If You Were Me (4 page)

DAN

 

 

 

W
hat a nightmare, knowing what I knew and having to trail round after Dad all day when all I wanted to do was yell at him for being a liar. Thankfully we were so busy we didn't stop for lunch, just grabbed a sandwich in the van, and the rest of the time I managed to avoid talking to him by putting on a sulk whenever he opened his mouth. By the time we got home I thought I was going explode with the strain so I decided to ring round a few mates and see if anyone wanted to meet up. I reached in my jeans pocket – no mobile. I couldn't believe it, not after the day I'd had. I dug through all my other pockets, rang the number from the house phone, ran outside to check Dad's van. Nothing. I must have left it at one of the jobs. I'd just have
to think which one. When I got back inside, Mum was in the kitchen dishing up shepherd's pie.

‘I knew you'd be hungry, so I've done your favourite.'

Hungry? Was she kidding? After stumbling across Dad's little sideline I never wanted to eat again.

She hollered up the stairs, ‘Tea's ready, Ron!'

Dad came running down, rubbing his hands like a bad actor in a sitcom. ‘Looks great, love. I'm starving.' He sat down and attacked the mound of food on his plate as if he didn't have a care in the world. ‘I was just checking out some holiday deals in Turkey. What do you think, Dan? We thought it'd make a nice change from Spain.'

I stared at the table, not trusting myself to speak. How could he sit there shovelling down mounds of mashed potato, helping himself to gravy and going on about holidays?
How were you thinking of paying for it, Dad? With your share of the drug money, or by selling off a few more stolen washing machines?

Mum frowned at me. ‘What's the matter, love? Don't you fancy Turkey?'

I shrugged. Dad rolled his eyes. ‘Ignore him, he's been in a strop all afternoon. I've hardly had a word out of him.'

I played up the sulk, hunched my shoulders and picked at my food, trying to remember where I'd left my phone, only my brain was so churned up I couldn't think straight.

Mum kept looking at me, wondering why I wasn't eating, and her eagle eyes homed in on the cut on my head. ‘What's this?' She pushed back my hair and
inspected my scalp.

I'd done my best to clean off the blood but I should have known she'd see it. I scowled and shook her hand away. ‘Nothing.'

‘That looks nasty. How did you do it?'

‘Stop fussing, Mum.' I didn't want to think about hitting my head or what had been hidden behind the falling junk in the Meadowview basement. But even as I mumbled something about bashing myself on a bathroom cabinet it dawned on me in a horrible rush of panic exactly where I'd last used my phone. It was at Meadowview, when Dad called to tell me to hurry up with the spare pipe. I'd been in the loading bay and I put it down so I could shove the drugs and the washing powder back in the washing machine. I must have forgotten to pick it up. Picturing Dad or Jez walking in there and finding it made me feel sick. That couldn't happen. I'd sworn to myself I'd never set foot in that place ever again and now, just when I thought my life couldn't get any crappier, I'd have to go back there to get my phone.

But I wasn't going to risk doing it in daylight. After tea I took my skateboard down the park till it got dark, then I hung around in my room, playing half-hearted games on the PlayStation, waiting for Mum and Dad to go to bed before I nicked Jez's keys out of Dad's jacket, snuck out of the house and biked it over to Meadowview.

The car park was even creepier at night. It looked deserted but you could feel there were people around,
hiding in the shadows, watching from the darkened windows. I walked fast, trying to make out I was a kid from one of the flats, coming home late. I crept down to the basement and as I let myself in something rustled the litter in the stairwell. I swung round, peering into the darkness. What if I'd been followed? What if Dad turned up when I was in the loading bay? It was weird. There was this big black hole in my mind sucking in everything I thought I knew about him and twisting it into something dark and distorted.

At least I'd brought a proper torch with me this time so I wouldn't break my neck tripping over. I fumbled my way across the rubble, beginning to wonder if the mess was just a way to keep people out.

Shifting all the scaffolding and oil drums again took ages, because I was trying to keep the noise down, and I was sweating hard by the time I stepped into the loading bay. Get in. Grab the phone. Get out. That was the plan.

