Ride or Die

by Khurrum Rahman

  Omar’s voice filled my car.

  I listened to it. Twice.

  I tried to work out what could be used, but what exactly had he said that was of any use? Pretty close to jack-shit. He was Adeel-Al-Bhukara’s son, so what? Didn’t mean squat. What else? He was rude to waiters? Not quite terrorism. Then there was all this about creeping around the internet looking for someone to bend at his will for a few quid. What did that mean? I remember his old man used to chat in annoying riddles, too, jumping from one subject to another without fully committing to either.

  Then there was that phone call to this Tommy character. Omar had called him his associate. What was Tommy doing for him, and what did he mean when he asked, Are you in position? Position for what?

  I killed the video and ran it over in my head. There was nothing I could take to the police, and I no longer had the luxury of having MI5 on speed dial. Those leeches were keeping their distance.

  Fuck, what was my move here?

  I glanced at his parked green Mercedes, shining under the light, and I remembered that the parking ticket on his dashboard was valid until midnight. He was still around. Waiting. For something.

  I replayed the video one more time and pushed the timeline forward to the phone conversation. Omar had mentioned an address.

  Clareville Road. Number 102.

  Chapter 22

  ‘Just call Samuel Carter,’ Sophia said, not for the first time. ‘He’ll clear it up. Me and him, we’re partners!’ It was starting to sound pathetic even to her.

  Regardless of how things had turned out, were going to turn out, Sophia wasn’t about to drop down on her hands and knees and beg for her life. It wasn’t that it was beneath her, she just didn’t think it would impress Tommy, and it may just irritate him into killing her earlier than planned.

  Sophia had been on her knees opposite him for forty-five minutes. He hadn’t said much, just made shy eyes at her and thrown in the occasional threat. She glanced at her cheap watch and double-checked it against the wall clock. It was approaching seven, just ten minutes before the homeowner was due to turn up. That had to be the plan all along. What else could Tommy possibly be waiting for? There never was a bloody safe. She’d been used, plain as day, and Sophia of all people should have known that life doesn’t change that easily. Not for her. Never had.

  She watched him carefully. He’d moved the knife away from her throat, but the threat remained. It was now resting on his knee as he caressed it with a gloved hand.

  Sophia should have known as soon as she set eyes on him. God, she’d seen enough movies to know that once you see their face it didn’t matter how much you pleaded that you wouldn’t say anything to anyone, they were going to kill you anyway.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Sophia asked, feeling sorry for herself.

  ‘I’m not doing this to you,’ Tommy replied. ‘I’m doing it for a belief.’

  ‘What belief? What’s your belief have to do with me? I helped you. I can still help you.’

  ‘Your part in this is over. But if you try to escape me, I’ll find you. I’ll find you and I’ll have to kill you.’ He said it with a sad smile, as though he was genuinely sorry at the idea of killing her.

  ‘I won’t try to escape you,’ Sophia replied, her voice huskier than normal, her lips slightly parted. There was a naivety about him, a shyness. Sophia hoped that if she showed interest, his age and glaring inexperience with women could work in her favour. She didn’t go as far as undoing her scrunchy and letting her hair tumble down, only because she hadn’t washed it the night before and the scrunchy would get caught and she’d have to untangle it from her hair.

  His phone vibrated noisily on the glass coffee table, he glanced at the text message and away from her. She could have used that moment to cause a distraction, throw something at him and then run out of the front door, screaming the quiet neighbourhood down. But the knife resting comfortably on his thigh was still pointing at her, and in the time it would take her to pick up the disinfectant spray, unlock the nozzle and squirt him in the eye with it, all he would have to do was lean forward and plunge the blade into her throat.

  Tommy replied to the text message and his eyes were back on her.

  ‘Was that Samuel?’ Sophia asked. Tommy snorted and she felt stupid for asking. As if Samuel Carter would come to her rescue. She had to rely on herself. She had to be smarter than him, than both of them.

