The Cover Up: A gripping crime thriller for 2018

Outside, the air was fresh. Too fresh. Youssuf had never been a fan of the Mancunian cold and damp that crept into his bones a little more with every year that passed. He buttoned his coat, glanced up at the offices on the first floor and made a disgruntled harrumphing noise.

‘Treats me like a child,’ he said, making his way towards Derby Street where he would quickly blend in with the hustle and bustle of men going about their business. Here, among the poorly parked vans and mess of discarded cardboard packaging that was whipped around on the stiff wind like abandoned kites gone rogue, he could be just another brown man in an area full of industrious brown men. No longer somebody’s ailing father or liability.

‘Youssuf!’ A voice called after him on the other side of the street.

He looked beyond the black Volkswagen van that was hugging the kerb on the opposite side of the road, crawling along at a walking pace. Squinted, peering at the small old fellow in the smart navy suit. ‘Amir!’ Wheezed with laughter as his sprightly chum from the Asian elderly people’s day centre crossed the road with a spring in his septuagenarian step.

They embraced.

‘I’ve escaped,’ Youssuf said, nudging Amir. ‘That boy of mine was driving me insane. Five times he promised me a lift to the centre; I gave up in the end.’

‘Ah, the price you pay for having a child who’s a big shot.’ When Amir spoke, his false teeth clacked slightly. He smoothed his thinning, Brylcreemed hair, making sure Youssuf saw the gold watch his own son had bought him for his last birthday. The same trick, every time they met. ‘I just dropped a packed lunch in to my boy. He didn’t give me the time of day either. Come on! We don’t need them.’

Together, they ambled towards Cheetham Hill Road, engaging in a well-intentioned game of one-upmanship on their son’s behalves. Tariq was buying and selling this gadget from the Far East and that sought-after skincare from Paris. Making a packet, of course. Amir’s son, Rashid, was importing that specialist model of Mercedes from Germany and exporting this must-have toy to America. Sitting on a fortune, naturally. In this game of vicarious career-tennis, Youssuf knew he could volley for hours with Amir and happily neither win nor lose. Old men loved to boast about their sons. This much he acknowledged.

As they neared the sprawling plot of the hand car wash on the corner of Derby Street and the deafening din of Cheetham Hill Road with its wholesalers and Asian fast-food takeouts and kebab shops, Amir stopped suddenly and looked askance at the black Volkswagen van.

‘Are we being followed?’ he said, tugging at Youssuf’s sleeve.

Youssuf leaned on his stick, panting from the exertion of having walked some two hundred metres in sandals. ‘What am I looking at, here?’

‘The black man in the van.’ Amir pointed, though Youssuf instinctively pulled his friend’s arm down. ‘Is he staring at you?’

‘Keep walking,’ Youssuf said, almost tripping as he sped up. He’d seen enough. The driver of the van had indeed locked eyes with him. He had dreadlocks, untidily stuffed beneath a knitted hat of some description. Though Youssuf had never seen the fellow before, the hairs on his arms were standing to attention and his bladder was throbbing as if in protest. ‘If he’s following us, he’ll have to turn onto Cheetham Hill Road. Not so easy with all those buses.’

‘Let’s cut through the car wash,’ Amir suggested. There was excitement in his voice as if this was some big adventure.

But Youssuf knew the line of business Tariq was actually in – beneath the shining entrepreneur-of-the-year veneer. And the dreadlocked stranger’s face didn’t fit round here, in the tight-knit business district that nestled in the long shadows cast by Strangeways Prison.

They shuffled onto the forecourt of the car wash. Youssuf stole a glance over his shoulder. All thoughts of steaming hot bhajis and of bagsying the massage chair in the day centre were gone. The driver was speaking on a phone. Nodding. But eyes still on them.

‘Go through the car wash bit itself,’ he told Amir. ‘He’ll lose sight of us in there. We’ll just sidle past the cleaners.’

But the van’s idling engine thrummed swiftly into overdrive. With squealing tyres, it hung a sharp right, bouncing onto the forecourt of the car wash, coming to an abrupt halt only inches from Youssuf and Amir. They were hemmed in between the unforgiving front end of the van and the rear of a large saloon in front, awaiting its turn beneath the spray.

The dreadlocked driver hopped out, a rash of acne scarring across his forehead and cheeks.

‘Ya-allah, what’s going on?’ Amir cried. ‘Help!’

Youssuf had swung around to face his assailant and was now gripping his walking stick like a baton. Ignoring the pains in his chest and the crippling icy pangs of fear that prodded his tired, old body. Trying to gauge the situation.

‘Get in the fucking van, granddad,’ the driver said in an accent that Youssuf wasn’t immediately familiar with. The man slid the side door open to reveal a cargo hold that was empty, save for a burly white man with shorn fair hair, crouched in the shadows. ‘Don’t give us no trouble and you won’t come to no harm.’ Birmingham. Maybe that was the sing-song accent. Same as his cousin in Solihull.

