If You Were Me

by Sam Hepburn

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  I didn’t need to see Dad’s face to know he was grinning and winking at Mum. What were the options? Force myself to take the call or face Dad coming up and ribbing me about giving some girl a hard time. I ran downstairs and took the receiver.

  ‘Yeah?’

  A voice whispered something I couldn’t make out.

  ‘What?’

  There was a gasp on the line. ‘I am Aliya Sahar . . . from Meadowview.’ The shock was like touching a live wire.

  ‘Where’d you get this number?’

  ‘Your father . . . he gave us a card.’

  I glanced over my shoulder. Mum and Dad were gazing at the TV, pretending they weren’t listening. I lowered my voice. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I . . . I . . . need . . . your help.’

  Panic squeezed my chest. Did she know what I’d seen? I swallowed hard. ‘Why me?’

  ‘You were kind.’ Her voice cracked. ‘You helped me to hide the gun from your father.’

  I dragged my fingers down my face, feeling relief give way to a burning rush of guilt. Mum was looking up, ears flapping. ‘Give us your number,’ I said, quickly. ‘I’ll call you back.’

  ‘I am using a telephone in a box.’

  ‘It’ll be on the wall above the phone . . .’

  ‘Yes, now I have it.’ She read out the number. I scribbled it on my hand and hung up. Dead casual, I walked towards the door. Just when I thought I’d made it, Mum said, ‘Who was that, love?’

  ‘No one you know.’

  I darted into the hall and rushed up the stairs two at a time. Aliya answered on the first ring. ‘My brother is in trouble.’ Her voice was steadier, as if she’d been practising the words.

  ‘I know. I saw it on the news.’

  ‘The people on the television are telling lies. He did not make that bomb. He is not a terrorist.’

  I closed my eyes and saw his bruised, desperate face as they threw him into the van, but I had to pretend I only knew what I’d seen on TV. ‘So what was he doing in that lock-up with all those explosives?’

  ‘That is what I must find out. I have to prove he is innocent.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I . . . I will start with his phone. I think maybe he hid it because there is something in it that is connected to what happened.’

  My heart pounded. ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you going to show it to the police?’

  ‘No. They do not care about the truth. They believe he is a terrorist and that is all they want to prove.’ The flutter was back in her voice. ‘I hid the phone and the gun and now I need you to get the phone back for me.’

  I gripped the handset. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘On a boat on the canal. Near the bridge. I put the bag under the tarpaulin.’

  ‘Why can’t you get it?’

  ‘I am not allowed to go near to Meadowview.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘The police.’

  I wanted to help her but this talk of the police was stopping me thinking straight, making me panic, holding me back.

  ‘Are you there?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yeah . . . but I—’

  ‘Please, do this one thing for me.’ For a moment all I could hear was her breath, jerking and rasping, then her voice came out in a rush, as if she was afraid I’d hang up. ‘They have put us in a hotel called Holly Lodge. It’s in a road called Swinton Street near to a big railway station called King’s Cross. Bring it early in the morning. I will watch from the window until you come.’

  ‘Look, I . . . I don’t know. I . . .’

  ‘Please.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘I have no one else to ask . . . and . . . and there is something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You touched the gun. You must clean away the marks made by your fingers, in case the police find it.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Fingerprints. I’d left them all over the loading bay too.

  ‘What’s the name of this boat?’

  ‘The Margaretta.’

  I hung up, pulled on my hoodie and ran downstairs, head spinning. My fingerprints. Whatever happened, I had to wipe them off Behrouz’s gun.

  ‘Hey, Mum, I’m going out for a bit,’ I said.

  ‘Where to? It’s late.’

  ‘Round this girl’s house. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Does she have a name?’

  My brain was too scrambled to make one up. ‘Ali. You don’t know her.’

  Dad looked up from the tray on his lap. ‘You need a lift, son?’

  ‘Nah, I’ll bike it.’

  ‘Got your key?’

  ‘Yep.’

