by Helen Black
She slumps into the kitchen, her face puffy, her head throbbing.
‘Are you all right?’ asks Mum.
Aasha shakes her head and bursts into a fresh batch of tears. ‘I feel awful.’
‘Back to bed.’ Mum shoos her out of the room. ‘I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’
Aasha wipes her nose on her pyjama sleeve and slides back under her duvet.
‘So,’ Mum puts a steaming mug on Aasha’s bedside table, ‘where does it hurt?’
Aasha chokes back a sob. ‘Everywhere.’
Mum smooths a cool hand over Aasha’s temples and Aasha aches to tell her about Ryan.
‘Shall I call Dr Farouk?’ asks Mum.
Aasha doesn’t think there’s much he can do. Is there even a cure for a broken heart?
‘I just want to sleep,’ she says.
Mum smiles and traces a finger over each of Aasha’s eyelids until they shut. ‘Then you do just that,’ she says.
Ryan is completely stressed.
Since that copper came round he cannot relax. He stayed up all night playing Grand Theft Auto and smoking weed and his head is mashed.
His mum is a stupid, stupid, stupid bitch. Why the fuck did she even answer the door? It’s not like she was expecting a friend or something. She don’t know nobody.
He throws the console across the room. If that copper comes back, sticking his nose in, Ryan will be carted off and then she’ll really be sorry, innit.
He can hear her scratching about in her room like some rat. She ain’t come out all night. Too scared.
Lilly parked outside the Free Voice Collective in a dingy sideroad behind Luton Social Services. Sandwiched between a Polish convenience store and Blockbuster’s it vied for attention between lopsided posters of cheese pastries and cherry jam and a life-size cut-out of Heath Ledger as the Joker.
‘Is this it?’ asked Taslima.
Lilly peered in at the window, obscured by layers of grime and frayed lace curtains. It was impossible to see whether anyone was there.
‘Doesn’t look too promising, does it?’
There was a buzzer hanging off the wall by the door, the electric wires bared to the elements. Rather than touch it, Lilly chose to thump the door with the side of her fist. The wood, though peeling, was solid beneath her hand.
They waited a few seconds before Taslima bent down and opened the letter box. It was filled with stiff bristles to prevent people posting junk mail. Or worse.
At last the edge of the curtain twitched and a woman peeked out. She looked from Lilly to Taslima and gestured to the door.
When it opened, Lilly was confronted by a gangly woman in her mid-twenties, her hair cropped, extravagant silver earrings dangling past her jawline.
‘Yes?’ Her tone was friendly yet brisk.
‘Can we talk to you about Yasmeen Khan?’ Lilly asked.
‘And you are?’
‘I’m the lawyer instructed by her family.’
The woman looked at Taslima, a green jewel glinting on her nostril. ‘And you?’
‘I’m Robin,’ said Taslima. ‘To her Batman.’
The woman smiled politely, though not warmly. ‘You’d better come in.’
She led them through a corridor, the woodchip wallpaper dotted with notice boards. Lilly scanned the announcements. Meetings with the Anti-Nazi League and discussion groups with the Black Sisterhood. She felt a pang of nostalgia for her days at university when she and the rest of the Women’s Committee had chained themselves to the car of a Tory MP who had presented a bill to the House of Commons aiming to criminalise abortion. In due course the police had brought bolt cutters and slung them in the cells for the night where they had driven everyone on duty to the brink of insanity with their tuneless chorus of ‘I Will Survive’. A few weeks later the MP had been caught with a rent boy by the News of the World. Heady days.
The room at the end was an office-cum-meeting room, one end covered floor to ceiling by books, the centre dominated by a desk piled high with files and boxes of pamphlets. An outsized computer with an incongruously tiny screen was perched precariously on the end. It looked twenty years old and heavy enough to break a foot if it fell.
The woman gestured to the hard plastic chairs. ‘I’m Kash.’
Lilly lowered herself down. ‘I’m Lilly and this is Taslima.’
‘So what can I do for you?’ asked Kash.
