If You Were Me (5 page)

‘Associates?' I glanced at Detective Callhoun.

‘Friends, acquaintances, work mates,' she said.

I searched my head for names. ‘There's his boss, Mr Khan, and he's mentioned a dispatcher called Corella, and some other drivers – Steve, I think . . . and Liam and Arif, and someone called Geoff, and he talks to Mrs Garcia from the refugee drop-in centre. He used to talk to some men who live in our block, but he doesn't like them and he told me to keep away from them, and sometimes he says
hello to Mr Brody downstairs, but he only shouts at us.'

‘Has Behrouz visited a mosque since you've been in the UK?'

‘No. He's not very religious.'

He stared at me hard. ‘Have you?'

‘No.'

‘Are you religious?'

I hung my head, ashamed. ‘No. Not really.'

‘Did you notice any change in your brother's behaviour recently, anything unusual?'

‘He seemed unhappy, afraid . . . I . . . don't know.'

The look that passed between the two detectives made me feel like a traitor and I knew I was right not to tell them about the gun. They wouldn't understand. They would think it was proof he was a killer.

‘What do you think was making him unhappy?'

‘He's been through a lot. I told you, the Taliban tried to kill him, he wants to finish his studies but he can't because we have no money, he's worried about my mother and my sister. It's not strange that he's unhappy. It's normal.' My words sounded hollow, even to me.

‘Did he spend time at any other properties?'

‘I don't know. I don't think so. He works and he sleeps. He doesn't have time to go anywhere.'

‘When you lived in Afghanistan did he go away for long periods?'

‘A few days sometimes, with the army. You can check with Colonel Clarke.'

Inspector McGill dropped forward on his chair. ‘Ah, yes, Colonel Clarke. How does Behrouz feel about him?'

‘The colonel was his boss. He respects him. He's grateful that he's sponsoring our asylum application. We all are.' I was floundering, unsure what he wanted me to say. ‘He is kind, he came to our flat to welcome us to the UK and he brought us a television.'

‘Do you know why Behrouz wanted to see the colonel?'

‘No.'

‘The day before yesterday he called his office at the Houses of Parliament. Clarke's secretary said he was pushing to see the colonel urgently and that he got very agitated when she told him he was in New York. Then yesterday morning he called the colonel's home and spoke to his wife, demanding to see the colonel as soon as he got back from the States. Do you have any idea why he was so anxious to see him?'

‘No . . . I don't know, maybe . . . maybe there's a problem with our papers.' I was pleased that I'd thought of something sensible and ordinary.

‘Or,' he said, and his voice grew slow, ‘perhaps Colonel Clarke was the planned target for Behrouz's bomb.'

I couldn't speak. The walls were closing in, trying to crush me.

‘The colonel's an extremely high-value target. We think Behrouz was trying to exploit their relationship so he could gain access to his home and plant a device.'

‘That is not possible.'

‘We checked with the colonel. He gave Behrouz the numbers of his parliamentary and constituency offices but not his home. So how did your brother get hold of it?'

‘I . . . I don't know.'

‘I think you're lying, Miss Sahar. I think you know a lot more about your brother's activities than you're letting on.'

‘My brother goes to work and he looks after us. That's all he does!'

‘Did he leave you instructions? A list of things to do or people to contact if he was killed or injured?'

‘No. Why would he?'

He ran his thumb down his stubbly cheek. ‘We're going to let you take a rest now, Miss Sahar. While we're gone, I'd like you to think about everything I've told you. When I come back, we'll talk again.'

They left me then. With nothing to look at but my own reflection.

