He’d caught sight of Sakina on the milk round and had recognised her, the way souls recognise each other. He’d watched as car after car came to take her away.

He found it hard to be around family now. He felt embarrassed, afraid, conflicted, all things he thought men weren’t supposed to feel. He needed to talk to someone and not feel ashamed. ‘Being around you calms me,’ he’d said to Sakina. ‘I know that sounds stupid.’

‘There’s a hadith that says, “Souls are like conscripted soldiers,”’ she’d replied. ‘Some of us were together before we were born, and recognise each other when we meet in this life.’ Benyamin didn’t know about that, but he knew he needed to talk to someone about what happened to him.

‘I can’t go to a shrink. This isn’t The Sopranos,’ he’d said. The two of them had laughed at that. He hadn’t laughed in a long time. She was clever and funny, and she knew how dark life was. Mina hadn’t understood. She’d wanted things to revert back to how they used to be almost instantly, but he couldn’t do that. She’d been lucky, managing to escape in the chaos that followed him getting caught that night. He hadn’t been so lucky, and Nowak had changed him.

‘Funny, the culture we come from. It’s fine for you to pay for sex, but tell someone you’re struggling emotionally and they lose all respect for you.’ Sakina could say things like that and he wouldn’t mind. When Jia said words like that they would trigger something in him that made him want to distance himself from her. But he still hoped she would take over Akbar Khan’s duties. She was the only one who could.

CHAPTER 31

The day after the explosion, Jia and Idris set to work. They began by strengthening their network. Their first port of call was an old school friend who ran a business close by. Jia wanted to explore options for the Jirga and its various operations.

Through an internal glass window in the reception area, she watched workers draping deep-red chiffon scarves across high ropes that stretched from one side of a room to the other. The lobby was empty, except for a young man in a grey suit, who sat on a sofa behind them. Clipboard in hand, he was filling in some paperwork. Idris checked his watch and then looked across at Jia. They were waiting for the owner of the business; he was running late.