Free Arabesk by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

own desk to plant a blow that split his lip as if it had been a ripe plum was beyond belief. So far beyond belief that Dr Millbank announced on the spot that what ZeeZee needed was not punishment but psychiatric help. His words left a fine spray of blood across his attacker’s tangled beard and broad chest, but even then he handed ZeeZee a Kleenex from a box by his desk.
    It made ZeeZee want to punch him all over again.
    All of which explained how ZeeZee found himself in the passenger seat of a Lincoln Continental coming off the 522 onto Interstate 5, with Lake Washington on one side and Puget Sound on the other, on his way to psychiatric assessment at a hospital in Tacoma.
    The man driving him to Mount Olive Hospital was Clem Burke, a bull from a downstate prison who was undergoing compulsory rehabilitation at Huntsville after taking a nightstick to the skull of an inmate at his old jail. Making Clem Burke work as a warder at Huntsville was probably constitutionally illegal: he certainly regarded it as cruel and unusual.
    “You know what I’d do with you?”
    ZeeZee looked across as Clem swung the heavy Lincoln out into the fast lane and overtook an old Beetle, nudging so close the VW got almost buffeted off the freeway.
    “Let me guess…”
    “Nah,” said Clem. “Don’t bother. You couldn’t begin to imagine.” He shifted down a gear and slid past a truck on its nearside, angrily flicking it the finger when the Mack hit its brakes and flashed its lights.
    “This Shitville do-gooding crap. It’s just toss. You don’t just hit the Governor and get away with it.” The Lincoln lurched forward, closing up a gap before anyone could pull into it.
    “Rehabilitation not working, then?” ZeeZee asked innocently.
    He enjoyed watching the veins stand out on Clem’s fat neck and his face turn an even deeper shade of purple.
    “Solitary,” snarled Clem. “That’s what you need. Stripped naked in a sweatbox; till you as pink and pretty as a baby. Then I’d give your ass to some Boss Nigra… That’s what. That’s the way any real prison would do it.”
    A real prison probably would, too. But then, someone was paying ZeeZee’s fees precisely to ensure stuff like that didn’t happen. And ZeeZee had a pretty good idea where that money came from. A Chinese woman who knew who really put a .22 through the back of Micky O’Brian’s head and watched him crumple as the sub-sonic slug ricocheted around the inside of his skull, scrambling what was left of Micky’s brains after a $15,000-a-month crack habit had magimixed its share. And Hu San wasn’t someone ZeeZee wanted to upset. Not now, not ever…
    Mentioning her name in public would have been a quicker way of committing suicide than standing up in court to claim he’d killed Micky, he’d meant to kill Micky and, given half a chance, he’d kill Micky again. And which way should he go for the electric chair?
    All of which would have been a lie.
    ZeeZee kept his eyes on the interstate. Watching the approach signs for SeaTac Airport and the other cars. Which was more than Clem Burke did.
    “What do you think of that, then?” Clem asked. He was chewing the inside of his lip at the thought of ZeeZee pegged out in some sweatbox or on his knees tossing salad for a war daddy.
    “Well?” Clem demanded.
    “It’s not going to happen,” said ZeeZee. At least, not now. He’d spent a lot of time in the remand centre worrying about what came next. Wondering what the rippers inside might have in mind for a polite blond boy with a nice English accent.
    So he did his own attitude adjustment, before anyone else got the chance. Within a month his prissy accent was gone—still obviously English, but flatter and harder. He took up exercise in his cell. And then, when his shoulders had developed and his arms had grown stronger, he braved the gym. In the weeks that followed he let his hair grow, gave up shaving and stopped washing until his skin finally found its balance.
    His