The Disappeared (3 page)

'Who?'
Jenny interrupted, running through a mental list of the several persistent
obsessives she'd had to fend off lately.

Alison
checked her message pad. 'Mrs Amira Jamal.'

'Never
heard of her.' Jenny reached for a spiral-bound folder of police photographs
sitting in her mail tray and flicked through several pictures of the frozen
corpses in the supermarket lorry. 'What did she want?'

'I
couldn't quite make it out - she was gabbling.'

'Great.'
Scooping up the reports, Jenny noticed that Alison was wearing a gold cross
outside her chunky polo neck. Not yet fifty-five, she wasn't unattractive - she
had curves and kept her thick bob of hair dyed a natural shade of blonde - but
a hint of staidness had recently crept into her appearance. Ever since she'd
become involved with an evangelical church.

'It
was a baptism present,' Alison said, a challenging edge to her voice as she
scrolled through her emails.

'Right.
. .' Jenny wasn't sure how to respond. 'Was this a recent event?'

'Yesterday.'

'Oh.
Congratulations.'

'You
don't have a problem with me wearing it at work?' Alison said.

'Feel
free.' Jenny gave a neutral smile and pushed through the heavy oak door into
her office, wondering if she'd go the same way at Alison's age. Organized
religion and late-onset lesbianism seemed to be what hit most frequently. She
couldn't decide which she'd opt for given the choice. Maybe she'd try both.

Amira
Jamal was a small, round woman barely more than five feet tall and somewhere in
her fifties. She wore a smart black suit with a large, elaborate silk scarf,
which she lowered from her head and draped around her shoulders as she took her
seat. From a small pull-along suitcase she produced a box file containing a
mass of notes, documents, statements and newspaper articles. She was clearly an
educated woman, but emotional and overwrought: she spoke in short excited
bursts about a missing son, as if assuming Jenny was already familiar with her
case.

'Seven
years it's taken,' Mrs Jamal said, 'Seven years. I went to the High Court in
London last week, the Family Court, I can't tell you how hard it was to get
there. I had to sack the solicitor, and three others before him - none of them
would believe me. They're all fools. But I knew the judge would listen. I don't
care what anyone says, I have always believed in British justice. Look at these
papers . . .' She reached for the box.

'Hold
on a moment, Mrs Jamal,' Jenny said patiently, feeling anything but. 'I'm
afraid we'll have to rewind for a moment.'

'What's
the matter?' Mrs Jamal flashed uncomprehending deep brown eyes at her, her
lashes thick with mascara and her lids heavily pencilled.

'This
is the first I've heard of your case. We'll need to take it a step at a time.'

'But
the judge said to come to you,' Mrs Jamal said with a note of panic.

'Yes,
but the coroner is an independent officer. When I look into a case I have to
start afresh. So, please, perhaps you could explain briefly what's happened.'

Mrs
Jamal rifled through her disorganized documents and thrust a photocopy of a
court order at her. 'Here.'

Jenny
saw that it was dated the previous Friday: 23 January. Mrs Justice Haines of
the High Court Family Division had made a declaration that Nazim Jamal, born 5
May 1982, and having been registered as a missing person on 1 July 2002, and
having remained missing for seven years, was presumed to be dead.

'Nazim
Jamal is your son?'

'My
only son. My only child . . . All I had.' She wrung her hands and rocked to and
fro in a way which Jenny could see would eventually have caused her lawyers to
feel more irritation than sympathy. But she had spent enough years in the
company of distressed mothers - fifteen years as a family lawyer employed by
the legal department of a hard-pressed local authority - to tell melodrama from
the real thing, and it was genuine torment she saw in the woman's eyes. Against
all her better instincts she decided to hear Mrs Jamal's story.

'Perhaps
you could tell me what happened, from the beginning?'

Mrs
Jamal looked at her as if she had briefly forgotten why she was there.

'Can
we get you some tea?' Jenny said.

