If You Were Me (6 page)

ALIYA

 

 

 

W
PC Rennell drove me to a busy district of London called King's Cross. The hotel was a tall narrow building down a side street, with the name Holly Lodge painted over the door and a sign in the window that said
VACANCIES
in winking blue lights. She hurried me past the deserted reception desk, up to the first floor, and pointed down a narrow corridor.

‘You've got rooms 11 and 12. Do you want me to come in with you?'

I looked into her scrubbed, shiny face. She gazed back as if she was still trying to work out what to make of me. ‘No, thank you,' I said.

‘OK. Here are your keys. I'll be back first thing. Remember, stay inside as much as you can and don't get
friendly with the other guests. If anyone asks who you are, you say your family name is Tarin and you're down from Birmingham sorting out your visas. Any problems, call us immediately.'

I took the keys and walked away, keeping my eyes fixed on the worn red carpet. I didn't glance back until my fingers were on the door handle. She gave me a nod. I took a long slow breath and went inside. Mina was asleep on the bed. My mother was beside her, staring at the television. She didn't look up when I came in and just went on running her prayer beads through her fingers, murmuring that Behrouz was a good boy, her firstborn, the apple of her eye. I should have gone to her, taken her hands, comforted her, but I couldn't find the strength. I followed her eyes to the screen and kept them there, held by a strange sort of fascination. She was watching Mr Brody. He was standing outside Meadowview, telling the reporters that he'd had his suspicions about us from the minute we'd moved in and that this is what happened if you let scum into the country. Another man came on, a policeman who said that people like Behrouz ‘represented the worst kind of danger to the public, because they weren't known to the police or the security services'. When the reporter asked him why the police hadn't arrested any other members of Al Shaab, he looked angry and said they were doing everything they could but Al Shaab was an elusive organization with no traceable links to any other terror group.

I looked away and gazed at the bumpy beige wallpaper, the thin green curtains, the battered brown furniture and the big plastic bag stuffed full of our things on the floor. I rummaged inside it for my purse and slipped downstairs. I didn't know where I was going. I just needed to get away, to feel free again, but the cool night air and the rush of lights made me dizzy after the gloom of the hotel, and the sight of Behrouz's photo staring from a news-stand made me want to cry out. The streets were crowded and it felt as if every face I passed was watching me, accusing me, condemning me: the man in the parked car, the homeless woman curled in her sleeping bag, the pizza-delivery boy revving his scooter. I wanted to scream at them that Behrouz was not a terrorist and that I was going to prove it. I slowed down, overcome by a sudden hopelessness. How could I prove anything? I was alone in a foreign city full of angry people who were convinced that my brother wanted to kill them.

A crowd of men pushed past me. They knocked me off the kerb, shouting words I didn't understand, and pulled at my headscarf. I ducked away from their tattooed arms and slopping beer cans and started to run. I heard them coming after me, roaring, laughing, swearing. I rushed into a takeaway and slipped behind a woman with a baby who was buying kebabs. I pressed my cuff to my teeth, ripping at the fabric as I peered between the faded photos of burgers, pizzas and fried chicken stuck to the window. The drunken men staggered past without seeing me. I
closed my eyes, waiting for their shouts to fade. When I opened them again, the woman at the counter was staring at me without smiling. A crowd of teenagers burst in, the girls laughing, the boys pushing each other, raising their voices. One of them poked my shoulder. ‘Come on, hurry up, we haven't got all night.'

I searched the list on the wall, looking for the cheapest thing. The girls began giggling and whispering. I asked for a small pizza and fumbled for the money, praying I'd have enough to pay for it. The purse fell from my hands, spilling vouchers, coins, cards and scraps of paper across the floor; I crouched down, trying pick them up and stuff them back but the purse wouldn't close. The girls' laughter grew louder. My eyes blurred as I dropped a handful of coins on the counter. Without waiting for the pizza I stumbled out of the shop, tugging at the crumpled card jammed in the zip of my purse.

