Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (top ebook reader TXT) 📕

from Los Angeles. And in the act of moving you, an opportunity would come to free you. You would be a fugitive, of course, but I imagine that you might lose the authorities with the appropriate assistance.” Pausing for a moment to think over his plan, Rook smiles to himself. “Yes. Very good. I think it the best option. You are clearly not in your right mind, but I still believe there’s enough of the man you once were in you to be useful. Let’s try giving you an errand.” He stands, fastening his jacket closed.

Adam finds that he is disappointed by Rook’s decree; he had rather liked the idea of staying in prison for a while. “What’s the job?”

“Oh.” Rook focuses on Adam again. “I need someone to find my brother. His spending habits have become peculiar as of late, and I have been unable to contact him. Indeed, my only means of tracking him is by following his withdrawals, which have been growing steadily more substantial. It’s… unlike Magpie to spend my money. I’ve never known him to not have his own. And while I am well aware of my brother’s eccentricities, this is unusual, even for him. I’d like someone to track him down, and either have him contact me, or questioned; I’d like to find out where my money is going.” Rook knocks on the door, waiting to be released. “Last I knew, he was in Scotland.”

“Okay,” says Adam.

Rook peers at Adam across the top of his spectacles, looking as if he’s been struck by a thought. “When was the last time you spoke to Eve, Adam?”

Her name is like a spark in Adam’s brain. A point of light, reignited.

“I don’t know,” he says, truthfully.

“Mmm,” says Rook, briefly studying Adam’s face, searching for something there.

The door opens, but before he can leave, Adam asks, “Did she name you? Or did I?”

“She did,” says Rook, and then he is gone.

* * *

Adam is denied bail and transferred to a holding facility pending trial. They don’t have an orange jumpsuit big enough for him, so he’s made to wear one two sizes too small. The other prisoners watch him pass in silence – step back from the bars of their cells.

He’s given his own cell. It has a low barred window, through which Adam can see a single leafless tree, standing darkly against the scrubby ground at the centre of the facility. Once a day, he is brought out to the yard to stretch his legs, but he spends most of that time beside the chain-link fence, peering beyond the enmeshed links and trying to get a better look at the tree. It needs some care, he thinks. It’s not getting enough water, and the sun is blocked off from it eight hours a day.

The only time of day he is allowed around the other prisoners is at lunch. The sudden sensory rush after being in his cell is always overwhelming: the rattling and clattering, the conversation and movement; all the stink of a hundred bodies devouring cheap slop in various dull arrangements. When he lines up with his tray, he is given space to move. The prisoners here don’t meet his eye, but the servers are generous with their portions.

Usually, Adam finishes his tray, but on the third day the kitchen serves fishcakes and he loses his appetite. A recent riot means that cutlery is forfeit for the foreseeable future, so that the prisoners must eat with their hands, and Adam becomes preoccupied with the slivers of fish clinging to the fingers and lips of everyone around him. He feels as if he is on the verge of remembering something – the reason why killing the writer felt so familiar. Lunch ends, and the sensation fades.

After the fourth day, two prisoners come and sit with him. The first is muscular, with so many crudely drawn black tattoos that he is running out of untouched skin; the second is slight and downcast, looking as if he has lived through a lifetime of sorrows. “Hey, man,” says the tattooed prisoner. “You the guy that killed that writer. I know you. Seen you all over the news.”

The sullen prisoner swirls his porridge around in its bowl with his finger. “I’m Earl. This is Throat.”

“Yeah, and you Sullivan. Adam Sullivan. Pleased to meet you, man.” When Throat grins, he flashes a complete set of golden teeth. “Fuck that writer, man. Way I see it, you did the world a favour. He’s been puttin’ out shit for years. Wish you’d done it three films ago.” He laughs. “You all right, man. You all right. Way I see it, guys like us, we gotta stick together.”

Adam peels his orange. “Guys like us?”

“Yeah, man.” Throat gestures broadly around the room.

No matter where Adam goes, he’s always singled out for the colour of his skin. He places his half-peeled orange down for a moment and turns his wrists over, studying his scars. “You were all once me,” he mutters, but the words aren’t really meant for Throat and Earl. They’re just a reflection of a thought he’s had for a long time.

“Listen, man,” says Earl, after sucking the porridge from his finger. “Some guys have been saying your lawyers are Corvid & Corvid. That shit is expensive. More important, they don’t even got a phone number.”

“My man’s got connects.” Throat slaps Adam on the shoulder. “Ain’t that right?”

Adam returns to his orange, pulling it apart and digging around in the segments, tugging the seeds free. He lines the seeds up on his tray as he eats, and then gathers them up, sifts through them on his palm like a fortune teller interpreting bones. The orange is old – barely edible – but some of the seeds might still grow, under the right conditions.

“You got a number I could call?” asks Earl, but Adam doesn’t answer. Two of the seeds seem viable. Adam places them carefully into a pocket.

Adam returns to his cell, lays back on