If You Were Me (10 page)

I sat forward. ‘What kind of van?'

‘One with “Are You Here Illegally? Go Home or Face Arrest” in letters a mile high down the side. Anyway, he starts shouting, telling them his visa's coming through and this old lady steps over, demanding to know what's going on and they tell her they've had a tip-off that he lied on his application.'

‘What has this to do with Behrouz?' Aliya said desperately.

‘Are you thick or something? That was the night his bomb factory blew up in his face. I reckon that's what all the whispering was about. Your brother was trying to drag Arif into some bomb-making scheme with him and his terrorist mates from Al Shaab and when Arif refused, Behrouz called Immigration and told them a pack of lies to get rid of him.'

Aliya didn't flinch. ‘Arif was Behrouz's friend. He would never do something like that to him.'

Connor jabbed his finger into his chest. ‘I was there. I saw it with my own eyes, and no one's heard a word from Arif since. Nothing. Your brother's trouble. Everyone at Khan's knows that.'

‘Corella doesn't believe he is guilty.' Aliya's voice was steady but I could tell she was having trouble keeping it that way.

‘Corella's a soft touch. She helped me out when I had a problem with a bent MOT. But this is different.'

‘Yes! Different because Behrouz is innocent!' She said it so loudly people were turning round.

He glared at her for a couple of seconds, too angry to speak, then he kicked the chair and stormed off.

I couldn't believe she'd lost it like that. ‘What did you do that for?' I hissed. ‘We need to get him on side.'

‘I'm sorry. He made me angry.' She got up to go after him.

‘I'll do it,' I said. I caught up with him at the top of the steps. ‘Hey, Connor. C'mon.'

He shrugged my hand away. ‘You want to teach your girlfriend some manners.'

‘She's not my—' I stopped. Let him think what he wanted. ‘Look, she was well out of order but she didn't mean it. She's upset.'

‘Yeah? Well, she's not the only one. My best mate's gone missing.'

‘I know. But you want to find out what's happened to Arif, we want to know what was going on with Behrouz, and they've got to be connected, so why don't we swap numbers and if we hear anything, we can let each other know?'

He eyeballed me for a bit, then he nodded and got out his phone. As soon as he'd sent me his number I ran back to Aliya, pressing keys, saving it to the memory, and knocked into a man heading for the next table. He
brushed off my apology but when he sat down I could see he'd spilt his coffee all down his front. I turned my back to him and dropped my voice below the hum of chatter and clinking plates. ‘Connor's OK. He was just upset about his mate. And you've got to admit, Arif getting picked up the same night as Behrouz was nearly killed, it's a bit weird.'

She looked down and nodded. ‘I know. I should never have said those things.'

‘Maybe you should tell him that yourself. I'll send you his number. So what does Sarobi mean?' I said. ‘Could it be Cement Face's name?'

She was thumbing through the contacts on Behrouz's phone, only half listening. ‘I know only a place called Sarobi. It is a town between Kabul and Jalalabad.'

‘Oh, right,' I said, disappointed. ‘What are you looking for?'

‘The number of Mrs Garcia at the refugee centre. I am going to send it to Connor. Maybe she can ring Immigration for him and find out what happened to Arif.'

‘Would she do that?'

‘I think so. She helped us with our papers when we first got here.' Her eyes drifted across the crowded room as if a memory had caught her off guard. I waited. Whatever it was, she was keeping it to herself.

‘Hey, you OK?' I said.

She rubbed her hands across her face. ‘I am scared.'

Me too. Scared to go on, scared to stop, scared of the
truth, scared of the lies, and right then scared stiff she was going start crying. I couldn't deal with that.

‘It's OK,' I said. ‘We can do this. You and me.'
Who was I kidding?

I snatched up Behrouz's job sheet and checked the list. ‘OK, so the last job he did was this Tottenham one on Tuesday. He picked up a woman called Vera Barnes at eleven-thirty and took her to Tottenham Hale station. According to Corella, he was in the area already and took the job so he could stay round there till lunchtime.'

She wiped her face with her sleeve. ‘Yes, and lunchtime was when he took the photos of Cement Face.'

‘Exactly. So I reckon he went to Cement Face's work, waited for him to go outside for a fag in his lunch break, grabbed a few shots of him, then drove off in a hurry.'

