Vengeance, page 21
Mishal hadn’t been the only one worried. Jia’s network was picking up other rumbles of discontent, whisperings that were filling the void left by a currently inactive Kismet Killer. But the fact that Benyamin had history with this source convinced Jia the fruit was ripe for picking.
Jia leaned forward so that her face was close to Mishal’s. ‘I can fix this, but I will need you and your team on board. This is a choice, and you must make up your own mind. But if you decide not to help me, then those friends and family you mentioned will lose all of their money. That is how it is.’
The girl nodded.
‘I’m going to need you to keep an eye on your colleagues and make sure they all understand who’s in charge now. But don’t be obvious – if they ask you what we’ve been talking about, tell them I was making you go through the script you used to sell the coin packages. Now, can you send them in?’
Soon, every member of staff was standing before Jia in silence, the sentinels against the wall, staring them down.
Jia heard the squeaking sound again. It seemed to be coming from behind one of the filing cupboards.
‘What’s that noise?’ she asked the office manager.
‘A mouse. It has its tail caught in the trap. We’re waiting for it to die so I can dispose of it.’
Jia looked at Idris in disbelief.
‘Do you not have pest control or humane traps in this place?’ Idris asked.
‘Meera expects us to sort these things out ourselves,’ the manager said.
‘Move the cabinet,’ ordered Jia.
Sure enough, the mouse’s tail was caught in a red-and-white trap. Jia reached down, released the mouse, holding its tail, and picked it up. She dropped the wriggling body into a half-filled glass of water somebody had left on the table, and then she pressed a finger on it until it had drowned.
When it was over, she handed the glass to the office manager.
‘You let your fear make you cruel,’ she said. And then Jia turned to Idris and added, ‘He who doesn’t show mercy does not deserve mercy. Have one of our men escort this man off the premises. And make sure he doesn’t work in this city again.’
CHAPTER 43
Investment was the next part of the plan, and for this they needed contacts in new businesses and industries that were more halal than their usual line of work. And they needed someone who had nothing to do with the Jirga or the family businesses, someone Jia Khan could trust.
Dressed in jeans, a blazer and black trainers, Jia looked like everyone else in Silicon Roundabout. Her face hidden behind dark glasses, hair tied up and tucked under a baseball cap, she walked down Old Street towards the tube station.
Adam Diaz had come through for her. ‘I always wanted to work with you,’ he’d said.
They set up a small office in Tech City. It wasn’t really needed, but it gave them the respectability of a postal address in the right area of London, people being narrow-minded when it came to companies based in northern towns. All kinds of fraud went on in London and no one judged the city, but such forgiveness was not held for places north of the Watford Gap.
This was a legitimate business interest, as Jia wanted no excuse for it to fail. She headed to the hotel where she was meeting a client whose business had suddenly become highly lucrative.
‘Once your name is taken off the asset, it’s disappeared,’ she explained to him. ‘We know several banks that can help with this process. It’s perfectly above board. We set up a series of shell corporations here in the UK. Register them with Companies House, open a bank account in the Bahamas or the British Virgin Islands, Jersey, Switzerland, it’s up to you.’
‘Why British companies? Surely this is a red flag to HMRC. I mean, our justice system is pretty robust.’
‘British companies look legitimate, but it takes twenty minutes to set one up online. There are four million of them registered. We can create a chain of shell corporations long and complicated enough so that no one will come after you.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because the authorities don’t have the manpower or funds for thousands of investigative hours, and in any case, they’re not interested.’
‘What’s to stop me doing this myself, or getting one of my people to do it?’
‘Nothing. You can do it. You can use multiple companies to own multiple bank accounts in multiple jurisdictions. But you still won’t sleep at night because you’ll know where the bodies are buried. And, frankly, you’d be right to be worried, as without the expertise, you might make mistakes. But we have that expertise and we are meticulous. Let me handle this for you, and you can have a restful night’s sleep on the Egyptian cotton sheets I’m sure you love so much. Every night.’
The entrepreneur had already made his decision before the meeting. Jia Khan came highly recommended, and Adam Diaz’s seal of approval also meant he was more likely to help with the next round of fundraising. Jia’s services were highly sought after, and rumour had it that she was about to close her client list. But he was dithering over the technicalities of compliance to keep it above board.
‘I will make it simple for you,’ Jia told him, and he believed her.
They shook hands on the deal, and Jia called Idris to confirm the start of a new business chapter from a café nearby.
It might not have been possible were it not for Paxton’s arrogance all those months earlier at dinner, and Jia’s gently leading questions about his business as she’d looked at him with doe eyes. He hadn’t been able to resist boasting, oblivious to the thoroughness with which Jia Khan was picking his brains.
The best part of it was that none of it was illegal, and they could clean their own cash alongside too. They were merely exploiting loopholes that had been created decades earlier to keep city bankers rich and London flourishing.
The café was busy, and Jia could hear discussions on latest leadership trends, the power of regret, the monetisation of digital media. ‘How self-important we all are,’ she thought.
