by C A Devine
‘I didn’t think it was a good idea because I knew your dad was like major old bill. No offence.’
Max raised her hands in absolution.
‘And he was like, well you know, walking a line. But then I find out he hasn’t started up the poppy again, but that he’s …’ he stopped, screwing up his face.
Max stopped pacing and turned to Weasel, stumbling to the left a couple of steps as the boat shuddered through a high swell. ‘What?’ she snapped, steadying herself against the bulkhead. ‘He what?’
‘He,’ Weasel sighed out a long breath, ‘he’s paying locals in Afghanistan for bits of bodies of soldiers. Any bits they can find, no matter how small.’
‘What?’ Nausea hit me, ‘Why?’
Weasel looked over at me, ‘And he’s shipping them to Yodelay heehoo-country for DNA testing. Ask no questions in lab there.’
‘Switzerland,’ Max translated, staring at him wide-eyed. ‘Why?
‘From what I hear,’ he sighed again, ‘he plans to send them back.’
‘He plans to send them back? What? Where?’ This time we both stared at him, then at each other. Our first eye contact since … It was uncomfortable, lasting barely a second. We both turned back to Weasel.
‘He says they deserve to be sent home.’
‘You have to be fucking kidding me.’ Max resumed the pacing.
‘I know, sometimes it’s just like tiny bits of flesh. Can you stop pacing, please? It’s making me feel sick, what with the boat jumping up and down.’
‘What?’ She glanced over at me again.
I shrugged, ‘He has a point.’ She slumped down onto the seat opposite Weasel and laid her head back.
‘He always was a bit mental. You know that, Max. But he’s really lost it this time. I know those little girls were like your cousins or somefink, but someone needs to stop him. Imagine getting somefink like that in the post, even if it does belong to your son or your husband. It’s sick, creepy, like.’
‘You reckon?’ Max said, motioning to run her hands though her hair. Instead she dislodged the cap. It was the first time I had seen her forget.
‘What happened to your …?’ Weasel ran a hand over his own scalp.
‘Your mate Mal,’ she snapped and fixed the cap back in place.
‘No. He did that? To you?’ Weasel’s eyes grew wide, ‘But he loves you.’
‘That was the least of it,’ I snapped at him and Max looked across at me once again, her eyes lingering this time, studying me. I didn’t have an answer for her.
‘So is it like my fault or our family’s fault that all this happened? For leaving Afghanistan? Is that what he thinks? Fucking moron,’ Max barked it out.
‘He’s not a moron,’ Weasel shook his head. ‘He saw an opportunity and he took it. You didn’t get too many opportunities where we grew up.’
‘Poor bastard; didn’t have opportunities; blah, blah, blah. I’m sick of listening to this. Stick them in a cabin down the back,’ I said to Max. ‘Tie them up, you’re good at knots. There must be some rope around here someplace. It is a boat after all. And go through their pockets, I want their phones. Then lock them in.’
I remained sitting in the pilot seat, facing the crowd, holding the gun, while Max went off searching. She came back a couple of minutes later, holding a long length of narrow rope.
I waved the gun to get them moving in front of her. I followed up the rear. We shuffled them into a luxury twin cabin. ‘Bulldog, down on your front, on the left. Now!’ He glanced back at me. I had the gun pointed at his head. He complied. ‘Hands behind your back.’ From the corner of my eye, I could see Weasel watching me as Max bound the rope around Bulldog’s wrists. ‘Feet.’ She ran the rope down and around the ankles. ‘Tie it up through the grab rails. Now you, Weasel. On the right.’
Weasel looked at Max, and she turned to me. ‘Let’s put him somewhere else.’
‘It’s here or outside on deck.’ I wasn’t doubling my risk with two locations to guard. Weasel lay down, making his own decision before Max had a chance to respond. She tied him up, then I checked the restraints on both of them. We backed out of the cabin and locked the door, before my urge to make Max join them overwhelmed me.
