The Fortune Men

by Nadifa Mohamed

  ‘There’s a visitor for you. Are you coming or not?’ Matthews, the chief warder, stands in front of the open cell door, his stomach straining against his brass-buttoned woollen jacket.

  Mahmood is dressed in his day uniform and had a shower in the morning, but he has left the decision to see Laura or not till the last moment. His heart beating hard, he heaves himself up from the bed and nods to Matthews.

  ‘It will do you good, doesn’t fix anything to mope, lad,’ the warder says encouragingly, slapping Mahmood on the shoulder. ‘I’ve seen plenty come and go and I’ll tell you this for not a penny, if your mind is a jail then it don’t matter where you are, but if you wake up thanking the Lord for the air in your lungs and wanting to make the most out of your predicament, then you’re halfway out the prison gate.’

  They clunk side by side along the gangway. ‘I want to be all the way out, sir.’

  ‘There isn’t justice anywhere in the world that is more stringent than the one we have here. I know you claim your innocence, Mattan, and I want to reassure you that the court will give you as fair a hearing as any duke. That is the British way.’

  ‘That is what I hear for a long time.’

  Matthews blushes. ‘Fair dealing is what we’re known for – that and tea, right?’

  Laura is alone at the little table, her face turned down and hidden by the sharp lip of her headscarf. A bright red jumper clings to her small conical breasts and lights up the pale, clinical room.

  ‘You didn’t bring any of the boys?’ Mahmood asks crustily, as he pulls the metal chair back with a screech.

  ‘No, they are not well,’ Laura replies, looking a long time at his body before resting her eyes on his face.

  He sees it immediately. Barely hidden by the hair she has styled forward. He reaches out and with a single finger pushes the strands away. ‘Who did that?’ he barks.

  Laura hurriedly looks over her shoulder and pulls the paisley scarf closer to her face. ‘It’s nothing. Don’t make a fuss.’

  ‘I ask you again, Williams, who did that?’ The yellowing bruise spreads from her left ear down to the corner of her thin, pink lips. It is marbled green and purple over her cheekbone.

  ‘Just some cosh boy on the Windsor Road. I was coming back from the shop with David and Omar and I saw him throwing rocks to take out the street lamps, soon as I opened my mouth to tell him off he was on me. Calling me the usual, threatening to bash the boys’ brains in, scaring David half to death, poor thing wet himself, but don’t let him know I told you.’

  ‘Nobody around?’

  ‘There were plenty,’ she answers bitterly. ‘One woman washing her front step stopped to gawp, but no one said boo to him. He started going on about how I should move out of Adamsdown, that I ain’t got no place being there … that they should hang the little niggers along with their dad.’

  Laura looks furtively up at Mahmood but his face is blank, distant.

  ‘That really cut and, you know, David is looking up at me with his wise old face, asking me if you’re going to be hanged. I told this little greaser to go to hell and that I’m not going anywhere and neither are you or the boys. Next thing I see is a rock hitting my face.’

  ‘You know this boy’s name?’

  ‘I think he is one of the Carson kids but I couldn’t swear on it.’

  ‘Find out, Laura, and I will fix him when I’m out. I will see him pay.’

  ‘Forget it, Moody, we’ve got bigger worries. I’m just going to keep the boys in until the trial is done. Omar loves to chalk the pavement and chat to old ladies as they pass so he’ll probably throw a strop over it. They’re only tiny but some people are just so sick-minded, you know? I don’t know how some of these teenagers think; if they’re not out causing trouble they think they’re not living.’

  ‘Keep them inside, that’s right. Your father not the kind to scare anyone off, so until I come back keep them in the house,’ Mahmood agrees, shaking his head. The desire to pound that Carson’s face to a pulp is so strong it’s almost sexual.

  ‘I spoke to Detective Powell this week.’

  ‘What for?’ Mahmood almost shouts with disgust.

  ‘Hear me out, for God’s sake, I was over at my sister’s house and Brian said he’s working on a building site with this Jamaican carpenter.’

  ‘So what? You take any tale to that pig?’

  ‘Listen! You’ve spent all week ignoring me, the least you can do now is bloody listen.’

