Take It Back

‘So? I have a stressful job.’ Her voice took on a steely edge. ‘You don’t need to worry about it.’

‘But I do worry about it.’ He threw up two hands. ‘Seriously, this makes me so uncomfortable.’

She scoffed. ‘It’s not my job to make you comfortable, Luka.’

‘You could give it a try once in a while.’ He picked up the bottle and tossed it in the bin. ‘Zara, seriously, you’ve got to stop.’

She bristled. ‘Listen to me, Luka. There’s only one man who could tell me what to do and he’s dead.’

Temper sparked in his eyes. ‘Yes, and even he couldn’t stand you by the end.’

The words struck her like a fist in the gut. In a moment shorn of reason, she reached out and slapped him.

He jolted back in surprise. A muscle in his cheek flexed beneath the rising colour and his hands clenched in fists by his side. He took a few short breaths to calm himself. His shoulders rose and dipped with the effort, then slowly came to rest. He spoke to her in a low voice: ‘Zara, look at you. Look at that rage burning inside. Would you really be so angry if you didn’t think it were true?’ He waited. ‘You think you can bury your feelings in a bottle? You think striking me will wipe your past clean?’

Zara held his gaze. ‘Leave,’ she said. Luka’s words smarted like wounds. Even he couldn’t stand you by the end.

‘No,’ said Luka. ‘You can’t drug yourself free of your father’s shadow. It’s everywhere you go. You say you quit your job to do some good, as if walking out didn’t sabotage everything you worked so hard for. You remind me all the time that we’re just having “fun” – but this isn’t fun anymore, Zara. Drugging yourself to oblivion isn’t “fun”; it’s cowardice.’

Zara squared her shoulders. ‘Just go,’ she said coldly. The sting of his words mixed now with a feverish self-loathing. He was the first person she’d ever struck.

Luka’s lips tensed over gritted teeth. ‘Zara, don’t do this. Don’t just shut down.’

She said nothing, as much as to hide her shame as to control her anger.

‘Stop acting like a child.’ Luka’s patience waned in the silence. ‘You’re impossible, you know that? Fucking impossible.’ He waited for a beat. ‘Call me when you grow the fuck up.’ He stalked out of the flat, slamming the door behind him.

His ugly words rang in her ears. They felt hot and prickly like blisters on skin. Even he couldn’t stand you by the end. The sheer ease with which he’d said them, the unthinking indifference, hurt more than a physical blow. Luka knew what her father had meant to her. That he would use him now to carve a malicious taunt stung like betrayal.

Even he couldn’t stand you by the end.

Denial flooded her veins. I was the one who stayed away. I was the one who refused to be to be seen. Deep down, however, she knew the quiet truth. She knew that even though he had tried, towards the end her father couldn’t bear to hear her name let alone see her face.

It was the summer of 2016 that she said yes to an arranged marriage. The grass outside was a burnt brown and the windows were open as far as they would go. Her father was on his second hospital stay of the year so while she can’t say she was forced or coerced, the situation was prime for emotional blackmail. ‘You’re his only burden,’ her mother would say with only the lightest touch of accusation. ‘He worries about you’ – as if marriage had solved all her siblings’ problems.

She sat there in the sweltering heat draped in her impossibly heavy silk sari, all blazing orange and gold-embroidered trim. She was told the colour would look amazing against her long dark hair – an irrelevant point of persuasion since it was now gathered in a bun, modestly tucked beneath the head of her sari. Her face was a mask of makeup, her foundation a touch too light, the sort that cast an ashy pallor if shown beneath the wrong light. Her eyes were lined with kohl and mascara in the heavy, dramatic strokes that made brunettes look sexy but blondes look trashy. Her lips were painted nude to downplay their obvious appeal, far too seductive for a demure little housewife. And jewellery everywhere. Her ears, freshly pierced after she let the last holes close, shone with Indian gold. Her neck was wrapped in elaborate jewels that would look at home on an Egyptian queen. There she sat, elegant, poised, perfected and neutered. She saw herself through a prism; not as a university graduate, not an ambitious lawyer, not a smart and successful woman but something else altogether, something shapeless and tasteless, a malleable being that had lost its way. There she sat and waited.