DAN

 

 

 

I
was wrecked. Not surprising considering it was nearly two-thirty by the time I got home. I'd cycled like a maniac but I only just made it up to my room before I heard Dad tiptoe downstairs and slip out the front door. After that I'd stayed awake half the night, worrying about him getting sent back to prison, wondering what Cement Face had done with the man he'd kidnapped, and wishing I'd never set foot in Meadowview. You walk in there thinking you're a normal person with a normal life and you come out smeared in filth, with the stink of fear and garbage in your nose and your head full stuff off the TV you never thought you'd see in real life. It was as if that whole building was rotten, not just the pipes, and if you lifted up any floorboard or opened any door, you'd find
some festering filth reaching out to suck you in. Every time I managed to drop off to sleep, I'd see that bloke's bloody, petrified face, the gun under the bath, packets of drugs stuffed in boxes of washing powder, then I'd hear that weasel saying Dad's name and I'd wake up yelling, imagining him going back to prison and me and Mum ending up in a place like Meadowview. She'd never cope.

Around four in the morning I heard the front door click shut: Dad coming back. I pulled the pillow over my head, trying to block out the sound of his footsteps padding past my room, and when he'd gone, I hurled it across the room and lay there in the darkness, asking myself over and over if keeping quiet about someone else's crimes makes you as guilty as they are. When he came in a couple of hours later to wake me up, I fixed my eyes on the wall and told him I felt sick and couldn't face going to work with him.

‘No problem,' he said, ‘Jez is back.' He put his hand on my forehead, like when I was kid. ‘You are a bit hot, son. I'll get you an aspirin.'

For a second the comforting weight of his big rough palm made me certain I'd got it all wrong, that there was a simple explanation for what I'd seen in the loading bay and that I'd dreamt I'd heard him coming and going in the small hours.

I shifted round a bit. ‘Did you go out last night?' He gave me a funny look. I stared at him and suddenly it felt like the familiar crinkles round his eyes, the scar on his
chin, the crooked tooth that showed when he smiled and his short bristly hair had been stolen by a stranger. I really did feel sick as I waited for his lie. I felt even sicker when it came. He gave me that easy, hey-what-can-you-do? shrug of his. ‘Yeah. Old people's home had an emergency, whole place got flooded.'

‘Was Jez with you?'

‘Yeah. We turned off the water and patched it up and we're going back this morning to sort it properly.'

He didn't hang around after that and I was glad. I couldn't face talking to him or anyone else, so I stayed in my room, hunched over the PlayStation, ignoring my phone. When Bernie Watts started calling, I turned it off.

ALIYA

 

 

 

T
hey went over the same things again and again. The man getting angry, drumming the table, chewing his cheek and the woman stepping in, trying to keep him calm, insisting they just wanted my help. Then they'd leave me on my own in that grey, ugly room as if I was a criminal and come back a little later with more questions and cups of tea that were too weak or too strong and food that I didn't want and couldn't swallow. It went on like that for most of the day, until finally, at about eight o'clock in the evening, the woman came back alone.

‘You must be tired, Aliya. Just a couple more questions, then you can go. Does your mother have a mobile phone?'

‘No.'

‘Do you?'

‘No.'

‘How do you contact people?'

‘I have no one to call. Just the doctor and sometimes the refugee centre. If Behrouz isn't there, I use the telephone at the garage opposite our flats.'

She frowned a little and wrote something down.

‘Are you certain Behrouz had his new mobile with him when he left the flat?'

‘My mother told me so, but I was not there. Why?'

‘We didn't find it on him, but it may have been destroyed in the explosion.'

Along with Behrouz. I looked down and tried not to let the tears come.

‘All right, that's enough for tonight.'

‘When can I see my brother?'

‘We'll let you know.'

‘Can I speak with his doctors?'

She looked away and shook her head, her mouth tight. ‘The hospital's issuing regular press bulletins. As of thirty minutes ago, he was stable but still unconscious.'

‘What is stable?'

‘No better, no worse.'

No worse. This was something to hold on to
.

She handed me a card. ‘If you remember anything that might be of help to us, please call me on this number. If we need to speak to you, we'll contact you at the hotel.'

‘Hotel?'

‘You can't go anywhere near Meadowview, not until
we've finished searching your flat and the surrounding area.'

I pushed away the thought of the gun and the phone in the
Margaretta
and looked down at the floor. ‘There is nothing in our flat, I promise.' It wasn't a lie. It just felt like one.

