CAFÉ ASSASSIN

by Michael Stewart

  I’d lost count of how many size sixteen French knickers I’d seen hurtling through the air in the club, but for Pawel it was all new. As I chatted to him, it struck me just what an odd character he was. How little I really knew him. Is a man with strange friends, a strange man? I noticed that Liv was in the corner with a friend. I gave her a wink and she grinned back. I left Pawel at the bar and went over to Liv.

  I’m just nipping out for a cig, want to join me? I said.

  She didn’t respond at first but then turned to her friend.

  Excuse me a minute.

  Outside we lit up. The streets were quiet. Somewhere I could hear a fox screaming.

  It’s good to see you. I wasn’t sure I would, I said.

  Been doing a lot of thinking.

  Are you coming back, to work I mean?

  No, that’s what I’ve come to tell you. I’ve decided that it’s not a good idea.

  So you just came to snoop around, check on Andrew’s cash?

  Fuck off.

  You here for the size sixteen French knickers then?

  Fuck off.

  What then?

  I wanted to see you.

  What for?

  Look, it’s not easy. There’s a lot at stake. We’ve been together a long time.

  I get it Liv. You don’t have to explain. He lied to you, but you’ve got a nice house. A nice magazine life.

  Fuck off. That’s not fair, Nick.

  The truth hurts, eh?

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have come. I’m cold. I’m going back inside.

  I watched her go through the door and descend the stairs. Yeah, fuck off then. I’ll get you when I’m good and ready and not before. I finished my cigarette and lit up another. I filled my lungs with smoke and watched the blue-white vapour snake around the orange streetlight. Inside, the next burlesque performance was about to begin. I went and sat back next to Pawel at the end of the bar.

  Just trying to persuade the chef to come back, I said.

  Good looking, he said, nodding to where Liv was sitting. I was shocked at how strongly I felt for her. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, it wasn’t the plan. I thought about a shard of jagged glass – pressing it hard into wounded flesh.

  Then I saw Steve coming down the stairs, stumbling, looking a little worse for wear, still in his work clothes, stained white with silicone sealant. He had threatened a visit and now here he was.

  Here’s trouble, I said. I’d already pre-warned Pawel.

  Can I get you a drink, Steve?

  Have I missed the tit show? he said.

  Lager?

  There were over a hundred people in the club. Lots of drinkers. I had three bar staff on and they were struggling to get the drinks out in time. Socha looked flustered. I watched her bend down and reach for some cold lager from the fridge. Young skin has a luminous quality, have you noticed that? As if there is a light inside, shining through. Like your daughter’s skin, Andrew. The queue at the bar was four deep. I went round and gave her a hand.

  Richard was doing sound and light. He’d not fucked up any of the cues, which was a first. It was crucial that the cues came in on time for burlesque (reveal, tableau, black-out). He must be getting the hang of it finally, I thought. It was the start of the second half and he was dimming the house lights and fading the backing track. The audience quietened down, the bar thinned and people made their way back to their seats. Too low a seats-to-punters ratio. Some were standing at the back. I was thinking about introducing a standing policy for people who drank soda water, or students, or anyone with a beard or a moustache.

  The finale took the burlesque idea into different territory: it was a black mass. All the performers came together. At the centre towards the back of the stage, there was a throne. There sat a woman dressed as a high priestess in a black cloak. Around her, positioned in a pentagram, were five women, their breasts bared and their faces hidden by black crow masks. They lit candles and started to chant, behind a repetitive tribal drum and a demonic bassline. The effect was sinister.

  You may find this amusing, Andrew, but in my desperation inside (or should I say one particular period of particular desperation) I sought solace in witchcraft. My thoughts were so deranged at the time. I would kick the opiates. I’d go cold turkey, crawling up the walls, uncontrollable spasms, sweating, shivering, shitting, vomiting. Then a sort of normality, but a cycle of struggling, craving, struggling. Then just needing something – an open door.

