This is how it happened.
Three Days Ago
1
On his last morning in prison Sami Macbeth woke early, brushed his teeth, folded his blankets in a neat pile and sat on the bed, waiting.
He told himself that everything he did was for the last time. It was the last time he would piss into a steel bowl; the last time he was strip-searched, or deloused, or would wake to the dawn chorus of farting, belching, swearing and coughing.
Unable to keep still, he rests his feet on his bunk and counts down through a hundred push-ups, breathing through his nose. He stands and looks into a shaving mirror, no longer surprised at seeing himself with short hair, although it’s growing out quickly. He’s put on weight. Most of it is probably muscle but he’s not like those cons who spend every waking moment pumping weights and flexing in front of the mirror. Who are they trying to impress?
With two short fast steps, Sami leaps at the wall, planting his foot at chest height and spinning in a complete somersault before landing on his feet. He does it again … and again.
A voice from below interrupts.
‘Cut it out, cocksucker, I’m trying to sleep.’
‘Almost done,’ says Sami.
‘Do it again and I’ll kill your entire family.’
Sami’s cell is on the first floor. No. 47. D-wing. It is eight feet wide and ten feet long, with brick walls and a cement floor. The only window, high on the wall, has tiny glass squares, some of them missing or broken. When he first arrived, in the middle of February, wind used to whistle through the gaps and the cell was freezing. Eventually, he filled the gaps with toilet paper, chewed into a pulp and wedged like putty into the holes.
He won’t have to worry about another winter. By midday he’s out of here. Not completely free, but as good as. Parole is a wonderful thing.
Sami yawns and rubs his eyes. He didn’t sleep well. A fresh fish arrived yesterday and they put him in the cell next door. The kid tried to look relaxed and act tough but his eyes were big as saucers and he kept looking at people sideways like a bird in a cage.
The cons called him Baby Ray and he spent all night talking to Sami - too scared to go to sleep. First night jitters. Everyone has them. He told Sami he wouldn’t be staying long, a short season, for one night only. He had a bail hearing the next day and his old man was going to pay whatever it took to get him out.
‘Your old man must have deep pockets,’ Sami said.
‘I’m his only son.’
Baby Ray had a silver tongue, a sharp tongue, a tongue for every groove. He talked about the girls he’d shagged, the fights he’d won, the deals he’d done. Sami wasn’t bothered. He was never going to sleep on his last night. He was going to count down the hours.
Baby Ray must have gone to breakfast or still be asleep. Sami’s stomach rumbles. Normally, this is the only meal of the day he doesn’t miss. You can’t fuck up breakfast. You scramble eggs, you grill sausage, you heat up beans; nobody can fuck up breakfast.
Today he’s not going. He doesn’t want anything to go wrong. No shoving in the food queue, no fights, no bullying, nothing that could see him brought up on charges or see his parole revoked. Instead he sits on his bed, stares at the concrete wall and thinks of Nadia.
Nadia is his sister. She’s nineteen. Beautiful.
They don’t look like brother and sister. Nadia has long dark hair, brown eyes and golden brown skin. She’s part Algerian. So is Sami, but he inherited his father’s blue eyes and dirty blond hair.
Nadia was only seventeen when Sami was sent down. She was still at school. Now she’s working as a secretary and going to college two nights a week. She’s renting a flat and driving her own car - one of those Smart cars that look like it comes with a Happy Meal.
Sami hasn’t seen her since Christmas. He only transferred back to the Scrubs a fortnight ago from Leicester nick, which was a long way for Nadia to travel, even with a rail warrant.
Someone drove her to see him. Waited outside. Her boyfriend. She wouldn’t tell Sami his name. He had a sports car and drove with the top down, mussing up her hair.
When everyone has gone to breakfast, Sami leaves his cell to use his last phone card. He calls Nadia. No answer. It’s been three days. She knows he’s getting out today.
He goes back to his cell. Sits. Waits. Watches the clock.
Time has special meaning to him now. He has studied it closely and mastered the art of imagining it passing. For two years, eight months and twenty-three days he has become an expert in how much a minute takes out of an hour and how much an hour takes out of a day. How fast a fingernail grows. How long it takes for his fringe to cover his eyes.
He has missed two birthdays, two Christmases, two New Years and countless opportunities for meaningless one-night stands with single London girls who have a thing for guitar players. He’ll have to play catch-up.
