The idea that he might be going after my position within the party was too audacious to even consider.
And yet now that I think about it, by keeping the alliance together, he gathers support within the party.
By publicly discrediting my work, he gathers support within the constituency.
By running for the seat that has been earmarked for me, with the support of the party that I have dedicated a decade of my life to, he isn’t just making it harder for me to win, he is taking me out of the competition altogether.
The highlight of his political career will come from ending mine.
It’s underhanded, disloyal and completely despicable but it’s also masterful and exactly what I would have done.
It’s what Javed Uncle would have advised me to do.
Dread trickles through me like a chill.
Faraz is right. I have always underestimated him.
SABAH
Exhaustion burns through my eyes. I’ve been up all night trying to sift and sieve the facts from the fabrications, working my way through the archive footage from every major network’s coverage of Javed Uncle’s press conference and the communal riots that had interrupted it, trying to pin down his whereabouts on the day. I hit pause on the video and get up, arching my back and stretching to release the tension. My head feels heavy, my stomach knotted after the multiple cups of black coffee I’ve gulped down.
I unlock my phone and press redial. I don’t stop to think about how much I’ve come to rely on Alia over the past few days. Everyone needs a sounding board.
Her voice is breathless. ‘I’m so sorry I missed your calls. I’ve had a hell of a day. Are you okay?’
I glance at the TV in front of me, a picture of Javed Uncle frozen on the screen. I have one day left before I have to go back and nothing except a theory that I still can’t bring myself to believe.
‘Can you come over?’
‘I’m on my way.’ There is no hesitation, no question, and that is how I know how panicked I must sound.
Twenty minutes later, Alia’s at my door.
I pull her into the house, hurriedly filling her in on my call with Addi, words spilling out of my mouth as I voice my worries about the timeline.
Alia’s face pales when I get to the part about Javed Uncle.
‘No,’ she says. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘Alia—’
‘There has to be another explanation. He loved her.’
I don’t say anything. I’d been fond of Javed Uncle, but Alia worshipped him. He was her mentor, the man who had plucked her out of obscurity and changed her life overnight.
Alia rubs her hand over her eyes, pinching her lids, and I can see that she is trying to order her thoughts, letting the memories claw back.
It is only when she sits down that I notice the file she has in her hand.
‘What’s this?’
Alia looks at me, her face completely blank.
‘Alia,’ I nudge. ‘What’s in the file?’
She hands it to me without a word and I flick through it, unsure of what to make of it. It’s a police report about a hit and run. It’s only as I start reading through the dates and the details of the cars that it all comes back to me. The young couple, the baby, the two underage boys, the lie I’d told about Faraz being with us in Goa. The lie Javed Uncle had asked me to tell.
‘Look at the name of the attending officer,’ Alia says.
My eyes skim to the bottom of the page. We all know the maxim it’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up, but it’s only now that it hits me how true it is.
Attending officer: Brij Pratap Joshi. Commissioner, Delhi Police.
The same man who had visited the Qureshi estate the night Noor died.
I go back to the archive, trawling through yet another network’s footage while Alia busies herself with phone calls, trying to track down the retired policeman who seemed to be Javed Uncle’s go-to cover-up guy. The motive fits, but even though I’ve spent the past hour convincing Alia of this, somehow I can’t bring myself to believe that Javed Uncle would have put his career before Noor. Every time he disciplined her, it was because he was trying to protect her, quite often from herself. He loved Noor and Faraz with an intensity that had often befuddled me. He was passionate about his career, he was devoted to serving his constituents, but his children were his life.
I’m missing something.
I hit pause.
The blood rushes to my head as my brain links what I’m seeing with what it means.
‘Where did you say Faraz was that night?’ I ask Alia when she hangs up.
‘Out of town. With his mum at her parents’ house, I think. Why?’
I hit play.
‘Look,’ I say, pointing to the TV as the clip starts playing. We watch Javed Uncle run down the stairs, surrounded by his entourage of bodyguards, assistants and party workers. He climbs into the first car in the convoy and in less than fifteen seconds they drive off.
‘What are we looking for?’
I rewind the tape and press play again.
‘Look at the second car.’
I watch once again as Javed Uncle climbs into the car, the engine already running and the car moving before he’s even closed the door. I hit pause just as Javed Uncle’s car exits the frame and the one behind it comes into focus. I zoom in on the image and turn to look at Alia.
I watch her expression flit from confusion to shock to anger before it settles. Her shoulders slump.
Javed Uncle hadn’t been the only one lying.
He’s looking out of the window, a cap pulled over his head, his face turned away from the camera, but even from that angle, the square jaw and sharp nose are unmistakable. It’s him, sitting in the passenger seat of the car.
Faraz.
Faraz had told us he’d been out of town that day. He’d said he had left the night before.
I was there when he arrived, moments before the funeral.
I’d seen him run into the house with his mother, tears streaming down his cheeks.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I say out loud. ‘What possible reason could he have to kill her?’
‘Do you remember how Faraz reacted when the video came out?’ Alia says.
