Willows & Lane 02 One-way Tickets by Peter Grainger

Author:Peter Grainger [Grainger, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-31T22:00:00+00:00

Two thousand and one hundred pounds is small change to any street dealer above the bottom rung of the ladder. Frequently he will have that much cash in his pocket – or hers, of course. These numbers may come as a surprise to those who have had nothing to do with such matters, but Lane knew them, and when Rashid Bahmani told her that’s how much the original debt was, he must have noticed her lack of reaction. He might even have been a little reassured by it.

Abbas, the elder of the two younger brothers, had offered a way into a new market sector, no doubt, and it had been easy work, to encourage him and provide him with the start-up supplies. And because Abbas was failing at school and resented his older brother’s control of the family since their father had died last year, he embraced this new opportunity and the respect it seemed to be giving him on the street.

Little of this had been spoken directly, naturally, but it was what Lane read between the lines of what she had been told. Abbas, however, had underestimated the conservatism in his own community, even amongst its younger members. In another family, a younger brother had whispered it to an older sister, who had told a mother who had told a father, and the father had come to Rashid Bahmani. This was at the end of August.

With only Rashid in work, driving the taxi at night and trying to study during the day, money was short but in time it could have been repaid. He had sold a laptop and an iPad, beginning to put the sum together, but then they had been told that there would be an interest charge, and compensation for the business that had been promised but not done. By the middle of September, Sahir had been stopped in the street, threatened and told that his brother now owed them three thousand pounds.

Something in Lane’s expression then stopped Rashid’s explanation.

He said, ‘You think I am a fool. I understand this. You think, why did they not go to the police?’

‘No. Not at all. If you had, a couple of people might have been questioned, but there would have been no evidence against them, nothing is recorded, it’s all just kids arguing on the streets. No one would have been arrested, and the next day things would have been worse for you.’

A look passed between Rashid and Nick Pascoe – surprise and something else.

Lane said, ‘So, you can’t pay, and they won’t quit. You never could have paid them off, by the way. What stage is it at? What do they really want?’

There was no concealing the surprise on Rashid’s face this time.

‘You are right. It is not about money now. On Friday last week, Abbas was cornered in the school – some of these boys are still in school – and he was beaten. Just enough, you understand? Then he was told all debts can be forgotten.

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