Bombproof (8 page)

Ms Wallace asks the questions. She wants to know if Nadia is the sort to go missing or take off without leaving a note.

‘Never,’ says Sami. ‘We’re tight, you know. We look after each other.’

Next thing Sami is telling her about their mother dying and how he won custody of Nadia. One thing leads to another and soon he’s recounting the whole sorry saga of Andy Palmer becoming a speed bump and Sami pleading guilty to possession.

She doesn’t say much. Sits. Listens. Maybe she hears stories like this all the time, thinks Sami, but it doesn’t stop him spilling his guts. His whole life story comes tumbling out - how his father was a Scottish merchant seaman and his mother a French Algerian refugee when they met in Montpellier and eloped.

She was a Moslem but didn’t wear the veil. She never mentioned her family. Didn’t call them. Didn’t write. It was as though when she married she ceased to have a history or a bloodline.

Sami’s father quit the boats and worked in an abattoir in Glasgow, while running an SP operation on the side. He did everything at a hundred miles an hour, full bore - drinking, singing, fighting and fucking. Women loved him.

Sami’s mother could tolerate his drinking and turn a blind eye to the bookmaking, but she hated the ‘whores’, as she called them.

‘What happened to your father?’ asks Ms Wallace.

‘He drowned.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘He was drunk.’

The parole officer is watching him intently, but whatever she’s really thinking is hovering around the edges of her sentences.

‘I’m not going back inside,’ Sami tells her, his voice shaking. ‘I just want to find Nadia. Make sure she’s OK. I’ll get a job, I promise. I’ll pay the rent. It’s not the whole future but it’s a plan.’

‘Who was the last person to see Nadia?’ she asks.

‘A tossbag called Toby Streak.’

‘You’ve talked to him?’

Sami grimaces slightly. ‘Yeah.’

‘Did he know anything?’

‘He mentioned an arrangement with Tony Murphy.’

‘Do you know this Murphy?’

‘I never met him until today.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He owns a restaurant, clubs … stuff like that.’

‘Nightclubs.’

‘Strip clubs.’

‘Under the terms of your parole I’m sure you are aware that you’re not supposed to be mixing with criminals or their associates.’

‘I know, I know, but it’s about Nadia.’

‘If you have concerns for her safety you should take them to the police.’

‘I’ve been to the police. They don’t care.’

Ms Wallace seems conflicted. She’s caught between her professional duty and her innate sense of concern.

‘What did this Mr Murphy have to say?’ she asks.

‘He said he didn’t know where Nadia was.’

‘But you don’t believe him.’

Sami shrugs. He’s not going to tell her about Murphy’s offer. He’s said too much already.

Ms Wallace lets her gaze shift over Sami and her fingertips drum on the blotter. Sami can see in her eyes that she’s already made assumptions about him. He’s just another low-life fuck-up, who’ll be back inside within a year.

Sami stands to leave. ‘Will that be all?’

‘Do you have somewhere else to be?’ she asks.

‘I have to find my sister.’

‘Do you have a photograph of her?’

‘Why?’

‘I might know someone who could help you.’

Sami reaches into his pocket and pulls out a weathered Polaroid taken at Nadia’s sixteenth birthday party. She’s wearing a party hat and draping streamers over Sami’s head.

Ms Wallace studies the image and then writes a phone number on a piece of paper.

‘If you don’t hear from your sister you should give this man a call. His name is Vincent Ruiz and he owes me a big favour.’

‘Why?’

‘I was married to him for three years.’

12

Friday afternoon. Quarter to six. Ruiz presses the doorbell. Watches Miranda appear behind the frosted glass.

The door opens. She smiles. Kisses both his cheeks.

‘I brought flowers,’ he says.

‘So I can see. Are the neighbours missing any?’

‘That’s cruel.’

Miranda leads him down the hall to the kitchen. Ruiz walks four paces behind. She looks great. She always does. Not just for a woman of her age but for any woman. Any age.

She fills a vase and arranges the flowers. Her cargo pants hang loose on her hips and her blouse is cut just low enough to show him what he used to have access to and is now off-limits. Another downside of divorce.

Miranda is a probation officer. That’s how they met. Ruiz was working a case involving a boatload of stolen Levi’s back in the late-eighties when 901s were the hottest ticket on the high street. Ruiz was married. Happily so, except for the cancer that was eating away at Laura from the inside.