Armed
with a cup of Alison's strong, thick, builder's tea, Mrs Jamal started
falteringly into the story she had told countless times to sceptical police
officers and lawyers. She appeared mistrustful at first, but once she saw that
Jenny was listening carefully and taking detailed chronological notes, she
slowly relaxed and became more fluent, pausing only to wipe away tears and
apologize for her displays of emotion. She was a highly strung but proud woman,
Jenny realized; a woman who, given different chances in life, might have been
sitting on her side of the desk.

And
the more Jenny heard, the more troubled she became.

Amira
Jamal and her husband Zachariah had both been brought to Britain as children in
the 1960s. Their marriage was arranged by their families when they were in
their early twenties, but fortunately for them they fell in love. Zachariah
trained as a dentist and they moved from London to Bristol for him to join his
uncle's practice in early 1980. They had been married for three years before
Amira fell pregnant. The pregnancy came as a huge relief: she was becoming
frightened that her husband's very conservative family might put pressure on
him to divorce her, or even to take another wife. It was a moment of great joy
when she gave birth to a healthy boy.

With
all the love and attention his doting parents lavished on him, Nazim sailed
through primary school and won a scholarship to the exclusive Clifton College.
And as their son became absorbed into mainstream British culture, so Amira and
Zachariah adapted themselves to their new social milieu of private school
parents. Nazim went from strength to strength, scoring highly in exams and
playing tennis and badminton for the school.

The
family's first major convulsion occurred when Nazim was seventeen, at the start
of his final year. Having spent so much time mixing with other mothers, Amira
had come to appreciate what she had been missing cooped up at home. Against
Zachariah's wishes she insisted on going out to work. The only position she
could find was that of a sales assistant in a respectable women's outfitters,
but it was still too much for her husband's pride to stand. He made her choose
between him and the job. She called his bluff and chose the job. That evening
she came home to find her two brothers- in-law waiting with the news that he
was divorcing her and that she was to leave the house immediately.

Nazim
gave in to irresistible family pressure and continued to live with his father,
who shortly afterwards took a younger wife, with whom he was to have a further
three children. Amira was forced out to a rented flat. Nazim loyally visited
her several evenings each week, and rather than leave her isolated refused an
offer from Imperial College London, and instead took up a place at Bristol
University to study physics.

He
started at university in the autumn of 2001 in the weeks when the world was
still reeling and the word 'Muslim' had become synonymous with atrocity.
Uninterested in politics, Nazim barely mentioned events in America and went
off happily to college; and in his first act of rebellion against his father he
decided to live on campus.

'I
didn't see much of him that year,' Mrs Jamal said with a touch of sadness
tinged with pride. 'He got so busy with his work and playing tennis - he was
trying to get on the university team. When I did see him he looked so well, so
happy. He wasn't a boy any more, I saw him change into a man.' A trace of
emotion re-entered her voice and she paused for a moment. 'It was in the second
term, after the Christmas holidays, that he became more distant. I only saw him
three or four times. The thing I noticed was that he'd grown a beard and
sometimes he wore the prayer cap, the taqiyah. I was shocked. Even my husband
wore Western dress. One time he came to my flat wearing full traditional dress:
a white robe and sirwal like the Arabs. When I asked him why, he said a lot of
his Muslim friends dressed that way.'

'He
was becoming religious?'

'We
were always a religious family, but peaceful. My husband and I followed Sheikh
Abd al-Latif: our religion was between us and God. No politics. That's how
Nazim was brought up, to respect his fellow man, no matter who.' A look of
incomprehension settled on her face. 'Later they said he'd been going to the Al
Rahma mosque, and to meetings . . .'

'What
sort of meetings?'

'With
radicals, Hizut-Tahrir, the police said. They told me he went to a
halaqah
.'

'
Halaqah
?'

'A
small group. A cell, they called it.'

'Let's
stop there. When did he start going to these meetings?'

'I
don't know exactly. Some time after Christmas.'

