Ayesha had asked if she could come to my house. I thought it strange, but felt I could hardly refuse. I offered her coffee. She was trembling.
‘The hospital says Masood’s in a critical condition, Martin. He could die. And if he doesn’t he’ll probably be paralysed for life. All because he was trying to help me. God knows who shot him, but it has to be because he was asking questions . . .’
‘Ayesha,’ I said. ‘This isn’t your fault. Masood’s a professional; he was doing it because that’s his job. He was a cop for long enough to know the risks. So don’t blame yourself.’
‘Yes, I know. But don’t you see what this means? Whoever shot Masood wasn’t just warning him, they were warning us. These people are so deeply implicated in whatever’s been going on that they don’t care who they murder. They’ve killed my dad and they tried to kill Masood. If we carry on they’ll kill us, too!’
Masood’s shooting changed things. A one-off murder had escalated into something much more sinister. But I was reluctant to give up. When I was a reporter working in war zones, my cameraman used to say that incoming bullets seen through the camera lens appear as safe as watching them on television; the viewfinder distances you into detachment. And writing a book had the same effect. Processing life into words on the page, real people into characters inured me to danger; the threats, violence and tragedy were part of a plot I felt I could control.
‘Look, Ayesha, I don’t think we should give up just yet. You and I both want to know what happened to your father. We owe him that, don’t you think? You said you felt guilty about letting him down; I’m worried it will haunt you for the rest of your life if you don’t do the right thing now.’
I heard the mendacity in my words, but continued.
‘You need to do this for yourself and for your mother as much as for him. And don’t worry; I’ll be with you. We’re in this together. The book is just incidental . . .’
Ayesha’s face was a mask.
‘But what we do need is trust between us. Whenever I was in danger as a journalist I knew I could trust the people I was working with – my producer, my cameraman – and that’s what kept us alive. So I want you to be open with me. I know there are things you’ve been hiding. From now on will you tell me everything?’
Ayesha nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It isn’t easy. I’ll try.’
I leaned forward and took her hand. ‘Thank you. I promise you won’t regret it. What happened to Masood is dreadful. But if we don’t want the same thing to happen to us, we need to be absolutely clear what’s going on here. You need to tell me: were these people gangsters that your dad fell foul of . . . or were they crooks he’d been working with?’
Ayesha hesitated. She wanted her father to be innocent, but the question of the land and the extravagant house in Kahin Nahi preyed on her mind. What had Ibrahim been involved in? Where had he got the money from? He had been a loving father, but had his disillusionment with England and his desperation to help his family drawn him into crime? Everything in Pakistan seemed to revolve around bribery, corruption and lies; maybe it was the nature of Pakistani society that had changed him.
‘We all have different people within us,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I never really knew him at all.’
‘Perhaps none of us ever understands our parents. But I don’t want us to have secrets from each other, Ayesha.’ It felt like the right moment to press her. ‘Why don’t you tell me about the dead girl your mother mentioned when we were in Burnley?’
‘Yes. I may as well . . . You’d probably be able to find out by going back through the newspaper reports . . .’
She seemed uncertain; I squeezed her hand and she didn’t withdraw it.
‘You remember I told you about the terraced house my dad bought to use as an office for his taxi business? Well, something happened there; something that got Dad into a lot of trouble. It was before I moved away to go to university. I can remember him coming home late one night in a terrible panic . . .’
Ayesha stopped. I feared she was thinking better of it, but she resumed.
‘I heard him whispering to Asma in their bedroom, then he was up and down the stairs all night. The next day he didn’t go into work. He spent the morning on the phone ringing people; he spoke quietly so I couldn’t hear what he was saying . . . Then the police came . . . There were six of them and they had a warrant to search the house. They pulled the place apart, emptied drawers and shelves, turned over mattresses, ripped up carpets. It was horrible. They kept Dad under guard in the spare room while they were going through his things. Then they took him away without telling us what was going on. Mum and I were in a terrible state . . .’
Ayesha swallowed hard.
‘It seemed a girl – a white girl, a teenager – had been found dead in the back yard of Dad’s office building . . . Her name was Kelly Stafford and she was sixteen. It seemed like she’d fallen from the top floor of the house. No one knew why she was there or what had happened, but the police decided that Dad must somehow have been involved. They weren’t saying how the girl had died, if she had fallen accidentally or what, but the local newspapers got hold of the story and suddenly there were headlines all over the place about “Burnley teen murder” and “Who killed Kelly?” and so on. It was a nightmare.’
Ayesha’s story shocked me, but I didn’t want to deter her from telling the rest of it.
‘Okay. So was Ibrahim involved? You said he came home in a panic . . .’
