Ride or Die

by Khurrum Rahman

  ‘Is that thing off?’ She spoke over her shoulder.

  ‘I think so,’ DCI Taylor replied quickly.

  ‘You think so?’

  DCI Taylor hurried to the desk, her cheeks reddening further as she checked the recording device. ‘It’s not recording, Ma’am.’

  The lady placed the envelope down flat on the table and covered it with her hands. She spent a moment looking at the cut above my eye caused by Asif Kabir striking me with the remote control.

  ‘Imran Siddiqui,’ she finally said. It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer. ‘I am Chief Superintendent Penelope Wakefield.’ She pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear, a soft gesture at odds with her steely features, before slipping out four 6x4 photos. One by one she slid them across the table towards me. I held her gaze before I looked at each photo in turn.

  Asif Kabir on his side on the living room carpet, his body contorted in a Z-shape.

  Mrs Kabir in Rafi’s bedroom, her head comfortably placed on the pillow, eyes closed peacefully and her mouth open as though a prayer were caught on her lips. A deep red hole where her heart once beat.

  Saheed Kabir on the upstairs landing. On his knees, his legs trapped underneath him keeping his body up. One bullet wound in the chest. One in his forehead.

  The fourth photo was of me. In a service station drinking coffee somewhere on the M40 between London and Blackburn.

  I took my eyes off the photographs and gave Chief Superintendent Wakefield the same empty look that she was giving me. I held it for a moment before glancing over her shoulder. DCI Taylor simply blinked. My eyes moved across to DCI Humphrey, the outline of his jaw prominent and his fists tightly balled. I imagined his reaction if we had been the only two in the room. I pictured mine.

  Chief Superintendent Wakefield picked up each photograph, collated them neatly and placed them back in the envelope. She had laid her cards on the table and as good as her hand was, this was a game that she could not win.

  I’d once made a deal with the devil, and it was starting to show a return.

  Wakefield turned her head slightly to her right shoulder towards DCI Taylor, a small gesture, an instruction.

  ‘Imran Siddiqui,’ DCI Taylor said in a small voice, ‘thank you for assisting with—’

  ‘Ma’am,’ DCI Humphrey broke in with urgency. ‘Do not do this!’

  ‘DCI Taylor, please, continue,’ Wakefield said, leaving no room for argument.

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’ DCI Taylor nodded. ‘Imran Siddiqui, thank you for assisting with our enquiries. You are free to leave.’

  She held open the door. I stood up and walked out of the room without having said a word.

  Chapter 18

  Jay

  I stopped at the traffic lights and clocked my mirrors for cops before checking my phone. Idris still hadn’t left me a message. Despite his hesitation and frustration, I knew he’d make that call. He’d want to know why Imy was brought in, just so he could have further ammunition to further break my balls. He didn’t know half the shit I’d landed in, let alone what I was walking into now. I wasn’t quite sure myself.

  I put my phone down and picked up the black business card sitting in my centre console. I had a good mind to rip it in two, one-eighty my car and head back in the opposite direction. The direction of my bed. I swear seeing my old Nike shoebox had set me off. The bare contents of my old life as a low-key street dealer, and now I had an automatic handgun in there. It had me scratching my head! Just how removed, detached, I had become, not only from my old life, but just fucking life.

  I placed the business card back as the lights switched to green, and I made my way to the location Omar had messaged me – a coffee shop somewhere in upper-class South Kensington. It took me the best part of an hour and a half. An hour and a half of trying to figure out how Omar knew about my past.

  The circle of people who had known that I’d once travelled and trained at a Ghurfat-al-Mudarris camp in North Pakistan was small. It crossed my mind to call Teddy Lawrence, my old MI5 handler and regular piece of shit, but his number wasn’t valid anymore – or more likely he’d blocked me after draining whatever he could out of me.

  I wheeled my Beemer into an NCP car park and spotted Omar’s slimy green Mercedes. There was a spot a couple of places along from it and I reversed in. I walked over to his car and glanced through the windscreen at the ticket. It was valid until midnight. It was approaching half five. How long did he think we were meeting for? I dropped a small fortune into the machine to see me through a few hours, not that I was intending to stay that long.