  I read Crowley and Anton LaVey. In my cell I would conduct a black mass and I would cast out all that was good and invoke all that was evil, to avenge me of my enemies: of my one abiding enemy. I even carved an effigy out of a bar of soap, it wasn’t a very good likeness but it was supposed to look like you, Andrew.

  For a moment I was back there. I was under the spell of the black arts. I started to sweat. A lizard chill crept down my spine. I felt shards of ice form around my heart. I was trapped by the ever-present reality of the past. By all that I had done and by all that had been done unto me.

  Then the music switched. It was a song from the 1920s Broadway show Running Wild. The high priestess pulled off her gown in one flourish and revealed a Josephine Baker style outfit. Fast kicking steps, the frenetic kicking of feet, and the rest of the girls were doing the jay-bird. The effect was comic, the audience loved it. I laughed out of relief. Steve stood at the back and looked bemused. I looked over to Liv, she seemed to be enjoying it.

  The music stopped abruptly and the lights went black. Silence. Darkness. A few seconds, nothing, and then they came back on again, but the moment was lost. I looked over to Richard, he shrugged and gave me an apologetic face. Once again he’d fucked it up at the crucial moment. The dancers realised there was no way of clawing this back and started to tidy up their discarded clothes: dress gloves, stockings, size sixteen French knickers.

  Steve looked outraged. He walked over to me.

  Where are the fucking minges? I paid twelve quid to get in.

  Look, I told you Steve, it’s more about the tease.

  What’s the point of that? he said. What’s the fucking point? He looked genuinely horrified.

  One of the dancers’ partners was up on stage having an angry word with Richard. I was trying to do two things at once: explain the basics of burlesque to the great ape Steve, and keep an eye on the fracas that was building between Richard and this dancer’s dick of a boyfriend. The dick of a boyfriend was shouting now but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then he reached over and started to mess with the PA. Richard was not an aggressive man, but someone else touching his PA was guaranteed to rile him. More words were spoken. The man pushed Richard, Richard pushed him back. The man squared up to Richard, then he landed him a punch. It caught him on the side of his head and Richard went down, falling onto his desk. Steve saw what was happening and, quick as lighting, was on the stage punching the life out of the man. He had him on the floor in no time. He was standing over him. The man stayed down. I went over to them.

  Nice one Steve, I said, genuinely pleased for the first time to have Steve in my world.

  The cunt was going to damage the desk. Took me ages to build that.

  We got the man up on his feet and escorted him to the doors at the top of the stairs. Steve flung him into the night. We went back to the bar and I got Steve a fresh bottle. Apes eat ants. The cat catches the weasel. The man with blood on his hands and the man with blood on his face.

  I went to freshen up. When I leaned over the sink to wash my hands I saw it, sprayed in red paint on the mirrors: I fouNd U Nik, it said. I stood back. The letters were about six inches in height. It was evidently the same hand as the graffiti on the door outside. The same use of capital ‘N’. I could feel a vein in my neck pulsing. I leaned back against the wall. I closed my eyes. I’d been working long hours, I needed more sleep. But when
I opened them, the words were still staring right at me. I went over to the letters and I touched one. The paint was wet.

  Could the culprit still be on the premises? I rushed back into the main room and scanned the crowd. I went over to Pawel.

  You seen the graffiti in the toilet?

  He hadn’t. I ushered him into the gents.

  It’s just been done, I said, It’s still wet. Have you seen anyone behaving strangely?

  It is burlesque, Nick. Everyone is strange.

  I looked down at my hand. It was stained red.

  15

  The next week I made a trip to the court again. The case was almost through. There was just your speech (which I’d come to listen to. Believe it or not, I like your voice), then the defence’s, then the judge would give the jury directions. It wasn’t just your voice I was here for though, I wanted to see my opponent at his best.

