One Way Out

by A. A. Dhand

  ‘I love you, too. Now hang up, conserve your battery and text rather than call – this is going to be a long day.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Saima said, calmer than before. ‘And for God’s sake, stay safe. You know I can’t raise our boy on my own.’

  Harry sank to the ground, placing his phone on the warm concrete pavement. His phone beeped, notification of several voicemails. Harry saw they were all from his boss. He listened to the first one. A desperate plea for all hands on deck. Harry ignored it, unable to shake the fact that Saima was inside one of the mosques.

  A Gold Command would be set up somewhere, probably Dudley Hill.

  The Counter-Terrorism Unit would take control. Assistant Chief Constable Frost was no doubt shitting himself that this had landed on his watch, in his city.

  Christ almighty – why Bradford?

  He thought back to the Patriots’ video.

  One hundred and five mosques, one bomb.

  Only Greater London and perhaps Birmingham had a higher number.

  Harry picked up his phone to watch the video again when it started to ring.

  Unknown number.

  He answered, surprised to hear the Home Secretary, Tariq Islam, on the line.

  ‘Harry, are you OK?’ said Tariq, voice quiet, tone serious.

  ‘Bloody wonderful. Was in City Park when the evacuation order came in and Saima is inside one of the mosques. So, yeah, I’m pretty fucking terrific. You?’

  Tariq paused and when he spoke his voice was uncertain.

  ‘I need you to come and meet me, Harry.’

  He knew better than to ask for details on the phone. ‘Where?’ asked Harry, getting to his feet.

  Islam told him.

  He couldn’t have heard it right.

  ‘Your silence says everything, Harry, but you heard me just fine. Meet me there as soon as you can. We need to get a handle on this. I’ll be waiting.’

  The line went dead.

  It hardly seemed possible, but Harry’s day had just got worse.

  ELEVEN

  Standing outside her home, Joyti had felt a deep unease as she watched Harry’s car disappear out of the driveway.

  Her husband would not be convinced to change his mind about Harry. To Ranjit, Harry was a disgrace. He would not forgive his Sikh son for marrying a Muslim woman.

  Joyti understood her husband’s position. Her acceptance of Saima had not been without its own challenges. The stereotypical depiction of Muslim women and their culture was not confined to white society.

  Joyti held Aaron’s hand a little tighter.

  He was innocent, a beautiful product of Harry and Saima’s relationship. And for her, all the more beautiful for looking just like her son. Being with Aaron brought back wonderful memories of Harry as a child.

  Joyti started to cry and wiped her face immediately, not wanting Aaron to see.

  Standing outside her home, she felt more afraid than ever.

  ‘Grandma, you live here?’ said Aaron, letting go of her hand, once again focusing on the tractor he was sitting on.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and lifted the bag Harry had left her, unzipping it to find a bottle of children’s sunscreen inside. She was grateful they were far enough away from City Park that the ash cloud from the blast was absent from the sky. She squirted some cream on to her hand and rubbed it into Aaron’s face, then his arms. He didn’t struggle but did close his eyes.

  She stared at him, blinking hard, trying to regain her composure.

  Ranjit could not hate Aaron, could he?

  What kind of a man would that make him?

  In truth, she was afraid of the answer to that question.

  ‘Grandma, this your tractor?’ asked Aaron, grabbing the steering wheel and making driving sounds.

  Just like Harry, she thought. As a child, he would sit in Ranjit’s car doing the same thing.

  She nodded and stroked his sweaty head, the heat unforgiving. She needed to get Aaron inside. Sitting out here in thirty-plus temperatures wouldn’t do.

  ‘My daddy coming back? He going to drive it?’ said Aaron.

  Another nod of her head. Another stroke of his clammy hair.

  Joyti gritted her teeth, the contempt she felt for her husband’s stubborn position suddenly cold and venomous.

  Aaron was his grandchild also. Surely he could not vent his rage on a child? If he did, Joyti would not tolerate it.

  She looked up at her home.

  Four walls and a roof.

