Vengeance, page 16
But for the Khan family things had changed dramatically. In an instant, everything was about to come crashing down.
Idris had seen more than his fair share of these moments. When his mother had died, he had been angry. He’d looked at other children, wondering why they got to hold their mother’s hand, smell her perfume and fall asleep in her arms. Jia’s mother, Sanam Khan, had sensed his pain and saved him from disappearing down the well of rage that he’d been digging. If it hadn’t been for her, Idris knew his life would have turned out differently. That Jia’s sons might experience what he had, reignited his rage.
He cursed the traffic, the red lights and the pedestrian crossing. He needed to get to the club to see for himself, to hope against hope, to make sure Jia was alive, breathing, and that his world had not collapsed once more.
The phone rang. It was his brother. ‘Salaam,’ Idris said, and then he made a sharp intake of breath at Nadeem’s words. ‘Ahad?’ said Idris. ‘What do you mean, missing? From where? ... Where am I? I’m turning into the car park at the martial arts club. It looks deserted and quiet. I can’t see anyone, but her car is here. I’ll call you back.’
Ahad was missing, Jia had been shot – what was happening? What should he do?
Idris felt dizzy, and then he told himself to focus; he needed to focus. He began to bargain with God. ‘Allah, if you get us out of this and save Jia’s life, I swear I’ll go straight. I’ll be at masjid praying Tahajjud every night, I promise.’
Up close it was clear that Jia’s Aston Martin was badly wrecked against the wall of the club. Idris’s heart fell and the life left his limbs. He mustered what strength he could and went to investigate.
There was glass and broken body kit everywhere. But Jia’s car was empty. He saw blood, a lot of blood, leading to the doorway.
He darted towards it, grabbing the handle and yanking the door open, praying that he’d not see what the evidence around him suggested.
But that’s when Idris found Jia.
Her body crumpled in a heap as if she were a rag doll, her hair soaked in blood.
CHAPTER 31
1974
Akbar Khan looked at Mary. She was more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen. The girls in his city were kept away from prying eyes, wrapped in shawls, their heads covered and eyes lowered, and he knew always to maintain a respectful distance. His mother had raised him this way.
But Mary was sharp and strong, uncovered but still modest. Where his skin was pale, hers was dark; but her eyes were as large as his and, also like his, glistened with flecks of gold.
The first time Akbar Khan saw her was at the Legal Help Centre. He’d pushed the door open, stepping out of the cold wind into the warmth of the office, and seen her immediately, sitting behind a desk across the room. He had wrongly assumed she was a secretary, and later this was something she would tease him about endlessly. She was wearing a polo neck the colour of caramel. It sat high around her neck, and even from a distance he could see she wasn’t like everyone else around her.
‘Excuse me, I need some help, please,’ he had said, looking into Mary’s eyes, hoping for some kind of connection. Then he’d caught himself, his gaze a second too long, and abruptly turned away.
She’d smiled, and he’d told her about the problem with his contract at the Pembroke.
‘You don’t sound like the other Jamaicans,’ he said later, when they met for a coffee in a café close by. ‘My neighbour Errol is from Jamaica. He used to live in Clapham South, but now he lives in Brixton.’ All the dark-skinned people Akbar Khan had come across in London so far said they were Jamaican, and so this seemed a safe thing to say.
‘I’m not from Jamaica,’ she replied, giving him a firm look as if she expected better from him. He felt like a man who had caught a magical fish but had let it slip away because of his stupidity.
When Mary had inquired across her desk in the Legal Help Centre if he was Pakistani, he’d asked her how she knew – most people assumed he was Indian. She’d told him it was on his paperwork. And all Akbar Khan could think to say was, ‘Oh.’
Her face softened, and hope surged in Akbar’s heart. Sitting in that café, he knew already that he wanted her.
‘My grandfather was in the textile business. He owned mills across India, but after Partition, he fell on hard times,’ he said, hoping his ancestry of lost generational wealth would impress her.
‘Partition?’
