Bombproof

by Michael Robotham

  ‘What have you got to be nervous about?’

  He raises his eyes to look at Sami for the first time.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Nadia.’

  ‘I’ll have to check my phone.’ He reaches into his jacket pocket. A flash of brightness. A blade opens.

  Sami launches a kick before Streak can straighten his arm. The sprung steel blade spins out of his fingers and bounces off the wall.

  A second kick connects with his stomach. Sami takes a four step run up and kicks him again.

  Zoe lets out a sob. Sami tells her to go home. Watch Sesame Street. Learn something.

  ‘Give him back his gear.’

  She pulls a dozen small packets of silver foil from her handbag and another half dozen from her knickers. Tosses them at Streak. Some of them float in a puddle, silver on black, catching the light.

  Zoe disappears through the fire door. Sami jams a rubbish bin across the frame to stop them being disturbed.

  ‘Now it’s just you and me, Toby. Your nose is broken. Maybe they can set it straight again. I could try. I could mess it up a bit more. They say every beautiful face needs a blemish. Where’s Nadia?’

  Toby is sitting in a puddle. ‘I don’t fucking know,’ he sniffles. ‘I ain’t seen her.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Days.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Did you give her drugs?’

  ‘She’s a consenting adult.’

  Louder this time: ‘Did you give her drugs?’

  ‘Nothing serious,’ whines Toby. ‘She wanted to party.’

  ‘What did you give her?’

  ‘She’s eighteen.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Like I said, I ain’t seen her.’

  Sami takes off his jacket, rolls up his sleeve. Picks up the knife, cleans the blade on the front of his jeans.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asks Toby.

  ‘Take off your pants.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve been nearly three years in prison Toby. You get a taste for certain things.’

  ‘You’re kidding me, right.’

  Sami unbuckles his belt. Toby’s eyes pop. Suddenly, he’s scuffling backwards through a puddle like a crab on polished marble. Sami steps past him, wraps a forearm around his neck.

  Toby sobs, ‘No fucking way, man. No way.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I swear I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘OK. OK.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I just passed her on.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Tony Murphy wanted her.’

  Sami tries to get his head around this. Tony Murphy doesn’t know Nadia. What’s he got to do with any of this?

  ‘We came to an arrangement,’ sniffles Toby.

  ‘What sort of arrangement.’

  ‘I sold her to him.’

  8

  Sami jogs out of the alley and back onto the street. He walks fast, trying to be inconspicuous. He can hear sirens starting to wail. Zoe must have called the police.

  Sami curses himself. He wasn’t exactly subtle. If Toby Streak lodges a complaint, he’s screwed. Parole revoked. Go straight to jail. Do not pass go …

  He comes out of St Martins Lane into Charing Cross Road. Buys a copy of The Times from a newsstand and hails a cab, keeping his face covered and his mouth shut. The cab drops him at Waterloo Station. He walks towards Elephant and Castle and into Camberwell Road.

  Toby Streak sits in a police car, holding a towel over his face. Two uniforms are interviewing Zoe, quizzing her about a fake ID. Neither of them seems too broken up about Toby.

  ‘What took you so fucking long?’ he complains.

  ‘Just you mind your language, sir.’

  They finish talking to Zoe. Tell her to go home. Toby’s next.

  ‘Do you want to file a complaint, sir?’

  ‘Will it do any good?’ he asks. His nose is blocked completely.

  ‘That depends on the quality of your information and if we feel it warrants further investigation.’

  Toby knows what that means. They’re going to write this one off as a small time drug deal gone sour. He’s not going to report Sami.

  As soon as the uniforms leave, he opens his mobile. Punches in a number.

  ‘Is that Mr Murphy?’

  ‘This better be important, son.’

  ‘That person you wanted to meet. He might be calling on you.’

  Sami stands across the road from the bail hostel on Camberwell Road. There is a sign on the door: rules for residents. One of them is not to break the curfew.

