No, I didn’t know that.
We Muslims call them Qabil and Habil, although they’re not mentioned by name in the Koran. The story is very similar to that in the Bible. We believe that Cain slew his brother for no other reason than that of jealousy, and that this was the first sin on Earth. Not murder but jealousy.
He got up and shook my hand.
Allah works in mysterious and wondrous ways. He has brought you to me, so we can do his work. Praise be to Allah.
Don’t you find that amusing, Andrew? Who says the world hasn’t changed. You certainly wouldn’t have got that in 1989 would you? In the end it was Officer Leadbeater, or as we should really call him, Alhamdulillah (praise be to Allah indeed), and his sense of divine justice that convicted you. I actually had nothing more to do with it.
I’ve been most industrious while you’ve been in enforced indolence. A few months after you were sentenced I opened up another Café Assassin, this one in the fashionable Northern Quarter of Manchester. If anything, it’s actually doing better than the original Café Assassin. It’s twice the size. We have a house band: Wanda and the White Trash. We’re thinking of extending the house band idea to all the clubs eventually. We’ve been looking at Berlin. We went over there a few months ago to look for suitable properties. We saw some great places in East Kreuzberg. It seems significant somehow that when their wall was coming down, my walls were closing in.
We’re putting Berlin on the back-burner for now. The latest venture is New York. We’re opening up a Café Assassin on McDougal Street in the New Year. It’s a really good spot, about halfway down, where all the bars are, not that far really from where Dylan used to play. I’m going to have a sign on the door which says: YOU CAN’T COME IN.
Here’s some advice for you which will help. Try and avoid forming relationships with psychotic cellmates with suicidal inclinations. Try to avoid having a mental breakdown. Whatever you do, don’t stab a fellow prisoner in the heart with a sharpened toilet brush because he said something to a person you were previously in a relationship with. If you find a man strangled by an improvised noose made of cut up bed sheets, don’t blame yourself for his death. Avoid being sectioned under the Mental Health Act and being transferred to the secure unit of a mental hospital. Stay clear of class A drugs, especially any heroin substitutes, in particular Subutex. Don’t, no matter how tempting it might look, cut a main vein with a broken razor blade.
The first few years are the hardest. It does get a bit easier, then it gets harder, then it gets easier again. It will be easier for you because you are forty, not eighteen. It will be easier for you because you’ve lived some of your life already, and it will be easier for you because you are not innocent. You are guilty.
It will also, in some ways, be harder for you. It will be harder for you because of your perceived drop in social status. It will be harder for you because you’re used to the finer things in life: Jaguar cars, Savile Row pinstripe suits, vintage wines, rare ports. I’m coming round to your way of thinking on that one, by the way. You’ll miss your single malts, of course, you’d got quite attached to them. You might get some of that prison hooch if you’re lucky. They make it out of orange juice and sugar. An acquired taste.
It will be harder for you because you’re a QC who’s sent down hundreds of men for murder. It will be harder for you because you’re in the same prison as Osman. You will meet Osman inside. You will meet some of the other men you’ve convicted, if you haven’t already. Some of them will be innocent of the murder they’ve been convicted of. All of them will be angry. And they will direct their anger at you.
Try to befriend one of the big men. Do whatever you have to do to be his friend. He will protect you. Try and avoid being on your own at all times. Learn to take the blows. Go down straight away, there’s no point fighting back unless you’re a hardcase, which you’re not.
Don’t be fooled by convicts who tell you to stick up for yourself, this only works if you’re going to see it through. If you struggle you will just prolong the beating. Make a lot of noise. Shout as loud as you can before you go down. Keep on screaming. Curl up in a ball. Protect your head. Try and make friends with the screws, they will be less likely to turn a blind eye.
Do WATCH OUT for Osman. He will be much angrier than Kareem. Avoid him at all costs. If he enters a room, leave the room. If he opts to do educational studies, opt for work. If he opts for work, opt to do educational studies. He will come for you.
Watch out for receptacles of boiling sugar water. Watch out for razors melted into toothbrushes. Watch out for sharpened toilet brushes. Don’t worry about Liv – I’m taking care of her. Because you are guilty and you are admitting your guilt, you won’t serve anything like the sentence I had to serve. The important thing is to survive it without too much physical or mental damage. The trick is to come to terms with it, to find the right frame of mind, to make peace with it – good luck with that.
It’s Christmas Day, Andrew, and believe it or not, chestnuts are busily roasting on top of your multi-fuel stove. Correction: my multi-fuel stove. What’s yours is mine. What’s mine is yours. I can hear them hissing and we’ve just opened a bottle of vintage port. I had no idea how delicate the decanting process is. Luckily, Liv is something of an expert. It’s a Graham’s 1945. Apparently, it’s one of your favourites. I can see why, the rich plum flavour, quite musky but with an aroma of roses. And what a lovely ruby colour. Magnificent. I’m wearing my new suit, made especially for me by a Savile Row tailor.
