Men pull their possessions closer when he is around and keep their eyes on his long, elegant fingers, but Tahir Gass-who was only recently released from Whit church asylum-leans close to him, looking for friendship that Mahmood won't give. He is a quiet man, always appearing and disappearing silently, at the fringes of the sailors or the gamblers or the thieves. Only Mahmood wears a homburg pulled down low over his gaunt face and sad eyes. Ranged along the bar are many of Tiger Bay's Somali sailors they look somewhere between gangsters and dandies in their cravats, pocket chains and trilby hats. 'Lou, sort this troublemaker another coffee.' 'Maxa tiri ? ' he asks as Mahmood Mattan pushes through the crowd at the bar.īerlin catches his Trinidadian wife's waist and steers her towards Mahmood.

Through the rock 'n' roll and spitting espresso machine Berlin hears someone calling his name. 'I b-b-b-et he wr-wr-wr-ote them on his d-d-d-eathbed,' a punter cackles. 'He'll meet many of our men down there,' replies Old Ismail, 'he better write his apologies on the way down.' The noise settles as milkshakes and colas clink against Irish coffees, and chairs scrape against the black-and-white tiled floor.īerlin hammers a spoon against the bar and calls out with his lion tamer's bark, 'Raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen, and send off our old King to Davy Jones's Locker.' Long live the Queen.' The announcer's voice crackles from the wireless and winds around the rapt patrons of Berlin's Milk Bar as sinuously as the fog curls around the mournful street lamps, their wan glow barely illuminating the cobblestones. And, under the shadow of the hangman’s noose, he begins to realise that the truth may not be enough to save him.The King is dead. It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of freedom dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a terrifying fight for his life – against conspiracy, prejudice and the inhumanity of the state. But Mahmood is secure in his innocence in a country where, he thinks, justice is served. It is true that he has been getting into trouble more often since his Welsh wife Laura left him.

So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn’t too worried. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. Buy this book from to support The Reading Agency and local bookshops at no additional cost to you.

The fortune men book review