Hating myself for being so weak, I ran round the corner, plunged into the nearest doorway, and let the tears come. The fear and loneliness took hold, my knees buckled and I slumped on to the step, not caring about the cold or the damp or the dirt. I laid my head on my knees, too wretched to move. A blast of pumping music jolted me out of my misery. I looked up. Two tall, thickset men in black suits came sauntering out of a door in the purple-painted wall across the road, their shaved heads and gold chains glinting in the light from the street lamp. I pulled my scarf across my face and prayed they wouldn't see me.
They came closer. I felt the heat of their stares and kept my eyes on the card in my fist. One of the men hawked and spat. A shiny slug of phlegm landed near my foot. I looked up into their faces. They stared back, then they grinned at each other and walked on. Anger grew and swelled inside me, filling the emptiness.

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, scrambled to my feet and dusted the dirt from my clothes. I'd show them. I'd show everybody in the whole world that my family wasn't scum to be spat at and accused of evil crimes they hadn't committed. I held the card tightly in my fingers and hurried away to find a phone box.

DAN

 

 

 

‘
H
ey, Danny.' Dad's voice boomed up the stairs.

‘What?'

‘Phone.'

No one ever called me on the house phone. ‘Who is it?'

‘She didn't say.'

I didn't need to see Dad's face to know he was grinning and winking at Mum. What were the options? Force myself to take the call or face Dad coming up and ribbing me about giving some girl a hard time. I ran downstairs and took the receiver.

‘Yeah?'

A voice whispered something I couldn't make out.

‘What?'

There was a gasp on the line. ‘I am Aliya Sahar . . . from Meadowview.' The shock was like touching a live wire.

‘Where'd you get this number?'

‘Your father . . . he gave us a card.'

I glanced over my shoulder. Mum and Dad were gazing at the TV, pretending they weren't listening. I lowered my voice. ‘What do you want?'

‘I . . . I . . . need . . . your help.'

Panic squeezed my chest. Did she know what I'd seen? I swallowed hard. ‘Why me?'

‘You were kind.' Her voice cracked. ‘You helped me to hide the gun from your father.'

I dragged my fingers down my face, feeling relief give way to a burning rush of guilt. Mum was looking up, ears flapping. ‘Give us your number,' I said, quickly. ‘I'll call you back.'

‘I am using a telephone in a box.'

‘It'll be on the wall above the phone . . .'

‘Yes, now I have it.' She read out the number. I scribbled it on my hand and hung up. Dead casual, I walked towards the door. Just when I thought I'd made it, Mum said, ‘Who was that, love?'

‘No one you know.'

I darted into the hall and rushed up the stairs two at a time. Aliya answered on the first ring. ‘My brother is in trouble.' Her voice was steadier, as if she'd been practising the words.

‘I know. I saw it on the news.'

‘The people on the television are telling lies. He did not make that bomb. He is not a terrorist.'

I closed my eyes and saw his bruised, desperate face as they threw him into the van, but I had to pretend I only knew what I'd seen on TV. ‘So what was he doing in that lock-up with all those explosives?'

‘That is what I must find out. I have to prove he is innocent.'

‘How?'

‘I . . . I will start with his phone. I think maybe he hid it because there is something in it that is connected to what happened.'

My heart pounded. ‘Like what?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Are you going to show it to the police?'

‘No. They do not care about the truth. They believe he is a terrorist and that is all they want to prove.' The flutter was back in her voice. ‘I hid the phone and the gun and now I need you to get the phone back for me.'

I gripped the handset. ‘Where is it?'

‘On a boat on the canal. Near the bridge. I put the bag under the tarpaulin.'

‘Why can't you get it?'

‘I am not allowed to go near to Meadowview.'

‘Who says?'

‘The police.'

I wanted to help her but this talk of the police was stopping me thinking straight, making me panic, holding
me back.

‘Are you there?' she whispered.

