by Saima Mir
‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Elyas.
‘It was exactly like that. There’s something else going on here, mate.’
Elyas already knew meeting at the funeral wasn’t a good idea, either for his son or the boy’s mother, but nothing about his relationship with Jia had ever been straightforward. He wondered if that was what had kept him addicted to her for so long. He was no different to a junkie, hungry for the next fix, willing to blur the lines of right and wrong to get it. Unwilling to confront his shame, he brushed the thought aside. Age had never stopped a grown man making a bad choice. Work was best. News was salvation. Work was where he made his best decisions. ‘So, what else do we know about the Jirga?’ he asked, picking up a copy of the day’s paper and handing it to John. Akbar Khan’s face was splashed across the front page, the headline ‘Gangland Assassination’ above it.
John shook his head. ‘Things are bad,’ he said. ‘They’re worse than when we first started. Everything has gone – the big companies have left, unemployment is high, and hardly anyone who goes away to university comes back. The city has been drained of hope. My contacts tell me the police have been after Akbar Khan for years. They know about the Jirga, about the drug runs, the money laundering, the prostitution, the tax fraud – you name it, they know it. But the CPS just can’t seem to make it stick. People whisper and gossip but when it comes to giving evidence, no one comes forward, stories don’t corroborate and reports go missing.’
‘People are that afraid?’ said Elyas.
‘They’re not afraid of him, they respect him.’
Elyas was surprised by his answer. Things had become so bad that criminals were now among the highly respected in society? He was so steeped in privilege that he hadn’t seen it coming.
John watched his old friend grappling with what he was learning. He had always admired Elyas’s drive. It was the kind of drive that required commitment, the kind that got you kicked in the teeth. Repeatedly. But that had never stopped Elyas. It had been evident the first time they met. They were at college and Elyas had just narrowly escaped a beating from a group of rival university students over a long since forgotten political discussion. John had dragged Elyas to the pub to escape. Once there, Elyas had ceremoniously suggested they write down their plans for the next ten years. John had thought it a bit weird but agreed. ‘The back of a stained beer mat is probably the best place for my plans,’ he’d told his new friend. Over the years, Elyas had crossed off every single one of his goals, and hung the mat in his study. John hadn’t. He now used his as a coaster on his desk ‘as a reminder that plans are for losers’, he told Elyas.
John was genuinely pleased for his friend and glad that success had not changed him. To Elyas, achievements were just road markers that allowed him to feel worthy. John knew this – and where his old friend’s demons lived. Elyas’s career trajectory had been inversely proportional to his personal life. John, on the other hand, had a job he liked and lived with the woman he loved, who loved him back. The equations of life were balanced.
‘Do you think Jia knows the full extent of her father’s criminal activities?’ John asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Elyas said. ‘They were close. But by the time she and I split up there was a lot of bad blood. I think it was more from her than from him.’ Jia would talk to Elyas about her father’s business from time to time, but only in general terms. She had never been comfortable on the subject.
They continued looking through the archives, separating out anything they thought useful.
‘This is from the night Bazigh Khan’s wife died,’ said John, handing Elyas a cutting. It was a photograph, black and white, of a young man being pressed against a wall by two policemen, his hands behind his back, his face turned to the camera, expressionless, emptied of feeling. It showed his children looking on, their faces bereft, one clutching a soft rabbit, Sanam Khan kneeling beside them, her dupatta wrapped around her head tight, her figure blurred as if she was moving when the camera clicked. Her husband was standing next to her, his eyes locked upon his brother. Elyas wanted to take the picture to Jia and ask her about it, but he knew it would be pointless.
‘Here’s what we’ve got so far about last night…’ John said, picking up his battered old notebook and squinting as he tried to make sense of his shorthand. ‘What does that word say?’ He pointed to one of the squiggles on the page. ‘Oh yeah, I remember now. A big drugs shipment was supposed to come in last night. The biggest that the city has seen in a long time…’
‘Where did you hear that? Not from official police channels, surely?’ said Elyas. He was impressed at John’s work.
