The Fortune Men

by Nadifa Mohamed

  Mahmood lifts a hand to his hair, vanity making him wonder if the barber has done a smooth job, but the Greek blocks his arm and says, ‘Leave it!’ in a gruff, protective bark. Mahmood smiles furtively, understanding the man’s pride, and drops his hand. He feels better, that’s true, cleaner, lighter, and closer to his real self. He straightens the collar of his uniform and looks for the exit.

  ‘Your mate’s in the hospital.’

  Mahmood turns back, looking to see if the words are aimed at him.

  ‘That’s right, your mate Archie’s been taken away to the infirmary.’

  It’s the little blond boy who had nearly fainted at Singh’s execution. Dickie. He’s standing there by the exit, as if he’s been waiting for him. ‘You talking to me?’

  Dickie nods.

  ‘Why you tell me? Archie is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Because you might be next, you know.’ He looks suspiciously around them.

  ‘I don’t know what you talking about, boy.’ Mahmood almost laughs.

  ‘They cut him cos he’s a nonce, right, he’s been raping girls all over the country and now word’s got out and the old fellas have cut him to teach him a lesson.’ Dickie draws a line from left ear to right, across his mouth rather than neck.

  ‘I never touch a girl like that.’ Mahmood pulls a sour face, ‘Why they want to drag me into it?’

  ‘Because they’ve heard you killed an old crippled woman in her shop. You did, right? They don’t tolerate that kind of thing.’

  ‘What? They ask you to check for them?’ Mahmood shouts. ‘You tell them I kill no woman, and if they try to hurt me I will hang for them.’

  Dickie raises his hands. ‘It’s a warning, a friendly warning. I was only trying to help.’

  ‘You tell them I am innocent. I innocent. Innocent.’ He jabs a finger against his heart with every repetition.

  Dickie shrugs, eager to end the exchange. ‘If you say so …’

  ‘I say so, you hear? I say so!’ Mahmood bellows into his face.

  ‘You call my solicitor now! You hear me! I want to speak to him now!’ Mahmood shouts, pummelling at his door and pressing the bell with mechanical tirelessness.

  He had tried to hold it together. Took deep breaths, paced the cell, picked up the Qu’ran, squeezed his head between his hands, but it was too much. These men had taken too much from him. His freedom, his dignity, his innocence, and now his name was finished too, said in the same breath as someone like Archie, the lowest of the low. He had been too meek and they had mistaken him for the kind of man they could do this to. If there was any shred of manhood left in him he would tear this door down, take this cell apart brick by brick, roar and thrash.

  ‘You fucking bastards, you motherfucking cocksuckers, I could kill you.’ Mahmood drags the thin, rancid mattress that has caused him so much sleeplessness on to the floor and stamps on it. He kicks the bread and milk he had stored to break his fast with; they smash against the walls, the milk cascading down the blue paint. He bangs his head on the window bars and then charges back to the door, throwing his full weight against it, not caring if he smashes his own bones in the process. ‘You will not finish me, you understand? Miyaad I fahantay hada? Do you understand me now? I’ll say it in any language you want.’

  Staggering back in pain but ready to make another charge, Mahmood is startled to see the cell door fly open and a crowd of warders accompanied by the doctor march in, one of them carrying a thick belt in his hands. Their truncheons are withdrawn and Mahmood steps back and stands on the wire frame of the bed, his eyes skipping from one warder to another. One breaks forward and drags him down to the floor, pinning him down with a knee to the chest, then they are all on him. His arms, his legs, his head held in place as they wrestle him into the thick leather contraption. It’s only when he notices that one of his wrists has been buckled fast to his waist that he realizes it’s a kind of straitjacket, like the ones he has seen at the pictures. He lashes out with his free arm, but they twist it so hard he screams in pain and they take the moment to attach it to the belt too. Lifting him up, a warder’s arm locked around his neck, Mahmood flies through the air and is taken out of the cell, through the dark corridor and around a corner.

  ‘Hooyo! Aabbo!’ he calls, as if his mother or father can help him now, his head becoming lighter and lighter as the grip around his neck tightens.

  ‘Put him in there,’ the doctor orders, stepping to the side as Mahmood is thrown into another cell, his head bouncing off the door frame. ‘Be careful, would you? Leave him now, I’d say he needs to be here overnight before he regains his senses.’ Mahmood hears the doctor’s voice drift away before the door bangs shut.

  His eyes close, the throbbing around his throat slowly diminishing, but he breathes in greedily, afraid that they will return and choke him again. He reaches to wipe his brow but his arms don’t shift, he lies flat on his back, his arms straight and immobile, the body belt squeezing his stomach to the point he feels bile rising up into his mouth.

  He opens his eyes, and the first thing he notices is the cell walls, lined with what look like grey mattresses, up to head height. He closes his eyes again, in case his vision is messed up by the knock to the head, but the mattresses are still there when he opens them again. Stained with brown and red streaks in places, and encircled by pale rings where someone has tried to scrub them clean.