  Not a home.

  Joyti hadn’t felt like anywhere had been a true home since they had sold their corner shop and the flat they had lived in above it. They’d moved in here with Ronnie not long after. This place, whilst luxurious, felt cold without any memories of Harry.

  A mother was incomplete without her children, that was how she felt. No matter what he had done. She was proud of him, always had been.

  In some respects, even when Harry had chosen Saima over his family, deep down a spark of warmth had comforted her. He had chosen love over hatred. What mother could not be proud of a son making such a difficult choice? To simply judge a person on who they were.

  Joyti looked at Aaron.

  She leaned down and kissed him dozens of times until he recoiled, then picked him up, ignoring his cries to be left on the tractor.

  ‘Ice cream inside,’ she said, knowing exactly which buttons to push.

  ‘Magnum?’ he said, eyes wide, smile broad.

  She nodded.

  ‘I don’t like white one.’

  ‘I have chocolate,’ she said, carrying him towards the front door.

  ‘I have two, Grandma?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At home, Mummy gives me two.’

  ‘No she doesn’t,’ she said, squeezing his chubby cheeks.

  Inside, Joyti took Aaron into the kitchen, sat him down and got a Magnum ice cream.

  ‘No, I open it!’

  She nodded and handed it over, unopened, sitting beside him.

  Footsteps coming down the hallway startled her. Ranjit’s shoes clicked on granite tiles. Joyti’s heart began hammering, sweat prickled her temple. Her chest felt tight and a momentary light-headedness afflicted her mind.

  She watched as Aaron bit into his ice cream, the sound of smooth chocolate breaking as Ranjit strode commandingly into the kitchen, chest stuck out, long hair loose down his back. He had learned of the blast and made his own assumptions, laying the blame firmly where it felt comfortable for him.

  ‘Joyti! Have you been watching the news? Have you seen what these bastard Muslims have done now?’

  TWELVE

  Queensbury Tunnel.

  This was Ronnie’s domain. How in hell did the Home Secretary know about the place where Harry’s brother buried the bodies?

  Ronnie controlled the supply and distribution of heroin in a city only second to Greater London for its drug problem. Ronnie insisted he supplied only a clean product and claimed to be helping rid the city of dealers who cut the heroin with any old crap in the interests of making more money. Clean heroin, he said, was no more toxic than alcohol.

  Harry hadn’t given up the fight to bring his brother over to the right side of the law, but it was a long struggle.

  He parked near the tunnel, BBC Five Live reporting from the ‘Bradford terrorist attack’ on the radio. He heard that Bradford City Football Club had been evacuated where Tariq had been, opening the new academy that encouraged young players from ethnic minorities to enter the game. The news report said the Home Secretary was currently en route back to Whitehall.

  No he bloody wasn’t.

  Harry’s brain couldn’t handle any more stress right now.

  How did Tariq know about this place?

  Was he working with Ronnie, too? Harry pushed the thought from his mind. Tariq was the Home Secretary, of course he wasn’t working with Ronnie. He was not though just a cabinet minister. Before entering politics, Tariq had been in the army, in an elite special forces gr
oup, no less. There were rumours that he had also been part of a covert group whose very existence was nothing more than speculation.

  Eyes closed, hands gripping the steering wheel, he wondered if Tariq and his associates had ventured into the tunnel and found the bodies of the past.

  The weapons hidden deep inside.

  The secrets which could ruin them both.

  Harry didn’t like helping Ronnie out from time to time but blood ran thicker than water.

  Harry exited his car, hurried to the boot and took off his expensive Rolex, shoving it in his laptop bag; the tunnel was no place for it.

  As he looked down towards the entrance, it hit him. There was only one way Tariq Islam could know about this place. He’d been wary of Harry and his methods since a high-profile case threw them together. Tariq must have had him watched.

  Queensbury Tunnel was once a busy thoroughfare for passenger trains between the city and Halifax. The Highways Agency had been planning to fill it with concrete and consign it to the history books until a private investor had purchased it for a bargain price. Ronnie.