‘I have my sources,’ John replied. ‘You’re not the only award-winning reporter here, you know.’
‘Seriously?’
‘It’s all over the community website,’ said John. ‘A guy called Andrzej Nowak was out celebrating with a group of his men last night. I’m told he’s been under police surveillance for a while. They’re not sure what he’s doing here but they know it’s not to do charity work for Islamic Relief. Your man Ben Khan was also seen at this gathering with some girl, probably his girlfriend…’
John knew Elyas thought of Benyamin Khan as a little brother. What he had to say next was difficult. ‘Apparently Ben was trying to steal Nowak’s drugs consignment. Maybe he was trying to impress his father, maybe he was just doing it for a lark, who knows. The drugs were in the guy’s car, so he stole the car.’ He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully, his eyes on Elyas, watching for a sign of when to stop. ‘The word is that the Brotherhood have Benyamin Khan. Andrzej Nowak is not known for his…mild-mannered ways. And if they do have him, and he’s alive…from what I hear, he’ll be praying that he wasn’t.’
CHAPTER 20
‘Yes, John, I’ll be careful,’ Elyas said as he left the car park. Just a day into management and he hadn’t been able to hack it, watching reporters leave the newsroom to find stories as he sat behind a desk and read reports and looked at budgets. He couldn’t do it. He’d collected his keys and left.
John was better at that stuff and should have got the job in the first place. ‘Look, I’ll call you as soon as I know anything,’ Elyas said, not letting John speak in case he told him to stop being stupid and head back. Which would have been a reasonable demand. Elyas ended the call and dropped the phone on the passenger seat.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Benyamin.
Elyas had heard enough about the Brotherhood now to know what they were capable of. A cold chill ran down his spine at the thought of them. He straightened his shoulders, leaning back in the seat; he needed to stay focused if he was to be of any help to Jia.
It had been years since he’d driven through the city. It was a set of memories to him, memories filled at first with sunny days, walking through town eating bags of salty chips from the shop on the corner of Moonbridge Road, and later with dark and rain-soaked days, collar pulled up and battling through the wind to catch the bus home. He couldn’t say exactly when the warm and bright had turned to cold and gloomy, but it was then that he had made the decision to leave. Today, as he drove through the same old streets with the same grey skies overhead, past the broken windows and peeling paintwork of the stone buildings, few signs of the city’s better days remained.
His time here had been mixed, but Elyas still loved this city. To him, she was a grand old lady who’d enjoyed her time in the sun, but had burned too brightly and faded all too fast. During her glory days in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, her beauty and potential drew traders from far and wide. With the merchants came lucrative deals and soon mills of honey-coloured stone began to spring up against the green landscape. Thousands of workers followed, crossing continents in the hope that some of her success would rub off on them. She became the wool capital of the world, and the district of Hanover was the jewel in her crown, home to her courtiers, who built huge houses for their families.
But then the textile indus
try moved overseas, where production was cheaper, and the mills that had once been filled with looms, humming love songs to her bounty, stood empty. As her charms faded, so did her suitors. The merchants fled when the money dried up, taking their families with them, leaving behind only high ceilings, covings and mouldings. Neighbourhoods dropped out of favour, prices fell. Immigrants and factory workers moved into the opulent Victorian houses. The multiple floors, numerous bedrooms and large living spaces made them perfect for the extended family system of the city’s South Asian communities.
It was to one of the old mills that Benyamin had been taken, rumour had it. Driving to it through the city meant taking a refresher course in clutch control, and as the car engine revved at the traffic lights on top of another steep hill, Elyas realised he had missed driving through this quiet beauty.
He arrived at the mill to find it cordoned off, two policemen patrolling the perimeter. He parked up and jumped out, taking the road in his wide stride as he walked towards them. ‘What’s going on, officer, if you don’t mind my asking?’ he said.
‘There was a nasty incident ’ere last night,’ the policeman replied, his accent white working class, but his tone warmer than expected. ‘From press, I s’pose,’ he added, watching as Elyas pulled a notebook from his pocket.
