Taslima was pacing outside the bathroom door waiting for Aasha to finish.
It was almost over. In minutes they’d walk outside and with any luck Lilly and Jack would be waiting at the end of the drive. By now they probably had backup. She considered texting but was fearful that Jalil would see her. She didn’t want to risk detection when they were so close to freeing Aasha.
She tapped lightly on the door with her knuckles. ‘Aasha, are you ready?’
The door opened and the girl gave a nervous smile.
Taslima smiled back. ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe.’
‘Safe,’ the girl repeated.
She opened her mouth as if she were going to say something else then stopped, her eyes following something behind Taslima.
Then they opened wide.
‘What’s wrong?’ Taslima asked.
She didn’t hear the girl’s reply. Instead she heard a crack and felt an explosion at the back of her neck that sent her reeling forward.
‘Oh.’
She felt the shape of the sound on her mouth, then nothing.
Just black.
May 2009
Re: Time for action…by Fighting4Islam at 10.30 on 3.5.09
Salaams to all my brothers and sisters.
I have asked myself time and time again when will I be called upon to take action and today Allah has answered me.
So I ask you humbly to make a
dua
for me.
It has been a week since Fighting4Islam has been on the board. I’ve missed his solidarity and scanned the posts for any sign of him.
When I read his latest message I’m happy to hear from him and tap out a response.
Re: Time for action…by Believer at 10.34 on 3.5.09
It’s good to hear your voice, brother.
I will ask Allah to keep you safe and strong for the long struggles which lie ahead.
His reply comes quickly.
Re: Time for action…by Fighting4Islam a10.36 on 3.5.09
I feel Allah’s strength within me, my friend, but it is for you and other good Muslims to continue the struggles ahead without me.
I have to take a deep breath. Can he really be saying what I think?
Re: Time for action…by Believer a 10.40 on 3.5.09
You can count on your friends here in the UK to help.
We are collecting as much money as possible to send out aid to our brothers and sisters in Gaza.
When he responds I feel the blood rushing in my ears.
Re: Time for action…by Fighting4Islam at 10.42 on 3.5.09
Jihad is Our Way
Martyrdom is Our Desire
I can’t speak or work for the rest of the day. My mind moves between manic thoughts and total paralysis.
Later, at supper, I can’t sit with my family as they stuff their faces with chapatti as if nothing is wrong. Yasmeen is yapping like a terrier about some book she’s read about Fidel Castro. I want to shove her face into the dahl to make her stop.
In the bathroom I splash my face with water, trying
to cool my anger, but it burns so deeply inside me I know nothing can help.
In bed that night I surf the news. Two suicide bombers entered a market square in Sderot and blew themselves up. Sixteen Israeli shoppers, including a handful of foreign aid workers, were killed. More still were injured.
I imagine Fighting4Islam in those final moments. As he enters the square, he can hear women chatting in Hebrew as they prod and poke lemons piled high on a barrow, their citrus tang filling the hot air. A child stops in front of him to pick up a ball, his curly hair swinging against his cheek. Fighting4Islam feels a stab of regret for the chubby toddler, but reminds himself of the hundreds of children less than an hour’s drive away, their homes bombed-out shells, their fathers scrambling through rubble for wives and babies.
He takes a position in the centre of the square, the weight of the explosives heavy under his coat. He lets his finger stroke the Koran in his pocket and whispers his final goodbye.
I can’t work or sleep, so I spend those dark hours praying.
I am sad beyond measure to have lost so great a brother, but through my prayers, my sorrow soon turns to pride.
I ask Allah to bless Fighting4Islam, to lift him high, with all the other heroes, and take him to paradise.
Then I beg him to show me my own path, to show me the way. When it will be my time to take action?
Jack inspected his windscreen while Lilly punched Taslima’s number into her mobile.
Jack looked up from the crack in the glass. ‘This should hold,’ he said.
Lilly nodded as she listened intently to the phone.
‘Anything?’ Jack asked.
She shook her head.
The last thing Lilly had heard were some strange animal sounds and a muffled conversation.
‘You sure?’ asked Jack.