  He used it to remind those bastards who dared cross him just what the entrance to hell felt like.

  Dark.

  Infested.

  Forgotten.

  Harry hurried down the steep, parched embankment, barren shrubs scratching at his naked arms. The city needed rainfall, especially today, he thought, remembering the fires raging in City Park. He jumped into the canyon, grateful for the shade.

  Pulling a rusted, creaking doorway aside, Harry saw Tariq Islam with a torch on the ground pointing towards the concrete ceiling.

  No suit and tie today. Still smart, though: white shirt, dark jeans. That shirt was too clean for this tunnel. Harry suspected Tariq never got his hands dirty. Not any more.

  Harry left the door ajar, stepped inside and took up his place opposite Tariq, hands in pockets, waiting.

  ‘Lots of questions, no doubt,’ said Tariq.

  He didn’t reply. He didn’t trust his voice not to betray how uneasy he felt.

  ‘What needs to happen now, Harry, are a series of fast, extremely pressurized decisions which might shape the future of this city as well as the next decade’s foreign policy and civil liberty programme.’

  Harry raised his hand to silence Tariq. Then he pointed deep inside the tunnel where there was nothing but darkness.

  ‘You know this isn’t the place for politics. When you walk through that door’ – Harry nodded towards the entrance – ‘everything is off the record.’

  Tariq nodded, arms folded across his chest now. ‘You want to know how I came to find out about this place?’

  Harry shook his head. ‘It’s obvious. You had me followed.’

  Tariq raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I helped you last year. I did you a massive fucking personal favour. Oh and of course, while I was at it, I got you a career-high poll rating.’

  Tariq chewed his lips, listening intently.

  ‘We had an agreement’ – Harry pointed to Tariq, his voice gaining an edge now – ‘but you couldn’t let it lie, could you? Put one of your team on me and realized one day this place existed. Have a snoop inside, did you? Find anything interesting?’

  Harry’s words were bitter, mostly because he didn’t have a hand to play. Tariq knew everything about him.

  ‘Some brother you have there,’ said Tariq.

  ‘In another life, you two would get along.’

  Tariq nodded. ‘Maybe. Something you said to me before really stuck out. Know what it was?’

  Harry shook his head, waited.

  ‘You said, Bradford isn’t like anywhere else. You’ve got to stay in the shadows, become the city. Understand its energy, the good and the bad …’

  Harry remained motionless, recalling those exact words.

  Tariq continued, quoting him, ‘… and there are some dark times to come, maybe darker than we’ve ever known.’ He paused. ‘Remember that, Harry?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Almost like you were predicting the future.’

  ‘This is Bradford. Its future is not without challenges. You know I had nothing to do with this. I was there with my little boy.’

  Tariq unfolded his arms and stepped a little closer to Harry, blocking some of the light from the torch, silhouetting half his face. ‘Dark times,’ he repeated.

  Harry stared at the one eye he could see, a sense of dread growing. ‘Who the fuck am I speaking to here? The Home Secretary? The ex-special forces commander? Or someone else entirely?’

  This time, when Islam spoke, it sounded altogether like military talk, pure facts, no padding – about as far removed from political speak as it got. ‘One hundred and five mosques, one bomb. Worshippers are afraid now but in a few hours they’ll want to leave, some of them – maybe all. Impossible to contain so many people. The guy with a pregnant wife at home, the daughter with chronically ill parents, they’re going to want to get back to their loved ones. We’ve got, I reckon, three hours before the Muslim community starts to crack. With the best intentions in the world, the imams, the police, the politicians, we can urge for calm but ten thousand people spread across a hundred and five sites? We can’t control that.’

  ‘Why am I here, Tariq?’

  ‘We also have a blast site to contain,’ Tariq continued, as if Harry hadn’t spoken. ‘A city to sweep for secondary devices and, amidst all that, four dickheads who refer to themselves as the chosen ones to locate and set up in a safe house, while troublemakers in Bradford, maybe even vigilante groups, try to compete with security services to track them down.’ He paused, then said, ‘Four dead or a thousand? That’s what this might come down to if we cannot find that bomb and disarm it without the Patriots knowing.’