Chatting animatedly in some central Asian dialect behind him, Youssuf spotted the car cleaners in his peripheral vision. Would they step up to defend two defenceless Pakistani old codgers? But as the driver grabbed at Youssuf’s shoulder, he realised that, just for once, he didn’t want young men leaping to his aid, emasculating him.

He trod heavily on the driver’s trainer-clad foot, grinding the man’s toes beneath the sole of his unyielding chunky leather sandal. Somehow shook loose from his grip. Brought the walking stick down on his forearm with a satisfying crack.

‘Ow, you fucking old psycho!’ he yelled, clutching at his arm. ‘Who do you think you are? Paki Rambo? Sort this bastard out, Trev!’

Youssuf raised his stick, preparing to hit him again, when the giant white man clambered out of the van.

‘Oi! You can pack that in,’ Trev said, trying to wrench the stick from Youssuf’s determined grasp. ‘Don’t play no hero with us. Get in the fucking van, old man.’ His voice was gruff but tinged with amusement.

‘You think I’m some kind of joke?’ Youssuf shouted, steadfastly clinging to the stick. The incandescent fury that burned within him gave him courage. He aimed another hefty kick, this time at Trev’s private parts. Missed. Watched with irritation as his sandal flew off, skittering like a frightened rat beneath the van.

Suddenly Youssuf gasped as an icy deluge of water hit the side of his head, knocking his hat off. The jet bypassed him, becoming stronger and more directional as two of the car cleaners advanced towards Dreadlocks and Trev, training the spray on them. Shouting in pidgin English that these interlopers should get the hell off their forecourt.

Amir grasped at Youssuf’s arm, trying to drag him out from between the vehicles and away from the claustrophobic jet-wash enclosure.

‘Let’s get out of here!’ he said in Urdu.

Finding himself rooted to the spot, Youssuf was only dimly aware that the sock that covered his one bare foot was now ringing wet.

‘Come on!’ Amir yelled.

Youssuf snatched up his hat but still couldn’t move. Amir let go of his coat, slowly starting to back away from the scene.

Suddenly, Youssuf was standing alone, caught in the middle of a fight of fists and high-intensity hoses between out-of-towners, hell-bent on kidnap, and outraged Uzbeks. But the hoses started to fail. The flow of water slowed. Soon, there was nothing more than a trickle dribbling from the ends. The car-cleaners looked quizzically at their equipment, shouting to the kiosk in which their boss lurked. When the pressure didn’t return, they too started to retreat in haste.

‘Get Khan, and let’s go!’ shouted Dreadlocks.

Paralysed, feeling the adrenalin drain away rapidly from his ailing body as though someone had pulled a plug in his bunioned feet, Youssuf was aware of being grabbed from behind. Strong-armed towards the open door of the van. He shouted for help. He prayed to God that he might be saved. He thought of Tariq and his grandchildren, little Shazia and Zahid, whom he might never see again.

‘No! No! I’m not getting in!’ he cried, kicking against the side of the van, though the man-mountain hoisted him aloft like a doll.

‘Put my father down!’ A familiar voice sliced through the pandemonium. Tariq.

To his right, Youssuf caught sight of his son’s henchman, Asaf Smolensky, sprinting towards the kidnapping Midlanders. Clad in his usual Hassidic garb of a full-length black overcoat and an oversized felt Homburg hat, his ringletted sidelocks jiggling atop his shoulders, it was an unexpected sight to see him move with the pace of a panther. He was wielding a machete.

Dreadlocks baulked. ‘Shit! It’s the Fish Man. Leg it, Trev!’

Trev released Youssuf from his grip instantly, leaving him to stagger back against the enclosure’s damp walls.

‘I’m gonna kill you!’ Tariq shouted, throwing himself onto the man-mountain.

As Dreadlocks scrambled into the van to escape the blade of a Fish Man with human harvest on his mind, Youssuf watched Trev square up to his only son. The difference in height between them was at least ten inches. Tariq’s slender build didn’t help. It was like David facing down Goliath.

‘I’d like to see you try,’ Trev said, swinging a punch at Tariq.

But Tariq was quick on his feet and deft with his hands. Years of aikido and judo lessons as a youth had stood him in good stead. Within three easy moves, he had thrown his outsized opponent to the ground and sat astride him now, clutching the man-mountain’s bull neck with the manicured hand of a gentleman.

Overwhelmed by a fresh surge of outrage, Youssuf whacked at his felled attacker’s legs with his walking stick, hurling insults at him in Urdu.

‘Leave it, Dad!’ Tariq said, calmly. Turned to the vanquished man, ignoring the van’s revving engine and the hacking sound of the Fish Man slashing at the vehicle’s tyres. Hissing, as the air in the back tyre escaped. One down … ‘Now, who do you work for? And what do you want with my dad?’

‘No one,’ Trev said, spitting in Tariq’s face.

‘Donkey!’ Youssuf yelled, swiping at his ankles.