  Sophia shifted on her knees and leaned in towards him. ‘I meant what I said,’ she said. ‘I can help you… We can help each other.’ Her hand crept onto his knee, inches away from the knife. He didn’t flinch or tighten his grip on it. Sophia lifted her eyes to him, trying to make them as wide as possible. ‘Take me with you,’ she whispered, hoping he wasn’t put off by the chocolate stain on her uniform.

  ‘You’re starting to become a nuisance.’ Tommy lifted the knife to her face, the cold teeth resting on the side of her nose and the point an inch away from her right eye.

  Sophia willed herself not to flinch, and to say something, anything, but only a soft breath escaped onto his hand, just as they both heard the faint rattle and motion of the garage door opening.

  Tommy pulled the knife away but the respite was short-lived. He yanked Sophia by her ponytail and shot up to his feet, forcing Sophia up to hers. She held back a scream in exchange for the time that the distraction had bought her. He dragged her backwards behind him through the living area and into the open-plan kitchen, and headed towards the connecting door to the garage.

  Sophia struggled to stay upright in his grip, her nylon-clad feet scrabbling to find purchase on the cold tiles. If she fell, he may not let her get up again. Tears stung her eyes. She gritted her teeth and blinked the tears away before they could obscure her vision, and searched frantically around the kitchen. Her eyes landed on the clean black granite worktop and then slid along to the knife block. Biting back the pain of having her hair wrenched out of her head, she reached out, her fingers brushing and then closing around a handle. The knife silently slid out of the block.

  Sophia held it close to her leg.

  Tommy stopped with his back tight against the wall beside the connecting garage door. Sophia was tight against him. She could feel his heart thumping in her back in rhythm with her own heartbeat. The point of his knife rested against the side of her throat, hard enough to break skin. Sophia held her breath as she waited patiently to make her move. She mentally ran through her options.

  The patio where she had let this hell in was closest to her; a direct run from the kitchen in a straight line, ten steps, a couple of seconds, she figured, and another two to slide the door open and then into the garden, out onto the beaten path and then run for her life. It was an option, but Sophia couldn’t be sure if Tommy had locked the patio door after entering. She wouldn’t have time to fumble with the lock with him on her tail. Those precious seconds could be the difference between her pathetic life and a violent death.

  The other option was the front door. It was further away and not as direct. Sophia would have to negotiate her way around the three-seat leather Italian sofa and into the hallway and then out of the front door and onto the street. Again, not ideal, but the street would be more populated than the back of the house.

  Sophia heard the chirp of the car alarm from the garage. The attacker tightened his grip around her. Sophia tightened her grip on her own knife. She evened her breathing the way she was taught in her Performing Arts course to combat nerves before a performance.

  The adjoining door between the kitchen and the garage opened, shielding them.

  The homeowner entered.

  ‘Who the hell has had the heating on?’ he puffed.

  He turned to shut the door behind him and his eyes fell on Sophia, on the knife at her throat and on the stranger in his home.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ he barked without fear.

  ‘Shut up!’ Tommy said.

  ‘Do you know who I work for?’ he shouted
. ‘I’ll have your balls in a jar for this!’

  ‘I said, shut the fuck up!’ Tommy yelled back and moved the knife away from Sophia’s neck and pointed it at the homeowner.

  Now. It had to be now! Sophia brought the knife up and felt the sharp steel meet the flesh of Tommy’s hand. He hissed, ‘Bitch!’ under his breath and his grip slackened. Sophia bent at the knees and ducked out of his grip and ran out of the kitchen, determined, careful at each step not to slip on the floor. She ran through into the living room. She ignored the sounds of the scuffle behind her, she ignored the smack and the heavy thud and the homeowner’s whimper.