‘Mind if I look around?’ said Elyas.
‘Knock yourself out, mate. Not past the cordon, obviously. The press officer is on her way if you’re looking for information – if you are, you know, press, like. Because if you were…I’d tell ya to ask in that shop over there.’ He pointed at a minimart across the road. Elyas thanked him and headed over to it.
Inside, an old man at the counter was chatting with an equally antiquated fellow behind it. Deep in conversation, they were oblivious to the arrival of new customers. Elyas looked around at the shelves. They were half empty except for crisps and chocolate, bread, booze and dust. A musty smell permeated the air, almost as if emanating from the old men, dense and pungent. Elyas lurked behind the shelves, eavesdropping on their chatter. He picked up a faded bar of chocolate. They were talking in heavy dialect, one he’d heard before but wasn’t fluent in. The shopkeeper noticed him loitering. He used the words ‘lamba’, ‘gora’… They were talking about him as though he was white.
‘Just this, please,’ Elyas said, coming forward and handing over his money. The old man fumbled in the cash register before giving change. Elyas thanked him. ‘Do you know why the police are here, Uncle?’
The shopkeeper shook his head vigorously, his eyes shut tight. ‘I no know what happened,’ he said in a thick accent. Elyas nodded and thanked him again, this time in Urdu.
‘You speak Urdu? Where you from? You Pakistani? You no look Pakistani,’ he said.
‘Yes, I am. Well, my grandfather was. He’s Pathan,’ Elyas replied.
The shopkeeper’s face lit up. ‘OK! You wait. Wait, OK?’ he said, picking up his phone. The man dialled a number and spoke to someone on the other end, then held out the phone. ‘Here, speak to my son, he will tell you everything,’ he said.
Elyas took the battered old Nokia and put it to his ear. The warmth of one’s own kith and kin, and their need to pass on what they knew, never failed to inspire him. ‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Bloody drug dealers, in’t it!’ said a heavy voice on the other end. ‘They moved in couple o’ weeks back. Rented some storage units. Said they were selling mineral water. Tried to give me some.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said no thanks! Best steer well clear of them Eastern Europeans. Two weeks after they moved in and they’re driving round in flashy cars. I knew it were dodgy. I mean, who sells water and makes enough for a Lambo? Then water board came out, sayin’ summat about a water leak. Sayin’ we usin’ too much of it. Think they moved premises after that, kept the units for storing their cars.’
The shopkeeper’s son spoke fast, making it difficult for Elyas to keep up. As he listened, he gauged the man was as dodgy as they came in this city, but everyone deserved to be heard. Elyas had a knack for getting people to open up. He could get them to reveal things in private conversations, with cameras pointed at them and down phone lines. You just had to care enough to listen.
Malala Food Stores was the kind of establishment that shouted money laundering: bare shelves, tins past their sell-by date, pins and needles in little packets, and plastic toys that looked straight out of the eighties, all signs that this was some kind of front. Experience told Elyas that the shopkeeper’s son was no stranger to the police. That’s why he wasn’t at the premises today, and why his fumbling old man was working the cash register.
‘You know Akbar Khan?’ the young man asked. ‘I work for ’im. I told ’im what these scum were doin’. Said we need to clean ’em out!’
‘And Ben Khan? Do you know what happened to him?’ Elyas asked. No reply. He waited. A less experienced man would have interjected but Elyas understood how to draw answers out of people by leaving a silence hanging. The void seemed unending but Elyas was patient, and then, ‘Hello? You still there?’
‘Yeah, I’m still here,’ came the voice. More silence. And then, it happened. When he finally started talking, his words were drained of their bravado and street kid arrogance. He spoke for quite a while, his voice low, so that Elyas had to press his ear to the phone, listening hard, swallowing every word. When the son hung up, he handed the mobile phone back to the shopkeeper.
‘Are you OK?’ the old man asked in Urdu. ‘You look even paler than when you came in.’