‘When the British split India and made Pakistan. We lost everything, almost everything. My parents weren’t used to working – they’d been waited on all their life. They didn’t handle it well. Much of that responsibility fell to me, and I missed out on a lot of my education.’
She’d smiled at him, and he’d felt seen, even as he realised by the curve of her mouth that she knew perfectly well what Partition meant.
People seemed to look through him, and not at him, in this frosty, inhospitable country. Mary made him feel as if pieces of him were coming together right in front of her eyes, making something rare and beautiful.
‘I grew up in Cameroon,’ she said as she sipped her tea. ‘My family are political, involved in industry. I’m the daughter of my father’s youngest and favourite wife. That is why I am able to be here, and to study, instead of getting married straight away. My mother fought hard for me.’
He nodded. He knew a little about the battles that women so often lost. He’d witnessed them in Peshawar, and occasionally in London.
‘What is it like, in your country?’
‘Not that different to here,’ she said. ‘Maybe a little warmer. And the people are kinder. Sometimes.’
Something passed across her face, and he recognised the look. It was homesickness mixed with the knowledge that things back home weren’t necessarily better. They were different, that’s all.
***
It wasn’t long before Akbar Khan and Mary were spending virtually all their free time in each other’s company. Walking through the falling leaves of Tooting Common, eating doner kebabs on Tottenham Court Road, listening to music on Mary’s record player – it didn’t matter what they did, as each minute together was perfect, each time they met like a homecoming.
Mary’s ferocious intelligence was intimidating to Akbar Khan at first though. He wasn’t used to women being so forthright. But his London self meant he could adjust his view of the world more easily than he might have done in Pakistan.
Mary had been in London for nearly two years longer than him, and so she naturally became his guide as an immigrant.
And when Akbar Khan’s brother, Bazigh, was arrested, it felt natural that Mary was the first person he thought of to ask for help.
He had run through the rain across town in a panic, clutching a newspaper over his head as protection. The doors to the Legal Help Centre were closed and locked, but through the blinds, he could see Mary putting on her camel-coloured mac and tying a scarf around her head. He rapped on the door hard, and then went back to the window in desperation, banging his palm against it.
She looked up, fear in her eyes, and then relaxed, seeing it was only him. She came to the door. He heard the various locks and bolts open, and then the red door was pushed open.
‘Please, Mary, my brother, he has been arrested. I don’t know what to do.’ Akbar was out of breath because he wasn’t used to running, and so his words were wheezy.
She hadn’t asked any questions other than where Bazigh Khan had been taken. Later, when they knew each other better, he asked her why she had put herself out to help him that night. ‘I am a good judge of character,’ she said.
That day, standing by her desk as the rain poured down outside, she’d picked up the clunky handle to her red phone and dialled a number, each turn and whirr and click of the dial an eternity. What was it about this woman that made him trust her, Akbar wondered. It was in the unsaid as much as the said; it was in gestures and, like love, in the eyes, he decided.
‘Hello? ... Yes, it’s Mary. I need your help with something. Can you come now? ... Yes, I know it’s raining, but you have a car, don’t you?’ Her manner was direct yet somehow warm.
When she finished the call, she turned to him. ‘That was an old university friend. He’s going to meet us at the police station. He’s rich, he’s white, he’s connected – and, well, he knows how to handle the police.’
She led him out on to the street. ‘You need an overcoat, Khan,’ she said.
‘Not Akbar tonight?’
‘Khan is better.’
She took off her scarf and wrapped it around his neck. It smelt of her, of perfume and the body lotion she covered herself with every morning. He was grateful for the warmth and the fragrance. He had never been this close to a woman before. It was an effort to turn his mind away from her towards Bazigh.
They arrived at the police station, and Akbar saw his brother standing outside with his hands deep in his blazer pockets. Beside him, offering him a cigarette, was a man in an overcoat with a briefcase. As they got closer, Akbar noticed the cut of his shoes, the shape of his chin.
‘There’s Henry,’ said Mary, waving at the man. ‘A modern Machiavelli.’
