Vengeance, page 14
Malik looked to Nadeem, hoping that he would see sense and explain to Jia and Idris that they were falling fast down the rabbit hole. But Nadeem wasn’t the saviour he expected, simply shaking his head instead.
‘I thought we were going to go straight?’ said Malik. ‘Wasn’t that why we did all this shit?’
‘In time, Malik,’ said Jia. ‘It was always going to be this way for a while.’
‘I get it, I know that it’s very difficult to be right there within the bullshit, trying to improve it, without becoming part of it. All this gangster stuff, all this rogue trading, it might earn us respect in the end,’ said Malik, ‘but it is changing us and I don’t think I like what I’m seeing.’
Nadeem said, ‘There are kids in this city who are desperate to be seen and have their voices heard.’
‘I know it’s a myth,’ said Malik. ‘I know that white people are like kids with stabilisers on their bikes and the rest of us are here on our penny farthings and unicycles, and we are still catching up with them. I see it at the hospital all the time – who makes consultant first, who gets the best job. But I also know that they’re afraid, and that this is a last grab for power for them. What we have to decide is whether the new systems will support just us or everyone. Are we like the white people we see around us or are we better?’
Jia Khan listened. She wanted to justify herself, to tell Malik he was wrong, but she couldn’t because she didn’t think he was. The truth of it was that they were becoming more and more enmeshed in the family system that was much closer to aspects of the old ways than Jia wanted. Something that had started out as selling drugs and sex was now built on massive amounts of fraud. Their legitimate business interests were growing too, and flourishing, but nowhere near the speed of all the illegal interests, and of course not everyone could partake in that. There were still kids on the streets who thought their only chance was dealing drugs, and elderly and vulnerable people out of pocket because of what Meera had done to them, not to mention the vacuum left by Nowak that had hit so many hard in their pockets. The money needed replacing in all these places, and those lives had to be protected.
Jia felt the weight of responsibility on her shoulders. She had no idea how she was going to change things for everybody. Perhaps she had lived away for just too long and had lost grip of what young and old people needed, and what they were interested in. She needed someone, who knew the landscape upon which her empire sat, to guide her. For the young people, she needed Maria, but she was also reluctant to get her sister involved.
Jia’s phone buzzed. She looked at the notification. It was a message from Henry Paxton.
Before she could read it, Idris interrupted. ‘Jia, you need to see this,’ he said, handing her his tablet. It was a bulletin on the hedge fund they’d hit the worst. It was Lord Paxton’s.
Somehow that didn’t seem like a bad thing to have happened. Jia wasn’t sure why she felt that way, just that for her, Henry Paxton was an itch she didn’t mind scratching.
She opened the message on her phone.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ it said.
CHAPTER 26
When Adam Diaz called, she knew it had something to do with Henry Paxton. It was too much of a coincidence to be any other way.
‘I fly into Heathrow on Tuesday, but I’ll come to you if that’s easier?’ he’d said, always eager to simplify life for her. He was a successful financier with intimate knowledge of the workings of crime families, because he came from one.
Jia had been on an evening walk across the Yorkshire Dales with Maria when he’d called. She’d taken to walking after Lirian was born as it helped soothe her mind. The Dales were home to the darkest skies in the country, and with memories of Zan’s love of stargazing, it felt like he was with them. This was the land of waterproof jackets and hiking boots, things that gave gun-owning a respectability, things she didn’t possess.
Even with the lengthening summer days, darkness had caught them out, the unpolluted night sky so clear that the sisters could see the Milky Way. They were far from the sights and sounds of urban life and were happy to head back to the car in silence.
Jia’s phone vibrated. The timing of Adam’s call left her considering whether this was a sign from God; or was it because the devil always found his people in the darkness?
‘Who was it?’ said Maria after Jia had ended the call.
‘An old friend. He was an American attorney and money person working for big-name tech companies. Last I heard he was working for an investment bank. Something to do with fraud.’
‘Did you date him?’
‘Not really.’
She couldn’t admit to Maria what she’d never admitted to herself, which was that although she and Adam had been friends for years, when it looked like the relationship was moving towards something deeper, her fear of even the slightest commitment with anyone other than Elyas had paralysed her.
‘We offer creative counsel for high-stake matters,’ he’d told her during that first dinner party fifteen years ago. She found herself seated beside him, thanks to meddling friends who always needed an extra to make up numbers.
‘That sounds fraudulent,’ she’d said. She was bored by small talk and had zero inclination to make new acquaintances. She shouldn’t really have been there, and she knew her unfriendly attitude wasn’t fair on her hosts or the other guests. But when his laugh took her by surprise, she’d reconsidered. And he’d leaned over and quietly said, ‘The best lines are the grey ones. That way there’s no guilt about crossing them.’
She’d been struck by his immense mass of hair that parted to one side, gleaming and black, and had assumed they shared the same heritage. She also guessed that he was a bit of a player. Wrong on both counts.
Circumstances brought them together again one Sunday morning, when she bumped into him in the café of the National Gallery.