Kasim Ali was the fifteenth suitor presented to her that year. She had worn out her rightful refusals about five suitors back and patience was wearing thin. He was big and broad with thinning hair atop milky white skin. His shiny suit was just a tad too tight and his navy tie made his neck fat crease. He was neither attractive nor ugly, just unremarkable.

To his merit, he was well-spoken and seemed to have a sense of humour – more than she could say of his predecessors. The conversation was brief and shallow: job, hobbies, favourite books; the sort of thing you might ask a fellow dinner guest, not the person you would shortly marry. It was that day, sitting mute in six yards of silk, that she made the biggest mistake of her life. It was that day she caved into pressure and said yes to a marriage she did not want. After all, she was her sick father’s only fucking burden.

The engagement came and went and the ball of anxiety grew and grew, contracting in her stomach like some sort of pestilence. Friends greeted the news with disbelief. She, Zara the Brave, was succumbing to tradition. She, with her iron will and unyielding ambition, was bowing to pressure? How could this be?

It was clear that Zara was struggling but her mother did not ask about the circles beneath her eyes or the weight that drained from her frame, for she knew they had reached a delicate détente. Granted the smallest concession, Zara would surely bolt, and so she was held to her decision with a cold, unremitting expediency. It was five months after the engagement that she took the decision to get out. Of course, by then the wedding had passed and her marital bed had long been soiled.

When Kasim secretly searched through her phone and found her message to Safran expressing her mortal doubts, his family rounded on her like wolves on cattle. Neither time nor history had thread trust into their relationship and so her husband showed her no empathy or discretion. Perhaps she could have stemmed the crisis before it reached their ears. She could have sweetened him with loving words, secured his silence with a warm tongue, but subconsciously she welcomed the fallout. She couldn’t be his wife. She couldn’t be a woman who wore elaborate saris and expensive rings; who made fifteen cups of tea every day; who was indefatigably sweet and loving and innocent. She couldn’t be that woman. And so she let them round on her and take away her phone and grab at her throat and call her a whore. For four hours she sat, waiting for her family to come. When it was clear that they would not, she gathered her belongings and marched out the door. She fled from the house and went back to a home that welcomed her no more.

Despite the trauma, that night was not the worst one. That privilege was reserved for the one that followed. The memory of it was oddly monochrome in her mind, darkly black and blinding white, film-noirish in its detail. She had recounted it all to Luka. One night, surprisingly sober, she lay in his arms and unlocked the floodgates for no reason at all. It all bled out: the bitter-centred anger and gut-wrenching pain.

Luka held her as the tears from her eyes stained kohl on his skin. He didn’t say the words but it was the night he fell in love with her. She knew from the pain he tried to hide from his eyes. Until that moment, all he had known was Zara the Brave. That night, he saw her weak and vulnerable. He touched the sorest part of her and he couldn’t let go.

She wondered how he could use it now to hurt her. But then, isn’t that what people did when you laid yourself bare? Luka would be lucky to ever have her in that position again.

Najim Rashid scanned the hall and spotted the four boys in a corner, huddled over a foosball table. Hassan Tanweer, the smallest of the four, danced restlessly around one edge, spewing a stream of obscenities. The others seemed amused, laughing as his wiry limbs flew from one handle to another. Amir broke the string of expletives with one or two of his own.

Fuck yes, son! No, no, no, you wank stain!

