Fortress

16

Sam slept fitfully in an antiseptic hotel near the station. He had nodded off watching Sky News and it was still playing when he woke up. Another night of violence…

His phone was buzzing: Helen.

‘Hey, sweetheart. So glad you called back.’ He had left several messages the night before.

‘Where are you?’

‘I had to go up north.’ He knew that would do. She never asked what he was up to.

‘Oh.’ She sounded put out.

‘Baby, I’m so sorry. Are you missing me? I thought you had a big shoot today.’ He seemed to remember her talking about a chocolate commercial.

‘Um — well, I just wanted to talk.’

‘Did you have a bad day?’

‘No — I’m just a bit freaked out about everything that’s going on.’

She had never mentioned the riots before.

‘Look, I’ll be back tonight. Promise. Okay? And I can put your mind at rest about everything.’

The thought of being back in her arms, smothering his face in her blonde curls, filled him with excitement. God, he fancied her.

‘Okay.’ Her voice was muted.

Oh, well. ‘Bye. Love you.’

Bala’s estate was a two-mile walk. In the daylight the centre of town seemed to have returned to business as usual. The exercise sharpened him and he soon forgot about Helen’s ominous tone. Further away from the centre, the damage was apparent. The estate was a ghost town of abandoned houses. Pavements were strewn with litter from overturned bins, glass from smashed windows and windscreen. A burned-out corner shop still smouldered. His mother had been right. Not since Bosnia had he seen anything like this. He didn’t expect to find someone home but at least he could say he’d made the effort. He’d ask anyone he did see around the estate, then get the hell out.

But they hadn’t fled. Bala’s father was up a ladder, nailing plywood over a smashed upstairs window. All the others had been boarded up.

‘Hi, Mr Pazic.’

Mr Pazic looked down at him, said nothing, and carried on hammering. Sam guessed they blamed Karza for pressuring Bala to go with him to Syria.

The front door wasn’t locked. He pushed it open. From the front room came the sound of a TV talk show turned up loud.

‘Anyone home? It’s Sam.’

In the semi-darkness, he could just make out a small child gazing at him from a doorway before she was pulled back. A woman’s face appeared. He almost didn’t recognize her: Bala’s sister, Jana. She kept her eyes lowered. Another ghost from his past — but one he wasn’t unhappy to see. ‘Jana. Hello. Is Bala home? I need to talk to him.’

She looked at him for what seemed a long time, a mixture of emotions passing over her face, like fast-moving clouds. Somewhere under the pasty olive skin and tired, sunken eyes was the idealistic teenager he had once kissed in the bus shelter. The headscarf made her seem much older, as did the expression of sullen resignation. He nodded at the child clinging to her skirt. ‘Yours?’

She said nothing, but indicated the room where the TV sound was coming from. He knocked, but the volume was too high. She stepped forward and hammered on the door. ‘Bala! Someone here for you.’

There was no answer. She shrugged. ‘Just go in.’

‘Why’s he got it up so loud?’

She stared at him for a few seconds. ‘He says it drowns it out — the stuff in his head. That and the skunk.’

The room was thick with the sweet, heavy smoke. Sam looked back at her and smiled, but she gazed past him blankly and pulled the child into the kitchen.

The TV volume shot up as the door swung open.

‘And I’m tellin’ ’im, she shows ’er face round our ’ouse, I’ll not be answerable for my actions, bladdered or not. Same goes for any of them kids what he’s had with her.’

On the TV a huge woman in a strapless top was jabbing the air with a heavily ringed finger. Two other women, similar but younger, were holding on to her as if she was liable to launch herself at the skinny, bearded, ponytailed man she was pointing at, seated in a separate chair the other side of Jeremy Kyle.

Sam focused on the solitary armchair pulled up close to the screen. He wouldn’t have recognized Bala. The beard was new, as was the shaved head. A stick lay tucked against the chair. He had put on at least twenty kilos. He wore a khaki vest and shorts. The stump of his left leg was wrapped in gauze.

‘Hey, bro.’

Bala lifted his eyes and frowned.

‘It’s Sam, Karza’s brother.’

‘I’m not blind.’

‘Well, it’s been a while.’

Sam lifted his hands and let them drop to his sides. He couldn’t think what to say next. The sight of the stump made him feel queasy. What if something like that happened to Karza? Or worse? ‘So — ah, a lot’s happened since I was last round here.’

He remembered sitting alone in this room with Jana, waiting for Karza and Bala to come in so he could take his brother home. He had fancied her, all right, but he’d known that at the first sign of anything serious between them, her parents would have seen it as permanent and he had other plans.

Bala let out a long, smoky sigh and turned back to the screen.

‘I need your help.’

At least that made Bala smile. ‘That’s a first.’

‘Mum’s worried about Karza. She wants me to find him.’

Bala snorted. ‘Good luck with that.’

‘She hasn’t heard from him in five months. She doesn’t even know if he’s still alive.’

