Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

‘Where you keeping it?’ Gurpreet said, squeezing.

‘I can’t. .’

There was something else, a sound, something being hacked at, looped around his neck. A rope. A lead. A belt. It was pulled tight. Randeep reared up, fingers clawing at his neck.

‘Where?’ Gurpreet said, yanking, coiling the lead into his fist.

He couldn’t speak. Could only look. He felt his eyes straining to leave his face. On the carpet. Gurpreet’s flick knife. Open. He launched his hand towards it.

Avtar hoped Hari’s room-mate had been genuine when he said he’d call him again. The work at the track hadn’t been bad and he’d seemed honest enough, though that was getting harder to judge. He climbed the stairs to the flat, tired, made even more so by the thought of a workless afternoon ahead. The door opened and Randeep stood there. He looked frightened, panicked even.

‘He won’t let me call an ambulance.’

‘What’s happened?’ Avtar said, shutting the door.

‘We need to call an ambulance.’

Gurpreet lay slumped behind the settee, his head thrown back to the windowsill. His Adam’s apple was pulsing hard, and his mouth hung sloppily open, as if at any moment it might slip right off his face. His hand, gripping his side, was covered in blood.

‘God.’

‘I put a bandage round,’ Randeep said.

‘You did this?’

Gurpreet spoke, breathing out each syllable. ‘No. Am. Bu. Lan.’

Avtar crouched beside him. Gurpreet slid his eyeballs across.

‘They might not send you back,’ Avtar said.

‘No. Am. Bu. .’ He couldn’t go on.

‘Is there anyone we can call? Do you know anyone who can sort this out?’

Gurpreet turned his face to the ceiling and closed his eyes.

‘Let’s get an ambulance, bhaji. Please. He’s not thinking straight. What if he dies?’

With a hand on the windowsill, Avtar pushed up onto his feet, slowly, thinking. ‘Where’s your Narinderji?’

‘Out. She could be back any minute.’

‘Call her. Make up a reason. Find out how long she’s going to be.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it.’

A door shut downstairs and he saw Tochi heading towards the bus stop. ‘He’s on lates, isn’t he?’

‘Who?’

Avtar took a knife from the cutlery drawer.

‘Shall I still call her?’

‘No,’ he said, and hurried down to the lower flat.

Tripping the lock was easy, and, inside, it seemed as if Tochi only ever used the front room and maybe the kitchen. The bathroom had been gutted, wood everywhere. In the shower tray sat the white-bottomed trunk of a toilet. He cleared a space by the door and vaulted back up the stairs.

‘We’ll have to put him down there until it gets dark.’

‘But what if he dies?’

‘He won’t die,’ he said, uncertainly.

Carefully, they folded him into one of their blankets so that he wouldn’t trail blood, and with even greater care carried him down. They laid him curled to the bathroom door. Avtar took a closer look at the bandage and bound it tighter — ‘We’ll get you help’ — while Randeep went back up to fetch a glass of water.

They washed the knife and Randeep zipped up his tracksuit top to cover the bruise on his neck. There were a few bloody handprints on the wall and a large stain absorbed into the carpet where Gurpreet had been lying. The handprints mostly washed away, but the stain didn’t, so Avtar cut the carpet out and said they’d have to move the settee back and hide the hole. Then they sorted the mess in Narinder’s room. Throughout all this Avtar kept making Randeep go over what had happened.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ Randeep said, when he’d finished. He sounded close to tears.

‘He was killing you. You didn’t have a choice.’

‘But he might die!’

‘Do you want to go to prison?’ Avtar said, raising his voice. ‘Because I’m not being sent back because of this bhanchod, do you understand? OK? So let’s try and stay calm. It’s too light now but we’ll get him out before that chamaar comes back.’

They checked on him two or three times every hour — the level of his water, the quality of his breathing — and when Narinder returned at dusk they stared at her, waiting for her to speak, notice.

‘Has he really gone?’ she said from the kitchen table.

‘You told him to leave,’ Avtar said, almost accusatory.

‘I know. I know. But where will he go?’

Avtar paused. ‘He’ll find somewhere.’

‘I was angry,’ she said, fingers closing around a rung of the chair. ‘I hope he’s not on the streets.’

‘Like I said, he’ll find somewhere.’

They had a dinner of roti-dhal, eaten mostly in silence. Randeep’s spoon kept clinking the side of his bowl.

‘Your hand’s shaking,’ Narinder observed.

‘I wanted to ask you where the doctor’s is,’ Avtar said swiftly. ‘My stomach’s playing up.’

‘There’s a surgery at the top. Past the shop and left down one of the roads. There’s a big blue sign outside. You’ll have to register as a patient first, though.’

Avtar said he’d wash up, hoping that might hurry her to bed, but she put a load in the washing machine and then sat doing her jigsaw puzzle at the kitchen table. Randeep and Avtar kept glancing at each other and at the clock, and it was nearly ten when she pushed back her chair and said goodnight.

They could hear her reciting the rehraas, then a switch being flicked, extinguishing the beam of light at the foot of her door. They waited an hour, not saying much, then trod down the stairs. Gurpreet hadn’t moved. He seemed weaker now, and the blood on his hands and vest had congealed and blackened. They wrapped him in the blanket again and Avtar wiped the tiles clean and scrubbed the pinkish handprints from the door.

‘When’s he back?’ Randeep asked.

‘Twelve. One. Depends.’

‘We should take him to the hospital, bhaji.’

‘Too far.’

‘But—’

‘I said it’s too far.’

They shouldered him up to his feet and in this way supported him down the hall and out into the night. They followed Narinder’s directions, except that they circled around the shops to avoid being seen, and laid Gurpreet in the doorway to the surgery. They arranged the blanket so that it cocooned him. He was whimpering, shaking his head. There was blood all in his beard. Randeep took a step back and clasped his hands together up by his mouth, praying.

They wanted to leave that night but didn’t know how to explain it to Narinder. So they returned to the floor, exhausted yet wary of sleep. Neither had wanted to take the settee. A car horn made Randeep flinch.

‘Yaar,’ Avtar said.

‘I know.’

‘He’ll be fine. His breathing was getting better. They’ll take him to the hospital and put him on a plane home. He’ll soon be with his family.’

‘I know,’ Randeep said again, and turned over.

The buzzer rang the next morning. It wasn’t even eight o’clock.

‘Who’s that?’ Randeep said.

Avtar moved onto his knees and scuttled to the window. He could see the car but not who was at the door. Narinder came out of her bedroom.

‘You expecting someone?’ Avtar asked.

‘The only person who comes is the landlord. But it’s too soon for him.’

The buzzer rang again.

‘It’s the police,’ Randeep said.

‘It’s not the police,’ Avtar said, giving him a heavy look.

‘I should go,’ Narinder said and, grabbing her chunni on the way, headed downstairs.

Avtar and Randeep listened from the open door of the flat. It was a male voice, a white voice. Randeep’s face tightened.

‘What?’

‘Immigration,’ Randeep said.

Avtar snatched his rucksack from the settee and raced to the window, trying to force it up. But there was no time and he let go and turned round as Narinder walked in with the man.