Across from them, another group of boys had set up a game of cards. In the middle of the table was a large pile of chips. Nah, sir, they had cried last week. We don’t play for money. That’s haram, the last word loaded with scorn. Najim had moved on without mentioning the pictures of naked women he had seen them sharing earlier. I suppose that’s halal, is it? he’d wanted to ask, but the Dali Centre was a place of acceptance. Supported by government funding, the community centre was set up soon after the 7/7 London bombings to engage disadvantaged youths in the borough. It attracted a ragtag group of kids, mainly boys, mainly brown, who came to be free of judgment. Here, there were no prayer rooms to prompt them to be pious, no parents with lofty immigrant dreams. There were no pushy preachers or angry teachers, no masters they had to please. Here, the boys could be themselves and as long as they weren’t breaking the law, Najim let them be. Of course, it was hard not to dispense advice or push college brochures into the hands of his charges. Every year, he lay out a stack of ‘Informed Choices’ from the Russell Group universities. Every year, they remained untouched but it was not his role to push the boys in the right direction, only to pull them from the wrong one. Of course, sometimes, trouble came knocking regardless.

Najim leaned over the table to interrupt the game. Hassan stepped back from the haze of competition, his face flushed red and pools of sweat dampening his T-shirt.

‘Sorry to disturb you boys, but you’re needed in my office.’

Amir playfully jabbed Najim in the rib. ‘“Office?” Since when do you have an office? Do we have to call you sahib now?’

Najim smiled good-naturedly while the boys laughed at the jibe. ‘Come on. You have some visitors.’ He gestured to the door, praying it was nothing serious. ‘Bring your things.’

He led them through the main hall, across a small pitch with forlorn goalposts at either end, and into the northern edge of the complex. Outside his cramped office stood a slim woman with shiny blonde hair scraped into a bun. Next to her was a much older man, dressed all in grey. He had hair that verged on ginger and a face like crumpled paper, his features focused in the middle as if someone had scrunched up his face then smoothed it out again. Behind the pair stood two uniformed police officers.

The blonde woman spoke first. ‘I am DC Mia Scavo and this is DC John Dexter. Can you state your names please?’

Amir offered a bright smile. ‘What’s the problem, officer?’ Then, to Hassan, ‘Has your mum been caught working the streets again?’

A snigger rose in the group and Hassan, never one to take insult lightly, bounced a hand off Mo’s chest, silencing the taller boy, knowing that he – nervy, docile, amusingly principled – was the easiest target in the group.

Mia stepped forward. ‘State your names please,’ she repeated.

Farid complied, then Mo and Hassan too. Amir sighed exaggeratedly, his eyes rolling skyward. Fine, it said. Be a joyless cow. In a tone dripping with deference, he said, ‘I’m Amir Rabbani, ma’am. How may I help you please?’

Mia’s lips drew a tight line. ‘Mr Rabbani, I am arresting you on suspicion of rape.’ Her tone was even. ‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ While she spoke, her colleagues arrested the other three boys.

Amir looked to Najim for help. ‘Rape?’ he asked dumbly. ‘What are they on about?’

Mo grew pale and Farid flushed red as if the blood had drained from one boy to the other.

Najim reached out a hand, not touching Mia but close to it. ‘Excuse me, you can’t just arrest them. Don’t you need a warrant?’

Mia regarded him coolly. ‘We have reason to believe that these young men have committed a serious crime. We don’t need a warrant to arrest them for questioning.’ She turned to Amir. ‘Please come quietly. We can discuss this at the station. Your parents will be informed and will join you there.’

Amir flinched. ‘My parents are coming?’ His voice was tense with worry. ‘They’re going to kill me.’

Hassan next to him was a coil of anger. ‘This is bullshit,’ he swore. His last syllable climbed a register, creating the wobble he hated in his voice.

Mia watched them with interest, noting the change in mood at the mention of their parents. ‘Come on.’ She tugged Amir away and turned him towards the exit. He wrenched around and looked at his friends. Before he had a chance to speak, Mia pulled him back and gave him a gentle shove. As he began to walk, he heard Najim behind him. ‘Don’t worry,’ he shouted. And then, in Urdu: don’t tell the pigs anything.

