Kitabı oku: «Ride or Die»

In memory of my beautiful Dad x

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Prologue

Part 1

Chapter 1: Javid Qasim (Jay)

Chapter 2: Imran Siddiqui (Imy)

Chapter 3: Jay

Chapter 4: Imy

Chapter 5: Jay

Chapter 6: Imy

Chapter 7

Chapter 8: Jay

Chapter 9: Imy

Chapter 10

Chapter 11: Jay

Chapter 12: Jay

Chapter 13: Imy

Chapter 14: Jay

Chapter 15: Imy

Chapter 16: Jay

Chapter 17: Imy

Chapter 18: Jay

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21: Jay

Chapter 22

Chapter 23: Jay

Chapter 24: Imy

Chapter 25

Chapter 26: Jay

Chapter 27

Chapter 28: Jay

Chapter 29: Jay

Chapter 30

Chapter 31: Jay

Part 2

Chapter 32: Jay

Chapter 33: The Teacher

Chapter 34: Imy

Chapter 35: Jay

Chapter 36: Imy

Chapter 37: Jay

Chapter 38: Imy

Chapter 39: Jay

Chapter 40: Imy

Chapter 41

Chapter 42: Jay

Chapter 43: Imy

Chapter 44: Jay

Chapter 45: Jay

Chapter 46

Chapter 47: Jay

Chapter 48: Imy

Chapter 49: Jay

Chapter 50: Imy

Chapter 51: Jay

Chapter 52: Imy

Chapter 53: Jay

Chapter 54: Imy

Chapter 55: Jay

Chapter 56: Imy

Chapter 57: Jay

Chapter 58: Imy

Chapter 59: Jay

Chapter 60: Imy

Chapter 61: Jay

Chapter 62: Imy

Chapter 63: Jay

Chapter 64: Imy

Chapter 65: Jay

Chapter 66: Jay

Chapter 67: Imy

Chapter 68: Jay

Chapter 69: Imy

Chapter 70: Jay

Chapter 71: Imy

Chapter 72: Jay

Chapter 73: The Teacher

Chapter 74: Jay

Chapter 75: Imy

Chapter 76: Jay

Acknowledgements

Extract

About the Publisher

Prologue

In that very heartbeat, I knew what I had to do.

As I watched, his small hand emerged out of his pocket, a detonator gripped high above his head, high enough for me to see. In a hall full of guests, I alone was his audience and he had my attention. The serene smile on the face of the ten-year-old boy was one of no regret and no fear of death, only victory. There would be no second guessing, no degree of falling to my knees and begging to sacrifice my life for the lives of my family.

There was only one way it would go. This was my punishment.

His serene smile was the last thing I saw before a white light filled my eyes and an explosion filled my ears. He took his own life and snatched away everything that I had allowed myself to believe would forever be mine.

I held my family in my arms, tight to me, their faces and bodies burnt and broken and breathless. Through my tears and through my screams, I never once asked why.

I knew why.

The rage was the only emotion that I’d felt and I welcomed it back like an old friend.

I knew what I had to do, and I would allow the rage to dictate my actions.

Part 1

Fake News.

Definition: Bullshit information fed by bullshit media to fit a bullshit narrative.

Chapter 1
Javid Qasim (Jay)

Flat on my backside, arms flopped to my side, laid out on a sun lounger with one of those big umbrella things above me, protecting me from the blazing sun, with nothing but another lazy day ahead of me. On the small plastic table next to me, a bottle of water sat upright on top of a book. Yeah, a book! Seemed like a good idea at the time. Seemed like a holiday thing to do, but really I could not be arsed. Give me some credit, though, I attempted it, ripped through a few chapters, but it just felt way too much like homework. Fuck, man, I barely did homework at school, I sure ain’t doing homework on holiday! Next to the book was my phone, also taking a well-deserved rest, and some loose change that amounted to either a fortune or jack-shit. I don’t know, I still hadn’t sussed out the exchange rate.

I sighed the sigh of a man who had finally sat down. I accompanied it with a noisy stretch which turned into a big fat yawn. Good times, that may just get better from what I could see in front of me.

