The Disappeared (22 page)

Thank
God for drugs. Thank God.

The
tightness in her chest had already begun to loosen a little as she entered the
house. She opened the living-room door to find Ross and Steve sitting side by
side on the sofa eating sandwiches.

'Oh,
hi.' Steve levered himself to his feet. 'Called by on my way down to the pub -
got waylaid.'

Jenny
turned to Ross, whose eyes were glued to the screen. 'I guess you won't be
wanting any dinner.'

'No
thanks. I'm going to Karen's.'

'On
a Tuesday?'

'Why
not?'

She
couldn't think of a reason that wouldn't make her sound like the kind of mother
she'd already sworn to him she wasn't. She compromised. 'All right, just make
sure you're back by eleven. You don't want to be exhausted tomorrow.' She
headed for the kitchen.

Steve
said, 'Can I do anything?'

Jenny
said, 'No. I'm fine.'

She
was searching through the dregs in the fridge - it seemed to empty as soon as
she'd filled it - when she heard Steve come in behind her. He set his empty
plate on the counter and put an arm around her waist.

'Rough
day?'

She
wished he'd stop touching her. It was one more thing to deal with. 'No more
than usual.'

Ross
called out from the living room: 'See you.'

Steve
was silent for a moment, his hand on the small of her back while she rummaged
for a three-day-old lettuce, a tomato and a scrap of cheese. The front door
opened and closed. They were alone.

'You're
tense,' Steve said.

'Just
tired.'

She
slipped away from him and grabbed a plate from the cupboard, feeling
self-conscious with him watching her fix her meagre supper.

'Ross
mentioned you'd been fraught lately.'

'Oh,
did he?'

'It's
tough on your own.'

There
was no answer to that. She tipped the last of a bottle of French dressing onto
her plate and looked at the half-dead salad with no enthusiasm. She wasn't even
hungry.

Steve
stepped up close behind her, brought both hands around her middle and held her
until she relaxed enough to lean into him. She felt the hard contours of his
body through her clothes.

'You
never ask me for anything,' he said quietly. 'You're not on your own, Jenny . .
.' He kissed her neck. 'I'm here.'

She
turned to face him and let him kiss her face and eyes and mouth, trying to
submit to the moment, to let their closeness overwhelm her and push the
intruding, chaotic thoughts from her mind. She let him take her hand and lead
her upstairs; without speaking a word, she went with him to her bed and for a
short while managed to lose herself.

Afterwards,
she huddled close to him. The bedroom radiator never managed more than a tepid
heat and there was hardness to the cold tonight, their breath almost visible
in the frigid air. She slipped in and out of a restless doze, a carousel of
faces passing in front of her eyes.

She
vaguely heard Steve say, 'Are you awake?'

She
forced her eyes open. 'Sorry . . .'

He
pushed the hair gently back from her face. 'You were murmuring.'

'Anything
interesting?'

'Couldn't
make it out.'

In
his concerned smile Jenny saw a different man from the one she'd met the
previous June. He was gentler, more straightforward, less mysterious. This
familiarity made her strangely sad: their bursts of excitement together were
still intense, but briefer, his touch wasn't as electric, the heightened
thrill had gone. And he wanted to know her when she didn't even know herself.

Steve
said, 'I think you need a good night's sleep.' He kissed her forehead, slid out
from under the duvet and pulled on his clothes.

'I'll
call you,' he said and quietly let himself out.

Jenny
listened guiltily to his footfalls on the stairs. He was a good man, she was
fond of him, yet when they had been making love she had fantasized for a moment
that she was with someone else. And it had unsettled her: it was as if the
constant tug she felt towards the darker corners of her subconscious had found
another weakness to work on. The one pure thing she had was being corrupted.

Frightened
by the places her imagination wanted to take her, she summoned the will to haul
herself out of bed and find her journal. She would write down the thoughts that
were preying on her in the hope that bringing them to light would exorcise
them. But as she wrote:
When I felt his touch on my belly, I closed my eyes
and let it be Alec McAvoy
, a surge of excitement passed through her.

It
was the same sensation she had felt the first time she set eyes on Steve: she
had known, profoundly and without question, what would happen next.

DS
Williams had moved quickly. Jenny arrived in the office to find an emailed list
of nearly five hundred black Toyota MPVs registered in the UK during 2002
together with their owners' addresses. She passed them on to Alison and asked
her to pick out any registered either in the Bristol area or a fifty-mile-wide
corridor to the north. It was an arbitrary approach, but they had to start somewhere.
Also in her inbox was a message from another detective sergeant, Sean Murphy,
to let her know that the inquiries into the missing Jane Doe and the fire at
the Meditect lab were now being treated as one and the same investigation.
Alison said the word inside the force was that there were no leads as yet, but
that the CID was working on the theory that the dead girl had been about to
inform on an organized criminal gang, possibly people traffickers.

A
further email arrived as she was clicking away from Murphy's. It was from
Gillian Golder copying a link to an article on BRISIC's website. She signed
off,
All best, Gillian
. The piece was written anonymously under the
headline, 'Coroner Adjourns Inquest into the Disappeared'. The unnamed writer
speculated that government agencies had been panicked by the speed at which the
inquest had commenced and had stepped in to bring a halt to proceedings before
any compromising evidence came to light. The author cited unsourced rumours
alleging the existence of shady agents provocateurs who were said to have
induced young British Asian men to go abroad, where they were secretly arrested
and imprisoned. The final paragraph ended:

Don't
expect the coroner's inquest to tell us anything we don't already know. The
small window of opportunity has closed. Mrs Cooper has given in to pressure and
denied the grieving families and their communities their one chance of
discovering the truth
.