‘Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Sahar. WPC Rennell will drive you to the hotel.'

I stood up. She raised her finger. ‘Remember, if anyone contacts you, trying to get a message to Behrouz, you call me immediately.'

A round-faced, pink-cheeked policewoman marched me down the hallway, her swinging hips rattling the keys and handcuffs on her belt. I was so empty and tired I could hardly keep up. The only thing keeping my legs moving was the need to get away from the grey walls, the endless questions and the sour smell of people shut up for too long in a stuffy room. We turned a corner. I saw swing doors with a glimmering green sign above them saying
EXIT
. WPC Rennell didn't walk towards it. She turned left down some stairs that disappeared into darkness. I pulled back. She had been lying. She was going to lock me up!

‘Where are you taking me?'

‘Out the back way. The press have found out you're here. Someone's posted it on Twitter.'

‘No!' My throat tightened around the sound.

‘It's all right. Come on, quick, before the crowd gets any bigger.'

She hurried me down the steps, through a door into a gloomy underground car park and guided me towards a small red car. It was old, with a dusty plastic dog in the back window and a dent along the side. She told me to lie across the back seat while she fetched an old rug from the boot.

‘Here, when I give you the word, put this over you,' she said. ‘It won't be for long.'

She got into the front, pulled off her jacket and cap and shook out her curly fair hair so it stuck up around her head like one of Mina's dolls. Two uniformed policemen leapt into a van parked nearby and roared up the ramp and through the exit with the roof light flashing and the siren screeching. A burst of voices shouted my name, screaming filthy words. It made me sick inside. They were so angry, so full of hate. The voices grew louder. I wanted to shout back and tell them it wasn't right what they were saying. The shouting faded as the crowd chased after the van.

‘OK. Stay down,' said WPC Rennell.

I heard the clunk of the door locks and I lay down flat, pulling the dusty rug over my head. It was itchy and smelt of dogs. My mouth was dry. My heart was thudding.

‘All right,' she said. ‘Here we go.'

I felt the rumble of the engine and the bump of the ramp. The car stopped.

‘Don't move,' she whispered. ‘There's still a few stragglers hanging around, looking for trouble.'

The car edged forward. The shouting started again. A
fist thumped the roof, we swerved sideways. I pushed my face into the sweaty plastic, fighting the urge to vomit, and I thought of Mina throwing up in Captain Merrick's jeep. Voices came right up to the car. I could feel the people out there. Hating me. Wanting to find me and hurt me. Knuckles rapped on the window. The car turned sharply and we sped away.

‘It's OK,' she said after a few minutes. ‘We're clear.'

I slipped the rug off my face.

‘There's a lot of angry people out there.' I could see her looking at me in the mirror. ‘But don't worry. We'll be around, making sure you're all right.'

‘There's no need,' I said, trying to sound sure of myself. But I wasn't sure of anything. I was so lost and scared it felt as if my body had broken into pieces.

All I knew was that I had to help Behrouz, and I couldn't do that with a policewoman standing over me, watching everything I did.

DAN

 

 

 

I
t was nearly four o'clock when I finally dragged myself downstairs to make a sandwich. On my way past the living room I heard the murmur of the TV and, looking round the door, I glimpsed a grainy, blown-up passport photo on the screen. The shock made my skin burn. It was him. The man who got kidnapped from Meadowview. The one whose petrified face had kept me up all night. I took a deep breath and kept walking. I didn't want to know. My head was still urging me into the kitchen when my feet swivelled round and turned back down the hall. I pushed the door wide. A bright-eyed, smiling weather forecaster was pointing to a map predicting rain. I gripped the doorframe. ‘Hey, Mum, that bloke on the news just now. What's happened to him?'

She was ironing, with her mobile clamped to her ear, gossiping to one of her friends. When I started mouthing at her and pointing to the TV, she frowned, shrugged and shook her head. I ran upstairs and checked the news online. It didn't take me long to find the story.