She watched a couple sitting with their son; he was on his iPad as the man and woman talked. The woman was slim and preppy, the man equally so. She wondered what it would be like to be ordinary like this, to be carefree, to believe oneself to be the sun around which the world orbited.
On her way back from the restroom, Jia saw that their chairs were blocking her path back to her table. She waited for them to move, but neither of them looked up. Years earlier, when she had started out in adult life, she would have apologetically asked the couple to make space for her, but she didn’t do that anymore.
Instead, she found herself intrigued by the games. She no longer felt the need to appease, and so she simply took up room.
She watched the man sigh and then make way.
People like this had no idea of the approaching tsunami, one that would wash away their comfortable lifestyles. Power had shifted to China and India, while African nations were taking back what had once been taken from them. One only had to look at the heads of the world’s biggest tech companies, the holders of our personal data, to see that.
No amount of tennis, piano or tutoring would give the children of a couple like this access to a world they had long ignored and looked down upon. They had no idea that the British would become butlers to the people they had once ruled over, and Jia Khan couldn’t help but smile.
CHAPTER 44
The attempt on Jia’s life had rattled Elyas.
He’d stayed out of his wife’s business for the last few years, partly because journalism was the only thing he felt he knew how to do and partly because of timing. After Akbar Khan’s death, Jia had quickly fallen pregnant thanks to their resuscitated relationship, and Elyas hadn’t wanted to do anything that would make her bolt. And then, when the baby came, they’d become so busy in the day-to-day of it all that there hadn’t seemed time to discuss anything other than practical matters.
If he was honest with himself, though, Elyas had known more about what went on than he wanted to admit. He had been too good a journalist not to; although these days he deliberately avoided covering any stories that seemed too close to home. He wanted to shut out the parts of Jia’s life that scared him and throw away the key.
He didn’t like conflict in his personal life, and Jia Khan had already left him once before.
But now everything was coming to a head, and he needed to keep his sons safe, he had started once more to be the investigative journalist that he’d been when he first qualified.
‘Jia, I never ask you about your work,’ he said one evening. Lirian was asleep and they were getting ready for bed. ‘I know where the line is,’ he added, pulling on his T-shirt. ‘I know what you do, and I made peace with it. Or I had.’
Jia stuck her head out of the en suite and looked at him with an unreadable expression.
‘But you nearly died, and Ahad could have too,’ Elyas went on, determined to have his say. ‘And it seems this woman from the restaurant where we took our small son that night, this Meera Shah, tried to have you killed. You’ve not said that to me, but this is what Benyamin tells me.’
Jia decided she must have words with her brother; she thought he knew not to say anything about the family’s business to Elyas, even though he was her husband.
Elyas clearly knew his wife well as he spoke the first word of his next sentence very loudly to steer Jia’s mind away from thinking about Benyamin and concentrate on what he was saying. ‘Anyway… Anyway, I’ve been looking into Meera Shah’s background and I’ve found several sources who have told me that if someone owes her money and doesn’t pay, she has them killed. If she owes money, she kills the person she owes. If she doesn’t like the way someone looks at her, she has them killed. I expect you see where I am going with this.’
Elyas’s face was sombre, his eyes afraid, as his voice quietened. ‘And, Jia, I’m willing to put money on the fact that Meera Shah is behind the Kismet Killings.’
Jia put down her water flosser. ‘This is what you’ve been doing instead of working on your book?’
Elyas gazed at her. With her face washed clean, her hair tied back, a slight glow on her cheeks, normally these moments were when he felt Jia Khan belonged only to him, as if she were still the girl he’d first married. But not that night. She wasn’t that girl. She was someone else: a woman who now had a price on her head.
She walked over to the bed, put her hand on his arm and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Try not to worry,’ she said. She took off her robe and climbed into bed, resting her head against the upholstered grey of the headboard.
‘She used to be a people smuggler too,’ Elyas said, to show that the kiss hadn’t mollified him.
‘You’ve really done your research on this,’ said Jia. ‘I know, I know – you are a journalist, and this is what you do.’
Jia was tired and she wanted Elyas to stop talking. She understood her husband’s concerns, but she didn’t want to be worrying about him on top of everything else right at this moment.
‘I think I should take Lirian to London,’ Elyas said.
‘For how long?’
Elyas didn’t answer.
‘For how long?’ Jia pressed.
‘I don’t know,’ said Elyas. ‘For as long as it takes to…’
‘Finish the sentence,’ she said. ‘What are you really saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything other than that.’
‘If you’re leaving me, be brave enough to say it.’
‘Jia, I want to leave this city. I know you have things to do here. I’ll not stand in your way.’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘You’re not taking my son,’ she said. ‘I won’t let you. You already took one of them and that didn’t turn out well – you remember the trouble he used to get into.’
‘And you hold me responsible for that? Can you hear what you’re saying?’ Elyas asked.
‘And you’re not thinking it through, that you make me seem vulnerable if you are seen to be taking Lirian away.’
‘It’s not always only about you, Jia!’