'OK
., .' Jenny made a note to the effect that whatever had happened to Nazim was
linked to people he met in the winter of 2001-2. 'You noticed a change in your
son in early 2002. What then?'

'He
was much the same in the Easter vacation. His father didn't speak to me so I
didn't know how he behaved at his house, but I was worried.'

'Why?'

'Nazim
didn't talk about religion in my presence, but I'd heard things. We all had.
These Hizb, followers of that criminal Omar Bakri, it's all politics with them:
telling our young men they have to fight for their people, for a khalifah - an
Islamic state. It's poison for young minds.'

'Do
you know for certain your son was involved with radicals?'

'I
knew nothing. I still don't, only what the police tell me.' She motioned
towards the file of papers. 'They say they saw him going in and out of a house
in St Pauls every Wednesday night for halaqah. Him and Rafi Hassan, a friend
from university.'

'Tell
me about Rafi.'

'He
was in Nazim's year. He studied law. They had rooms in the same building, Manor
Hall. His family comes from Birmingham.'

'Did
you meet him?'

'No.
Nazim hardly mentioned him. I got all this from the police . . . afterwards.'
She pulled a fresh handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her eyes, rocking
back and forth in her chair.

'After
what?' Jenny said, tentatively.

'I
saw Nazim only once in May. He came on a Saturday, my birthday. His aunties
were there and cousins. It was a wonderful day, he was himself again . . . And
then once more in June, the 22rd, another Saturday.' All the dates were etched
on her memory. 'He arrived in the morning looking pale. He told me he wasn't
feeling well, a fever and headache. He lay in the spare bed and slept all
afternoon and evening. He ate a little soup but said he was still too tired to
go back to college, so he stayed the night. I woke at dawn and heard him
praying: with perfect tajwid - reciting from the Koran like he'd learned as a
boy.' She took a shaky breath and closed her eyes. 'I must have fallen asleep
again. When I got up to make breakfast he'd gone. He left me a note.
Thanks,
Mum. Bye. Naz
. It's there in the papers ... I never saw him again.' Tears
ran down her cheeks. She pressed her mascara-stained handkerchief to them and
tried to steady herself. 'The police said . . . they said they saw him come out
of the halaqah at ten-thirty on the night of Friday, 28 June 2002. That was in
Marlowes Road in St Pauls. He walked to the bus stop with Rafi Hassan and that
was it. He didn't go to tennis the next morning and neither of them was at
class on Monday. The police spoke to all the students in the hall, but no one
saw them over the weekend, or ever again.'

For
the first time in their interview Mrs Jamal was overcome. Jenny let her weep
uninterrupted. She had learned that the best response to grieving relatives was
to observe a respectful silence, to offer a sympathetic smile but to say as
little as possible. However well meant, words seldom eased the pain of grief.

When
her tears eventually subsided, Mrs Jamal described how the college authorities
had telephoned her husband, who then called her when Nazim failed to attend his
tutorial the following Wednesday. He had been due to hand in an important
dissertation. Zachariah and several of his nephews scoured the campus, but no
one had seen Nazim or Rafi since the previous week, and neither boy seemed to
have any close friends apart from one another. Even the students who lived in
adjoining rooms could claim only a nodding acquaintance.

Initially
the police responded with their usual indifference to reports of missing
persons. A liaison officer even went so far as to suggest that the two young
men might have fallen into a sexual relationship and run away together. Mrs
Jamal knew her son well enough to know this wasn't likely. Then it emerged that
both boys' laptop computers and mobile phones were missing. The police sergeant
who had searched their rooms found evidence that their doors had been forced
with a similar implement, probably a wide screwdriver. And then, nearly a week
later, a girl who had a room in a neighbouring building, Dani James, came
forward to tell police that she'd seen a man in a puffy anorak with a baseball
cap pulled down over his face walking quickly out of Manor Hall at around
midnight on the night of 28 June. She thought he had a large rucksack or a
holdall over his shoulder.