The man on TV was making headlines on every channel. He was a nineteen-year-old Afghan minicab driver who'd nearly died when his bomb-making equipment exploded in a lock-up in Kilburn at four a.m. that morning. I broke out in a sweat and rocked back on my chair, staring at his face on the screen, trying to work it out. Two hours before the explosion I'd seen him being whacked round the head and dragged off in a van. He'd have had trouble standing up after that, let alone getting himself to Kilburn and cooking up a bomb. Cement Face must have dumped him in that lock-up. That's what he'd meant about making him famous! I closed my eyes, feeling trapped, cornered, guilty as hell.

You could have saved him, Dan. You could have called the cops
.

Then the reporter said his name: Behrouz Sahar.

I jerked my head up. Sahar! He had to be the brother of that girl in the flat! I kept hitting replay so I could take it all in. It looked like Sahar was in intensive care with half the anti-terrorist squad camped round his bed waiting for him to come round.

Shots of the entrance to the hospital and an aerial view of Meadowview gave way to pictures of tanks
churning up dust in Afghanistan and a reporter saying Sahar had been an interpreter for the British army. There were photos of his time with the troops: Sahar laughing with a bunch of grimy, sunburnt soldiers, Sahar leaning out of a tank giving the thumbs up, Sahar with all these men in suits at some big meeting, and one of him getting a medal pinned on his chest by a posh-looking army officer. The picture cut to the same man pushing a trolley through Arrivals at Heathrow. A slim woman with long shiny hair was running towards him, trying to shake off a mob of reporters. They were all shouting at him: ‘Colonel Clarke, did Sahar ever show any signs of instability? Colonel Clarke, did you ever have cause to trust his loyalty? Is it true you were planning to use him as a goodwill ambassador for Hope Unlimited?'

Clarke leant in to the nearest microphone. ‘I cannot find words to express my astonishment at this horrific news. The Behrouz Sahar I knew, or thought I knew, was a brave, upstanding young man who risked his life to save three injured British soldiers under my command. When his army colleagues discovered that he was on a Taliban death list, they urged me to intervene personally to bring him to Britain. Which I duly did. I can only assume that his decision to plan an act of terrorism against this country came about either because of some deep-seated mental disorder triggered by the traumas he experienced in Afghanistan, or because he had been subjected to intensive brainwashing and radicalized by Al Shaab militants
intent on exploiting his youth and vulnerability. We can never condone what he has done, and he must of course be punished. But the way forward is to support all those who have been touched by the horrors of war, civilian and military alike, which is why organizations like Hope Unlimited, the charity my wife and I set up some years ago, are so important for the future peace and stability of our world.'

His wife, who'd been gazing up at him, nodded and turned a pair of soft brown eyes to the camera. That's when I recognized her. She was that actress, India Lambert, the one who spent half her time making films and the other half roaming round war zones banging on about injustice. She squeezed his arm and with a murmured, ‘Thank you,' the two of them turned and walked off towards the exit.

The whole of me felt numb as I clicked on a live update of the story.

‘. . . A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police has just confirmed that Behrouz Sahar's mother, Farah, forty-two, and his sister Aliya, fourteen, were taken in for questioning soon after the explosion. While they are in custody his four-year-old sister Mina is being cared for by the authorities . . .'

How was that spaced-out little kid I'd seen on the Sahars' couch going to cope with a load of strangers looking after her? As for the mother, they'd have a hard time getting any sense out of her. Which left that girl,
Aliya, facing the police on her own. I leant forward and dropped my face in my hands.

‘The police are anxious to talk to anyone who has information about Behrouz Sahar's activities since he came to the UK, or who can help trace his movements over the last forty-eight hours, particularly between one and four a.m. this morning. If you have any information, however small or seemingly insignificant, please contact this number . . .'

I knew I should call that number, tell them what I'd seen, get Behrouz Sahar cleared of being a terrorist. But I couldn't. Because of Dad. Whatever he'd done, he was still my father. I couldn't risk him going back to prison.

My mind raced with shock, anger, pity, guilt.

What you going to do, Dan? What you going to do?