Bombproof (18 page)

‘Excuse me, sir. It’s very dark in here and I get quite claustrophobic. ’

‘You can come out now,’ says Sami. ‘Stay away from the windows.’ He directs them to sit at tables closest to the kitchen. The van driver sits alone, tilting back his chair and propping his feet on the wall.

Lucy is translating Sami’s instructions to her parents. Her mother doesn’t understand what’s happening.

Lucy turns to Sami. ‘Are you still hungry?’

‘Pardon?’

‘You ordered food. Do you still want it?’

‘I can pay,’ says Sami, peeling a fifty-pound note from the bundle in the rucksack.

‘Is it stolen money?’ she asks.

‘Would it matter?’

Lucy folds the note three times and puts it into a jar above the sink next to a picture of her grandparents in a formal pose dressed in their finest clothes.

Sami watches her prepare, a knife blade blurring with speed as she dices celery, bamboo shoots and broccoli. She heats a wok and the kitchen fills with the hissing of vegetables hitting hot oil.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asks.

Sami can’t answer her.

‘Do you really have a bomb?’

Her eyes look incredibly wise yet she doesn’t look older than fourteen.

‘Why?’ Lucy asks.

‘Pardon?’

‘Why do you have a bomb?’

It’s an obvious question. Sami doesn’t have an answer.

‘What are you fighting for? What are you protesting against? What do you hate - Western imperialism, decadent bourgeois attitudes? Do you want independence or freedom? Are you an anarchist? Has Britain betrayed the Arab world?’

Sami just wants her to shut up.

‘What do you hate about us?’ asks Lucy.

‘I don’t know who “us” is.’

‘Western civilisation,’ says Lucy. ‘Do you know what Gandhi said when he was asked about Western civilisation? He said he thought it was a good idea.’

‘He was a lot cleverer than me,’ replies Sami.

‘I don’t think you do have a bomb.’ She makes him sound like a failure.

‘I have a gun,’ he says defensively.

A mobile phone is ringing on the counter beside the cash register. Lucy’s phone. She stares at it as though expecting it to do something else, like answer itself.

Lucy picks it up. Presses green. Listens. Hands the phone to Sami.

A deep resonant male voice booms down the line: ‘This is London News Radio. Am I speaking to a terrorist?’

Sami doesn’t answer.

‘Are you a hostage?’

‘No.’

‘Can you talk? Are you being held at gunpoint?’

‘Sorry, who are you?’

‘London News Radio.’

‘Who did you want to speak to?’

‘A terrorist or a hostage.’

Sami looks around the restaurant.

‘I’m not a terrorist.’

‘So what do you call yourself - a freedom fighter, a martyr, an insurgent? What group do you represent? Are you affiliated with Osama Bin Laden? We’re live to air. Do you have a message for the British people?’

‘No.’

‘The police are saying you might be Algerian or Moroccan.’

‘I was born in Croydon.’

‘But you’re Moslem, right?’

‘No.’

‘Can you explain why you’re doing this?’

‘Doing what?’

‘Holding people hostage. Why didn’t you detonate your bomb?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Your colleague blew himself up. Were you meant to die together?’

He’s talking about Dessie.

‘Have you harmed any of the hostages? How many are there? What are your demands?’

Sami hangs up. Looks at Lucy, who shrugs.

The van driver has turned on the TV. A policeman is being interviewed. Top brass. Chin out, shoulders back, he’s facing a firing squad of cameras and microphones.

‘This was a brutal, callous and horrifying act,’ he says. ‘One of the worst atrocities I have witnessed in my twenty-three years as a police officer …’

Sounding more righteous by the sentence, he bristles with intent and stresses his determination to bring the perpetrators to justice … no stone unturned … all available resources brought to bear … blah, blah, blah.

Reporters are shouting questions. They want to know about the second bomber, ‘the one who ran away’.

The policeman avoids answering the question. Tries to move on. The reporters won’t let him go.

‘Why have police evacuated parts of Soho?’

‘For operational reasons.’

‘Is it true you’ve cornered a suicide bomber?’

‘We hope to arrest a suspect shortly.’

‘Does the suspect have a bomb?’

‘We have no intelligence to confirm the existence of more devices.’

‘Or rule it out?’