‘We understand Yasmeen called this centre on the day she died,’ said Lilly.
Kash’s face was non-committal.
‘Could you tell us what the call was about?’ said Lilly.
Kash shook her head and her earrings danced. ‘I didn’t speak to her.’
‘Do you know who she did speak to?’ asked Lilly.
Kash reached over to a drawer and took out a small tube of lip balm, which she squeezed onto her little finger.
‘Not off the top of my head, no.’
Lilly watched the woman smooth the cream first across her top lip, then her bottom lip. Deliberately, she replaced the top on the tube and returned it to the drawer.
‘Could you find out?’ asked Lilly.
Kash waved distractedly at the numerous files on her desk. ‘We’re not very good at keeping records.’
‘Give me a break,’ Lilly was surprised to hear Taslima chip in. ‘You don’t have a staff of hundreds. You know full well who spoke to Yasmeen.’
Kash raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
‘All we want to know is what was discussed,’ said Taslima. ‘Is that such a big thing to ask?’
‘Women call here when they are in trouble and they have nowhere else to turn.’ Kash leaned forward and frowned. ‘They know everything they say, everything they tell us, is confidential. If we can’t offer that then, yes, it is a very big thing.’
‘We understand that,’ said Lilly, ‘but Yasmeen is dead.’
‘All the more reason not to collaborate with those that were involved in her death.’
‘How can you be so sure her brother killed her?’ asked Taslima.
‘A Muslim girl contacts us.’ Kash clapped her hands. ‘Then she’s gone.’
‘It could be coincidence,’ said Taslima.
‘Get real,’ said Kash. ‘Honour killings are a problem in this community.’
Taslima flared up. ‘Honour killings are unislamic.’
‘Tell that to the fathers, brothers and uncles out there.’
Taslima shook her head. ‘The Prophet, peace be upon him, tells us women are to be cherished.’
Kash banged her fist on the desk. ‘I know exactly what he said, but wake up and smell the coffee, girlfriend. Women are being beaten and bullied and forced into marriage. When they won’t comply they’re murdered.’
‘Do you think that’s what happened to Yasmeen?’ asked Lilly.
‘To Yasmeen—and lots more like her.’
‘Did you know she was pregnant?’ asked Lilly.
Kash let out a slow puff of air. ‘I didn’t, but that just confirms my suspicions that she was murdered.’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Taslima.
‘You’re not listening, sister.’ Kash jabbed the palm of her left hand with the forefinger of her right. ‘Systematic punishment is being meted out.’
‘You make it sound organised,’ said Lilly.
‘It is,’ said Kash. ‘Have you heard of the PTF?’
Lilly shook her head.
‘The Purity Task Force,’ said Taslima. ‘A militia group that polices the women in Afghanistan.’
‘I’m impressed,’ said Lilly.
Taslima shrugged. ‘I like to know what’s happening to my sisters around the world.’
‘So this PTF,’ Lilly looked from Kash to Taslima, ‘what’s their deal?’
‘They patrol the streets, making sure women are properly dressed, not out unaccompanied,’ said Taslima. ‘If they hear about any behaviour they disapprove of, the PTF punish the woman involved.’
‘I’m assuming
you don’t mean a good telling-off,’ said Lilly. ‘They sound dangerous.’
‘And brought by popular demand to a street in Luton near you,’ said Kash.
‘You’re kidding me,’ said Lilly.
Kash stared hard at Lilly. ‘Do I sound like I’m joking?’
‘Do you think the PTF were involved in Yasmeen’s death?’ asked Taslima.
‘Ask her brother.’
Back in the car, Lilly pulled out her laptop and went straight to her search engine.
‘Purity—what-was-it?’
‘Purity Task Force,’ said Taslima.
At least twenty entries appeared.
‘Popular little buggers,’ said Lilly, and clicked on Wikipedia.
‘“The Purity Task Force are the religious police based in Afghanistan,”’ she read aloud, ‘“similar in function to the Mutaween in Saudi Arabia.”’