I nod. I do remember. I remember standing in the crowd watching the consequences of Noor’s fling with my boyfriend play out in front of the whole school.
But that was different. However misguided, Faraz was trying to protect her.
I think back to the day after the funeral. I had seen Faraz grieve. He had wept inconsolably. They all had.
I’ve always believed that part of his grief came from guilt over the fact that he hadn’t been there that night. But the video shows that not only was he in Delhi that day, he was at the house.
‘This video is from hours before. It doesn’t prove anything,’ I venture, clinging to hope. I’d been willing to accept that Javed Uncle could have killed his own daughter, but I cannot bring myself to think that the boy I’d grown up thinking of as my friend, as my brother, could have killed someone.
But why would Faraz lie if he wasn’t hiding something?
In that one moment it crystallizes.
He wouldn’t. And neither would Javed Uncle.
Family came first for Javed Uncle, always and without question.
I think about the lack of an investigation, the hurried funeral, the silence the Qureshis had maintained throughout the whole ordeal.
If Faraz had something to do with Noor’s death, Javed Uncle would have had no option but to help him cover it up or risk losing his son as well. If an investigation had been carried out, the family would have been questioned. Their alibis would have been verified. The truth would have come out.
I think too about the diary entry. I had assumed that Fatima Aunty had sent it to me anonymously so she could avoid adding to Faraz’s worries.
But what if I had been looking at it all wrong.
Faraz had refused to let me interview his mother with
out him being present, telling me he wanted to make sure she felt supported.
Control flipped sideways can look a lot like concern.
I press my fingertips into my eyes, trying to focus on the thought that’s taking shape. What if the reason Fatima Aunty had kept it from him was not because she was protecting him, but because she was afraid of him?
ALIA
‘We need to go to the police,’ Sabah says, dark eyes fixed on mine.
‘The police will go straight back to Faraz,’ I say, the DU rape case still fresh in my memory. ‘Look at the files, Sabah. The head of the force orchestrated the cover-up.’
I had tried to use my position to force the police to do their job but even a junior minister like Saeed had enough influence to get the police to dance to his tune. Faraz had inherited the relationships Javed Uncle had spent years building. The police wouldn’t touch him. He had access to that special kind of power that can only come with years of privilege.
‘We have to do something,’ Sabah says. Her face has gone very pale and there is a desperation in her eyes that scares me.
The silence that follows seems to bounce off the walls.
I almost sigh with relief when my phone rings.
‘Omar,’ I speak into the phone. ‘Did you find him?’
I’d tasked Omar with locating the retired police commissioner who was proving notoriously difficult to track down through the usual channels.
‘Yes, but—’
Sabah hands me a post-it and a pen.
‘Have you got an address?’
My heart stills as Omar speaks, his words delivered in a staccato manner that is so unlike his usual tone. Terror snakes down my spine. I feel the flicker of a memory. Once again, I underestimated Faraz.
I hang up without a word.
‘Well, where is he?’
My skin feels hot and I have a sudden urge to burst into tears. Nothing I do will ever be enough. I will never be able to get Noor the justice she deserves. Not when I’m up against men like Faraz who wield their power with a flick of their hand, devastating entire families without so much as leaving a fingerprint.
Sabah’s already standing, shrugging on her coat, cramming her feet into her boots. She’s getting ready to go and see a man who doesn’t exist.
Not anymore at least.
I reach out and grab her wrist.
‘We can’t see him.’
She pulls away. ‘Why the hell not?’
I go very still. Dread churns in my stomach.
‘He’s dead,’ I say. ‘He was murdered last week.’
Sabah’s expression is a mix of fear, shock and foreboding. I imagine mine is much the same. ‘What do we do?’ she whispers.
‘I don’t know.’
I cradle my head in my hands, letting the enormity of it sink in as the sense of unease I’ve carried for so long morphs into something far more terrifying.
The retired head of police, the man who helped cover up Faraz’s complicity in two cases, found dead in a ditch.
It is the timing that alarms me the most. Faraz is at the cusp of having everything he’s ever wanted, party presidency, a seat in the parliament, if all goes well, a portfolio on the cabinet.
I look up as Sabah answers the question I haven’t asked. ‘He was the only remaining witness.’
It is shocking how far Faraz’s power stretches, how ruthless his ambition is.
Sabah straightens up and pushes her shoulders back. ‘There has to be something else,’ she says with trademark determination. Her gaze is direct, unflinching. ‘If there’s one advantage we have, it’s that Faraz has no idea we are on to him. We need to keep it like that till we have a plan. No one can commit murder without leaving a trace.’
Two a.m. Tiredness beats against my eyelids as I push the front door open and climb up the stairs, lack of sleep making my footsteps heavier, my head foggier.
Sabah is due to fly back to London in a few hours. We had talked about rescheduling her flight, then decided against it. It would be stupid to risk alarming Faraz when we had nothing concrete to go on. I was meant to be flying to London for a women’s empowerment summit in a few weeks anyway, so it made more sense to regroup then.
