Fortress (16 page)

Rolt shrugged as if it had been no more than an unintentional aside.

‘And what you’ve said will send shock waves through Whitehall.’

He smiled. ‘That won’t hurt. They could do with a jolt.’

‘But if you follow your argument to the logical conclusion, what you’re talking about is a pretty extreme crackdown on potential terrorists that we don’t currently have legislation for. Critics will accuse you of advocating something like – well, ethnic cleansing.’

He waved Tom’s words away. ‘Look at you. You’ve risked your life all over the world in the War on Terror. I don’t know the details of why you’re suddenly back in Britain, that’s your business and I’ll respect your desire to keep it to yourself, if you choose to do so, but I’ll hazard a guess that you’ve risked your life – oh, maybe twenty, thirty times for this country, and what have you got in return for it? What has your friend Blakey got to look forward to when he comes out? Freedom from fear – is that such a big thing to ask?’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Okay, cards on the table. My people are loyal – in fact, they’d probably drive over their own grandmothers if I asked them to. But almost all of them, one way or another, we’ve helped put back on the rails – they’re, well, to an extent a bit dependent. Men like you, in their prime, with a record like yours, are different. Be my ambassador, go to the US and get them to commit. With your track record, you’ll be the one to convince them. Think of it as just another mission, but with food, drink and hotels instead of warfare.’

He raised his hands almost apologetically. ‘I’m not asking you to sign up to anything. Just go and tell them your story.’

Tom knew this wasn’t a decision to be made on the spot.

‘Let me sleep on it, okay?’

31

Doncaster

An eerie calm seemed to have settled over the town. He passed a petrol station. The pumps were covered up, the shop part gutted. There was no sign of the police this time. On the forecourt a pair of foxes battled it out over the contents of a discarded KFC box. He was irritated at having to leave London. Only one day into his new job and he had had to ask to be excused from a seminar they’d wanted him to attend at the LSE. But Pippa was full of understanding, as if he could do no wrong.

‘Of course, Sam! Family must come first. It’s a Party motto,’ she’d told him.

Not that he had let on what the family matter was: if they found out about Karza, it would be a disaster. He still didn’t quite know what to make of his important new role. He was glad of the money as well as the attention. It felt good to have a position and be listened to, though it was new to him to be trading on his background.

He rounded the corner at the bottom of his mother’s street. Part of him dreaded what Nasima would have to say, but he was looking forward to seeing her again. There was something intriguing about her – and she was the complete opposite of Helen. The brutally perfunctory way she had ditched him, the implication that he was the wrong race and religion, had stung him hard.

He heard the steps about ten metres behind. At first it felt like a good sound, that he wasn’t alone on these deserted streets. The cops had the place on lockdown so surely there was no need for alarm.

But an unmistakable
clack clack
said the steps were boots with metal tips. A sound that, as a kid, he had read as a warning: trouble.

‘Hey, it’s Kovacevic the
Arse
hole.’

His first thought was to ignore it. But that word, one he had hoped never to be called again, meant he had been recognized. And he knew from the voice who it was. The steps quickened; he felt a hand on his arm, breathed the smell of alcohol and weed. The street was deserted, with no sign of the police van that had been at the bottom of the hill. Right. He stopped and turned.

There was a look of furious indignation on Dink’s face. He was still small, but he had filled out, a mixture of workouts, steroids and making up for all the calories he’d missed out on as a kid. His pink shaven head seemed to rise out of his tattooed shoulders like a plug amid the flesh and muscle, his features crowded into the middle of his face, as if they’d been grafted on from a much smaller head. His disconcertingly full, feminine lips parted and Sam saw the straight white teeth of a man with money to burn on dentistry, and the ability to manage a drug habit, a sure sign that he had got where he wanted to be.

‘What’s in the bag,
Arsehole
?’

Although he was three years younger – in the same year as Karza – age had never inhibited Dink from taking on his elders. He had two others with him, half a foot taller at least, heavily muscled, their heads identically shaved. One had no eyebrows, which gave him a misleadingly babyish appearance. The other had an unusually narrow skull and slightly sloping eyes, more likely a legacy of foetal alcohol syndrome than any exotic ancestry.

‘I asked yer a question, Paki.’