He flirted a little with Miranda, became friends and then lost touch with her for a decade. By then Laura was dead and Jessie, his second wife, a suppressed memory.

He and Miranda were married for three years. They’ve been divorced for two. She’s the sort of ex-wife blokes dream about. Low maintenance. Friendly. She’s even tried to set him up on dates. Unmitigated disasters.

When they were married, Ruiz could never fully reconcile himself to the fact that Miranda worked as a parole officer. He didn’t like the idea that low-life scrotes and toerags were sitting in her office wondering what underwear she was wearing. He half suspected - but never told Miranda - that half the reason she had such a good retention rate was because her parolees lusted after her.

Miranda was always careful. She dressed down. Minimal make-up. Nothing provocative.

‘You want tea or coffee?’ she asks.

‘Got anything stronger?’

‘Nope.’

‘Is it proper tea?’

‘Camomile.’

‘Tastes of nothing, smells like potpourri.’

‘It’s very good for you.’

Ruiz produces a bottle of red wine from behind his back. ‘So is this. It’s full of antioxidants. Good for the heart. Ask the French. Sarkozy lives on this stuff and bags himself a pop star and a supermodel. What do we get? Gordon Brown. I rest my case.’

Ruiz finds a corkscrew and Miranda gets two glasses. The garden flat is nice. Homely. Ruiz likes the way it smells. He also likes the fact it’s full of reminders and souvenirs of their marriage. The rug in front of the fireplace is from a holiday they took in Cornwall and the painting above the dining table was bought from a sidewalk artist in Florence.

Miranda sets out two balloon glasses and fills a bowl with roasted cashews. She’s self-sufficient. Classy. Never asked him for a thing when they divorced except for the souvenirs. And all she asks of him now is that he returns her phone calls and lets her stay involved with Michael and Claire - the twins. Laura’s kids, not hers. They still need a mother, she says, and she’s happy to fill the role.

She sits down on the far end of the sofa. Curls her legs. Ruiz stares at her earlobes. He could nuzzle them for a few hundred years and never get bored.

‘You called,’ he says, trying to change the subject.

‘What did the doctor say?’ she asks.

‘Is that why you asked me round?’

‘Not entirely.’ She sips her wine. ‘But since you’re here.’

‘He said nothing.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It must have been very quiet.’ Her eyes are dancing. ‘Did he tell you to exercise?’

‘I told him I was going to exercise by being a pallbearer for all my friends who exercise.’

‘What about your weight?’

‘What about it?’

‘You’ve put on a few pounds.’

‘No I haven’t.’

‘Stop trying to hold your stomach in.’

Ruiz relaxes. ‘It looks good on me. You’re too skinny.’

‘I’m the same size as when you married me.’

‘That’s why I divorced you.’

Miranda gives him a hurt look. Ruiz wants to take the comment back. She has this way of acting that makes him believe that several women are living inside her and only one of them divorced him. The rest are still undecided.

Ruiz takes a sip of wine and a handful of cashews. Miranda has stopped talking and grown pensive, one tooth biting into her bottom lip.

‘You all right?’

She nods and starts telling him about her new parolee, Sami Macbeth, released after nearly three years in prison. Tells him the story of his sister going missing.

Ruiz is thinking runaway. This Nadia is probably having the time of her life. She’s found herself a boyfriend, doesn’t want to associate with a jailbird brother.

Miranda hands him a photograph - a prison mugshot that must have come from Macbeth’s file.

‘What was this guy in for?’

‘Possession of stolen goods.’

‘First timer.’

She nods.

‘What makes him think his sister is in trouble?’

Miranda tells him how Nadia abandoned her flat. She hasn’t turned up for work or at college. Isn’t answering her phone.

‘When was the last time he heard from her?’

‘A week ago.’

‘This Nadia have a boyfriend?’

‘According to Sami she had started seeing a guy called Toby Streak.’

Ruiz doesn’t know the name. ‘What does Streak have to say?’

‘Says that he and Nadia parted company. Last time he saw her she was with Tony Murphy.’

Now there’s a name that does ring a bell. Dozens of them, pealing from the rooftops.

Miranda senses as much.

‘It’s not good news, is it?’

