If You Were Me Read online

  I shifted round a bit. ‘Did you go out last night?’ He gave me a funny look. I stared at him and suddenly it felt like the familiar crinkles round his eyes, the scar on his chin, the crooked tooth that showed when he smiled and his short bristly hair had been stolen by a stranger. I really did feel sick as I waited for his lie. I felt even sicker when it came. He gave me that easy, hey-what-can-you-do? shrug of his. ‘Yeah. Old people’s home had an emergency, whole place got flooded.’

  ‘Was Jez with you?’

  ‘Yeah. We turned off the water and patched it up and we’re going back this morning to sort it properly.’

  He didn’t hang around after that and I was glad. I couldn’t face talking to him or anyone else, so I stayed in my room, hunched over the PlayStation, ignoring my phone. When Bernie Watts started calling, I turned it off.

  ALIYA

  They went over the same things again and again. The man getting angry, drumming the table, chewing his cheek and the woman stepping in, trying to keep him calm, insisting they just wanted my help. Then they’d leave me on my own in that grey, ugly room as if I was a criminal and come back a little later with more questions and cups of tea that were too weak or too strong and food that I didn’t want and couldn’t swallow. It went on like that for most of the day, until finally, at about eight o’clock in the evening, the woman came back alone.

  ‘You must be tired, Aliya. Just a couple more questions, then you can go. Does your mother have a mobile phone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you contact people?’

  ‘I have no one to call. Just the doctor and sometimes the refugee centre. If Behrouz isn’t there, I use the telephone at the garage opposite our flats.’

  She frowned a little and wrote something down.

  ‘Are you certain Behrouz had his new mobile with him when he left the flat?’

  ‘My mother told me so, but I was not there. Why?’

  ‘We didn’t find it on him, but it may have been destroyed in the explosion.’

  Along with Behrouz. I looked down and tried not to let the tears come.

  ‘All right, that’s enough for tonight.’

  ‘When can I see my brother?’

  ‘We’ll let you know.’

  ‘Can I speak with his doctors?’

  She looked away and shook her head, her mouth tight. ‘The hospital’s issuing regular press bulletins. As of thirty minutes ago, he was stable but still unconscious.’

  ‘What is stable?’

  ‘No better, no worse.’

  No worse. This was something to hold on to.

  She handed me a card. ‘If you remember anything that might be of help to us, please call me on this number. If we need to speak to you, we’ll contact you at the hotel.’

  ‘Hotel?’

  ‘You can’t go anywhere near Meadowview, not until we’ve finished searching your flat and the surrounding area.’

  I pushed away the thought of the gun and the phone in the Margaretta and looked down at the floor. ‘There is nothing in our flat, I promise.’ It wasn’t a lie. It just felt like one.

  ‘Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Sahar. WPC Rennell will drive you to the hotel.’

  I stood up. She raised her finger. ‘Remember, if anyone contacts you, trying to get a message to Behrouz, you call me immediately.’

  A round-faced, pink-cheeked policewoman marched me down the hallway, her swinging hips rattling the keys and handcuffs on her belt. I was so empty and tired I could hardly keep up. The only thing keeping my legs moving was the need to get away from the grey walls, the endless questions and the sour smell of people shut up for too long in a stuffy room. We turned a corner. I saw swing doors with a glimmering green sign above them saying EXIT. WPC Rennell didn’t walk towards it. She turned left down some stairs that disappeared into darkness. I pulled back. She had been lying. She was going to lock me up!

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Out the back way. The press have found out you’re here. Someone’s posted it on Twitter.’

  ‘No!’ My throat tightened around the sound.

  ‘It’s all right. Come on, quick, before the crowd gets any bigger.’

  She hurried me down the steps, through a door into a gloomy underground car park and guided me towards a small red car. It was old, with a dusty plastic dog in the back window and a dent along the side. She told me to lie across the back seat while she fetched an old rug from the boot.

  ‘Here, when I give you the word, put this over you,’ she said. ‘It won’t be for long.’