Elyas smiled weakly and thanked the old man for his help and his concern. Once safely in his car, he scrolled through his phone for Jia’s number. He held the phone tightly in the palm of his hand, staring at it, his heart ready to jump out of his mouth. He had to pass on what he knew. But it had pained him to hear it himself – how would he tell her?
The young man on the phone had been quite sure about what had been done to Benyamin last night. ‘I couldn’t get hold of Idris so I called Phats – he does security for the Khans – told ’im where Ben Khan was,’ he’d said. ‘But I couldn’t bring myself to tell ’im all of it. Tauba! I ain’t slept all night since I heard his screams, bro!’
‘What happened?’
‘They took him to the parking lot by the storage units. I saw them with my own eyes. That Brotherhood, if you do ’em wrong, they want you to suffer as a warning t’rest of us…’ He took a long breath. His voice trembled. ‘He’s a good kid, our Ben. Looks out for my dad. What they did to him was not human, man… I heard his screams… They just wouldn’t stop… They just kept revvin’ up those cars, man. Revvin’ ’em up and parking those fuckers on him. Reckon they only stopped cos they heard the Khan had got wind of what was goin’ on. They were gone before anyone showed up.’
CHAPTER 21
Jia emerged from the house to find Michael waiting for her at the bottom of the stone steps. He was empty-handed, his phone tucked away in his jacket pocket. He’d been admiring the valleys from this vantage point. The air was clean and crisp, filled with the smell of freshly cut grass. Jia looked at the grounds of her father’s house, the pathway weeded clean, the neat edges of the lawn. The wedding had left none of its mark thanks to the Khan’s men. The family never left business unfinished.
She had spent the rest of the morning handling the details of death. The post-mortem had been expedited, thanks to Bazigh Khan. He had pulled strings and ensured that the process would be completed quickly; even in death, Akbar Khan came first. The coroner’s office was not as easily persuaded. Its bureaucracy was as a heavy ship, difficult to change direction once its course was set, so the inquest date was in a few weeks. Men and women who deal with death on a daily basis do not fear much, and so bribery was out of the question. That said, the coroner was a fair man and had agreed to issue an interim death certificate so that the burial could take place within the three days recommended under Islamic law. It wasn’t an unusual request in this city.
Michael held the door of the Range Rover open, ready for Jia to take her seat. The Bentley was in the police compound, being examined for evidence. They were on their way to meet her father’s men. The car’s music system began playing old Rafi songs as the engine turned. Michael moved to turn them off but she stopped him, hoping her father’s favourite tunes would ease her discomfort. The old memories kept on coming.
Row upon row of small terraced houses came into sight, then the roads widened to open green fields. The landscape brought a mix of melancholy and nostalgia. With its dry-stone walls and winding roads, its green and grey and brown countryside, its cold, crisp air, this would always be home to Jia. And though the hills and valleys merged with ease, she knew that people who lived here stood apart.
It was an apartness that had begun when men like her father had crossed sea and land to come here in search of a better life. Her father. The thought of him brought a sudden, sharp shot of sadness, but she had no time to indulge the emotion and she knocked it back.
She thought of the tangas and taxis and ships and planes carrying their passengers from rural parts of sixties Pakistan. They had settled slowly, some marrying here and others ‘back home’, and their families had grown. Their sons and daughters, the next generation, were born and raised in the city, and schooled in places that would later be described as ‘enclaves’. They’d worried they’d lose their heritage, their language, their way. But that hadn’t happened.
Instead, the next generation of children had become something else, something caught between the land of their heritage and the place of their birth. Something that would find more acceptance in the village of their forefathers than in the green fields of the county where they were born. Cocky and confident, the boys held on to tribal divisions, speaking of them with pride in their own form of patois. Using the same mash-up of English and Punjabi, Pashto or Mirpuri, and dressed in the vibrant pinks and parrot greens belonging to the bright shine of the Indian sub-continent, the girls were caught in an even bigger crossfire. The East gave them grace, the West gave them freedom. And of course they wanted both. They were proud to call themselves Pakistani, wearing the cricket shirts and flying the flag of the crescent moon on Eid, but their mindset belonged to the land where they were born.