  ‘Talk.’

  ‘This Jamaican tells Brian that he knows you’re innocent and he knows who the real killer is.’

  ‘Who is he? How would he know?’

  ‘Cover, something Cover. Well, I think he said he was outside Volacki’s and he saw two Somalis hanging around outside just before the murder was meant to have happened. I thought the police should speak to him.’

  ‘So, who is the killer?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘That Cover, Berlin told me about him, he hates Somalis and stabbed Hersi last year. He’s just trying to get us into trouble. Probably covering for one of his own lot. He’s wasting everyone’s time, you don’t know men, they like to talk big and say they know something the next man don’t.’

  Laura raises an eyebrow. ‘That sounds very much like someone I know.’

  Mahmood blinks a couple of times and then understands she means him. He smiles reluctantly.

  ‘Detective Powell seemed interested. He thanked me and said that he would follow it up. Let’s be hopeful, Moody, this could be the witness you need. Someone knows something that could get you out of this place.’

  He holds his hand out to her. ‘You are a strong woman, fighting my battles.’

  She lays her palm against his. ‘This is my battle too.’

  They sit in silence for a long time, holding hands, glancing as the metal hands of the broad institutional clock shiver towards the hour, a hubbub of sweet nothings and hushed arguments around them.

  ‘You won’t ignore me this week, will you?’

  Mahmood shakes his head.

  ‘I know you’re angry, Moody, I would be too – in fact, I’m livid – but you can’t throw me on to the same heap as the others.’

  ‘Me know, me know,’ Mahmood says abashedly, letting go of her hand to doodle on the table with his clammy index finger.

  ‘We are on one side. Not different ones.’

  ‘Me know, me know.’

  She squeezes both his hands in hers and looks him directly in the eyes, her hazel irises flaring a bright green. ‘I am not one of them, right? I am not one of them. You have no reason to hate me.’

  ‘I never hate you, don’t say that.’

  ‘Well, don’t let yourself walk down that road, that’s all I’m asking.’

  Mahmood’s hands are limp in her tight grip, he feels cornered and unable to articulate himself. He had wanted to hurt her, he knows that, but he can’t confess to it so hides in silence.

  ‘It’s time to go now. Next time, the boys will be with me.’

  ‘Good, good,’ Mahmood is finally able to say, his eyes settling one final time on that damning, eggy bruise as she picks her bulky leather handbag up from the floor.

  ‘I’ll see you at the window tomorrow, right?’

  ‘On the dot.’

  ‘So, you found no witness for me? No one to say I’m a good man or that I stay far away from where the woman got killed? No man or woman at all?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, your defence will rely on the lack of inculpatory evidence rather than the presence of exculpatory.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  The solicitor sighs gently and cradles his head in his hand. Mahmood notices the gold wedding band on his finger for the first time; he can’t picture him with a woman, all he needs is a cape and fangs and he’ll look like Dracula himself.

  ‘It means that we have no way of proving your innocence but, similarly, the Prosecution have no clear proof of your guilt.’

&
nbsp; Mahmood rubs his hands down his cheeks and thinks. They are seated on opposite sides of his bed in the cell. The late June heat is making him sweat heavily, the stale smell of the room combining with his own odour to embarrass him. He had tidied up before the solicitor’s arrival, after days of slovenliness, but shafts of light from the window still illuminate floating pillars of dust.

  ‘There ain’t no one to say they saw me in the cinema?’

  ‘Yes, the attendant, but he doesn’t remember what time you left exactly.’

  ‘And those bastards at Davis Street say I came back later than I said.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘And Laura’s mother say she saw me at eight p.m.’

  He doesn’t bother replying, just nods his long head.

  ‘So you think that the police have nothing on me?’

  ‘I didn’t claim that, but it’s all circumstantial, meaning that the evidence could have different interpretations to those they are imbuing it with.’

  ‘Like the old boots they say have blood on them?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And they found no fingerprints, weapon, money, nothing to say I do it?’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Mattan.’

  ‘So, why I still sitting here?’

  ‘Because they’ve managed to find witnesses to put you at the scene of the crime, at the time it’s believed to have been committed, and that is no small matter.’