Aliya unfolded the napkin with her grid on it and added the stuff about Behrouz going back to Khan's, talking to Arif and mentioning Sarobi. Even from where I was sitting, there were still more blanks on it than facts.

‘What we need is a motive,' I said.

‘What is that?'

‘A reason for doing a crime.'

She nodded and wrote
MOTIVE
in big letters under her grid, underlining it twice and putting a big question mark next to it.

‘OK. Let's go to Tottenham and see this Vera Barnes. You never know, he might have said something to her on the way to the station.'

Aliya was very quiet on the bus and the Tube. To be honest, I preferred it that way. It gave me time to think. We'd found out quite a lot in one morning. Some of it, I really didn't like. And the thing with this Al Shaab terror group claiming Behrouz was their bomb-maker kept buzzing round my head like a fly in a can of rotting worms.

ALIYA

 

 

 

I
'd really believed my English was good and getting better. Today I realized that knowing words would never be enough. It was the things people didn't say, the hints and gestures, like Corella signalling ‘phone me' with her fingers, that were going to save Behrouz. The underground station was the same, full of arrows, maps and signs sending people scurrying off in every direction. The boy seemed to understand them all, twisting and turning through white-tiled corridors and rushing down steep juddering escalators on to a crowded platform with a tunnel at the end that gaped like the mouth of a cave. I stared into the circle of black, wondering what other signs he'd been following that I hadn't even known were there.

‘When we see Mrs Barnes, I want to ask her the
questions,' I said.

He shrugged. ‘OK. What's your cover story?'

‘What is that?'

‘A fake reason for talking to her. You can't tell her the truth.'

I'd forgotten that I'd have to lie. ‘I will think of one,' I said.

The train pulled in with an ear-splitting screech. I flinched away from the clumsy whoosh of the doors. The crowd swept me inside, jamming me so tightly that I couldn't free my hand to reach for the rail. The train gathered speed. I looked round for the boy. He wasn't there. Maybe he hadn't got on. I didn't know where I was or where I should get off. What would I do? A baby was screaming, someone stamped on my foot. I couldn't see faces, just arms and elbows jostling me. I couldn't breathe. I closed my eyes. The train stopped. The doors opened. The people poured out like rice from a sack, carrying me with them.

‘Hey, where are you going?' The boy caught my arm and pointed at the map above the seats. ‘It's ages yet.'

He stood next to me swaying with the train. I didn't speak. I stared at the web of colours on the map, reading the names, memorizing the stations, as if I was back in Kabul, studying for an exam.

Half an hour later we burst on to the street. I was so hot and sweaty from the train ride that for once I didn't mind the rain. I tipped my head back as I walked and let the
cooling drops run down my face. The street streamed with people rushing to buy lunch, some clutching paper cups and bags of sandwiches, others dashing into cafes. I felt a twinge of hunger and gave my stomach a little punch to stop it growling. A bus pulled away from the bus stop and eased into the traffic, revealing a poster across the road showing the London Eye lit up at night in a rainbow of coloured lights.

‘Have you been on it many times?' I asked the boy.

‘The Eye? No, never.'

I was surprised. ‘Why not?'

‘We were going to take my nan for her birthday but she broke her ankle so we couldn't go.'

‘I can see it from our flat. I would love to take a ride on it.'

‘Yeah, it'd be a laugh. Tell you what, when this is over and we've got Behrouz off, I'll take you on it to celebrate.'

I shook my head and smiled. ‘No. I will take you to say thank you for helping me.'

The smiles froze on our faces. We both looked away. What if this was never over? What if we couldn't prove Behrouz was innocent? I think we were both glad when my phone bleeped. I pulled it from my pocket. It was Connor. I put it on speaker and held it between us. Connor's voice sounded quieter. Scared.

‘Your Mrs Garcia just phoned Immigration for me. You're right. There's something weird going on.'

I felt my grip tighten on the handset. ‘What did she say?'

‘According to their records, their officers questioned Arif, checked his details were in order and let him go. But that's a lie. Five minutes after they got him in the van, they drove off.'

Thoughts swirled round my brain, turning into handfuls of nothing when I tried to catch them. The boy had his head down, rubbing the back of his neck, but I could see he was trembling.

‘Will you tell this to the police?' I asked Connor.

‘Who are the feds going to believe? Me or Immigration? And I just got talking to Geoff.'

‘Who is Geoff?'