Indignation rose in Sam like acid. ‘I’m not a Pakistani.’

Dink’s approach to racial profiling: anyone who wasn’t pure white like him simply shouldn’t exist. His eyes blazed. He jabbed Sam in the chest. ‘You’re all Pakis to me, you Paki fuck.’

‘Okay, whatever.’

Sam knew Dink’s story – in fact, he had thought of him when he was preparing his last lecture, ‘The Gang as Family’. A textbook example of what he’d termed ‘Son of McDad’, the product of a ‘domestic void’, the child whose father only shows up from time to time to take the kids to McDonald’s, the mother on benefits, a stream of adult males through the home treating it like it was theirs, and Mum telling him to piss off out when she had company. The child, neglected and constantly out on the streets, falls prey to the gang, who brutalize him, then test him with tasks – at first relatively trivial, such as a mugging, then increasingly violent. As they absorb him, they put him to work, teach him how to steal, how to threaten, how to be feared. He gets respect, status. It’s addictive, like the stuff they’re dealing. The gang becomes his family, their values his.

Dink had done well. The teeth said it all. As the older members were picked off – killed or maimed or sent to jail – he had risen through the ranks until he was number one. Respected, feared and rich, everything he wanted out of life.

But right now, all of Sam’s insight counted for shit.

Dink snatched his bag.

‘Please – careful.’ Sam’s voice sounded more officious than he meant it to, a habit Helen had reminded him to check. Dink pulled out his conference ID.

‘Whooo!
Doctor
Arsehole!’

Sam was twelve again, hurrying back to do his homework, Dink and his posse blocking the pavement, his satchel grabbed, the precious textbooks emptied onto a waiting heap of dog shit. Only this time it was his brand-new MacBook Air.

‘All my work’s in that.’

Dink smoothed his hand over the surface of the lid, then flipped it open. ‘We’ll look after it, don’t worry.’

He passed it to one of the henchmen.

‘Now fuck off where you came from, Paki. You’re trespassing.’

‘Come on, this is my street.’

Dink stepped back in mock horror. ‘“My street”, is it now? Next it’ll be “my country”.’ He looked at his henchmen, who arranged their pudgy features into expressions of dismay. He waved a tattooed hand at the smashed shops. ‘Your lot started this. Who’s gonna clear it all up?’

‘My “lot”?’

‘All you Paki Muslim cunts gotta go back where you came from. It’s over, mate. You’ve had your fun.’ He nodded at the henchmen who each grabbed one of his arms while Dink patted him down, then pulled out his wallet. It flapped open, revealing the picture of Helen.

Dink’s eyes bulged with indignation. ‘You dirty Paki fucker.’ Dink flashed the picture at his mates, shaking his head with theatrical sweeps. ‘Big mistake, Arsehole. Big mistake.’

Sam was terrified and confused. This time indignation and rage overcame his fear. ‘
Fuck you!
’

Dink’s features seemed to crowd even further into the middle of his face. Then he grinned and put his mouth close to Sam’s ear. ‘Anyone doing the fucking, it’s gonna be me. Pakis fucking white women should know what they got coming from Dink.’ He pressed himself closer, the smell of the various intoxicants rising from him, thrust his hands into Sam’s pockets and pulled out his mother’s keys. He dangled them from his little finger. The flat was only a few metres away. ‘Is Mummy home?’

He shook his head. That much he was grateful for.

Dink reached into his pocket, pulled out a bunch of surgical gloves and gave a pair to each of his mates. ‘Then it’ll just be us chickens.’

32

He had no idea what time it was. Daylight streamed in through the kitchen window, which seemed to loom above him at an unfamiliar angle. His eyes widened as he realized where he was. There was a strong smell of piss and alcohol. He glanced at the floor. The lower half of his body felt cold. And wet. He looked at himself. He was naked from the waist down, his linen trousers round his ankles. With a jolt, it came back. As he moved, pain flashed between his buttocks. He turned his head and vomited.

He dragged up his pants and trousers, felt the pockets. His phone was gone. Then he remembered the laptop. Ignoring the pain now, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, pulled on his clothes. The fridge door yawned open. In the pool of water in front of it his bag and wallet lay open and face down. His cards were still there but the cash was gone. The bag was empty, the laptop gone. Using the table he had once sat at to do his homework, he hauled himself up, then slowly sat in a chair.

