CHAPTER 4
Kevin, now aged eighteen, also collected and delivered packages and parcels for Mr. Khan of Faisal World Travel on Park Road.
It was not his main job—which was helping Bashir in a Bangladeshi food store on Park Road—but just a part of an arrangement with Mr. Khan, who provided Kevin with attic space above the travel agency. Kevin’s attic was basic: a mattress, a metal pole on which to hang what few clothes he had, a single light bulb hanging from the frayed loft insulation, and a plug for charging his phone and the single bar electric heater. Kevin’s main possession was an old car, which he sometimes used for his errands.
The jobs for Khan had worried him for weeks, but the latest collection was three hundred miles away. “Shall I go by train, Mr. Khan?” he’d asked.
Khan had shaken his head. “Don’t you have a car?”
Kevin never argued with Mr. Khan because arguing with him might cause other problems. He didn’t even have the courage to ask for money for fuel but hoped his expenses might be included in whatever Mr. Khan was proposing to pay when he returned. So Kevin took his old red Volkswagen Golf for its longest drive ever.
57 Montrose Crescent turned out to be a housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh. For Kevin, Scotland was like a foreign country. It was as far from home as he’d ever been, but once he’d found it, it was like many other places he knew—an area of low-cost houses, cracked concrete gardens, old cars and white vans blocking the roads. Then there was a man who came to the door when Kevin rattled the loose letter box.
He was a man of around fifty with sharp brown eyes set in a nutty brown face covered in bushy grey beard. His head was topped with a white taqiyah. A grey shirt covered half a globe of stomach that hid the top of his baggy grey trousers. He looked like countless others Kevin saw every day walking the streets at home, going in and out of the local shops, standing, chatting in groups, or those on their way to or from the mosque—Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Afghans, Somalis, Iraqis, Syrians, Indians, West Africans—and Mr. Khan.
“Good morning,” Kevin said politely. “Wazir?”
“From Khan, is it?” Wazir said. “Wait.”
Wazir had then plodded back inside in dirty white trainers with the laces undone, leaving Kevin standing on the doorstep, stamping his feet, shivering, and rubbing his hands. It was ten degrees colder than back home, and Kevin had hoped that after a seven-hour drive, he might at least be invited inside for five minutes for a friendly chat and a cup of tea or coffee. Instead, he waited outside and allowed his mind to wander.
It was so cold he wished he’d brought his sweater, but it was, he thought, in the attic, or had he left it at Bashir’s.
Kevin pictured his attic and tried to visualise his sweater hanging there.
All thoughts about the attic depressed Kevin. The space beneath the roof tiles, with the crumbling styrene insulation and the cooing pigeons, was accessed via a folding ladder that hung onto the top landing but could be pulled up or down whenever Mr. Khan decided. If Mr. Khan wanted it up when Kevin was already up there, then he was marooned for a while like a prisoner. If Mr. Khan had a meeting with friends downstairs, then the ladder was dropped, and Kevin was told to go out for an hour. And if he returned too soon, then it was to such a volume of Arabic, Urdu, or Punjabi abuse that Kevin would leave again and wait in the Silver Bullet gaming shop opposite until he’d watched them all come out and disappear into the night. Kevin’s choice of work and accommodation, just like his other choices in life, had always been limited, even more so since his mum had been granted a single-person council flat after being forced out of the old rented house on Shipley Street that Mr. Khan also owned.
Cass had also lived on Shipley Street, and as he stood shivering on Wazir’s doorstep, he thought about Cass.
It was Mr. Khan who, two years before, had sold Cass his airline ticket to go to Istanbul and then, at the last minute, given him a parcel to take with him. Kevin had not seen Cass since, but he often thought about him.
He kicked a loose lump of asphalt, watched it slide across the concrete garden, and hit the overfull trash bin. Then he decided to phone his mum later to tell her about his trip to Scotland, to check if she was OK, and to bring her a few packs of the frozen peas Bashir couldn’t find space for in the freezer. Had she eaten today? Was she feeling OK?
Kevin’s mum had had problems for longer than Kevin could remember. She had self-harmed, overdosed, and when he was twelve, ran away only to come back the next day to throw her arms around him, to smother him with hugs and kisses, and to promise never to leave him again. For a time, Kevin had become well known to social services, but whenever they visited, his mother would be calm, collected, rational, and protective. They would sit together on a broken sofa holding hands. The hugs and smiles were genuine. Kevin loved his mum.
But he’d grown used to days off school when she had a bad day, and he was all too familiar with the professional words of wisdom from experts who came to check. “It’s an anxiety attack, depression, not eating properly, stress.” None of them had ever asked her why she was like that. For a long time, Kevin hadn’t either until he was old enough to realise that for every problem, there was a cause.
“You were too young, Kevin my love. We’ve just got to get on with it. We’ll manage. It’s just between you and me, OK?”
When they’d moved out of Shipley Street, the only thing Kevin got beside the room in Khan’s attic was his mum’s old red Golf that had sat in someone’s garage for seven years after she’d lost her licence. Kevin had asked Walid, who was working at Gordon’s Motors, to check it over and fix the satnav. It had twin exhausts, a special steering wheel, and the ancient satnav device stuck to the windscreen had been loaded with a Joanna Lumley voice-over.
Using the car for Khan’s work was unusual. Normally, it was an envelope to the Minhaj-ul-Quran mosque in Birmingham, train ticket paid for, a box to a house in Swindon, bus fare paid, or an envelope for someone who’d meet him outside Starbucks at Paddington Station.
Wazir was such a long time that Kevin wondered if he should wait in the car, but Cass was still playing on his mind. Cass would have stuck it out. Cass would have shrugged and put up with it.
Cass and Kevin had played together, been to school together, shared thoughts together, and only Kevin had been there when Cass caught the bus to the airport carrying his small bag of clothes and the parcel from Khan. Cass would have been nineteen now, almost a year older than Kevin.
“Don’t tell anyone where I’m going, Kevs. Promise?” Cass had asked.
“You’re such a bad boy, Cass,” Kevin had said.
They had always called each other bad boy. Bad boys told bad un-Islamic jokes about terrorists, beards, and women in hijab and niqab. Bad boys bought ham sandwiches from the Shell garage and greasy pork sausages and chips at the Park Street Chippie, shared naughty pictures on phones, and dodged prayers on Fridays. Being a bad boy was what had kept them close.
“Where are you going, Cass?”
“Turkey, Kevs. I’m going to Istanbul. It’s on the Bosporus. The bridge between Europe and Asia.”
“Waah! That’s so cool. Genuine bad boy stuff.”
Wazir eventually returned, carrying a small box wrapped in brown paper. Kevin then finally left Montrose Crescent with Wazir’s words still ringing in his ears. “Lose this and you’re in big trouble, fella. Got it?”
Kevin’s day was to get worse.
Half an hour outside Edinburgh, the car’s engine misfired, and Walid’s words of caution started ringing in Kevin’s ear. “I wouldn’t take this old wreck too far, Kevs. And don’t rely on that satnav.”
The satnav had suggested a shortcut through the hills, and Kevin took the advice because the scenery looked more interesting than around Shipley Street and Park Road. The road wound upwards, higher and higher, and the scenery was interesting, but the weather was deteriorating. It went from rain to sleet and then to heavy snow, and that was when Kevin’s old Golf gave up completely and died. Neither was there a phone signal.
So, with dire warnings from both Khan and Wazir about urgent parcels ringing in his ears, the snow piling up, night drawing on, and the temperature near freezing, Kevin started to panic.