There was only one other person in the little waiting room: Jo.
Joanna Barraclough-Clark (and what a mouthful) was Ali’s sister. The middle child, she’d gone off to art college, met David, dropped out, had a baby, and married. All in about three years. Now she lived in Sheffield with her husband and young sons, and Ali didn’t see much of her. He’d had no desire to since the trial, when she’d stood up for the defence and said that Tony wouldn’t have ever tried to murder somebody.
“My brother is a lot of things,” she’d said, “but he’s not a murderer.”
Ali had wanted to shake her and scream, demand what Tony could possibly have meant to do by forcing his way into their flat and taking a crowbar to Yazid’s head—but he hadn’t. He’d simply stared at her in the witness box, tried not to cry, a
