by Chris Ryan
‘It’s late, Kyle, I was just going to bed.’
Kyle’s grin fell away. ‘You’ve got to help me, mate,’ he breathed. He looked over his shoulder – a dramatic gesture, but there was something in his eyes that Kyle wasn’t faking. A look of genuine fear. ‘Can I come in?’
For a moment Danny didn’t move. Then, after a few seconds, he reluctantly stepped aside. ‘If you have to,’ he said.
Kyle entered the flat and walked unsteadily up the hallway and into the front room. He stood in the doorway for a moment, then looked back at Danny. ‘Didn’t know you had a fuck buddy,’ he said.
‘Call her that again, Kyle, and you’ll need someone to fix the other side of your face.’ Danny pushed past him and answered Clara’s questioning look with a single word: ‘Brother.’ He’d warned Clara about Kyle.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Clara said in a small voice from her place on the sofa. Kyle didn’t reply. He and Danny stood opposite each other, a couple of metres apart.
‘Tried calling,’ Kyle said. ‘But you didn’t pick up, as usual.’
Danny’s personal mobile phone was lying powered off on the floor by the sofa.
‘Some of us have jobs to go to,’ Danny said.
‘What was it today, running up hills with rocks on your back? Laser Quest with your knucklehead friends?’
‘Something like that. Better than staying home with a bottle of Scotch. You’re rat-arsed, Kyle. What the hell do you want?’
‘Got a bit of a s. . . s. . . situation,’ his brother said. He had suddenly affected a casual air, but still had to have three goes at saying the word ‘situation’. ‘You know, business-wise.’
Danny almost laughed. The only business Kyle ever had was with the guy behind the counter at the discount booze store.
‘Got a bit of a hitch in the supply chain,’ Kyle continued. ‘Nothing serious. Just need a bit of muscle to sort it out. Thought I’d give you first refusal on the job, seeing as that’s your game. You know, muscle . . .’
‘Seriously, Kyle, what the fuck are you talking about? Who did that to your face?’
‘Well, are you interested, or not?’ Kyle had suddenly turned aggressive, but Danny could hear the hint of panic in his voice. He caught his brother’s glance again, and only then did he notice it: it was bright in the room, but Kyle’s pupils were large. Dilated. Danny felt his contempt for his brother double. Not only drunk, but high.
‘What is it?’ he asked quietly. ‘Ketamine? MDMA? You’ve got a nice little cocktail going, by the look and smell of you. I thought you were clean of that shit.’
Kyle was in the corner of the room now, diagonal to the door. A trapped animal. His dilated eyes darted around. In an instant, his demeanour had changed yet again. Defensive. ‘I’m not here for a lecture,’ he breathed. ‘Specially not from you.’
‘Then what are you here for?’ He paused. ‘Money?’
The word ‘money’ caught Kyle’s attention, but only for a moment. He screwed up his face, as though he were suppressing some violent emotion. ‘It’s not my fault, okay?’ he muttered, almost as though he was talking to himself. ‘It’s not my fucking fault.’
‘Danny,’ Clara said quietly. ‘He needs help. He’s been using.’
‘Of course he’s been using.’ Danny fronted up to his brother. ‘Spit it out,’ he whispered.
Kyle’s face was a picture of conflict. ‘They should know this kind of thing happens all the time.’
‘Who should know?’
‘The Poles.’
‘Which Poles, Kyle?’
‘What do you mean, which Poles? The ones who run Hereford.’
Danny nodded. He understood what Kyle was talking about. Every town had its drug problems, and Hereford was worse than most. He’d heard the rumours that a Polish crew was flooding the street with everything from cannabis to heroin. The needle-exchange programmes had never been so busy. Hardly surprising that Kyle had fallen in – or should that be fallen out – with them.
‘So what exactly has happened?’
‘They lost some product.’
‘They lost some product. Or you lost it for them?’
Kyle’s face twisted again. ‘Some bastard junkie stole it from me!’ he exploded. ‘I told the Poles. I told them it wasn’t my fault, but they still want their money. But I’m not paying them. You can go and put the shits up them, get them off my back. It’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?’