‘One of the other dispatchers. He said some foreign bloke rang Khan's on Tuesday afternoon, asking if Behrouz worked there, and when Geoff said yes, he slammed the phone down.'

I got out my grid. ‘What time was this?'

‘Around two. As soon as Geoff told Behrouz about it he panicked, and that's when he went running off to find Arif. What's it mean?'

The boy said, ‘Dunno. But keep your ears open.'

I cut the call, feeling as if I had kicked over a rock and glimpsed a vast stinking sewer underneath. I waited for the boy to say something. He just chewed his bitten fingernails and frowned at a crack in the pavement.

Mrs Barnes's house was small and old, with bent rusty
railings at the front and stalks of grass sprouting through the path. As I lifted the knocker the boy gripped my wrist. ‘Whatever she says, don't lose it. OK?'

‘You mean I mustn't get angry?'

‘Yeah.'

I shook off his hand and rapped the knocker hard. An elderly woman with a face webbed with wrinkles came to the door, patting a curl of white hair into place.

‘Oh, I thought it was the police. They said they'd be popping round. I can't imagine what it's about.' Her pale eyes searched mine. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you, dear? Are you collecting for something?'

‘No. Um, Mrs Barnes, it is about my . . . friend.' I was speaking too fast but now she'd said the police were on their way, I was anxious to get away. ‘He drives a minicab. I think he took you to the station on Tuesday.'

I waited for the anger, the hateful words, the door slamming in my face. Mrs Barnes didn't shout or slam the door. She smiled. ‘That's right. I went to my sister's in Hertford. I've only just got back.'

‘Do you remember him?'

Her eyes crinkled up. ‘As a matter of fact, I do. We had a lovely chat, all about his plans to go back to university and finish his engineering degree. I said to him, that's what this world needs. People who can make things.'

The boy gave me a tiny bewildered shrug. ‘Do you watch much telly, Mrs Barnes?' he asked.

‘Actually mine's broken. Your friend said if he had a
spare minute, he'd come round and have a look at it for me. Wasn't that kind?'

‘So you haven't seen the news lately?'

‘No, dear. My sister always turns it off. I can't say I blame her. They never report anything nice, do they?'

‘And you don't read the newspapers?'

‘I prefer the wireless. They have some lovely music programmes on.'

The boy held out the picture of Cement Face. ‘Mrs Barnes, have you ever seen this man?'

The old lady slipped on her glasses and inspected the photo.

‘No, dear. Why do you ask?'

It was one thing to think up a lie, another to pretend it was true. My mouth was so dry I couldn't get the words to come out, even though I'd stood at the end of the street and practised the story over and over. But it came easily to the boy.

‘He got in our friend's cab after he dropped you at the station,' he said. ‘Then he ran off without paying. We were in the area, so we said we'd ask around and see if we could track him down.' He even smiled his lopsided smile as he said it.

‘That's terrible.' Mrs Barnes looked shocked. ‘Was it a lot of money?'

‘Yeah, quite a lot, and his boss is making him pay it back out of his wages.'

‘I'm very sorry to hear that.'

‘Well, thanks anyway. Sorry we troubled you.'

‘Don't worry at all. To tell you the truth, it's nice to have a bit of company. I hope you find this man. And say hello to your friend for me. What was his name again? My head's like a sieve these days.'

‘Baz,' I said quickly. ‘They call him Baz.'

Mrs Barnes smiled and waved as I opened her creaking gate. I tugged my cap over my eyes and walked away very fast. The boy ran to catch me up. ‘Total waste of time,' he grumbled.

‘No, it wasn't. We know now that at eleven-thirty he was chatting to Mrs Barnes about university and offering to mend her television, and by two-thirty he was so scared that he ran off with Arif to get a gun.'

I walked on, staring at the ground. I could feel the boy's eyes on me. Finally he said, ‘What are you thinking about?'

‘An old pot I saw once in a book.'

‘What?' he glanced up, not sure if I was serious. He saw that I was and said, ‘Go on, then. What was so special about this pot?'

‘There were just a few small pieces of it left, but someone had remade the whole thing by filling the spaces between them with white plaster. And when you saw where the pieces fitted, you knew it was not possible for that pot to have been any other shape.'

The boy walked more slowly as if he was turning this over in his head. ‘So?'

‘It's like the grid I have drawn. If we are clever, we can use the tiny pieces of information we have to work out the whole of what happened to Behrouz.'