  It’s 3.00 a.m. There is a light on. He presses a buzzer. A large woman swings open the door, black as paint with a square, hard-boned face. She stands in the doorway, unsmiling, as though waiting for his excuse.

  ‘I’ve been looking for my sister. She’s missing.’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  ‘I’m worried about her.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear your lies, honey. You break the rules, you go back to prison.’

  ‘I’m not lying. It’s my first day out.’

  She steps back, opens the door wider. Sami has to detour to get around her hips. She’s wearing a uniform - a light blue shirt with double pockets and dark blue trousers that stretch so tightly across her rump he can see the outline of her knickers. My God, she’s wearing a G-string. A nightstick and a can of mace swing from her belt.

  Sami follows her to the office. She turns down the TV. Moves a jumbo packet of crisps. Signs him in. Next she hands him two stiff bed sheets, a grey blanket, a towel and a bar of soap.

  ‘The laundry is in the basement. Detergent is extra. Don’t go leaving shit in your pockets when you use the machines. Two been fixed in the last month.’

  She takes a swig of soft drink and wipes her hand across her mouth. ‘You been doing something you ain’t supposed to?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Don’t believe you.’ Her hand shoots out and grabs Sami’s wrist. Turns it over. His knuckles are torn and bleeding. She shakes her head. ‘You’re just aching to get back inside, ain’t you, honey? Maybe you like the sex in there.’

  She hoists herself out of her chair and gives him a tour, keeping her voice down because other ‘residents’ are sleeping.

  ‘No eating in the common room. No smoking in the common room. No drinking. No drugs. No women …’

  ‘And they leave you here to tempt us,’ says Sami.

  ‘You trying to be funny, skinny boy?’

  ‘No, I’m just saying you’re a fit-looking woman.’

  ‘You trying to tell me you’re not gay, honey? Well you don’t have the hammer and you don’t have the nail to impress me.’

  She turns off the lights as she leaves each room. They climb the stairs to the first floor.

  ‘No damaging property, no touching the CCTV cameras, no loud music - you wearing an electronic tag?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t let anyone talk you into wearing theirs.’

  ‘I won’t. How many people are here?’

  ‘Thirty.’ They stop outside a door. ‘This is your room. Don’t lose the key.’

  She waddles away, almost brushing each side of the hall with her hips. Sami closes the door. Locks it. Walks to the window. It overlooks a walled courtyard with empty flowerbeds that look silver under the security lights.

  The room has a single bed, a lone chair, a wardrobe and a bedside table with a lamp, an ashtray and a Bible. A laminated copy of the House Rules is pinned to the back of the door.

  Sami lies on the bed and feels himself slipping into a dark envelope of depression. He thinks about Nadia and about Tony Murphy and about the four guys who came looking for him earlier outside the Scrubs. Freedom wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  9

  Under normal circumstances - better circumstanc
es - Sami Macbeth might never have heard of a gangster like Tony Murphy, but there are two things you have in abundance when you’re pacing an exercise yard: time and prison gossip.

  Most of the stories are bullshit. Every con will tell that you he’s innocent of the crime he was convicted of and then brag about the ones he got away with.

  According to the skinny on Tony Murphy, he came from one of those big Irish families (seven brothers and sisters - the girls as mad as the boys) who seem to live everywhere except Ireland. Murphy grew up in Kilburn, North London, and began stealing cars to order when he was barely old enough to see over the steering wheel.

  From car rackets he branched out to running escort agencies, nightclubs and casinos (illegal and otherwise), including a floating Chinese junk in Manchester that he shipped from Hong Kong. His latest passion was a restaurant on the river near the Millennium Bridge - one of those up-market nosheries where the chef is a daytime TV star who can make a four course meals out of a bag of spuds and a Bisto cube.

  The place has booths along the walls and linen tablecloths. The maître d’ gives Sami the hairy eyeball.

  ‘Do you have a reservation, sir?’

  ‘I’m here to see Mr Murphy.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mr Murphy doesn’t like being disturbed while he’s dining.’

