Kia Abdullah - Take It Back

He hesitated. ‘Her name is Jodie Wolfe. She’s a girl from school. She has something called neurofibromatosis which messes up your face. We had a class about it at school but the kids called her the Elephant Woman anyway.’

‘What was she doing at the warehouse?’

Amir shifted in his chair. ‘She’s a sweet girl but she can be a little bit … sad. She’s had a crush on me since year seven and even now, five years later, she follows me around – pretends she just bumped into me.’

‘Is that what she did that night? Pretend to bump into you?’

Amir shook his head. ‘No, even she wouldn’t be that sad. She said she was looking for her friend Nina. She’s always going off with different boys so Jodie must’ve lost her. She said she saw a bunch of us heading here and figured there was some kind of after-party.’

‘Did you invite her to join you?’

Amir scoffed lightly. ‘No, she just turned up. We were hanging out – just the boys.’

‘So she turned up at the warehouse or joined you before?’

‘Yes, she turned up at the warehouse.’

‘Then what happened?’

Amir frowned. ‘She asked if she could have a smoke. The boys didn’t want to share one with her. I didn’t say anything. I mean, she’s not diseased or anything but she’s scary to look at because of her condition so I could understand why they said that. She seemed upset so I tried to comfort her.’

‘How?’

He shrugged. ‘I put my arm around her and told her to ignore them.’

Mia couldn’t place his emotion. Guilt? Shame? Embarrassment?

‘Then she …’ his voice trailed off.

‘Then she?’

The boy’s face flushed red. ‘She whispered in my ear and said she would do something for me if we got rid of the boys.’

Amir’s father stood abruptly. He turned to the door and then back to his son. He opened his mouth to speak but then closed it again. Finally, he sat back down in silence and trained his gaze away from his son, as if the space between them might swallow the mortification of what was to come.

Mia leaned forward. ‘You said that Jodie whispered in your ear. What did she say?’

Amir glanced sideways at his father. ‘She—she said she would give me a blowjob and then started describing it. I was stunned. I always had this idea that she was a sweet girl.’

‘How did you respond?’

‘I took my arm off her and told her to go home. The boys started laughing and making kissing noises. I was really embarrassed so I started on her too.’ He paused, shifted in his chair and made a visible effort to focus on Mia. ‘I’m not proud of it but I said there’s no way we’d share the spliff with her; that we didn’t want to swap saliva with a dog. I knew she was hurt because I’ve always been alright to her but—’ Amir pinched the skin between his brows, as if to ease a headache. Then, he spoke with surprising maturity, ‘Look, I have an ego – I know that – and egos are fragile. The kids at school look at me and see the cricket captain, the guy that gets all the girls, the guy that has it all – and if it got out that I was cosying up to the school freak, then my reputation would take a hit. I like Jodie but she’s not the kind of girl I want to be linked with that way, so I had to put a stop to it. She got upset and started crying. I felt bad but I told her to leave.’

‘And then?’

‘She left. She was crying and I think she may have had a drink because she was stumbling about a bit, but she left. Despite what the boys say, I think we all felt a bit bad so we wrapped it up, finished the spliff and went home.’

‘And have you seen Jodie since then?’

‘No. Why? Is she okay?’

‘Jodie says she was raped that night.’

The boy’s face turned ashen. ‘ She’s the one who said I raped her?’

Mia’s voice was cold. ‘Yes, Mr Rabbani. She’s the one.’

DC Dexter put his elbows on the table. Calmly, he repeated himself, ‘Jodie Wolfe said you, Amir and Mohammed raped her that night while Farid stood by and watched. What do you have to say to that?’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Hassan, his eyes ringed with pale, uncomprehending horror. He looked to his father. ‘ Aba, Allah Qur’an , that’s a lie.’

Irfan Tanweer was an older version of his son: short and wiry with tight ringlets of black hair atop a thin and hawkish face. His beady eyes danced with suspicion as he leaned forward and, in a thick Bangladeshi accent, said, ‘You must be mistaken. My son – he is a religious boy. He would not do this.’ He held out a hand to quieten his son. ‘We are good people, sir, Mr Dexter. I have worked hard to make a home for my wife and my boy. I have a decent boy. Of that I am very sure.’

Dexter nodded placidly. ‘That may be true, sir, but we need to know what happened. We need to hear your son’s side of the story.’

‘There is no “side” of the story. My son will tell the truth.’ He turned to Hassan. ‘Hasa kotha khor,’ he urged him to start.

Mo ducked in embarrassment when his father gripped the edge of the table. Each fingernail had a dried crust of blood along the cuticle. His father wore butchers’ gloves at work and washed his hands thoroughly but that thin crust of blood seemed to always cling on. The two didn’t look like father and son. Zubair Ahmed with his burly shoulders and broad chest was a pillar of a man. Mo was tall too, but thin and awkward. Where Zubair’s hands were strong and meaty, Mo’s were thin and delicate, almost effeminate in their movement as they fiddled now with his glasses.

He sat forward in his chair, shoulders hunched as if he were cold. ‘I’m not confused, sir,’ he said. ‘We didn’t hurt Jodie – not the way you say we did.’

The detective watched him with reproach. ‘I think you are confused, son, or you would see that the wisest thing for you to do now is to tell the truth.’

Mo remembered the sharp pain in Jodie’s eyes and the sting of betrayal when he sided with the lads. His obedience to them had cost him too: his pride, his integrity, his belief in his own valour. His complicity felt viscous in his throat and he swallowed hard so that he could speak. ‘I shouldn’t have let them treat her that way. They shouldn’t have called her a dog.’ He hesitated. ‘But they were just words. We were in a loose and silly mood and,’ his voice grew thick, ‘we took it out on her because she was there and she was weak.’ He blinked rapidly, sensing tears. He hated that they’d targeted Jodie. He, all too familiar with the sting of mockery, hated that he’d let it happen. With a deep breath to steady his voice, he said, ‘We hurt Jodie but not in the way she says.’ He swallowed. ‘We were awful to her, but what she said did not happen and I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not confused about that.’

Amir sat in silence, his mouth open in a cartoonish O. His father spoke to him in a burst of Urdu, the long vowels urgent and angry. A lock of his salt and pepper hair fell free of its pomade and he swiped at it in a swift and severe motion that betrayed a slipping composure.

Mia firmly quietened him and urged Amir to speak.

‘But it’s Jodie …’ he said. ‘You’ve seen her. I – we – wouldn’t do something like that.’ He ran a hand across the back of his head. ‘This is so bizarre.’

Mia studied him closely. He seemed neither worried nor guilty – just confused. She spoke to him in a low voice. ‘Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was Hassan and Mohammed that did it and you and Farid just watched. Could that have happened and Jodie just got confused?’