‘Yeah.' He seemed unnerved. ‘Or maybe just enough of it to get him off. Come on. Let's go to the station. Maybe he passed Cement Face's work on the way there.'

‘All right.'

He tapped and stretched the map on his phone. ‘It's about a half-hour walk.'

The sky was darkening, purple-edged clouds closing in as the rain grew heavier. We plodded through puddles, getting sprayed by passing cars and searching every side road for the wall in the photos. By the time we got to the station I was so wet I was sure I would never feel dry again.

‘I'm starving,' the boy said. ‘Wait here. I'll get us something to eat.' He slipped into the crowd, squeezing his way to a little kiosk, while I took one of the free newspapers from the crate by the ticket office. I held the paper in my hands, too scared to look at it in case I read bad news about Behrouz. A woman with short black hair and a brown leather jacket was leaning against the opposite wall, watching the crowd. Our eyes met for a second before she waved at a man coming through the barrier and hurried away. My eyes shifted to the boy. I felt a flutter beneath my ribs. He was talking to the other people in the queue, pointing to something on his phone. They were peering at the screen, shaking their heads. He ran back to me, holding out a bar of chocolate wrapped in shiny red paper.
I did not take it. ‘What were you showing to those people?' I said.

‘The photos of Cement Face. That wall he's leaning against has got to be round here somewhere and I was hoping one of them might recognize it.'

‘Yes, but why do you have copies of Behrouz's photos on your phone?'

He flushed a little. ‘My screen's bigger, it made it easier to see the details.'

That made sense. He was helping me, being kind. The flutter grew quieter. I felt ungrateful that it didn't disappear. Maybe I was just hungry. He pushed the chocolate bar into my hand and ran off to show the photo around some more, as if standing still would burn his feet.

I nibbled a small piece of the chocolate. It tasted good. Hard on the outside and crispy biscuit in the middle. I took a bigger bite to give myself courage and looked down at the newspaper, hoping for a miracle. Nothing had changed. Behrouz was still unconscious and the police were still waiting to interview him. The little scrap of relief this gave me was snatched away when I turned the page and saw a photo of Behrouz beneath the words ‘The Evil That Men Do: Inside the Mind of a Bomber'. Someone in America had written this. A doctor who had never even met my brother. How dare she write these lies about him! I skimmed the other pages, glancing at pictures of food, cars, houses, clothes, anything to wipe the word ‘evil' from my head. A name jumped out at me.

A young British soldier was killed on Wednesday afternoon, just a day after arriving in Jordan with an advance party to prepare for the arrival of his regiment.

Captain James Merrick, 29, who survived three missions in Afghanistan, died in what the army described as a tragic incident in the Jordanian desert in the east of the country. The army has begun an investigation into how he died, but army sources say he was killed by his own weapon while taking part in a training exercise.

My mind wouldn't work. The letters were shifting in and out of focus. The places where thoughts should have been were filling with fear and panic. All around me the station seemed to throb. I shrank back against the wall, seeing Merrick's face beneath his helmet, his beefy hands reaching out to throw me into his jeep, his gruff delight when he told us we were coming to England. The boy came running over.

‘What's up?'

I held out the newspaper, struggling to speak. ‘It's him. Captain Merrick. The one who helped us to escape from the Taliban.'

‘What's he done?'

Blood roared in my ears as the reality sank in. I felt myself sway again, so terrified I could barely whisper the
words. ‘He's dead.'

The boy turned as pale as dough. His eyes dropped to the article.

‘What's happening?' I whispered. ‘Behrouz nearly killed, Arif dragged off where no one can find him, and Captain Merrick shot dead. Who is doing these things?'

The boy glanced back at the crowd and steered me towards the exit. ‘I don't know, but let's get out of here.'

The street was jammed with cars, vans, lorries and trucks. I pulled my hood over my cap, feeling as sick and scared as the moment the Taliban slid their death threat under our door. Only this time Behrouz wasn't going to appear out of nowhere with a crazy plan to save us.

I plodded along behind the boy, shivering and weighed down by grief for Captain Merrick. I had met him only once, but I owed him my life. Nothing seemed real. Even the honking horns and the rattle of the traffic seemed faint and distant, as if they belonged to another world that had spat me out into nothingness and would never let me back. For a long time the boy was silent too. Maybe he'd had enough of my nightmare and he didn't know how to tell me.