‘I told Dad I’d be late. He was cool with it,’ said Omar.

‘I didn’t ask whether you’d told him, I asked where you’d been.’

Zack was almost ten years older than Omar and a good two inches taller. As the eldest he was supposed to be accorded respect, but Omar despised him. He was weak and flabby, too fond of Coke and fast food. He was a bad Muslim, too, often missing prayer time while working in the garage. Worse, much worse, he was dating an English girl. A kafir. For that alone he deserved to be treated with contempt. But Omar’s trainers had taught him well. He smiled and put up his hands to apologise. ‘I’m sorry, bruv. I was at the dentist’s. One of my back teeth was playing up.’

‘Okay now?’

Omar pulled a face. ‘He gave me an injection, said it should quieten the nerve down. But if it doesn’t get better I might need the root working on.’

‘Unlucky, bruv,’ said Zack, ruffling his brother’s hair. He gestured at a white Transit van. ‘New brake linings. And the steering’s loose.’

‘I’m on it,’ said Omar. He hurried to the locker room.

Another of his brothers, Toby, was bent over the engine of another Transit. ‘You okay, bruv?’ he asked, as Omar went by.

‘Yeah, all good,’ said Omar. Toby was a couple of years older than Omar, and had thought he might one day become a jihadist. But the imam who had groomed Omar was less convinced by the older brother. He had spoken to Toby at length over a six-month period not long before Omar had gone to Pakistan and pronounced him too weak and too corrupted by the West. Omar knew that the imam had a point. Toby prayed every day, but never more than once or twice. He liked pop music and had posters of Beyoncé and Rihanna on his bedroom wall. He abused himself every night. Omar knew that to be the case because his bedroom was next to Toby’s and he could hear him through the wall.

‘When you’re done with the Transit, I could do with a hand here. We’ve got a rush on.’

‘We’ve always got a rush on,’ said Omar. ‘Dad takes on too much work. He’s killing us.’

‘Make hay while the sun shines, bruv,’ said Toby, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. ‘We’d be moaning if we didn’t have any work. At least this way we’re earning.’

Omar’s father had set up the garage a few years after arriving in the UK, funded with money he’d borrowed from family and friends. The early years had been a struggle but he was a good, honest mechanic and had a lot of return business, mainly from within the local Pakistani community. But it was the boom in online shopping that had taken the business to a whole new level. With more and more people ordering online, courier firms sprang up around the country, with fleets of vehicles that needed repairing and servicing. Omar’s father had landed half a dozen lucrative contracts and the garage had been working at full capacity for the past two years. Now he was searching for larger premises.