But where was it? I flashed the torch around, peering between the boxes, feeling inside the washing machines, going crazy. Come on, Dan. Start by the door. Do it methodically. I was on my knees, sweeping the torch around, inching backwards, when I heard a noise. A wheezy engine turning over, tyres crunching tarmac, and voices. Hushed. Urgent. It sounded like someone was moving the JCB I'd seen outside. My skin turned icy. I flipped off the torch and squeezed behind the pile of appliances, holding myself against the wall of boxes. A
pinprick of light winked red in the darkness. My phone. Just out of reach. Footsteps were coming nearer. I willed them to go away. Fear exploded through my body as I heard the jangle of keys and the electric hum of the rolling door sliding up. Through a gap between the boxes I saw a red van back in and made out something that looked like ‘—tal Meats Ltd' written down the side. Two men jumped out. Outlined in the glare of the headlights, the driver was tall, thin and stooping, wearing a woolly hat. He used a key to lower the door and as he turned round I caught a glimpse of a face I wouldn't forget in a hurry. Thick eyebrows, sunken cheeks, hooded eyes and skin like badly mixed cement. The other man flung open the back doors of the van and the two of them sat on the tailgate, lighting cigarettes, checking their phones. Waiting. For what? My muscles burnt with the strain of keeping still. The slightest twitch would crackle the plastic. Give me away. I bit down on my lips to stop my teeth chattering and glanced at my phone, poking out from under one of the boxes. If it rang, I'd be dead.

I heard something outside. Muffled cries, scuffling, an angry shout, then footsteps coming across the car park, getting louder. Cement Face switched off the headlights. Dropping his cigarette in a shower of sparks, he raised the rolling door. Three more people ducked under it, and as he turned the key to lower it again I fought a crazy urge to dash out, wriggle under the slowly narrowing gap and make a run for it. I knew I'd never make it.

The headlights flicked back on. One of the new arrivals, a big fair-haired bloke, was dragging a hunched-up woman who had a black shawl over her head. The other man, a weaselly-looking creep, had a gun wedged into her back. When he snatched off the shawl, I nearly gasped out loud. It wasn't a woman. It was a young dark-haired guy, blinking and shaking his head. Despite the blood and the bruises, I recognized him. He was the man I'd seen that morning on the stairs. He was trying to speak, hissing bubbles of blood through broken teeth. ‘Please . . . don't hurt my family, they don't know anything . . . please . . . please don't hurt them.'

‘Shut up.' Cement Face had a voice that made my hopes sink for the bloke they'd just dragged in. He held his hand out to the weasel with the gun. ‘You get his phone?' Weasel tossed him a mobile.

They pushed the young guy towards the back of the van. As he stumbled forward his head shot round in a last desperate hope there'd be someone there to save him. There wasn't. There was just me, cowering in the dark, nearly wetting myself. Weasel flipped the gun, caught it by the barrel and thwacked him hard on the side of the head. With a dull crack of metal on bone the man slumped forward. They caught him as he fell and threw him inside.

‘What you going do with him, boss?'

Cement Face gave a short, grating laugh. ‘I'm going to make him famous.'

He slammed the doors. As he got in the driver's seat he jerked his head at the pile of appliances. ‘Get that stuff out of here. Before it all kicks off.'

Weasel slipped his gun in the back of his trousers and got out his phone. ‘No worries. I'll get Jez and Ron on to it.'

Jez and Ron. The names slammed round my head. Jez Deakin and Ron Abbott.

The rolling doors hummed shut and after couple of minutes I heard the JCB rumble back into place outside. They'd gone. I crept from behind the appliances, grabbed my phone and stumbled back to the basement, the freeze-frame of that bloodied face seared into my brain. I wanted to call the cops but how could I when my own dad was involved? Somehow I managed to lock the padlocks and sling a few oil drums across the door before I slid to the ground and lay there, hunched over on the cold concrete, my thoughts flipping back to the night of my fifth birthday. We're in the crummy flat we had back then. I can hear Mum on the phone. She's crying. That makes me angry. I'm the one who's upset. I'm the one whose birthday Dad has missed. I run into the kitchen. She turns round, her face is red and blotchy and she squats down, opening her arms to me, smothering me in kisses. When she speaks her voice is jumpy, as if she's struggling to breathe, and she says, ‘I swear to you, Danny, your Dad's never going miss your birthday again. Not ever. And when he comes home, we'll have a special
day out to make up for it. Just the three of us.' Then she gets down the calendar and we count the days till he'll be back. Every single one of them, and I'm feeling proud because it's the first time I've ever counted to one hundred and twenty-two. That's what he's got left of the nine-month sentence he's serving for receiving stolen goods. They'd gone easy on him because it was a first offence, but it seems like a lifetime to us, and when Mum hugs me again, her tears wet my cheek.

