Safe from Harm

by RJ Bailey

  ‘But she also said that some men might come to get me.’

  I touched my damaged cheek. ‘Do I look like a man?’ Maybe this was what they meant by gender confusion.

  ‘I’m sorry. I was frightened.’

  I heard footsteps on the stairs, a sharp rat-a-tat. ‘Is there another way out?’

  She indicated one of the bedrooms behind her. ‘Fire escape.’

  ‘Get onto it.’

  I walked back down the hallway, forcing myself not to touch my face until I had a mirror and tweezers, but I could feel blood running down my cheek. The left side of my face was throbbing, too. Those air pistols pack enough punch to crack bone.

  I saw his shadow from the feeble landing light, judged the distance, stepped out and grabbed his throat. I had him back inside in a second, the Colt shoved up under his chin. You have to know guns to know the fake. I was guessing this young man didn’t.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  The noise he made was horrible. But then I realised I had forced the barrel almost into his buccal cavity. I backed off a little and asked again.

  ‘I came to see if Asma was all right. Someone . . . someone broke down the front door.’

  ‘That was me,’ I confessed. I took a step away to look at him. Black curly hair, beard, dark skin, more than twenty, less than twenty-five. ‘Name?’ I demanded.

  I still had the gun pointed at him, so he said: ‘Okan. We own the shop . . .’ His eyes moved in the direction of the all-night grocery store next to the mosque. In fact, I’d seen him serving drinks outside the shop at Friday prayers. I figured he was on the level. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She will be.’ I wondered if he knew that she was originally a he. It wasn’t important. ‘You want to help, Okan? To help Asma?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You have a car?’

  He nodded again. ‘At the back of the shop.’

  ‘Keys?’

  He tapped the pocket of his jacket and I dug in there. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Toyota Corolla.’ Good – anonymous, boring. ‘Will I get it back?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, not knowing the truth of that. My track record that day wasn’t promising. ‘Now go back downstairs. There’s a white Range Rover Evoque hanging around. If anyone from it asks, you saw Asma leave in a yellow Porsche Cayman. OK?’

  The kid nodded, his curls shaking as he did so, but his eyes told me that it hadn’t gone in. I gave his face a light slap. ‘Look, pay attention. Yellow Porsche Cayman, heading north. Bit banged up, but driveable. Got that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. And Asma will thank you.’

  I dropped the gun in one of the outer pockets of my jacket. The bulk against my hip felt oddly reassuring, even though it was a phoney. ‘Call the police if you want.’ I’d probably have to deal with them sooner or later. ‘But give us a head start, OK? She’ll be safer where I’m taking her.’

  I ran to the rear of the flat, into the bedroom. A sash window was open, curtains billowing, and, as promised, when I stuck my head out in the night breeze there was a metal staircase. There was just no sign of Asma.

  And then someone else voiced my thought.

  ‘Where the fuck is she?’

  You’d think, being in the army, you’d get used to having guns pointing at you. But ours wasn’t a particularly close-up war. There were no stand-offs. You heard, rather than saw, guns. The distinctive thud of an AK or the chatter of a Type 8 machine gun. Then there were the sniper rifles, the ones where, thanks to some supersonic distortion, you heard the whine of the bullet passing you before you heard the thump of it leaving the barrel. They said, if you heard that latter noise, they’d missed. If you didn’t . . .

  So, very rarely have I been in a situation where someone had a pistol levelled at me, and here I was, twice in one day. Except this time, it was Lawrence, Swincoe’s coiffured sidekick, who was threatening me. And his pistol was the genuine article.

  Glock 17, I noted. The Generation 4. Nice. Except when it’s heading your way.

  The thing is, no matter how much you tell yourself you’ll be brave, that they’ll never pull the trigger, that you can handle it, talk your way out of the situation, staring down that little 9mm hole and knowing what one bullet – let alone the seventeen the mag holds – can do has a way of scaring the shit out of you.

  So my mouth was dry when I spoke. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘What happened to your face?’

  He asked with what sounded like genuine concern.

  ‘I cut myself shaving.’ I wish I could stop that.

