Free Bombproof by Michael Robotham Page B

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.
    That’s when he wakes up and looks down. Sees her tousled blonde hair. She crawls up the bed, straddling his chest, rocking her hips back and forth.
    She eases back, squats over him, takes him inside. He can see their reflection in the mirror. Sami looks twice to make sure it’s him. Surely he must be in heaven. He’s lying on Egyptian cotton sheets in one of the most expensive hotel suites in London, being screwed by a girl he’s fantasised about for more nights than he can remember. Kate Tierney. No longer a wet dream. A reality.
    Later, as they’re lying in bed, they talk about old times, about the past couple of years. She wants to know all about prison, the nitty gritty, the violence, the gangs. Kate seems to get off on all those men being in the one place. Sexually frustrated men. Unfulfilled. Violent.
    Sami doesn’t need much time to recover. Kate gets on all fours and says, ‘Show me how they do it in prison.’
    Prison sex normally involves a left hand and a bartered copy of Big Jugs magazine but Sami thinks her version is a lot more interesting.
    They cuddle afterwards. It’s nice. They know stuff about each other. Sami remembers the details of her letters. He knows about her brothers and her father losing his job and how they always spend Christmas in Scotland with relatives. She wrote about ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff, but Sami loved reading about it. It made him feel normal or at least that one day his life could be normal.
    At six the next morning he’s out of the Savoy the way he came in, smelling of sex and tasting Kate on his lips. Sami buys a coffee from a kiosk near Embankment Tube. Sits on a bench in Victoria Gardens. Makes his plans for the day. The wind comes off the river and tugs at the coats of commuters leaving the station.
    Tony Murphy denied any knowledge of Nadia, but he could have been lying. Toby Streak was too frightened to be telling lies. So what does he do next?
    He takes a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and smooths it on his knee. The name and number are written in pencil. Vincent Ruiz. Sounds foreign.
    Sami looks at his watch. It’s gone seven. He flips