by Sam Hepburn
‘Yeah, see.’ The boy’s face was scrunched up, concentrating on the window lock. ‘Miss Butter-Wouldn’t-Melt, travelling round the world for her charity, and all the time I bet she’s checking out suppliers and finding new officials to bribe. It’s the perfect cover.’
I wasn’t listening, I was thinking about my grid, the facts we knew and the blanks between them. ‘Look, Merrick was killed on Wednesday afternoon, Arif disappeared on Wednesday evening and Behrouz was blown up on Wednesday night.’
‘So?’ Connor was shaking his head, running his hands through his hair.
‘The last call Behrouz made was on Wednesday morning. To India Lambert. Maybe he told her that Merrick and Arif knew about Zarghun and maybe she was the one who ordered them to be silenced.’
The boy spun round. ‘She’s right, Connor, and I bet it was some of Hutch’s army mates who arranged Merrick’s “accident”.’ He went back to digging at the lock. ‘And if we don’t get out of here fast, they’re going to arrange an accident for us too. What are they doing now?’
‘Still talking on their phones,’ I said. With trembling fingers, I took a hairpin from the dressing table and offered it to the boy. ‘Try with this.’
Connor, whose face had turned the colour of sour milk, grabbed it from my hand, elbowed the boy out of the way and slipped it into the tiny keyhole, twisting his oil-stained fingers delicately from side to side until it gave a click. He pushed up the lower half of the window, which opened like a flap. ‘Come on, then! Hurry up.’
As I scrambled on to the padded bench I snatched one of India Lambert’s letters from the dressing table and slipped it into my pocket. I was a thief now, as well as a liar. We wriggled backwards through the narrow gap, almost falling on to the track, and ducked into the undergrowth, creeping along the bottom of the high stone wall. Connor let us step on to his cupped hands to climb over it before he scrambled up after us. We dropped on to the wooded lane on the other side, running around the curve of the road to where we’d left the car. The boy was in a lot of pain, his injured foot kept giving way and he was gasping for breath. In the end Connor almost had to carry him to the car. Now I was glad he hadn’t brought a minicab. The bright-orange Khan’s sign would have screamed through the trees and given us away.
Connor started the engine, hit the accelerator and swung into the lane. His hands were moving fast, slipping the gears, spinning the wheel to avoid the bumps and holes. I tried not to think about Merrick driving us out of Kabul and turned round to peer through the darkened windows. A glitter of silver was coming down the lane behind us, Hutch’s car screeching to a stop. I saw the flash of his white shirt as he jumped out, crashing through the undergrowth, calling my name. He came nearer. I wriggled lower in my seat. He was looking past us, casting up and down. My heart stopped. He was staring as if he could see right through the blackened windows. Suddenly he began to run towards us, yelling into his phone. Connor speeded up, shouting, ‘Lock your doors!’ He let out a string of bad words as two huge trucks came lumbering towards us down the lane, blocking our escape. A man got out of the first one and stood in the road, holding up one hand to guide the drivers through the narrow space and the other to tell Connor to back up so they could get past.
Hutch reached our car and grabbed the handle of Connor’s door. When it didn’t open, he swung back his fist, punched out the cardboard on the broken side window, plunged his arm through the hole and made a grab for the lock. The boy flung himself across the seat and sank his teeth into Hutch’s fingers while Connor hit the accelerator, threw the wheel sideways and swerved off the lane into the woods. Hutch yelled and stumbled back. Connor hurtled past the trucks, zigzagging through the trees. I flinched as branches bounced and scraped along the windows and turned to see Hutch pelting back to his car, ready to come after us as soon as we’d by-passed the trucks. But Connor didn’t go back to the lane. He plunged deeper into the woods, where Hutch’s high wide car couldn’t go. The wheels churned the leafy mud, catching and spinning, crunching twigs and rocking the little chassis. Tree trunks loomed as we crashed through the branches. I ducked my head right down, afraid they would smash the glass and spear us in our seats, but Connor kept his nerve, swerving, skidding, lurching, until without warning the trees thinned and we burst out of the woods into a field full of cattle. The grass was lush and as green as the velvet dress in India Lambert’s trailer. Connor headed for the far end, jolting us over the bumps and only slowing down when he came to a patch of mud scored with deep rain-filled ruts leading up to the gate.