‘By their very nature people callous enough to kill innocent civilians are hard to stop, but our services and police are doing a heroic job.’

‘Is the suspect holding hostages?’

‘No comment.’

‘Have you made contact with him? What are his demands?’

Sami blinks at the screen. His stomach spasms like he’s going to be sick. The brass is asking for public patience and co-operation. Central London will be locked down for a while longer.

The media conference ends. Next they interview the cabbie that kicked Sami out of his cab. He’s talking about how he came face to face with the devil.

‘’He had this crazed look in his eyes, like he was obsessed, you know, and I thought I could hear the bag ticking. He could have blown me up but I kept my cool, know what I’m sayin’? I saved myself and other people.’

Hold the phones, thinks Sami. Get this guy an agent and put him on Oprah.

Next comes the woman from the Crooked Surgeon who let Sami use the phone.

‘He had these cold blue piercing eyes. They were looking right through me. It was like he was undressing me, you know, like he wanted to do things to me, obscene things. Clearly he has a very twisted misogynistic view of Western women.’

Everyone is getting their fifteen minutes of fame, thinks Sami, except in the new digital age fifteen minutes is condensed into a sound-bite and should come with an extra large coke and fries.

They’re calling it a siege. Nobody ever gets away from a siege. Look what happened at Waco and that school in Russia where all those kids died.

Sami lets his forehead drop onto his forearms and closes his eyes, listening to his heart thudding and smelling sweat rising from his armpits. Even if he destroys the shooter and flushes the drugs, he’s guilty of tampering with evidence, perverting the course of justice, breaking and entering, blowing up a train and holding people hostage.

How many years do you get for robbing the Old Bailey or for taking hostages in a restaurant? Fifteen years? Twenty? They’re calling him a terrorist. It’ll be high security, category A, Parkhurst or Belmarsh.

Twenty years. That’s seven thousand and something days. Nadia won’t be waiting when he gets out. Neither will Kate Tierney. She’ll be long gone, twice married with three kids and thunderous thighs.

They say you only think about escaping for the first five years. After ten you stop thinking about women and by fifteen you’re looking forward to a hot cocoa and lights out at ten.

Maybe they won’t even bother arresting him. They’ll shoot him Butch and Sundance style the moment he sets foot outside. Exclamate him. Full stop. End of story.

30

On the day Nadia started primary school Sami was supposed to walk her to the school gates and hold her hand when she crossed the road. He got as far as the skateboard park where a mate of his was trying a fifty-fifty grind on a handrail. Sami told Nadia to wait for him because he wanted a turn.

She waited for a while but then grew tired of watching the skateboarders. She saw a girl wearing the same school uniform and thought about following her across the road. The lights changed as she stepped out. Tyres screeched. The car couldn’t stop. Nadia fell under the front wheels.

Sami saw her lying on the road. He started running; calling for help. Then he kept running, convinced that he’d killed her. Sure she was dead. He was to blame.

Nadia wasn’t dead. The nearside tyre had run over one of her school shoes, which was so stiff and new that it didn’t give way. It tore all the ligaments in her left foot and she spent two months in a cast.

Sami took his punishment like a man. His skateboard was broken into pieces.

Why does he remember that now, he wonders. Staring at the window, he tries to force Nadia to appear in front of him. He has tried to do it for three days but it hasn’t worked.

Outside the restaurant it’s gone quiet. Nothing seems to be moving except the Chinese lanterns rocking in the breeze. When Sami presses his left cheek against the glass and looks sideways he can make out the barricades blocking Shaftesbury Avenue. Pressing his opposite cheek to the window, he can see the twin stone dragons outside the Exchange Bar and the fruit stand at the Lucky House Mini Market. Boxes of apples, oranges and bananas are neatly stacked with prices written in coloured markers on white squares of cardboard. The doors are closed. The windows are dark.

‘Why are you doing this to us?’ demands a voice behind him.

Sami turns. The girl in the wheelchair has broad shoulders and strong arms. Her face might be pretty if her eyes weren’t so narrow and hard. Anger seems to be trapped inside her, filling her like a reservoir.

‘Doing what?’

‘Keeping us prisoner.’

Sami can’t answer her.

‘When are you going to let us go?’

‘Soon.’

‘I have to be home.’

‘Why?’

