But even as a teenager, he was relieved that someone else had come along to take the heat off him and carry the burden of bankrolling her and Karza. One major up-side of Karza taking off: he wasn’t leeching off them any more. But no matter where he was, dead or alive, he still exerted a powerful force over her.
‘But no Karza…’ She was still talking about him, her face clouded with sorrow.
Jesus, families, thought Sam. They really do fuck you up.
She looked at him with those sad Labrador eyes. ‘Jimmy is the kindest man but there can be no joy, only pain, while Karza is…’ She couldn’t finish the sentence.
He put his arm round her.
She nestled her head against his neck. ‘Will you do something — anything — to bring him back? Will you?’ She lifted her head away and fixed him with one of her trademark stares, gradually taking a deep breath that, depending on his response, would erupt in a wail of pure sorrow or an exclamation of love and joy.
He heard the words leave his mouth as if with a will of their own. ‘All right, I promise.’
Her face lit up. She pulled him to her again, squeezing him tight. Then, just as quickly, her mood changed. ‘Sahim, please go now to the flat and get my passport.’ She rummaged in her bag and produced a huge ring of keys. ‘It’s in my bedside table — top drawer.’
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.