Taslima nodded. ‘They wander about in groups making sure the women are covered properly and chaperoned by male relatives.’
Lilly continued to read. ‘“The name Purity Task Force or PTF has been adopted by many groups enforcing Sharia law.”’
There were links to articles from all over the world—Iran, Jordan, Malaysia…Lilly clicked onto Oman.
The lead photograph showed a group of frightened young women being bundled into a minibus by bearded men wielding sticks.
‘“On 15 April scores of teenagers and girls were rounded up at a city shopping centre and arrested by the PTF,’ Lilly read.
Taslima nodded. ‘There are crackdowns from time to time.’
‘“Horrified onlookers could do nothing as the girls were beaten and taken away for daring to walk the streets unaccompanied.”’
Lilly had to look away. The treatment of children in the UK was often unpalatable but this was barbaric.
She went back to the screen and clicked the link to an article in the Birmingham Observer.
Honour Attack linked to the PTF
A Muslim woman was blinded yesterday when acid was thrown in her face.
Relatives, who did not wish to be named, confirmed that the assault coincided with her decision not to marry her elderly fiancé from Bangladesh.
The woman’s father has been arrested along with her uncle, both of whom are members of a local vigilante group calling itself the Purity Task Force.
‘Bloody Hell,’ said Lilly.
As they sped towards Arlington, Lilly stole a glance at Taslima. She hadn’t spoken since they had left Luton and was looking straight ahead.
‘Do you think Raffy could be involved with this gang?’ Lilly asked.
Taslima kept her eyes dead ahead. ‘The PTF’s not a gang, it’s much more dangerous than that.’
Lilly tried to ease the tension. ‘At least you’ll be OK.’
‘What?’
Lilly gestured to Taslima’s headscarf. ‘No one can accuse you of bending the rules.’
‘The hijab gives me the freedom to make my own decisions.’ Taslima’s eyes sparkled. ‘I wear it out of respect for myself, not because a man tells me I should.’
Lilly was sceptical. Surely Taslima dressed as she was expected?
‘Is it really your choice?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t it just part of how you were brought up?’
‘Of course not.’ Taslima straightened her back. ‘My mother and sister don’t cover their heads except in the mosque.’
‘So why do you want to wear it all the time?’
‘I don’t wish to be seen as trivial or vain.’ Taslima seemed to grow two inches. ‘I wish to be taken seriously.’
Lilly glanced down at her maternity trousers with their sweaty elastic waistband. ‘No one ever takes me seriously.’
A smile spread across Taslima’s face. ‘You are so funny.’
‘It wasn’t a joke.’
‘You’re a lawyer, Lilly, you make decisions that affect children’s lives every day of the week,’ said Taslima. ‘Of course people take you seriously.’
Lilly checked her reflection in the mirror. She was developing a double chin.
‘Maybe it’s just me, then.’
Lilly pulled into the car park of Arlington YOI.
‘This is a prison!’ Taslima exclaimed.
Lilly looked up at the twenty-foot fence topped with razor wire that stood between them and the monolithic concrete block casting huge shadows into the distance.
‘What were you expecting?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure.’ Taslima shook her head. ‘But not this.’
Institutions for young offenders were supposed to be different from adult prisons. The website for Arlington promised education and programmes devised to produce law-abiding citizens. Activities ranged from catering to ceramic design. Buzz words littered the home page: ‘rehabilitation’, ‘specialist support’. In reality it was a prison.
They locked the Mini Cooper and headed to reception where a guard checked their identification. His pot belly was squeezed into a navy sweatshirt emblazoned with the word ‘Securitas’.
‘Don’t they wear proper uniforms?’ Taslima whispered.
Lilly placed her hand in the print scanner. ‘The place is run by a private security company.’
‘To make it less austere?’ Taslima asked.
‘To make it cheaper,’ Lilly replied.
They passed along a grey corridor lit entirely by fluorescent strips that winked ominously. There were no windows and a strong smell of disinfectant.
‘How many boys are here?’ asked Taslima.
