‘It is time for change,’ she told Idris as they drove back to Pukhtun House. ‘We have to help our own people. Pakistani families only help those who toe the line. If you want to do something different, there’s no one to help. The little girl from Bradford, the boy from Luton, or the teenager in Ilford – who steps up for them when they need a job, or an internship, or money to finish their education? No one. And no one will, except us.’

And she told him her plan, and he listened, nodding at her every word. Things were about to change.

CHAPTER 33

The plan was simple, and was operational in just four weeks. They took the brightest and the best, the youngsters who couldn’t get ahead because of their skin tone or the way they spoke, or because they just didn’t know how to get to the place they wanted. The rude boys, the dropouts and the misunderstoods. The artistic, the creative, the risk-takers and shortcut-makers. The broken men and women the extremist mullahs wanted to lure away with false promises, twisted surahs and skewed images of pop culture, only to abuse them and turn them into instruments of mass destruction.

And they built their empire, a brave new world, alongside the old, a world that stood on the foundations of the past but was slicker and digitised. Jia’s rules were clear. ‘They have to be here because they want to be,’ she said. ‘Not because they have to. That’s the only way they’ll stay loyal. If they’re with us under duress they will succumb to a better offer or be seduced into disloyalty. We can’t take that risk.’

They did what they set out to do. They trained them, gave them a place to go, a place where they were understood, valued and their skills known. They were given a salary, their taxes were paid, and under the table they were handed a cut from the job. Students enrolled in the educational arm and the press loved it: they were ‘helping the disenfranchised’.

‘Who in their right mind would name a drug-dealing business after an illegal substance?’ Malik asked.

‘We would. And we have,’ said Idris. The name was his idea: the Opium Den. ‘They may know what we’re doing, they may eventually gain some understanding of it, but they will never prove anything. We’re smarter than they are, and so are our people. They like to underestimate us, so let them.’

Jia always knew the venture would succeed but the speed at which it did surprised even her. Then there was the sideline business…