  I ran into the kitchen, snatched Mum’s rubber gloves and a dishcloth off the draining board and headed for the back door. I cycled towards the estate, head down into the spitting rain, nearly hitting the kerb when the top of Meadowview appeared above the dingy rooftops, lit up by the searchlight from a hovering helicopter. I turned off the main road and pushed my bike through the crowd, craning to see into the car park. It was full of vans, police cars and figures in white paper overalls carrying boxes out of the building. People were out on the balconies, staring down at the TV news vans or gazing up at the helicopter that looked as if it was hanging off the end of its own light beam.

  The whole area had been cordoned off and the growing mob of onlookers was jostling the barriers, feeding off each other’s fury. Some of them were having a go at Aliya and her mother for harbouring a monster, others were waving copies of the evening paper and talking about the evil lurking in Behrouz Sahar’s eyes, while people from the other blocks milled around, trying to outdo each other with stories of dodgy characters hanging out on the Meadowview staircases and stuff going on around the car park at night. The babble of voices grew louder and shriller until I thought the waves of outrage were going to swallow me up.

  I backed my bike away, barging into an agitated woman, who dropped her newspaper and screamed in my face when the wheels crushed a front page picture of Behrouz headlined ‘BOMBER!’ I jumped on the bike and made off towards the canal, skidding to a halt when a couple of cops in high-vis jackets stepped forward, blocking the entrance to the towpath. One of them shone his torch in my face then ran it over the bike. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Home,’ I said. ‘I just came out to see what was going on.’

  He grunted and let me pass. I sped along the track, following the curve of the water towards the bridge. Even out of sight of the helicopter I could still hear the whirr of its blades and the shouts of the crowd. They were chanting now, demanding the death penalty for terrorists.

  Worried I’d missed the Margaretta, I stopped by a tree stump and swept the bike light across the moorings. It was there, a flash of a white M on the bow of a rotting rowing boat, almost hidden in the shadow of the barges either side. I checked the path, making doubly sure no one was coming before I pulled on the rubber gloves. Drawing the slimy rope towards the bank, I planted my knees in the mud and plunged my hand through the split in the tarpaulin. I stretched down, feeling for the plastic bag, blinking into the blast of rain that whipped my face. The boat kept swinging away and even with the gloves on I shuddered when my fingers touched a clammy layer of sludge, but I kept digging around till I felt the bag scrunched under the seat. I dragged it out and backed into the undergrowth, holding it at arms length to avoid the stinking water pouring off the plastic and trying to dodge the brambles clawing my face. My feet crunched broken glass and empty cans as I went deeper.

  When I was sure no one could see me I reached into the bag and took out the gun. Hating the stubby feel of it, I rubbed every inch of the barrel and handle with the dishcloth, imagining all those greasy, tell-tale spirals disappearing under the pressure. I dropped it back in the bag. It fell with a clunk. I flinched and looked around. There was no one to hear it, no sound at all except the distant roar of the crowd outside Meadowview yelling for Behrouz Sahar’s b
lood.

  My mind flashed back to the raw fear I’d seen on his face. Almost before I knew it, I was reaching for the tobacco tin and ramming it into my pocket. Slashing the brambles with my elbows, I pushed my way back to the towpath and shoved the bag through the tarpaulin. I cut through an alleyway further up, and once I was well way from all the cruising cop cars I tossed the muddy gloves and the dishcloth into a skip. Mum would go mad when she found out they were missing. That was nothing compared to what she’d do if she found out what else was going on. Shaking, I let myself into our house and eased the front door shut.

  ‘That you, Danny?’ Mum was on the landing in her nightie, looking down over the bannister. ‘Don’t forget to bolt the door.’

  ‘I won’t. Night.’ I propped myself against the wall and closed my eyes, waiting for my heart to stop crashing against my ribs. Still trembling, I hurried up to my room and checked for news updates on Behrouz Sahar. According to the BBC, he was still in a coma and the police were looking for his accomplices. A whole load of Afghan businesses had been attacked and the boss of his cab company had told the papers he was a lone extremist who deserved the death penalty for bringing shame on a law-abiding community. Even his army mates were turning against him.

