‘This is an excellent debut and hopefully the start of a fantastic new series! Absolutely loved the ending, great new author to follow right from the beginning, I feel this could be a real eye opener of a series. It’s certainly going to keep you on the edge of your seat.’

Fiona Sharp, Bookseller

To Ami and Abu, thank you for putting my happiness above the gossip.

However dirty and coarse his hand he will stretch it to a king for a hand-shake. However meagre his meal he will invite an emperor to share it.

The Pathan, Ghani Khan

PROLOGUE

The frayed fabric of the black niqaab scratched at her nose and she raised her hand to adjust it, bringing it taut over her lips. She hurried on. The setting sun worried her. She would be late for work.

Broken syringes and greying condoms lay spent, caught between the pavement and the road, trying to disappear into the sewers beneath. Engine oil mixed with rain pooled around them and spread into the gutter.

Ahead of her a new Bentley waited, its engine purring gently. Further up and across the road a bruised, blonde working girl leaned into a sheenless VW Golf. Hidden behind grubby old textile mills, this forgotten strip of land equalised rich and poor. They all came here. From near and far. To have their cars looked at and their bodies serviced.

The young Muslim woman’s eyes, watchful, hollow and kohl-rimmed, moved from lamp post to lamp post and then to street corner. For one brief moment her resolve weakened and she considered turning around and heading home, but then she remembered the Final Demand letter her mother had handed her as she’d been leaving and something tightened in her stomach.

Sakina, her name was, and as she pulled her arms tight around herself, hoping their warmth would melt some of the hardness that had set in, she reminded herself of its meaning: serenity. ‘Bas thorai saal hor nai putar,’ her mother had told her, her tone as gentle as her coarse Punjabi would allow. ‘Once your brother finishes university he will take care of everything.’ But only Sakina knew what those few years were costing. She was paying with more than money for the university fees, rent, bills and bread her family needed. Her father’s death had come suddenly and he hadn’t had time to make provision for his wife and children. He had been a good man and she missed him with an all-encompassing heaviness in her heart. He had always been proud of Sakina and she wondered what he would have thought of her now.