Silence in the room. Danny stared at his brother. He was family, sure, but Danny felt nothing but contempt for him. If he was in a mess, it was of his own making. Danny had stopped taking responsibility for Kyle a long time ago.
‘Get out,’ he said.
A pause.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Kyle breathed. His hands were shaking slightly. He looked pathetic.
‘I said, get out.’
‘What are you going to do about it, little brother?’ Kyle’s voice had gone a little higher. ‘Play your hard-man macho bullshit? Beat up your own brother? Shoot me with one of your big fucking guns? What would Daddy say? Or Uncle Taff? He’s been off the scene for a while. Maybe he doesn’t love you any more?’ Kyle laughed at his own joke, but the laughter descended into a wheezing cough.
Danny turned to Clara. ‘Make sure he doesn’t steal anything,’ he said.
‘Shouldn’t you call the police?’ she whispered.
But calling the police would mean a barrage of questions. Their dad might even be dragged into it, and Danny didn’t want that.
‘Just watch him,’ he said.
Danny left the front room and walked along the hallway to the one double bedroom at the back of the flat. It was bare – almost spartan. Plain white walls and a built-in cupboard along one side. ‘Like a cell in a psychiatric ward,’ Clara had joked first time she saw it. Danny opened the cupboard and shifted some shoe boxes off the floor before peeling up a rectangle of old carpet and removing the loose floorboard that it covered.
A chilly draught wafted up from underneath the floor, and a smell of damp. Danny buried his hand into the cavity and his fingers made contact with a dusty old shoe box. He grabbed it, and pulled it up to floor level. His fingers smeared the dust as he opened the box.
There were bank notes inside. A mixture of sterling and American dollars. Out in Afghanistan, there had been money swilling around. Some of it, the guys had been given float money for when they were out on ops. A lot had been confiscated from militants out in the field. The guys had handed a proportion of it back to the ruperts, but they’d kept a far greater chunk and smuggled it back to the UK, where they’d distributed it among the rest of the squadron. A nice little backhander that everyone at Credenhill knew about and which nobody would admit to. The lads in the Regiment risked their lives for a pittance. Nobody begrudged them a little private income on the side.
There was about two and a half grand in here. In a corner of Danny’s mind he’d been setting it aside against the day when he and Clara moved in together. Not that he’d ever mentioned it to her. Until that time, it was just fine where it was. Untouched, except for now. He removed a crumpled fifty-pound note, replaced the box in its hiding place and strode back to the front room. Kyle was still in the far corner. He’d grown paler, and there was a thin mist of sweat on his forehead. Danny held up the note like a guy trying to catch the attention of a barmaid. Kyle took what looked like an involuntary step forward. His bruised face actively twitched.
‘Danny,’ Clara breathed. ‘He needs help.’
‘He needs to get out of here,’ Danny replied. He turned, walked to the front door and opened it. Seconds later, Kyle was there. He stepped over the threshold, then eagerly took the note Danny brandished under his nose.
‘If I hear you’ve been touching Dad up for money,’ he said, his voice dangerously quiet, ‘I will call the police. And when they’ve finished, I’ll get to work on you. Understood?’
Kyle pocketed the money, then wiped a drop of mucus from hi
s nose with the back of his hand. ‘Twat,’ he said.
Danny didn’t react. He just watched Kyle disappear into the rain before slamming the door closed. He stalked back to the front room where Clara hadn’t moved. ‘Don’t say it,’ he scowled at his girlfriend.
There was an uncomfortable silence while Danny peered through the curtains to check that Kyle wasn’t still lurking somewhere outside.
‘Will they really hurt him?’ Clara asked in a small voice. ‘The Poles, I mean?’
Danny let the curtains fall shut. ‘Probably,’ he muttered.
‘And you’re okay with that?’ she said. ‘He’s your brother, after all.’
‘Yeah,’ Danny said. ‘I’m okay with that.’
And that might have been the end of the conversation, had Clara not given him a look that made Danny feel as if he was the most heartless bastard she’d ever met. ‘I’ve done everything I can for him, Clara. I’ve dug him out of more holes than I can count. If I can’t stop him screwing his life up, maybe these Poles will knock some sense into him.’
