Free The Ultimate Truth by Kevin Brooks Page B

the
landing.’
    ‘Thank you,’ I said, getting to my feet.
    As I left the room I heard Courtney say, ‘It sounds like you have a wonderful son, Mrs Kamal. He must be a very caring young man.’
    ‘Bashir has a good heart,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t ask for any more in a son.’
    There were only three rooms upstairs. A main bedroom on the left, a smaller bedroom on the right, and the bathroom at the end of the landing. I hurried down to the bathroom,
opened and closed the door without going in, then quietly went into the smaller bedroom. There was no doubt it was Bashir’s room. There was a weight machine on the floor, a punchbag in one
corner, and a poster of Amir Khan on the wall. It was a very small room, and the weight machine took up about half of it, so there wasn’t much space for anything else. There was a single bed,
a chest of drawers, a bedside cabinet, and that was it.
    I went over to the chest of drawers and started searching through it. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I was just looking, hoping to find something that might throw some light
on whatever was going on. I went through the drawers as quickly and quietly as possible, but I didn’t come across anything useful. There was nothing in there except clothes.
    As I went over to the bedside cabinet, I heard Courtney calling out from downstairs. ‘
Travis! Hurry up, Trav! We need to get a move on!
’
    It was a warning. She’d guessed what I was doing, and she was trying to tell me that Mrs Kamal was getting suspicious and it was time for me to come back down. I hesitated for a moment,
knowing that I should heed her warning, but I was at the bedside cabinet now, and it only had two drawers . . . it would only take a couple of seconds to go through them.
    I leaned down and opened the bottom drawer. It was full of bits and pieces: an old iPod, headphones, bootlaces, a pack of playing cards, a can of shoe polish . . .
    ‘
Travis!
’
    Courtney’s voice again. Louder now, more urgent.
    I opened the top drawer. It was jam-packed with boxing magazines.
Boxing Monthly
,
Boxing News
,
The Ring
. . .
    ‘Damn,’ I muttered.
    ‘
TRAVIS!
’
    As I went to close the drawer, something caught my eye. There was something poking out from between the pages of one of the magazines, a little booklet or something. I reached in and pulled it
out.
    It was a passport.
    I heard footsteps then. The sound of someone coming up the stairs. It didn’t sound like Courtney. With my heart thumping hard, I opened the passport and scanned the details, then I dropped
it back in the drawer and tiptoed quickly out of the room and along the landing to the bathroom. As I went in and closed the door, I heard Mrs Kamal’s voice from the top of the stairs,
‘Excuse me? Are you all right in there? What are you doing?’
    I flushed the toilet, ran the taps, turned them off again, and opened the door. Mrs Kamal was standing on the landing.
    ‘Sorry,’ I said, holding my belly and looking embarrassed. ‘I think I must have eaten something bad . . . I’m really sorry.’
    She frowned at me, not sure whether to believe me or not, and I saw her glance over at Bashir’s room.
    ‘Are you all right, Travis?’ Courtney called out from the bottom of the stairs.
    ‘Yeah,’ I told her. ‘I’m OK. I’m just coming.’
    As I moved off along the landing, and Mrs Kamal stepped aside to let me pass, I could tell from the way she was looking at me that she guessed I’d been up to something. She didn’t
say anything though. And I knew that she wouldn’t. Because I knew now, without a shadow of doubt, that she was lying about her son.

17
    I told Courtney about Bashir’s passport as we drove back to her house.
    ‘Are you sure it was his?’ she asked.
    ‘It was in his name, and it had his photograph in it. It wasn’t an old one either. The expiry date was September 2021.’
    ‘He can’t have left the country then.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘So why are his parents