‘Open it!’ he shouted. ‘Quick, before Hutch comes round the other way.’
I threw myself out of the car and splashed towards the gate. There was a metal lever on a spring. Listening out for Hutch’s car, I pulled it and pushed it, not knowing how the mechanism worked. The cattle were circling the car, closing in on it, some of their heavy wedge-shaped heads so near to me that I could hear their puffing breath and the suck of their hooves on the mud. I yanked at the lever and glanced back. They weren’t cows. They were young bulls. Plump, well fed and bigger than any cattle I’d ever seen. Thirty or forty of them, twitching their tails and nostrils and staring at me with threatening, long-lashed eyes.
I wrenched the lever. It gave with a snap. I pushed the gate, yelling at the bulls to get back. They didn’t budge, not even when Connor blasted the horn. The boy got out, stumbling forward, unsteady on his feet. He waved his arms, shouting feebly, ‘Go on! Move it!’ For a moment they switched their stares to him, tilting their heads, jostling each other as if they might charge at him and the car. He stood there pale and swaying. I thought he would fall and get trampled. I ran towards the bulls, trying to head them off. The lead one stared at me with eyes like black marbles, then turned away. Slowly the others followed, their muscles rippling beneath their mud spattered hides. I pushed the boy into the car and ran back to the gate. Connor revved the engine. I was sure the wheels were going to sink into the mud, but he rammed the car into reverse, got up some speed and shot forward across the mud, sending up an arc of black spray. I rammed the gate shut and scrambled back into the passenger seat, expecting him to turn and race off up the hill. Instead, he rocketed across the road, swerving through a gap into the field opposite, sped along the hedge and pulled up in a grassy dip.
Was he mad? ‘What are you doing?’
He cut the engine, pointed up at the road and said, ‘You watch. He’ll be coming past any minute.’
We gazed up through the hedge. I flinched with fear as first a yellow truck then a blue van sped past. Out of sight, brakes screeched. We heard a car door open. Someone had stopped to look into the field opposite. I closed my eyes. Seconds later the car door slammed. I opened my eyes to see a rush of silver flicker past the hedge as Hutch drove on up the hill.
The boy grinned at Connor. ‘Nice one. What do we do now?’
‘We go to the colonel and tell him everything,’ I said. I waved the envelope I had taken from India Lambert’s dressing table. ‘I have the address. It’s in London, in Highgate. We must watch his house and wait until he comes.’
The boy rolled his eyes. ‘How can you even think of trusting him after what just happened?’
‘I don’t believe he knows that India Lambert is working with Zarghun.’
‘What? You think he hasn’t noticed that his wife’s an evil, scheming, drug-dealing, murdering liar?’
‘She is an actress. It is her job to lie. That is why she is so good at it. Look how she is deceiving him with this man Hutch. But the colonel is a good man. You heard what Behrouz said on the video, “Seek out Colonel Mike Clarke so that justice can be done.”’
‘There’s two ways you can take that,’ Connor muttered.
Why didn’t they understand that I had no choice? ‘If you won’t come with me, I will go on my own.’
‘You can’t take the risk,’ the boy said, ‘not till we’ve thought this through.’
‘Risk?’ My throat grew hoarse with frust
ration. ‘What is the risk if you have nothing to lose?’
‘The risk is, you could end up dead.’
‘Without the colonel I am dead anyway.’
‘Don’t be stupid, we’ll find some other way . . .’
‘If you believe that, then you are the one who is stupid. If the colonel does not help me, either Zarghun’s people will kill me here or I will get sent back to Afghanistan and the Taliban will kill me there.’
Connor started the engine, flung his arm across the seat and backed out of the field. ‘Do what you like. I’m going to lay low at Arif’s while I work out what to do. You can come if you want, it’ll be safe. No one knows I’m staying there.’
‘I’m up for that,’ the boy said.
I was furious that they wouldn’t listen to me. Especially the boy. Who was he to tell me who I should and should not trust? I pulled out my phone.
‘Who are you calling?’