I sat down again on the pilot seat. Max hopped into the chair beside me. I turned to the console and picked up the handset of the satellite radio. I stared at the hole splintered through the bottom. That cleared up where the bullet had landed on the consol. It was our only connection to the outside world.
‘We may not need it,’ Max said. We were skimming over the water at 28 knots, a step up from the 8 we were making on Two At A Time. ‘We’ll be there tomorrow at this speed. Then again we could be at sea for a lot longer than that if the weather turns bad. This thing isn’t really meant for the mid-Atlantic and I have no idea if we have enough fuel to make it to shore.’ She looked over at me.
I kept my eyes forward, my head spinning with, what, rage? Questions? My body trembled.
‘They must have been tracking the satellite phone calls,’ Max said. It’s the only way they could have found us.’
I shrugged.
‘We need to talk.’
‘About what?’
‘Don’t be like that,’ she looked at her hands a moment. ‘You need to know the truth, before we reach shore.’
‘What? More than I’ve already heard? This should be good. Does it involve you screwing any more of your relatives?’
‘Hey, that’s not fair,’ she looked at me, frowning. ‘And it isn’t you.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘I told you it was much more than you thought.’
I stared at the ceiling as she began.
32
The Real Elizabeth McKenzie
My mother’s Afghan; I’ve never set foot in the place. She fled the coup in 1973.
The year before, Mum’s family had been killed in a car explosion. There was no proof it was political, but my grandfather was in the Shah’s inner circle. The next door neighbours, a distant cousin of my grandmother, took in my fifteen-year-old mother, Laila.
Hamed Ariana, his wife, four children and Laila settled in Bradford, England. He got a job as a hospital porter. It wasn’t the middle-class existence they were used to, but in Britain with poor English there wasn’t much else going. And he thought things would improve. It was better than living in fear. To top it all off, Mrs Ariana was pregnant again. Their youngest at the time was ten, so it was all a bit unexpected.
Joe McKenzie was Laila’s English teacher. The Arianas didn’t exactly embrace Laila’s choice. Girls didn’t have boyfriends in their society and this young man was from a culture they didn’t know or trust. But Joe was polite and he always brought Mrs Ariana chocolates and cake when he called. And at seventeen Laila was old by Afghan standards not to be married. In the end she wasn’t their daughter, so with another mouth to feed on the way, they gave Laila’s relationship their blessing – but only on the condition Joe and Laila got married.
After the wedding, Joe McKenzie returned to his native Scottish Highlands with his new Afghan wife. Laila got pregnant pretty much straightaway, from what I can figure out. And Joe needed a decent job, so he joined the force. I was raised a Scot. I didn’t know any Afghans, besides the Arianas.
I loved visiting the Bradford family. We’d go every year. I called them Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma cooked strange spicy dishes and Grandpa would teach me Pashto. It never crossed my mind they weren’t Mum’s parents.
They called their new baby Malak, Angel in Pashto. Grandma treated him like he was her little miracle; he could do no wrong and from a young age he truly believed he was special. He could manipulate his way out of anything using charm and his winning smile. When he was eight I saw him distract a shop assistant by gushing over her necklace while shoving four chocolate bars in his pocket, which he duly distributed among his mates and me. Less than two years separated us and he always looked after me. He was more like my big brother than my unc
le. We were inseparable. When I visited we’d play around the streets. He introduced me to his friends. But boys generally didn’t want to play with girls. So we came up with the plan that I’d dress in Malak’s clothes, tell them my name was Max and pretend that I was a boy.
But the summer I hit fifteen, things all went to hell. We were still best friends, but for me it had mutated into teenage love. I still believed he was my uncle and I knew it was wrong, but when you’re fifteen reason doesn’t factor high on your agenda.
‘I’ve got the best surprise for you,’ Malak announced one evening.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.’
We wandered through hot and sticky streets until we came up against steel barricades. On the far side, race cars flew by. The road had been turned into a race track. It was only the practice sessions and few people were around. It was intimate, like he had arranged it especially for me. We sat down on a wall overlooking the track; the cars were speeding by and we were laughing and pointing, shouting with delight at the speeds and the angles of the corners, besting each other with the stats of the engines. The stats were very important.
