this is not a good time.’
‘Please, Shaz. It’s important,’ I said, approaching the junction to the Great West Road, my hand hovering over the indicator, the direction dependent on his reply. It came in the form of a low moan. I was frustrating him, I know, but I couldn’t let it go.
‘Is this about Imy?’ he asked, so fucking gently, that I had to think twice before answering.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s about Imy.’
‘Sorry, Jay,’ Shaz said. ‘I… I can’t meet you.’
He disconnected the call.
Deflated, I slowed down, and without a destination I parked my car to the side. I let the engine idle as I slid down in my seat. I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. The fuck was I thinking, calling Shaz? He’d probably been at Imy’s wedding reception – scratch that, he was probably best man! He would have seen the tragic events of that night unfold in front of his very eyes. I should have let him be.
I exhaled deeply, trying to loosen a little of that frustration. I opened my eyes and in front of me that fucking slimy green Merc was creeping towards me. Any thoughts about coincidences curled up and died when it slowed down and stopped beside me.
His window slid smoothly down. He was a young Asian man, with a tight buzz cut and a small stud on the side of his nose. He was wearing a bright red tracksuit over his skinny frame, and he was watching me with an air of amusement on his face, as though Tom had finally caught up with Jerry. He twirled his finger, gesturing to me to drop my window.
I acknowledged him with a slight nod, and in no mood for bullshit, I said, ‘I saw you at the car wash. What? You tailing me?’
‘Nah, bro. Just trying to get your attention,’ he said. ‘You walked away just as I was about to say hello.’
‘Do I know you from somewhere?’
‘I think me and you should catch up,’ he said, completely pissing over my question.
‘Catch up?’ I said, not a clue what he was chatting about.
He slipped his hand in the centre console and reached for something. My heart did a backflip. This is exactly how drive-by shootings happen. To my relief his hand emerged holding up a business card between two fingers. He passed it across through my window. I took it. It was a black and glossy, embossed gold trim bordering around an embossed gold phone number and nothing else. Not even a name.
‘Call me,’ he said.
I nodded and slipped away the card. ‘I better go,’ I said, making a show of putting my car in gear.
‘Busy man, huh?’
‘Just got a lot on, that’s all.’
‘Yeah,’ he smiled. ‘Just another day for Jay.’
Wait. What?
Before I could ask him how he knew my name, he’d roared away. My eyes flew to the rear-view mirror trying to pick out his number plate before he disappeared out of sight. The plates were private – OMA 22R – I repeated it out loud a few times before it escaped, and opened up the notes app and typed it in. It wasn’t exemplary detective work, but at least I now knew his fucking name, too.
Omar.
The name didn’t mean jack to me. He definitely wasn’t someone I knew from dealing, that circle was small and I knew every one of my customers pretty well. I didn’t recall him knocking about town either, flash little rich boy like that, I would have remembered. It’s possible that we may have crossed paths at a house party or at a session, or his older brother was in my class at school and why the fuck was I wasting so much time thinking about this shit? I had more urgent matters to get my head around and getting hold of Imy should have been my only focus. And my only link to him had told me in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t help me.
Doing the right thing, I swear, is a bitch. Most of my life I’ve done the wrong thing and it’s served me well. Responsibility is over-hyped. The last year or two, my attitude changed pretty quickly and pretty fucking dramatically, and doing the right thing has done nothing but cause hurt.
I dropped the indicator and turned right onto the Great West Road, when I should have turned left towards home. There was something I thought I needed to do but I wouldn’t know for sure until I got there. If I couldn’t face this, how the fuck could I ever look Imy in the eye?
Five long minutes later I wheeled my car into the grounds of Osterley Park Hotel.
Ground fucking zero.
The car park was empty and I parked in the first spot I saw. I exhaled loudly and stepped out. A toxic smell hit me like a force field and I found myself breathing through my mouth. The entrance to the hotel was at the far end, to get to it I had to walk past the hotel pub and the hotel Indian restaurant. Both haunts that I’d often kicked in, lifting my glass in one and stuffing my face in the other. Both now closed for business. I hoped the community spirit Hounslow is known for would soon see both of these businesses thriving again. Then again, people have long memories.
I gritted my teeth and moved quickly past, the presence of rioters, looters and protesters apparent as my feet crunched through a sea of discarded leaflets, patronising placards, broken glass bottles and improvised missiles. All that crap that comes when people lose their fucking minds.
There are six wide steps leading up to the entrance. I stood at the bottom, and despite wanting to puke out my heart, I lifted my eyes to Osterley Park Hotel.
The double doors leading into reception were hanging by a thread. Somebody had attempted to board it up, but somebody else had ripped it off again. The board lay by my feet, and scrawled over it in thick black marker was Closed for Refurbishments. It sounded a fuck of a lot more respectable than Closed due to Terrorist Attack. A few windows were smashed, and there were patches of a rough paint job, no doubt covering probably offensive or righteous graffiti. If I made the effort and looked closely enough, I could make out the message under the paint, but what the fuck for? To be honest the damage was minimal; it could be fixed. It was the screams that would be trapped inside forever.
I turned my back to the hotel and sat on the bottom step. I slipped out a cigarette, sparked it and pulled hard.
The fuck had my life become?
I’d lived my life in a lullaby, without a care in the world. Juggling a little weed to the bods in Hounslow and cruising through life in my shiny black Beemer, so blissfully ignorant. I never even used to watch the news or read the papers, and suddenly there I was, making the fucking news. I’d seen first-hand the destruction that most people only read, and cast their judgement about.
Fuck, man, this wasn’t even the first bombsite that I’d had the misfortune to set eyes on. A hospital, located beside beautiful snow-topped limestone mountains in Afghanistan, was the first. It was built and funded by Ghurfat-al-Mudarris for the poor people of a poor village called Hisarak, and devastated by two US military drone strikes.
The result of a war – as was this, thousands of miles away in Hounslow.
The difference, and there was a fucking difference, was that the military action that destroyed the hospital was able to dodge the bad press. Sorry about all the innocent lives but target has been met. A round of applause and pats on the fucking back. Either way, the impact was felt, at the time and forever after. Points are scored as lives are lost. Shit escalates and then calms down for a beat, just before the next devastation. It’s just where we are.
I sighed and it sent a shiver through me as I tried to figure out who was the egg in this fucked-up equation, and who was the chicken.
I took a last pull of my cigarette and added it to the littered ground, and looked out at the Great West Road. Cars were slowing down with purpose,