The Agent Runner (16 page)

‘Three-and-a-half years! They were systematically stealing radioactive waste for three-and-a-half years?’

Gul Rassoul shrugged and flung another lump of meat. ‘Perhaps. Who can say?’

‘Where did they take it?’

‘Back to wherever they came from, a land of stones.’

‘What tribe? What clan?’ Noman demanded.

‘It is said of nomads with no livestock that they have no right to a name let alone a clan or tribe. But I can tell you what I told your colleague, that they lived under a
bamiyat
– an oath of allegiance – to one known only as the father of smoke.’

‘My colleague?’

‘I think Khan was his name.’

Noman swore under his breath. So Khan knew. Khan, who maintained that the House of War was a tall tale, a bugbear to frighten the Americans, knew that, in reality, the House of War had in its possession enough radioactive waste to manufacture the dirtiest kind of bomb imaginable. Why had he kept it secret? Why was he so adamant that Noman should stay away?

It was as he was striding back to the Range Rover that Noman first caught sight of the boy, a skinny rat-faced beggar in a ragged black overcoat that made him resemble a bat. He was staring at Noman with an impudent expression on his face. Noman might have dismissed him as wholly unremarkable, but there was something about him that made Noman think of himself at that age, the same barely-suppressed orphan anger.

Noman scowled in return and slammed the door behind him as he climbed in the car beside Raja Mahfouz.

‘Let’s get out of here.’

23. Nadifa’s story

The doorbell woke him. Ed looked groggily around. He’d dozed off in front of the television with his father in the chair beside him. The old man was still snoring. He looked at his watch. Two am.

When he opened the door Leyla was standing there with her mother’s X5 blocking the street behind her. She was wearing a black woollen hat and the tip of her nose was pink with cold.

‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.

‘Can you do me a favour?’

He nodded without thinking. ‘Sure.’

‘I need to go to Newham. Do you think you could come along?’

‘Sure.’

She seemed surprised. ‘Just because you work for my mother doesn’t mean you have to jump to it. You can make your own mind up.’

‘I’ll get my coat.’

He got in the car and she turned the music down. It was Asian Dub Foundation:
Where’s All the Money Gone?

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m kind of a dick sometimes.’

‘That’s alright.’

She accelerated down the street and turned onto New Road. ‘You’re a boxer, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘How come?’

‘It’s a family tradition. My father boxed in the Navy. I boxed at college.’

‘Did you win much?’

‘I won more than I lost, put it that way. Now tell me what’s going on.’

‘It’s something I’ve been working on for a while. A woman has agreed to be interviewed. She works in Forest Gate, off the Romford Road.’

‘She’s working at this hour? What does she do?’

‘She runs a brothel.’

He laughed. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Absolutely.’ She was an impatient driver but wary too, short bursts of rapid acceleration with her eyes roaming the road ahead. ‘The police have launched a crackdown. They’re closing down brothels across the East End and putting ASBOs on the women barring them from the area. They’re putting their pictures up in shops and pushing them through letterboxes. It makes it dangerous for the prostitutes because they can't phone the police to protect themselves. It’s pushing them further underground. If I don’t do this interview now I’m worried I won’t get the chance again.’

‘Does your mother know you’ve got her car?’

‘No. Are you going to tell her?’

He was enjoying himself now. ‘No.’

‘Look, I just need you to be there with me as a precaution. Don’t say anything and don’t start any fights. Is that clear?’

‘Crystal.’

She parked underneath a railway bridge beside an ominous sign encouraging anyone witnessing a collision with the bridge to call an emergency hotline. They walked along the side of the railway arches and cut down an
alleyway between two brick walls, emerging onto an expanse of waste ground and a long, low-rise sixties housing block. They stood at the entrance to the block and she pressed a buzzer. Soon after the intercom crackled into life.

‘Name?’

‘It’s Leyla for Nadifa.’

The door clicked and they were in. They climbed two flights of concrete stairs and walked along a corridor past a man zipping his fly. Leyla knocked on a door. A large man with bloodshot eyes opened the door.

‘I’m here to see Nadifa,’ Leyla said.