  The only person in the whole world still sticking up for him was Aliya.

  I got out his phone, turning it in my fingers for a long time. Then I picked through the heads on the universal charger Bernie Watts had given me (a key tool if you work with nicked phones) and put it on to charge. A tiny dot of red flickered into life. I paused for a second, knowing that once I’d seen what was in the memory there’d be no going back. I drew a long, unsteady breath and turned on the phone.

  There were eight numbers in Behrouz’s contacts, a few texts, and some photos, family stuff mostly: Aliya, his mum and his kid sister in their flat, all four of them on a sightseeing trip round London – smiling and waving outside the railings of Buckingham Palace, feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and one of Behrouz standing proudly beside his minicab with Big Ben in the background. Then a few taken ten days later of Aliya and the kid at some dreary-looking fundraiser in the Meadowview car park: a juggler in a droopy jester’s hat, a bunch of grown men lobbing balls at a coconut and an old lady selling tea and buns. The only person who looked like he was enjoying himself was a policeman who was leaning across the tea table with his cap under his arm, helping himself to a bright-green cupcake.

  The next lot of pictures were low-angle shots of two men carrying parcels between two vans parked under some trees on a deserted patch of waste ground. My room wasn’t that warm but as I looked closer sweat prickled the back of my neck. One of the vans was the same red as the one they’d used for the kidnap, and the taller man, who had a stoop and a cigarette dangling from his lips, was obviously Cement Face. As for the packages he was unloading, I was guessing they were full of drugs. What else were they going to be? But it was the white van and the stocky blond bloke loading it up that had got my heart pumping. The man was Jez Deakin. And from what I could see of the number plate I had a horrible, gut-twisting feeling that the van was my dad’s.

  I thought I was going to be sick. For a few seconds I just sat there gasping and looking down at the thick brown mud caked round my trainers, before I managed to get up the courage to scroll on to the most recent photos. They’d been taken the day before the explosion and they were all of Cement Face, leaning up against a brick wall, smoking. Whoever he was, he had a serious nicotine problem. This time he was wearing green overalls tucked into white rubber boots. There were four decent shots of him and a couple of blurred ones that had caught another man in the frame, as if Behrouz had grabbed them as he was driving off.

  My hand hovered on the delete button, fighting the urge to erase the lot and forget I’d ever seen them. I didn’t do it. I sent them to my own phone and tried enhancing them, looking for any scraps of information I might have missed. When that didn’t help, I sent them to my computer and worked through all the images, even the blurry ones, clicking, cropping, zooming until the details were almost too pixellated to make out. Almost. Not quite. I’d been clinging to a last desperate hope that the white van Jez Deakin was loading up might turn out to be someone else’s. But there was no getting away from it. That van was definitely Dad’s.

  ALIYA

  WPC Rennell was back at the hotel by seven next morning. This time she wore pink lipstick, a tight red jumper, blue denim jeans and boots with high heels, but she still looked like a police-woman. She tried to be friendly. She even brought drawing paper, crayons and a big wooden jigsaw for Mina to play with, and magazines and DVDs for me and Mor. She asked us to call her Tracy and kept saying she was there to protect us from journalists and troublemakers. This was only half of the truth. She was watching us. Or rather, watching me. She thought I knew something about Behrouz. I could see it in her darting blue eyes and sense it in the way she spoke to me.

  I hurried away to get dressed. When I came back to my mother’s room, Tracy was clearing the little plastic table so we could sit down together and eat the limp white toast and boiled eggs the kitchens had sent up on a tray. I edged my chair towards the window, worried that the boy would come and go away again before I could make an excuse to go outside. Tracy caught me looking and jumped up to peer over my shoulder. ‘Don’t tell me the press are out there.’

