If You Were Me

by Sam Hepburn

‘I need to see you. I’ve got information that’ll prove Sahar is innocent.’

  He paused before he spoke. ‘Is this a wind-up? Because if it is, there are stiff penalties for wasting police time, specially on a case as serious as this.’

  ‘No. I promise this is for real.’

  ‘Hang on, you’re breaking up. I’ll go outside.’

  His voice was lower when he started talking again. ‘Look, Danny, there are all sorts of rumours going round the estate, so whatever it is you’ve heard . . .’

  ‘I’ve got proof. But I want this off the record. Like we never met.’

  ‘Proof of what?’

  ‘That he was set up. But I want my name kept out of it.’

  His voice was sharp. ‘Have you told this to anyone else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Keep it that way till we’ve talked. But if you want this off the record, you’d better not come to the station. Look . . . um . . . there’s a service road behind the snooker hall and the new chippy in the High Street. Do you know where I mean?’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘The turning’s after the DIY shop. I’ll meet you there in thirty.’

  I turned off my phone. I didn’t want Aliya calling while I was spilling my guts to Trent. The service road he’d mentioned wasn’t far. Funny how you think you know a place, then suddenly you discover bits of it you never even knew existed. Same with people, I s’pose. I must have walked past that turning a thousand times without noticing the potholed cinder track that led past the back of the shops to a world of rackety sheds, flapping tarpaulins and dumping grounds piled high with tyres. I hung around by the back of the chippy, breathing in the smell of fish and cheap fat. My hands were shaking, my stomach was churning and, despite the cold, my T-shirt was sticky with sweat.

  ALIYA

  I’d got a seat by the window and I stared out, wishing the anger would leave me so I could concentrate on what I would say to the boy. I would stay calm and cold like Inspector McGill, the detective who had interrogated me at the police station, and if he tried to go on lying, I would rip his lies to pieces word by word. The bus turned into the High Street. It was crowded. People texting, pushing buggies, swinging briefcases, crossing the road. Suddenly, as if my anger had conjured him out of the air, I saw the boy, striding down the road. He didn’t look upset. He looked purposeful and distracted. I shot from my seat and reached for the bell. A burly man in a grubby sweater stood in the way.

  ‘I have to get off,’ I said. The man grunted and shifted a little. I toppled forward, jamming my finger on the button just as the bus roared past the stop. I kept on pressing it and shouted to the driver, ‘Please! I need to get off!’

  He didn’t stop. I ignored the glares of the other passengers and craned over their heads, looking for the boy. He’d disappeared. Gone. It seemed to take for ever before the bus stopped again. I jumped off and ran back along the shuttered shop fronts, stopping to peer inside the few that were open and scanning the slowly moving traffic to see if he’d got into a car. Ahead of me a pale-blue hatchback was flashing its indicator, waiting to turn right. I caught the last three numbers of the licence plate and darted forward to read the rest. Dizzy and sick, I stepped back and checked the note on my phone. The numbers matched. It was the car I’d seen when I was dangling off Hamidi’s drainpipe. I pulled my cap low and ran to catch it up, slowing right down as I drew level with the driver. He had freckles on his skin, short hair the colour of sand, and he was drumming his fingers on the wheel, checking the mirror every couple of seconds. I knew his face. I must have glimpsed him going into Hamidi’s. Only it had been dark. Too dark to see his freckles and his hair-style. The car turned into an alleyway. I followed a few metres behind, with my back hugging the wall. The boy was there, halfway down, leaning against an old wooden shed. I opened my mouth to shout a warning. I shut it quickly. The car was drawing up beside him. He was raising his hand as if he knew the driver, looking furtively up and down, opening the door. Getting in. My eyes blurred. Now I knew for sure that the boy had been spying on me. Reporting back. Not to the police. To a man who worked for Hamidi.

  DAN

  Trent had brought along couple of coffees in a cardboard container. He shoved one into my hand. He was in scruffy jeans, needed a shave and the dark circles under his eyes reached halfway down his cheeks.