‘Yeah . . . but I—'

‘Please, do this one thing for me.' For a moment all I could hear was her breath, jerking and rasping, then her voice came out in a rush, as if she was afraid I'd hang up. ‘They have put us in a hotel called Holly Lodge. It's in a road called Swinton Street near to a big railway station called King's Cross. Bring it early in the morning. I will watch from the window until you come.'

‘Look, I . . . I don't know. I . . .'

‘Please.' Her voice wobbled. ‘I have no one else to ask . . . and . . . and there is something else.'

‘What?'

‘You touched the gun. You must clean away the marks made by your fingers, in case the police find it.'

‘Jesus.' Fingerprints. I'd left them all over the loading bay too.

‘What's the name of this boat?'

‘The
Margaretta
.'

I hung up, pulled on my hoodie and ran downstairs, head spinning. My fingerprints. Whatever happened, I had to wipe them off Behrouz's gun.

‘Hey, Mum, I'm going out for a bit,' I said.

‘Where to? It's late.'

‘Round this girl's house. I won't be long.'

‘Does she have a name?'

My brain was too scrambled to make one up. ‘Ali. You
don't know her.'

Dad looked up from the tray on his lap. ‘You need a lift, son?'

‘Nah, I'll bike it.'

‘Got your key?'

‘Yep.'

I ran into the kitchen, snatched Mum's rubber gloves and a dishcloth off the draining board and headed for the back door. I cycled towards the estate, head down into the spitting rain, nearly hitting the kerb when the top of Meadowview appeared above the dingy rooftops, lit up by the searchlight from a hovering helicopter. I turned off the main road and pushed my bike through the crowd, craning to see into the car park. It was full of vans, police cars and figures in white paper overalls carrying boxes out of the building. People were out on the balconies, staring down at the TV news vans or gazing up at the helicopter that looked as if it was hanging off the end of its own light beam.

The whole area had been cordoned off and the growing mob of onlookers was jostling the barriers, feeding off each other's fury. Some of them were having a go at Aliya and her mother for harbouring a monster, others were waving copies of the evening paper and talking about the evil lurking in Behrouz Sahar's eyes, while people from the other blocks milled around, trying to outdo each other with stories of dodgy characters hanging out on the Meadowview staircases and stuff going on
around the car park at night. The babble of voices grew louder and shriller until I thought the waves of outrage were going to swallow me up.

I backed my bike away, barging into an agitated woman, who dropped her newspaper and screamed in my face when the wheels crushed a front page picture of Behrouz headlined ‘
BOMBER
!' I jumped on the bike and made off towards the canal, skidding to a halt when a couple of cops in high-vis jackets stepped forward, blocking the entrance to the towpath. One of them shone his torch in my face then ran it over the bike. ‘Where are you off to?'

‘Home,' I said. ‘I just came out to see what was going on.'

He grunted and let me pass. I sped along the track, following the curve of the water towards the bridge. Even out of sight of the helicopter I could still hear the whirr of its blades and the shouts of the crowd. They were chanting now, demanding the death penalty for terrorists.

Worried I'd missed the
Margaretta
, I stopped by a tree stump and swept the bike light across the moorings. It was there, a flash of a white M on the bow of a rotting rowing boat, almost hidden in the shadow of the barges either side. I checked the path, making doubly sure no one was coming before I pulled on the rubber gloves. Drawing the slimy rope towards the bank, I planted my knees in the mud and plunged my hand through the split in the tarpaulin. I stretched down, feeling for the plastic
bag, blinking into the blast of rain that whipped my face. The boat kept swinging away and even with the gloves on I shuddered when my fingers touched a clammy layer of sludge, but I kept digging around till I felt the bag scrunched under the seat. I dragged it out and backed into the undergrowth, holding it at arms length to avoid the stinking water pouring off the plastic and trying to dodge the brambles clawing my face. My feet crunched broken glass and empty cans as I went deeper.

When I was sure no one could see me I reached into the bag and took out the gun. Hating the stubby feel of it, I rubbed every inch of the barrel and handle with the dishcloth, imagining all those greasy, tell-tale spirals disappearing under the pressure. I dropped it back in the bag. It fell with a clunk. I flinched and looked around. There was no one to hear it, no sound at all except the distant roar of the crowd outside Meadowview yelling for Behrouz Sahar's blood.