  ‘No. I was looking to see if it was raining.’ That was a lie. ‘I’d like to find a library. I don’t want to get behind with my school work.’ That was true. But studying wasn’t on my list of things to do that day. Our eyes locked. I waited for her to tell me I wasn’t allowed to go out. But she smiled a fake toothy smile and said, ‘Why not? You’re not under arrest. You can go anywhere you like, except Meadowview, of course. That’s still out of bounds. But, well . . .’ The smile slipped. Underneath it was something that looked like real concern.

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘Be careful, Aliya. London’s a big city and the people in it aren’t always what they seem. There’s some you can trust and some you can’t.’

  I left the table and went to fetch my headscarf. The boy. Would he come? If he did, was he one of the people I could trust?

  DAN

  For the second night running I couldn’t sleep. Instead I printed out all of Behrouz’s photos and sat there looking at them while my mind threw out questions I couldn’t answer. Who was Cement Face? Why did he want Behrouz dead? How long had Dad been lying to Mum about going straight? And if Behrouz really wasn’t a bomb-maker, why would that Al Shaab terror group say he was? I felt like I was drowning in lies: little white ones, big black ones and the grubby grey ones that grow out of all the things you haven’t got the guts to say or do. Just before dawn I had a panicky, guilt-soaked moment when telling Dad what I knew and forcing him to go with me to the police seemed like the only option. As soon as light started filtering through my blinds, I knew I couldn’t do it.

  I didn’t know which was worse. The thought of that girl, Aliya, calling me up, going on about her brother being innocent and hassling me for his phone, or the thought of bumping into Dad and having to act normal, when nothing was ever going to be normal again. There was only one thing to do – pull the covers over my head and stay in bed.

  I was lying there, staring at the ceiling, when the front doorbell rang. I heard Dad thumping down the stairs muttering, ‘All right, all right.’ I strained to hear what was happening, picked up men’s voices, strangers, at least two of them, then Dad telling them to come in and closing the door. I froze rigid when he called up the stairs, ‘Danny, get yourself down here.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Police. They want a word.’

  Police? My insides shrivelled up. I heard Mum calling, ‘What’s wrong, Ron? What’s happened?’ Then her footsteps as she ran down to the kitchen.

  I rubbed my knuckles against my forehead, trying to stop the pounding, hoping they’d come about the phones I’d been ‘recycling’ for Ber
nie Watts. For a first offence what would I get – a slap on the wrists? A few hours’ community service? It’d break Mum’s heart, but not so badly it wouldn’t mend. But if they’d come for Dad . . .

  I shoved Behrouz’s phone and the printouts under my pillow, stumbled to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water, telling myself that all I’d got to do was just walk down there and say nothing. But I was terrified that as soon as I saw the police I’d either screw up or throw up.

  I don’t know what I expected – Dad in handcuffs, sniffer dogs, armed men searching the house? When I got to the kitchen, there were two uniformed PCs sitting at the table, Dad was stirring the teapot and Mum was reaching down mugs from the cupboard. I hung around in the doorway, not trusting myself to go in. The older cop, hard-faced and weary, was opening his notebook. ‘Is that Abbott with two Ts?’

  Dad put the lid on the pot. ‘And two Bs.’ He caught me staring. ‘Don’t look so worried, Dan. Come in and sit down. This is PC Trent and PC Collins. They want to ask us a couple of questions.’

  Trent gave me a friendly nod. He was late-twenties, tawny hair, thick, fair lashes, freckly face and dark circles under his eyes like he’d been up all night. I nodded back. Collins, the older one, didn’t bother looking up, just went on staring at his notebook and tapping his pencil on the table. ‘I was just explaining to your Dad. We’re here about the terrorist who got blown up by his own bomb. He lived at Meadowview. His mother told us you were in their flat the day before yesterday mending a leak.’ He laid a photo of Behrouz Sahar on the table, the grainy one I’d seen on TV. ‘This is him. Did you see him at any time when you were in or around the building?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dad said, frowning. ‘He was coming down the stairs as we were going up.’

  Mum gazed at him, gobsmacked. ‘You never said.’

  Dad shrugged. ‘I didn’t see the news last night, never realized it was him.’

  ‘Have you got an exact time for this sighting?’ Collins said.