Chapter Three

Hashim Khan hurried up the stairs but failed to catch the door held briefly open. At sixty-one, his legs were far wearier than even two years before. He had increasingly begun to ask himself if it was time to wind down his fruit stall but his state pension was a few years away and could he really support his wife and three children without the extra income? He pushed open the wooden doors to Bow Road Police Station and followed Yasser Rabbani to reception.

Yasser, dressed in a tailored pinstripe suit with a woollen mustard coat slung around his shoulders, looked like he’d stepped out of a Scorsese movie. Despite approaching his sixties, he was powerfully built and strikingly handsome – clearly the source of Amir’s good looks. He placed a firm hand on the counter. ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for my son.’

The receptionist, a heavyset woman in her late forties, glanced up from her keyboard. ‘What’s his name, sir?’

Hashim leaned forward, his solemn eyes laced with worry. ‘Woh kiya kehraha hai?’ he asked Yasser to translate.

Yasser held up an impatient hand. ‘Ap kuch nehi boloh. Me uske saath baat karongi.’ He urged the older man to let him handle the conversation. He spoke with the woman for a few long minutes and then, in a muted tone, explained that their sons were under arrest.

Hashim wiped at his brow. ‘Saab, aap kyun nahi uske taraf se boltay? Mujhe kuch samajh nahi aaygi.’

Yasser shook his head. In Urdu, he said, ‘They don’t have interpreters here right now. And I can’t go with your son. Who’s going to look after mine?’

The older man grimaced. What could he – an uneducated man – do for his son? Thirty-five years he had been in Britain. Thirty-five years he had functioned with only a pinch of English. Now he was thrust into this fearsome place and he had no words to unpick the threat. He wished that Rana were here. His wife, who assiduously ran her women’s group on Wednesday afternoons, could speak it better than he. For a long time, she urged him to learn it too. Language is the path to progress, she would say, only half ironically. The guilt rose like smoke around him. Why had he spent so many exhausted hours by the TV? There was time for learning after a day on the stall. Cowed by embarrassment, he let himself be led away, along a corridor, into an austere room.

Farid sat alone under the fluorescent light, fingers knitted together as if in prayer. He looked up, a flame of sorrow sparking in his eyes. He offered a thin smile. ‘It’s okay, Aba,’ he said in Urdu. ‘Nothing happened. They just want to question us.’

Hashim sat down with his hands splayed on his knees and his joints already stiffening from the air conditioning. He stared at the wiry grey carpet to still the nerves that jangled in his limbs.

Hashim Khan had learnt to fear the white man. After moving to England in the seventies, he had learnt that wariness and deference were necessary in all dealings with the majority race. Now, called upon to protect his son, he knew no amount of deference would help. The door shut behind him with a metallic thud. He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer.

‘Mr Rabbani, please take a seat. Would you like a drink? We have coffee, tea, water.’

‘No,’ said Yasser. ‘Tell me what this is about or I’m calling a lawyer.’

Mia was unruffled. ‘If your son is guilty, he probably needs one. If not, he’ll likely be out of here in an hour.’

Yasser scowled. ‘Then tell me what this is about.’

Mia pointed at a chair and waited for him to sit. She explained that the interview was being recorded and ran through some formalities.

Amir shifted in his seat, feeling unnaturally small next to his father’s frame.

Mia began, ‘Amir, can you tell me where you were on the evening of Thursday the twenty-seventh of June?’

‘Yes. I was at home until about 7 p.m., then I went to a party with some of my friends.’

‘What time did you get there?’

Amir shrugged. ‘I don’t really remember.’

‘Okay, what did you do after the party?’

‘I went home.’

‘What time did you get home?’

‘I’m not sure. About 1 a.m.’

Mia made a note. ‘And you went straight home after the party?’

‘Yes, I just said that.’