  ‘They got you now,’ Mahmood whispers, ‘made you into their slave, bound up and out of your mind. Mattan is dead.’

  ‘He’s in there somewhere.’ The warder laughs as he opens the door.

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  Mahmood watches from the gloom of the unfamiliar corner of the familiar cell, hidden behind the door, as two brightly polished shoes step into sight.

  ‘Mr Mattan?’

  Mahmood keeps quiet. There is nothing more he has to say to them.

  The solicitor steps further in, walking almost on tiptoe. Finally, the door closes and he catches sight of the prisoner hunkered down where the guards can’t see him.

  ‘There you are!’ the solicitor says, as if Mahmood is a child playing a game.

  The man waits for him to rise, to dust himself off and shake his hand, but he stays in place, looking down at the floor.

  ‘I was told that you had some kind of outburst yesterday. I do hope that you are feeling … more yourself now. The doctor told me it was most probably due to the extraordinarily protracted length of time you have waited to go to trial. It is wholly understandable that your nerves would be frayed, Mr Mattan, but I come, finally, with good tidings. Your trial has been scheduled to commence on July the 21st, at Swansea Assizes. D-Day has arrived!’

  Mahmood keeps silent, his eyes trained on his bulbous prison-issue boots.

  ‘I notice that there is an abrasion on your cheek. Shall I take it up with the governor, or not?’

  The solicitor glides a thumb around the brim of the felt hat in his hands, waiting for any kind of response. None arrives. He looks for somewhere to sit but eschews the unmade bed.

  Adjusting his pose, he straightens his spine and takes a firmer tone with Mahmood. ‘It really doesn’t do to be attacking the guards, Mr Mattan. A man in your situation is truly nothing more than a ward of the State, and in your physical and verbal assault of your guardians lies an insult to the State itself. You will achieve far more with a conciliatory and dignified approach. Mr Rhys Roberts and I have prepared a strong defence on your behalf, and the Prosecution has not been able to do more than cobble together an assortment of tattletales and what-ifs. I would be gratified if you could express a little more faith in our abilities. It would do you good too to take more air, to eat well, sleep well, build up your morale for the trial,’ he looks to his watch, ‘which is less than nine days hence.’

  Mahmood sinks his head between his raised knees.

  ‘Are you seeing your wife and sons? Maybe that would provide the boost you need? Nothing like the kindly faces of loved ones to remind u
s that we are not all alone in the world.’

  The solicitor sniffs suspiciously and sneaks a look at the chamber pot underneath the bed.

  ‘My word. You didn’t slop out this morning. What is the matter with you? If you think that all of this palaver will get you declared unfit for trial, Mr Mattan, you’ll have to think again. You passed the Statutory Board and that’s the end of it. You’ll sit through the trial and the jury will decide your innocence or guilt, dependent on the evidence and arguments. Come what may.’

  TWELVE

  Laba Iyo Toban

  The Clerk Of The Assize:

  Members of the jury, the name of the accused is Mahmood Hussein Mattan and the indictment against him is that on the 6th day of March this year in the City of Cardiff he murdered Violet Volacki. To this indictment he pleads not guilty and puts himself upon his country, which country you are. It is your duty to hearken to the evidence and to say whether he is guilty or not guilty of murder.

  The Crown:

  Members of the jury, shortly after eight o’clock on the evening of Thursday, the 6th March of this year, the doorbell of a shop at number 203 Bute Street rang. In the living room behind the shop there were Miss Violet Volacki, who owned the shop, her sister, Mrs Tanay, and Mrs Tanay’s young daughter. It was after ordinary business hours, but Miss Violet Volacki was never unwilling to do a little more business, and when the shop doorbell rang on this occasion she went to the shop, closing the door between the living room and the shop behind her. Neither her sister nor her niece ever saw her alive again.

  Mrs Diana Tanay Sworn:

  Q. Did you at any time hear any stamping in that shop after your sister had gone out?

  A. No.

  Q. Were there any noises in your own living room?

  A. Well, I was playing a little with my daughter, so I doubt whether I would have heard. We had the wireless on.

  Q. Just tell my Lord and the jury what form the playing with your daughter took?

  A. My daughter was asking me about square dancing. I did not know much about that, but I was going over a little country dancing with her.

  Q. Is the door between the living room and the shop a well-fitting door, or does sound travel easily from the shop to the house?

  A. No; we had rubber put around it to stop the draught.

  Q. Did you see anyone enter the shop?

  A. No.

  Q. Did you see anyone at the shop door?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Is that man sitting in the dock today?

  A. No.

  Q. Would you formally look at that. (Newspaper handed.) At the bottom of that newspaper it is quite clear that you and the other members of your family are offering £200 reward for information leading to the conviction of whoever committed this crime?

  A. Yes.

  (The witness withdraws.)

  Grace Tanay:

  Q. Is this man (indicates) the same man you saw standing on the porch that night?

  A. No.

  Constable English Sworn:

  Q. Look at photograph number 3. In photograph number 3 do you see the heel of a boot lying on the right-hand side?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did you make these marks?