  Beyond the thumping of her heart, she could now hear the thumping of heavy boots getting louder, closer. She didn’t have time to negotiate her way around the sofa so she placed one foot on the seat and leaped over the back, her heart in her mouth as she momentarily flew in the air before landing plum on her feet. She risked a look back. Tommy struggled with the same move, his boots too heavy, digging into the seat. Sophia slid around the door and into the hallway, past her shoes, past her coat, muttering to a God that she’d just that second started to believe in. Her shoulder landed painfully against the front door. She pulled down the handle and pulled open the door. The cold welcomed her as she ran as fast as she could onto the middle of the road.

  To her left, headlights approached her at speed, flaunting the regulations of the quiet road. Sophia didn’t want to be mown down after all her efforts. She waved both hands above her head as she ran full pelt towards the car. It skidded and screeched and finally stilled in front of her. She placed her hands on the warm bonnet, either side of the BMW badge, and locked eyes with the driver as she tried to catch a breath. The driver stuck his head out of the window and screamed at her to ‘Get the fuck in!’

  Chapter 23

  Jay

  The woman pulled opened the passenger side door and scrambled in and slammed it shut behind her. I screamed at her to get down as I hunched low myself. My life was such that I expected my windscreen to explode in a hail of bullets.

  I quickly carried out a hasty five-point-turn on the narrow road, my sensors doing most of the work, and shifted through the gears into second. My Beemer jerked and then flew away from whatever the fuck was behind us.

  Her eyes were fixed on the wing mirror. ‘See anything?’ I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, as I glanced through the rear-view mirror into the darkness, for a tail or the flash of a muzzle.

  ‘I can’t tell,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Okay, buckle up!’ I said, as I tried to get my bearings, but I was pretty fucking far from Hounslow so I took the first right at speed, followed by a series of random turns until we eventually hit a more crowded street. We simultaneously expelled breath.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I finally got around to asking. ‘Are you hurt?’

  She ignored my questions and only opened her mouth to offend me. ‘Does this thing go any faster?’

  I ignored her right back as I hooked a left onto a road that I finally recognised. I looked out the driver’s side window as I slipped past the coffee shop where I’d met Omar not an hour ago. The door opened and I couldn’t miss him as his scrawny form stepped out dressed top to tail in his red tracksuit, with his phone clamped to his head, as he paced in the opposite direction. I shielded the side of my face with a hand, but he was too preoccupied finding out that his plan had gone a little sideways to notice the result of it sitting in my passenger seat.

  At the first opportunity I hit the dual carriageway, and I was able to open up the valves, swerving and slipping easily past cars. Even with all the shit that was happening, a small part of me was hoping that she was impressed. I swear, a pretty face can do that. I put those thoughts quickly behind me and tried to take some control.

  ‘Who’s after you?’

  She massaged her forehead and then ran her hand over her face. ‘I don’t know.’

  I side-glanced at her and took her in; tied blonde hair, plain white uniform, and she smelt a little of disinfectant. That much told me she was a housekeeper. The lack of shoes told me she’d left pretty sharpish.

  ‘I saw you run out that house. The hell happened back there?’

  She shook her head in a trance. Playing for time, no doubt searching for a blag to entertain me with. I tapped my screen and brought up the telephone menu. ‘I’m gonna call the cops!’

  ‘No,’ she said, and gently placed a hand on my arm before I could tap the last nine.

  ‘Something went down,’ I said. ‘We have to call the cops!’

  She pursed her lips tightly and I could hear her breathing through her small nose.

  ‘From a phone box,’ she said, quietly.

  Obviously she wanted to make the call anonymously. Which suggested she was more than just the victim. She’d had a part to play in whatever went down, but she hadn’t bargained that her part would lead to running for her life. Whatever had gone down, she sure as shit hadn’t been expecting it.

  ‘Cool,’ I agreed. A phone box made sense. I didn’t really want to be using my phone to call the cops. They traced that shit back to me and I’d get stuck in the mud trying to explain myself. I had to work out how this involved me, without the fuzz buzzing around me. I slipped off the dual carriageway and cruised slowly through Hammersmith High Street.

