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?’
He frowned. ‘Look, we were all together the whole time. There is no way any of the boys could have done anything to Jodie and they’ll all tell you the same. Nothing happened.’
Mia’s face grew stony. ‘Then you won’t mind giving us DNA samples.’
Amir shrank back in his chair, his athletic frame suddenly small. His father held up a hand. ‘Don’t you need a warrant for that?’
Mia leaned in close. ‘Mr Rabbani, your son is under arrest for rape. Do you understand how serious that is? We can take DNA samples if we want to.’ She paused. ‘And we want to.’
Amir grimaced. ‘I didn’t do it.’
Mia smiled without humour. ‘Then we don’t have a problem, do we?’
It was an hour later that she watched the group of men file out of the station. She turned to Dexter. ‘I can’t work it out. Do you think they colluded beforehand?’
Dexter’s face creased in thought. ‘I didn’t get a sense of rehearsed answers.’
‘Were either of yours even a little bit tempted to shop their friends?’
‘No. They’re too clever for that. They know all about divide and conquer.’
Mia frowned. ‘I just can’t work it out,’ she repeated. She stared at the door, still swinging on its hinges in the wind.
Sameena Tanweer sat motionless, her tiny frame comically small on the sofa. A network of fine grey cracks spread across the leather and a fist-sized patch stained one of the seats. She had caught Hassan as a child pouring the contents of her Amla hair oil in a concentrated pool on the spot. She had tried to hide it with homemade sofa covers, flowery and powder blue, but her husband had shouted. He was still bitter about spending two months’ wages on the three-piece suite all those years ago and damn him if he was going to cover up real leather with cheap fabric like a fakir.
She sat there now, compulsively tracing the stain as the phone beside her hummed with the news. Her husband’s tone had been rushed and harsh, untempered by words of comfort as he told her of their son’s arrest.
In her mind, she searched frantically