The shopkeeper’s son spoke fast, making it difficult for Elyas to keep up. As he listened, he gauged the man was as dodgy as they came in this city, but everyone deserved to be heard. Elyas had a knack for getting people to open up. He could get them to reveal things in private conversations, with cameras pointed at them and down phone lines. You just had to care enough to listen.

Malala Food Stores was the kind of establishment that shouted money laundering: bare shelves, tins past their sell-by date, pins and needles in little packets, and plastic toys that looked straight out of the eighties, all signs that this was some kind of front. Experience told Elyas that the shopkeeper’s son was no stranger to the police. That’s why he wasn’t at the premises today, and why his fumbling old man was working the cash register.

‘You know Akbar Khan?’ the young man asked. ‘I work for ’im. I told ’im what these scum were doin’. Said we need to clean ’em out!’

‘And Ben Khan? Do you know what happened to him?’ Elyas asked. No reply. He waited. A less experienced man would have interjected but Elyas understood how to draw answers out of people by leaving a silence hanging. The void seemed unending but Elyas was patient, and then, ‘Hello? You still there?’

‘Yeah, I’m still here,’ came the voice. More silence. And then, it happened. When he finally started talking, his words were drained of their bravado and street kid arrogance. He spoke for quite a while, his voice low, so that Elyas had to press his ear to the phone, listening hard, swallowing every word. When the son hung up, he handed the mobile phone back to the shopkeeper.

‘Are you OK?’ the old man asked in Urdu. ‘You look even paler than when you came in.’

Elyas smiled weakly and thanked the old man for his help and his concern. Once safely in his car, he scrolled through his phone for Jia’s number. He held the phone tightly in the palm of his hand, staring at it, his heart ready to jump out of his mouth. He had to pass on what he knew. But it had pained him to hear it himself – how would he tell her?

The young man on the phone had been quite sure about what had been done to Benyamin last night. ‘I couldn’t get hold of Idris so I called Phats – he does security for the Khans – told ’im where Ben Khan was,’ he’d said. ‘But I couldn’t bring myself to tell ’im all of it. Tauba! I ain’t slept all night since I heard his screams, bro!’

‘What happened?’