Through the tango tint of my replica designer shades I glanced across the pool and the brunette who was giving me the eyes yesterday was doing so again. I wasn’t surprised, I’d hit the weights twice in the last couple of weeks, and possibly this attention was a result of that. I crossed my arms across my chest, hoping that the curve of a bicep might make an appearance. I lifted my shades onto my forehead, and gave her the elevator eyes. I decided against a wink, instead giving her the smallest of smiles, no teeth, not yet, just one side of my lips curling a touch. That’s enough for today. I’d played this game before, with varying results. I’d keep it cool. With a flick of a finger I slid my shades down my forehead, but they fell too far down my nose and I had to quickly readjust. Great! She’d turned her attention elsewhere.

A member of staff approached. Unlike me he was showing teeth and smiling wildly. He towered over me, blocking my view. His too-tight shorts too close to my face, he handed me an already dripping lemonade ice-lolly that I’d forgotten I’d ordered, and didn’t feel like anymore, and started jabbering on about some excursion or another, thrusting flyers in my face. I reached across to the table and picked up a couple of coins and held them up to my face, squinting, trying to figure out how little of a tip I could get away with. I handed him one Qatari Rial and took a flyer from him and waved him away with it as I considered jumping in the pool.

This had been my spot for the last two weeks, with another two weeks to come. And I didn’t have the inconvenience of waking up at fuck-off-o’clock in the morning to come and plant my towel on the lounger, as is the international method of reservation. No, man, this was my mum’s joint and she called the shots. It was actually the Marriott Hotel in Doha, Qatar, and Mum worked there on reception. She had a word with one of the lifeguards to keep the shaded lounger reserved for me during my stay, because she knew better than anybody how sensitive my skin was to the sun.

I had finally managed to get out to Qatar to visit Mum and Andrew, her now fiancé. His proposal was a long, convoluted story which I lost interest in pretty quickly when they told me, but there were dolphins, a hot air balloon and a lost shoe involved. He was alright, Andrew, made Mum smile and laugh. He made her happy. Even though they were settled in a Muslim country, nobody questioned their so-called interfaith relationship. It would have been worse in Hounslow!

Yeah, man, life was good, you know. Well, it was good right then.

In a couple of weeks, I’d fly back home to an empty house and an empty life. I’d sit on my trusty armchair and face up to the fact that I was quickly running out of money, currently unemployed and had jack-shit to fill my days with. It crossed my mind that I should go crawling back to my old IT Helpdesk role at the London Borough of Hounslow. I mean, I never officially left. I just hadn’t been in for the last eight months. I didn’t even phone in my absence. I mean, what would I tell them? How would I explain the death in the family? That my old man was tracked down then shot down as part of a large-scale government operation that I was central to.

Can you imagine that conversation?

So instead I ignored the emails and phone calls from my team leader, then I ignored the emails, phone calls and letters from HR. I just couldn’t be arsed to go back, figured that I had too much to sort out. Turns out I didn’t have jack-shit to do. Abdul Bin Jabbar was dead and MI5 had no use for me. I should’ve been glad. It’s what I wanted. What I thought I wanted.

My life came to a standstill and the world continued to spin without my interference.

It gave me time to reflect. Eight months of sitting in my armchair watching Piers, Lorraine and Holly and those crazy Loose Women, as I tried to work out what matters and what fucking doesn’t. I was done with doing the right thing in the wrong way, and I was done thinking about those that didn’t deserve my fucking attention. But, you know, sometimes your mind betrays you.

The fuck, man! Stop with this self-pity bullshit.

I had Christmas in the sun with Mum to look forward to. I realised that my nails were digging into my palms. I flexed my fingers and shook my head clear of that shit. Those demons could take a back fucking seat.

I lifted my head and peered over the rim of my shades across the pool to see if I could re-establish eye contact with my soon-to-be holiday romance. I watched her carefully, still perfectly poised, one leg stretched, the other bent at the knee looking like an Instagram post. She was no longer looking in my direction. She was chatting merrily away to a copper.

He had gallantly picked up her towel, which had dropped to the floor, and handed it to her. She smiled and flirted her way through a show of gratitude. I had been about to make my move on her, tomorrow or the day after. But I had no chance with him knocking about.