At 11.30 Mr Dean, the senior screw on D-wing delivers Sami’s belongings in a pillowcase.
Mr Dean waits for him to get changed into a pair of jeans, a shirt, a leather bomber jacket and trainers. Sami has to hand back his prison kit which Mr Dean checks off on a list. Afterwards he walks in front of the warder to the reception centre, carrying his personal effects in his arms. They don’t consist of much: a wristwatch, a transistor radio, three photographs - two of Nadia - a bundle of letters, a mobile phone with a flat battery and a plastic bag containing thirty-two pounds and seventy-five pence. Sami has to count the money and sign for it in three places.
As he walks along the landing and down the metal stairs, some of the other cons are calling out to him.
‘Hey, Sparkles, when you get out get yourself laid for me.’
‘Get shit-faced,’ someone else yells.
At three minutes past noon, Sami walks out of the small, hinged door in the much larger gates of Wormwood Scrubs Prison. It’s been raining, but the shower has passed. Puddles fill the depressions, reflecting blue sky. Bluer now he’s outside. He raises his face and blinks at the sky. Takes a deep breath. He knows it’s a cliché about freedom smelling sweeter, but it’s a cliché for a reason.
He keeps walking across the cobblestones, away from the gates. There’s no sign of Nadia. She could be running late. London traffic. There’s a car parked opposite in a bus zone, a big black four-wheel drive Lexus with the darkest legal tint.
As Sami walks past a window glides down.
‘Are you Sami Macbeth?’ asks a squeaky voice coming from a head so round and smooth it looks like it should be bobbing on the end of a string. Maybe that explains his voice, thinks Sami.
There are three other guys in the car all wearing dark suits like they’re auditioning for a Guy Ritchie film. They’re not friends of Nadia’s and they’re not from the local mini-cab firm.
‘Are you fucking deaf?’ asks the guy with the balloon-shaped head.
Sami scratches his cheek. Tries to stay calm. ‘Why do you want Macbeth?’
‘You him or not?’
‘No, mate,’ says Sami, swinging his bag over his shoulder. ‘Macbeth kicked off at breakfast this morning. Got into a row with some bloke and threw a mug of tea in his face. They’re keeping him in.’
‘For how long?’
Sami motions over his shoulder. ‘Knock on the door. Maybe they’ll tell you.’
Then he gives a little skip as he walks away, telling himself not to look back. What do these guys want with him? Where’s Nadia?
Down the street he finds a bus stop. Sits down. Waits some more.
A bus pulls up. The poster on the side shows a woman in a bikini lying on a pool chair. Golden skin. Clear eyes. Sami is so busy looking at the girl he forgets to get on the bus. The doors close. The bus pulls away.
He waits. Another bus comes. The driver doesn’t look at him.
‘Where you going?’
‘Station.’
‘Which one?’
‘Nearest.’
‘Two quid.’
Sami takes a window seat. Looks at the playing fields. Nadia must have had to work. She’ll have left a note at the flat. They’ll celebrate later. Order a curry. Watch a DVD.
Ever since their mum died, Sami and Nadia have looked after each other. And even before then, he’d kept Nadia out of harm’s way when any of their father’s lecherous friends took a liking to her.
She wanted to leave school at sixteen. Sami made her stay. He did courier jobs, drove a van. At night he played gigs. He wasn’t cock deep in cash but he had enough to keep the wolf from the door.
Sami had often wondered what that saying meant. What sort of wolf - the fairytale kind, like in Little Red Riding Hood or the Three Little Pigs, or the human kind?
It wasn’t always happy families. Sami and Nadia’s fights were legendary. That’s the thing about Nadia. She’s not some sort of innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth angel. She’s had her moments. Skipping school. Underage drinking. Sneaking into nightclubs when she was only fifteen.
Nadia also had some black days. It was a family disease. A school counsellor wanted to send her to a psycho-whatsit, but Sami wouldn’t let them. He also had to fight Social over letting her live with him. He went to court. Won. Didn’t rub it in. You don’t give them any excuses.
For a long time Nadia had no idea she was beautiful. Blokes would have licked shit off a stick for her, but she didn’t care. After a while she began to realise.