I creak open the door to the bedroom and slip into the bathroom to undress, careful not to wake Arjun.
It’s only when I come out, face scrubbed clean, pyjamas on, that I realize he isn’t there.
The bed has not been slept in. The glass of water on the side table is untouched.
I search my brain, trying to remember if Arjun was meant to be at an event last night, but despite the haze that is clouding my thoughts, I am sure that he hadn’t mentioned anything and he isn’t due to travel to Tokyo until next week.
I grab the cordless handset and press down on the speed dial, aware of the quickening in my chest.
Please answer. Please answer.
‘Hello?’ Arjun’s voice is deep and gravelly, the way it sounds when he reaches for me in the middle of the night. I can hear music in the background. Not loud club music, not even the light jazz that you might find in some of Delhi’s finer establishments. It sounds like sufi music, something that Arjun usually hates and –
‘Alia? Is everything okay?’
It takes me a few moments to find my voice. ‘Where are you?’
‘At work. I left you a voicemail.’
‘Did you?’ I can hear the accusation in my voice. I don’t care.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Look, I’m in the middle of something. Are you okay?’
He seems to take the strange sound that comes out of my mouth as confirmation that I am indeed okay.
‘Good. I’ll see you in the morning.’
He’s gone before I can protest.
But not before I hear the identifying lyrics of the song. It’s surprising really, how long it took me to recognize it, considering it had been an almost constant soundtrack to my years at Cambridge.
‘Afreen Afreen.’
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s ode to the irresistible beauty of the unattainable woman.
Niv’s favourite song.
ALIA
I flip onto my side, wide awake in the milky darkness of four a.m.
As a little girl, when I couldn’t sleep, I would slip out of bed and tiptoe along the hall to my parents’ bedroom. I never went in – even as a five-year-old I understood that I wouldn’t be welcome – I just stood there outside their bedroom, listening to the muffled sound of my parents snoring. I still remember the sensation of that cheap, fake wood against my cheek as I pressed myself into the door. Just knowing that my parents were behind that door was soothing and I would drowsily slink back to my room and into my bed after a few minutes.
I hold myself completely still, listening. Arjun is still not back and the house is silent. And yet my hearing is amplified, my brain is on high alert. I am acutely aware of every heartbeat, every breath, but it is my thoughts that are roaring the loudest. They are the ones that are impossible to silence.
The dull thud of the front door closing.
The click of the switch as the lights flick on.
The creak of the stairs, decades-old wood groaning under the weight of footsteps.
I sit up with a jolt, reaching for the bedside lamp just as the bedroom door swings open.
‘Fuck! You scared me,’ Arjun says.
His shirt is rumpled. The tie I’d watched him pick out yesterday dangles from the pocket of his heavily creased jacket. My breath catches. I force my gaze to his face, to the dark shadows underneath his eyes and the tousled hair.
My voice, when I get it to work, comes out raspy.
‘You were with Niv.’
It is not a question but he nods anyway. He slips off his jacket and sits down at the foot of the bed.
I am aware of the tears streaming down my face. My husband isn’t.
His head is bowed. His hands, bent like claws, rest on either side of him on the bed. I can tell by the way he holds himself
that underneath the wrinkled shirt the muscles in his back are stretched taut. He is bracing for impact.
His voice cracks and breaks as he speaks. ‘The past few months . . . things have been difficult. I’ve been trying so hard . . . I thought I could steer us back on track but – oh God, I don’t know how to say this. Alia, I—’
‘You’ve been having an affair,’ I finish for him. There is no point dragging this on.
It’s the thing that I’ve been dreading since the day we got together and somehow also the thing that surprises me the most.
‘What?’ He flips around, his body twisting as he looks at me.
Even in the dim light of the bedside lamp, I can see that his eyes are wet. I look away. It’s too much.
I thought we were good. I thought we were solid.
‘I am not having an affair.’
‘You just admitted you were with Niv.’
He walks around to my side of the bed and sits down in front of me.
‘Yes,’ he says, holding my gaze. ‘And Nisha and Amit and about five others from finance.’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t want to tell you. I thought I could salvage things.’ He sighs. There is weariness in his eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. ‘Barclays gave the contract to Go Green.’
His biggest competitor.
‘Last week,’ he adds, before I can ask him when.
‘The deal with John was a mistake. Niv kept trying to warn me but I was overconfident and reckless. I overstretched. We were trying to find a way to keep the company intact but . . . I have to be in the office at nine for the first round of layoffs and then straight to Mumbai to face the investors.’
‘I’m sorry, I had no idea. I thought –’
‘That I was having an affair. How could you even think that?’
I don’t say anything. I don’t need to.
His jaw tightens. ‘That was different.’
Only it wasn’t. It was exactly the same. Except the woman.
I thought we were past that, I really did.
Arjun runs a hand through his hair, his expression unreadable. ‘I can’t believe you accused Niv.’
‘She told you?’ The words slip out before I have a chance to consider them.
Can You See Me Now? Page 23