‘India Lambert said the colonel is coming back to his house today. If I speak to him, maybe I will know if I can trust him.’
Connor rolled his eyes. ‘If he picks up, you keep me out of it.’
The boy slumped back in his seat. ‘Yeah. And me.’
I left a message on the colonel’s voicemail and rather than talk to either of them I turned on the radio. Connor speeded up. I watched him from the corner of my eye. He was a different person when he drove. No longer shy and awkward, but expert and fearless, like Behrouz, as if the wheel and the gears had become part of him.
I turned my face to the window and closed my eyes, a childhood memory flooding back; a time in the mountains when Behrouz was only nine. We were visiting my grandparents and a huge slick of grey-black mud from the swollen river brought boulders crashing down the slopes on to their village, ripping out trees, tearing through houses, and everybody was running and panicking, trying to round up their children and their livestock and get out of the valley, all except for one old blind man who wouldn’t budge. He stood in the middle of the street beside his son’s brand new truck, waving his stick and yelling that someone must drive it to safety. Our family got separated in the chaos. I was with my mother and she was frantic that she couldn’t find Behrouz. My father came running, yelling Behrouz’s name, and then we saw the truck lurching past us down the winding track with Behrouz at the wheel, perched on the lap of the old blind man, who was working the brakes and the gears. I smiled, remembering how Behrouz and I used to roll around laughing when my father told that story. The sound of Behrouz’s name from the radio dragged me back to the moment.
‘Police have released CCTV footage of a man they believe to be Behrouz Sahar getting off a bus in Highgate at ten forty-five a.m. on Wednesday morning and walking towards the home of Colonel Mike Clarke. The colonel was not at home at the time and the police believe that Sahar was doing a recce of the area, preparing to return later to plant his bomb.’
I scrabbled for my grid, trying to make sense of this new information.
The boy leant in between the seats. ‘That’s weird. Didn’t Merrick text him Wednesday morning saying he couldn’t get hold of the colonel’s address?’
‘Yes.’ I ran my finger down my notes for Wednesday. ‘The text came at 9.22. It said, “. . . got Clarke’s home number, no luck with address or mobile”. Then Behrouz called the colonel’s house at 9.25 and spoke to India Lambert for seven minutes.’
Connor half glanced at the grid. ‘So how did he manage to find the address and get to Highgate by a quarter to eleven?’
The boy punched a fist into his palm. ‘Because India Lambert gave it to him! That must be where he was heading when me and . . . when I saw him coming down the stairs.’
He had managed to avoid mentioning his father but I still felt a pang of fury at the reminder of that man.
‘I don’t know,’ Connor said. ‘If he went to her house and she wanted him dead, why did she let him leave?’
That was the biggest blank on my grid. I had no idea what Behrouz had been doing between the time he was in Highgate and the time he was snatched from Meadowview that night.
‘What if she didn’t let him leave?’ the boy said into the silence. ‘What if he escaped?’
Connor shot me a look. ‘In that case he was a bloody idiot to go back to Meadowview. No offence, Aliya, but he must have known they’d be watching your flat.’
I thought of our last night in Kabul and all the risks Behrouz had taken to save us from the Taliban and in that moment I knew exactly why my brave, daredevil brother had gone back to Meadowview. Hot tears slid down my face. ‘He came back to save us,’ I said. ‘He thought Zarghun’s people would hurt us to punish him for getting away.’ The tears flowed faster. ‘But they caught him in the car park before he could get upstairs. If it hadn’t been for us, he wouldn’t have been there. He would have got away.’
DAN
It took us nearly three hours to get back to London. We knew India Lambert would have her mates in the police on the lookout for us, so Connor had his eyes glued to the windscreen, searching for ways to avoid the main roads, doubling back down farm tracks and criss-crossing half of Kent. I was watching the back window, waiting for Hutch to come screeching up behind us, and Aliya had the colonel’s house on redial. When she wasn’t calling it or leaving messages, she was staring into space.
All I could feel was this bone-numbing exhaustion, a hopeless desire to flip a switch and make everything stop, and a desperate need to throw up. What with the fear, the guilt, the movement of the car and Trent’s drugs still swilling round my system, by the time we got to Stoke Newington I was sweating like a pig and about to hurl any minute.
