One Way Out

by A. A. Dhand

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Imam Hashim’s office.’

  Her voice sounded shaky. Something wasn’t right.

  ‘What’s happened, Saima?’

  She told him what had happened with the bomb and of her follow-up call with Frost.

  ‘A sleeper cell?’ he said, amazed. ‘Are you … shit, I don’t know … “OK” seems like such a stupid word to use.’

  ‘I’m OK. I mean, my life flashed before me but, to be honest, it’s not the first time.’

  She forced a laugh and Harry smiled. She was some woman.

  ‘Frost asked me to … help.’

  ‘You good with that?’

  ‘You know I am. How’s Aaron?’

  Harry smiled again. Typical Saima, all about her boy.

  ‘I told you, he’s with my mother.’

  ‘Why aren’t you there with him? How can you leave him alone for so long?’

  ‘I’m working, Saima. Everyone needs to play their part today.’

  ‘You need to get to your parents and put him to bed, Harry. He won’t sleep otherwise.’

  ‘Saima – my mother has looked after—’

  ‘—did you leave his Batman blanket there? His pyjamas? His Winnie-the-Pooh?’

  Christ, this wasn’t going to be easy.

  ‘He’ll be upset and confused, Harry. Today must have been awful for him.’ Her voice cracked. Harry hated to hear her this way.

  ‘I can deal with everything that’s going on. The mosque, City Park, the bomb, the sleeper – all of it. What I absolutely cannot deal with is my four-year-old in a strange house, afraid. You will go to that damn house, Harry Virdee, and you will put my boy to bed – do you hear me?’

  She was almost shouting now.

  Harry took the breath he needed. ‘Saima, he is my boy too. Do you think I would let him suffer? You have to trust my mother. I can’t go and sit at home while this city burns around us and you’re stuck in the mosque. What if something happens to you? What do I tell Aaron then?’

  ‘You know I am not the priority here, Harry. Our son is the priority.’

  ‘You are both my priority. Please, Saima—’

  ‘Your father is there. God knows what he’s said to Aaron. You know what he’s capable of.’

  It was the thing Harry had been trying not to think of. And now she’d said it aloud. Harry trusted his mother, but he also knew his father.

  Was Aaron really safe there?

  ‘If Mum needs me, I’ll go back.’

  It was a promise he knew he would be unable to fulfil.

  ‘Saima, stop crying. I need you to hold it together.’

  Harry glanced at the broken mirror, hanging clumsily next to the front door. He caught his reflection. The crack in the mirror distorted his image, cutting him in half right down the centre.

  It was exactly how he felt right now.

  ‘What did Frost say when he called? Did he give you any clues what to look for?’

  Her voice steadied a little. ‘He said to trust nobody.’

  Harry wanted to give her some reassurance but didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I want to find who it is, Harry. It might … give us all a better chance.’ She was right but the odds were against her: they were one in a thousand. ‘How do I start?’

  Harry told her the only thing he could think of. ‘Try and find the calmest person in the room, Saima.’ He paused then added, ‘Or the one making the most noise.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Isaac Wolfe could hear Harry on the phone in the hallway. The detective had taken the gun with him but that was OK.

  Isaac put his hands across his chest and started to perform the Islamic nafl prayer, a quick form of worship that he used to charge his courage. Once finished, he remained on the floor, facing Mecca, eyes closed.

  He had gained Harry Virdee’s trust. It was a fragile allegiance but it was something.

  The next few hours were about one thing.

  Isaac Wolfe was going to reunite with his leader, Abu-Nazir, because he knew there was a much bigger nightmare to come.

  One Harry Virdee would never see coming.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  His call to Saima had barely disconnected when Harry phoned his mother.

  She answered immediately and Harry heard in the background the one thing he absolutely didn’t want to hear.

  Aaron crying.

  I should be there.

  He closed his eyes, trying not to let his emotions overrule his head.

  ‘Hardeep, are you coming?’ she said, clearly leaving the room judging by the sound of Aaron’s cries fading.