I laughed to myself in disbelief. If I’d had a pen and a pad, I’d have been taking notes.

I took him in. He wasn’t in police uniform. In fact, he’s wasn’t wearing a stitch, apart from a pair of barely-there lime-green trunks that he’d probably borrowed from his ten-year-old nephew. He gave her a Sheriff’s nod and sauntered away, her eyes tracking his movement as he rounded the pool and approached me with a perfect smile on his stupid face.

My best mate, and Hounslow’s finest detective – his words, not mine – Idris Zaidi. I hadn’t seen him in, I don’t know, a couple of months? A few? A long time considering that we once lived in each other’s pockets. Despite the fact that he’d got in the way of what could very well have been The One, Idris was just what I needed.

‘They’re letting anyone in here now, are they?’ I beamed up at him. ‘This is supposed to be a five-star joint.’

‘They dropped a star as soon as you walked in,’ Idris replied. ‘You going to get up and greet me properly or do you want to do this horizontally? You know I’ll do it!’

I laughed and straightened up, and we bumped fists before bumping bare chests. It was as awkward as it sounds.

‘Mum?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said, using a straight hand to shield the sun from his eyes. ‘She called me, said you might need some company, so you know, thought I swing by.’ He smiled and ruffled my hair. The girl from across the pool was laughing like a cheerleader as though the jock had just kicked sand in the nerd’s face. I knocked his hand away.

‘Swing by?’ I said, fixing my hair with a flick of my hand. ‘It’s a six-and-a-half-hour flight.’

As sunny as my disposition allowed me to be, Mum had read me inside and out. She recognised that I was at war with myself. She’d made the right call to the right person. It was just what I needed. I’d never tell Idris this, but he was just what I needed.

In the evening Mum and Andrew joined us for a meal at one of the many bars at the Marriott. This one, can’t remember the name, something corny, turned into a nightclub late on and I could already see it filling up with young hungry holiday-makers and well-dressed hookers looking to clean them out for a slice of dirty heaven.

‘We should call it a night,’ Mum said, joined at the hip to Andrew, opposite us in a booth.

Idris glanced at his watch. ‘It’s only just gone nine. Can I tempt you with a nightcap?’

Idris always did that, always spoke like that around certain company, a little hoity-toity for my liking. Who says tempt you with a night cap? Like he’s just stepped out of a black-and-white flick.

‘I wouldn’t mind an early night, actually,’ Andrew said, making eyes at Mum.

I wanted to believe that age was catching up with them, and that they were heading up to rest their old bones and not… you know. I made a face. Mum noticed, smiled beautifully at me, and they shuffled out of the booth. Idris stood up and gave Mum a cuddle, and shook hands heartily with Andrew, and told him what an immense pleasure it was to meet him. Seriously Idris, keep that shit real, man!

Mum beckoned me over to one side, away from Andrew and Idris, and softly asked me the same question that she had been asking for the last two weeks.

‘Are you okay, Jay?’

It was a double-barrelled, fully loaded question. We both understood the meaning of it, but neither of us was willing to mention or even acknowledge the fact that my dad, her husband, was dead. We just had to read it in each other’s eyes.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

Mum smiled and replied. ‘I am.’

I watched her watch me for a moment before landing one on my cheek and then rubbing off the lipstick with her thumb. She stepped away and linked arms with Andrew, then with a joint smile they walked out of the bar.

‘Right.’ Idris rubbed his hands together like he was trying to start a fire. ‘Drinks?’

‘Yeah, go on,’ I said. I didn’t have to tell him my order. He knew.

Idris went off and ordered the first round of alcoholic drinks of the night. It wasn’t like we were hiding it from Mum, I think she knew, but I would never feel comfortable drinking around her. I did quit for a while, possibly due to the company I was keeping, but I was back on it. It helped, other times it hindered, but each time it numbed and clouded what I didn’t want to see.

My stomach rumbled at the thought of drinking on empty. Once again, my choice of meal had been poor. I’d bent two knives trying to cut through the steak, so I gave up. The potatoes were too squishy, so I left those. The vegetables I didn’t touch, because they were vegetables.