  ‘Maybe you could pass him a note,’ says Sami. He borrows a piece of paper and writes Nadia’s name, draws a sad face on it, folding it twice before handing it to the maître d’. Then he watches him weave between the tables, up three stairs, pausing at a table overlooking the main seating area.

  He hands the note to a fat man whose head seems to be stitched onto an oversized tweed jacket. A hard man turned to lard.

  Murphy reads the note and sways back, sucking down an oyster from the shell. Juice dribbles over his chins. He wipes it away with a napkin. Waves Sami over.

  Sami tells himself to relax. It’s a busy restaurant. Nothing’s going to happen.

  Murphy’s luncheon companion is a head taller, with ruddy cheeks discoloured by broken veins beneath his skin. This guy is walking proof of man’s simian ancestry - flared nostrils, torso like a wardrobe, arms reaching his knees. He doesn’t say a word.

  Murphy and Sami make the introductions.

  ‘What can I do for you, son?’ asks the fat man, edging the blade of a knife beneath the flesh of another oyster.

  Sami has to be careful here. It’s a balancing act. Tony Murphy is not the sort of man you threaten or piss off or yank about. It’s also not a good idea to crawl up his rectum and set up house. He has to be respectful. Considered. Polite.

  ‘Toby Streak says you might know where my sister is.’

  ‘What’s your sister’s name?’

  ‘Nadia Macbeth.’

  ‘What makes you think I know where she is?’

  ‘Toby said he sold her to you.’

  Murphy puts down his fork. Wipes his mouth. Folds his napkin. Places it on his side plate.

  ‘Slavery was abolished in 1841, son. People don’t get bought and sold any more. Didn’t they teach you that at school?’

  ‘Toby Streak seemed pretty confident, Mr Murphy.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I had my boot on his balls, sir. Figuratively speaking.’

  ‘Well, if we’re speaking figuratively, in my experience drugsters like Toby Streak can be coerced into saying almost anything.’

  ‘Toby still seemed pretty sure.’

  Murphy’s voice drops an octave.

  ‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Mr Macbeth. You don’t want to be making unsupported allegations against people. There are laws about that sort of thing. Defamation. Slander.’

  ‘I’m not here to cause any trouble,’ says Sami. ‘I just want my sister.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘Old enough to make up her own mind.’ Murphy summons the waiter. Asks for another glass. Pours a wine for Sami.

  ‘I appreciate your candour, Mr Macbeth. I can also see you got courage. You got balls as big as the Ritz to waltz in here and accuse me of wrongdoing. This makes me think that either you’re a very loving brother or you’re so dumb you couldn’t piss straight with a hard-on.’

  ‘I’m a loving brother.’

  ‘That’s good. Now let’s talk about you.’

  Murphy sucks down another oyster. He offers one to Sami, who’d rather eat cold snot.

  ‘I heard about you, Mr Macbeth. I hear you’re a talent.’

  ‘Me? No.’

  Murphy drizzles lemon juice on an oyster and gives the pepper mill a twist. ‘Dessie has given me the skinny on the Hampstead job. Very impressive.’

  Dessie must be the other guy at the table. Dessie Fraser. ‘The Dobermann’. Sami remembers a story about Dessie, who used to be in the army, stationed in Northern Ireland. He was there when the IRA killed Earl Mountbatten by planting a bomb on his boat in County Sligo. Two more bombs went off that day, but nobody remembers them because old man Mountbatten made all the headlines.

  One of them was detonated beside a road in County Down just as a Bedford drove by with Dessie Fraser and a load of Paras in back. A second bomb was timed to go off as people tried to help the wounded. A dozen soldiers died. Dessie survived.

  A week later, dressed in uniform, Dessie walked into a notorious IRA bar in the Newry and ordered a beer. Waited. Not for long. He left three people near death, tore the place up and the COs needed teargas to get him out. Dessie was dishonourably discharged. Prematurely ejected. Returned to civilian life even less civilised than before he signed up.