  She got into the front, pulled off her jacket and cap and shook out her curly fair hair so it stuck up around her head like one of Mina’s dolls. Two uniformed policemen leapt into a van parked nearby and roared up the ramp and through the exit with the roof light flashing and the siren screeching. A burst of voices shouted my name, screaming filthy words. It made me sick inside. They were so angry, so full of hate. The voices grew louder. I wanted to shout back and tell them it wasn’t right what they were saying. The shouting faded as the crowd chased after the van.

  ‘OK. Stay down,’ said WPC Rennell.

  I heard the clunk of the door locks and I lay down flat, pulling the dusty rug over my head. It was itchy and smelt of dogs. My mouth was dry. My heart was thudding.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Here we go.’

  I felt the rumble of the engine and the bump of the ramp. The car stopped.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she whispered. ‘There’s still a few stragglers hanging around, looking for trouble.’

  The car edged forward. The shouting started again. A fist thumped the roof, we swerved sideways. I pushed my face into the sweaty plastic, fighting the urge to vomit, and I thought of Mina throwing up in Captain Merrick’s jeep. Voices came right up to the car. I could feel the people out there. Hating me. Wanting to find me and hurt me. Knuckles rapped on the window. The car turned sharply and we sped away.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said after a few minutes. ‘We’re clear.’

  I slipped the rug off my face.

  ‘There’s a lot of angry people out there.’ I could see her looking at me in the mirror. ‘But don’t worry. We’ll be around, making sure you’re all right.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ I said, trying to sound sure of myself. But I wasn’t sure of anything. I was so lost and scared it felt as if my body had broken into pieces.

  All I knew was that I had to help Behrouz, and I couldn’t do that with a policewoman standing over me, watching everything I did.

  DAN

  It was nearly four o’clock when I finally dragged myself downstairs to make a sandwich. On my way past the living room I heard the murmur of the TV and, looking round the door, I glimpsed a grainy, blown-up passport photo on the screen. The shock made my skin burn. It was him. The man who got kidnapped from Meadowview. The one whose petrified face had kept me up all night. I took a deep breath and kept walking. I didn’t want to know. My head was still urging me into the kitchen when my feet swivelled round and turned back down the hall. I pushed the door wide. A bright-eyed, smiling weather forecaster was pointing to a map predicting rain. I gripped the doorframe. ‘Hey, Mum, that bloke on the news just now. What’s happened to him?’

  She was ironing, with her mobile clamped to her ear, gossiping to one of her friends. When I started mouthing at her and pointing to the TV, she frowned, shrugged and shook her head. I ran upstairs and checked the news online. It didn’t take me long to find the story.

  The man on TV was making headlines on every channel. He was a nineteen-year-old Afghan minicab driver who’d nearly died when his bomb-making equipment exploded in a lock-up in Kilburn at four a.m. that morning. I broke out in a sweat and rocked back on my chair, staring at his face on the screen, trying to work it out. Two hours before the explosion I’d seen him being whacked round the head and dragged off in a van. He’d have had trouble standing up after that, l
et alone getting himself to Kilburn and cooking up a bomb. Cement Face must have dumped him in that lock-up. That’s what he’d meant about making him famous! I closed my eyes, feeling trapped, cornered, guilty as hell.

  You could have saved him, Dan. You could have called the cops.

  Then the reporter said his name: Behrouz Sahar.

  I jerked my head up. Sahar! He had to be the brother of that girl in the flat! I kept hitting replay so I could take it all in. It looked like Sahar was in intensive care with half the anti-terrorist squad camped round his bed waiting for him to come round.