  It brought it all back. I remembered waiting in a holding cell. I’d been confined there for hours while I waited for the jury to come to a decision, with nothing but a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee to keep me company. Pacing the concrete floor or standing staring at the wall, reading the same graffiti over again. A large part of me clung to the hope that I would be found innocent. My barrister had done a reasonable job of presenting my case, I thought. At some point a prison officer brought me another cup of coffee, but I couldn’t drink it and I put it on the floor where it went cold and congealed next to its companion. Then I heard the rattling of keys and I knew the call had come for me to be returned to the courtroom.

  I looked over at the jury. I wondered if they understood the full weight of their responsibility. It would all be over for them soon. They would go back to the routine of their lives, to the jobs they had been temporarily seconded from. Perhaps they had even enjoyed this brief spell away from their ordinary existence. Builders, hairdressers, plumbers, waiters, teachers, office workers: normal jobs for normal people. It would all be boxed up for you soon as well and then you could go on to your next job.

  There you stood in the middle of the courtroom, like a king. You were addressing the jury. You made the case against Kareem very straightforward. Kareem had already admitted he wanted to punish and rob the victims and he had already accepted the possibility this could include harm. Kareem was in real financial difficulties and there was a pressing need. Kareem had pleaded guilty on count four – conspiring to commit a robbery. And he had already pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

  None of this mattered, you pointed out. The position of the prosecution was that they did not need to rely on Kareem’s plea. Osman was clearly lying when he said he had gone into the house for a cup of tea. The men had a common cultural heritage, had known each other since childhood, and saw each other as brothers. In Iraq they’d gone to the same school, had sat next to each other in class. They’d played games together, gone camping together. Not for the first time, I thought about me and you, Andrew. I wondered if you were thinking of me?

  Kareem and Osman were sitting in a glass-fronted box to the side of the courtroom. They were accompanied by prison officers. They betrayed no emotion but I knew, perhaps better than anyone else in the room, what they were feeling behind the facade.

  In life the simple answers are often the correct answers – is that not so? And is that not the case here? It is simply not possible to know what happened with Tony Ho in his bedroom – only two men alive know.

  You looked over to the defendants for effect. Again, a touch of theatre. The members of the jury were hanging on your every word. You had them where you wanted them.

  Kareem and Osman, and we cannot rely on anything they say on that matter. We do not need to know in order to prosecute. The fact is Kareem was in charge but Osman was still responsible and is a murderer.

  You were enjoying saying the word ‘murderer’, fully aware of its dramatic effect. I wondered if you were thinking of yourself as a murderer, or whether you’d been able to put that to one side.

  Duress, as you know, cannot be used as a defence to murder. The taking of an innocent life can never be justified, so no amount of fear or intimidation can justify murder. Osman bears responsibility for Tony Ho’s murder. He is therefore guilty, along with Kareem, of count three. When he said to Sally, ‘I’m going to get your brother now’, he meant that he was going to confront him, going to use violence against him. And when he said later at the police station, ‘I am not ashamed’, he meant that he was not ashamed of murder.

  Of course, you may have been right, Andrew, Osman may have meant those things. Or when he said, ‘I’m going to get your brother now’ perhaps he meant precisely that, he was going to bring him into the room. And when he said, ‘I am not ashamed’, maybe he meant he was not ashamed because he wasn’t a murderer. There you were putting thoughts into the jury’s head. You looked over again to the glass-fronted box, and stared this time at Osman.

  That was when I noticed him: Darren Lease. One of the prison officers at Wakefield who had told me stories about his shit dad to make me feel better about my shit dad. One of the prison officers who showed me kindness. The only prison officer who listened to my story and believed it without question. I’d known Darren for a long time. And what Darren had told me inside was to prove very useful.

  I caught up with Darren outside during a break. He was having a cigarette.

  Fucking hell, Nick. Good to see you on the outside. You look well. What you up to? Keeping out of trouble?