  ‘But they are liars, how can I be in two places at one time? I cut myself in two? Stupid.’

  ‘Well, that is what the trial will examine.’

  ‘No point of trial if people lie,’ Mahmood says quietly, scratching the wiry stubble along his jaw.

  ‘That is called perjury and is a crime in itself.’

  ‘Laura saw me that evening.’

  ‘Yes, but they are using her mother’s statement against you, because you claimed to have gone straight home from the cinema while Mrs Watson – excuse me, Mrs Williams – said you called around and asked her if she needed any cigarettes, as you were heading to the shop. You have also put yourself in two places, Mr Mattan.’

  ‘I don’t even remember if I ask her or not, it was a normal night for me. You remember every chat you have? Every minute you come home? Don’t make you a murderer if you forget.’

  ‘No, but it does create complications for the Defence in a murder trial, Mr Mattan. We can only work with the evidence and statements we have. Is there anything more you want to tell me? Anything you have omitted or …’ he raises an eyebrow, ‘have just remembered?’

  Mahmood turns his head sharply towards him. ‘You think I did it? Ha! My own solicitor think I’m guilty! What funny joke is that?’

  Dracula stands, annoyed that he is being laughed at. ‘I do not think you are guilty, Mr Mattan, I think the case against you is actually a rather weak one but it is strengthening. By being as open with me as possible about your movements you will enable me to find the evidence needed for an acquittal. However, I cannot help you if you decide to be a fool to yourself.’

  Mahmood holds his hands out in exasperation. ‘I tell you what you need to know. I am not a Hollywood man. I just go home and I sleep. I never go to school like you but if I kill a woman and steal one hundred pound, you think I don’t have enough brain to take the next ship out and never come back?’ He shakes his head. ‘You people understand nothing.’

  ‘Well, if that is the case, I won’t take up any more of your busy time, Mr Mattan.’ He picks up his briefcase and wide-brimmed hat and stands stiffly by the door, his back to Mahmood, waiting for the guard to let him out.

  They are trying to drive him crazy, Mahmood knows that, it’s how they work, how they have Shay’s killer sitting in a madhouse in the middle of nowhere, even though when he pulled that trigger he was as sane as any man. Once you crazy they got their victory. Sometimes, he feels like he’s half mad already, he can’t breathe, as if there is thick, black smoke in his lungs and he about ready to drop.

  He is a man who needs to walk, always was, and never sat still from the moment he learnt to get up on two feet. He walked the length of Africa, for fuck’s sake. This immobility is what will do him in. Just a few months ago, at the end of January, he had got the train to London and walked from Paddington to West India Quay and back again, just for the hell of it, for a change of scene, just to remember that this body is his and he can do with it what he wants; that he can push it hard and it will do his bidding like an expensive machine. Now, his muscles feel slack, his spine hurts from lying around too much, and his dense dark skin has lightened to a strange dull brown from lack of daylight. He don’t want Laura, never mind the children, seeing him like this – a dusty-haired, scuffed, broken shop mannequin.

  The sun has slumped outside and the cell glows a grimy yellow from the fat, wide rays flooding it. He’s stripped the thick grey jacket off and sits cross-legged on his bed in just the vest and trousers. He’s been in that position for so long his buttocks and feet are numb but he is thinking, thinking hard, and doesn’t want to break his chain of thought. He needs to plot his way out of this snare. Is it too late to tell them a little more? A little more ‘well, I did visit Laura’s house before going home’ and ‘yes, I did visit Bute Street the week the woman was killed’. Would that help anything now? Or would they just say, ‘Ha! Now, we prove you a liar’? He is stuck on this little island of his lies and he can’t leave because the sea all around is filled with sharks. So be it, he’ll just have to brazen it out and put his faith in the all-seeing and all-knowing one. Berlin had said on his last visit that Ramadan was due to begin at the next new moon and he taps his temple to remind himself to check the moon after the sun finally sets. He will fast, that would be the right use of this dead time; one thing he can thank the bastards for is that they have kept him away from all the belwo he had grown accustomed to – the alcohol, music, drink, gambling, women – the five pillars of his old life. He can start to atone for some of his past sins here, in the sterile womb of the prison.