‘About four hundred.’
Taslima stopped in her tracks and cocked her head. ‘Where are they all?’
‘In their cells.’
‘But it’s the middle of the day.’
‘Twenty-three hours’ bang-up,’ said Lilly. ‘Welcome to the Tenth Circle of Hell.’
Jack rubbed his forehead. He could feel the furrows beneath his fingers. When had he got so old? This morning he’d noticed a couple of renegade whiskers sprouting from his ears. And grey ones at that.
He looked at his desk, covered in paperwork and empty paper cups, like every other desk in the room.
Nothing ever changed, from the ugly décor to the piss-taking banter. His life seemed to be stuck on pause.
Even he and Lilly were stuck in a rigid knitting pattern of fight, fight, kiss, fight, fight, kiss. They were stale, like week-old bread, not even fit for toast.
His mobile bleeped with an incoming text. Expecting to hear from Lilly, Jack felt a jolt of surprise at the sight of Mara’s number.
Thank you very much for last night.
They’d met up in a cosy Thai place where the doll-like waitresses wore full-length sarongs and remembered their order without writing anything down.
‘I love it here,’ Mara said, dipping a cracker into a sticky red sauce and nibbling gracefully.
She told him how she’d spent a year teaching English in Bangkok before travelling on to Vietnam and India. How the journey from Jaipur to Delhi had taken days, and each night she’d slept on the bus, not because she had no money for a hotel but because she wanted to.
She showed him a beautiful ring with a square green stone that she’d bought in Chiang Mai for thirty pounds.
‘They said it was jade,’ she laughed, ‘but I’d bet my arse it’s not.’
As Jack slurped his Tom Kah Kai he was ashamed to admit he’d never been further than the Costa del Sol, when he and a mate had spent the week fighting hangovers and sunstroke.
When he told Mara his theory about Ryan and his mother she put her hand to her mouth.
‘That’s awful.’
‘I could be wrong, of course,’ he said. ‘She didn’t actually tell me he was abusing her.’
Mara shook her head. ‘I guessed there was something wrong there, but not this.’
‘Like I say, I could be wrong.’
‘I’m sure you’re spot on, Jack,’ Mara said. ‘I saw what I wanted to see, I’m afraid, whereas you’re used to seeing t
hings from every angle.’
He took another mouthful of soup, secretly pleased that she had such faith in his abilities.
‘Is there anything that I can do?’ she asked.
‘Difficult, unless she makes a complaint.’
Mara dabbed her mouth, her scarlet nails perfect against the white of the napkin. ‘Maybe I should speak to him,’ she said; ‘try to get through to him.’
The image of Ryan’s contorted face flashed through Jack’s mind, how he’d growled at his mother, the menace in his voice.
‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘I’ll tackle the lad.’
Then she smiled at him and put her hand on his knee. ‘I am so very grateful.’
Once again he rubbed his face. He had to admit to being very flattered at how appreciative Mara was. It made him feel useful and he hadn’t felt that way in a long time. If there was even the tiniest bubble of guilt rising to the surface, Jack pressed it firmly down.
He tapped the keys on his phone and pressed Send.
It was a pleasure.
‘Tell me about the PTF.’
Lilly slapped her papers on the table between herself and Raffy. The legal visits room was full and hot. More than twenty inmates bent over documents with their lawyers.
Raffy glared at her. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘An organisation that attacks Muslim girls for stepping out of line.’ Lilly held his stare. ‘Are you a member?’
Raffy laughed. ‘You are totally crazy.’
Another Asian boy swaggered past the table. Raffy held out his fist. ‘All right, brother.’
The boy touched the fist with his own and slouched towards a middle-aged man in slip-on shoes and a comb-over.
A white boy in the far corner got to his feet and began to grunt. He had a skin head and swastika tattoos fought for space amid the acne on his neck. He brought his hands to his armpits and imitated a monkey.
Raffy jumped to his feet. ‘You want to start something?’
The skinhead just laughed and threw a pen at the other Asian boy.