‘I wonder how many times we’ve been in the same room and passed each other by,’ he said.
‘I would have remembered you. I remember everything.’
‘I must come clean,’ he said. ‘I did my due diligence after we met, and I’ve discovered we are quite alike. Our families are in the same business.’
She was taken aback by how forthright he was, and honest. She had never spoken about her father’s business interests as openly. He told her he was in London to leave an old life in the States behind, and Jia had understood exactly what that was like – how it left one exposed, like raw nerves, with the kind of pain one feels compelled to touch over and over again, even though it brings no relief.
***
When Tuesday came, she found herself watching him before he noticed her, standing in the doorway of the café. She’d picked a place in North Yorkshire that was close to a station, somewhere easy to get to but quiet and out of the way, wanting to keep a clear distance between past and present.
She touched the nape of her neck, surprised by her own hesitancy. She was older now, she’d become a mother again, and her familial responsibilities left her feeling less pleasing on the eye than when they’d last seen each other. She was surprised by her need to feel attractive.
But he smiled and kissed Jia on both cheeks, and she relaxed. The old warmth was still there. They laughed at the fact that they were dressed almost identically. Both in a navy hoodie, denim jeans, trendy trainers and a dark peacoat.
‘How have you been?’ he asked.
‘Good, I’ve been good.’
‘I came back and you weren’t in London any longer.’
‘Did you expect to find me waiting around for you?’ There was a sparkle in her eye, and it felt good to be outside her countless circles of responsibility. He laughed his raucous laugh she remembered well, and they slipped easily back into how it used to be between them.
‘My father died,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing you already know.’
He nodded.
Adam understood what a father’s death meant for people from their worlds. He often thought of Jia Khan as he went about his daily life. She was a touchstone to him, their lives connected by an invisible thread across time and space.
‘You’ve rattled cages, Jia Khan, and you need to know that. That hedge fund you hurt, its portfolio holders were some very powerful men, including the arms dealer Henry Paxton.’
‘I know he’s not happy with us right now. Are you visiting on behalf of all these portfolio holders? And there’s me thinking you were here to see me.’
He reached out and took her hand. She let him, just for a moment, before taking it back. Their lives were different now; there were other people involved, serious relationships.
She glanced out of the window at the green of the fields stretching up to the fork in the road, the drystone wall lined with telephone poles and a bus stop in the distance, the signs of a modern life fading into obscurity.
Their relationship had been the drop-in-and-drop-out kind. Adam had told himself that it was because he had been too young to settle down, but really it was because he always felt Jia could undo him. There were times he’d thought that their relationship would be devastatingly beautiful, and at other times just devastating.
Perhaps if they’d met before Elyas and Ahad, when Jia hadn’t been ravaged by loss, things would have been different, and Adam had known that, even during those years away from her husband, Zan’s death had made anything between them totally impossible. But he’d understood, too, that even if none of that had happened, the reality was that Jia would have grown into a different kind of woman, one that he might never have been drawn to. Even now, Adam regarded the cracks in her soul to be filled with golden thread. Kintsugi, the Japanese called it.
‘Remember those events and classes you used to make me go to? The ones in Borough Market, Spitalfields and the V&A, where we masqueraded as normal people?’ she said. ‘They are nice times to remember.’
‘You always were an early riser, and someone had to stop you spending your weekends running or working.’
It was true, and she had enjoyed having someone arrange things and send her the details, so that all she had to do was turn up.
Once, when they had been talking about their fathers, Jia remembered Adam confiding, ‘You know whose name came across my desk last year? The leader of the posh boys who made my life hell at school. He heads up the hedge fund that his father built. Turns out, my own dad wasn’t the only one doing all kinds of illegal shit. We take the guy to court, he swears under oath that a document, one that’s key to our case, never existed. Last week I found the notary who witnessed the signing of it. Among the 8.6 million residents of New York, like a needle in a haystack, I found him. And it feels like dynamite.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Jia had asked.
‘That’s the thing. I haven’t decided yet. One minute I want to withhold the evidence as leverage, with the threat of passing it to my dad. And then I tell myself to do what all those law-abiding lawyers would do and declare it.’
‘That only shows you’re human,’ she had told him, ‘like everyone else.’
Those Saturday mornings were a lifetime ago to the Jia Khan and Adam Diaz who sat together now.
‘Why are we here?’ said Jia.
‘It was a lot easier to sit in judgement back in the good old days in London, far from the families who relied on my father’s interests. Things are different now. Jia, this failing hedge fund is affecting my family’s interests.’
Jia understood. ‘I’m not proud of what I do, but I am not ashamed either.’
‘I know,’ Adam said. ‘But you should know that these guys are watching you, and they are bigger players than your father was and bigger than you can ever be. I’ve grown up with these guys, and now they’re telling me you may understand their needs better than some of the bankers and accountants they currently use.’
Although Adam’s words were mild, Jia recognised the threat at their heart.
‘And if I don’t want to work with them?’
