Page 128 of Tell No One
“There’s not much choice as far as I can see, but shall we ask him?”
Delaney reached to toggle the switch on Ahsan’s headphones.
“How are you feeling?” Henry asked.
“Excited to see Rafiq. Relieved to be alive. Thankful. Worried.”
“Since you disappeared, your family has been trying to find out what happened to you,” Henry said.
Ahsan’s jaw tightened. “Have they?”
“The British Government promised the Saudi royal family that they’d look into your disappearance,” Henry told him.
“I’m not going back to Saudi. They’d make me disappear forever.”
“You’re not safe in the UK,” Delaney said.
“Your brother, Saad, paid for you to be killed,” Henry told him. “He engaged the services of a professional assassin to make sure it happened.”
Ahsan groaned. “What can I do? Where can we go?”
“You’re probably safe in your Scottish rental property for now,” Henry said. “We hadn’t traced you to it, so I doubt anyone else could. But in the long term, you’d be best leaving the country.”
“You don’t need me to be a witness against them?”
“If necessary, it could be done remotely,” Henry said. “But it would have to be a closed court. It’ll be decided what’s best over the next few days.”
“If we left the country, where could we go?”
“How about Canada or New Zealand?” Henry suggested.
Delaney wondered about the favour the British government were supposed to be doing for the Saudis. Maybe now the truth was out, Henry was on the right side.
“We could arrange new identities,” Henry said. “Maybe you died today. Would you mind if your family believed that?”
“No.” Ahsan didn’t even hesitate.
“They’d want his body,” Delaney said.
Ahsan nodded. “They don’t want me alive, but they’d honour me when I was dead.”
“Then maybe it’s better if you just disappear,” Henry said. “No mention of you being up here.”
“Too many people know, even if those people are going to be serving long prison sentences,” Delaney pointed out.
“Then let me just go missing. I was in Scotland but disappeared. Rafiq has to disappear too. I don’t want my family to get their hands on him. But we need to sell the house.”
“I have your diamonds,” Delaney said. “Rafiq tried to sell them, which set off alarms. He couldn’t find the certification but even if he’d been able to, I suspect your brother had warned the main dealers to be on the lookout.”
“They’re my diamonds to sell, not the family’s. When Rafiq and I were talking about where he should go to sell them, I chose Chason’s. I’d used them before.”
“Ah, well that was a mistake,” Henry said.
Delaney thought that no matter where Rafiq had taken the diamonds, Saad would have been informed.
“Can you arrange for us to go to Canada?”
Henry nodded. “Is that what Rafiq will want?”
