The Disappeared (53 page)

About
a week later he called again and instructed me to give a statement to the
police, saying that I had overheard Nazim talking to Asian friends in the
canteen about going to fight in Afghanistan. He told me to keep it short. I
didn't dare disobey him.

He
contacted me once more in late July. He said he was leaving the country to work
abroad but that he'd hold good to his promise. In the first term of my third
year I was sent an application form to apply for a Stevenson scholarship to Harvard.
I was successful: I studied there for three years and gained a doctorate in
2007.

I
have no knowledge of what happened to Nazim Jamal or Rafi Hassan. From the
little that Silverman told me, I formed the impression that they had been
arrested by the Security Services. As I became better informed about the
political situation, I speculated that they had been taken into custody by the
US authorities and removed to a foreign country, but I have no evidence for
this.

I
am now in the protective custody of the British Security Services and make this
statement freely, willingly and am receiving no reward or favour in exchange
.

Khan
shot to his feet.

'Ma'am,'
he said, with an expression of complete incredulity, 'are you honestly
proposing that the contents of this statement cannot be reported or made known
to anyone outside the immediate families of the deceased? If what Dr Levin says
is true, words cannot describe the depth of corruption that this represents.'

Collins,
sitting alongside him, nodded in agreement. Havilland shifted uncomfortably in
his seat. Martha Denton wore an expression of impassive detachment.

'I'm
not proposing anything, Mr Khan. How each of us behaves with a gun pressed to
our heads is a matter of individual conscience.'

Khan
was defiant. 'I refuse to be silenced. I intend to make the evidence we have
heard public by whatever means possible.'

Jenny
felt the eyes of Golder, Rhys and Moreton on her. She realized that the wall of
silence that had been erected around her proceedings would never be breached.
Immediate imprisonment awaited any newspaper editor or broadcaster who
disobeyed the order. If Khan wanted to spread the word he would be restricted
to megaphone and soapbox or an obscure extra-territorial corner of the
internet, where he would compete for attention with the cranks and conspiracy
theorists.

'You
must do as you see fit, Mr Khan,' Jenny said, and began her summing up to the
jury.

A
sense of anticlimax greeted the verdict of unlawful killing. There was no sense
of a blow being struck for justice, no surge of satisfaction that the truth
would now be made known to a waiting world. Rather it was a guilty, furtive
moment in which everyone in the room felt as if they had tacitly participated
in the concealment of an evil too monstrous and powerful to confront. The
uneasy feeling of complicity was completed when Jenny reminded the jury that
every last word they had heard must remain absolutely secret, even from their
immediate families.

She
couldn't decide whether she had uncovered the truth, or buried it more deeply.

As
the jurors shuffled from their seats, she looked across at Mr Jamal. He wiped
tears from his cheek, gave her a brief nod of acceptance, and made his way to
the back of the hall, where police officers waited to escort him to his car. It
was cold comfort, but she sensed he was glad there would be no publicity.

Not
so Khan. He burst outside and announced to waiting supporters that their
brothers had been murdered by American and British agents. A minor riot broke
out. There were scuffles and arrests, cracked heads and screams of pain, but no
reporters to witness them.

Jenny
met Golder and Rhys in the restaurant at the bird sanctuary. They sat by the
window overlooking the pond. The light was fading from a brilliant sky and the flamingos
wading in the water gleamed fluorescent pink.

'Do
you like birds?' Gillian Golder asked, stirring sweetener into milky tea.

'Most
kinds. Don't you?'

'As
long as they're not grubby,' Golder said. 'I think all the pigeons in London
should be exterminated.'

'I
rather admire their tenacity.'

Alun
Rhys cut in, 'What do you want to know, Mrs Cooper?'

Jenny
sipped her tepid coffee. There was so much she wanted to be told, and she
trusted them so little.

'Who
is Silverman?'

Golder
answered. 'As far as we can ascertain he was an American agent operating
outside the usual channels of cooperation. He appeared to have access to our
intelligence, but we knew nothing of him or his activities.'

'You're
denying all knowledge of him?'

'They
were fearful times. The Americans were understandably jumpy and we had let the
grass grow under our feet rather. Not that that's any justification for summary
killing, I grant you.'

Jenny
remained sceptical. 'If they thought they'd identified terrorists, why not just
hand them over to you or fly them out of the country?'

Golder
and Rhys exchanged a look. Golder said, 'We're still working on that. All we
have at present is the little Alec McAvoy told us. Apparently Tathum confessed
that he and his colleague - since killed in Iraq, if that's any consolation -
brought the two boys straight from Bristol to the woods, where they were met by
Silverman. He interrogated them for most of the night, extracted nothing except
denials, then shot Hassan as an incentive to Jamal. Seemingly it didn't have
the desired effect.'

'You're
in contact with McAvoy?' Jenny tried not to show her excitement.

'He
made a single call to the police. There's been no other communication.'

'Will
he be prosecuted?'

The
loyal Crown servants exchanged another glance. 'That's a decision that depends
on many factors,' Rhys said, 'not least of which is whether he's still alive.
The police found a vehicle yesterday which we think may be his.'

'Where?'

'Just
along the estuary from here, at Aust, near the bridge.'

Jenny
gazed out at the birds and told herself it was a ruse on McAvoy's part. He was
buying time, that was all, throwing them off the scent while he worked out his
next move. He wouldn't leave her now, he had promised . . .

Golder's
harsh, businesslike voice interrupted her thoughts. 'We're informed by the
police that he's also wanted in connection with another suspected killing. He
recently orchestrated the defence of a Czech nightclub owner by the name of
Marek Stich, who shot dead a young traffic policeman but got a miraculous not
guilty. Stich's girlfriend went missing shortly before his trial. She was
Ukrainian. Apparently CID are working on the theory that hers was the body
that was famously stolen from your local mortuary last week.'