  I slapped the ticket on my dash and walked out into the cold. I’d left my mac back at home as the weather had turned, and lifted the hood of my parka jacket over my head to protect me from the rain and the wind howling in my ears. With my phone directing me I walked five minutes to the location.

  It was a double-fronted building, which didn’t resemble any kind of coffee shop I’d ever been to. I stepped through the door and pulled my hood down. I was used to Costa and Starbucks, or the café behind Hounslow High Street that doubles up as a Vape bar. This was different. Above me there was a huge chandelier and circling it were smaller versions, but despite all that the lighting was moody, as though they were using those energy saving bulbs that never quite come alive. No obvious counter, no booths, just neatly clothed round tables and smartly dressed waiters serving smartly dressed clientele. On almost every table there was a three-tiered stand, holding picture-perfect cupcakes and some of the smallest sandwiches that I’d ever seen. Immediately I felt out of place, standing there in my dripping-wet parka and Air Jordans, wondering if I was violating some fancy-pants dress code. But I wasn’t the only one.

  In the far corner, sitting on his own at a round table fit for six, there he was, dressed as he had been earlier when we’d met, in a loud red tracksuit. He was watching me with amusement, clearly enjoying my discomfort. Maybe it’s because he was the only other brown face in the room that I greeted him warmer than I wanted to, by throwing my hand in the air and waving at him. I walked past the mostly white, mostly middle-aged clientele. Well-to-do, in appearance anyway. They all took turns to discreetly check me out. I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t doing the same to them.

  I approached his table and I shrugged off my wet parka. I went to place it on the back of my chair, but some suit crept up on me and gently took it from me with a tight smile that said, I’m watching you before shuffling away with my jacket.

  ‘Jihadi Jay!’ Omar said, again.

  ‘Maybe not call me that here?’ I smiled nervously as I sat down opposite him.

  ‘Never give up who you really are, regardless of your surroundings, Jay. You feel me?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, agreeing with the sentiment, but not quite in this case. ‘I feel you.’

  ‘Especially in a place like this. This is where you have to represent.’ He made a show of looking around. His voice purposely raised just enough to be heard. ‘Can you even begin to contemplate the arrogance of people that think there can only be one reality? One truth?’

  It was a hell of an opening gambit and he knew it. He leaned back with a smirk on his face, twirling the nose stud in between his thumb and forefinger as I tried to figure out what the fuck he was chatting about. I felt every eye in the room on us. I glanced over my shoulder and nobody seemed to give a shit.

  ‘So what’s up?’ I asked, because I really needed to know what the fuck was up.

  ‘Busy as the Devil but doing the work of Angels,’ he replied, smoothly.

  It had only been a minute, but I swear he was starting to annoy me with his bullshit. If he wanted to play the Riddler, then, fuck it, I’d play the Caped Crusader!

  ‘Alright, listen up.’ I leaned in, appropriately aggressive, and pressed a finger into the table. ‘You know my name, you know where I live. I reckon we should even the scores a bit.’

  ‘My name is Omar.’ I’d already sussed that from his private plates.
I shrugged. He smiled. And then he dropped it. ‘Bhukara. Omar Bhukara.’

  The pieces fell heavily into place. I willed my face to express the right fucking expression, even though I almost shit out my heart. In that moment, that fucking second, I was back there again.

  ‘Your father is a good man,’ I lied. His father was a first-class evil fuck!

  ‘Yeah,’ Omar said. ‘A great man!’

  ‘He meant a lot to me,’ I said. I was rusty and it sounded clumsy in my ears. It had been a while since MI5 had me in that position. But this was different, they hadn’t put me there, I had gone seeking. It didn’t matter; I was there and I had to switch on. Eyes and ears open. Taking in everything I could.

  Omar leaned back and draped an arm around the back of the chair. I took my eyes off him and looked on the table between us. Two phones, a smartphone and a lesser phone, most likely a throwaway, sitting next to his Mercedes key fob. In front of him I eyed the tea pot and the crusts of a sandwich on a small plate. On a separate plate, the creamy remains of a cake. He’d been there a while and I wondered why.

