My stomach rumbled at the thought of drinking on empty. Once again, my choice of meal had been poor. I’d bent two knives trying to cut through the steak, so I gave up. The potatoes were too squishy, so I left those. The vegetables I didn’t touch, because they were vegetables.
‘Here,’ Idris said, handing me my drink, a bag of crisps, and some sort of health bar. ‘Figured you might be hungry,’ he said, taking a seat opposite me.
‘The hell is this?’ I said, holding up the health bar, all raisins and berries.
‘You don’t want it?’ he said. ‘I’ll have it.’
‘No. I’ll have it,’ I said, taking a bite out of it. ‘So, what’s new?’ I asked, through a mouthful.
‘Honestly, I needed to get out of Hounslow. That place is starting to depress me.’
‘Yeah, it’s not what it used to be. Lost some of its charm.’ I split open the bag of crisps longways and nodded at Idris to help himself. He shook his head. ‘Gone are the days when you could sort out shit with a good scrap. Now it’s all blades and shooters.’
‘It’s worse than that, Jay.’
‘Drugs?’ I nodded. Idris worked for the Met’s Drugs Directorate; he was basically a Narc. It was a role that had taken its toll on him. ‘Fucking junkies are taking over Hounslow.’
‘Worse than that, Jay.’ Idris took a sip and watched me over the rim. It was starting to become clear that he hadn’t just flown over to work on his tan.
‘What’s happened, Idris?’ I said, shifting my drink from one spot to another for no apparent reason.
‘I’ve been meaning to chat to you, but I couldn’t get hold of you at home. You could’ve mentioned that you were flying off on holiday.’ Idris took his time clearing his throat. ‘So when your mum called, I thought, I’m due time off work, so why not. I’ll fly over.’
Stalling…
‘What’s happened, Idris?’ I asked, again.
He took a sip of his drink, and dropped his gaze. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and evenly and eventually, he asked, ‘The name Imran Siddiqui mean anything to you?’
I sat back in my chair and measured the question. Yeah, that name meant something to me, but I wasn’t quite sure what. Imran, or Imy as I knew him, used to knock about with this stoner, Shaz, and on occasion when I was juggling, they’d pick up off me at the back of the Homebase car park, Isleworth. Some shit-talk and that was it, everyone on their merry way. Once I quit dealing, I didn’t see much of either of them.
Until one day Imy tried to fucking assassinate me.
From what little I found out, Imran Siddiqui was a sleeper agent for the terrorist cell, Ghurfat-al-Mudarris, and when said terrorist cell slapped a fatwa on my head, it was on him to carry it out. He couldn’t go through with it, though. Living in London, in Hounslow, had softened him, I guess. The fuck do I know!? All I know is that I was looking down the barrel of a gun and then I wasn’t.
‘What about him?’ I asked, drained all of a sudden. All that optimism dissipated out of me.
‘Do you know him?’ Idris said, one fucking word at a time, like I was a child.
‘I’ve seen him around,’ I shrugged. ‘Way back when, when I was hustling, he used to pick up a little weed off me… You going to tell me what’s on your mind, Idris?’
‘You haven’t seen him since?’
I wasn’t about to give it up that easily.
‘Yeah, knocking around town, probably. Fuck, man, what’s with the questions?’
‘He got married… Last week.’
I shrugged. ‘Yeah?’ The lights dimmed above me as the DJ took his place behind the booth, a ripple of excitement from the few early ravers. ‘Good for him,’ I said. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
The DJ spun his first track, a Christmas classic remixed with a jaunty Euro-trash beat. Idris leaned in over the table so he could be heard over the music. I didn’t know what he was going to say but I had a feeling I didn’t want to hear it. I moved back even further in my seat and crossed my arms as I willed my knee to stop hammering under the table. He inclined with his head for me to join him at the middle of the table. I sighed, leaned in and met him there, our foreheads almost touching.
‘Ten days ago, there was an attack at his wedding reception,’ he said. ‘A bomb went off,’ he fucking said.