  ‘There!’ I pointed at a graffiti-decorated phone box and pulled up tight against it. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘I can do it myself,’ she said stubbornly, stepping out of the car and into the phone box.

  I watched her carefully through the passenger side window. She turned her back to me as she put the phone to her ear. I couldn’t trust her to do the right thing.

  ‘I said I can do it,’ she hissed at me as I pulled open the door and stepped into the phone box with her, suddenly feeling overly conscious being in such close quarters with her.

  I shrugged. ‘Go on then.’

  Her hands shook as she hit the first nine followed quickly by two more.

  I placed my head next to hers so I could hear both sides. Only the phone receiver separating us.

  ‘What service do you require?’

  ‘Police,’ she replied and then with a quick look at me, she added, ‘Ambulance, too.’

  ‘What is the address please?’

  ‘102 Clareville Road. South Kensington.’

  ‘Thank you. Can you tell me exactly what happened?’

  ‘There was a break-in. The intruder had a knife. The homeowner… he… he was attacked.’

  ‘Is he conscious?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Police and ambulance have been dispatched. Can I take your name?’

  It didn’t surprise me when at that point she disconnected the call. We stayed in the phone box for a moment in silence. She was looking at me as if daring me to ask the many questions that were running laps around my head. I let it slide. She’d been through it, and the police were on their way, so I gave her a small smile and nothing else. She didn’t return it, instead she crossed her arms tightly around her body, her shoulders shivering. I looked down and noticed one shoeless foot was perched on the other and I wondered just how cold the concrete floor would be. I felt a little guilty wrapped up in my parka.

  ‘Let’s get in the car,’ I said, when another part of me wanted to rub her arms and back for warmth. She looked out of the phone box as though considering other options, but something about her told me that this was a girl who never had options.

  I opened the car door for her and watched her get in. I slipped my jacket off and handed it to her. ‘Here,’ I said, and she draped it up to her neck like a blanket.

  I sat in the car. She ran a hand through her hair and in the process slipped off her purple scrunchy, then spent a moment untangling her hair before it fell gently over my jacket.

  Yeah, she was definitely cute!

  I cleared my throat. ‘So… What now? Where can I take you? Where do you live?�
�

  ‘I can’t go home. Not tonight.’

  I had a feeling that I knew the answer to my next question. ‘Friends, family?’ She shook her head gently. I nodded mine.

  ‘Where do you live?’ she asked.

  It threw me enough to quickly answer, ‘Hounslow.’

  ‘Can I stay at yours for a bit?’ she said, so softly that by the time her voice got to me I was already sweating bullets.

  ‘My place?’

  ‘Just for a few hours. I need to… work things out.’

  ‘Uh, yeah, you know. That’s cool, I guess.’

  It was the first time that I saw her smile. It was only small but it was worth the wait.

  ‘I don’t know your name,’ I said.

  She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. ‘Sophia,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Javid,’ I said, as my Beemer came to life. ‘Call me Jay.’

  Sophia opened her eyes and gave me another smile. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘you look like a Jay.’

  Chapter 24

  Imy

  The police had escorted me to the undisclosed location in Colnbrook but that’s where their courtesy expired. I pulled up my hoody over my head as the rain picked up, and made my own way back.

  Not ready to go home yet, I felt the need for noise, to drown out the noise in my head. I decided to cut through Hounslow High Street and let it all in; inhaling the smell and the constant stream of different tongues as strangers rushed and brushed past me looking for shelter from the rain. I allowed myself to escape for a moment, I allowed myself to be one of them. I didn’t care that from across the pedestrianised road a man in a dark suit was walking in the same direction, keeping the same steady pace, his head hidden underneath a large black umbrella so he wouldn’t be noticed by anyone but me.

  I ignored him and stepped into a newsagents and bought a single bread bun. As I paid for it I glanced out of the shop window and watched him, his frustration apparent as he waited across the road.