  ‘Last year my father was the happiest I’d ever seen him, leading up to the Boxing Day fuck-up! The way things turned out. It broke him.’

  The Boxing Day fuck-up, as he so poetically put it, was a terrorist attack, young British Muslim men armed with sawn-off AK assault rifles and automatic handguns. They were let loose in the middle of the afternoon on one of the busiest days of the year on Oxford Street, London. Their target was to shoot and kill at will. Omar Bhukara’s father, Adeel-Al-Bhukara had recruited them, educated them and made them think in the way that he wanted them to think. I was one of them.

  ‘It broke us all,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t to blame.’

  ‘There’s always somebody to blame.’

  That, right there, was it. That was my cue: stand up, moonwalk out of the joint, go home and smoke a spliff. I’d only landed that morning and already I felt like I’d put in a shift in a job that didn’t belong to me. But I couldn’t walk away just yet.

  I still hadn’t worked out how much Omar knew, and I couldn’t read if his screwed-up expression was directed at me. If word had hit him that I was on the opposite side of the table, in more ways than one, then this could be the last time that I’d enjoy high tea and cake. I nodded and then continued to nod as I looked over his shoulder, before casually scoping the room. There wasn’t any threat, not that I could see.

  ‘I wish things had turned out differently,’ I said, softly, hoping he’d follow the lead and lower his fucking voice. ‘Will you tell your father that I’m thinking about him?’ That was nothing but the truth. I’d have to make room in my already busy mind for that terrorist fuck!

  ‘You don’t know?’ Omar said.

  ‘What? What don’t I know?’

  ‘Of course, how would you?’ he said. ‘My father is dead.’

  Playing the part, I respectfully put my hand to my heart. ‘I’m sorry. I… I didn’t know.’

  ‘Earlier this year. March. He was killed in Dubai.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know,’ I said, again, when I really wanted to ask, how? But I had a feeling the how would be revealed, and the why would follow.

  ‘What’re you drinking?’ He switched, the smile back on his face. ‘You seem like a frothy coffee type of guy. Am I right, Jay? Hmm? Am I?’

  Without taking his eyes off me, Omar shot his hand up in the air and snapped his fingers. It got the attention of some of the patrons, and the waiter was at our table before Omar had put his arm down.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ I smiled at the waiter.

  ‘It’s alright, check out the menu. My man here will wait,’ Omar said, looking up and down at the waiter. ‘Won’t you, Garcon!?’

  ‘Very well, sir.’ The waiter nodded.

  I fumbled with the oversized menu and opened it. Considering the size of it there wasn’t much of a choice. ‘I’ll just have whatever you’re having,’ I said, closing the menu.

  ‘Alright, then,’ he said to me, and to the waiter he said, ‘Another pot of tea. Make sure it’s brewed before it gets here. I don’t want to sit around staring at it. And some more of those tuna sandwiches. Wash your hands first, though, I don’t want you handling my food after you’ve handled haram. And get me another selection of cakes. Nothing with gelatine, because I’ll know. You know I’ll know!’

  ‘As you please, sir,’ the waiter said, and walked away.

  ‘I love coming to places like this. Love how they look at me. You see, Jay, despite how I dress or the colour of my skin, money pisses over all prejudices. They have to treat me as though they would treat one of their own.’

  ‘It’s pretty exclusive for a coffee shop. Do you live around here?’

  Omar shook his head. ‘Did my growing up here, but I have a place in Copenhagen. I run my own PR company from there and my business takes me places, allows me to meet with some interesting people.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? Business?’

  ‘Amongst other things. I’m here to see you. I’m hoping you and I will do great things.’

  The short hairs on my short-back-and-sides stood to attention. I placed a hand onto my lap and out of sight. I slipped my hand into my pocket and my fingers found my phone. Blindly, I used my thumb to quick-press twice on the home button, a shortcut to launch the camera function. The capture button was bottom middle, and to the left of it was the red record movie button. I pressed it whilst coughing to cover the beep. I wasn’t trying to make a video of the inside of my pocket, but I hoped that it would pick up sound.