  Clearly he doesn’t bear a grudge against Paddies, thinks Sami, glancing at Murphy.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you’ve heard about me, Mr Murphy. If I was so talented, I wouldn’t have got caught.’

  ‘You were unlucky,’ says Murphy.

  Tell me about it, thinks Sami.

  ‘Modest, too, I like that in a young man, Mr Macbeth. You’re not some cocky little gobshite who thinks he’s seen it all. And you’re not a flash prick like Toby Streak, who buys himself a sports car and rubs the law’s nose in his success. You’re old school. A skilled technician. An artist. I like surrounding myself with talented people; people who use their god-given skills. You know what I’m saying, son?’

  The answer is no, but Sami doesn’t utter it out loud.

  ‘You’re a quiet achiever. That’s why none of us had ever heard of you until the Hampstead job. You kept a low profile. Used your discretion.’

  What the fuck is he talking about, thinks Sami.

  ‘I could use someone gifted like you,’ says Murphy. ‘Someone who thinks on his feet, someone flexible, someone who can open things.’

  ‘You got the wrong guy,’ says Sami, feeling the conversation has taken a wrong turn. ‘I just want to find my sister and get my shit together in one pile.’

  Murphy slathers butter on one half of a torn bread roll.

  ‘You work alone, I understand that, but I could open up whole new horizons.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ says Sami. ‘I’m going to concentrate on my music.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I play guitar. I’m a musician.’

  Murphy has stopped chewing. ‘You taking the piss, son?’

  Sami realises his mistake. ‘No, no, I’m just thinking, given what’s happened, that it might be best to change my career. I thought I might concentrate on my music, you know.’

  Murphy gives him the pointy finger. ‘You’re planning something, aren’t you? The big score.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Nobody fucking retires in this business unless they’re planning a see-you-later job.’

  ‘It’s not about money.’

  ‘It’s always about fucking money. You want to contemplate retirement - you do it while you’re tossing champagne bottles off the back of your yacht or sipping sangria in
a Spanish villa.’

  ‘I’m not planning anything,’ says Sami.

  Murphy looks at him dubiously, wondering if he’s lost his bottle, or worse, gone over to the other side.

  ‘How old are you, son?’

  ‘Twenty-seven.’

  ‘How much have you got in your pocket?’

  Sami shrugs.

  ‘You’re potless, aren’t you?’ Murphy pushes back his chair. ‘Poverty isn’t freedom. Look at the poor fuckers out there.’ He points to a bus queue over the road. People are shivering in the rain. ‘Most of ’em ain’t got a pot to piss in. They’re shell-shocked, exhausted, they’re tired of scraping away week after week, year after year, making the giro stretch till next pension day, living on overdrafts and plastic. Meanwhile, the politicians keep telling them they’ve never had it so good and they’re too stupid to know they’re being lied to. Only scraps ever fall from the top table, son. Toast crumbs and bacon rind. So when you hear a politician start talking about trickle down economics and how everyone benefits from the good times, that’s because they’re pissing on you from a great height.’

  Dessie chuckles.

  ‘Do you ever think about the future, Sami?’ Murphy asks.

  All the time, thinks Sami.

  ‘What are you gonna do?’

  ‘Start a band. Get some gigs. Look after Nadia.’

  ‘Work with me, son. And I’ll make sure you’ve got a tidy little stack before you walk away. I’ll even throw you a farewell party.’

  ‘What about Nadia?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do to find her. I got contacts. I’ll lean a little on Toby Streak. Get the real story.’

  This is crazy, thinks Sami. He’s two days out of prison - innocent as the day he was born - and Tony Murphy wants him to join the firm. His guts are churning.

  ‘I just want to find Nadia,’ he says.

  ‘Like I said, I’ll help you find her.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Not without asking.’

  Sami looks hard at Murphy’s face, searching for a clue that he knows more. Out of the corner of his eyes he sees Dessie’s right eyebrow go up a quarter of an inch. He doesn’t understand what it means but he knows enough to sense trouble.

  ‘It’s nothing personal, Tony. I’m not interested.’