  Lawrence thought that was funny, in the context. ‘Is she out there?’

  ‘Asma? No.’

  ‘Pity. Because if we don’t go with Asma, we’ll go ahead and publish the pictures. Give her up and you’ll save yourself, and your little girl, an awful lot of embarrassment.’

  ‘You are a sick fuck.’ I was understating the case, but I couldn’t afford to let the red mist I could see building in front of my eyes cloud my judgement.

  ‘Jesus, why didn’t you just do what you were meant to? Not up to speed on tech, we were told. Didn’t know a hard drive from a hard-on. Just wind her up and off she’ll go, for Queen and Country.’

  ‘But you’re not, are you? Queen and Country. You aren’t MI5. Not you, not Swincoe.’

  He ignored that. He waved the pistol a little to indicate the flat. ‘You aren’t hiding her in here then?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘She’s gone.’

  He tutted. ‘I’m going to have to take you to Swincoe. See what we can salvage. Jesus. You know, we hadn’t clocked this she-male freak. No idea. If we’d known, we could have just gone with that. Sure you don’t know where she is heading?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not a clue.’

  Lawrence put his head to one side and some stray hairs flopped over his forehead. ‘You know, I thought, that day in the church, I thought I could quite fancy you. Bit of older cunt. I reckon I could have had you. The gallant knight rescuing the damsel in distress. I’d still do you.’

  ‘Shoot me now. It’d probably be more fun.’ I cursed my big mouth again, but he chortled once more.

  ‘Come on, we’re going downstairs.’

  ‘Nope. Not going anywhere.’

  ‘I will shoot you. In the arm if I have to. In the leg, although you’ll have trouble on the stairs. Come on, why are you acting like a bloody martyr? It’s just a bunch of Pakis fighting among themselves. What do you care? It’s business. Not ISIS or ISIL or Blade of buggery Islam. One part of the family want to fuck the other part without getting their hands dirty. As they said to us, ten years ago they’d have just assassinated him.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s very relieved.’

  ‘Mind you, they’ll probably kill the freak when they get hold of it.’

  ‘Her name is Asma.’

  ‘Whatever. Why are you being so stubborn?’

  Protect the Principal, I thought. If Swincoe was on The Circuit, he was on the other one, the one they usually classify as mercenaries. Guns for hire. Moral compunction not required.

  ‘It’s the job,’ I said.

  His eyes flicked down to my jacket pocket. I saw a shadow of concern cross his face. ‘You carrying?’

  I made a little noncommittal tightening of my lips.

  ‘You are. Fuckin’ hell.’

  ‘Now would be a good time.’

  ‘For what?’ Lawrence asked.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’

  The blade sliced through the muscle of the upper arm, emerging streaked with Lawrence’s blood. It was a smart choice of impact point. It wasn’t going to kill him – that was too much to ask – but the bicep automatically contracted, the gun pointed to the ceiling and went off. The boom was like a punch to my skull but the bullet buried itself in the ceiling, sending down a flurry of plaster.

  Lawrence screamed as the knife was yanked out. I knocked his gun hand aside, then pulled my own pist
ol out. ‘Yup, I’m carrying.’ And I slammed it across his young, unmarked face as hard as I could.

  ‘Fuck.’ Okan had gone quite pale. He still had the wicked boning knife in his hand. Blood was dripping off the tip onto the carpet, but it was so stained, a few more blotches wouldn’t matter. ‘That must have hurt.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ But he wasn’t feeling it now. He was a heap on the floor. And now I had a Glock 17. Ho, ho, ho. God moves in mysterious ways.

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘In the shop. Hiding in the meat store.’

  ‘I am on her side,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, I heard.’

  I took the knife and wiped it on Lawrence’s hoodie. As I handed it back I asked: ‘How did you know you’d need that for him?’

  ‘I didn’t. It was meant for you.’

  My turn to laugh. I had to admire his spunk, because he didn’t know the Colt was a replica. Yet he was willing to come and tackle me with that blade snatched from the kitchen next door. ‘Okan, I am a professional bodyguard.’