  ‘I can’t, Mum. I just … can’t.’

  She paused for only a moment. ‘It’s OK,’ she replied, her voice resolute. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Has he eaten?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Properly?’

  ‘He had chapatti and curry and a Magnum.’

  ‘He’ll fall asleep when he’s tired from crying, Mum. There’s a dummy and a Batman blanket in the blue bag. Give them to him and lie next to him in bed.’

  ‘He doesn’t have any pyjamas, Hardeep.’

  ‘It’s warm, Mum, just let him sleep in his underwear.’ Harry sighed. ‘Mum, I need you to help with this. I need to know you can cope with him overnight. How’s everything … else?’ He couldn’t bring himself to ask the question directly.

  Her voice was fierce. ‘Nothing is happening to Aaron whilst I am alive. You don’t worry.’

  ‘I need to go, Mum,’ he said, fear pooling in his stomach. He wanted to throw his phone against the wall and smash the house to pieces. How could he not be there for his boy?

  He hung his head. ‘My phone might be off for a while, Mum. If it’s urgent, leave me a voicemail, but only if it is urgent.’

  ‘And Saima? Is she OK, Hardeep?’

  ‘She’s fine, Mum.’

  ‘Almukhtaroon – tell me how you got involved with them? It’s new, right? You were locked up until fairly recently. How did it happen? Tell me everything,’ said Harry, checking his phone for the time: 18.25. They needed to move.

  He was back in the kitchen with Isaac, his head still cloudy for having spoken to his family. He knew this was the only thing he could do to protect them.

  Isaac spoke hurriedly. His mother, Noori, was a second-generation Pakistani immigrant, born and raised in London. She’d been a shop assistant when she had become pregnant with Isaac. She and her boyfriend had moved to Bradford to escape their local community and the backlash for having a child out of wedlock.

  The shame.

  Isaac’s father had died before he had been born. He knew almost nothing about him.

  Noori had changed her surname from Hussain to Wolfe, afraid her family would try to track her down. Afraid of what they might do if they found her.

  ‘Why Wolfe?’ asked Harry.

  ‘She liked to read. Came across the name in a book. Plus, she thought it was safer to use a name nobody would think of.’

  Isaac had worshipped his mother. She had worked two jobs to make sure he never wanted for anything. She had wanted him to become a doctor.

  Harry thought about Isaac’s stellar grades; the kid had been on his way.

  Then, quite suddenly, his mother had been diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer. By the time she’d seen her GP it was already too late.

  ‘Four months later, she was dead,’ said Isaac.

  Harry sighed; he still had Aaron’s cries in his head.

  ‘Just like that, she was gone,’ said Isaac, his face blank. ‘I was alone.’

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  ‘And the youth detention centre?’ Harry ventured.

  ‘Someone at school said something about her. I lost it.’

  Isaac stopped. He didn’t need to say any more. Harry imagined the rest.

  The boy would have fallen on the wrong side of the government’s
Prevent programme, meant to tackle radicalization. Harry slouched in his seat, dismayed. Instead of helping Isaac, Prevent had put him on a darker path.

  ‘Is that how you found Almukhtaroon?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Ironic, right?’ Isaac allowed himself a smile. ‘Abu-Nazir was visiting another kid inside. I asked some questions, he came to see me and, well … when I got out … he was there.’

  Harry leaned back, scrubbing his palm across his stubble.

  ‘He’s a white guy,’ said Harry, shaking his head. ‘Didn’t that strike you as weird?’

  ‘It was because he was white that I listened. It felt like so much more of a statement coming from him.’ Isaac glanced up at Harry but didn’t stop talking. ‘It felt like I had family again. The more Abu-Nazir taught me, the more I saw how unfair the world had become to the Muslim community.’

  Harry struggled not to interrupt. This was textbook: lost Muslim kid falls victim to charismatic hate-preacher.

  ‘How do we find the others?’ Harry asked, voice firm. He wanted to find those fuckers now more than ever.