Nothing about Murphy is good news, thinks Ruiz. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I thought you might ask around - make a few calls, you’re good at that sort of thing.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘Finding girls.’

‘I’m a bit long in the tooth.’

‘As a favour,’ she says, rubbing her stockinged foot against his ankle. ‘I feel good about this guy. I don’t think he’s a bad egg. He wants to straighten himself out.’

Ruiz has to fight the urge not to run his hand up her leg to her thigh. After another glass of wine he’s beginning to settle in for the evening - something Miranda recognises.

‘Off you go, big man,’ she says.

‘Why?’

‘It’s Friday night. I’m going out,’ she says.

‘Who with?’

‘None of your business.’

She gives him a hug. Ruiz runs his hands down the small of her back and squeezes her backside.

‘What was that for?’ she purrs into his mouth.

‘Old time’s sake.’

‘Stop calling yourself old,’ she says.

‘It’s all right for you. You still look great.’

‘It just takes me twice as long to look half as good.’

Ruiz smells her hair and turns away, walking up the stairs, onto the street. How is it, he wonders, that something so soft can make him so hard.

13

When Sami was in Wormwood Scrubs he received a letter from a girl called Kate Tierney. Kate used to hang around the band - not like a groupie, but as part of the entourage.

She was dating the drummer, Shortie, a good-looking bastard who treated her like shit. What is it about drummers? Ringo Starr falls out of the ugly tree, hits every branch, yet still manages to pull birds like Patti Boyd and Barbara Bach, a Bond girl for fuck’s sake.

Sami used to lust after Kate from afar, or at least from the front of the stage. She was always upfront, in the mosh-pit, eyes closed, swaying to the music.

She was only eighteen when he first met her. When that particular band broke up, she drifted away. Over the next few years he bumped into her once or twice before losing touch.

Then Sami got sent down for a stretch. Three months in, he gets a letter from Kate Tierney. Perfumed. Little blue flowers around the border. Sami lay back in his cell and imagined the same little blue flowers on the edges of her knickers.

After that she wrote to him twice a week. Told him about her life. Her folks had been rich until her old man invested in junk bonds and blew the lot. Kate went from a private school in Surrey to a comprehensive in Hackney.

Sami had no idea why Kate decided to write to him. Maybe she felt sorry for him. Maybe she’d secretly fancied him for years. Maybe the reason was more fundamental and deep seated.

He asked her to send him a photograph. She sent one of her wearing a silk teddy, sitting astride a rocking horse. That’s when he realised it was about lust. He was now a bad boy. An outlaw. Some girls think they deserve guys like that.

Kate Tierney studied hotel management and got a job working at the Savoy. She started in reception and worked her way up to night manager.

Sami calls her at work. Tells her he needs somewhere to stay. He’s spent all afternoon and evening looking for Nadia. Visiting her friends, talking to her workmates. He’s not going back to the bail hostel.

Kate thinks about it. Puts him on hold. Sami can hear her talking in a posh voice to one of the guests, telling Mr Somersby to have a nice evening and enjoy the opera.

Then she’s back on the phone, whispering about the tradesman’s entrance in a side street near Embankment Gardens. He has to wait till ten. Call her when he’s outside.

Sami does as she says.

The fire door opens. Kate looks great. She’s dressed like an airline stewardess only sexier, in a black pencil skirt and a fitted black blazer. Armani. Her eyes are made up to look huge and her hair is piled up on her head, making her neck look even longer.

‘You can stay, but you have to be out by six,’ she whispers, waving him inside. The door shuts.

She takes him upstairs in a service lift. Unlocks a suite with a master key. The place is bigger than most of the houses Sami has lived in.

‘Don’t take anything from the mini-bar. I have to go. I’ll come see you later.’

Sami has a shower. He’s so whacked out he almost falls asleep under the water, which is spilling out of this big silver head the size of a dinner plate.

Afterwards, he puts on one of those soft white robes and crawls onto the bed. He needs to think. Needs to sleep. His eyes close. He dreams.

It’s about Kate Tierney and it’s not unlike a lot of the dreams he’s had about her in the past two and a bit years. She’s cupping his balls in her right hand and taking him in her mouth. She looks up his chest, into his eyes, and then rubs her tongue along the length of him, popping him into her mouth, sucking hard enough to almost bring him off. Just when he’s about to blow, she pinches him hard just below the head of his penis.