Jia had to try very hard not to shout as she said, ‘Isn’t it, Elyas? It really is all about me in so many ways and you know it.’
Elyas looked at Jia as if he didn’t recognise her anymore.
He’d been so afraid of losing her that he had turned a blind eye to what she had become. And what a mistake this was turning out to be.
His feelings for her paled in comparison to the love he had for his sons. Elyas had far more to lose by staying silent and doing what she wanted. ‘Don’t think that because I love you, Jia, I will stand by and watch you destroy our children’s lives,’ he said.
‘You don’t know what I’m capable of, Elyas,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘Don’t make me show you.’
CHAPTER 45
Idris stared into the fridge. It had been a long day and he needed to eat. He was tired of take-aways and too weary to cook.
But the fridge, like so much of his life, was empty, except for a box of olives, a few cold cuts and a carton of orange juice that had been there for a long time. He pulled out the juice, taking a glass from one of the overhead cabinets and setting it on the cold granite worktop. He poured a little into the glass and took a sip. Then he poured the rest of the bottle down the sink.
He’d have to settle for tea and toast. He opened the double doors to a pantry that concealed the small appliances normally found on countertops. Pouring water into the kettle, and dropping two slices of bread into the toaster, he waited, thinking through the day’s events.
His relationship with Jia was straightforward, clear cut, and he liked it that way. He knew what was concealed and what was revealed; that was his job. Her asking him to take a step back had hurt. He was family in a way that Sakina was not, although she was Jia’s closest woman confidante and Girl Friday, and so who knew what the two of them talked about when they were alone. She was younger than him and she was Punjabi. His people had little respect for hers, regarding them as uncouth farmers who drank too much and ate even more. Idris had always considered himself accepting and open-minded, so this thought took him by surprise, and he flushed with shame, an emotion he was uncomfortably familiar with these days.
He’d been wrong about Meera Shah, and because of this he knew that he did need to have a bit of air between him and Jia so that he could look at things with fresh eyes.
He considered what his father, Bazigh, had told him about Jia and her mindset, about the things that had transpired between her and Ahad when he was a baby. He didn’t see it the way Bazigh Khan did – that Jia Khan was willing to do whatever needed to be done to save her family. Bazigh Khan believed Jia Khan to be ruthless.
Instead, Idris saw a complex woman with many facets, who was loyal to her cause. Jia loved her family and would live, die and kill for them. She had clearly been unwell when Ahad was born, and this was no sign of weakness.
Idris heard the doorbell. He checked the video monitor on the wall and pushed the buzzer, before walking to the front door to let her in. She slipped off her shoes in the hallway, placing the red trainers next to Idris’s in the cloakroom.
‘I’m making toast – would you like some?’ he said.
She nodded, following him into the kitchen. She took a seat at the island, watching him add more bread to the curved green KitchenAid toaster.
‘How’s Jia?’ she asked.
‘Better now, well on the way to a full recovery. Smashed avocado?’ he said, pulling the ripe fruit from the bowl.
She smiled and watched him add lime juice, a couple of red and orange flakes of dried chilli and a grind of salt and pepper to the mashed avocado, before arranging it on to two of the slices of toast. He wiped a smidge of green from the plate with a paper towel and placed the dish in front of her, alongside a knife, fork and napkin.
They ate in silence. And when they’d finished, Idris cleaned the plates away swiftly, and then he said he’d make more tea.
He opened a cupboard door to expose row upon row of teal and golden tins, all labelled. ‘What kind of chai do you like?’ he asked.
‘You decide,’ she said.
She liked being looked after, not having to make the decisions. As the eldest daughter of a widowed mother, it was not something she’d ever experienced. She moved to the sofa and watched as he carried over a tray with two small cups and a black teapot on it and placed it in front of her.
‘Shall we get to business, Sakina?’ he said, smiling.
She nodded and swung her legs on to the sofa, tucking her feet underneath.
He saw how much she liked being here, and Idris realised he felt the same.
CHAPTER 46
Jia Khan checked her watch. She drummed her fingers on the desk and then, after what seemed an age, checked it again. Only a minute had passed. She waited for the receptionist to finish her call. She checked her watch a third time, then realised what she was doing.
The knots in the back of her neck ran like rocks either side of her spine as she fought not to look at the watch again. She took a deep breath, removed her Tag Heuer and slipped it into her pocket. Her father had given it to her as a gift when she started university and she’d worn it almost every day since then.
But she had no need for timekeeping this weekend. She was learning to unwind. Supposedly.
She’d just arrived in Edinburgh, away from everyone who knew her and far from the responsibilities and demands placed upon her by work.
She put her phone in sleep mode. She stared at the blank screen, tempted to turn it back on and check one last WhatsApp, but resisted. She would put it in the safe once she got to her room, as she had promised her husband. It was part of the tacit deal between them, with the unvoiced accusation that she was burnt out.
‘I can’t be completely absent,’ she’d said to Elyas.
He’d booked her the trip after their argument. They’d not spoken about it again but were still circling each other.
