A messenger was waiting for Shamira Iqbal when she came out of court with the news which in all the world was the worst she could have heard. The detail was sparse but the message deadly. Her aunt, the woman she had idolised, whom she had seen survive the trial for murder, was no more. She refused all the offers of comfort from her colleagues. She dealt with them courteously enough but she didn’t want to hear them. She held it all together until she reached the sanctity of her own home when the tears flowed like an unstoppable river. Eventually, gradually, the storm subsided and she lifted her head. She realised she was sitting on the edge of her bed. She loosened her headscarf and allowed her long dark hair to tumble down each side of her face. This can’t be right, she thought, the work has to go on. It can’t stop here. She reached for phone and texted Zakia—“I’ve heard the news.”
“It’s so bad. She helped me rescue a young girl today. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“The work has to go on.”
“Without her it’s going to be impossible. She provided the link into the government. These women have no influence and no money. Who is going to fight for them?”
“Me.”
“You? You will give up your career in London. Why would you do that?”
“My aunt did it and I’ll do the same. It was her cause. I want to carry it on.”
“I can’t believe it but it would be wonderful of course.”
“I’ll need to tie things up here. It may take me a month or so but I’ll do it.’
“There must be a God after all. You’ll tell me when?”
“Of course—it will be soon.”
When she clicked the phone off she felt better. The sense of purpose was back and her road ahead was clear. She toyed with the idea of writing out her letter of resignation, but then decided it would be preferable to deal with it face to face. She could imagine already the frowns of wonderment that she was ready to give up her burgeoning legal career, which over the next ten years could be expected to set her up comfortably for life. Trying to explain that she was giving it up for a cause she believed in in a third-world country would be hard, but the verbal route would be easier than setting it all out in print. The paperwork would come of course, along with severance, a final pay-out maybe on the basis of what she’d achieved. She could leave a modest amount of her savings in the bank in London—“just in case money”—but the rest would come with her.
She looked around the interior of the flat walking from room to room. It had been hers for eighteen years, rented at first and then bought when her career was starting to take off. With its quiet, secure location and view over the Thames it should let fairly readily. Better that than selling with all the hassle and she would have a bolthole if she ever wanted to come back or just spend downtime in London. She stopped in mid-stride as she wondered about Helena’s living arrangements in Lahore. All their texts and messages over the years had almost exclusively concerned work, with the aunt urging her to move up the ladder and Shamira in turn offering support for everything her aunt had stood for. There had been very little about Helena’s personal life but Shamira knew she had a house. She wondered whether that would be available to her. Presumably her aunt would have made a will—that was something to investigate when she got out there. The sooner the better, she thought, the work has to go on. The funeral wouldn’t be her concern. In line with religious tradition it would be done very quickly and with her aunt’s reach, there would be no shortage of organisers and people to attend. A lightning visit by her would only delay the real move.
It was all coming together—she was plotting and filing away the big decisions. Then she stopped again. The box—how could she have forgotten the box? When her aunt had left all those years ago and Shamira had been eleven years old her aunt had found a quiet moment when they were alone to give her a sealed cardboard box. “I want you to keep this,” she’d said. “Nobody else is to know about it, not your parents, no one. Do you understand? It’s to be our secret.”
The box had felt quite heavy in her small hands. “I understand, Auntie. What’s in it?”
“That’s our secret as well. You’re to keep it in a private place where only you know where to find it. It’s only to be opened when I die.”
“That will be a long time, Auntie, won’t it?”
“You can never tell, child. In the work in which I shall be engaged, it could be any day. When you hear news of my death, you open it. Will you do this for me?”
And Shamira had agreed. It had worried her where she could hide the box so that her parents wouldn’t find it and eventually she settled on putting it in a corner of the loft where nobody went, hidden under the protective foam. When she moved to her flat it had come with her. There she had found a slightly wonky floorboard in her bedroom and the box had been consigned into the space below it. Shamira had nailed it down and forgotten about it. In all her messages her aunt never mentioned it. What was in it? Shamira wondered. What was in it? It was time to find out.