‘Here,’ Idris said, handing me my drink, a bag of crisps, and some sort of health bar. ‘Figured you might be hungry,’ he said, taking a seat opposite me.

‘The hell is this?’ I said, holding up the health bar, all raisins and berries.

‘You don’t want it?’ he said. ‘I’ll have it.’

‘No. I’ll have it,’ I said, taking a bite out of it. ‘So, what’s new?’ I asked, through a mouthful.

‘Honestly, I needed to get out of Hounslow. That place is starting to depress me.’

‘Yeah, it’s not what it used to be. Lost some of its charm.’ I split open the bag of crisps longways and nodded at Idris to help himself. He shook his head. ‘Gone are the days when you could sort out shit with a good scrap. Now it’s all blades and shooters.’

‘It’s worse than that, Jay.’

‘Drugs?’ I nodded. Idris worked for the Met’s Drugs Directorate; he was basically a Narc. It was a role that had taken its toll on him. ‘Fucking junkies are taking over Hounslow.’

‘Worse than that, Jay.’ Idris took a sip and watched me over the rim. It was starting to become clear that he hadn’t just flown over to work on his tan.

‘What’s happened, Idris?’ I said, shifting my drink from one spot to another for no apparent reason.

‘I’ve been meaning to chat to you, but I couldn’t get hold of you at home. You could’ve mentioned that you were flying off on holiday.’ Idris took his time clearing his throat. ‘So when your mum called, I thought, I’m due time off work, so why not. I’ll fly over.’

Stalling…

‘What’s happened, Idris?’ I asked, again.

He took a sip of his drink, and dropped his gaze. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and evenly and eventually, he asked, ‘The name Imran Siddiqui mean anything to you?’

I sat back in my chair and measured the question. Yeah, that name meant something to me, but I wasn’t quite sure what. Imran, or Imy as I knew him, used to knock about with this stoner, Shaz, and on occasion when I was juggling, they’d pick up off me at the back of the Homebase car park, Isleworth. Some shit-talk and that was it, everyone on their merry way. Once I quit dealing, I didn’t see much of either of them.

Until one day Imy tried to fucking assassinate me.

From what little I found out, Imran Siddiqui was a sleeper agent for the terrorist cell, Ghurfat-al-Mudarris, and when said terrorist cell slapped a fatwa on my head, it was on him to carry it out. He couldn’t go through with it, though. Living in London, in Hounslow, had softened him, I guess. The fuck do I know!? All I know is that I was looking down the barrel of a gun and then I wasn’t.

‘What about him?’ I asked, drained all of a sudden. All that optimism dissipated out of me.

‘Do you know him?’ Idris said, one fucking word at a time, like I was a child.

‘I’ve seen him around,’ I shrugged. ‘Way back when, when I was hustling, he used to pick up a little weed off me… You going to tell me what’s on your mind, Idris?’

‘You haven’t seen him since?’

I wasn’t about to give it up that easily.

‘Yeah, knocking around town, probably. Fuck, man, what’s with the questions?’

‘He got married… Last week.’

I shrugged. ‘Yeah?’ The lights dimmed above me as the DJ took his place behind the booth, a ripple of excitement from the few early ravers. ‘Good for him,’ I said. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

The DJ spun his first track, a Christmas classic remixed with a jaunty Euro-trash beat. Idris leaned in over the table so he could be heard over the music. I didn’t know what he was going to say but I had a feeling I didn’t want to hear it. I moved back even further in my seat and crossed my arms as I willed my knee to stop hammering under the table. He inclined with his head for me to join him at the middle of the table. I sighed, leaned in and met him there, our foreheads almost touching.

‘Ten days ago, there was an attack at his wedding reception,’ he said. ‘A bomb went off,’ he fucking said.

Chapter 2
Imran Siddiqui (Imy)

I used to have this itch. I’d scratch it and it would appear elsewhere. I’d scratch there. Then somewhere else. It would leave me with scrapes and grazes all over my head and body. At times I would break skin and bleed. It was a condition brought on by stress. Brought on by knowing with certainty that one day my past would catch up with me and destroy all those that I cared about.

I no longer have that itch. I no longer have that stress. My past caught up with me.

