Ayesha was tough and determined. She had risen to the top of London’s IT industry where women, especially Asian women, have to be ruthless to succeed. And now she was driven by a passion that stemmed from love for her father, regret for his passing and, perhaps, a tacit sense of guilt that she had not done more to save him. She was exorcising her pain through the search to discover who had murdered Ibrahim and why. Her passion and anger had sliced through the bland assurances of the Foreign Office officials, but when we met again a week later, Ayesha was full of regret that she hadn’t insisted on concrete undertakings from them.
‘I’m kicking myself, Martin. We had them on the ropes and we didn’t pin them down. It’s my fault – I should have got specific promises from them, but I let them get away with a few expressions of goodwill. I don’t know how it happened – it’s not like me to be so unfocused.’
‘They were always going to resist getting into specifics,’ I said. ‘Maybe they genuinely are limited in what help they can give us. In any event, I’d say the best thing we can do now is to help ourselves. We need to do what I suggested earlier and go to Pakistan, don’t we?’
Ayesha was silent. For all her bravery she was reluctant to return to Kahin Nahi. When I asked if she was afraid she nodded vaguely.
‘Ayesha,’ I said, ‘we had a deal. You promised that if I got us a meeting with the Foreign Office, you would come with me to Pakistan . . .’
‘I didn’t say that; I said if you got us a meeting with a minister at the Foreign Office. I think we need another meeting and this time we really do need to see the minister. Will you help me?’
There was little point arguing. I wasn’t sure how I would persuade the Foreign Office to serve up a minister, but Ayesha was determined to exhaust every possible option before considering a trip to Pakistan. My own contacts in Whitehall were long gone and I no longer had the clout of working for a national news organisation, so I cast around for advice, beginning with my former BBC colleague Aled Parry-Jones. Aled was a big, practical Welshman who had spent several years as the Corporation’s Islamabad correspondent.
‘Bloody Foreign Office!’ he said when I told him how Ayesha had been treated. ‘Always trying to shuffle off responsibility. Give me a few days. They owe me a favour after the episode in Balochistan. I’ll see if Alistair Smart will talk to you. He’s the minister responsible for south Asia and he’s not a complete idiot; he may be some help. How’s the book coming on?’
‘Slowly. And I’m writing it in real time, so I’ve got no idea where the plot’s leading – if Ibrahim really is the hero Ayesha wants him to be, or some despicable crook. And because Ayesha keeps blowing hot and cold about cooperating with me, I’m worried I’m going to end up with half a book and no way to find out how the story ends!’
Aled laughed. ‘Ha! The miseries of being a writer! Just wait until you have real problems to deal with! You’ll have enough of that when you get to Pakistan.’
‘What do you think of the story?’ I asked. ‘Does it interest you?’
‘Yes, but I’ve spent years out there. I have to say, the dynamic between British Pakistanis and Pakistanis in Pakistan is pretty fraught. There are all sorts of jealousies and resentments between them. I’ve come across quite a few murders like yours, usually connected with land disputes or family feuds. There was one I was thinking of writing about myself. But it turned out to be such a nest of vipers that I dropped the idea.’
‘I was drawn to Ayesha’s story precisely because of its drama and the emotions it has stirred up,’ I said. ‘There’s something elemental about the passion and pride, the anger and hatred that exists in Pakistani culture. We’ve lost that in the West; it’s as if our society has been mollycoddled and gone soft. In Pakistan there’s still that untamed fierceness that you associate with legends of heroes and villains from ancient times. And then I find Ayesha herself fascinating; as a person, I mean. She’s suffered so much and she’s been so brave. But there’s a lot I don’t understand about the Pakistani mentality, or at least about Ayesha’s. At times she seems completely opaque; she wants to solve her dad’s murder but she’s scared of discovering what’s behind it. She’s constantly trying to make me write the story the way she wants it written, as though she’s worried that something terrible is going to emerge.’
‘Okay. Look,’ Aled scratched his chin. ‘I wasn’t going to mention this, but it strikes me there’s a pretty big elephant in the room. You said Ibrahim was a taxi driver when he was suspected of involvement in that girl’s death, right? So think about it. Who were the guys behind the scandals in Rochdale and Rotherham and Oxford? It was Pakistani men abusing white girls. And who were the people organising it all? In nearly every case it was Pakistani taxi drivers. They’re the ones who were running the gangs, ferrying the kids back and forth, collecting the bookings and the money. You should read the cuttings. I’m not saying Ibrahim was one of them, but it’s worth looking at. I wonder if that’s what Ayesha’s worried she’ll discover . . .’