Lilly held her phone to Jack’s ear. ‘Nothing. Not even voicemail.’
‘Shit.’
The enormity of their situation was pressing down on Lilly. Taslima was with a dangerous man and they had absolutely no idea where he was taking her. The young woman was utterly alone.
‘I’d better call the chief for backup,’ said Jack.
‘And what can they do?’ asked Lilly. ‘Drive around aimlessly?’
‘Well, we can’t just do nothing.’
Lilly racked her brains. There had to be another way to contact Taslima.
She snapped her finger. ‘She has another phone.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’ve seen it in her bag,’ said Lilly. ‘She keeps it for emergencies.’
‘So call it,’ shouted Jack.
Lilly sighed. Here came the ridiculous part. ‘I don’t have the number. She never gave it to me.’
‘For God’s sake, why not?’
Lilly threw up her hands. ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe she runs an escort agency, maybe she works for MI5.’
‘Shit.’
‘Can we get someone to find the number?’ Lilly asked.
‘Which phone company?’
Lilly groaned. On the telly, surveillance units could track down details at the touch of a button, but this wasn’t the telly, was it?
Think, woman, think.
If someone wanted to get access to Lilly’s number where would they find it?
At home of course, in an untidy pile of unpaid bills.
‘Her flat,’ said Lilly. ‘We might find it there.’
Jack bit his lip. ‘Tell me you at least know where she lives.’
Lilly rummaged in her bag. Taslima’s CV was still crumpled at the bottom, covered in chewing gum. She pulled it out and thrust it under Jack’s nose.
He gunned the engine. ‘Christ, you never mentioned she lived on the Clayhill.’
‘To be honest, I never even looked at it.’
Taslima tried to open her eyes but it was as if she were underwater and the pressure fought against her. There was a humming in her ears and a dull sensation at the base of her skull.
In the distance was a shape, a figure perhaps, and a noise floated towards her, the edges blurred. She tried to focus, to sharpen the pictures and sounds.
The shape loomed closer, a gooey figure, but definitely a figure. A girl perhaps?
‘Faaaah.’ Words oozed from the girl’s mouth. ‘Faaaah.’
What was she saying? Did it matter?
Taslima tried to repeat the sound but her tongue lolled, useless and wet, picking up a familiar taste from the air.
‘Faaah.’ The girl’s lips undulated in a fascinating dance.
As darkness began to seep from the sides and the girl floated away, Taslima decided it didn’t matter at all.
A pitbull growled in the square below. Lilly watched as its owner, a teen in a Dayglo tracksuit and box-fresh Nikes, struggled to keep it under control. It pulled its massive squat body, straining against a spiked collar. The boy heaved in the opposite direction, the lead taut between them.
‘Shit.’
Behind her Jack was desperately going through his ring of skeleton keys as he tried to open Taslima’s door.
He grabbed a short brass one and stabbed it into the lock. There was some movement but only halfway.
‘This is a fecking nightmare,’ he said.
That about summed it up. Lilly’s young assistant was at the mercy of a man they suspected of a brutal attack.
Jack growled in frustration. ‘Step back,’ he barked.
Lilly did as she was told while Jack kicked out at the door with a fury he rarely showed. As his boot connected with the wood, the door flew off its hinges with a crack.
‘Thank Christ the council don’t spend any money on this shithole.’
Lilly nodded. She hadn’t been to the Clayhill in over a year but it hadn’t improved. An endemic drug problem and a pervasive sense of hopelessness kept the estate in
the top ten places in the UK where you were most likely to encounter violent crime.
How the hell had someone as intelligent and well-educated as Taslima ended up here?
‘I’ll take the kitchen,’ said Jack. ‘You do the sitting room.’
Lilly normally hated being told what to do, particularly by her partner, but right now she felt like she was drowning, that no matter how hard she swam, the waves kept pulling her under, and she was just glad he was taking charge. Was this the side to him that had appealed to the woman in his texts? Did she like his protective nature in a way Lilly never had?
She forced herself to let it go. Now wasn’t the time.