He raised his shoulders, let them drop, then looked back at the screen.

‘Anything you can tell me to make a start, like where you last saw him?’

‘When they drove off and left me for dead, you mean? About fifty K east of Aleppo. That help you?’

Sam had always assumed that Bala was the more reckless of the two. Their mother had always said he was a bad influence. But listening to him now, and thinking of Karza posing absurdly with his ammunition belts, it occurred to Sam that maybe he had got it wrong and it was the other way round. Their mother would have been in denial, of course, as she so often was where Karza was concerned, and having Bala to blame would have perfectly suited her picture of his brother as the innocent, misguided dupe of more dominant personalities.

‘Can you just give me something? Who bought your tickets or who got you across the border? Someone I can ask.’

‘We drove.’

‘To Syria? From here?’

‘Taking medical supplies for a charity.’

‘Which one?’

He shrugged.

‘Which group were you with?’

‘Jaish Muhajireen wa Ansar. That’s the Army of Emigrants and Helpers — since you don’t speak the language.’

God, he was a pain. Sam bet he didn’t speak more than two words of Arabic either, but he was fluent in self-righteousness.

‘We were in an assault on a Scud base near Aleppo, then an army barracks at the airport.’ He shook his head. ‘Karza got lucky — he always does. They let him use the RPG and he scored a direct hit on a bus full of government conscripts. Went right to his head.’

Sam struggled to get his head round the idea of his little brother as a killer. Even after they’d received the photograph and he had seen Karza’s expression, he had dismissed it as showing off.

Bala sucked on the spliff until it glowed back to life. He reached forward and scratched his ankle, where something was bulging inside his sock.

‘What’s that?’

‘You should know. Aren’t criminals your special subject?’

Bala pushed his sock down. An electronic tag. ‘Cos I’m such a danger to society. I’m on a TPIM. You’ll know what that is.’

Sam did: Terrorism and Prevention Investigation Measures had replaced Control Orders but did much the same, a blunt instrument to keep tabs on would-be terrorists.

‘Just cos of going to Syria, never mind I didn’t fire a single shot.’

The smoke was starting to get to him, irritating his eyes. Bala coughed heavily into the hand that held the spliff, then waved it at Sam. ‘You don’t get it, do you? They’ve declared war on us. How’re we gonna fight back?’

Sam said nothing. He let him rant on.

‘Even you, with your degree, you’re still a target. We’re all targets. Better make up your mind which side you’re on.’

Sam decided not to engage with this. He’d come about Karza. ‘The Army of Helpers — do they have anyone based in the UK?’

Bala gave him a withering look.

‘Okay then, whoever organized the van you drove there. Just somewhere I can start. Come on, man. Mum’s bloody desperate.’

Bala reached for a Biro and tore off a corner of the local paper, scribbled something and passed it to him. On it was the name ‘Leanne’ and an address on the other side of Doncaster. ‘They worked out of there.’

‘Leanne?’

‘It was her house. She was the co-ordinator. Your brother had a bit of a thing for her. Maybe she’ll know something.’

‘Any phone number or surname?’

But Bala was done. He turned back to Jeremy Kyle. The large, beanbag of a woman had dissolved into sobs and was being comforted by her similarly shaped supporters.

Sam exited the room and turned towards the front door, but Jana was there, the child still clutching her long skirt. Like him, she had gravitated away from the other Muslims at school. Once, Sam and she had even talked about taking off for London together, escaping the stranglehold of family life. He tried to think of something to say. ‘Last time I saw you, you were in hot pants.’

It sounded clumsy and out of place.

She looked at him blankly. ‘Then you’ve not seen me in a long time.’

He gestured at her clothes. ‘How come?’

She ignored the question. ‘You going to help him or what?’

‘Bala?’

‘You saw that thing on his leg.’

‘It’s up to the authorities. The TPIM expires after two years.

He needs to stay out of trouble, though.’

‘Yeah, like he’s going to blow up a bus or something.’

He tensed, prepared himself for another speech. You don’t like this? Try Egypt, or Libya, he felt like saying. If only they understood how lucky they were to be here. In a hundred other countries Bala would have been locked up and forgotten — or tortured.

‘And that lot who’ve attacked us all along, before this kicked off. They gonna be tagged? How long do we have to go on getting battered, shit through our letterbox, bricks in our windows before you do something about it?’

‘Look, Jana…’

She pursed her lips.

‘… I’m just trying to find my brother.’

‘Fuck your brother. He got Bala into this.’

Victimhood: he could have written a whole dissertation on it. It was like a plague that had crippled the community, breeding a toxic combination of self-pity and thwarted entitlement. Thank God he hadn’t got involved with her. Instead he had got away. But something about the way the light had gone from her eyes touched him. ‘You’ve changed.’

She glared at him, then gestured at the boarded-up windows round the front door. ‘It’s not me that’s changed. It’s out there that’s changed.’