And that really was the end of the conversation. ‘I’m hitting the sack,’ Danny said. ‘I’ve got an early start tomorrow, and a lot to do.’
He turned his back on Clara and marched back to the bedroom. He kicked off his clothes and noticed a smear of blood just above his left wrist, from shooting the guy in the mouth. He didn’t even bother to wipe it off before collapsing into bed. He closed his eyes, then heard Clara stepping into the room.
‘Why are you really moving to London?’ she asked quietly.
‘I told you,’ Danny replied. ‘General security.’
‘Is it dangerous, this “general security”?’
Danny sighed. ‘The extremists have had their fun, Clara. Atrocities like this come in ones. Look at 9/11. 7/7. They’ve stuck their heads above the parapets. Now they’ll be scurrying back down the holes they came from. Trust me.’
He rolled over and closed his eyes again. Seconds later, he was asleep.
Four
Tuesday. 06.00hrs
Sarim had never felt so nervous. Even before he and Jamal had detonated the Paddington bomb, he hadn’t been suffering palpitations like this. He hadn’t had this sensation of cold dread flowing through his lungs. Abu Ra’id could do that to you.
He coughed politely. Anxiously. ‘Ex. . . excuse me, ustath. He is ready.’
Abu Ra’id had his back turned. He was broad-shouldered and seemed too big for this room, even though the room itself was spacious. The furnishings were ultra-modern: gleaming white sofas, an enormous plasma screen against the far wall, colourful abstract art on the walls. In the corner there was a bar area, with a line of spirits on a glass shelf along the wall – untouched, of course, by the current occupant of this extravagantly luxurious apartment. On a glass table was a collection of framed pictures. They showed a Middle Eastern family in traditional dress – a man with a very crooked nose, a woman and three children. Sarim wondered who they were – the owners of the apartment, perhaps – but didn’t dare ask.
Two sides of the room were taken up by floor-to-ceiling windows, but these were covered up by internal electric blinds. Sarim understood why. From this penthouse apartment, more than two hundred metres high and in the heart of the Docklands, you could see for miles across the London skyline. But a gleaming glass tower like this required constant cleaning, and should the window cleaner in his ascending cradle happen to see inside, there was no chance he wouldn’t recognise Abu Ra’id, whose face had peered out of every newspaper in the past few days.
Abu Ra’id was not using any of the expensive lamps dotted around the room to light up the early morning darkness. Instead, a single candle burned on a low cabinet. It made the cleric’s shadow flicker against the wall as he walked over to a small sink behind the bar area. He washed his hands very carefully, and dried them on a white towel hung on a chrome bar to his left. Only then did he turn round.
He was, Sarim had always thought, a good-looking man. The pictures of him in the papers never did him justice. True, he wore the line of a permanent frown, but he looked much better than he ever did in print or on TV. The newspapers always tried to make him look as crazy as possible. In fact he looked anything but. Calm. Collected. Beneath the black beard that reached down to his chest, Abu Ra’id’s cheekbones were pronounced and his nose in perfect proportion. And when he smiled, he had a way of making you think that nobody else in the world mattered to him at that moment.
Abu Ra’id smiled now. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Sarim. You are like a son to me.’
‘I owe everything to you, ustath.’
Abu Ra’id stepped over to the centre of the room where his prayer mat was unfurled on the floor. He had obviously just finished praying and had washed his hands, because to desecrate a prayer mat was a sin. He rolled it up carefully, then placed it on the cabinet next to the candle.
Sarim had no idea who paid for this apartment. He was sure it had to be just about the most expensive place to live in London, and a far cry from his own shoddy ground-floor flat in Hammersmith, or even Abu Ra’id’s large home in North Ealing where he had lived up until the day before the Paddington bomb, and where his wife still did. And he had no idea why the cleric was so convinced that this Docklands penthouse was safe, although he had noticed that the concierge was of Middle Eastern origin, so perhaps he was one of them. But Sarim trusted Abu Ra’id without question. He was more than simply his imam. He was, as Sarim had called him, his ustath – his teacher. And so he just accepted what he was told. He accepted that Abu Ra’id must live in these luxurious surroundings, while he must live in near poverty on the other side of London. And he accepted that nobody would find them here. They were perfectly secure.