  He looked down at the crumpled form of Lawrence. I’d have to tie him up before we left. ‘No shit.’

  ‘And I will take Asma to somewhere safe from those who would harm her.’

  More nodding ensued. ‘I believe you. I do.’

  ‘Good. One more thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Does your shop sell matches?’ Not for a cigarette. I was done with them for the moment. They can tie up your hands at inconvenient moments. And I wanted to be as hands-free as possible.

  He nodded and pointed to my cheek. ‘And plasters.’

  FORTY

  ‘He doesn’t know, does he?’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘Okan.’

  ‘About me?’ Asma shook her head – I was beginning to get the right pronoun fixed in my head – as she slowed for traffic on the North Circular. We were taking a roundabout route to The Bishops Avenue. I had found the Evoque parked up with someone in it. Fortunately they were playing some godawful EDM shit, and it was easy to sneak up and jam broken matchsticks into the air valves of the two rear tyres – thank God they weren’t run-flats – to bleed out the air, an old trick Jack had taught me. I could have stabbed a blade into them, but there are sensors for rapid decompression – such as a blowout – that trigger dashboard alarms. There are too many bloody computers in cars these days.

  I reckoned the Evoque would be out of action for a while, but still, I wanted to keep my eyes peeled in case there had been back-up. That was why Asma was driving. Not particularly well, but it meant I could get in the occasional 360.

  ‘Stay left, we are coming off here.’

  ‘His family are Turkish. They have similar attitudes to my family. Better dead than trans.’

  ‘But he’s sweet on you?’

  She turned those big doe-eyes on me and, unconsciously I’m sure, batted her eyelids. ‘He’s just a friend.’

  ‘That’s some friend who stabs a guy holding a gun for you. Greater love has no man that he should put a knife through someone. He’s sweet on you.’

  Asma let out a little giggle, that was almost feminine, just pitched slightly too high.

  My phone pinged. Freddie, reminding me to give her a new number to send the images to. I texted her the one for the Sharif handset and I asked her to make sure they were compressed. Look at me, I thought. A dodgy hard drive, some hacked phones and suddenly I’m a regular Steve Jobs.

  ‘Want to tell me about it?’ I asked.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Everything. How we got here. How you got here. Just get past this van here.’ It wasn’t promising any trouble, but it was obscuring too much of the road.

  The Corolla clanked forward. Mechanically it was a piece of junk, but Okan had had it resprayed in a metallic gold, with red flames emblazoned along the side. I was hoping for inconspicuous. I was saddled with a prop from The Fast and the Furious. Still, the upside was, it was so ridiculous nobody would think a PPO worth her SIA accreditation would be in it. Hiding in plain sight, I think it’s called.

  ‘It started when I was twelve. I began stealing clothing from my mother, my aunties. I had a hoard of them under my bed. Sometimes, late at night, I would experiment with make-up. By the time I was fourteen, I was beginning to sneak out when I was dressed.’

  ‘Dressed?’

  ‘You know. Looking like this. Only not as good.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘My idea of make-up then made me look like an Andy Warhol painting.’

  ‘Right at the lights.’ Home run. No sign of anyone with an interest in a rocket-logo’d Toyota. It was beginning to rain, which would make us even more invisible. People concentrated on their driving more when it rained at night. ‘Keep your speed down and your distance from the car in front.’ Not that a sudden stop was likely with that car’s brakes. I could tell they were spongier than Square Bob’s pants.

  ‘I’ve only been driving a few months.’

  Like I couldn’t tell. ‘You’re doing fine.’ I checked my phone. Still downloading. And it was down to 15 per cent charge. I’d have to see if I could pick up a charger at the Asparovs’. I also had to think how to thank a man with more money than I could imagine. He had said I could use the house to put up a friend while they were away. He didn’t know I was turning it into the Alamo.

  I put the phone on the centre console and moved the Glock to my lap. ‘So who discovered you?’