Then he remembered Nasima. She couldn’t see him like this. He got to his feet and saw himself in the mirror, his face bruised and bloody. Then he noticed the clock on the oven. It was seven a.m. He must have missed her – or maybe she hadn’t come, after all.

He threw himself into a frenzy of activity, clearing up the kitchen, mopping the floor. He stripped off his clothes and threw them into the bin. In Karza’s room he found a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a hoodie. They would have to do. In the bathroom he did what he could to clean up his face, but tears of rage blurred his vision. When the doorbell rang he jumped.

‘Who is it?’

It was Nasima. He opened the door and her mouth dropped open. ‘What happened?’

‘What does it look like?’

He shut the door quickly and showed her upstairs, steering her towards the front room.

‘Who did this?’

‘Thugs.’

‘Whites?’

Waves of shame and embarrassment welled in him. He couldn’t hide it. His humiliation was complete. She stood in the kitchen and surveyed the scene. Then she came towards him and embraced him. He resisted at first, then gave in, put his head on her shoulder and cried.

‘Fucking bastards. Fucking white fascist bastards!’

She soothed him. ‘It’s okay, you’re safe now.’

He pulled back. ‘Safe? That’s about the last thing I feel.’

That he had been singled out made a mockery of all his years of trying to blend in. But she held on to him. ‘For what it’s worth, I know just how you feel, believe me.’

Her words calmed him. He felt less alone. She sat him down and made him a cup of tea. Then she sat opposite and held his hand while he sipped. He tried not to catch her eye but when he did he saw how different she looked. She had lost the reserve she had shown when they first met.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come last night – I got waylaid.’

‘Maybe it’s just as well. You might have got caught up in this – this …’ He let out another anguished sob. ‘I hate you to see me like this.’

She smiled. ‘I saw you on the TV.’ She leaned closer. ‘You were very good. Does that mean you’ll be meeting members of the government?’

He snorted. ‘I had a breakfast meeting with the home secretary. Now look at me!’

‘No one need know. Don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing your pain. Don’t give up on what you’re doing.’

He shivered at the thought of his words about restraint and the need for perspective. ‘Well, I don’t expect you to agree with any of it.’

‘You put your points very convincingly. I believe you’re sincere.’

‘I just want to make a difference.’

‘Maybe you haven’t found the right kind of difference yet.’

‘What do you mean?’

She smiled and reached for his face. Her touch was soothing. ‘Let’s not have this discussion now.’

‘What about Karza? Do you know any more?’

She put her hands into her lap. ‘Well, we’ve made contact with the group he’s with. He is alive, that’s been confirmed.’

He felt a huge rush of relief. ‘So he’s safe?’

‘Well, no one is safe in Syria right now.’

‘Of course – stupid.’

She laughed. ‘I can see you’re new to all this.’

‘So you might be able to get him back?’

‘It’s not as simple as that. We’ve yet to make direct contact. MI6 monitor all emails and Twitter feeds now so the fighters have gone quiet. I should know more in a few days.’

Sam felt a twinge of irritation. ‘So you asked me to come up here just to tell me you might know more?’

She focused on the cut on his cheek. ‘You’re bleeding again. I’ll sort that out.’

In the bathroom she dabbed the wound with a piece of lint. Her bag seemed to contain a substantial medical kit.

‘You came well prepared.’

‘Well, I am a doctor, and I do work for a medical charity.’

She produced a small plaster, unwrapped it and applied it to his cheek. ‘I hope that’s better.’ She bit her lip and dropped her eyes, but her fingers lingered on his face. ‘There’s a favour I wanted to ask.’

‘Name it. After all you’re doing for me it’s the least I can do.’

‘It’s a big favour.’

‘Well, go on.’

‘You saw we’re closing down here. I have to come to London, but I don’t really know anyone there and I was wondering if you had a spare room where you could put me up.’ She gave a small laugh.

‘Well, I’m staying at a friend’s myself.’

She gazed at him. Her whole persona, so cool and reserved when he had first encountered her, had softened. Her eyes were wider, her lips slightly parted. Then she looked away. ‘I’m sorry, it was inappropriate …’