  ‘First, I want to know what happens after that,’ said Isaac.

  ‘We negotiate with the Patriots.’

  ‘They want us dead. That doesn’t sound like a negotiation to me.’

  Harry had been expecting the question. ‘The Patriots will know that nobody is handing you over to be executed. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on them asking you all to go on TV and stand down.’

  Isaac slouched in his seat. ‘Abu-Nazir would die first.’

  Harry smiled. ‘In my experience, when death actually stares you down, most men do what they can to stay alive.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘What about Amelia? What is her role?’

  ‘You’ve heard the stories, right?’

  Harry had. She was known as the black widow, using her position as Abu-Nazir’s partner to entice young, impressionable men to join the cause.

  ‘Is she submissive to Abu-Nazir or are they equals?’

  Isaac paused and just the fact that he did so gave Harry the answer. Abu-Nazir was not in charge.

  ‘I got it. Let’s move on to the muscle. Fahad-Bin-Azeez.’

  Isaac’s tone changed, now more serious.

  ‘Nobody calls him that, just Azeez. And he is altogether different.’

  Harry’s leg started to twitch. He needed to get going but he couldn’t rush this. Isaac had to be on his side, had to believe Harry was on his.

  ‘He’s the tough guy. I … I … don’t really spend much time with him but Abu-Nazir says everyone’s frustrations at how the Islamic world is perceived manifest differently, and that people like Azeez are necessary. Words get you so far, swords the rest of the way.’

  ‘Those his words, are they? Abu-Nazir’s?’

  Isaac nodded. ‘Azeez is huge. You’re no match for him.’

  ‘You just tell me everything you know about Azeez and let me worry how to take him down.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  Joyti put her phone away, wiped tears from her face and went back into the kitchen. Aaron was exactly as she’d left him. She hurried to him, ignoring his flailing arms trying to bat her away. Distressed, he called for his mummy. She held him close. His head was growing heavy with exhaustion and he nestled into her.

  Her heart missed a beat.

  She struggled to her feet, lifting Aaron with her. As she passed the living-room door, she saw Ranjit was not there. She went to the window by the front door. His car was gone.

  Rage exploded inside her.

  How could he hate Aaron for the sins of his father?

  She gritted her teeth, pulled the chain across the lock and secured the top internal bolt. Her husband was not welcome any more.

  Aaron continued to cry, tears from his warm face dampening her skin.

  She took him upstairs, struggling with her hip, wincing in pain. She sat Aaron on her bed.

  ‘We’re going to sleep in here tonight, my boy. Just you and me.’ She stroked his head to soothe him.

  ‘No, I want my mummy,’ he said, still crying.

  ‘I know. But tonight you are going to stay here, with Grandma. Mummy and Daddy said so.’

  Joyti handed Aaron his Batman comfort blanket and his dummy. His cries stopped for a moment.

  ‘My blue ’jamas?’ he asked hopefully.

  Joyti grabbed a remote from the bedside cabinet and passed it to Aaron. She pressed a button and the bed moved underneath them, lowering them towards the floor. It was a specialist unit, for her hip.

  Aaron took the remote, eyes lighting up.

  ‘Do you want to sleep on this bed, tonight?’

  He nodded. ‘I keep this?’ he said, shying away from her, afraid she might take the remote away.

  ‘If you sleep in this bed, you can keep it.’

  He nodded, sucking on his dummy, making it squeak. He really was the spitting image of Harry.

  She jumped at the noise of the doorbell.

  Ranjit.

  ‘Grandma, somebody here?’ said Aaron, still playing with the remote.

  ‘It will go away soon.’

  She could hear Ranjit’s key in the door. The doorbell went again.

  And again.

  ‘Grandma, I don’t like that noise.’

  ‘You stay here,’ she said and started towards the stairs.

  At the bottom, she unlocked the door, ready to tell Ranjit he was not welcome.

  She didn’t have to.

  Her husband stood on the doorstep, face grave, a large carrier bag in each hand. He raised them to show her. It was children’s clothing.