For
a brief moment Jenny toyed with the idea of trusting Gillian Golder, even with
asking her to help hunt down the Toyota and its occupants. The familiarity of
the brief email had disarmed her into believing they were on the same side,
that she wasn't alone after all. She checked herself. Golder was a spy for
God's sake, a professional deceiver. Her job was to forge false friendships and
make the isolated feel loved.

She
replied tersely:
Thank you. Contents noted
.

Her
immediate task was to review the evidence and decide where to put her limited
energies. She fetched out the legal pad on which she'd made a note of the
testimony she'd heard on the first day of her inquest and read it through. She
had an uneasy feeling about Anwar Ali. He was close to BRISIC and something in
his demeanour had suggested that, despite appearances, he was still the
Islamist he had been eight years before. Until she'd heard Madog's story, she
had assumed Ali's role might have been to hook Nazim and Rafi up with a third
party who had helped them to leave the country. Several more outlandish
possibilities now presented themselves. One was that Ali was working for the
government, spotting and informing on potential radicals. It seemed unlikely,
but she was aware she was entering a world where the normal rules didn't apply.

Dani
James was less mysterious, but her evidence raised troubling questions. The
fact that she had slept with Nazim days before his disappearance chimed with
Mrs Jamal's account of the change she'd seen in her son. What didn't fit was
McAvoy's memory of Mrs Jamal mentioning her suspicion of a previous
relationship. Everything Mrs Jamal had told her to date suggested that Nazim
had become pious and outwardly observant during his first term at Bristol. Yet
his behaviour late the following June seemed to be that of a young man freshly
released from doctrinal bonds.

She
needed to talk to Mrs Jamal again. Strictly speaking, the proper course would
have been to recall her to the witness box to deal with McAvoy's recollection.
In reality, Jenny knew that she was far more likely to open up in private. It
would be easy to hide behind the rules and let the law take its course, but the
same instinct which had prompted her to take the case in the first instance
wouldn't let her. This was one occasion on which the law could take second
place to what felt right.

Amira
Jamal lived in a modern five-storey building on a leafy, comfortable street
north of the city centre. She buzzed Jenny through the main door and met her by
the lift on the third floor, dressed soberly in a dark suit and long batik
scarf. She led her into a small, tidy apartment, where they sat in the living
room surrounded by mementos of Nazim's brief life. In her short career as
coroner Jenny had already lost track of the number of homes she had visited
that were maintained as private shrines to lost loved ones. The only unusual
feature was a shelf lined with neatly labelled box files, all of which related
in some way to Nazim's disappearance and the long slog of letter writing that
had followed in its wake. A small desk was set up beneath it. On it were a
laptop, assorted papers and a book entitled A Family's Guide to Coroners'
Inquests.

Mrs
Jamal had made tea and set out her best china. She poured Jenny a cup with a
shaky hand. 'I'm sorry for how I was on the phone, Mrs Cooper. Sometimes I just
can't stop myself.'

'I
understand.'

'I
see his face when he was a little boy. It's as if I'm still holding him . . .'

'You
seem better today.'

'I
did what you told me, went to the doctor. She gave me some pills.' She shook
her head. 'I've never taken drugs in my life.'

Jenny
picked up her teacup and placed it down again, finding the situation even more
uncomfortable than she'd anticipated. 'Mrs Jamal, there are a couple of
questions — '

'I
have one first, Mrs Cooper. Why did you stop the inquest - the real reason?'

'It's
not stopped, it's adjourned until Monday. Your former solicitor, Mr McAvoy,
told me about something I ought to investigate.'

A
look of alarm bordering on terror spread across Mrs Jamal's face. 'What?'

'I'm
telling you this on the strict understanding that it goes no further than this
room. Do I have your word on that?'

'Yes
. . .'

'You
remember that, before he went to prison, he hired a private investigator who
found an old lady who claimed to have seen a black Toyota outside her house
along the road from the halaqah?'

'I
spoke to that man, Mr Dean - he said she was confused. She might even have got
the night wrong.'

'She
didn't. Mr Dean was probably trying not to raise your hopes . . . About six
months later McAvoy asked him to follow it up. He found a toll collector on the
old Severn Bridge. I spoke to him yesterday. A black Toyota came past his booth
on the night of 28 June 2002. He remembers two white men in the front, two
young Asian men in the back. He said they seemed frightened.'

'Who
is this man? Why didn't he say any of this before?' Mrs Jamal asked, breathless
with shock.

'It
seems he was intimidated. I can't be sure he's telling the truth, but he claims
one of the men in the front of the car tracked him down the following week and
assaulted his young granddaughter - sprayed her hair with paint.'

Mrs
Jamal held her head in her hands. 'I don't understand . . . Why now? Who was
driving this car?'

'That's
what I'm trying to find out.'

'You
say Mr McAvoy knew? I never trusted that man.'

'Only
some of it. Mr Dean died when Mr McAvoy was in prison.'

Mrs
Jamal reached for a box of tissues.

'I
know it's a lot for you to deal with,' Jenny said, 'but Mr McAvoy also
remembers you mentioning that Nazim might have had a girlfriend before Dani
James.'

'My
son never touched her. She's a prostitute. She's staining his memory.'

'Why
do you say that?'

'You
heard what she said - she had a disease.''

'It
could be important. Did you tell Mr McAvoy about another girl?'

She
fell silent and held a Kleenex to her eyes.