Our conversation turned to the future. Malak had left school without taking any exams. He seemed to be floating rudderless. I asked him what he was going to do now that he was free to follow his dreams.
‘I’m not hanging round here,’ he said.
‘Where are you going?’
He winked at me, ‘The world’s out there waiting for me.’
When the race cars finished their practice laps, a Ferrari pulled onto the track and I got wildly excited. I’d never seen one in real life. ‘It’s a Testarossa,’ I shouted with glee, ‘like Crocket drove on Miami Vice.’ He knew it was my favourite car.
Malak looked into my eyes and said, ‘I’ll get you one of those, one day. That’s where I’m going, to get you one of those.’ I threw my arms around his neck, hugging him tight. At first he pushed me away, but then he pulled me back and kissed me. Not a peck on the cheek, not a quick smack on the lips. It was a real kiss. I felt it from my fingertips to my toes. I’d never been kissed like that before.
Suddenly something snapped. He shoved me away, started shouting, ‘I’m your uncle, for fuck’s sake. You’re disgusting.’ He ran off. I didn’t know what had happened. I felt numb. Guilt welled in me; tears spilled from my eyes. Was he right?
I walked the streets for hours and hours, churning it obsessively over in my mind. It was dark when I got back to Grandma’s. Malak didn’t come back that night at all and the next day we left for Scotland.
The following summer, mum broke her leg and we didn’t go. The summer after that was just before I started at Oxford – the same year my father transferred to the Met and my parents moved to London.
Dad didn’t come with us. I later found out the Arianas had asked my mother to persuade him not to come. Malak had started getting into trouble with the police and they were afraid Dad would find out. But they told Mum they believed things would improve soon, as Malak had started going to the mosque again.
The morning after Mum and I arrived, we were squashed round the breakfast table in the tiny old-fashioned kitchen with Grandma. Malak was there too, sulking. We were making plans to go to town when Malak piped up, staring straight at me, ‘You can’t go out like that.’
I dropped my eyes, thinking I must have spilled something on my top. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ I said.
His eyes shot to his mother, ‘You can’t have her disgracing us.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I was confused and embarrassed, but fury rose in me. ‘Disgracing you? How exactly am I disgracing you?’
‘Find her something,’ Malak snapped. And Grandma just hopped up and shuffled off, like she was used to obeying his orders. I was only eighteen, but I was old enough to know something was seriously wrong with that picture.
‘Find me something for what?’
‘To cover yourself up with; we don’t allow our women to walk around like whores here!’
‘What did you just call me?’ I was taller than Malak and played a lot of sport, and as far as I was naively concerned, I was afraid of no-one, certainly not him.
‘Whore,’ he snapped. ‘Look at you.’ I glanced down at my shorts and t-shirt. ‘I will not have my women going out looking like whores.’
‘I am not your woman,’ I growled. ‘Don’t take it out on me because you can’t get a girlfriend, you little prick.’ He lunged across the table, sending his dishes smashing to the floor. He pushed me up against the wall. ‘You uncivilised barbarian,’ I screamed at him. ‘Is that it? You have the IQ of a dog, so you behave like one?’ I had quite the smart mouth.
‘You will do as you are told,’ he whispered, staring through me with ice-cold eyes.
I heard pounding on the stairs and Grandpa came running in. ‘You stop that. Now!’ he dragged Malak off me. ‘You do not touch her in this house. This is still my house,’ his voice shook and I could tell, as he said it, he was afraid – afraid of his own son.
Later that day, I overheard my mother telling my grandparents that if that was what the mosque was doing to Malak maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. My grandparents told my mother that she should go home and it would be better if we didn’t visit again. They said she was lucky, she had her good life, and that she should enjoy it.
We were both devastated.
It was only then, on the journey back to London, that my mother told me about what had happened to her family in Afghanistan and that Grandma and Grandpa weren’t her parents.