  ‘I wasn’t sure it was you. Where’s your cop car?’ I said.

  ‘I was on my way home when you called. Been up all night.’ He plucked at his crumpled shirt. ‘All I need now is a hot shower, a fry-up and forty-eight hours sleep.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t realize—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. All part of the service.’ He flashed me a tired smile. ‘So, what’s this about, Danny? Sahar’s guilty. He’s confessed. Haven’t you seen the video?’

  ‘No. He’s innocent. Someone forced him to tape that confession.’

  ‘How d’you make that out?’

  ‘Like I said, if I tell you, I want it off the record. If you swear not to tell anyone you got it from me, or make me go to court, I can give you everything you’ll need to prove what really happened. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘I don’t make deals, Danny. But if you give me information that helps us crack this, I’ll do everything I can to protect your identity as a source.’

  ‘OK.’ I guessed that was about as good as I was going to get. I closed my eyes. If I was going to keep Dad out of this, I still had to watch every word I said. ‘I was at Meadowview the night of the explosion. I saw Behrouz being chucked in the back of a van by four blokes. They had him at gunpoint.’ Just saying it out loud was like bursting a throbbing boil.

  Trent nearly choked on his coffee.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Around two in the morning.’

  He shifted round and gave me a long hard look, like he was testing me. ‘There’s nothing on the Meadowview CCTV. We’ve been over the tapes a hundred times.’

  ‘It was out of sight.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the loading bay.’

  I started to describe what I’d seen and I could hear myself gabbling. It was all the festering guilt pouring out. ‘They must have grabbed him on his way home. Check the CCTV. You’ll see two men and what looks like a hunched-up old woman with a shawl over her head coming across the car park. I’ve hardly slept since. I keep seeing the gun and the look on his face . . . he was petrified, like he knew they were going to kill him.’

  Trent rubbed a hand over his chin. ‘That doesn’t mean he’s innocent. Those people with guns were probably from Al Shaab, trying to stop him bottling out.’

  ‘No. Only one of them was Afghan, the other three were English. One had a Union Jack tattooed on his neck.’

  He took a long sip of his coffee and wiped a fleck of milky froth off his lip. ‘Why didn’t you come forward with this before?’

  I looked down. It had felt good telling the truth. Now I had to stop.

  ‘I . . . I didn’t want my parents knowing I’d been out that late . . .’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’d been grounded and I . . . I was meeting people they don’t approve of . . .’

  It sounded exactly like what it was. A feeble lie. He wasn’t impressed.

  ‘Sahar’s facing life in jail, Danny. You should have told me this the day I came round.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that? It’s been tearing me up.’ My lip trembled and my voice rose out of control. ‘I’ve been trying to find some other way to prove he’s innocent. And now I have. These people wanted him dead, and making out he was a terrorist was a cover-up.’

  He frowned at me like I might be crazy and said slowly, ‘Why would anyone want to kill a nineteen-year-old Afghan cab driver who’s only been here a couple of weeks?’

  ‘To silence him.’ I thought of what Zarghun’s people had done to Merrick and Arif as well as Behrouz and my voice sank to a shaky croak: ‘He . . . he saw someone who’s supposed
to be dead.’

  Trent blew out a long breath, as if he could see this was going to take a while. ‘OK, take it easy. Have your coffee.’ He took a sachet out of his pocket, ripped it open and tipped it into my cup.

  I held up my hand. ‘That’s enough.’ He went on pouring.

  ‘State you’re in, you need the sugar. It’ll calm you down. Go on, drink it.’

  I took a couple of glugs. It tasted good. Sweet and creamy with a hint of bitterness. He was right. I felt calmer straight away.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks.’

  He looked straight at me. ‘So come on, then, who did Behrouz Sahar see?’