‘You know the answer, Jia. We always knew, didn’t we? Deep inside. You and I might have entertained the idea of getting out in those less responsible days, but I think we both recognise now that the chances are neither of us will get out of this alive.’
Adam was one of the few people who saw her clearly and saw her world clearly too. There was something about the way he looked at her, as if he could see into her soul. She knew he was right. She would either have to get into bed with the plutocrats, or she would have to destroy every single one of them. Neither choice was appealing.
‘Your husband, what’s he like?’ said Adam, changing the subject.
‘My husband is an honest journalist. The kind of man who writes about people like us. I did try and tell him a long time ago, but I don’t think he really wants to recognise the whole truth of who I am.’
‘Maybe he loves you. The Hollywood kind of love you always scorned when we watched a romcom.’
‘Yes, I think maybe he does. Or did. These days I feel the scales are beginning to fall from his eyes. I think he’s starting what will become a long process of leaving me.’
Adam was surprised. This was quite an admission on her part. ‘What will you do?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘Maybe my sons are better off without me. I can’t seem to get things right. It’s why I work all the time. People are grateful, but not my children. They don’t understand what I do for them. Lirian is beautiful and funny and clever, and I know that he will grow and want to go out in the world and do things that are frightening and dangerous, just like his big brother. These children do not know what it was like for us, how we have fought to be accepted, how many doors we have opened for them. The older one, Ahad, has no idea what it is like to be rejected and alone. He thinks he does, but he doesn’t. He wants to show up in the world in all his authenticity, and I just want him to thicken his skin slowly before he does. And I am the last person he wants to listen to.’
‘Remember I’m always there. If none of this works, or even if it does,’ Adam said, and Jia felt her heart lift at the idea of a different possibility.
The ringing of her phone broke the spell, and she knew duty was calling her home and with the Jirga. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then answered the call.
CHAPTER 27
‘I’m losing my faith,’ the imam admitted.
Jia had needed counsel, advice about Ahad, from whom she felt estranged, life and other things to do with faith. As it turned out, so did he.
They were sitting opposite each other in the centre of the prayer room, as their fathers would have done, under a stained-glass dome made of intricate geometric patterns in various shades of blue and green. Shafts of coloured light fell on to the maroon carpet.
‘Not in Islam, so much, but in an omnipotent creator, maybe,’ he went on. ‘So much of what I see doesn’t sit right and the more I try and untangle it, the more the knots tighten.’
Jia related to the imam’s sentiment. But his life was built on the foundation of being an imam: to lose his faith would mean the dismantling of all of that.
‘I see injustice around me, and I’m at a loss. Even the work that you do, Khan sahiba, I hear things…’
‘Speak plainly,’ she said.
‘I am not judging your work, as it makes sense to me. But perhaps that’s the rub. If it didn’t, then everything would be fine, as I would know what was wrong and what was right.’ He paused. ‘Faith is hard, but religion is harder. Our scriptures have been interpreted in so many ways.’
Jia listened carefully. She needed him in her Jirga. Her people needed belief in the world to come in order to live in this one, for good and evil only balanced where an unseen afterlife existed. She couldn’t advise the imam about his faith, but she could show him his place in her world and his importance to her. She brought the conversation back round to her problems.
‘My son, I don’t know what to say to him,’ she said. ‘He has his whole life ahead of him. What do I tell him? We were raised in a world where he is regarded as an abomination. When I lived in London, I became friends with people who were gay, or queer as Ahad described himself. I loved those friends as my family, and I questioned and rejected what I had been taught. But I don’t know what to tell my son about all of this, because while I can live with a fragmented idea of my faith, I cannot pass that on to him.’
Jia could see the sadness and understanding in the imam’s eyes. His face was soft, his unlined hands sat in his crossed lap. He had never done a day’s physical labour in his life, and yet here he was, trying to shore up the edifice of community. He was bright, brilliant and honest. But some would see their conversation as a danger to the status quo of society.
Jia needed men like him behind her though.
Disruption required one to stand in the wilderness of faith and family, to risk losing it all, while daring greatly. People like the imam were rare; men like him were rarer still. She hoped he was strong enough.
He finally spoke. His words came slowly, as if he was tasting something new, trying on something untried. ‘In the Quran, there is no word that explicitly describes homosexual or transgender persons. The Arabic terms were invented after the Quran’s revelation by jurists and journalists, doctors and social critics. Islam was never supposed to be about organisations, but that’s the side effect of success, I guess. A lack of unity means that, unlike the Catholic church, we aren’t answerable to one person. We don’t have a formal movement, and so all change is gradual. But it does impact our immediate families, our friends, the people we work with. The question is whether, without a word, there is anything wrong. Not all the things we believe to be law are law. They are interpretations, ideas handed down from generation to generation.’
‘Then where are the sermons saying this?’ Jia asked. ‘Why aren’t you preaching this at Jumma prayers?’
‘For those whose hearts and minds are sealed, they don’t hear me. But this doesn’t mean they won’t one day.’
