at a crawl. The snow had settled heavier than in London. I parked the car in a tight spot outside number 34 and checked the time. It was near ten, still relatively early. The risk of being seen was high. I pulled the seat back and stretched out. Patience was key. I would wait until the early hours of the morning to give me cover.
I let the wipers sweep away the flakes of snow as I looked out onto the street. It was quiet, not a soul or a Christmas light in sight. This wasn’t that kind of place. It was a thriving Muslim community, unashamedly proud at being segregated. I remembered from my last visit, each face was brown and every woman was covered top to tail in black with only her eyes visible. There were four halal butchers, located close together, and two masjids less than a hundred metres apart, with a third under construction. They were frowned upon in today’s backwards Britain, but places like this do exist. I didn’t have a problem with it. I know what it’s like to find comfort with your own, whether that’s family or whether that’s someone who looks like you. It’s only a problem when those values are forced upon you.
I remember clearly Rafi’s elder brother, Asif, walking me up and down this street, proudly showing me the sights, revelling in the seclusion. He pointed out a newsagents, the only business on the street that was owned by a non-Muslim. I remember it being empty at the time, as a result of it being boycotted. Seeing it now, through my windscreen, it was boarded-up, out of business. Job done.
Across the road to my right, fifty metres or so in front of me, I could just make out the outline to the Kabirs’ semi-detached home. I scanned for police presence, for the press that had set up camp outside the house after the attack. It had been widely reported by the media that Rafi was a cleanskin. He wasn’t affiliated to any terrorist group or known in any capacity to MI5 or counter-terrorism. His family were looked at closely, but ultimately they also didn’t appear on any watchlists. They hid their connections well. The press frenzy eventually fizzled out after Saheed Kabir had given his tearful doorstep interview to the world’s media, about the tragic loss of his youngest son. His pain was genuine, even though his words weren’t. His emotion blended easily with defiance as he stated that Rafi was innocent, and had been subjected to religious indoctrination from the day that he had gone missing to the day he took his own life. Not once mentioning that his innocent son had taken innocent lives. As for religious indoctrination, Rafi had been indoctrinated a long time before he went missing. By his father, his mother and his brother, who raised and nurtured him to exact madness against those who opposed their beliefs. The Kafir.
I couldn’t wait any longer. The thought of Saheed’s emotion in front of the cameras fuelled mine, and my body moved of its own accord. I don’t remember stepping out of my car. I don’t remember tucking the Glock into the waist of my trousers and slipping the suppressor in my inside pocket. All I know is that I was striding through the snow, the plastic food bags secured tightly over my shoes and hands with elastic bands.
The weather had picked up. The gentle fall of snow was now torrential rain, dropping from a black cloud that would forever follow me. I pulled my baseball cap low and my scarf high. It gave little protection against the strong wet wind, biting into me, trying to blow me back the way I came.
God’s way.
But me and Him, we were no longer talking.
I lifted my eyes and through the storm I glanced at number 65 across the road. My eyes furtive and busy, taking in everything. Upstairs the bedrooms lights were on, shining a ray through the gap in the curtains. Downstairs, the living room light was off, but the glare of the television through the net curtains illuminated one figure.
I dropped my gaze and moved past the house. Further down, two houses next to each other had their lights switched off. Number 71 and number 73. Only a metal gate between the two houses separated them. I crossed the road and without breaking stride I rested one foot on the metal gate and scaled over. I hurried around to the rear of the house and into the back garden. The fences were head-height but the adrenaline made me feel light as I lifted myself over with ease. I ducked low under washing lines as I crossed from garden to garden to garden, until I was standing in the Kabirs’ garden.
I craned my neck up. Upstairs the toilet light came on.
I pressed myself to the house and sidestepped to the back door. I peered inside, through the frosted window. No movement, just the muted sound of the television. I removed the Glock from my waist and wrapped the tail of my scarf around the butt of the gun and then tapped it firmly against the window. The glass fell gently onto the kitchen mat on the other side. I put my hand through; the glass cutting into my forearm caused me no pain. My hand landed on the lock. I turned it and stepped inside their home as glass crunched under my shoes.
I looked around the kitchen as I attached the suppressor to the Glock. It was dark but I could make out a tower of mismatched Tupperware on the worktop. The neighbours. They would have rallied around at this tragic time and forced home-cooked meals into the hands of the Kabirs. I moved out of the kitchen and into the narrow hallway. Flashes of light and music from the television travelled from the living room. I stopped halfway into the hallway as an unwelcome memory hit me and I stood staring, just as I had eight months ago. Hung on the wall, the Ayut-al-Kursi in swirling Arabic written and engraved in wood. A prayer that once meant so much to me and was threatening to do so again. I squeezed my eyes shut and gripped my gun tightly and let them in again.
Smiling. Laughing. Living. Dying.
I exhaled hard and walked past the prayer without another look. With the Glock in my grip hanging low by my side, I stepped into the living room.
To my left the television was tuned into a music channel, heavy drum and bass accompanied by flashing lights. I turned to my right. Rafi’s older brother, Asif, had already leaped up from his armchair and was hurtling towards me, the flashing from the television made his movements appear jerky. He cut the distance quickly. I blinked as a tight fist gripped around a remote control came towards me, connecting just above my eye, knocking my baseball cap off. I absorbed it. No pain. No fucking pain! The batteries dropped out of the remote and cracked loudly on the laminate floor. A second blow, same place, and I felt a trickle of blood above my eyebrow. I switched the Glock from my left to right hand and swiped across, blindly catching Asif flush on the jaw and dropping him. He looked up at me. Anger turned to recognition and then realisation.
‘Imran?’ he said, getting himself up on his knees. He spat out a bloody tooth. I lifted the Glock and pointed it to his chest. ‘I couldn’t have known… I didn’t know Rafi was going to—’
I pulled the trigger and felt the bullet travelling through my heart and through my arm and popping quietly out of my hand and into his heart.
Asif dropped back, his head meeting the floor with his legs still tucked underneath his body. I breathed in three times through my nose and out of my mouth.
I would not let the guilt in. He had a hand in this.
I turned away and moved out of the living room. I passed framed family photos hung on the wall as I slowly climbed the stairs, the last of the family’s memories. I stood on the landing, the Glock impatiently tapping against my leg. To the left, a light seeped underneath the bathroom door. To the right, a bedroom, door ajar. I pushed it open slowly. The room was lit dimly from a small football-shaped table lamp. Rafi’s room.
By the side of the bed, Rafi’s mother was standing on a prayer mat, hands clasped against her chest, her face a picture of peace. I watched her for a moment, just as I’d watched my Khala pray so many times. She moved her hands to her knees as she bent down towards Mecca, and then knelt in the Sajdah position, her forehead touching the floor as she recited Subhana Rabbiyal A’laa, three times.
The