My mind flashed back to the raw fear I'd seen on his face. Almost before I knew it, I was reaching for the tobacco tin and ramming it into my pocket. Slashing the brambles with my elbows, I pushed my way back to the towpath and shoved the bag through the tarpaulin. I cut through an alleyway further up, and once I was well way from all the cruising cop cars I tossed the muddy gloves and the dishcloth into a skip. Mum would go mad when she found out they were missing. That was nothing compared to what she'd do if she found out what else
was going on. Shaking, I let myself into our house and eased the front door shut.

‘That you, Danny?' Mum was on the landing in her nightie, looking down over the bannister. ‘Don't forget to bolt the door.'

‘I won't. Night.' I propped myself against the wall and closed my eyes, waiting for my heart to stop crashing against my ribs. Still trembling, I hurried up to my room and checked for news updates on Behrouz Sahar. According to the BBC, he was still in a coma and the police were looking for his accomplices. A whole load of Afghan businesses had been attacked and the boss of his cab company had told the papers he was a lone extremist who deserved the death penalty for bringing shame on a law-abiding community. Even his army mates were turning against him.

The only person in the whole world still sticking up for him was Aliya.

I got out his phone, turning it in my fingers for a long time. Then I picked through the heads on the universal charger Bernie Watts had given me (a key tool if you work with nicked phones) and put it on to charge. A tiny dot of red flickered into life. I paused for a second, knowing that once I'd seen what was in the memory there'd be no going back. I drew a long, unsteady breath and turned on the phone.

There were eight numbers in Behrouz's contacts, a few texts, and some photos, family stuff mostly: Aliya, his
mum and his kid sister in their flat, all four of them on a sightseeing trip round London – smiling and waving outside the railings of Buckingham Palace, feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and one of Behrouz standing proudly beside his minicab with Big Ben in the background. Then a few taken ten days later of Aliya and the kid at some dreary-looking fundraiser in the Meadowview car park: a juggler in a droopy jester's hat, a bunch of grown men lobbing balls at a coconut and an old lady selling tea and buns. The only person who looked like he was enjoying himself was a policeman who was leaning across the tea table with his cap under his arm, helping himself to a bright-green cupcake.

The next lot of pictures were low-angle shots of two men carrying parcels between two vans parked under some trees on a deserted patch of waste ground. My room wasn't that warm but as I looked closer sweat prickled the back of my neck. One of the vans was the same red as the one they'd used for the kidnap, and the taller man, who had a stoop and a cigarette dangling from his lips, was obviously Cement Face. As for the packages he was unloading, I was guessing they were full of drugs. What else were they going to be? But it was the white van and the stocky blond bloke loading it up that had got my heart pumping. The man was Jez Deakin. And from what I could see of the number plate I had a horrible, gut-twisting feeling that the van was my dad's.

I thought I was going to be sick. For a few seconds I
just sat there gasping and looking down at the thick brown mud caked round my trainers, before I managed to get up the courage to scroll on to the most recent photos. They'd been taken the day before the explosion and they were all of Cement Face, leaning up against a brick wall, smoking. Whoever he was, he had a serious nicotine problem. This time he was wearing green overalls tucked into white rubber boots. There were four decent shots of him and a couple of blurred ones that had caught another man in the frame, as if Behrouz had grabbed them as he was driving off.

My hand hovered on the delete button, fighting the urge to erase the lot and forget I'd ever seen them. I didn't do it. I sent them to my own phone and tried enhancing them, looking for any scraps of information I might have missed. When that didn't help, I sent them to my computer and worked through all the images, even the blurry ones, clicking, cropping, zooming until the details were almost too pixellated to make out. Almost. Not quite. I'd been clinging to a last desperate hope that the white van Jez Deakin was loading up might turn out to be someone else's. But there was no getting away from it. That van was definitely Dad's.