First Response

TOWER HAMLETS

‘Did he get it?’ asked Daniel, as his brother closed the laptop and stood up. Daniel was sprawled on a sofa, watching a football match on a big-screen TV above the fireplace.

‘He got it,’ said Adam, dropping onto the sofa next to him.

‘And you don’t think we should leave the country?’

‘This is our home, did you forget? Where do you want to go? Pakistan? Fuck me, bruv, the food’s crap and it’s too bloody hot most of the year.’

Daniel laughed. ‘But Tower Hamlets? You really want to stay here?’

‘Bruv, there are more than one and a quarter million Pakistanis in the UK, twenty per cent of them live in London and Khan is one of the most common surnames. We can hide in plain sight. No one knows what I look like anyway, and you’re completely different now.’

‘I won’t miss that bloody beard, that’s for sure,’ said Daniel, rubbing his chin. ‘What now?’

‘We restart our lives. You start working in the movies again. I go back to being a doctor.’

‘And how do we explain what we’ve been doing for the last two years?’

‘Travelling the world, bruv. Finding ourselves.’ He grinned. ‘Probably best not to say that we took a sabbatical to get revenge on the bastard who killed our sister.’ The smile vanished as quickly as it had flashed across his face. ‘It took longer than I thought it would, but it was worth it. That bastard was responsible for the death of Sarah and everyone else who died on that day. I don’t know why the cops didn’t work it out for themselves. But they know now.’ He sighed. ‘We’ve got time, bruv. There’s no rush. Five million quid minus expenses will last us years.’

‘I hope Mo doesn’t drop the ball. El-Sayed needs to go down for what he did.’

‘It’ll happen, don’t worry,’ said Adam. ‘And once they start looking, the Yanks will want their pound of flesh. El-Sayed will spend the rest of his life locked inside a metal box. Don’t worry.’

‘We should have just killed him.’

‘No, this way is better. Plus we got his money. We can do a lot of good with that.’

‘Do you think Sarah knows what we did for her?’

Adam smiled. ‘If there’s a heaven, she knows.’