  Another pause.

  Harry had no idea where this might be going.

  ‘We’ve got a deadline of six a.m. Sunrise.’ Islam checked his watch. ‘About fifteen hours from now. These … Patriots haven’t destroyed this city and pulled off this plot without planning it for months. This might come down to choices we simply cannot make.’

  ‘We?’ said Harry, feeling the chill of the tunnel on his skin.

  ‘Security services.’ Tariq waved his phone at Harry. ‘Twitter,’ he said, shaking his head ruefully. ‘Let me read you some tweets that sum this up.’

  Tariq’s finger scrolled through his feed.

  ‘Let the bomb inside the mosque blow! New national holiday #takebackourcountry.’

  It shouldn’t have bothered Harry. Twitter heroes were cowardly people.

  It did.

  Tariq read another. ‘Find the leaders of Almukhtaroon and make them Saints! #anothermuslimterroristattack.’ He scrolled for more.

  ‘I get it,’ said Harry.

  ‘One more,’ replied Tariq. ‘Far Right brothers and sisters! Our day has arrived. #whiteandproud.’

  Harry put his hand out and lowered the phone in Tariq’s hand.

  Islam backed off, holding Harry’s gaze. ‘What happens if the security services find these four leaders of Almukhtaroon? They have no cards to play. The government does not negotiate with terrorists and that policy will not change simply because thousands of lives are at risk. There are always lives at risk. Either we will get them into safe custody and then pray we’re able to disarm the bomb, or we somehow negotiate a truce with the Patriots. If the bomb blows, we will have the start of a new crisis in this country. It could be a generation of nutters born from those who lost loved ones in this siege or a massive surge in popularity for the Far Right who will play on these fears. Either way, we lose.’

  Harry knew Tariq was right.

  Lose–lose.

  With sudden clarity, Harry knew what was coming.

  ‘There is one more option,’ said Tariq.

  Harry stepped back, leaning against the cold wall of the tunnel, a welcome distraction from the fear burning in his mind.

  ‘If it does come down to the choice between four li
ves and thousands of lives, I want to be able to make that call, off the record. I need Almukhtaroon in my custody. To do that, I need someone to find them for me.’

  THIRTEEN

  Saima was standing by the window in the foyer of the Mehraj mosque. From here she could see the ash as it continued to bloom into the sky from City Park, emergency services all around as fires burned in the distance. It looked like a war zone.

  Saima continued to tap at her mobile. Joyti wasn’t answering.

  Why not?

  Had something happened? She tried to phone Harry but his phone went straight to voicemail. Outraged, she kicked her foot against the base of the window.

  Saima had managed to speak to her sister, who thankfully was not inside a mosque. They had shared an awkward conversation about whether Nadia should inform Saima’s parents about her predicament. Their parents had moved to Pakistan soon after Saima had married Harry. That had always been their plan but had been expedited by Saima’s decision. The cultural shame, the damnation from the community. Saima had ordered Nadia not to inform their parents. She didn’t need the added drama today of all days.

  She’d left the grand hall, preferring to watch what was happening outside. Inside, a search was under way, the men taking control because clearly women couldn’t find a bomb.

  Almost as worrying, dissent was rising. They all wanted to get out of this alive and unharmed. Yet all hundred and five mosques across Bradford would not stand together as one for long. In here, divisions were already forming. Saima heard people whispering about making a break for it.

  Out the window she could see the one thing that might stop them. Dozens of officers creating a cordon around the mosque.

  Somehow, amid all this chaos, she felt totally alone in the world.

  She turned away from the window and glanced at the battery life on her phone: 33 per cent. She couldn’t keep trying to call her mother-in-law. She couldn’t just stand here, either.

  Screw it, she was just as good as anybody else at searching.

  Those men would accept her help whether they liked it or not.

  FOURTEEN