Chapter 2
Imran Siddiqui (Imy)
I used to have this itch. I’d scratch it and it would appear elsewhere. I’d scratch there. Then somewhere else. It would leave me with scrapes and grazes all over my head and body. At times I would break skin and bleed. It was a condition brought on by stress. Brought on by knowing with certainty that one day my past would catch up with me and destroy all those that I cared about.
I no longer have that itch. I no longer have that stress. My past caught up with me.
His name was Rafi Kabir, and at ten years old he was a child desperately trying to be a man. He reminded me of myself at that age, dripping in poison and ready to infect the whole world for a belief shared by millions but no longer by me. From the first time that I’d set eyes on him, I knew that he had the will to one day achieve what I never could.
I’d only spent a short time in his company, but Rafi often crossed my mind. The cocksure smile, the bravado, as though, at ten, he had it all worked out. Spitting out words with raw intention, the vicious promise to kill for his people, when at that age, his people should have been running around a playground, and not a battlefield.
But that’s not how he was brought up. He was a product of his environment. His father, his brother and his mother, all had a part to play in polluting an innocent mind with sick thoughts.
I had walked away from him, desperately relieved that he would never cross my path again, and I would never again have to look at the hatred in his eyes.
Life has a way about it, though.
An uninvited guest at my wedding. Standing beside my son, Jack, my wife, Stephanie, and my Khala. Waiting, just waiting for the right moment for me to notice him, acknowledge him. With guests in my ear, hands out for me to shake, and pats on my back, I noticed him.
I noticed the detonator, too big in his small hands.
My eyes moved hungrily over my family, one last time. I was too far away to save them but close enough to see the smiles on their faces. They were the happiest I had ever seen.
It’s how I would remember them.
My Khala was like a mother to me. I buried her the day after she’d been killed. As a Muslim, it had to be that way. Then I waited ten days locked away at home, lying on my side, staring through a small gap in the curtains as it shifted continuously from darkness to light to darkness. I ignored the knocks on the door, the phone calls and the well-wishers, and mourned them just as I had once mourned my parents. But I was older now, stronger, no longer a boy. And I had nothing or nobody left to lose.
On the tenth day, I put on the same black tie and suit and buried Stephanie, my wife only for a day, and Jack, my son. He would have turned six that day. We’d planned to celebrate on the beach in the Maldives, a joint celebration of our marriage, his birthday, and a future that I had been foolish to present to them. I had ripped the tickets into the smallest of shreds and then Sellotaped them back together and placed them in the inside pocket of my suit jacket.
I stood alone at the side of the graves, the rest of the mourners stood away on the other side. To them I was damaged, a disease, someone to steal glances at and blame. Stephanie’s mother and father would have stood by my side, but they too had been murdered on our wedding day.
Somebody, I don’t know who, had hired out an old tavern for the wake. And somebody, I don’t know who, said a few words. The mourners, who had been guests at our wedding, sat and listened in grim silence, surrounded with cheap Christmas decorations, knowing how close they themselves had come to death. They drank, they ate, they whispered, they stared. I felt the blame directed at me and accepted every judgement. They walked away, leaving me on my own w
ith ringing messages of consolation and promises of support. It meant nothing to me. They meant nothing to me. I’d never see them again.
Last to leave, I walked out of the tavern and into the early evening darkness that the winter brings. My Prius sat alone in the small car park, a thin layer of snow melting away as the weather changed to a cold rain.
I unlocked the car and lifted the boot. From under the spare tyre I picked up a roll of plastic food bags, a handful of elastic bands, and a Glock .40-calibre handgun and suppressor. I pushed the boot shut and sat in my car, placing the items on the driver’s seat. I started the car and as I waited for it to warm up I felt a presence outside.
My hand reached across and instinctively I gripped the cold steel barrel of my gun and turned to look outside my window. A figure wrapped up in a black puffa and a woolly Raiders hat that I recognised, ambled slowly and uneasily towards me, each step more tentative than his last. I dropped the gun on the seat and placed my hands on my lap.