Only they weren't Mum's tears I could feel – they were mine, and I wasn't sitting at the table holding a chunk of birthday cake and looking at a calendar. I was lying in a freezing basement staring into blackness and wondering what the hell Dad had got himself mixed up in. He'd be setting off, any minute, him and Jez. I had to get the keys back before he discovered they were missing. I picked myself up and started to run.

ALIYA

 

 

 

T
hey came while we were sleeping. An angry swarm of policemen, smashing the door down with a bright-orange battering ram, pointing their guns at us and ordering us to ‘Freeze!' Black boots, black gloves, black helmets and angry eyes staring through plastic visors. My mother didn't make a sound. She just stood in the middle of her bedroom, wrapped in her long white shawl, looking more like a ghost than ever. A video camera swung past my face. Someone jerked my hands up my back and clamped my wrists with tight metal cuffs. They were doing the same to my mother, leading her to the door. Mina ran to me and clung to my legs. I couldn't reach her, I couldn't move my hands. I shouted at the men in black, ‘What do you want? What do you want? Where are you
taking my mother?'

They acted as if I was invisible, kicking open doors, pulling food from our cupboards, tipping out the rubbish pail from under the sink. There were dogs with them, straining on leashes, scrabbling down the hall, sniffing and whining at the floorboards in the bathroom. The relief of knowing the gun wasn't there was swallowed by a terrible certainty. They would never send this many dogs and this many people to look for one small gun. They were searching for something else. I told myself over and over it was all a mistake and everything would be all right once they'd spoken to Behrouz. So why was the dark coldness squeezing my throat so tightly that I couldn't even scream when they prised Mina's arms from my legs and carried her away?

One of the figures in black was a woman. She threw a blanket around my shoulders, dropped my sandals at my feet and hustled me downstairs, fingers tight on my arm. My feet slapped on the damp concrete. The blanket smelt bad and I felt ashamed to be outside in my nightclothes. She wouldn't answer my questions. I felt her hand pressing on my head as she pushed me into a waiting police car. The car roared away. I looked back, trying to see what they'd done with Mina. I told myself this was England. That we'd come here to be safe, to get away from the terror, and that nothing bad could happen to us here.

They drove me to a big ugly police station and put me in a room without windows. Half of one wall was made of
darkened mirror. The rest of it was empty except for a camera on a metal stand, four plastic chairs and a metal table with a tape recorder on it. Another woman came in. She wore a creased blue suit; her hair was short and brown with ragged orange tips. She said her name was Detective Constable Audrey Callhoun. She unlocked my handcuffs and asked me very slowly if I wanted an ‘in-ter-pret-er'.

‘I . . . I don't need one.' I struggled to breathe. I was used to fear: the dull ache that had always been with me when Behrouz was on patrol with the British soldiers, the fierce panic I'd felt when we were escaping from the Taliban, and the shuddering sweats I get when I'm up high or in the dark. But the fear I was feeling then was thick and paralysing like the terror in a dream. I pushed out the words, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Please. Why am I here?'

She was watching me closely and her voice was firm but low. ‘You're not under arrest. We've brought you here as a witness. We think you can help us.'

I didn't believe her. ‘A witness? I can't help you. I haven't seen anything.'

‘Can you tell me your name?'

‘Aliya Sahar.'

‘How old are you, Aliya?'

‘Fourteen. Where is my sister?'

‘She's all right. She's upstairs with a social worker.'

‘She doesn't like strangers. She needs to be with me.'

‘She'll be fine. The social workers are specially trained to deal with distress. We just want to talk to you. But first,
I have to search you.'

I backed away, pulling the blanket tighter. ‘Why? What are you looking for?'

‘Please, Aliya. This is important for you as well as us.'