His name was Rafi Kabir, and at ten years old he was a child desperately trying to be a man. He reminded me of myself at that age, dripping in poison and ready to infect the whole world for a belief shared by millions but no longer by me. From the first time that I’d set eyes on him, I knew that he had the will to one day achieve what I never could.

I’d only spent a short time in his company, but Rafi often crossed my mind. The cocksure smile, the bravado, as though, at ten, he had it all worked out. Spitting out words with raw intention, the vicious promise to kill for his people, when at that age, his people should have been running around a playground, and not a battlefield.

But that’s not how he was brought up. He was a product of his environment. His father, his brother and his mother, all had a part to play in polluting an innocent mind with sick thoughts.

I had walked away from him, desperately relieved that he would never cross my path again, and I would never again have to look at the hatred in his eyes.

Life has a way about it, though.

An uninvited guest at my wedding. Standing beside my son, Jack, my wife, Stephanie, and my Khala. Waiting, just waiting for the right moment for me to notice him, acknowledge him. With guests in my ear, hands out for me to shake, and pats on my back, I noticed him.

I noticed the detonator, too big in his small hands.

My eyes moved hungrily over my family, one last time. I was too far away to save them but close enough to see the smiles on their faces. They were the happiest I had ever seen.

It’s how I would remember them.

My Khala was like a mother to me. I buried her the day after she’d been killed. As a Muslim, it had to be that way. Then I waited ten days locked away at home, lying on my side, staring through a small gap in the curtains as it shifted continuously from darkness to light to darkness. I ignored the knocks on the door, the phone calls and the well-wishers, and mourned them just as I had once mourned my parents. But I was older now, stronger, no longer a boy. And I had nothing or nobody left to lose.

On the tenth day, I put on the same black tie and suit and buried Stephanie, my wife only for a day, and Jack, my son. He would have turned six that day. We’d planned to celebrate on the beach in the Maldives, a joint celebration of our marriage, his birthday, and a future that I had been foolish to present to them. I had ripped the tickets into the smallest of shreds and then Sellotaped them back together and placed them in the inside pocket of my suit jacket.

I stood alone at the side of the graves, the rest of the mourners stood away on the other side. To them I was damaged, a disease, someone to steal glances at and blame. Stephanie’s mother and father would have stood by my side, but they too had been murdered on our wedding day.

Somebody, I don’t know who, had hired out an old tavern for the wake. And somebody, I don’t know who, said a few words. The mourners, who had been guests at our wedding, sat and listened in grim silence, surrounded with cheap Christmas decorations, knowing how close they themselves had come to death. They drank, they ate, they whispered, they stared. I felt the blame directed at me and accepted every judgement. They walked away, leaving me on my own with ringing messages of consolation and promises of support. It meant nothing to me. They meant nothing to me. I’d never see them again.

Last to leave, I walked out of the tavern and into the early evening darkness that the winter brings. My Prius sat alone in the small car park, a thin layer of snow melting away as the weather changed to a cold rain.

I unlocked the car and lifted the boot. From under the spare tyre I picked up a roll of plastic food bags, a handful of elastic bands, and a Glock .40-calibre handgun and suppressor. I pushed the boot shut and sat in my car, placing the items on the driver’s seat. I started the car and as I waited for it to warm up I felt a presence outside.

My hand reached across and instinctively I gripped the cold steel barrel of my gun and turned to look outside my window. A figure wrapped up in a black puffa and a woolly Raiders hat that I recognised, ambled slowly and uneasily towards me, each step more tentative than his last. I dropped the gun on the seat and placed my hands on my lap.

Shaz was the only other person left in this world that I cared about. But the cards had been dealt and turned over and he had walked away from my life without a goodbye. Because of who I was. Because of what I had brought into his life.

We watched each other for a moment through the driver’s side window, replaying the same events in our minds. I had once hurt him and I hadn’t seen him since. I blinked away the memory and slid down the window.

‘I’m… I’m so sorry.’ He said the words I should have said to him a long time ago.

I took my eyes away from him and stared straight ahead at the Christmas lights running along the roof of the tavern.

‘Steph… Jack… Khala… I don’t know what to say… I’m sorry.’

