever his name is – calls himself a boxer but never trains or competes, just upstairs blowing reefer smoke out the window.

  Doc has put his outside voice on, Mahmood hears him clearly through the wall.

  ‘Detective Lavery! What brings you out on dis malignant night? I try my hardest to keep a steadfast, Christian establishment and I’m aggrieved, truly aggrieved, dat any of mine would be the locus of your suspicions.’

  ‘Nothing to unduly worry you, Mr Madison, yours is not the only lodging house we’ll be attending tonight. Are all of your tenants at home?’ Lavery has a strong Welsh accent and together their voices are those of a lord and his gamekeeper on a radio comedy.

  ‘I should think so, Detective, but we have a new man upstairs and he is the kind to keep he-self, pardon me, himself to himself.’

  ‘We’ll need to speak to everyone, Mr Madison.’

  ‘He in, he in,’ Monday reassures.

  ‘Let’s start at Mattan’s.’

  They are on him before Mahmood has even had a chance to put his trousers on. ‘Who is it?’ he yells.

  ‘Police.’ They ambush him in his drawers and vest. Familiar faces. Morris and Lavery.

  ‘What do you want?’ Mahmood stands square in front of the pair of them.

  ‘Where have you been this evening?’ Lavery asks, while Morris runs his eyes over everything, his fingers already on Mahmood’s coat.

  ‘To the Central.’

  ‘What pictures did you see?’

  ‘Korean War and cowboys.’