I let go of the blanket and slowly lifted my arms, burning with shame as she patted me and prodded me through my thin nightdress. When she'd finished, she handed me a bundle of clothes. ‘Here, we brought these from your flat. You can put them on in the ladies.'

She led me across the corridor to a cold bare cloakroom that had green and black tiles on the walls, a lock on the window and a chipped mirror nailed above the sink. She waited outside. I could see the shape of her body darkening the glass in the door. I went into a cubicle and pulled on the salwar-kameez I'd been wearing the night we left Kabul. It was clean. I'd washed it many times since then but to me it would always smell of fear and diesel and Mina's vomit.

A young policeman with a freckled face and hair the colour of sand followed us back, carrying a tray with tea in a paper cup and a cheese sandwich wrapped in plastic. When I caught him staring at me, he looked away.

‘Thanks, Mark.' The woman detective took the tray.

‘That's OK. Give us a shout if you need anything else.'

Her voice was sharp and easy to understand, whereas his was soft and he drew out the sounds in a way that made words sound strange. I didn't want the sandwich and I only took the tea because I thought that holding something
would help me keep my hands still. As we sat down at the table a tall, angry-looking man came in, pulling a jacket over his crumpled shirt. There was stubble on his chin and he smelt of sweat. He switched on the tape recorder, then leant back, pushing his fingers through his dark greasy hair.

‘I'm Detective Inspector Terry McGill. I need to ask you some questions.'

‘I'll try to answer anything you ask,' I said, respectfully. ‘But first, please take my sister home. My mother too. She's sick. She takes tablets. She shouldn't be here.'

‘I've just spoken to your mother, Miss Sahar. My colleagues will be finished with her soon.' His eyes were accusing, as if my mother had told him something bad about me.

‘Why are we here? Please, you have to tell me.'

‘We'll get to that.' He tilted his head to one side. ‘Where did you learn such good English? I understand you only arrived here three weeks ago.' He said this as if speaking English was a crime.

‘My parents taught me. My mother used to teach languages at the University of Kabul. English and French.'

He frowned. I think he was surprised that my mother hadn't always been the blank, staring creature she was now.

‘And your father?'

‘He studied to be a doctor in London.'

‘When was that?'

‘In the 1970s.'

‘Where is he now?'

‘He died. A year ago.'

‘How?'

Tears burnt my eyes. ‘Why do you want to know this?'

Detective Callhoun leant forward. ‘Please don't get upset, Aliya, we just need to establish—'

He silenced her with flick of his hand. ‘Answer my question, Miss Sahar.'

‘There was an explosion near the hospital. A Talib suicide bomber . . . my mother has been sick since that day. She has to go home. She's not strong. She's –' I searched for the right English word – ‘depressed.'

‘I've told you. Your mother will be released as soon as we've finished questioning her. So your father wasn't killed by Allied action?'

‘No. It was a Talib. I told you.'

‘What about the rest of your family? Any of them killed or injured by British forces?'

‘No. Everyone we have lost was killed by Talib fighters . . . or Russians. My grandfather was killed by the Russians, but that was before I was born.'

‘You have a nineteen-year-old brother, Behrouz.'

The dark coldness crept up my throat. I swallowed hard to make it go back. ‘Yes'

‘Are you close?'

‘Yes.'

‘When did you last see him?'

‘Yesterday. In the morning.'

‘Where did he go?'

‘To work. He drives a minicab.'

‘Did he come back to the flat that day?'

I knew he was testing me to see if I would tell him lies.

‘Yes.' I fixed my eyes on his. ‘He came back in the morning when I was at the shop.'

‘Why?'

‘He gave my mother his new telephone number.'

Something passed across his face. ‘Do you have that number?'

‘It's on a paper in my purse.'

He glanced at Detective Callhoun. She nodded and made a note.

‘Why did he change it?'

‘I . . . I don't know.'
Please don't ask about his old phone. Please don't make me lie
.

‘Is that the truth?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where did he go after work last night?'

‘I don't know. He didn't come home to eat and he didn't answer his phone. I called the cab company where he works and they said that he –' I felt his eyes boring into me – ‘that he brought his car back early in the morning and didn't work that day.'

‘Did that surprise you?'

‘Yes. He tries to earn as much as he can. He is proud. He hates taking benefit money.'

‘Do you have any idea where he went?'