I turned back to him. His teeth chattered and his body visibly shook from the cold or from facing me again. He looked at me for a response and I wanted to give him one. I wanted to get out of the car, put my arm around him and buy him a drink. I wanted to hear him regale me with the first world problems that always seemed to bother him. I wanted to hear his laughter. I wanted to hold him.

Instead, I nodded blankly.

‘Anything I can do?’ He shrugged softly.

I shook my head.

‘I’ve moved away.’ Shaz hesitated. I didn’t blame him for not telling me where. I had once brought hell to his doorstep.

‘It’s okay,’ I said.

Shaz looked embarrassed at what our friendship had become. He shifted his eyes away from mine and they landed on the passenger seat, on the roll of plastic food bags, the elastic bands, before resting on the handgun and suppressor. He blinked as though trying to find the common factor between the items. He couldn’t. How could he?

I watched him jerk back, as though he had just been pulled back from stepping onto a busy road. His eyes were wide, wild, worried, expressing what words could not.

‘I have to go,’ I said.

I slid the window up, my eyes not leaving his, and shifted the gear into D and drove away. In my rear-view mirror, past Jack’s car seat, I watched Shaz get smaller and smaller until he disappeared out of my life.

Chapter 3
Jay

‘Jay,’ Idris called. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

Imy got married? There was an attack? A bomb went off? Yeah, I fucking heard him.

Not able to bring words to my lips, I nodded and snatched my eyes away from his. Over Idris’ shoulder, a gaggle of giggling girls moved onto the dance floor. A group of three lads followed, all tight jeans and tight T-shirts and perfect glow-in-the-dark teeth. They stood at a safe distance, eyes set on the girls as they coolly nodded their heads to the bass. In an effort to impress, one of them decided to break the monotony and bust a move. His body moved too fast to the music as he drew invisible shapes with his hands. Too soon, I thought, bide your time, mate.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything, Jay?’

‘Is he dead?’ I asked.

Idris shook his head. ‘No… But there were fatalities.’

I nodded again, my eyes still over his shoulder. The over-enthusiastic dancer had peeled away from the group and shimmied closer to the girls. His friends watched and laughed on as though they were used to such an audacious move.

‘Who?’ I said.

‘Imran lost his wife and son… He lost his Khala… He lost his mother- and father-in-law.’ He held up an open hand. ‘Five fatalities. Six including the bomber. And a whole lot of guests were left with life-changing injuries.’

I nodded and kept nodding. The disco dancer had made himself a sixth toe, bang in the middle of the group of girls. He carried a huge smile, lighting up his face as the girls laughed and danced around him. I wondered what his biggest problem was. If he had any. I wondered if he would continue to live the rest of his life as free and happy as he was at that moment.

‘How?’ I said, not yet able to form any more than one-word responses.

Idris shook his head again, this time sadly, and took his time telling me. ‘The bomber. His name was Rafi Kabir. He was ten fucking years old.’

I blinked and moved my eyes from the dance floor and they landed on the traffic light disco lights at the foot of the DJ booth. I watched them flash from red to blue to green. Red to blue to green. Red… Blue… Green. I focused on them until they were burning a hole in my eyes.

‘Jay,’ Idris said, putting a hand on my arm. I turned to him, the colours in my eyes moving with me. The bass thumping through my heart. ‘You okay?’ I nodded. He wrongly took it as a sign to continue. ‘Rafi walked into Osterley Park Hotel with an explosives vest strapped to his chest under his sherwani. He detonated at the head table where they all sat.’

‘But not Imy.’

‘No.’ Idris narrowed his eyes, picking up that I called him Imy, when I had told him I didn’t know him all that well. ‘Not Imran. He was at the other side of the hall, but he witnessed it.’

I let it sink in. I tried to visualise it. I couldn’t. But I knew what it meant. Imy suffered a punishment worse than death.

‘They only got married that morning. Less than a day they were husband and wife!’

‘Yeah, alright, Idris.’ I didn’t need to know anymore. I stood up. ‘I’m stepping out for a cigarette.’