And Akbar recognised Henry as the man from the hotel, the one with the wallet.
Bazigh dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his foot, pulled his collar up and dipped his head as he ran across the road. Something about the way he moved made him look older. The brothers embraced, Akbar Khan glad to see his little brother alive and free. The bruises would be visible in the cold light of day.
Months later, while in bed with Mary, Akbar Khan told her how at that very moment he knew things had changed.
It wasn’t anything Bazigh said; it wasn’t the bruise on the side of his face, his hair crusted hard with blood from where the police officer had hit him with his truncheon. It was something about the way he carried himself. He was different now, as if he’d splintered into two distinct people. There was the Bazigh who didn’t want to be noticed, who disappeared into the background to avoid calling attention to himself, to avoid causing offence. Then there was the other Bazigh, the one who walked with swagger, who pulled himself up to full size so that anyone who considered messing with him would think again. It was a change that would last forever.
And some germ of that experience found its way from his brother deep, deep into Akbar Khan’s heart, and from there it reproduced and grew.
CHAPTER 32
1974
The men were on their way to the Scotch Club, tucked away behind the luxurious Fortnum and Mason emporium. London was lit up with the warm glow of Christmas lights, but the men lifted their collars against the chill in the wind. They looked up at the department store’s clock as it began to chime. Two little, male clockwork figures moved out, one in red, the other in green, and bowed to each other.
‘William Fortnum was a footman for the royal family,’ Bazigh Khan said, pointing at the figurines and then to the decorated shop windows. ‘They liked new candles every day, so he started taking the old ones and selling them.’
‘Sounds like a swindle, Brother,’ said Akbar Khan.
‘Sounds to me like good business sense,’ Bazigh replied.
Akbar smiled at the way working on a market stall had made his brother streetwise.
Watching the wealthy of London go about their business at the Pembroke always left Akbar Khan thinking too, and he knew he was learning a lot of things that one day he was determined to put into practice.
‘Every empire is built on a crime,’ he said now.
It was late and they were meeting Henry at his favourite drinking establishment. Henry helping Bazigh out and Akbar knowing Mary had greased the wheels of their friendship – and of course neither Henry nor Akbar had forgotten that moment with the money-stuffed wallet.
The plush club wasn’t the kind of place Akbar Khan usually frequented, and Bazigh Khan’s wandering eyes could not get enough of it. The sheen of Akbar’s green suit against his glossy hair made him look like he belonged here as a customer, alongside the musicians, artists and young and wealthy elite who were hoping to monetise their talent.
‘Have you heard of the Grosvenor diamond?’ Henry asked, taking a sip from his glass.
Akbar Khan shook his head.
‘It’s a 45-carat diamond,’ said Henry. He leaned back against the purple scallops of the private booth, swilling his drink, making the ice clink.
‘Is he a lawyer or a jeweller?’ Bazigh Khan said to his brother in Pashto.
‘I am a lawyer,’ said Henry, and both brothers realised they must be careful what they said in front of him. But Henry smiled then, and added, ‘I’m interested in the gemstone for personal reasons. And I need your help to procure it.’
‘But surely you have enough money to buy this yourself?’ said Akbar.
‘I do. But the owner of the store and I had a disagreement, and its value to me is that I want to teach him a lesson.’
‘Buy a different one. Why do you have to have this one?’
‘Because it belonged to someone I loved. Someone I met when I lived in Lahore, in the old part of the city.’
Far away from their land and the homes of the ones they’d loved, to hear mention of their motherland from the mouth of a white man sent an electrical current through each of the Khans.
Akbar asked, ‘What would a man like you be doing in the old part of Lahore? It is a place for prostitutes and conmen.’
‘Not everyone who lives that life chooses it – you know that. Besides, aren’t we all just exchanging services to survive? My tailor sells his tailoring skills, you sell your numeracy, your dependability, your people skills, while Bazigh here sells his charm. Tell me I’m wrong,’ said Henry.
‘We don’t have any money.’
‘I don’t need your money, Akbar. I need your help.’