She kept a small toolbox in her hall cupboard and in it she found a spanner to lever up the floorboard. In the cavity beneath was the box covered in a film of dust. She carefully took it out and brought it into her kitchen, where she placed it on the table and looked at it. It was made of plain cardboard, folded in at the top and sealed with sticky tape. She donned a pair of plastic gloves before she fetched a knife and sliced along the tape. Then she unfolded the leaves on the top. This revealed a layer of tightly packed paper which she carefully took out. Three objects were revealed to her gaze.
The first was a small gold crouching lion. She picked it up and examined it all over, including the base, on which the number three was stamped. She thought back to how the lions had featured at Helena’s trial. They were designed as corporate gifts for Pennington’s top customers and relationships. Helena wouldn’t have fallen into the customer category. That left relationships. And then Shamira tumbled to it—it all fitted into place. Pennington had hit on Helena, obviously more than once. It had been an obsession for him and hence the gift, which for Helena would have come over as garish and ostentatious rather than a means of attraction, but which for him would have been a signal of his intentions for her. She’d turned him away and he had targeted the family. So the Christmas Day accident had been no accidental meeting. It had been deliberate as a means of getting his own back. Had he meant to kill the little Jekina? Probably not. He’d only intended to scare her aunt into doing his bidding. After that must have come the rape, either attempted or actual. The threat would have been enough, the deed worse. What had really happened that night after the corporate party? Shamira wondered. The witnesses testified to seeing the two of them together and seeing the door to the side room close. Cauley Mortimer testified he heard a cry after that. Was that the moment when the rape took place? Shamira shuddered.
She turned her attention to a small twist of packing material. When she very gradually took it apart she found a collection of ashes, the remains of papers which had obviously been burned. She sat back, deep in thought. The twofold motive was quite clear now—the attack on the family plus the advances to Helena herself. She had waited to see what the justice system might produce before she took matters into her own hands. To be so important that she wanted to preserve them, the ashes could only be the result of burning the evidence against the Grouper. Instead of putting the papers away in the safe, as she’d been instructed, Helena had taken them home and burned them. In that way she had complied with her part of the deal to get the Grouper off. She’d preserved the evidence to show what she’d done, to show how she’d engaged the Grouper to help her.
The final item was bound up with white cloth and when Shamira touched it, her heart started to race. She knew now what she would find wrapped up in there. As the cloth fell apart, she saw a knife encrusted with dried and congealed blood. On top of it was a note which read: “Honour has been satisfied”.
Later on in the darkest part of the night Shamira went out carrying a bag. As she walked alongside the river she smiled as she pictured Helena in her jogging suit, racing from the court building to a pre-arranged spot where Shamira’s father, the taxi driver, was waiting for her. He would have used every side street and byway he knew to get to the house in Brayfield Road. There Pennington would have been waiting, lured by the thought that his advances had finally succeeded. When the deed had been done, Helena had come running out in her blood-stained outfit. Inside the taxi a fresh one would have been waiting for her, which she’d struggled into as the hectic return trip took place. The old one had been placed presumably in a garbage bag in the boot of the taxi which had dropped her off and raced to make the appointment to take the next businessman to the airport. At the first opportunity the garbage bag would have been taken to the tip and thrust deep into the accumulated rubbish. Helena had come panting back to the court, her late arrival being nullified by the lift malfunction. As she climbed the steps on to London Bridge Shamira wondered if the Grouper had fixed that one too.
When she arrived at the midpoint of the bridge there were no other pedestrians. She waited for a car to pass before she extracted the knife from the bag with her gloved hands and dropped it like an arrow into the grey swirling water beneath. It disappeared, to be lodged with all the other detritus on the riverbed no doubt to come to light some day when the whole story might start up again. Shamira turned back home.