  And on top of the first bag was a pair of blue pyjamas.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Harry gripped the steering.

  If you fail tonight, everything will fall apart.

  He’d sailed through the nearly empty streets. Now, close to the city centre, there were helicopters hovering above, police cars, ambulances and fire engines everywhere.

  This was the biggest test the city had ever faced. The biggest test Harry had ever faced.

  He headed for the side streets.

  ‘How certain are you Azeez lives here?’ asked Harry.

  ‘It’s the last place I know he was staying.’

  ‘Staying?’ said Harry.

  ‘He moves around a lot. He’s paranoid he’s being watched. Works hard to stay under the radar.’

  Harry thought of the Police National Database he had searched. NFA. No fixed abode.

  Intelligence reports linked him with addresses around Manningham, Leeds Road and Tong but this address on Back Lane hadn’t been mentioned anywhere.

  That needled Harry. He glanced at Isaac, the kid staring out the window. Could he really trust him?

  ‘There,’ said Isaac, pointing at the first house on the street: semi-detached, show-stopping front garden – red and yellow roses bordering a pristine lawn.

  Harry drove past and parked further up.

  Quarter past seven on the car’s clock, and it was still daylight. This shit would have been so much easier in the dark.

  ‘Are you sure this is the place?’ asked Harry, not convinced. It was far from the shit-hole he had been expecting.

  ‘Shared a taxi with him once. That’s it.’

  The garden was bothering Harry. Whoever lived there had poured a heck of a lot of time, effort and love into it. It wasn’t the work of someone who drifted from place to place.

  ‘Who else lives there?’ he asked Isaac.

  ‘I don’t know. Family friend, he said.’

  Harry stared at Isaac but saw nothing in his expression to make him think this was a set-up. His mind went to the gun Isaac had handed back to him.

  ‘He wants to go back to Syria,’ Isaac offered.

  Harry thought of the recent headlines. Over a thousand young Muslim men had returned from Syria. Apparently, they were all on watch lists but, with resources badly stretched, those identified as ‘low
risk’ had longer leashes.

  With his connection to Almukhtaroon, it seemed unlikely Azeez would have been downgraded to low risk. Unless he had never been to Syria.

  A dreamer, thought Harry. Azeez wanted the glory and camaraderie of combat but had been too chicken-shit to actually go there. He liked that theory. Maybe Azeez was nothing more than a playground bully.

  Harry pulled a pair of handcuffs from the glove compartment and waved them at Isaac.

  ‘You can’t be serious?’

  ‘I can’t be scoping that place out worrying you might get a rush of blood to the head and do something stupid.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not wearing those.’

  Harry sighed.

  ‘You put a loaded gun in my hand and now you want to handcuff me in the car?’

  Harry slapped the cuffs on Isaac, one across his right wrist, the other around the steering wheel. ‘Finished with your speech?’ he said.

  Isaac looked despondent.

  Harry got out of the car.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Frost had his eye on the clock on the far wall: 19.30.

  Two hours before darkness hit them. It would bring another complication. In this city, fading light usually brought fading hope. He was pleased Saima had sounded resilient when he’d asked her to help find the possible sleeper cell but Frost didn’t have much hope. It was a one-in-a-thousand shot, a lottery.

  One piece of positive news was that he had just received word there had been no fatalities from the blast in City Park. The twenty-minute evacuation order had been time enough for everyone to leave. Many people had been taken to hospital with minor injuries, most from the stampede to evacuate, some from flying debris. Bradford Royal Infirmary was in a state of emergency; other hospitals around Yorkshire were also receiving patients. A Gold Command had been set up for the NHS trusts. The medical service, like the police force, was bracing itself.

  One thousand and nine people were at risk inside the mosque.

  A line of communication had been set up between Frost’s team and the Patriots. It was an international phone number, which had been traced to an area of no-man’s-land in Russia. What was clear, however, was that this was not a Russian operation. From them, this would have been an act of war, and the Soviets were far too cute for that.