Mia smiled coldly. ‘Well, what if I said we have reports of you attending an after-party of sorts at seventy-two Bow Docks, a derelict warehouse approximately seventy metres from the location of the party?’

Amir frowned. ‘That wasn’t an after-party. We were just fooling around on our way home.’

Mia glanced at the father. He was like a nervous cat, poised to pounce at any moment. Perhaps a soft approach was best here. ‘Okay, it wasn’t an after-party – my mistake. What did you boys get up to there?’

‘We just hung out.’

Mia tapped the table with her index finger. ‘And by that you mean?’

‘We just talked, played music and …’ He swallowed hard. ‘We had a smoke.’

Amir’s father snapped to attention. ‘A smoke? Of what?’

‘Dad, I’m sorry, it’s not something we do all the time. Just sometimes.’

‘A smoke of what?’

The boy stammered. ‘Ganja.’

Yasser shot back in his chair. ‘Tu ganja peera hai? Kahan se aaya hai? Kis haraami ne tujhe yeh diya hai?’

‘Aba, please. It was just once or twice.’ Amir tried to push back his chair but it was bolted to the floor.

‘I work all hours of the day to give you the life you have and you’re going to throw it away on drugs?’

Amir shrank beneath the ire as if physically ducking blows. ‘Dad, I swear to God, it was only once or twice. Kasam.’

His father’s voice grew stony. ‘Just wait until your mother hears about this.’ Yasser shook his head in disbelief. ‘We’ll deal with this later.’ He exhaled slowly and turned to Mia. ‘I’m sorry, officer. Please continue.’

Mia felt a flicker of grudging respect. It was obvious he cared about his son’s mistakes. Too often she saw young men trudge through here like ghosts, floating from one place to another with nothing at all to tether them. Yasser Rabbani clearly cared about his son.

‘So you were smoking cannabis,’ said Mia. ‘Was there alcohol?’

Amir vigorously shook his head. ‘No.’

Mia made a note to ask again later. ‘Who else was there?’

Amir nodded at the door. ‘Mo, Hassan and Farid.’

‘Did anyone join you throughout the course of the night?’

‘No.’

Mia caught the fissure in his voice. ‘Amir, you should know that our officers are collecting your computers as we speak and we’ll be examining your phones. If you or your friends are hiding something, we’ll find out.’ She smiled lightly. ‘Don’t you watch CSI?’

Amir blinked. ‘Okay, there was one other person there but I really don’t want this to get out. I’ve been trying to protect her forever.’

‘Who’s that?’

He hesitated. ‘Her name is Jodie Wolfe. She’s a girl from school. She has something called neurofibromatosis which messes up your face. We had a class about it at school but the kids called her the Elephant Woman anyway.’

‘What was she doing at the warehouse?’

Amir shifted in his chair. ‘She’s a sweet girl but she can be a little bit … sad. She’s had a crush on me since year seven and even now, five years later, she follows me around – pretends she just bumped into me.’

‘Is that what she did that night? Pretend to bump into you?’

Amir shook his head. ‘No, even she wouldn’t be that sad. She said she was looking for her friend Nina. She’s always going off with different boys so Jodie must’ve lost her. She said she saw a bunch of us heading here and figured there was some kind of after-party.’

‘Did you invite her to join you?’

Amir scoffed lightly. ‘No, she just turned up. We were hanging out – just the boys.’

‘So she turned up at the warehouse or joined you before?’

‘Yes, she turned up at the warehouse.’

‘Then what happened?’

Amir frowned. ‘She asked if she could have a smoke. The boys didn’t want to share one with her. I didn’t say anything. I mean, she’s not diseased or anything but she’s scary to look at because of her condition so I could understand why they said that. She seemed upset so I tried to comfort her.’

‘How?’

He shrugged. ‘I put my arm around her and told her to ignore them.’

Mia couldn’t place his emotion. Guilt? Shame? Embarrassment?