The large man stepped back and allowed her to enter, but when Ed made to follow he stopped him with one hand. ‘Not you.’

Ed locked eyes with him and, stifling the urge to break the man’s arm, he carefully removed the hand from his chest.

‘She doesn’t go in there without me.’

‘It’s ok,’ Leyla said. ‘You can wait out there. I’ll be fine.’

‘It’s not ok,’ he said, continuing to stare at the man. ‘You don’t go in there without me.’

From inside the flat a woman’s voice called out. ‘Let him in if he’s so keen.’

The man stepped aside. Ed brushed past him and followed Leyla down a carpeted hallway past two closed doors and into a room lit by candles on a low table.

Sprawling on a long sofa was a young black woman with a moon face, long braided hair and painted-on eyebrows that gave her a startled, mask-like expression. She was wearing a white robe with the hood thrown back and the longest nail extensions Ed had ever seen. They were crimson and sharp as blades.

She pointed one of them at Ed. ‘I know you.’

‘No,’ he said, emphatically.

The woman chuckled, ‘Of course not. It was your father.’

‘We’re not that alike.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You have a pretty face,’ the woman said, switching her attention to Leyla, flashing a sly grin, ‘but you’re too skinny. My clients prefer their bones with flesh on.’

‘I eat like a horse,’ Leyla told her.

The woman raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry but I don’t think I can offer you any work.’

There was a pause.

Leyla smiled, grimly. ‘You agreed to drink tea with me, Nadifa.’

‘How silly of me, of course I did.’ She clapped her hands. It was an ungainly gesture, with her talons spread and only the heels of her palms making contact. ‘Please sit down.’

They sat opposite her. An unnervingly young girl in a child’s pink pyjamas brought in a tray with tea things.

‘What can I do for you?’ Nadifa asked.

‘Tell me your story,’ Leyla said, placing her iPhone on the coffee table with its recorder app on.

Nadifa laughed. ‘Are you going to make me into a celebrity?’

‘No real names will be used.’

‘It’s not a fairytale. Though I was a beautiful girl once, full of promise like Amal here,’ she pointed at the child pouring them tea, ‘but more innocent.’

‘What happened to you, Nadifa?’

‘My parents were very poor and couldn’t afford to feed me so they sold me to a man in Mogadishu. I was sent there in a suitcase. When I got to the house I was raped. First by the man and then by his sons.’

Leyla closed her eyes.

Nadifa chuckled. ‘Why so sad? It is the way of these things.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘The man told me that he could not afford to keep me and I could never return to my village because I had shamed my family. He said that my father or my brothers would kill me. Of course, I was terrified. He said the only hope for me was to go to Europe to be adopted. How could I say no? A mixed Italian-Somali couple that had children of their own flew with me to Rome. They did it all the time, passing children off as their own. You see, you didn’t need a photograph of children under the age of ten on a passport in those days. When I got to Rome I was told that the best chance for me was in England with a man from Bosaso and I travelled here in the back of the truck. But when I arrived in Newham the man told me I was too old for adoption and I would have to pay back the cost of my transport. I was made to have sex with men to pay my debt. I did it for ten years. I was fortunate that the man from Bosaso was fastidious in certain matters. He insisted on the use of condoms.’

Ed looked at Leyla but she didn’t acknowledge him. The two women were staring at each other.

‘Go on.’

‘The man from Bosaso became sick in his liver. It is a common sickness with people from my country. He could not work and someone had to run his business. He could not trust his family. It was natural that he put me in charge. I soon discovered that I have a talent for this work. The girls respect me and so do the clients. Here I am.’

‘And the man from Bosaso?’

She chuckled. ‘He died, of course, although not before he married me. He died in the bed beside me. Some people say I smothered him with a pillow.’

Ed sat in silence while the interview continued. Nadifa was explaining to Leyla how many girls she had working for her, in this flat and in others locally. Ed looked through the curtain of beads at the bouncer standing just the other side. It was clear from the sounds coming through the walls that business was being conducted as usual. Once a man emerged from one of the other rooms and was shown to the door. After a short interval the intercom buzzed and the bouncer answered it. ‘Name?’

‘It’s Hussein for Nadifa.’