  I told him about the club. He seemed impressed, perhaps even envious. We chatted for a bit. Caught up on a few characters. Sam Farnworth, who had stopped me topping myself, had left his job and opened up a bar in Spain. Karen Kenning had transferred to Broadmoor, which wasn’t as perverse as it sounded. There were lots of advantages to working in Broadmoor. It was more of a hospital, less of a prison.

  Listen, Darren, I’m glad I bumped into you. I wanted to check something with you.

  Go ahead. What?

  When we were talking that time, the QC who’s prosecuting, you remember me telling you about him?

  Andrew Honour. Course I remember. He was the bloke put you inside. How am I gonna forget that?

  Well, I know you’ve seen him at work a few times.

  Sure. He’s good at what he does, one of the best, but he gives me a creepy feeling.

  That’s right, Andrew, you gave him the creeps. Darren Lease was a man of compassion and what he saw in you that made you such a good QC was a complete lack of pity. In fact, that’s one of the reasons Darren believed my story. Because he’d seen you cross-examine a police officer. A police officer who happened to be a very close friend of Darren’s and someone that you accused of being a liar under oath. And that police officer was angry. Perhaps his ire was excessive but nevertheless, he’d been incensed and full of rage at the time. Of course, you remember that police officer now, don’t you, Andrew? You are unlikely to forget him. Perhaps you think him unbalanced, because accusing someone of being a liar is just part of your job.

  That police officer. What was his name again?

  He’s called Paul Leadbeater. Officer Leadbeater to you. He laughed. What do you want to know for?

  I just remembered it, it came back to me. I’ve been watching Andrew in action.

  Right. You get off on a man in a wig do you?

  Beggars can’t be choosers … Where’s he based, this Leadbeater?

  I think he’s at Huddersfield. I’ll warn you though, he’s changed. He smiled and winced at the same time.

  I shook Darren’s hand and said goodbye. I walked to the nearest pub and ordered a drink. Thanks, Darren. Thanks for that. I owe you one. And I drank on my own to Darren Lease. Things were moving forward – falling into place. Outside I made a phone call.

  Is that Huddersfield police station? Could I speak to Officer Leadbeater please?

  I wondered what Darren had meant by
Officer Leadbeater changing.

  16

  I think it was the week after your fourteenth birthday. You had a new tent and we decided to camp by the chicken coop down the road. There was me, you and Steps in your tent; Rogan, Summers and Bob in Bob’s tent. It was a Saturday afternoon and the sun was scorching the grass along the banks of the old railway track. We were erecting the tents and collecting fire wood when Bowie came across the adjoining field with an excited look on his face.

  Hey, guess who I’ve just seen?

  We had no idea. Madman Marz. That’s who.

  Bowie was not a close friend, not in our gang, but someone who was on the periphery of the scene. You didn’t like him, Andrew. He was too feral for your tastes. But I always admired his capacity for hedonism. He was mates with Summers, had been in borstal with him. He was wayward, frequently in trouble with the police. He was a glue head and a thief.

  What was he doing? Rogan asked.

  Walking the slacks, with his hood up.

  We were scared of Madman Marz, even though we had no reason to be scared of him. We would always see him on his own, walking the old railway track or walking the slacks. The slacks were the name we gave to the levelled out areas of slag. Slagheaps from the mines that had gradually flattened and were being reclaimed by nature. Madman Marz always wore an oversized green parka with the snorkel hood zipped up to the top so his face was hidden, even in the heat of a summer’s afternoon. We’d never seen his face. He always wore jeans tucked into football socks. He sometimes carried a plastic bag. We’d been told once that he carried a human head in the bag. We didn’t believe this.

  He was going, ‘keek, brrrmf’.

  He always made this noise as he walked. In rhythm with his walking. The ‘keek’ like something snapping, the ‘brrrmf’ like something stopping. We didn’t know anything about him, where he was from, or what his real name was, or how old he was. We didn’t even know what he looked like. We didn’t understand him and that made us afraid of him. Somewhere in our darkest thoughts, we imagined him without a face, without a body, forever traipsing across a giant ball of dust.