‘Then she …’ his voice trailed off.

‘Then she?’

The boy’s face flushed red. ‘She whispered in my ear and said she would do something for me if we got rid of the boys.’

Amir’s father stood abruptly. He turned to the door and then back to his son. He opened his mouth to speak but then closed it again. Finally, he sat back down in silence and trained his gaze away from his son, as if the space between them might swallow the mortification of what was to come.

Mia leaned forward. ‘You said that Jodie whispered in your ear. What did she say?’

Amir glanced sideways at his father. ‘She—she said she would give me a blowjob and then started describing it. I was stunned. I always had this idea that she was a sweet girl.’

‘How did you respond?’

‘I took my arm off her and told her to go home. The boys started laughing and making kissing noises. I was really embarrassed so I started on her too.’ He paused, shifted in his chair and made a visible effort to focus on Mia. ‘I’m not proud of it but I said there’s no way we’d share the spliff with her; that we didn’t want to swap saliva with a dog. I knew she was hurt because I’ve always been alright to her but—’ Amir pinched the skin between his brows, as if to ease a headache. Then, he spoke with surprising maturity, ‘Look, I have an ego – I know that – and egos are fragile. The kids at school look at me and see the cricket captain, the guy that gets all the girls, the guy that has it all – and if it got out that I was cosying up to the school freak, then my reputation would take a hit. I like Jodie but she’s not the kind of girl I want to be linked with that way, so I had to put a stop to it. She got upset and started crying. I felt bad but I told her to leave.’

‘And then?’

‘She left. She was crying and I think she may have had a drink because she was stumbling about a bit, but she left. Despite what the boys say, I think we all felt a bit bad so we wrapped it up, finished the spliff and went home.’

‘And have you seen Jodie since then?’

‘No. Why? Is she okay?’

‘Jodie says she was raped that night.’

The boy’s face turned ashen. ‘She’s the one who said I raped her?’

Mia’s voice was cold. ‘Yes, Mr Rabbani. She’s the one.’

DC Dexter put his elbows on the table. Calmly, he repeated himself, ‘Jodie Wolfe said you, Amir and Mohammed raped her that night while Farid stood by and watched. What do you have to say to that?’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Hassan, his eyes ringed with pale, uncomprehending horror. He looked to his father. ‘Aba, Allah Qur’an, that’s a lie.’

Irfan Tanweer was an older version of his son: short and wiry with tight ringlets of black hair atop a thin and hawkish face. His beady eyes danced with suspicion as he leaned forward and, in a thick Bangladeshi accent, said, ‘You must be mistaken. My son – he is a religious boy. He would not do this.’ He held out a hand to quieten his son. ‘We are good people, sir, Mr Dexter. I have worked hard to make a home for my wife and my boy. I have a decent boy. Of that I am very sure.’

Dexter nodded placidly. ‘That may be true, sir, but we need to know what happened. We need to hear your son’s side of the story.’

‘There is no “side” of the story. My son will tell the truth.’ He turned to Hassan. ‘Hasa kotha khor,’ he urged him to start.

Mo ducked in embarrassment when his father gripped the edge of the table. Each fingernail had a dried crust of blood along the cuticle. His father wore butchers’ gloves at work and washed his hands thoroughly but that thin crust of blood seemed to always cling on. The two didn’t look like father and son. Zubair Ahmed with his burly shoulders and broad chest was a pillar of a man. Mo was tall too, but thin and awkward. Where Zubair’s hands were strong and meaty, Mo’s were thin and delicate, almost effeminate in their movement as they fiddled now with his glasses.

He sat forward in his chair, shoulders hunched as if he were cold. ‘I’m not confused, sir,’ he said. ‘We didn’t hurt Jodie – not the way you say we did.’

The detective watched him with reproach. ‘I think you are confused, son, or you would see that the wisest thing for you to do now is to tell the truth.’