  ‘This guy called Zarghun—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Farukh Zarghun. He’s an Afghan warlord.’ I got out the printouts. ‘That’s him in Afghanistan and that’s him in England. He’s shaved off his hair and his beard but you can tell it’s the same man by his missing fingers. Run these through a computer if you don’t believe me – all the features match. I measured them. He got life in prison for running drugs and officially he got stabbed to death in a Kabul jail, but that’s a lie. He must have bribed his way out and now he’s over here, working in a meatpacking factory. That man next to him is this psycho Tewfiq Hamidi, who was his top commander in Afghanistan. He’s the one I saw in the loading bay kidnapping Behrouz Sahar.’

  ‘Go on,’ he said, quietly.

  For a minute I just sat there staring at the dots of rain on the windscreen and trying to catch the thoughts trickling through my brain. ‘Behrouz was one of the interpreters at Zarghun’s trial. That’s how he recognized him. Zarghun saw him taking his photo and got Hamidi to kidnap and kill him so he wouldn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a leap, Danny. Are you sure it was this . . . what’s his name, Hamidi . . . you saw kidnapping Behrouz?’

  ‘Positive. The van they drove him off in . . . it was a Hardel Meats van. That’s where Zarghun and Hamidi work, at their packing plant in North London. But I think they’re using the meat deliveries to move drugs around.’

  He squeezed his chin again, like he was thinking hard. ‘Why make out Behrouz is a terrorist? Why not just run him over or chuck him off a building?’

  ‘To skew the investigation.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I was getting tired but I ploughed on. ‘Behrouz told two of his mates about Zarghun, this army captain James Merrick and another cab driver called Arif. The next day Merrick died, in a freak “accident”, Arif got taken off in a phony immigration bust and hasn’t been seen since, and Behrouz got blown up in that lock-up.’ My voice seemed to be detaching itself from my mouth and my face was starting to feel numb. ‘That’s what Zarghun’s people do. They’re clever. They get rid of people who get in their way and make it look like their deaths aren’t murder or connected in anyway. They couldn’t do that on their own. They’ve got to be paying off people in high places to help them out.’ My hands started to shake.

  ‘All right, Danny. You’re doing fine. Take a deep breath and finish your coffee.’

  I took another slug from the cup and felt the last of the guilt swill away like gunk from a blocked drain. It was going to be all right. I never knew that relief could make you feel so different, so light. It was as if I was floating. ‘You’ve got to start by arresting Zarghun. Check his passport. It’ll be fake. Once you prove who he is, you’ve got his motive for silencing Behrouz. Then check the Hardel Meats vans for Behrouz’s DNA. The one they used for the kidnap had a number plate starting GLR.’

  ‘All right. But there’s a couple of things I need to know. First of all. How the hell did you find all this out?’

  ‘Behrouz’s sister found his old phone with the photos of Zarghun and Hamidi on it, and we used them and his call log to piece it together.’

  Trent sat up. ‘This phone. Where is it now?’

  ‘She’s got it.’

  ‘And she can back you up on all this?’

  I dropped my eyes. ‘She doesn’t know about me seeing the kidnap and, if it’s all right with you, I don’t want her to find out . . . she . . . she’d hate me for not coming forward before.’

  ‘All right.’

  I looked up at him again and heard my voice crack, ‘Will it be enough to get Behrouz off?’

  ‘If it pans out.’

  I smiled for the first time in days.

  ‘Did you mention what you saw in the loading bay to anyone else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure about that, Danny? None of your mates or a girlfriend, trying to impress her?’

  ‘I haven’t got a girlfriend,’ I said, my voice sounding echoey and even further away.

  ‘And there’s nothing else you want to tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll need you to make a statement—’

  My eyelids drooped. ‘We had a deal. You said you’d keep this off the record.’

  ‘I will, but I need exact times, dates, addresses. Nothing formal. Don’t worry. I’ll keep you well away from the nick. There’s a safe house we use for talking to informants. You’ve done the right thing coming to me. It’s going to be OK.’

  A wave of warmth washed over me, deep and soft like I was drifting on a slowly sinking cloud. His voice was muffled, soothing. I heard him say, ‘That’s it, Danny. You have a nice little kip.’

  ALIYA

  The blue hatchback was backing up, turning round. I squeezed behind a row of stinking waste bins, staying low until it had passed. It didn’t make sense.