  ‘PR has its benefits, you feel me?’ Omar said, as I brought my hand back into view and placed it casually on the table. Every move I made now seemed to drip in suspicion. ‘I scour the internet daily,’ he continued. ‘Social media sites, mainly. Looking for the king and queen of losers. The most desperate of desperados. Those willing to give their granny a black eye for a fiver.’

  ‘For what, exactly?’ I shrugged.

  ‘Because,’ he said, as the waiter parallel-parked a trolley by our table. ‘They can be of use to me.’

  He was about to reveal something, I could feel it. And I wasn’t confident that his voice would carry to my phone buried in my pocket. I had to be sure that it was recorded. Omar watched the waiter clear the old crockery and place the new neatly on the table, no doubt looking for a reason to break his balls. I took the opportunity to slip out my phone from my pocket. Under the guise of casually checking for messages I glanced at my phone and crap! The clever manoeuvre in my pocket had led me to like an inspirational meme on Instagram. I raised my eyebrows and nodded to myself, as though I was reading an interesting text. Omar’s eyes were still judging the waiter. I tapped quickly on the camera app and set the video recorder, the phone beeped softly to indicate that the recording had started. I coughed just in time to cover it, and placed the phone face down on the table. I think I did it cool, but I was sweating my balls off.

  I picked up a small spoon and made appreciative sounds at the cake in front of me, as I cut smoothly through it with minimum crumble. I took a bite and it felt like a party on my tongue. The waiter walked away unscathed.

  ‘So,’ I said, getting him back on track. ‘The king and queen of losers?’

  ‘It’s funny what lengths a downtrodden individual will go to, given a little respect and a cash incentive.’

  I leaned in closer and in doing so I nudged my phone a touch closer to him with my elbow. ‘I take it you found someone?’

  ‘More than one. I’ve put together a small team. Two on the payroll, and one who is sympathetic to The Cause. You’ll meet him.’

  My mouth opened as my brain scrambled through a thousand questions. Omar had assumed that I would be part of this operation, as if Jihadi Jay was back in town.

  One of his phones vibrated on the table and he picked up the lesser handset. ‘Speak of the devil, and the devil shall call,’ he said, talking shit again before answering. I poure
d us both some tea, positioning my body so that I could eavesdrop, but Omar dropped back in his chair and I could only hear one side of the conversation.

  ‘Yes, Tommy. Hello… Are you in position…? Are you sure…? Clareville Road. Number 102…? Okay, alright, I’m just checking…! Of course she’s going to let you in… Yeah, yeah, it’s disabled… All good…? Drop me a text… I’m not far… We will be victorious, my Brother, Inshallah.’

  Omar hung up and stared at the phone for a moment as though he was running through the conversation with whoever this Tommy character was. I wondered if he was one of those on the payroll, or the one who was sympathetic to The Cause. The use of Inshallah pointed to the latter.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to call time.’ Omar nodded over my shoulder, seconds later the waiter returned with my parka. I shrugged it on hesitantly with his help. I didn’t want to leave, not yet. Omar hadn’t given me much, but something was happening, and it was happening right fucking now. ‘Keep your phone close,’ he said.

  ‘Huh?’ I said, in a daze.

  ‘If things go as planned, then believe me, bro, you are going to want to be a part of this.’

  His words sent a cold shiver down my back and reality kicked the fuck in. I should’ve turned my back on the whole fucking thing and given whatever little I did know to someone more qualified for this shit.

  Then again, who was more qualified for this shit than me?

  I dug deep. I had to play the part and become that person again. I reached out and shook his hand warmly, and with my other hand on my heart, I said, ‘It would be an honour to be a part of your Jihad.’

  Chapter 19

  How easy is it to get a gun in America? Tommy thought, as he sat invisible in the dark on the damp dank green. Walmart, or any other supermarket; apparently the checks weren’t very rigorous and he could have walked out with a trolley chock-full of groceries and automatic weapons. The thing was, Tommy wasn’t in America, he was in England, living in Southall, and regardless of what the news alluded to, it was near impossible to get hold of guns there. Unless, of course, he was running in those types of crowds which Tommy wasn’t. Though he had found somebody who could place as many guns in his hands as he wanted. But it would come at a price.