The question is so unexpected that she doesn’t have an answer.

‘I have things to do. I have a life.’

‘What’s your name?’ Sami asks.

Her hands leave her wheels and are pressed into her lap.

‘Persephone.’

‘How long you been in a wheelchair?’

‘Since I was nine.’

‘What happened?’

‘I got an infection.’

Sami can’t think of any more questions, but his silence infuriates her.

‘Is that all you got?’

‘Pardon?’

‘The only question you got? When you look at me is that all you see - a wheelchair? A cripple?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t ask where I live or what I do. You’re not interested in my opinions or my pastimes; what music I like, my favourite films, what I’m reading, it’s just the wheelchair. Well let me tell you: I drive a car. I go to the gym four nights a week. I have a boyfriend. I’m a dynamite fuck. Want to know more?’

Not really, thinks Sami. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you.’

‘You’re too transparent to offend me,’ she says, rocking back in her chair, raising the small front wheels and spinning away from him.

Now there is a girl with serious issues, thinks Sami, as he watches her depart. It’s not just her anger or her bitterness that creates a force field around her. It’s as though she uses her disability to selectively embarrass people or socially bludgeon them.

The van driver is still leaning against the wall with his eyes closed.

‘You don’t look like a Paki or an Arab,’ he says.

Sami doesn’t answer.

‘I suppose you figure you’re going to blow a few people up and go straight to heaven; get to sleep with the vestal virgins. How do you Moslems find enough virgins to go round? Maybe they’ll run out and you’ll end up shagging camels instead.’

Sami’s molars are clenched. Hurting.

‘I suppose you think 9/11 was a triumph,’ continues the van driver. ‘But you dumb bastards just made the West stronger. You shoved a pointy stick into the biggest bloody wasp’s nest in history and now the Yanks are gonna eat you for breakfast and shit you out before lunch like you’re extra-strength All-Bran.’

Sami tells him to shut up. He’s not listening.

‘Look what happened in Iraq. Saddam bragged that the Republican Guard would lay waste to the infidels. He said they were gonna stain the sand red with American blood. Bollocks! They folded. They fled like frightened rabbits.

‘Now you got insurgents instead of soldiers. Proper cowards. They bomb schools and mosques. They dress up as women. Booby-trap cripples and retards. Run away. If Gordon Brown had any balls he’d kick every last sand nigger out of this country.’

Sami spins around and kicks at the rear legs of the driver’s chair, which are taking his weight. Gravity does the rest. He goes down, landing hard on his back. Winded. Sucking in air.

‘I said shut the fuck up,’ mutters Sami, pressing the barrel of the shooter into the driver’s forehead. Leaving a mark. He pulls away suddenly. Shaking. Frightened of how much he wants to pull the trigger.

Dragging himself up, he slumps in a chair, arms hanging between his knees, the gun loose in his fingers. A hand brushes his shoulder. Persephone’s mother has crossed the restaurant. She’s one of those women who seem to have been beaten down by life, worn smooth like a pebble in a fast moving stream.

‘Do you have a headache? I have some paracetamol in my handbag.’

‘Thank you, but I’m OK.’

She lowers herself, perching on the edge of a chair, hands clasped in her lap. Enclosed. Bird-like.

‘You’ll have to forgive Persephone. She can be quite … acid-tongued. You see she’s very independent and strongwilled. People sometimes mistake it for rudeness.’

‘She has her reasons.’

‘I used to think it was the accident, but she was always rather demanding.’

‘The accident?’

‘My husband was driving, God rest his soul. Persephone was thrown out of the car. I was pinned inside.’ She pulls back her fringe and Sami sees the scar running across the top of her scalp, just below her hairline.

‘When was it?’

‘Six years ago.’

‘Persephone said it was an infection.’

‘She doesn’t like talking about what happened. People always want details.’

Her voice drops. She glances behind her.

‘I was just wondering … hoping really … that you might consider letting Persephone go - because of her disability. She wouldn’t say bad things about you. You’ve treated us very well.’

The van driver interrupts.

‘You can’t let one of us go and not the others. That’s fucking discrimination.’

‘She’s in a wheelchair,’ says her mother.

‘So what? We give her ramps. We build her lifts. She gets a special fucking pension. It’s a rip-off.’