I moved away from Idris with my name on his lips. I ignored him and walked through the half-empty dance floor in the straightest of lines, past the happy, and out of the bar into reception. The receptionist, a friend and colleague of my mum, said something to me, like a joke, something funny about my shirt, I can’t be sure. I laughed politely without catching her eye and walked out to the pool.

I located my lounger and sat down heavily on it. The humidity, still strong at that time of the night, strangling me. I watched my cigarette shake in my hands all the way to my lips. I sparked up. The swimming pool was empty and blue and still and perfect. I wanted nothing more than to jump in. See how long I could hold my fucking breath for.

I took a long pull of my cigarette, not realising that I had smoked it down to the butt. The cherry was gently burning my finger tip. I let it burn.

Idris was walking towards me, drinks in hand, as if we could continue with this fucking evening. As if I would finally tell him what my life had become.

I wished I could.

He placed the drinks on the plastic table and pulled up a plastic chair and sat down beside me. I stubbed my cigarette out and slipped out another.

‘Rafi Kabir was reported missing from his home in Blackburn by his parents eight months ago,’ Idris continued, when all I wanted was for him to shut the fuck up. ‘Did you not hear about it?’

I shook my head. A missing brown kid was never going to make any kind of waves in the news. The media is selective as fuck.

‘The attack has made front-page news,’ Idris said, as if crawling through my brain. ‘The first few days, the country’s media set up shop out on the Great West Road just outside Osterley Park Hotel. There were protesters from the left, from the fucking right. Gangs of Muslims from Luton turned up. Faces obscured with scarves. It kicked off, Jay! Fights and riots! The Four Pills pub and that Indian restaurant next to the hotel was smashed up and looted. Two stabbings and a fuckload of arrests.’ Idris took a breath as I held mine. ‘All because this kid decided to express his hatred in the most violent way possible, right in the middle of a wedding reception between a Muslim boy and a Christian girl.’ Idris rinsed off his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘The press, as you can imagine, lapped it up.’

Yeah, I can imagine. The media. Instant fucking hard-on. Instant fucking narrative. Bomb attack at Muslim/Christian wedding. Reporting the level of racism, of hatred it would take for someone to react in that way. To destroy the coming together of two cultures after one had tried so hard to accept the other. I could picture the headlines, designed to prod and provoke, designed to escalate a war starting on social media before drawing blood onto the streets. It’s bullshit, such fucking bullshit! Just another reason to avoid us, shun us, look at us and judge us. The press were not going to let go of this fucking bone. But once again they would be wrong. Because I know exactly why it happened.

It happened because of me.

Chapter 4
Imy

I pulled into our driveway. The front bumper of my Prius gently kissed the back bumper of Stephanie’s Golf. The red and white Christmas lights draped across the houses either side of our bare home reflected and blinked lazily on the windscreen.

I didn’t move for a moment, or a while. The soft, synthetic leather of my seat cradled me gently as the wind whipped and whistled around me and the rain beat down on my windscreen, making shapes in the darkness that resembled the holes in my heart. I could see her. In the driver’s seat of her car, her blonde hair falling across her face, as she leaned across to pick up her work files before emerging out of the car, clumsily balancing the files and kicking the car door shut with the heel of her sneaker. She turned to me and smiled, transforming the storm into sunshine.

The wiper swooped over the windscreen and she disappeared.

I stepped out into the rain and rounded the car. I opened the passenger side door and picked up the Glock. I slipped it into the back of my trousers, letting the tail of my suit jacket conceal it. I slipped the plastic food bags and elastic bands into my inside pocket, along with the suppressor. As I walked past Stephanie’s Golf I allowed my fingers to slide gently across the slick windows, leaving my mark.

I unlocked the front door and pushed it open with the palm of my hand. A dark empty hallway greeted me. Behind the darkness I knew the coat stand was filled with jackets and hats and scarves and them. I knew Jack’s handiwork was sprawled across the wall in red crayon as high as he could reach. I knew Stephanie’s hairbrush sat on the shelf underneath a single Post-it note stuck to the hallway mirror serving as a school run reminder.

Book bag. Bottle of water. Lunch box.