‘Let him in,’ Nadifa called out. A few minutes later, a man knocked on the door and was admitted. She smiled at Ed. ‘I prefer to deal with established clients …or their relatives.’

When the interview was over, Nadifa clapped her hands again and the child collected the tea things. Nadifa’s eyes met Ed’s for a moment and she said, ‘Do you want her?’

‘No.’

‘What about your father?’

‘No.’

‘I haven’t decided on the price yet but I can tell you she is going to be very expensive the first time.’

The girl carried the tray back into the kitchen and closed the door behind her.

#

Neither Leyla nor Ed said anything until they were on the Romford Road heading west. She was driving too fast, shifting up through the gears and overtaking slower traffic. He almost told her to slow down but mastered the urge.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure how safe it would be.’

Soon they were back in Banglatown, near his house. He wanted to say something about the young girl in pyjamas but nothing he could say seemed adequate.

She pulled up in front of his father’s house. They stayed like that for a moment, without moving. But then a car turned into the narrow one-way street behind them and flashed its lights. He had to get out. He was reaching for the door handle when she gave him a quick, darting kiss on the cheek. She looked away immediately afterwards. He got out of the car. They didn’t say goodbye.

He watched the taillights of her car flash red at the end of the street and then she turned out of sight. He was standing still but it felt like he was falling.

24. An impulsive act

‘It’s Rifaz for Nadifa.’

The door clicked open. Ed steered his father up the stairs and along the corridor with the crowbar hanging loosely at his side. He crossed in front of the door to Nadifa’s flat at a crouch and pressed himself against the wall on the far side. He raised the crowbar and nodded to his father.

Rifaz stepped up to the door and knocked. He stepped back a pace and stood there, trembling.

Ed was counting, a snake of sweat sliding across his temple.

One, two, three…

The door opened. Ed pivoted and swung the crowbar down like an axe on the bouncer’s forehead. He crashed to the ground.

‘Police!’ Ed shouted.

He jumped over the body and advanced down the hall, banging the crowbar against the walls and shouting. He pushed through the bead curtain and crossed the living room without pausing to look at Nadifa. He kicked open the door to the kitchen.

The girl, Amal, was curled up in a dog crate. She was awake and watching him.

‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. He jimmied the door open and helped her out. ‘This way.’

He led her back into the living room.

‘You’re right, you’re not like your father,’ Nadifa said. She hadn’t moved since earlier.

He pointed the crowbar at her. ‘The girl is mine.’

She stared impassively back at him. ‘You think you can just walk in here and damage my property and then steal my property?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think you are foolhardy and stupid.’

‘No.’

He turned his back on her and guided the girl through the bead curtain and along the hall past the bouncer. Ed’s father was still standing in the corridor outside.

‘It’s done,’ Ed told him.

#

He felt strangely liberated. They were sitting on a bench outside the entrance to A&E, at the Royal London Hospital. Amal was wrapped in a blanket and curled up beside him. His father was standing some way off smoking a cigarette.

A police car parked at the end of a rank of ambulances in the forecourt, as far from the entrance as possible. Two men got out of the back and moved as swiftly as possible away from the vehicle, as if embarrassed by it. Ed recognised them both. One was Jonah and the other was Rat-face, one of Leyla’s attackers. He was wearing a plaster cast on his arm and it was Ed that had broken it.

Jonah crossed over to the bench.

‘May I?’

Ed nodded. Jonah sat on the bench. He looked down at the sleeping girl, then around the forecourt. It was relatively quiet.

‘I hate hospitals,’ he said, eventually. ‘Too many cameras.’

He seemed at a loss for anything else to say and then he noticed Rat-face hanging back, with a sullen expression on his face.

‘That’s Carl,’ Jonah told him, ‘one of the lost boys. Carl thinks you’re a sociopath.’

Ed met the young man’s gaze and saw there a mixture of fear and defiance.

‘It’s just injured pride,’ Jonah said. ‘You were supposed to hurt him. After all it was part of the plan. You remember the plan, right? Burrow you into J&K Cargo and Travel, make you an invaluable member of their team, and get yourself sent to Pakistan.’