‘No. I was worried in case he'd had an accident.' The policeman's face was like stone. The darkness filled my mouth and made my words into a muddle. ‘Why? I don't . . . Where is he? What's happened . . .?'

His voice didn't change. His eyes didn't blink. ‘At four a.m. this morning there was an explosion in a lock-up garage in Kilburn. When the fire brigade arrived, they found your brother inside.'

‘No!' I jumped up. The room swam around me. I reached for the table.

‘Is he . . . dead?'

‘No.' Detective Callhoun reached over to touch my hand. I pulled away from her. ‘He's concussed and badly burnt. He's in intensive care.'

‘I have to go to him.'

Inspector McGill was still staring at me, hard. ‘Sit down, Miss Sahar. He won't be having visitors until he's been questioned and that can't happen until he's conscious.'

The room was still spinning. I could hear my breath coming very fast. ‘Questioned? What about?'

He leant forward, his face so close I could see the broken veins on his nose. ‘His terrrorist activities, Miss Sahar.'

Shock shook my body, making my voice quiver and jump. ‘I . . . I . . . don't understand.'

He leant back, folding his arms. ‘Then let me spell it out for you. That lock-up was where your brother made
his bombs. And he's in hospital because one of his devices went off while he was working on it.'

‘No . . .' Darkness closed over me. For a few seconds I sat there gasping, my hands opening and closing as if I might catch the right words to explain the terrible mistake this hard-faced policeman had made. But all I could whisper was, ‘He is not a terrorist. Please. You must believe me.'

His eyes were drilling into mine, searching for something I hoped wasn't there. ‘He studied engineering,' he said.

This was madness. He was taking something good and turning it into evil. ‘That doesn't make him a bomb-maker. He wanted to rebuild our country, to make roads and bridges. Me too.'

‘What?'

‘I also want to be an engineer.' I said it defiantly, proud of my ambition. He made a note and from the way he glanced at the woman I knew that somehow I had made things worse.

‘In addition to the chemicals in the garage, we found a number of electronic detonators with his fingerprints on them. Can you explain how they got there?'

I felt weightless, as if my mind had left my body. I didn't understand what was happening. All I knew for certain was that Behrouz was innocent. ‘I . . . I . . . it's a mistake.'

‘Did he resent the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan?'

Anger snapped me back into my body. ‘No! He worked
for the British army. He was an interpreter. They gave him a medal for saving three soldiers. If we hadn't come to England the Taliban would have killed him. Like they killed my father!'

‘I told you to sit down, Miss Sahar. Calm yourself.' I sank back on to the grey plastic chair. ‘There have been countless incidents of Afghan nationals turning on their foreign employers.'

‘Not Behrouz. He would never hurt anyone. Someone else put those chemicals in that garage. When Behrouz can speak, he'll tell you what happened.'

Detective Callhoun cut in quickly. ‘You need to prepare yourself, Aliya. Your brother's injuries are very bad. He may never regain consciousness.'

She was just pretending to be kind. She didn't care that he was injured, maybe dying
. I closed my eyes to shut out her face. All I saw in the darkness was fear and danger and confusion.

‘Have you heard of a terror group called Al Shaab?' the man said.

I looked at him, bewildered. ‘I think maybe on the news. Last year. They planted some bombs in Helmand, I think, and . . . and maybe Lahore . . . I . . . I don't know.'
Why was he asking me this?

‘They contacted us. They told us that your brother was working for them.'

His words slipped into my brain like a thin sharp blade. ‘No! They're lying!'

‘They identified him by name at least half an hour before we'd established his identity.' The blade slid deeper, probing for doubt.

‘Anyone could pretend they're from Al Shaab. Anyone could tell you these lies.'

‘The caller gave us details of a foiled bombing attempt carried out by Al Shaab earlier this year.' He kept his eyes on mine.

‘I don't understand . . .'

‘Those details were known only to the bombers and the security services.'

‘No . . . somebody is doing this to him.'

‘Why would they do that, Miss Sahar? Does he have enemies?'

‘Only the Taliban. He got away from them in Afghanistan. Maybe they came after him here.'

He waved his hand dismissively. ‘They couldn't stage something like this. It's not how they operate. Now, we need you to tell us about your brother's associates.'