Shaz was the only other person left in this world that I cared about. But the cards had been dealt and turned over and he had walked away from my life without a goodbye. Because of who I was. Because of what I had brought into his life.
We watched each other for a moment through the driver’s side window, replaying the same events in our minds. I had once hurt him and I hadn’t seen him since. I blinked away the memory and slid down the window.
‘I’m… I’m so sorry.’ He said the words I should have said to him a long time ago.
I took my eyes away from him and stared straight ahead at the Christmas lights running along the roof of the tavern.
‘Steph… Jack… Khala… I don’t know what to say… I’m sorry.’
I turned back to him. His teeth chattered and his body visibly shook from the cold or from facing me again. He looked at me for a response and I wanted to give him one. I wanted to get out of the car, put my arm around him and buy him a drink. I wanted to hear him regale me with the first world problems that always seemed to bother him. I wanted to hear his laughter. I wanted to hold him.
Instead, I nodded blankly.
‘Anything I can do?’ He shrugged softly.
I shook my head.
‘I’ve moved away.’ Shaz hesitated. I didn’t blame him for not telling me where. I had once brought hell to his doorstep.
‘It’s okay,’ I said.
Shaz looked embarrassed at what our friendship had become. He shifted his eyes away from mine and they landed on the passenger seat, on the roll of plastic food bags, the elastic bands, before resting on the handgun and suppressor. He blinked as though trying to find the common factor between the items. He couldn’t. How could he?
I watched him jerk back, as though he had just been pulled back from stepping onto a busy road. His eyes were wide, wild, worried, expressing what words could not.
‘I have to go,’ I said.
I slid the window up, my eyes not leaving his, and shifted the gear into D and drove away. In my rear-view mirror, past Jack’s car seat, I watched Shaz get smaller and smaller until he disappeared out of my life.
Chapter 3
Jay
‘Jay,’ Idris called. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
Imy got married? There was an attack? A bomb went off? Yeah, I fucking heard him.
Not able to bring words to my lips, I nodded and snatched my eyes away from his. Over Idris’ shoulder, a gaggle of giggling girls moved onto the dance floor. A group of three lads followed, all tight jeans and tight T-shirts and perfect glow-in-the-dark teeth. They stood at a safe distance, eyes set on the girls as they coolly nodded their heads to the bass. In an effort to impress, one of them decided to break the monotony and bust a move. His body moved too fast to the music as he drew invisible shapes with his hands. Too soon, I thought, bide your time, mate.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything, Jay?’
‘Is he dead?’ I asked.
Idris shook his head. ‘No… But there were fatalities.’
I nodded again, my eyes still over his shoulder. The over-enthusiastic dancer had peeled away from the group and shimmied closer to the girls. His friends watched and laughed on as though they were used to such an audacious move.
‘Who?’ I said.
‘Imran lost his wife and son… He lost his Khala… He lost his mother- and father-in-law.’ He held up an open hand. ‘Five fatalities. Six including the bomber. And a whole lot of guests were left with life-changing injuries.’
I nodded and kept nodding. The disco dancer had made himself a sixth toe, bang in the middle of the group of girls. He carried a huge smile, lighting up his face as the girls laughed and danced around him. I wondered what his biggest problem was. If he had any. I wondered if he would continue to live the rest of his life as free and happy as he was at that moment.
‘How?’ I said, not yet able to form any more than one-word responses.
Idris shook his head again, this time sadly, and took his time telling me. ‘The bomber. His name was Rafi Kabir. He was ten fucking years old.’
I blinked and moved my eyes from the dance floor and they landed on the traffic light disco lights at the foot of the DJ booth. I watched them flash from red to blue to green. Red to blue to green. Red… Blue… Green. I focused on them until they were burning a hole in my eyes.
‘Jay,’ Idris said, putting a hand on my arm. I turned to him, the colours in my eyes moving with me. The bass thumping through my heart. ‘You okay?’ I nodded. He wrongly took it as a sign to continue. ‘Rafi walked into Osterley Park Hotel with an explosives vest strapped to his chest under his sherwani. He detonated at the head table where they all sat.’