‘He was in a panic because one of his drivers who’d been at the office had seen the girl’s body lying in the yard. I don’t think Dad was anywhere near the place. This driver had rung Dad to tell him about it. Dad had no idea who she was or why she was there. And the guy was ringing him, asking him what to do. So of course he was in a panic. None of them knew what to do. They’re all Pakistanis, all taxi drivers; of course they’re going to be petrified about what happens when the body gets found. They’d be the chief suspects. Pakistanis are always to blame for everything. So yes, of course they should have reported the body straight away; but you can understand what they were going through.’
‘I suppose so. But what had actually happened? Was there foul play involved?’
‘What happened was a nightmare. It turned into four years of harassment and persecution. The police really had it in for my dad. It turned out that the girl, Kelly, had absconded from a council care home in Manchester. No one knew how she’d got to Burnley. The forensic investigation concluded that she’d fallen from the fire escape at the back of the house . . .’
‘Okay, so perhaps she could have been trying to break in . . . Could she have been climbing the fire escape and fallen off?’
‘Yes, of course she could. And that’s what I think happened. That’s what any reasonable person would think, right? But the police went after Dad and after the drivers who were working for him. Because they were Pakistanis. They kept coming round to the house with more and more warrants. They seized Dad’s bank books and the accounts for his business. He had no idea what they were after. It was like they suspected him of being a criminal mastermind; they treated us all like criminals or drug dealers or something . . .’
‘And was Ibrahim being held in custody all this time?’
‘No, they didn’t have anything on him, so they had to let him out. But they set some ridiculous level of bail and he really struggled to find the money.’
‘But if there was bail it means he was being charged with something, doesn’t it? If they were just releasing him, they wouldn’t be asking for bail?’
‘Yes . . . No . . . It was complicated. Actually it was really to do with the other guy, the driver who’d rung Dad in the first place. The first thing the police did was to search Dad’s offices, where the girl had fallen from. And in the top-floor bedroom they found some blankets and some half-eaten food and things. So the police were making out that she’d been living there and that she’d fallen, or thrown herself or been pushed out of the window. Well, Dad knew nothing about any of that. The house was on four storeys – it was an old Victorian place – and he only ever used the bottom two floors. Upstairs it was just like some storerooms for junk; he never went up there. But the drivers did. They used to use part of the top floor as a smoking den when they were on their break or waiting for a fare. And the driver who phoned Dad right at the beginning to say he’d found the body was a strange fellow; I never liked him. So if there was some foul play I think he might have been mixed up in it. I’m pretty sure the phone calls Dad was making that morning after he came home in such a panic were to this driver, trying to find out what had really happened . . .’
‘But why didn’t Ibrahim report all this to the police straightaway? Didn’t he realise that waiting and doing nothing would throw suspicion on him?’
‘Look, I told you already. He was in a panic. Pakistani people hate to get involved with the police – they’re the white man’s police; they aren’t on our side. And I don’t think Dad really knew what the driver fellow had been getting up to. At one stage the guy seemed to admit that he’d known the girl, Kelly; that she’d been his girlfriend or something and that maybe she had been living in that top-floor bedroom without Dad knowing about it. Then the guy changed his story and said she must have broken into the house and been squatting there. So Dad was confused. If she had been living in his house, or – even worse – if she’d been there because of one of his drivers, he just thought it’s all going to land on his plate and he’s going to take the rap for it . . .’
‘So what were they charging him with, if they were demanding bail from him?’
‘Failing to report a death. And they were saying to him that if it turns out not to be an accident then he’ll be charged with perverting the course of justice. So Dad’s petrified. He’s very suspicious about the driver who discovered the body. He’s thinking he should tell the police about his suspicions, but he’s worried about the consequences. So Dad ended up having to maintain his story that the girl must have broken into the office and hidden there without anyone knowing. But the police didn’t believe it. They kept hauling him in for questioning and they obviously leaked it to the press, because Dad’s face was in all the papers. His face, not any of the drivers who worked for him. We couldn’t understand why my father was being so demonised and the other guy was never mentioned . . .’
‘So do you think there really was foul play, even if your dad wasn’t involved in it?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t believe my dad could have done anything like what they were accusing him of. The whole time he was being interrogated and pilloried in the press, he stuck consistently to his version of things – that he didn’t know the girl, didn’t know she was living in the house, if indeed she had been, and they couldn’t prove anything other than that. In the end he was convicted of not reporting a death. There was no murder charge for anyone. But the police wanted someone to be punished so Dad got a really harsh sentence. He got three hundred hours of community service. He ended up sitting at home, depressed and not knowing what to do with himself. He felt it was so unfair; that British society had treated him really badly . . .’
‘So he didn’t feel British any more? He’d become an outsider again?’
‘He felt his reputation and his standing in the community had been completely destroyed. He’d got caught up in something terrible and he’d been unfairly treated. I’ve got massive regrets that I didn’t do more to help him during that awful period. That really haunts me . . . And the worst thing was that Ahmed revelled in Dad’s humiliation. He didn’t come to his aid or defend him as a brother should do. When it was all in the papers and people were talking about it, Ahmed went round saying, “Oh yes, Ibrahim could well have done it . . .” ’