She had a few modelling shots taken when she was seventeen, glossy professional ones, soft focus around the edges. She touted her portfolio around some of the modelling agencies but they said she didn’t have the look they were after, you know, the anorexic don’t-let-me-near-the-fridge heroin chic look.
She did have something going for her. The photographers knew it. One of the agents knew it. Nadia had that vulnerable, big eyes, full lips, just-been-shagged look that directors love. Porn directors.
Sweet but not so innocent Nadia.
Sami saved her from the wolves.
That’s what big brothers are for.
2
Vincent Ruiz’s worst dream has always included an orange sledge and an ice-covered pond with a hole at its centre. A child is pulled from within, blue lips, blue skin. He is to blame.
His second worst dream features a man called Ray Garza, who is like the ghost of Christmas past showing Ruiz his past failings. Garza’s face has sharp features, bone beneath skin, with a scar across his neck where someone once tried to slice open his throat but didn’t cut deep enough. Hopefully they were more successful at cutting their own throat because you’d want to die quickly if you crossed Ray Garza.
Ruiz is one of the few people to know about Garza’s true nature. Others seem to have forgotten or chosen to ignore the evidence.
Garza is now a pillar of society, a member of the establishment, rich beyond counting. He is invited to dine at Downing Street, given gongs by Her Maj and gets mentioned in newspaper diaries as a philanthropist and patron of the arts.
Yet every time Ruiz sees a photograph of him at some charity function, or film premiere, he remembers Jane Lanfranchi. It was twenty-two years ago. She was only sixteen. A wannabe beauty queen.
Garza was going to make her a page-three sizzler, the next Sam Fox. That’s before he sodomized her and chewed her cheek open to the bone.
Such a beautiful face, destroyed. Such a sweet girl, traumatised. Ruiz promised Jane that he’d protect her. He promised that if she were brave enough to give evidence against Garza, he’d put him in prison. He made promises he couldn’t keep.
Jane Lanfranchi committed suicide two days before the trial, unable to look at her face in the mirror. The charges were dismissed. Garza went free. He smiled at Ruiz on the steps of the court. His crooked mouth lined up when he grinned and his acne-scarred cheeks looked like lunar craters.
Ruiz has always been a pragmatist. There are bad people in the world - rapists, murderers, psychopaths - many of them nameless, faceless men, who are never caught. The difference this time was that he knew Ray Garza’s name, knew where he lived, knew what he’d done, but could never prove it.
One of Ruiz’s mates, a psychologist called Joe O’Loughlin, once told him that some dreams solve problems while others reflect our emotions. Carl Jung believed that ‘big dreams’ were so powerful they helped shape our lives.
Ruiz thought this was bollocks, but didn’t say so. History showed that whenever he disagreed with Joe O’Loughlin, he ended up looking stupid. Ruiz knows why he had the dream. It happens every year. Just before his birthday. He’s sixty-two today. In a couple of hours the first post will arrive. There’ll be a birthday card from his son Michael and daughter Claire. Twins. His ex-wife Miranda will send him something funny about him being only as old as the woman he’s feeling.
There’ll be another card, one from Ray Garza. He sends one every year - a goading, vindictive, poisonous reminder of Jane Lanfranchi, of broken promises, of failure.
Ruiz looks at the clock beside his bed. It’s gone six. He doesn’t feel rested or rejuvenated. One of the annoying legacies of old age is the copious passing of water and learning the odours of various vegetables and beverages.
Pain is the other legacy, a permanent ache in his left leg, which is shorter than his right and heavily scarred. A bullet did the damage. High velocity. Hollow pointed. Painkillers were harder to recover from. Even now, as he lies in bed, it feels as though ants are eating away at his scarred flesh.
The pain always wakes him slowly. He has to lie very still, feeling his heart racing and sweat pooling in his navel. The hangover is entirely expected and nothing to do with pain management. Ruiz drank half a bottle of Scotch last night and almost fell asleep on the sofa, too cold to get comfortable and too drunk to go to bed.
Now it’s morning. His birthday. He wants it to be over.
Ruiz gets out of bed at seven. Runs a cold tap in the bathroom. Fills his cupped hands. Buries his face in the water. He dresses slowly, methodically, as though working to a plan. Socks, trousers, shirt, shoes. There is order in his life. He might be retired but he has his routines. He goes downstairs and puts on a pot of coffee.