The Disappeared (17 page)

'Thinnish
. . . kind of wiry. He had a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, so I
couldn't see his face. He had a blue puffy anorak on, which seemed odd as it
was the middle of summer. I think he had a rucksack over one shoulder.'

'In
your statement you said "large rucksack or holdall".'

'I
don't remember in detail, just that it seemed strange. I do remember thinking
he had a real attitude shoving me like that.'

'Have
you any idea what the police did with this information?'

'No.
I made a statement, that was it.'

'Do
you know if anyone else saw him?'

'Not
that I know of. It was late.'

Jenny
said, 'My office has made contact with a lot of students from your year, yet
virtually none of them seems to have anything to say. Do you have any idea why
that is?'

'Because
they didn't know them, I guess.'

Jenny
nodded. Her own brief excursion through the university precincts had been
enough to convince her that Dani was probably right: devout, politicized
Muslims would have occupied a world apart.

She
was ready to hand the witness over for cross- examination by the lawyers when
she remembered the statement that Sarah Levin - a witness not listed to appear
until tomorrow - had given to the police a short while after Dani had spoken to
them. She reached for a file and turned up the flagged page. It was brief, only
two paragraphs, the first giving her personal details and stating that she was
in the same year and faculty as Nazim, and the second detailing a conversation
overheard some time in May 2002.

'Do
you remember a student in your year called Sarah Levin?' Jenny said.

'Vaguely.
I think she lived in a different hall.'

'That's
right - Goldney. She gave a statement to the police on 10 July saying that in
May 2002 she overheard Nazim talking to some other young Asian men in a canteen
on the main campus.' She read aloud. ' "I overheard him saying that some
of the "brothers" were volunteering to fight the Americans in
Afghanistan. That's all I heard, just a snatch of their conversation, but I got
the impression they were talking a lot about other young Muslims who were
committed enough to fight for their beliefs. I remember the expression on
Nazim's face - he seemed to be in awe of them." Did you ever overhear any
conversations like this?'

Dani
gave an uncertain shake of her head.

'Are
you sure?'

She
glanced from Jenny to Mrs Jamal, then back to Jenny again. 'I don't find it
surprising - he was quite macho, the way he held himself. . .' Another flick of
the eyes to Mrs Jamal. 'But what his mother said about him changing . . .' She
paused and swallowed, the colour leaving her face.

'Yes?'

Dani
opened her mouth to continue, but stalled, startled, as the door opened at the
back of the hall and a tall man dressed in a long coat entered. Jenny
recognized McAvoy immediately. He picked her out with those still blue eyes and
gave a lawyer's nod before finding standing room among the young men lining the
back wall.

Jenny
drew her gaze away from him. 'You were about to say, Miss James?'

'I
think a lot of it might have been posing,' she said, her voice shaky. 'He
wasn't as religious as all that . . . not in late June, anyway.'

'What
makes you say that?'

Dani
turned her face away from Mrs Jamal. 'It was on the night of 2.6 June, a
Wednesday. Nazim came into the bar and we got talking. He wasn't drinking,
obviously, but he was fun, more like his old self. . .' She paused, then lifted
her eyes. 'We spent the night together.'

A
whisper went around the room. The journalists crouched over their notebooks.
Jenny noticed McAvoy give a bemused shake of his head. Mrs Jamal wiped away a
bewildered tear. Jenny felt a burst of excitement. At last, a revelation.

'You
slept with Nazim on the night of the 26th?'

'Yes,
I did.' Dani seemed relieved to have made a public confession. 'There was no
relationship or anything, it was just impulsive. Only the one night. He left my
room early next morning and that was fine with both of us.'

'Did
you talk?'

'Not
really.'

'Did
you get any insight into his state of mind?'

'He
was laughing, cracking jokes . . . like someone who was demob happy. And I was
quite far gone, to be honest. I don't think I put up too much resistance. It
just sort of happened.'

'Did
you see him again?'

'No.
Never.'

'And
you've no idea why he chose that night to approach you?'

'I
was nineteen and partying. It didn't matter enough to ask.'

'Wait
there, Miss James.'

Fraser
Havilland and Martha Denton had their heads together in animated conversation.
Seeming to reach an agreement, Havilland stood and addressed the witness.

Sleek
and polished, he gave her a disarming smile. 'You didn't tell the police about
this night together at the time?'

She
shook her head.

'Because?'

'It
didn't seem relevant.' She let out a breath, her face twisted in a frown. 'And
I suppose I felt guilty somehow . . . There was no reason to, but I didn't know
what was going on in his mind.'

Havilland
glanced down at his notes. 'You said he seemed "demob happy"?'

'Yes.'

'Demobbed
from what?'

'I
don't know. It was just his mood.'

'He
wasn't wearing traditional dress at the bar, I take it?'

'No.
He'd stopped that. I'd noticed a few weeks before.'

Havilland
drummed his fingertips thoughtfully on the table as he searched for a suitable
form of words. 'Did it occur to you that this
elation
of his might have
had something of the final fling about it?'

'Not
at the time. Later, when I heard what was being said — '

'Thank
you, Miss James,' Havilland said, cutting her off, and sat down with the look
of a man satisfied that he'd made a powerful point.

Martha
Denton rose. 'Do you not think it dishonest of you not to have told the police
this at the time?'

Dani
looked to Jenny. 'Can I please finish what I was going to say?'

'Go
ahead,' Jenny said.

Martha
Denton rolled her eyes impatiently.

'I've
thought about it a lot, again and again ... I don't believe Nazim was going off
somewhere. It felt exactly the opposite - it was as if he was coming back.'

