This had always been his favourite time, sitting in the warmth of his car, encased in the velvet night. That feeling of comfort had been marred now, but he still preferred it to being at home, especially with so many people around, so much fussing and high emotion. Here he could watch the world go by from the shadows, like a film, the orange street lamps spotlighting the actors: working girls, junkies, pimps and punters. It was a place for the lonely, for the strung out, the desperate. It felt like escape.

CHAPTER 30

Two months later Nowak made his next move. ‘Why would he target that building?’ said Idris. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Jia, Idris and Nadeem were sitting in a shisha bar across from where the bomb had exploded. The large plasma screen on the wall opposite was tuned to News 24, showing the rubble that was once a refugee centre. Plumes of smoke poured out of the old warehouse, as young and old ran out on to the street.

Jia had been nearby when it happened. The explosion had shattered glass, pulled roofs off buildings and taken walls apart brick by brick. It had cracked the road wide open. Jia and her cousins had spent hours fielding the injured. Exhausted and broken, they had retired to Pasha’s shisha bar.

The images on the news kept coming. ‘I know her,’ said Jia, pointing at the screen. The woman from Akbar Khan’s funeral, the one who had accompanied her elderly father, was standing behind the reporter. The side of her face looked raw; she was hysterical, paramedics patiently helping her into an ambulance. The chaos was a message from Nowak, a sign that there was no line he would not cross. He wanted the city and he would take it as a corpse if he had to. He’d sent Jia a text just before it happened, like an attention-seeking child, she thought, her blood boiling; he wanted everyone to look at him, talk about him, be afraid of him.

‘If it wasn’t for the proceeds of crime, this city would have nothing,’ Idris went on angrily. ‘No one cares what happens in this place. And no one’s going to care about these people who come here, the refugees, people who have escaped war and persecution! So why target them?’

‘I care,’ said Jia. ‘We care. And his fight is with us. I’ve seen men like him before. They don’t care about anything. They don’t love anything. He’s targeted the most vulnerable people he can to get to us. Because he knows we do care.’