She lumbered down the hall towards the sitting room, but when she stepped inside she felt as though it were she and not the front door that had been shattered. On the tiny sofa, nesting among embroidered cushions and ornate throws as a Pooh Bear. Sam had had exactly the same one as a baby and had gurgled whenever Lilly pulled the string between his legs and a tune tinkled out. How many nights had she stared into the dark of the early hours with that bloody music in one ear and her ex-husband’s snore in the other?
From the bear, Lilly’s eyes were drawn to the activity centre where crabs and starfish in primary colours dangled seductively, a tiny blue sock abandoned in the corner.
‘You never said she had a kid,’ Jack called from the kitchen.
Because she never told me, Lilly thought. Why was that?
She remembered the night on the phone when Lilly
had heard a child crying. Taslima had said it was a neighbour. Why?
She shook her head to clear it.
Taslima, living on the Clayhill, with a secret baby. It didn’t make any sense.
‘There’s nothing through there.’ Jack poked his head in the room. ‘To be honest, she’s a bit of a neat freak.’
‘I’ll try in here,’ Lilly approached a set of cupboards in the corner of the room.
On the top were photographs of Taslima with someone who looked like her. They smiled out with the same exquisite cheekbones. A sister? Taslima had never mentioned one, but then again, she had never mentioned a bloody baby.
The drawers were impeccably tidy. One housed hand cream and alcohol-free perfume, the other a small stack of letters, bound with an oversized paper clip. Lilly flipped through them but there were no bills. These were personal, handwritten in bright blue ink, signed off with clusters of kisses.
‘You may as well know I’ve called the pol-is.’
Lilly looked up. A black woman stood in the doorway, her hands on more than ample hips. The grey in her hair marked her as at least in her fifties, but her face was entirely unlined, her eyes bright.
‘We are the police,’ said Lilly.
The woman’s eyes flashed. ‘Is dat right?’
Jack came from the bedroom and flashed his badge.
‘So what do you want,’ the woman’s eyes were no less angry, ‘that you come here flinging a girl’s door open?’
‘We need her mobile number,’ said Lilly.
The woman crossed her arms over enormous breasts. ‘You break down her door to give her a call?’
‘It’s very urgent,’ Lilly explained. ‘There was no other way.’
‘She’s a good girl,’ said the woman. ‘A very good girl.’
Tears sprang into Lilly’s eyes. This was her fault. She had been so set on finding out who killed Yasmeen and proving Raffy’s innocence she had lost all sense.
‘I know that and I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I got Taslima into this.’
The woman frowned.
‘If I could turn back the clock I would,’ Lilly could hear herself gabbling. ‘I would never have let her do anything this dangerous.’
Lilly began to cry, her words choking her.
‘I wouldn’t even take on this stupid case because, as usual, it’s brought me nothing but trouble.’
The woman crossed the gap between them and put a soft hand on Lilly’s shoulder. The gesture was so comforting Lilly felt herself melt like chocolate.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, but Lilly could feel herself unravelling.
Her insistence on handling this case was at the heart of all her problems. Jack was so pissed off with her he’d been having an affair. Sam had turned into a bully because he was starved of attention at home. Lilly was terrified because some nutter was stalking her and now Taslima, lovely, funny, clever Taslima, was in dreadful trouble and it was all her fault.
‘I’m sure we can sort this out,’ the woman stroked Lilly’s hair, ‘but you’re going to have to tell me who is this Taslima.’
‘Faaah, faaah.’
The girl’s words bled into Taslima’s ears, forcing her out of the cosy black space.
She opened her eyes and everything was the same, though the girl was nearer and that smell stronger.
And there was a thudding at the back of her neck. It was the only part of her body Taslima could feel. Her arms, legs and feet were all deliciously blank, like someone had cut them off.
The girl reached out to Taslima and touched her. She could see that was what she was doing but she couldn’t actually feel it. The sensation, or lack of it, made Taslima want to laugh, but something in the girl’s face told Taslima it wasn’t funny.
The girl’s eyes flicked between Taslima’s face and to something behind her. Taslima tried to understand, grasped at what she saw on the girl’s face.