It gripped me instantly. Paralysed me. My legs felt like the heaviest of weights and I was unable to cross the threshold. The wind howled in my ears, the voices and the laughter and the fucking hope that we once shared rushed at me like a physical force and dropped me where I stood onto my haunches. I reached out for support and my hand found the doorframe, my nails clawed into wood. I could feel a breath caught somewhere inside me, desperately trying to escape. I wrenched my tie away from my neck and ripped away the collar, the cold rain snaking its way down my back. I squeezed my eyes closed and pressed my teeth together. My jaw pulsed and my head pounded as their faces filled it. I screamed through gritted teeth, a guttural sound from deep within, willing me not to fall now, not to fail now.

In one quick motion I forced myself up to my feet and stepped inside the hallway and punched the lights on, slamming the door behind me into silence. Their faces disappeared and finally I released a breath.

I stood perfectly still in the hallway, the house now as still as me.

I had too much to do. Afterwards, the ghosts can take me.

For now, I had to focus. I slipped my phone out of my pocket and positioned it on the shelf. It would remain there and place me at home. I picked up my baseball cap and scarf from the coat stand, adjusting the cap low, finishing just below my eyebrows, and the scarf high, covering my mouth. With the cover of the darkness and storm, I didn’t think that I could conclusively be picked up on CCTV.

I stared in the hallway mirror at what I had become, what I always was, and what I had tried so desperately to get away from. The black suit that I wore to bury Stephanie and Jack and Khala was drenched and clung to me. I wouldn’t change. It felt fitting, somehow, for what lay ahead.

Chapter 5
Jay

Idris went to his hotel room and I went to mine. Thankfully he was seven floors below me. At that moment I needed that space between us. My room had been cleaned. Six pillows lined neatly against the head board, when all I needed was one. I threw the other five off the bed with unnecessary aggression, losing the complimentary chocolate in the process, and snatched the room service menu off the side table. I browsed through it intently, trying to prioritise my stomach over my heart and mind, which were ready to lead me astray.

Idris. Fucking Idris. I know in his own way he was looking out for me but all he was achieving was to bury me deeper into a hole that I was desperate to climb out of. The detective in him knew I was involved in something, and I could feel his concern, his disappointment that I couldn’t share it with him. I wished I could. I wished I could share all of it with my best friend, but how could I put my shit on him? Instead my silence continued to drive a hole through our friendship.

Idris wasn’t aware that I once had ties with MI5, but he was aware that I once had ties with a group of Muslims that had planned and failed to carry out a gun attack in the heart of London. Some of them were based in Hounslow. Fuck, man, one of them lived across the road from me, and I had considered him a friend. He died as result of his actions. If he hadn’t, others would have. That should have been it, alarm bells should have been ringing, but no, instead, earlier this year, I grew close to a kid – much against Imy’s advice – a kid who was touched by tragedy and decided to even it out by carrying out a fucking acid bomb attack against a right wing group. So, yeah, I get it! Idris was probably shattered from carrying the weight of I told you sos.

Given my track record it was only fair that Idris wanted to know whether or not I knew anything about the bombing, as if any shit that goes down in Hounslow has my name attached to it. If Idris had asked me, if he had brought those words and that question to his lips, I would have answered Fuck no. When the truth was entirely different.

Eight months ago, Imy walked into my home and pointed a gun between my eyes. I knew he was doing so against his will, and he knew that if he didn’t pull the trigger then there would be consequences in the shape of his family.

And it came. The consequence, it fucking came.

This bomber, this child, exacted his plan to perfection, on what should have been the happiest day of Imy’s life. Helpless, he watched his loved ones perish.

The one thing worse than death is watching the ones closest to you die.

The black and white of it. If Imy had killed me, his family would still be alive. But he just didn’t have it in him to take a life.

I bet burying his wife and son changed that.

I had to get to him.

I made four phone calls. To reception, telling them that I would be checking out tomorrow. To Idris, telling him that I would be flying out tomorrow, and then cutting him off without explaining. Then a longer call to Mum with a bullshit excuse, telling her that I had to return home. And finally a call to room service, ordering myself a chicken burger, onion rings and a chocolate gateau.

I placed the receiver back in its cradle and eyed the minibar.

It wouldn’t be the first time that I’d reached for a bottle to dim the madness.