John nodded. He knew exactly how personal it was. Tentatively, he broached the subject. ‘Did Jia say anything else?’ he asked.

Elyas shook his head. ‘Just that the funeral will be on Monday. And that I should bring Ahad.’

‘What? She wants you to bring Ahad?’

‘Yes.’

John shook his head. ‘Are you sure that’s wise? I mean, her dad told her that he was dead. Is his funeral the best place for a reunion?’

Elyas shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Ahad wants to go. He’s getting a train up here this afternoon. None of this is easy.’

‘What I never understood was how she believed that he was dead. Surely she needed to bury her child, name him, find some closure, something? But she just carried on. And then Khan left him with you. What the fuck was that all about?’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Elyas.

‘It was exactly like that. There’s something else going on here, mate.’

Elyas already knew meeting at the funeral wasn’t a good idea, either for his son or the boy’s mother, but nothing about his relationship with Jia had ever been straightforward. He wondered if that was what had kept him addicted to her for so long. He was no different to a junkie, hungry for the next fix, willing to blur the lines of right and wrong to get it. Unwilling to confront his shame, he brushed the thought aside. Age had never stopped a grown man making a bad choice. Work was best. News was salvation. Work was where he made his best decisions. ‘So, what else do we know about the Jirga?’ he asked, picking up a copy of the day’s paper and handing it to John. Akbar Khan’s face was splashed across the front page, the headline ‘Gangland Assassination’ above it.

John shook his head. ‘Things are bad,’ he said. ‘They’re worse than when we first started. Everything has gone – the big companies have left, unemployment is high, and hardly anyone who goes away to university comes back. The city has been drained of hope. My contacts tell me the police have been after Akbar Khan for years. They know about the Jirga, about the drug runs, the money laundering, the prostitution, the tax fraud – you name it, they know it. But the CPS just can’t seem to make it stick. People whisper and gossip but when it comes to giving evidence, no one comes forward, stories don’t corroborate and reports go missing.’

‘People are that afraid?’ said Elyas.

‘They’re not afraid of him, they respect him.’

Elyas was surprised by his answer. Things had become so bad that criminals were now among the highly respected in society? He was so steeped in privilege that he hadn’t seen it coming.