  The night comes too late, the sun teasing him and sending the sky all kinds of colours before it tires and finally slinks below the horizon. Mahmood has to crane his head this way and that before he spots the moon, hiding behind a bank of slow-moving clouds. They drift clear and then he can see the whole grey disc, large and pockmarked, settling in for the night. It’s a full moon, so tomorrow will be the start of Ramadan. He is grateful that he will have something to occupy his mind, even if it is just hunger.

  It is an ugly sky tonight, full of gas and smoke. The night skies in Hargeisa made you think of God, while here they are worldly, contaminated by men and their ceaseless chimneys and bright lights. He can see one constellation, its Somali name lost somewhere in his memory, the English never known. In Hargeisa, where sunset meant genuine darkness, you could track the slow movement of stars and planets, glittering and pulling you up into a depthless, shifting sea with its coastline of purple, indigo and black stretches. God reminds you through those night skies of how small and insignificant you are, and he speaks to you clearly, his anger and solace tangible in the rain he sends or withholds, the births or deaths he orders, the long, waxy grass he gives or dead, broken earth he carves. The miasma above the prison, above Cardiff, suffocated Mahmood’s faith and separated him from God. He began to strut and bluster his days away and completely forget that this life meant nothing and was as fragile as a twig underfoot. He had needed to be humbled, Mahmood nods to himself, he can see God’s wisdom so clearly now. Looking back to the bed, he makes the obligatory intention to fast the next day, using the Arabic sentence – wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadan – that his mother had taught him as a child, his sing-song intonation mimicking hers.

  Mahmood lies down on his side, his head resting on his spongy biceps, and thinks about shaving the whole of his head, a clean start like pilgrims do after completing the hajj, the sins of the old life shorn away. But how would he look? With his broad face and small,
jutting ears. What scars and lumps might be revealed? What would a jury think, a white jury already prepared to hate him, if he stood there with no hair to soften him? They would not think of hajj or purification, no, they would think him a madman, or a hardened criminal, a wild savage needing the chastening of the law. He can’t risk it; he’ll neaten up his wiry hair with a short back and sides in the morning, and start pulling himself together again.

  Mahmood had joined the queue first thing in the morning, but the line, being one of the few places the prisoners can gather and talk freely, is full of men with closely cropped hair going for their weekly trim. His hunger is manageable, his thirst less so, his mouth already claggy and stale. The other elements of the fast – not swearing, not smoking, not losing his temper, not thinking sexual thoughts about Laura – will be harder for him to manage than the physical deprivation, though. He will go back to his cell and start reading the Qu’ran from the first line: ‘In the name of Allah, the entirely merciful, the especially merciful.’ Try to lose himself in the poetry and rhythm of the Holy Book and block out all other thoughts.

  It takes more than an hour for Mahmood to shuffle silently to the front of the line and take his place in the barber’s seat, where a little mound of ratty hair rests beside his feet, but at least the barber has swept down the chair with a cloth. They exchange a nodded greeting and then Mahmood takes the full measure of the man. He is tawny and frizzy-haired, maybe a Cypriot or other kind of Greek, the wrong side of forty with a round stomach under his blue-striped shirt, and rings on most of his hairy fingers; his clothes have the same sharp herbal smell that his old barber in Bute Street had. Mahmood closes his eyes as, without hesitance, the barber begins running a metal comb through his overgrown and knotted hair, pushing it this way and that, looking for its natural shape. The comb scratches and pulls at his skin, but there is something comforting, still, in the way the barber cradles his jaw with his warm, clammy hand. It’s a benign, fatherly touch that allows him to imagine himself back in his real life, sitting in the leather chair in Bute Street, with a scratchy mournful Greek love song on the gramophone. Mahmood hears the clip of the scissors and then hair drops on to his nose, cheeks. He keeps his eyes closed, leaving the man to do what he wants with his hair. The barber runs the clippers up his neck and around his ears. What difference did he seriously believe a hairstyle could make? If they are gonna hang an innocent man there is nothing he can do about it. A slick of pomade and then the ritual is over, a slap on the shoulder the sign to get up for the next prisoner.