The cleric turned towards Sarim again. He wore a plain white dishdash, spotlessly clean. ‘He has prayed?’ he asked. Although Abu Ra’id’s features were Middle Eastern, his accent was English.
‘Yes, Abu Ra’id.’
‘And washed his hands and feet?’
Sarim nodded.
‘And how does he seem? In himself?’
‘Scared, Abu Ra’id, if I’m honest.’
‘Ah,’ the cleric said sadly. ‘That’s to be expected. But it is us, Sarim, us who live in the lands of the infidel and wage our war against them, who have more reason to be fearful. Shall we join him?’
Sarim nodded. He opened the door and held it open for the cleric, blinking as his eyes grew accustomed to the bright light in the corridor outside. As he passed Abu Ra’id stopped, tenderly put one hand behind Sarim’s head, and gently stroked his hair. Then Sarim followed him along the corridor and into the dining room of this extravagant flat.
They had chosen this room because it was the largest and because the floors were tiled. The floor-to-ceiling windows took up only one side of this room. These too were covered with their blackout blinds, but they also had black sheets draped over them. Against one end, Sarim had personally hung a white drape, about five metres by five, with the Arabic symbol for God painted on it in black. In front of the drape was a large piece of plastic sheeting, folded double, as wide as the room and three metres deep. On the sheeting was a stool. Facing this little stage, at a distance of six metres and next to the dining table which they had moved away from the centre of the room, was a video camera fitted to a tripod. It was angled upwards so that it could get the drape and the stool fully in frame. And behind the camera, lighting up the scene, was a bright spotlight, illuminating everything. Jamal stood behind the camera, fiddling with the controls, ensuring everything was working. He looked as anxious as Sarim felt, and couldn’t take his eyes from Abu Ra’id now he had entered the room.
‘Fetch him,’ Abu Ra’id told Jamal.
Jamal nodded. He left the room. Sarim stood awkwardly by the stool, not knowing what, if anything, he should say to Abu Ra’id. The cleric broke the silence first. ‘You have done well, Sarim,’ he said.
Sarim felt himself almost shi
ver with pride. That was the thing about Abu Ra’id. Everybody was scared of him when he wasn’t around, but a simple word of encouragement like that would make you feel ten feet tall.
‘Jamal is nervous,’ the cleric continued. ‘More nervous than you. I sense it.’
‘Because of the bombing, ustath,’ Sarim explained. ‘He doesn’t want to be caught, and thrown into a British jail.’
‘He does not believe me when I tell him he is safe?’
‘I think he believes you, Abu Ra’id. It’s just . . .’
‘Faith is difficult sometimes,’ the cleric observed. ‘But without it, we are nothing. And you and Jamal must know that I would not risk your safety for anything.’
The door opened. Jamal re-entered, and behind him a young man whom Sarim knew to be only 16 years old. He was gangly, with a hooked nose, a protruding Adam’s apple and thin arms. His cheeks were covered in soft, downy facial hair that he had clearly never shaved. He wore a black dishdash, and an expression of hopeless terror. His eyes looked sore from crying and lack of sleep.
‘Karim,’ Abu Ra’id said quietly. ‘You are ready?’
Karim didn’t answer. His eyes darted around the room. Jamal stepped behind him, closed the door, and then locked it with a key that he dropped back into his pocket.
‘Are you ready?’ Abu Ra’id insisted.
‘I . . . I have a question,’ Karim said. His voice shook.
‘Then please ask it.’ There was a dangerous edge to his voice. Sarim wondered if the kid had picked up on it.
Karim licked his dry lips. ‘You said . . . You said that this was the greatest of all honours.’
‘And so it is,’ Abu Ra’id nodded.
‘Then why . . .’
The kid stumbled over his words. He looked like he wanted to speak but his tongue was frozen.
Abu Ra’id didn’t take his eyes off him. They were suddenly cold and cruel.
‘Why what, my son?’ His voice was level.