'That
can't be right. . .'

'I
couldn't possibly comment,' Gillian Golder said, 'I suggest you talk to the
police.'

He
wouldn't. He couldn't have . . . But why else would he have come to view the
Jane Doe that day? She remembered now: he had told her a story about a client
with a missing daughter which he never repeated again. It was a fiction - his
client was Stich. He must have sent McAvoy to identify the corpse that had
unkindly washed back up on the tide. But that wasn't illegal, it wasn't
complicity, it was just what criminal lawyers did for their clients. McAvoy
would have had nothing to do with the murder or with the theft of a body.

'I
presume you'd like our thoughts on Mrs Jamal?' Golder interrupted her reverie.

'Yes,'
Jenny said, distracted.

'We're
assuming Silverman was involved in her death. Our best guess is that the
prospect of a public inquest rattled him somewhat. From what we gather he's not
the most stable of individuals. We've no concrete evidence that he forced her
to strip naked and drink half a bottle of whisky, but it seems as likely an
explanation as any.'

'Why?
She didn't know anything.'

'She
might have known about Dr Levin. She might have approached her, prodded her
conscience, got her to talk.'

'But
he knew Levin. He could have talked to her directly.'

'We
assume he probably did,' Rhys said. 'Disposing of Mrs Jamal was merely a
housekeeping exercise, if you like.'

'What
about Anna Rose?'

Rhys
deferred to Gillian Golder, who considered her words carefully. 'As far as we
know, Silverman resurfaced early last year after an extended period in the
Middle East. He came back to Sarah Levin, looking for another young woman to
work for him.'

'In
the same university?'

'That's
where he had the contacts,' Golder said. 'But we think his big idea this time
was rather different.' She paused for a moment to weigh her words. 'Let's just
say that, despite outward appearances, certain of our American cousins still
harbour a residual frustration with Britistan, as they like to call us. They
think we still need shocking out of what they see as our complacency over the
radical elements among our Muslim population. Anna Rose was to be less of an
informer and more of an agent provocateur.'

Golder
gave Jenny a look as if to say that was as far as she was prepared to go.

Jenny
wasn't satisfied. 'He was using her to set up Salim Hussain. She was to pretend
she could get hold of the ingredients for a dirty bomb, but they actually came
from Silverman. Then what . . . she took fright and ran?'

'You
understand that we're not at liberty to disclose.'

'What
does Silverman want? What's his agenda? He surely wasn't going to let a
radioactive bomb go off?'

I
wouldn't have thought so, no, but the propaganda value would have been, well .
. . immeasurable. And I'm sure our American colleagues would have been more
than happy to advise us on the necessary cleansing measures to prevent any
future occurrence.'

'What's
happened to him? Have you got him, too?'

Gillian
Golder glanced at her watch. 'I'm afraid we have to go.' She gulped a mouthful
of tea and stood up from the table. She told Rhys she'd see him outside and
headed for the ladies' room.

Faintly
embarrassed, Rhys said, 'Regarding Mr McAvoy, you wouldn't know who this might
be for, would you? It was found in his car.'

He
produced a clear plastic evidence bag from his jacket pocket which contained a
folded scrap of lined paper. Written in an elegant cursive hand in ink that
might have been spattered by rain or teardrops, were the words, 'My Dark
Rosaleen'.

'May
I?'

'Of
course,' Rhys said, awkwardly. He opened the bag and handed her the note.

She
turned away from him, pretending to need the vestiges of daylight afforded by
the window to read it. The verses were set out with copybook neatness:

Roll
forth, my love, like the rushing river,

That
sweeps along to the mighty sea;

God
will inspire me while I deliver,

My
soul of thee!

Tell
thou the world, when my bones lie whitening

Amid
the last homes of youth and eld,

That
once there was whose veins ran lightning

No
eye beheld.

Him
grant a grave to, ye pitying noble,

Deep
in your bosoms: there let him dwell.

He,
too, had tears for all souls in trouble,

Here
and in hell.

'Does
it mean anything to you, Mrs Cooper?' Rhys said. 'Mrs Cooper . . . ?'

Throughout
Saturday Alison drip-fed Jenny snippets of information gleaned from
ex-colleagues in CID. She learned that photographs of Marek Stich's missing
girlfriend appeared to match those of the Jane Doe, and that Stich himself had
been arrested on suspicion of murder and conspiracy to commit arson. McAvoy was
being sought as an accomplice to the 'unlawful concealment, disposal or
destruction' of a corpse. There had been no activity on his credit cards or
bank account for forty-eight hours and his phone hadn't been used since his
final call to Pironi. There were unconfirmed reports of a smartly dressed
middle-aged man seen walking along the public walkway at the edge of the Severn
Bridge late on Friday morning, but no one had witnessed a suicide. The clever
money in CID was still on him turning up in a few weeks' time to cut a deal:
immunity from prosecution in exchange for giving evidence against Stich.

But
Jenny sensed he had gone; not out of self-pity or despair but willingly to
receive his judgement. Just how he had touched her, just what his brief presence
in her life had meant she couldn't yet discern, but that she soon would she had
no doubt.

Jenny
crossed the yard at Steve's farm. She found him at work in the vegetable garden
behind the barn, a flurry of hungry birds scrapping over the worms and insects
he'd turned up in the black earth. He was too absorbed in the physicality of
his task to notice her leaning on the rail watching him. He'd dug a whole row
before a sixth sense made him glance over his shoulder.