  A. Yes.

  Q. You were wallowing in the evidence, Constable.

  A. At the time I thought the intruder might have been in the back room that adjoins this place.

  Q. How long have you been a police officer, Constable?

  A. Thirteen years.

  Q. Do you not know enough to prevent yourself from making marks like this? What do you think these photographs were taken for?

  A. For the benefit of the Court.

  Q. And here there are bloodstains from your feet all over these photographs. Did you find it necessary to walk on both sides of the body and round it, Constable?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Why?

  A. First of all I had to make an examination of the body at the time.

  Q. What examination of the body did you make?

  A. I saw a wound on the right-hand side of the neck.

  (The witness withdraws.)

  Mrs Elizabeth Ann Williams Sworn:

  Q. Are you the mother-in-law of the accused, Mattan?

  A. Yes.

  Q. On the evening of the 6th March did you see Mattan?

  A. That is on the night of this affair?

  Q. You know the night Miss Volacki was killed.

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did you see him that evening?

  A. Yes, I did see him that evening.

  Q. First of all, where were you when you saw him?

  A. I was in my room. This man knocked on my door. My daughter went and he asked her if she wanted cigarettes. I went to the door and I looked over her shoulder. He was by the door, and I said, no, I did not want any cigarettes because I had no money, and this time I see him –

  Q. When you say ‘this man’, who do you mean?

  A. Mattan.

  Q. This man here (indicating).

  A. Yes, my son-in-law.

  Q. It would be three or four minutes after eight when he left?

  A. That is when he came.

  Q. Are you quite sure of the time?

  A. Yes, I am positive.

  Q. How do you know it was that time?

  A. Because my children were all ready to undress and I told my daughter, ‘Go on,’ I said, and I got up from my armchair and I looked at my clock. I said, ‘It’s going on; it’s gone eight o’clock; let’s put the children to bed and let’s have a bit of peace.’

  Q. Your children go to bed to give you a little bit of peace about eight o’clock?

  A. Yes.

  Q. How long have you known your son-in-law?

  A. Going on five years.

  Q. Has he ever had a moustache in that time?

  A. I have never seen one.

  Q. I should like the witness to see the shoes, Exhibit 9. (Shoes handed.) Do not worry about those yellow things on them. Have you ever seen these shoes before?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Were those shoes bought for your son-in-law?

  A. No; I had them from my brother; he works on the salvage. He brought them home thinking they would fit my husband. They did not, so I asked the accused if he would buy them for four shillings, and he did.

  Q. Can you remember roughly – I do not say you can remember the exact date – how long before Miss Volacki was murdered, if it was before Miss Volacki was murdered, did you sell these shoes to this man?

  A. About a fortnight.

  Q. And, with the exception of the yellow marks I have told you to ignore, are they in anything like the condition they were in when they were in your possession?

  A. I should say they were a bit cleaner now.

  (The witness withdraws.)

  Mrs May Gray Sworn:

  Q. You are a second-hand clothing dealer carrying on business at 37 Bridge Street, Cardiff?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Do you know the accused man, Mattan?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Has he been a customer in the shop?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Do you remember the Thursday night, the 6th March, when Miss Volacki was killed?

  A. Yes.

  Q. I want you to keep your voice up because those are the ladies and gentlemen who want to hear you. First of all, will you tell us what time it was you saw Mattan?

  A. It was just before nine o’clock.

  Q. Where was it: where were you when you saw him?

  A. He came to ask if I had some clothes to sell.

  Q. What did you say?

  A. I said, ‘You have got no money to buy them, so go away.’

  Q. When you said that to him what happened?

  A. He put his hat on the counter and he pulled out a wallet of notes – he could not close the wallet – and a big bundle of money, and he said, ‘I got plenty of money.’

  Q. Could you form any idea how much money there was?

  A. There was sure t
o be eighty to a hundred; it was such a big pile.

  Q. Just tell us first of all how Mattan was?

  A. He was out of breath; he had been running; he looked as if he was very excited, and he was running.

  Q. How was he dressed?

  A. He had a blue Air Force jacket underneath and white trousers, and dark overcoat, and a trilby hat, and he had an umbrella over his arm, and he had gloves on his hands.

  Q. What sort of gloves were they?

  A. I went out to the door to see if my daughter was coming from school, and he ran over towards Millicent Street.

  Q. I was asking you what sort of gloves he had on his hands?

  A. My hearing aid has gone and I can’t hear very well.

  Q. What sort of gloves was he wearing on his hands?

  A. No, it was in pound notes.

  Q. What kind of gloves was he wearing?

  A. Right over to Millicent Street.

  Q. What kind of gloves did he have on?

  A. Dark gloves, and they were very wet.

  Q. Your business is selling second-hand clothing, is it not?

  A. Yes, it was, but I do not sell them now.

  Q. You want to make money, do you not?

  A. I have wages coming in. I do not want anybody’s money. I do not know what you are referring to.