‘Where’s Arif’s?’ I groaned. ‘Is it far?’
Connor was idling at a crossroads, waiting to turn left. He pointed down the road. ‘Down there. Over the newsagents.’ I followed his finger along a row of manky shops and scanned the street, hoping there’d be a parking space right outside Arif’s flat. My eye caught a shiny black BMW squatting opposite the building like a waiting panther. Its number plate ended AUA. Same as Hamidi’s.
‘Back up!’ I yelled.
‘What?’
‘It’s Hamidi.’
‘Where?’
‘In the black BMW.’
Connor swung right and rocketed away in the opposite direction. ‘Where to?’
We were out of options. My house, Aliya’s hotel, Meadowview – they’d be watching them all, waiting to pick us off the minute we went near. My mind was spinning on empty, my skull was tightening. ‘I don’t know. Keep driving.’
‘Go to Highgate. To the colonel,’ Aliya said. ‘We have to!’
‘No way!’ Connor snapped. ‘I told you I’m not going anywhere near him.’
‘Yeah, me neither, Aliya,’ I said.
We got to a main road, Connor driving fast, jerking his head up every couple of seconds to look in the mirror, trying to put as much distance between us and the BMW as he could, burning left past a disused cinema, down an empty stretch of one-way road built up either side with dingy flats. A kid on a bike shot out from an alley. Connor slammed on the brakes. The car slid into a skid and slewed out of control, missing the kid by a couple of inches. The kid carried on across the road, trailing an arm behind him, flipping us the finger.
‘Jesus!’ Connor said. ‘I could have killed him.’ He dropped his head on the steering wheel and sat still for a few seconds before he reached forward and turned the ignition. The engine grunted, refusing to fire. A horn blared. I turned around. A lorry was heading towards us, bearing down, flashing his lights. Connor turned the key, pumped the pedal and with a jerky splutter the engine started.
I don’t know how she did it. One second Aliya was sat up front and Connor was jamming the car into gear, the next she’d thrown open her door and jumped out. By the time I realized what was happening, Connor was moving, pushing the accelerator to get out of the lorry’s path. I looked back. Aliya was running fast, disappearing between the buildings. I snatched u
p the envelope she’d left on the seat.
‘She’ll be going to the colonel’s, we’ve got to stop her.’
Connor hurtled on to the next junction, swung left, and chucked me his phone. ‘Call her. Tell her she’s crazy. I’ll go round the block and pick her up.’ We drove around – must have been nearly half an hour – doubling back, taking every side road. No sign of her. I kept calling, getting her voicemail, until the battery died.
I stuffed the envelope in my pocket and felt around, looking for coins.
‘You got any money?’ I said.
‘A bit.’
‘See if you can find a phone box.’
‘OK. And we’re going to need petrol soon.’
We’d ended up somewhere east, going towards the Lea Marshes – takeaways, pawn shops, warehouses, the sky darkening, street lights and civilization thinning out ahead.
We drew up at a set of lights. Connor glanced in the mirror and let out a yell. I flipped round just as Hutch’s silver Range Rover rammed into the back of us, throwing me forward like someone had cracked a baseball bat across my back. The car lurched again, the same horrible sick-making thump came from behind and my head bashed into Connor’s headrest. There was a terrible sound of screeching metal as he floored the accelerator. The back of the car must have been pushed right in and the back wheels were jamming against the wheel arches. We lurched on for a few metres, then both of the back tyres blew, letting the wheels turn free but they were shuddering and banging on the bare rims.
I turned my head, saw Hutch’s radiator grill drowning in a spray of sparks whenever we hit a dip and our ruined back end scraped the surface of the road. Connor was shouting every swear word under the sun but he kept the car on the road and took a right. Someone had parked a boat – some sort of cabin-cruiser – on a trailer at the kerb. Connor braked, but too hard, sending the back of our car swinging out. It slammed into the trailer, skewing the back of the boat round to block the road. The trailer tipped and the boat slid on to the road in front of Hutch. A squeal of rubber as he tried to brake, but he was going too fast and went straight through the bow, drilling through the cabin. Then a horrible crunch as he hit the solid metal of the trailer.