  Shots of the entrance to the hospital and an aerial view of Meadowview gave way to pictures of tanks churning up dust in Afghanistan and a reporter saying Sahar had been an interpreter for the British army. There were photos of his time with the troops: Sahar laughing with a bunch of grimy, sunburnt soldiers, Sahar leaning out of a tank giving the thumbs up, Sahar with all these men in suits at some big meeting, and one of him getting a medal pinned on his chest by a posh-looking army officer. The picture cut to the same man pushing a trolley through Arrivals at Heathrow. A slim woman with long shiny hair was running towards him, trying to shake off a mob of reporters. They were all shouting at him: ‘Colonel Clarke, did Sahar ever show any signs of instability? Colonel Clarke, did you ever have cause to trust his loyalty? Is it true you were planning to use him as a goodwill ambassador for Hope Unlimited?’

  Clarke leant in to the nearest microphone. ‘I cannot find words to express my astonishment at this horrific news. The Behrouz Sahar I knew, or thought I knew, was a brave, upstanding young man who risked his life to save three injured British soldiers under my command. When his army colleagues discovered that he was on a Taliban death list, they urged me to intervene personally to bring him to Britain. Which I duly did. I can only assume that his decision to plan an act of terrorism against this country came about either because of some deep-seated mental disorder triggered by the traumas he experienced in Afghanistan, or because he had been subjected to intensive brainwashing and radicalized by Al Shaab militants intent on exploiting his youth and vulnerability. We can never condone what he has done, and he must of course be punished. But the way forward is to support all those who have been touched by the horrors of war, civilian and military alike, which is why organizations like Hope Unlimited, the charity my wife and I set up some years ago, are so important for the future peace and stability of our world.’

  His wife, who’d been gazing up at him, nodded and turned a pair of soft brown eyes to the camera. That’s when I recognized her. She was that actress, India Lambert, the one who spent half her time making films and the other half roaming round war zones banging on about injustice. She squeezed his arm and with a murmured, ‘Thank you,’ the two of them turned and walked off towards the exit.

  The whole of me felt numb as I clicked on a live update of the story.

  ‘. . . A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police has just confirmed that Behrouz Sahar’s mother, Farah, forty-two, and his sister Aliya, fourteen, were taken in for questioning soon after the explosion. While they are in custody his four-year-old sister Mina is being cared for by the authorities . . .’

  How was that spaced-out little kid I’d seen on the Sahars’ couch going to cope with a load of strangers looking after her? As for the mother, they’d have a hard time getting any sense out of her. Which left that girl, Aliya, facing the police on her own. I leant forward and dropped my face in my hands.

  ‘The police are anxious to talk to anyone who has information about Behrouz Sahar’s activities since he came to the UK, or who can help trace his movements over the last forty-eight hours, particularly between one and four a.m. this morning. If you have any information, however small or seemingly insignificant, please contact this number . . .’

  I knew I should call that number, tell them what I’d seen, get Behrouz Sahar cleared of being a terrorist. But I couldn’t. Because of Dad. Whatever he’d done, he was still my father. I couldn’t risk him going back to prison.

  My mind raced with shock, anger, pity, guilt.

  What you going to do, Dan? What you going to do?

  ALIYA

  WPC Rennell drove me to a busy district of London called King’s Cross. The hotel was a tall narrow building down a side street, with the name Holly Lodge painted over the door and a sign in the window that said VACANCIES in winking blue lights. She hurried me past the deserted reception desk, up to the first floor, and pointed down a narrow corridor.

  ‘You’ve got rooms 11 and 12. Do you want me to come in with you?’

  I looked into her scrubbed, shiny face. She gazed back as if she was still trying to work out what to make of me. ‘No, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘OK. Here are your keys. I’ll be back first thing. Remember, stay inside as much as you can and don’t get friendly with the other guests. If anyone asks who you are, you say your family name is Tarin and you’re down from Birmingham sorting out your visas. Any problems, call us immediately.’

