set high up in the left-hand wall. All were closed. It didn’t look as if they could be opened. There were no handles, and they were covered by thick metal bars.
A uniformed officer sat behind a battered wooden desk to our right. He was hunched over, concentrating on a computer screen. His badge gave the name JACKMAN. When he saw us he pushed the mouse away and stood up.
“Evening, fellas,” he said. “What have you got for me?”
“Just this one guy,” Kaufmann said. “Collar off a homicide on Mulberry Street.”
“You’re in luck, then. Got one vacancy left. Who caught the case?”
“Don’t know. Norman and Johns were at the scene. Said they’d be leaving it for the day tour.”
“No problem. I’ll find out later. What’s the guy’s name?”
“Don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”
“OK then-let’s have a look at him.”
Jackman took a shiny metal dish from a filing cabinet behind him and came around to our side of the desk. He worked his way methodically through my pockets and put each piece of my property in turn into the dish. He ended up with eighty cents in change, eighteen dollars in bills, and the card key from my hotel. He added my watch to the pile. It still didn’t look like much. Jackman stood and studied the dish, gently stirring the contents with his stubby index finger as if weighing up whether there was enough for a bona fide citizen to be carrying. After a moment he frowned, put the dish back down on the desk, and searched me all over again. He pinched his fingers along the seams of my clothes, squeezed the edges of my collar, and inspected the inside of my boots. It was a much more thorough job than Klein had done in the alley, but it turned up nothing more.
Jackman took the dish over to the other side of the desk and tipped the contents into a clear plastic bag. It was twelve inches tall by eight wide. Large enough for a gun or a knife. No wonder he seemed so disappointed with my sorry collection. He sealed the top, and held it up to the light as if to emphasize how little my possessions amounted to. Then he stuck a label on the bag and dropped it into the top drawer of the cabinet. Without looking he nudged the drawer with his elbow, and while it was still grinding slowly back into place on its worn runners he made his way around to the bars.
Klein took his gun out of its holster and laid it on the corner of the desk. Then he grabbed my elbow and pushed me forward. Jackman took a bunch of keys from his belt. They were large and heavy, something you might imagine a medieval jailer would use. He unlocked the center section of bars and swung them open. They hinged outward, toward us. Klein shoved me through the gap. Jackman followed him, then pulled the gate back into place and made sure it was secure.
The wall to the left was blank. So was the one at the far end. To the right was a row of cells. There were five. They were identical. The front walls were made of bars. There was a gate in the center of each, all with a heavy lock. The sides were gray metal, three inches thick, filled with broad rivet heads. I realized the panel you could see from the lobby was the outside of the first cell. The rear walls were whitewashed stone. They were all covered in graffiti. It was scratched, rather than written or painted. A pair of benches ran parallel with the side walls. They were made of metal and had been bolted to the floor. The only other item in each cell was a toilet. The bowls stuck out from the rear wall. They were also made of metal-stainless steel-and none of them had a seat.
Klein led me past the first four cells. They were all occupied. There was a single person in the one nearest the lobby. A young guy. He had stained, shapeless clothes, lank greasy hair, and sunken features. He was standing hunched over near the toilet, looking wide-eyed and confused. There were five people in the second cell and four in each of the next two, but I could see the door to the last one in the row was standing open. It was folded back on itself, flush with the bars. When we reached it Klein let go of my arm. Jackman took over. He pushed me into the cell, and kept going until my shins were touching the toilet bowl. My nose told me it was a while since anyone had cleaned it.
“Look straight at the wall,” he said. “Now, keep looking at it. When I uncuff your left wrist, immediately put your hand on top of your head. Do the same when I uncuff your right wrist. Understand?”
I didn’t reply, but he released my wrists anyway.
“Good,” he said. “Now, stand still. Do not move until you hear me close the cell door. Understand?”
I listened to his footsteps retreat across the cell floor. It sounded as though he were walking backward. He stopped, and the door slammed shut, squealing on its hinges as it was dragged through 180 degrees. I heard the keys jangle as he worked the lock, and then two sets of footsteps receded down the corridor.
The graffiti in my cell was fascinating. It covered every inch of stone from floor to ceiling. People must have stood on the benches and even the toilet to find space. I saw people’s names, gang names, sports teams, including one English soccer club, political slogans, insults about the police, opinions of rock bands and movie stars. But mainly obscenities. And for some reason those were mostly in clumsy attempts at rhyming couplets, so they really made no sense at all.
I gave it a couple more minutes, then picked a spot on one of the benches and tried to get some rest. It wasn’t easy. The giant rivets kept digging into my spine and shoulder blades so I had to slide my back to and fro along the wall until I found a comfortable position. But even then, wherever I looked in that narrow space my eyes couldn’t avoid settling on one cold, hard object or another. The toilet, the other bench, the bars, the floor, the walls. This was definitely not what I’d had in mind for my last night in New York. I’d worked hard. I’d done a good job. I deserved a night to myself. But on the other hand, if the last few days had worked out even a whisker differently, I might not have had any time left to spend anywhere. Maybe this was just fate balancing the scales a little.
Without consciously intending to, my hand moved up to touch the back of my head. It was still sore. Two nights ago someone I was working with made a mistake. It was their miscalculation, but I was the one to pay the price. A piece of flying glass had cut me. A big piece. It had sliced my skin, right through to the bone. So I had to admit, annoying as the situation was, things could have been a lot worse. It wasn’t as if I’d never been locked up before. It comes with the territory. As cells go, this one wasn’t too bad. It was a bit small maybe, and pretty spartan, but relatively clean. And I was in there on my own. There’s nothing worse than being crammed in with a horde of unwashed lowlifes, spewing out their foul breath and trampling on your feet. Plus, I wouldn’t be in there long. Not like the hopeless cases you normally find in these places. Sad, desperate people clinging to the fruitless fantasy they weren’t going to spend the rest of their lives in jail. For me, clearly, it was only a temporary problem. A bump in the road. Nothing more.
Because in a few hours, I’d be on a plane back to London.
THREE
I first moved house when I was still in kindergarten.
It was because of my dad’s job. He worked for the government and for some reason they found it essential to transplant us from Birmingham to London. One large English city to another. On the face of it, not too big a change. But for a six-year-old, different worlds.
Looking back, violence was inevitable. I had a different accent. A different vocabulary. I was used to different rituals and routines. And it was the 1970s, after all. With hindsight, what happened the first time I set foot in the playground wasn’t a huge surprise. For a moment I stood on my own, looking around, getting my bearings. Then I noticed a group of kids coming toward me. I counted about twenty. All boys. At first I was pleased, thinking they wanted to play or to make friends. Two of them came right up close. The rest gathered around. They formed a tight circle. And started to chant.
Fight, fight, fight.
I’d never encountered a situation like that before. My old school had been happy and peaceful. I had no experience to base my response on. Only instinct. And it was telling me the danger had to be snuffed out fast, before things got out of control. I focused on the two boys in front of me. They were the biggest. Clearly a year or two older than the rest. One was a little taller than the other. And a little broader. That made him more of a threat, so I decided he had to go down first.
I was surprised, but one punch was all it took. It left him rolling on the ground, a mess of blood and snot and tears. Then I turned to his pal. Only I couldn’t hit him. He’d already run away, along with the rest of their little gang.
