The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

forward and handing over his money. The old man fumbled in the cash register before giving change. Elyas thanked him. ‘Do you know why the police are here, Uncle?’

The shopkeeper shook his head vigorously, his eyes shut tight. ‘I no know what happened,’ he said in a thick accent. Elyas nodded and thanked him again, this time in Urdu.

‘You speak Urdu? Where you from? You Pakistani? You no look Pakistani,’ he said.

‘Yes, I am. Well, my grandfather was. He’s Pathan,’ Elyas replied.

The shopkeeper’s face lit up. ‘OK! You wait. Wait, OK?’ he said, picking up his phone. The man dialled a number and spoke to someone on the other end, then held out the phone. ‘Here, speak to my son, he will tell you everything,’ he said.

Elyas took the battered old Nokia and put it to his ear. The warmth of one’s own kith and kin, and their need to pass on what they knew, never failed to inspire him. ‘Hello?’ he said.

‘Bloody drug dealers, in’t it!’ said a heavy voice on the other end. ‘They moved in couple o’ weeks back. Rented some storage units. Said they were selling mineral water. Tried to give me some.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said no thanks! Best steer well clear of them Eastern Europeans. Two weeks after they moved in and they’re driving round in flashy cars. I knew it were dodgy. I mean, who sells water and makes enough for a Lambo? Then water board came out, sayin’ summat about a water leak. Sayin’ we usin’ too much of it. Think they moved premises after that, kept the units for storing their cars.’

The shopkeeper’s son spoke fast, making it difficult for Elyas to keep up. As he listened, he gauged the man was as dodgy as they came in this city, but everyone deserved to be heard. Elyas had a knack for getting people to open up. He could get them to reveal things in private conversations, with cameras pointed at them and down phone lines. You just had to care enough to listen.

Malala Food Stores was the kind of establishment that shouted money laundering: bare shelves, tins past their sell-by date, pins and needles in little packets, and plastic toys that looked straight out of the eighties, all signs that this was some kind of front. Experience told Elyas that the shopkeeper’s son was no stranger to the police. That’s why he wasn’t at the premises today, and why his fumbling old man was working the cash register.

‘You know Akbar Khan?’ the young man asked. ‘I work for ’im. I told ’im what these scum were doin’. Said we need to clean ’em out!’

‘And Ben Khan? Do you know what happened to him?’ Elyas asked. No reply. He waited. A less experienced man would have interjected but Elyas understood how to draw answers out of people by leaving a silence hanging. The void seemed unending but Elyas was patient, and then, ‘Hello? You still there?’

‘Yeah, I’m still here,’ came the voice. More silence. And then, it happened. When he finally started talking, his words were drained of their bravado and street kid arrogance. He spoke for quite a while, his voice low, so that Elyas had to press his ear to the phone, listening hard, swallowing every word. When the son hung up, he handed the mobile phone back to the shopkeeper.

‘Are you OK?’ the old man asked in Urdu. ‘You look even paler than when you came in.’

Elyas smiled weakly and thanked the old man for his help and his concern. Once safely in his car, he scrolled through his phone for Jia’s number. He held the phone tightly in the palm of his hand, staring at it, his heart ready to jump out of his mouth. He had to pass on what he knew. But it had pained him to hear it himself – how would he tell her?

The young man on the phone had been quite sure about what had been done to Benyamin last night. ‘I couldn’t get hold of Idris so I called Phats – he does security for the Khans – told ’im where Ben Khan was,’ he’d said. ‘But I couldn’t bring myself to tell ’im all of it. Tauba! I ain’t slept all night since I heard his screams, bro!’

‘What happened?’

‘They took him to the parking lot by the storage units. I saw them with my own eyes. That Brotherhood, if you do ’em wrong, they want you to suffer as a warning t’rest of us…’ He took a long breath. His voice trembled. ‘He’s a good kid, our Ben. Looks out for my dad. What they did to him was not human, man… I heard his screams… They just wouldn’t stop… They just kept revvin’ up those cars, man. Revvin’ ’em up and parking those fuckers on him. Reckon they only stopped cos they heard the Khan had got wind of what was goin’ on. They were gone before anyone showed up.’

CHAPTER 21

Jia emerged from the house to find Michael waiting for her at the bottom of the stone steps. He was empty-handed, his phone tucked away in his jacket pocket. He’d been admiring the valleys from this vantage point. The air was clean and crisp, filled with the smell of freshly cut grass. Jia looked at the grounds of her father’s house, the pathway weeded clean, the neat edges of the lawn. The wedding had left none of its mark thanks to the Khan’s men. The family never left business unfinished.

She had spent the rest of the morning handling the details of death. The post-mortem had been expedited, thanks to Bazigh Khan. He had pulled strings and ensured that the process would be completed quickly; even in death, Akbar Khan came first. The coroner’s office was not as easily persuaded. Its bureaucracy was as a heavy ship, difficult to change direction once its course was set, so the inquest date was in a few weeks. Men and women who deal