  It was the boy who had led me to Hamidi. Why had he done that if he was working for him? I ran back to the bus stop, furious with the boy and furious with the small stubborn part of me that still wanted to trust him.

  When I got back to the hotel, Sandra and Tracy were both there and my mother was sitting on the edge of the bed with a shawl around her head, holding her handbag on her knees, ready to go out.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Tracy said, crossly.

  ‘For a walk. I needed air.’

  She didn’t believe me. I didn’t care.

  ‘I’ve had a call from Inspector McGill.’ Every muscle in my body tensed. ‘He says I can take you and your mother to visit your brother. Sandra will stay with Mina.’

  ‘Oh.’ My eyes watered. I wiped them dry. ‘Did Behrouz wake up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I sank on to the bed, expecting a rush of joy. What I felt was the hollow trembling exhaustion of waking from a nightmare. I told myself Behrouz was conscious and now he could destroy all the doubts and demons in my head and tell the police who had done this to him. I looked up. Tracy was chewing her lip. I turned from her to Sandra. Something was wrong.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘He’s got no idea who he is or what’s happened to him.’ Tracy said. ‘They’re hoping some familiar voices might help to jog his memory.’

  I knew the big white hospital building well. I saw it every day on the television and every night in my dreams. But something inside me still ripped a little as WPC Rennell’s dented red car swept us through the gates. We passed a row of ambulances striped with chequered bands of blue and yellow and drew level with two news vans topped with satellite dishes, parked to one side of the entrance. I pulled my cap low over my eyes. A group of reporters stood watching the passing cars, laughing, chatting and drinking from paper cups. Some of them had set up folding chairs along the wall. Others were walking around with headphones clamped to their heads and one of them, a woman reporter with long glossy hair, was holding a microphone to her red-painted mouth and talking into a camera. They were here because of Behrouz. If they’d known who we were, they’d have chased our car like street dogs hungry for meat. I wanted to run over and yell into that camera that Behrouz was not a bomb-maker, whatever lies their experts told about him. Instead I shrank away from the window and kept my eyes on my hands.

  To avoid the reporters, we had to go in the back way and creep through the ba
sement and up the stairs like thieves. I put my arm around my mother. Her head had sunk into her shoulders as if she’d suddenly grown very old, and she kept her scarf pulled tightly across her face. Two policemen were guarding the door to Intensive Care, checking everyone who went in. Tracy went up to them and said something quietly. They hardly glanced at her. Their hard, curious eyes were fixed on me and my mother, taking in every detail, so they could go home and tell their wives what we looked like or sell what they’d seen to the newspapers. One of them took my backpack and rooted through my things with his big hairy hand. I felt the press of Behrouz’s phone against my thigh and held my breath until the policeman thrust the backpack at my chest and waved me on.

  WPC Rennell pushed open the door and led us into a reception area where a nurse made us clean our hands with a sharp-smelling gel. She talked very softly and only looked at us when she thought we weren’t looking at her. She pointed down the corridor to a door with two policemen sitting outside holding guns across their laps.

  I knew my brother was badly injured, but nothing had prepared me for the twitching bundle of tubes and bandages that lay on the bed. I heard myself murmur, ‘No, no, no.’ The policewoman sitting beside him looked up and let her magazine slip to the floor. My mother reached out to touch Behrouz’s agitated fingers and let out a howl. His burnt, bandaged hand was cuffed to the bed. My tears grew hot with rage. I couldn’t stop them pouring down my cheeks. The policewoman got up and moved to the window. Mor straightened a little, dropped her bag to the floor and, with more purpose in her face than I’d seen for months, she sat down and began to rock backwards and forwards, murmuring Behrouz’s name and crooning a song she used to sing to us when we were little, ‘Sleep, sleep, sleep, my child, as still as a stone in the water.’ His fluttering eyelids opened. The blankness in them was a blow to my heart. He didn’t know her and he didn’t know the song. His gaze wandered from her face to mine. He didn’t know me either. A nurse came in to look at the monitors. ‘When will he remember?’ I said.