‘Ask someone else,’ said Bazigh. ‘One of these gorai,’ he added, pointing to the bar.
‘I need someone I can trust,’ said Henry, running his hand through his blond hair, his eyes as blue as his shirt. ‘Not a gora, but someone who looks the part. A man who can pass as a rich Arab.’
‘Why would you trust us?’ said Akbar Khan, his whisky untouched, the ice melting slowly.
‘Because you returned my wallet. I’ve tried that out on people before. Most are willing to sell their souls for a few quid. But you didn’t. And that interests me.’
‘My soul is worth more than ten pounds,’ said Akbar Khan.
He looked at the white man who had tested his honour. While he hadn’t seen through the trick in the moment, Akbar Khan knew how to act. And later he’d suspected it had been a test, one that he would use on somebody himself one day.
What Henry was suggesting had possibilities, Akbar Khan decided. The arrogance of rich and powerful white men was their weak spot. That they assumed themselves cleverer than everyone else while they pretended not to be liars and cheats never failed to surprise him.
‘To be clear, you’re asking us to steal for you?’ said Akbar.
‘This isn’t about money. Nor theft, eventually. I’ll pay him once I have the diamond,’ said Henry. ‘This is about love.’
‘Ah yes, love is a thing worth giving up both this life and the next for, or at least that is what poets would have us believe,’ agreed Akbar Khan, not that he really believed this.
Henry took out his wallet, the one Akbar had handed back to him. He pulled out a photograph, just as he had that day in the hotel. But it wasn’t his brother. It was a sepia-toned picture of a young woman in uniform, her dupatta folded flat into a ‘V’ over her chest, reminiscent of college students across Pakistan. She was drinking from a tall ice-cream glass, her eyes downcast, her lips almost touching a striped straw.
The Khan brothers exchanged a look, unsure what they were supposed to say, but Henry Paxton didn’t notice this, being so intent on staring at the photograph.
‘She was a girl I was at boarding school with.’ His voice had an uncharacteristically dreamy quality. ‘As we got to know each other, I fell in love, and she told me about the Grosvenor diamond, how it belonged to her family but had been lost when they fled India for Pakistan after Partition. I was young and made rash promises. I vowed to return it to her, and she agreed to marry me. Needless to say, it didn’t last. My father convinced me of the futility of such a marriage, and of course, women aren’t always what they claim to be. But I’ve never forgotten her, and I was always intrigued by the story of the diamond. Recently, I got news that it was here in London. It has found its way to the Knightsbridge jeweller, who is clearly a thief.’
‘Who was this girl?’
‘No one you would know. She came from a long line of courtesans. Or that’s what I heard.’
In the background of the club, women drifted about with glasses in their hands, wearing knee-high leather boots and short skirts, and feathered hair atop their haze of purple, orange and brown shirts.
Akbar Khan considered how easily men categorised women into good and bad, virtuous or of ill-repute. He thought of Mary and the depth of his feelings for her, and how indefinable she was. For Henry, clearly lineage was more important than love, and the worth of a woman was measured according to the decisions that those who came before her had made.
Henry must have caught this thought in Akbar’s eyes, as he added, ‘All women are the same, whether they’re in Whitechapel, Lahore or Lagos. They like sex as much as we do, but they don’t want us men to know this. They play different games to get what they want.’
Akbar felt that what Henry was hiding was that it suited him to see women in this shallow way, as it was how men like him lived with themselves.
‘Anyway, I want that diamond,’ said Henry. ‘And you’re going to get it for me.’
***
‘His family is steeped in the blood of Hindustani and Pakistani women,’ said Bazigh as the brothers headed home, discussing what they should do, adding, ‘All those trains full of bodies of women, their breasts removed, that arrived at stations in both countries. The “colonies”, what a quaint word for thievery, bloodshed, rape and enslavement. This pale-skinned man and his ancestors masqueraded as friends, and then carved up nations according to their own palate, taking things they regarded as delicacies and leaving the rest to rot.’