‘But not Imy.’
‘No.’ Idris narrowed his eyes, picking up that I called him Imy, when I had told him I didn’t know him all that well. ‘Not Imran. He was at the other side of the hall, but he witnessed it.’
I let it sink in. I tried to visualise it. I couldn’t. But I knew what it meant. Imy suffered a punishment worse than death.
‘They only got married that morning. Less than a day they were husband and wife!’
‘Yeah, alright, Idris.’ I didn’t need to know anymore. I stood up. ‘I’m stepping out for a cigarette.’
I moved away from Idris with my name on his lips. I ignored him and walked through the half-empty dance floor in the straightest of lines, past the happy, and out of the bar into reception. The receptionist, a friend and colleague of my mum, said something to me, like a joke, something funny about my shirt, I can’t be sure. I laughed politely without catching her eye and walked out to the pool.
I located my lounger and sat down heavily on it. The humidity, still strong at that time of the night, strangling me. I watched my cigarette shake in my hands all the way to my lips. I sparked up. The swimming pool was empty and blue and still and perfect. I wanted nothing more than to jump in. See how long I could hold my fucking breath for.
I took a long pull of my cigarette, not realising that I had smoked it down to the butt. The cherry was gently burning my finger tip. I let it burn.
Idris was walking towards me, drinks in hand, as if we could continue with this fucking evening. As if I would finally tell him what my life had become.
I wished I could.
He placed the drinks on the plastic table and pulled up a plastic chair and sat down beside me. I stubbed my cigarette out and slipped out another.
‘Rafi Kabir was reported missing from his home in Blackburn by his parents eight months ago,’ Idris continued, when all I wanted was for him to shut the fuck up. ‘Did you not hear about it?’
I shook my head. A missing brown kid was never going to make any kind of waves in the news. The media is selective as fuck.
‘The attack has made front-page news,’ Idris said, as if crawling through my brain. ‘The first few days, the country’s media set up shop out on the Great West Road just outside Osterley Park Hotel. There were protesters from the left, from the fucking right
. Gangs of Muslims from Luton turned up. Faces obscured with scarves. It kicked off, Jay! Fights and riots! The Four Pills pub and that Indian restaurant next to the hotel was smashed up and looted. Two stabbings and a fuckload of arrests.’ Idris took a breath as I held mine. ‘All because this kid decided to express his hatred in the most violent way possible, right in the middle of a wedding reception between a Muslim boy and a Christian girl.’ Idris rinsed off his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘The press, as you can imagine, lapped it up.’
Yeah, I can imagine. The media. Instant fucking hard-on. Instant fucking narrative. Bomb attack at Muslim/Christian wedding. Reporting the level of racism, of hatred it would take for someone to react in that way. To destroy the coming together of two cultures after one had tried so hard to accept the other. I could picture the headlines, designed to prod and provoke, designed to escalate a war starting on social media before drawing blood onto the streets. It’s bullshit, such fucking bullshit! Just another reason to avoid us, shun us, look at us and judge us. The press were not going to let go of this fucking bone. But once again they would be wrong. Because I know exactly why it happened.
It happened because of me.
Chapter 4
Imy
I pulled into our driveway. The front bumper of my Prius gently kissed the back bumper of Stephanie’s Golf. The red and white Christmas lights draped across the houses either side of our bare home reflected and blinked lazily on the windscreen.
I didn’t move for a moment, or a while. The soft, synthetic leather of my seat cradled me gently as the wind whipped and whistled around me and the rain beat down on my windscreen, making shapes in the darkness that resembled the holes in my heart. I could see her. In the driver’s seat of her car, her blonde hair falling across her face, as she leaned across to pick up her work files before emerging out of the car, clumsily balancing the files and kicking the car door shut with the heel of her sneaker. She turned to me and smiled, transforming the storm into sunshine.
Ride or Die - Jay Qasim Series 03 (2020) Page 2