I got home late, with a notebook full of questions and a headache. There was so little firm ground, so many certainties that had crumbled at the first challenge, so much that seemed alien and incomprehensible.
Clicking on the Internet I entered the search terms, ‘Child abuse; taxi drivers; Pakistani’. The screen filled with lurid newspaper headlines and stories of crimes carried out in cities across the country.
Police say vulnerable girls across Rochdale and Heywood were subjected to grooming by a network of men, mostly taxi drivers. Nine men of Pakistani heritage were jailed for crimes including rape, trafficking and child sex abuse . . .
The report concluded that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 . . .
Girls as young as 12 or 13 were being trafficked around the north-west of England. Men who worked in the take-away trade or as taxi drivers – professions that gave them unsupervised access to young teenagers – were grooming girls by offering them gifts, getting them hooked on drugs or alcohol, then forcing them to have sex. Victims were driven between Rochdale, Oldham, Bradford and elsewhere to have sex with men . . .
The facts were shocking, and the attitude of the rapists towards the girls sickening:
All the girls were white, all the accused were Asian Muslim men, and they displayed a searing contempt for their victims. ‘You white people train them in sex and drinking,’ one of the accused told the jury, ‘so when they come to us they are fully trained.’
Girl E had only just turned 13 when Sajid picked her up in his taxi and plied her with vodka before raping her. She later said Sajid and his co-defendants ‘treat white girls as easy meat’. Another victim said: ‘Pakistani men pass you round like a ball, they’re all in a massive circle and put a white girl in the middle.’
Two themes recurred throughout the reports – that the crimes were largely organised by taxi drivers; and that many of the girls were vulnerable children from care homes:
The gang’s victims were typically in care or on ‘at risk’ registers, their isolation from their families having turned them to drink, drugs or both.
Men from other cities would visit for £100-a-time ‘sex by appointment’ set up by the Oxford gang, who would also transport their underage sex slaves by taxi to London and Bournemouth to be abused.
My email pinged. It was a message from Tom with the subject heading ‘Highly Confidential PLEASE’.
Hiya Martin,
Are you in London? We have had plenty of drama up here. I have just started taking drugs. No, sorry, start again . . . I haven’t taken any illegal substances for decades, but my GP has put me on Prozac. I have taken two a day as prescribed and am totally unable to spell! I got lost last night (don’t let Tara know that I am telling you this bit, please). We were walking the dog in Thornberry Park, having taken my first Prozac tablet, and I thought Tara was following me but she wasn’t. It took me and the dog four hours to walk home. In the meantime, Tara had called the police thinking that I had killed myself. Apparently there were four police cars and a helicopter looking for me. After walking all the way through Crofton, Walton and down the dual carriageway, which is a very fast road without pavements, I realised I had no house keys. I thought I would find Tara at home, but instead I found a police car with a searchlight looking for me. This is what I put on Facebook . . .
‘I have just had a meeting with an interesting member of the constabulary. We had to sit in his police car for half an hour and he passed the time by showing me pictures on his iPhone of handbags, quilts and dresses that he makes in his spare time on his sewing machine. Perhaps the oddest thing is that he showed me a picture of himself wearing his latest creation. Life couldn’t possibly get any stranger, could it? He waited with me until someone came to take care of me, and as he left he said, “I haven’t enjoyed any of my police work as much as I’ve enjoyed talking to you tonight.” Potential boyfriend then?’
Love, Tom x.
I found Tom’s message worrying. He reported the episode with his usual humour, but he didn’t want me to talk to his wife about it. I replied immediately.
Wow! That’s a dramatic series of events! Will you tell me more when I see you the week after next? The main thing is that you are ok. I think the Prozac is a good idea if you are feeling bad. I am guessing that getting lost was a side effect of a medicine you aren’t used to yet. I particularly liked your story of the policeman and look for ward to hearing more about him. But I really don’t think you should take him on as a boyfriend . . .
See you soon. Lots of love.
PS I will of course keep all this confidential xx.
Tom wrote back:
Yes, it was the Prozac. But don’t you think it should be prescribed only with some kind of tranquiliser? I have looked it up on the Internet, as has my fantastically loyal, beautiful and absolutely wonderful wife. 99% of people using it for the first time say that their depression deepens for the first one to two weeks of use. There are reports of people who previously had ideas of self-harm or suicide becoming violent towards other people in the first few days of taking it. One man stabbed his wife to death and then killed himself. I have told Tara to keep all knives locked up for a while! Joking of course – I absolutely love her to death (. . . sorry!) x.