Mo remembered the sharp pain in Jodie’s eyes and the sting of betrayal when he sided with the lads. His obedience to them had cost him too: his pride, his integrity, his belief in his own valour. His complicity felt viscous in his throat and he swallowed hard so that he could speak. ‘I shouldn’t have let them treat her that way. They shouldn’t have called her a dog.’ He hesitated. ‘But they were just words. We were in a loose and silly mood and,’ his voice grew thick, ‘we took it out on her because she was there and she was weak.’ He blinked rapidly, sensing tears. He hated that they’d targeted Jodie. He, all too familiar with the sting of mockery, hated that he’d let it happen. With a deep breath to steady his voice, he said, ‘We hurt Jodie but not in the way she says.’ He swallowed. ‘We were awful to her, but what she said did not happen and I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not confused about that.’

Amir sat in silence, his mouth open in a cartoonish O. His father spoke to him in a burst of Urdu, the long vowels urgent and angry. A lock of his salt and pepper hair fell free of its pomade and he swiped at it in a swift and severe motion that betrayed a slipping composure.

Mia firmly quietened him and urged Amir to speak.

‘But it’s Jodie …’ he said. ‘You’ve seen her. I – we – wouldn’t do something like that.’ He ran a hand across the back of his head. ‘This is so bizarre.’

Mia studied him closely. He seemed neither worried nor guilty – just confused. She spoke to him in a low voice. ‘Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was Hassan and Mohammed that did it and you and Farid just watched. Could that have happened and Jodie just got confused?’

He frowned. ‘Look, we were all together the whole time. There is no way any of the boys could have done anything to Jodie and they’ll all tell you the same. Nothing happened.’

Mia’s face grew stony. ‘Then you won’t mind giving us DNA samples.’

Amir shrank back in his chair, his athletic frame suddenly small. His father held up a hand. ‘Don’t you need a warrant for that?’

Mia leaned in close. ‘Mr Rabbani, your son is under arrest for rape. Do you understand how serious that is? We can take DNA samples if we want to.’ She paused. ‘And we want to.’

Amir grimaced. ‘I didn’t do it.’

Mia smiled without humour. ‘Then we don’t have a problem, do we?’

It was an hour later that she watched the group of men file out of the station. She turned to Dexter. ‘I can’t work it out. Do you think they colluded beforehand?’

Dexter’s face creased in thought. ‘I didn’t get a sense of rehearsed answers.’

‘Were either of yours even a little bit tempted to shop their friends?’

‘No. They’re too clever for that. They know all about divide and conquer.’

Mia frowned. ‘I just can’t work it out,’ she repeated. She stared at the door, still swinging on its hinges in the wind.

Sameena Tanweer sat motionless, her tiny frame comically small on the sofa. A network of fine grey cracks spread across the leather and a fist-sized patch stained one of the seats. She had caught Hassan as a child pouring the contents of her Amla hair oil in a concentrated pool on the spot. She had tried to hide it with homemade sofa covers, flowery and powder blue, but her husband had shouted. He was still bitter about spending two months’ wages on the three-piece suite all those years ago and damn him if he was going to cover up real leather with cheap fabric like a fakir.

She sat there now, compulsively tracing the stain as the phone beside her hummed with the news. Her husband’s tone had been rushed and harsh, untempered by words of comfort as he told her of their son’s arrest.

In her mind, she searched frantically through a list. She couldn’t call Jahanara’s mum. That woman would spread the news to five others before she even came round. What about Kulsum? Wasn’t she always talking about her lawyer son? Or was he an accountant? Sameena couldn’t remember. Did she, after thirty years in Britain, really have no friends that she could call? Her social circle was limited to her neighbours, each of whom visited her several times a week to gossip about the unruly daughters and unkempt houses of their mutual acquaintances. Sameena always listened with patience but never partook in the gossip. She knew that every family had its flaws and she refused to pick apart another woman’s life.