'It
certainly seems dishonest of you not to have told the police that,' Denton
fired back.

'It's
not easy to talk about those things, especially when you're that young.'

'It
doesn't sound as if you were particularly inhibited.'

Stung,
Dani said, 'Believe me, it's easier to go to bed with someone than to talk to
the police.'

'Miss
James, whether or not you slept with Nazim Jamal, you have no idea whatsoever
where he went, do you?'

'No,
I just have an instinct. I don't believe he was ever a religious fanatic, not
truly.'

'You're
in the legal profession, you know an instinct's not evidence.'

Dani's
face hardened. 'Devout Muslims don't sleep around. I caught chlamydia from
Nazim. I suffered severe inflammation and ended up in hospital a month later. I
suffered permanent damage and may not be able to carry a child.' She turned to
Jenny. 'You can check my medical records.'

Rattled,
Martha Denton said, 'Perhaps you just don't like the idea that he used you.'

Dani
didn't answer; Jenny didn't press her to.

'Or
perhaps we can't trust your evidence at all. Keeping quiet on such a matter for
eight years, then coming forward with a story which you know full well would
kick up all sorts of dust—'

'It's
the truth.' She looked at Mrs Jamal. 'I'm only sorry I didn't say this before.'

Martha
Denton glanced sceptically at the jury. 'I'm sure we all are.'

Yusuf
Khan, who had appeared embarrassed at the turn Dani's evidence had taken,
offered no cross-examination, and requested only that she give permission for
her medical records to be made available to the court. She consented.

Before
releasing her, Jenny asked Dani if she'd had other sexual partners before
Nazim. She admitted to one, a boy she had slept with during the first term, but
insisted they had used condoms. With Nazim she'd taken a chance. There was no
doubt in her mind that it was he who had infected her.

Jenny
asked Alison in open court to make copies of both Nazim and Rafi's medical
records available to the lawyers and told the jury that from what she'd seen
there was nothing to suggest Nazim had an STD or any health problems at all.
According to his GP's notes he hadn't visited the doctor in three years.

Dani
James left the witness chair and walked out of the hall, drawing a mixture of
admiring and suspicious looks. Jenny was impressed with her. She was a
successful lawyer with a reputation to uphold. It had taken a lot of courage to
give the evidence she had.

There
was time for one more witness before breaking for lunch. She decided to call
Simon Donovan and use the recess to plan her questions for McAvoy. She had a
long list accumulating.

Donovan
was a fifty-three-year-old managing accountant for a Ford dealership. He was
married and lived in the suburb of Stoke Bishop. A man remarkable only for his
overwhelming blandness, he told the court that several weeks after Nazim and
Rafi's disappearance he had seen their photographs in the Bristol Evening Post.
He immediately recognized them as the two young Asian men who had been sitting
across the aisle from him on the ten a.m. train from Bristol Parkway to London
Paddington on Saturday, 29 June. He had been en route to a football match, as
had many of his fellow travellers, and had noticed them mainly because they
seemed not to approve of the sometimes boisterous fans. As far as he could
recall they were both dressed in smart casual clothes and had only small items
of luggage with them.

Jenny
said, 'You remembered the faces of two strangers that clearly after three
weeks?'

'They
were different, I suppose,' Donovan said. 'Maybe it was because they were young
lads with beards. And we were all pretty jumpy about terrorists at the time,
weren't we? You notice these things on a train.'

'Is
this a polite way of saying their presence made you anxious?'

'I'm
not a racist,' Donovan said. 'I haven't got a racist bone in my body. But you
just can't help wondering, can you? Especially when they're looking so
serious.'

Jenny
said, 'I see. Thank you, Mr Donovan.'

Havilland
asked only a few soft questions designed to shore up Donovan's credibility as a
reliable and concerned member of the public with no axe to grind. Martha Denton
delved a little further and managed to prompt him into saying that both young
men seemed worried or apprehensive. Jenny pointed out that this detail was
missing from his statement made three weeks after the event. Donovan replied
that the police officer who took his statement had been in a hurry and seemed
only to want the bare facts. Jenny wasn't convinced by his explanation.

Yusuf
Khan looked at Donovan for a long moment, his head cocked thoughtfully to one
side, before asking how many bearded young Asian men he came across in his
daily life at that time. Very few, Donovan had to admit.

'But
the newspapers at the time were full of them, weren't they? We all remember the
hysteria. Every time you caught a train or a plane, the media would have had
you believe, you took your life in your hands.'

'What's
your question for the witness, Mr Khan?' Jenny said.

'My
question, Mr Donovan, is whether you think you could have told one bearded
young man with Asian features from another? That's all you recognized, wasn't
it - their beards and the colour of their skin?'

'I
wouldn't have called the police if I wasn't sure it was them.'

'What
was your motivation?'

'I
thought it the right thing to do.'

'Do
you make a habit of calling the police?'

'No.'

'Were
you under the impression they might be terrorist suspects?'

'Well,
I ... I suppose it might have crossed my mind.'

Khan
nodded calmly. 'When you first called the police, did you say to them, "I
definitely saw the two missing men", or did you say, "I saw two young
Asian men who might have been them"?'

Donovan
moved uncomfortably in his seat, his thick neck reddening. 'I said I'd seen
these two lads . . . They came round to my house with photographs. When I'd
seen a few, I was sure it was them. Why would I have made it up?'

Jenny
heard a sudden sharp derisive laugh from the back of the hall. She looked up,
angry, and saw that it had come from McAvoy.