Page 40 of Savage Protector
I consider my predicament for a few moments, then, “Okay, okay. Here.” I hand over my phone. “It’s an email. It came a week ago. And this was waiting for me when I got home the day before yesterday.” I drag the now somewhat crumpled picture of Uncle Abdul from my bag and shove it across the table at him
He scrolls through my phone until he finds the offending photo. He pauses, glances up at me. “You should have told me.” He flattens out the photograph. “Ah, Uncle Abdul. He looks well, considering.”
“Are you mad? He’s in a wheelchair.”
“True. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving knobhead.”
“Deserving? What are you…?” My words dry up when the penny finally drops. “You did this.”
“I did. By way of a warning. And…punishment. He got off lightly, I think.”
I’m lost for words. I can only gape at him, try to get my head around what he’s done. The brutality, the…the sheer barbarism. “You can’t just take the law into your own hands like that.”
“I think I already did. The question now is, why didn’t you contact me when you started getting these threats?”
“I was dealing with it myself.”
“By going into hiding?”
“I’m not. It…it’s nothing.”
“Nothing? So much ‘nothing’ that you’re moving out. Running scared.”
“I’m not scared. I just?—”
“Bollocks. Fucking bollocks. You’re either scared or stupid, and my money is not on stupid.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“It’s obvious who sent these happy little holiday snaps,” he says. “But what does it mean?”
“Search me, but…”
“But?”
“It has to be Iftikar. Or Mehrban. And they actually got inside my house. They were there, in the hall by the post boxes. What if I’d been at home?”
“Maybe then you would have had the sense to press your panic button. I’d be interested to know how they found you.”
“I don’t know.”
He raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “Leila…” His tone is low, a warning.
“Well, maybe…”
“Maybe what, Leila?”
“It was Farah’s birthday, her sixteenth and, I thought after two years, maybe…”
“You got in touch with your sister.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“Just Farah. It was only?—”
“For fuck’s sake, Leila.” He’s livid. “You’re right, you do have to move. But I’ll find you somewhere. It needs to be secure.”
“That’s ridiculous. Even if itwasmy cousins, they wouldn’t?—”
“They threw you in the ocean, left you for dead.” He leans forward, elbows on the table. His glare is intense. “But you’re not dead, are you? You’re very much alive and ready to tell the tale. A fucking witness statement, backed up by a video to prove what happened. Attempted murder, they’d go to prison for years. Of course they’re not going to leave you walking around, ready to blow the whistle whenever you feel like it.”