Malak wasn’t my uncle. Despite everything I couldn’t help wondering if he knew.
My grandparents are good people. They didn’t want Malak’s rebellion and run-ins with the police to affect my mother or her marriage. When they told her to go and have her good life, they meant it.
After university, I couldn’t settle. I boat-hopped around the world, skippering sailing yachts, never spending too long in one place. It was the only way to keep Malak out of my head.
After 9/11, while other Afghans were viewed with trepidation, my mother, Mrs Laila McKenzie, and her daughter, Ms Elizabeth McKenzie, went about our daily lives under the radar of suspicion. My father never mentioned to anyone in London that my mother was from Afghanistan – he adores her, but he was no fool. Hell, in the last few years, my mother didn’t even say anything herself. She had near-perfect English with a Scottish accent, she wasn’t religious, and she loved Prada and Gucci. That was enough to halt any questions.
Then three years ago, Laila was diagnosed with a brain tumour. I contacted the Arianas to tell them my mother was ill. They took the train down from Bradford and I collected them from the station. The atmosphere was awkward as we drove to the house; the conversation superficial. Tears welled in my eyes as I realised we were like strangers. I asked about the family. They told me Malak was married to an Afghan woman, who was the cousin of a man he knew from the Mosque. They lived most of the time in Kabul and had two beautiful children.
I wanted to ask why would anyone want to live in the middle of a war zone, but I was conscious of not saying anything to jeopardise the visit. This was important to Mum. So I said, ‘Oh that’s nice.’
My mum was so happy to see them; she and Grandma cried all the way through. The three of them spoke in their native Pashto and they shared stories of their life back in Afghanistan when things had been good. It was nice to see; it reminded me of my childhood.
After that I began visiting again and on the third trip Malak was there with his wife and two little girls. He hugged me tight and told me how good it was to see me. His daughters were the cutest little girls: the four-year-old screamed with excitement when I taught her English words and the baby smiled up at me shyly. But his wife, who looked little more than a child herself, never spoke, and only occasionally played with her children. After that I would try to make sure I visited when they were in England. I used to send them presents t
o Afghanistan the odd time. I was going to send toy cars because they were my favourite when I was a wee girl, but …
33
We’ll always have Paris
I pushed up off my seat, ‘I’m going to check on our friends.’ I stopped at the door and cocked off the safety; I wanted them to hear. I unlocked the catch, nudged it open and swung the gun between them. Weasel followed me with his eyes as I tugged on the ropes. ‘Enjoy the luxury boys,’ I said, backing out, ‘it’ll probably be the last you’ll see in a while.’
‘I need to pee,’ Bulldog said when I was closing the door.
‘I really don’t care.’
‘Look, I’m just the hired gun, this is nothing personal.’
‘If this was personal, I wouldn’t have you locked up in this luxury pad.’
Max was still slumped in her seat, staring out at the ocean. The cabin was warming up despite the hostile cold outside. I slid out of my wet weather jacket before sinking back into my chair. We sat in silence, crashing over the waves. The vibration was starting to grate on my already-raw nerves. This was nowhere near as comfortable a ride as the Two At A Time.
Max let out a breath, ‘In May, I was in Paris. I was fairly flush from a stint skippering a yacht in the Caribbean, so I was treating myself to that Michelin three star restaurant. I was sipping a very fine Rothschild, surveying the varied clientele, when a man, in a flashy suit, swaggered up to my table and introduced himself as Angelo. It took me a moment to process what I was seeing. Malak was standing in front of me. I was totally dumbstruck. He told me he was sorry for what he had said back in Bradford, all those years before.
‘He said that he had been in love with me, but he could never see me having any interest in him. It was just another thing in his miserable life that was going nowhere. I told him how wrong he was.
‘He said you were branded in Europe these days with a Muslim name, so he had changed his name from angel in Pashto to Italian, Angelo. He could easily pass for an Italian. He even adopted a fake Italian accent to cover his English one. I understood, totally.