The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

his head. ‘Just that the funeral will be on Monday. And that I should bring Ahad.’

‘What? She wants you to bring Ahad?’

‘Yes.’

John shook his head. ‘Are you sure that’s wise? I mean, her dad told her that he was dead. Is his funeral the best place for a reunion?’

Elyas shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Ahad wants to go. He’s getting a train up here this afternoon. None of this is easy.’

‘What I never understood was how she believed that he was dead. Surely she needed to bury her child, name him, find some closure, something? But she just carried on. And then Khan left him with you. What the fuck was that all about?’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Elyas.

‘It was exactly like that. There’s something else going on here, mate.’

Elyas already knew meeting at the funeral wasn’t a good idea, either for his son or the boy’s mother, but nothing about his relationship with Jia had ever been straightforward. He wondered if that was what had kept him addicted to her for so long. He was no different to a junkie, hungry for the next fix, willing to blur the lines of right and wrong to get it. Unwilling to confront his shame, he brushed the thought aside. Age had never stopped a grown man making a bad choice. Work was best. News was salvation. Work was where he made his best decisions. ‘So, what else do we know about the Jirga?’ he asked, picking up a copy of the day’s paper and handing it to John. Akbar Khan’s face was splashed across the front page, the headline ‘Gangland Assassination’ above it.

John shook his head. ‘Things are bad,’ he said. ‘They’re worse than when we first started. Everything has gone – the big companies have left, unemployment is high, and hardly anyone who goes away to university comes back. The city has been drained of hope. My contacts tell me the police have been after Akbar Khan for years. They know about the Jirga, about the drug runs, the money laundering, the prostitution, the tax fraud – you name it, they know it. But the CPS just can’t seem to make it stick. People whisper and gossip but when it comes to giving evidence, no one comes forward, stories don’t corroborate and reports go missing.’

‘People are that afraid?’ said Elyas.

‘They’re not afraid of him, they respect him.’

Elyas was surprised by his answer. Things had become so bad that criminals were now among the highly respected in society? He was so steeped in privilege that he hadn’t seen it coming.

John watched his old friend grappling with what he was learning. He had always admired Elyas’s drive. It was the kind of drive that required commitment, the kind that got you kicked in the teeth. Repeatedly. But that had never stopped Elyas. It had been evident the first time they met. They were at college and Elyas had just narrowly escaped a beating from a group of rival university students over a long since forgotten political discussion. John had dragged Elyas to the pub to escape. Once there, Elyas had ceremoniously suggested they write down their plans for the next ten years. John had thought it a bit weird but agreed. ‘The back of a stained beer mat is probably the best place for my plans,’ he’d told his new friend. Over the years, Elyas had crossed off every single one of his goals, and hung the mat in his study. John hadn’t. He now used his as a coaster on his desk ‘as a reminder that plans are for losers’, he told Elyas.

John was genuinely pleased for his friend and glad that success had not changed him. To Elyas, achievements were just road markers that allowed him to feel worthy. John knew this – and where his old friend’s demons lived. Elyas’s career trajectory had been inversely proportional to his personal life. John, on the other hand, had a job he liked and lived with the woman he loved, who loved him back. The equations of life were balanced.

‘Do you think Jia knows the full extent of her father’s criminal activities?’ John asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Elyas said. ‘They were close. But by the time she and I split up there was a lot of bad blood. I think it was more from her than from him.’ Jia would talk to Elyas about her father’s business from time to time, but only in general terms. She had never been comfortable on the subject.

They continued looking through the archives, separating out anything they thought useful.

‘This is from the night Bazigh Khan’s wife died,’ said John, handing Elyas a cutting. It was a photograph, black and white, of a young man being pressed against a wall by two policemen, his hands behind his back, his face turned to the camera, expressionless, emptied of feeling. It showed his children looking on, their faces bereft, one clutching a soft rabbit, Sanam Khan kneeling beside them, her dupatta wrapped around her head tight, her figure blurred as if she was moving when the camera clicked. Her husband was standing next to her, his eyes locked upon his brother. Elyas wanted to take the picture to Jia and ask her about it, but he knew it would be pointless.

‘Here’s what we’ve got so far about last night…’ John said, picking up his battered old notebook and squinting as he tried to make sense of his shorthand. ‘What does that word say?’ He pointed to one of the squiggles on the page. ‘Oh yeah, I remember now. A big drugs shipment was supposed to come in last night. The biggest that the city has seen in a long time…’

‘Where did you hear that? Not from official police channels, surely?’ said Elyas. He was impressed at John’s work.

‘I have my sources,’ John replied. ‘You’re not the only award-winning reporter here, you know.’

‘Seriously?’

‘It’s all over the community website,’ said John. ‘A guy called Andrzej Nowak was out celebrating with a group of