It didn’t make sense in the end, for me to be staying in some shitty little room in an old hippy’s house and for Liv to be on her own rattling around, for the kids to be away at boarding school. Liv’s heart was never really in the boarding school idea in any case, she’d gone along with your wishes. A family should be together. And now we are – together. Even your cat seems to have taken to me. Here he is now, sharpening his claws on the leg of your unused chess table.
It took some time before Ben and Megan accepted me. It was easier with Megan. Ben wasn’t rude but he was cautious. The breakthrough came when I helped him with his homework. He’d asked for help before, but I wasn’t able to give it. I don’t know the laws of thermodynamics, but I could help him with his English. They were studying Macbeth. I was so relieved when he asked for help. I knew I could genuinely contribute.
Let’s have a look, I said. And he handed me the worksheet.
I’ve got to write a monologue from Lady Macbeth, between her going mad and throwing herself off the tower. I’ve got to imagine what she’s thinking about.
That’s easy, I said.
Really? Have you read it?
Not only had I read the play, I’d studied it. I’d opted for the module on Shakespeare during my OU English degree. I knew the play inside out. We talked about the regret she would feel, not regret about killing Duncan, no, but the regret of losing the person she loved, the only person she’d ever loved: her husband.
As we wrote a draft, and spoke the words together, I felt her pain as though it were my pain. The last thing we did was to turn the monologue into iambic pentameters, with Ben counting the syllables on his fingers. The final flourish was a joint effort, a rhyming couplet to end. He was absolutely thrilled a week later, when he was awarded an A star.
We all went for a walk in Moorside Park last week. Megan is a bit old for that now, practically a woman, but she came along for the ride. We broke off chunks of bread for the ducks and watched them gobble it down. It was a scene from Swiss Family Robinson. You become a father through your actions, not by your DNA.
Ben, despite resembling you physically, is such a delightful child. And Megan is turning into a very striking young woman. She’s left school now. She’s nearly eighteen, as you know, an interesting age.
There aren’t many jobs around for eighteen year olds. Luckily, I was able to offer her a job. We’ll be working closely with ea
ch other from now on. It’s a practical solution. Liv’s running the Leeds and Manchester bars, while I get everything ready for the grand New York opening in the New Year. Liv eventually told me about how your conduct had cost her the catering business. It was when she came back to work at the club. Late one night when we were clearing up.
She told me about the big corporate job and her car breaking down. How she had asked you to book a delivery van. How the food had never showed up. You hadn’t booked the van. They were high up, big players with a lot of influence. I thought about the trouble one person can cause another person. She also told me how you’d had an argument a few hours before you were supposed to make the phone call. Surely, you wouldn’t be so petty as to fuck everything up for your own wife over such a trivial argument?
Megan is helping her mum out, being trained on the job. Still too young for bar work but she can help out behind the scenes. Exciting times, Andrew. Don’t you agree?
I’m sure she’ll stop judging you eventually, she might even forgive you. One day. Who knows, eventually she may even pay you a visit. She’s so excited about New York, she’s bought a whole new wardrobe.
I have to go now, Andrew. We are going to visit Liv’s brother, as a family. As you know, he’s in a special home, where they can look after him. Liv has bought him a matching hat and gloves set. Ben and Megan have chipped together for some DVDs. He’s a big fan of Only Fools and Horses. Then we’re going round to Alun’s to give out the presents and I don’t want to keep Liv, Ben and Meg … I don’t want to keep my family waiting.
You know Alun, you were his best man. Alun’s a good friend of mine now. Your parents will be there too. I can’t say it’s all plain sailing there, because that would be very far from the truth. They are, and will always be, lying cunts. Don’t worry, I’ve got plans for them.
It’s been a long letter, but I think you deserve a long letter. Every man gets what he deserves, the man with blood on his face and the man with blood on his hands. My hands are clean now. It’s time for you to wash yours.
Oh, before I go (I can hear those chestnuts really spitting now!), some good news: Liv says you never thought it would grow, she told me about your persistent efforts to nurture it, but in fact your mistletoe is thriving. It’s creeping along the twisted bough of the oak in the corner of your garden. I’m taking some to Alun’s party now. I’m cutting your mistletoe with my golden sickle.
What have I gained in royal wealth through you?
Naught worth more than love that’s real and true.
Ben Honour, aged 15
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the wonderful people at Bluemoose Books for their dedication and expertise: Kevin Duffy, Hetha Duffy, Lin Webb, Pippa McCarthy and Leonora Rustamova (couplet queen). I’d also like to thank Jim Greenhalf, Lisa Singleton and Simon Crump for reading drafts of the book at different stages and giving invaluable advice. Special thanks to QC Paul Greaney, who helped with the legal side and was kind enough to let me shadow him in his work. Also a big thank you to Oliver Coleman for his ‘insider’ knowledge. Finally, a big thank you to my son, Carter Stewart, who lent me his ears when the book was forming in my head.
CAFÉ ASSASSIN Page 24