  ‘School. I boarded. I had a friend who . . . we gravitated to each other. We both went out one night, dressed and underage. We went to a hotel bar. Some man tried to pick us up, bought us drinks so we didn’t have to go up to be served. But the barman saw us and called the police.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘I moved schools. Came here, to England. Had therapy. Didn’t help. I got into trouble at a place called Dick’s Dive. Soho.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘I was fifteen.’ That explained it. You’d be hard put to find anywhere as colourfully named as Dick’s Dive in Soho these days, not now Crossrail and chain restaurants have reduced it to a beleaguered little compound.

  ‘When I was sixteen I came into some money. Not much. But I told them I was going to live as a woman. All the time. No more hiding. This is me from now on, I said. My father . . .’ She let out a sigh.

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘You’d think in this day and age, a man like him would understand. But no. He said if I did that, his son was dead to him. I said he had never had a son in the first place. My mother persuaded me that there was a way forward. We would kill off Davood Sharif and invent Asma Abbas. Such things are easier in Pakistan.’

  ‘But why Bounds Green?’

  ‘The imam at the mosque. He offers prayers for people like me. He believes we can remain in the faith. Plus there is a clinic, nearby. For the electrolysis and injections. It is, was, only a temporary place to stay. But in Bounds Green I am unlikely to run into any of the family. Once I am fully a woman, then nobody will be any the wiser. I can be introduced as a distant relative, perhaps. But while I’m half and half, I am an embarrassment . . . as it says in the song, there’s always something there to remind me.’

  I laughed. I was beginning to like this . . . person.

  I wasn’t sure how to phrase the next question. ‘So you’ll go all the way?’

  ‘Next year. I can’t wait.’ She looked at me. ‘And before you ask, I’m not gay. It’s more complicated than that.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, thinking of Martyn. No politics, no religion and now, no gender judgements. ‘Right, turn here and we are there.’

  The lights on the A1 changed to red and I looked at the phone. Freddie’s pictures had downloaded. I gave a quick swipe through them. It wasn’t until we were turning into the Asparovs’ that I began to scream.

  FORTY-ONE

  ‘You going to keep it?’

  ‘Shut up and pass the SwiftKlot.’

  Ewan ‘Tom’ Jones has gone i
nto shock, not through blood loss, although Christ knows there is enough of that, but sheer surprise at being alive. They are called ‘legacy’ mines, which make them sound like they come from Fortnum & Mason or Harrods, but all it means is that they were left behind by the Russians.

  Around us is a group of WMIKs, the Land Rover ‘Wolf’ vehicles, equipped with .50 calibres. This was meant to be a simple resupp convoy to a Forward Operating Base. But before we reached the FOB we came under sustained mortar attack just outside Marjah. The air is full of the ear-bruising punch of high-calibre weapons and the whump of mortar rounds detonating.

  We have dragged the wounded lad down to a ditch, and are now cleaning up the damage. He was lucky. One of his oppos took the full blast. There is nothing we can do for that one, other than scoop up the body parts.

  I duck as rounds zip over our heads. Theirs or ours, I can’t be sure. They don’t discriminate when it comes to lifting the top of your skull off. I am feeling terrible. I have the squits and I hate what I have seen of Afghanistan, it’s just another dust-choked country with a political situation even more confused than Iraq. After what happened with Latif, I no longer trust the locals, especially not the kandak of the Afghan National Army we are working with. Six hundred men, every one a potential Taliban sympathiser or infiltrator. My nerves were shredding.

  But then again, being pregnant didn’t help.

  Our .50 calibres started up again. ‘Where’s the fuckin’ CAS?’ Freddie says to herself as she gets a drip into the young man’s arm. He is going to live. If we can get him out of the ditch.

  In a situation like this Close Air Support is essential, otherwise we could be stuck for hours.

  ‘Man down!’

  I look at the radio, then Freddie. ‘My turn.’

  ‘You can’t go in your condition,’ she says.

  ‘Fuck off.’ I ask for a confirmation of position and got a LOCSTAT in reply. I stick my head up. I don’t need the coordinates to spot my destination. A low blockhouse about four hundred metres away. I could see the muzzle flashes from within and little puffs of cement where the incoming rounds buried themselves in the walls.