False Friends by Stephen Leather Page B

The woman he’d known had always been cuddly rather than fit but as he looked at her pouring tea he could see what had attracted his father. She had high cheekbones and flawless skin the colour of the milky tea that she handed him. Her eyes were wide, with impossibly long lashes, and her hair was stil as lustrous as a model’s in a shampoo advertisement. It was hard to imagine her as a simple vil age girl unable to speak English. His mother was always immaculately dressed, either in a traditional sari or in a western designer outfit, and she was always wel made-up, even if she was just popping down to the local shops.
    ‘How would I know? I haven’t seen her,’ said Chaudhry.
    Mrs Chaudhry looked over at her husband. ‘Didn’t you show him the picture?’
    ‘I haven’t had the chance,’ said his father. He grunted as he pushed himself up off the sofa and walked over to a sideboard that was loaded with framed family photographs. He pul ed open a drawer and rooted through the contents.
    ‘She is gorgeous,’ said his mother. ‘And smart.’
    ‘Yeah, Dad said she was a microbiologist.’
    ‘And she’s got such a good heart. She took a gap year to work in an orphanage in Pakistan. Like you did last year. You’l have so much to talk about.’
    ‘It wasn’t an orphanage Manraj worked at, it was a hospital,’ said his father.

    ‘It’s the same thing, giving up your time to help others less fortunate.’ She smiled at Chaudhry in the way that only a proud mother can and Chaudhry’s stomach lurched. He tried to cover his discomfort by sipping his tea.
    He’d never lied to his parents before he started working for MI5 but there was no way he could have told them that he had gone to Pakistan to attend an al-Qaeda training camp, where he learned to strip and fire a whole range of weapons, construct explosive devices and manipulate biochemical agents. He’d told his parents that he was volunteering at a country medical centre during his Christmas break and he’d never felt more guilty than when his father had offered to pay for his ticket. The people at MI5 had told him that under no circumstances could he ever tel his parents what he was doing, that to do so would risk his life and theirs. So he had lied, and he hated himself for doing it.
    ‘Are you okay, honey?’ asked his mother.
    Chaudhry forced a smile. ‘I’ve been studying too hard and not sleeping enough,’ he said.
    ‘Why don’t you stay for the weekend? I’l feed you up, you can lie in tomorrow and if you need to get some work done you can use your father’s study.’
    ‘We’ve only just kicked him out of the nest. Don’t say you want him back already,’ said his father. He held up a photograph. ‘Here it is.’ He walked back to the sofa and gave the picture to Chaudhry.
    Chaudhry took it. He looked at it for several seconds and then looked back at his father, his eyebrows raised. ‘Wow,’ he said.
    Shepherd woke up early on Monday morning, half an hour before his alarm was due to go off. He’d spent the weekend in Hereford and had arrived back in London late on Sunday night. His back was aching, probably from the long drive, so he did a few stretches before heading to the bathroom to clean his teeth. His back was stil sore so he decided to go for a run to see if that would loosen it up. He pul ed on an old sweatshirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms and went through to the kitchen, where he kept his army boots and weighted rucksack. He figured it best to forgo the rucksack and he went downstairs. He jogged to the Heath, then set off on his regular route: up North End Way and round the Hampstead Heath extension, a large open space to the north-west of the main Heath. In the past it had been farmland and while it wasn’t as pretty as the rest of the Heath it was general y quieter and Shepherd always preferred to run alone. He did two circuits of the extension then cut around West Meadow and down to Parliament Hil Fields. Several running