  I took the keys and walked away, keeping my eyes fixed on the worn red carpet. I didn’t glance back until my fingers were on the door handle. She gave me a nod. I took a long slow breath and went inside. Mina was asleep on the bed. My mother was beside her, staring at the television. She didn’t look up when I came in and just went on running her prayer beads through her fingers, murmuring that Behrouz was a good boy, her firstborn, the apple of her eye. I should have gone to her, taken her hands, comforted her, but I couldn’t find the strength. I followed her eyes to the screen and kept them there, held by a strange sort of fascination. She was watching Mr Brody. He was standing outside Meadowview, telling the reporters that he’d had his suspicions about us from the minute we’d moved in and that this is what happened if you let scum into the country. Another man came on, a policeman who said that people like Behrouz ‘represented the worst kind of danger to the public, because they weren’t known to the police or the security services’. When the reporter asked him why the police hadn’t arrested any other members of Al Shaab, he looked angry and said they were doing everything they could but Al Shaab was an elusive organization with no traceable links to any other terror group.

  I looked away and gazed at the bumpy beige wallpaper, the thin green curtains, the battered brown furniture and the big plastic bag stuffed full of our things on the floor. I rummaged inside it for my purse and slipped downstairs. I didn’t know where I was going. I just needed to get away, to feel free again, but the cool night air and the rush of lights made me dizzy after the gloom of the hotel, and the sight of Behrouz’s photo staring from a news-stand made me want to cry out. The streets were crowded and it felt as if every face I passed was watching me, accusing me, condemning me: the man in the parked car, the homeless woman curled in her sleeping bag, the pizza-delivery boy revving his scooter. I wanted to scream at them that Behrouz was not a terrorist and that I was going to prove it. I slowed down, overcome by a sudden hopelessness. How could I prove anything? I was alone in a foreign city full of angry people who were convinced that my brother wanted to kill them.

  A crowd of men pushed past me. They knocked me off the kerb, shouting words I didn’t understand, and pulled at my headscarf. I ducked away from their tattooed arms and slopping beer cans and started to run. I heard them coming after me, roaring, laughing, swearing. I rushed into a takeaway and slipped behind a woman with a baby who was buying kebabs. I pressed my cuff to my teeth, ripping at the fabric as I peered between the faded photos of burgers, pizzas and fried chicken stuck to the window. The drunken men staggered past without seeing me. I closed my eyes, waiting for their shouts to fade. When I opened them again, the woman at the counter was staring at me without smiling. A crowd of teenagers burst in, the girls laughing, the boys pushing each other, raising their voices. One of them poked my shoulder. ‘Come on, hurry up, we haven’t got all night.’

  I searched the list on the wall, looking for the cheapest thing. The girls began giggling and whisper
ing. I asked for a small pizza and fumbled for the money, praying I’d have enough to pay for it. The purse fell from my hands, spilling vouchers, coins, cards and scraps of paper across the floor; I crouched down, trying pick them up and stuff them back but the purse wouldn’t close. The girls’ laughter grew louder. My eyes blurred as I dropped a handful of coins on the counter. Without waiting for the pizza I stumbled out of the shop, tugging at the crumpled card jammed in the zip of my purse.

  Hating myself for being so weak, I ran round the corner, plunged into the nearest doorway, and let the tears come. The fear and loneliness took hold, my knees buckled and I slumped on to the step, not caring about the cold or the damp or the dirt. I laid my head on my knees, too wretched to move. A blast of pumping music jolted me out of my misery. I looked up. Two tall, thickset men in black suits came sauntering out of a door in the purple-painted wall across the road, their shaved heads and gold chains glinting in the light from the street lamp. I pulled my scarf across my face and prayed they wouldn’t see me. They came closer. I felt the heat of their stares and kept my eyes on the card in my fist. One of the men hawked and spat. A shiny slug of phlegm landed near my foot. I looked up into their faces. They stared back, then they grinned at each other and walked on. Anger grew and swelled inside me, filling the emptiness.

  I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, scrambled to my feet and dusted the dirt from my clothes. I’d show them. I’d show everybody in the whole world that my family wasn’t scum to be spat at and accused of evil crimes they hadn’t committed. I held the card tightly in my fingers and hurried away to find a phone box.

  DAN

  ‘Hey, Danny.’ Dad’s voice boomed up the stairs.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Phone.’

  No one ever called me on the house phone. ‘Who is it?’