Sean opened the door from the staircase and they looked at each other, frozen. Sean was about to say something when Saleem put his finger to his lips. Sean shrugged and held the door wide open for the boy, who slipped through and took off up the stairs, his footsteps so light he made no sound. Sean followed him.
They kept going up and up, until Saleem pointed to the roof and Sean felt an old chill of fear. Don’t go up on the roof, some kid got shoved off. But that was another time and another tower, and anyway, the killer had served her sentence. He put his hand on his back pocket to feel for the folded-up newspaper he’d been carrying that morning, but it wasn’t there. He must have dropped it on the way up.
The metal door to the service ladder had a broken lock and they were up and through the hatch in moments.
‘So?’ Sean said, taking in the view, breathless from climbing up ten floors. ‘What’s so important that we have to meet up here? Were you looking for me or do you often pay my dad a visit?’
‘Didn’t even know you had a dad, till someone told me.’
‘Who told you?’
Saleem shook his head. ‘I said to that other copper at the police station that I wanted to speak to you, that I would only speak to you. He just ignored me.’
‘Saleem, I’m not …’
‘On the case … yeah, he said that. But you’re safe, man. You’re the only one that is.’
‘You got into the back of the Health Centre right under my nose. Were you trying to get caught?’
Saleem grinned at him. ‘That’s what I mean: you’re the only one with any brains.’
Sean sighed. He wished he had Saleem’s faith in his abilities because none of this was making any sense at all. He walked across the roof and sat on a low wall that surrounded a large air extraction unit.
‘Can’t talk there,’ Saleem jerked his thumb at the white, slatted construction. ‘All the kitchen fans come out here. They might hear us.’ He walked towards the opposite corner of the tower, which looked across the ring road to the woods and the quarry beyond. ‘I heard about you. You’re the one that cracked that caravan case. You were famous, man. I wanted to be a copper for time after that, you know?’
‘You still could.’
Saleem barked out a laugh that had no humour in it. ‘Nah, I’m never going be like you. You’re the real thing, CID, plain clothes now and all that.’
‘Thank for your high opinion of me, Saleem, but I was only seconded, a temporary thing, and right now I don’t know what’s going to happen. I may be done with the police anyway; I’ve been suspended.’
‘Seriously?’
Sean nodded, wondering why he was telling him all his secrets.
‘Whose voice did you hear, Saleem? Downstairs?’
‘If I tell you stuff, you never heard any of it from me, OK? I don’t want anything to do with it. I get stuck in the middle and this happens.’
He lifted his sweatshirt and showed Sean the large gauze bandage over his stomach wound.
‘So why do you trust me?’
‘I want you to make sure Ghazala is looked after.’
‘What makes you think I can help?’
‘You know people: housing, social and that.’ Saleem shrugged like it was obvious. ‘Sooner or later, my luck’s going to run out, man. I’ll end up dead or inside.’
‘I won’t be able to stop that from happening. You need to make changes in your own life, Saleem.’
‘Whatever. Look, what I’m trying to say is, I’m worried about Ghazala. The shop’s gone, everything in the flat is ruined; she can’t live there. But if I’m not there, she’s got no one. People will push her around.’
‘What about your auntie?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Your dad?’
‘Worse, don’t ask.’
‘Saleem, how old is Ghazala? She must be able to make up her own mind.’
‘She’s twenty-two. My dad wanted her to go with him to Pakistan, to help look after my granddad, but she was scared to go. She didn’t want to come back with an old man for a husband, or not come back at all.’ Saleem seemed suddenly older than his years; his fidgety, streetwise energy had all but fizzled out. ‘She had some trouble with a boy, years ago. It messed up her marriage chances. Like I said, it’s complicated, but trust me, I don’t want her to be on her own.’
‘I’ll do what I can to help your sister,’ Sean stood up, moving closer to the boy, uneasy now he was standing so near the edge. The rail was only waist-height and flimsy. ‘But in return, I want you to tell me what you know about Terry Starkey.’
Saleem froze, the muscle in his cheek pulsing.
‘Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s sitting in your dad’s flat.’
‘That’s whose voice you heard?’
Saleem nodded. ‘That’s him. He mustn’t know I’m here and he can’t see me talking to you.’
‘Does he know I’m a police officer?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Don’t know. I ain’t said anything. Does it matter?’
‘God knows what my dad’s told him, but I think Starkey might have got the idea I’ve been in jail.’
Saleem’s laugh sounded more natural now and he was smiling when he turned round. ‘Who’s going to believe that?’
‘Where were you when your cousin Mohammad was killed?’
Saleem’s face dropped. ‘I just got told the game was on, some sort of shakedown. I was hanging around the rec and some white guys I knew said I could earn a bit of cash, if I wanted to help. They sent me down Attlee Avenue. I had to keep a lookout and make sure no one got out down there. I didn’t even know who they were chasing. I walked down to the bottom corner, then I walked back up, didn’t see nothing.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Just some lads. There was some money in it. Seemed like easy money.’
‘Who stabbed him?’
‘Don’t know. I stopped to roll a ciggy. Honest, I didn’t even know who the target was until …’ His voice caught in his throat and he turned back to the view of the ring road, hiding his face from Sean. ‘I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt Mo. He was my cousin. He stuck up for Ghazala.’ Saleem sucked his teeth and spat over the wall of the block. ‘They must be laughing at me now, those boys. Same ones who came to burn down the shop, I reckon.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Because they’re racists, of course. You want a name? There’s an older guy called Gary MacDonald, fat and bald. You can see videos of him on the internet doing all the Nazi salutes at a football match.’
‘So that’s what this is about, is it? Far-right extremists? What about the drugs?’
‘What about them?’
‘Terry Starkey reckons drugs are coming in to the estate from the Asian community.’
‘Of course he’d say that. Come on, you’re supposed to be the clever one. You work it out. I’ve got to go. We’re staying at my auntie’s and I’m supposed to be tucked up on the settee, letting my stitches heal. My sister will kill me if she knows I’ve been here.’
Despite his wound, Saleem moved quickly and reached the exit door in three strides. He swung himself round onto the ladder, wincing only slightly from the injury. Sean thought how in another world, the boy could have been a gymnast.
‘Wait! You can call me if you think of anything else,’ Sean said. But Saleem had gone and the metal door clanged shut at the foot of the ladder.
Sean made his way back down the stairs. When he reached the first floor, it was as if the boy had never been there. He pushed open the door to the landing and stopped dead. Terry Starkey was standing by the lift with Sean’s copy of The Doncaster Free Press in his hand.
‘Did you drop this?’ Terry said.
Sean nodded. ‘Must have done.’ He tried to think quickly, thoughts scrambling round his brain. ‘Look, um, I’m sorry for your loss. Must be hard to know she’s out. The one who did it.’