The Disappeared (9 page)

Held
steady by her morning combination of beta blockers to calm her physical
symptoms of anxiety and anti-depressants to level her mood, she was ready to
face the world again. She wanted to write her report to the Home Office as soon
as possible, but first needed to carry out the two most logical lines of
inquiry: to discover what, if anything, was known about the missing boys at the
university, and what other documents the police still held from their original
investigation.

She
called through to the university offices during her morning commute while Ross
slouched half asleep in the passenger seat plugged into his iPod. She was
passed on to the office of Professor Rhydian Brightman, head of the department
of physics. His none-too-helpful secretary claimed he was booked solid for the
next week, but Jenny stood her ground and calmly reminded her that failure to
assist with a coroner's inquiry could land the obstructing party in jail.

Ross
looked round during this exchange and pulled out one of his headphones to catch
the result: a meeting was swiftly arranged for late morning.

He
said, 'Wow. Is that true? Can you really throw people in prison?'

'If
I have to.'

'Have
you ever?'

'Last
summer. Two witnesses in the same inquest. Caused quite a stir.' She glanced
over with a smile, but he was already plugged back in, his head bouncing to the
music.

Alison
greeted her with the usual stack of paperwork and a clutch of requests from
other families with missing daughters wanting to look at the Jane Doe.

'What
about the lab tests from the last lot? Shouldn't we rule them out first?' Jenny
said.

'If
I know anything they'll take at least a fortnight. Don't worry, I'll fix a
viewing for later in the week. Probably have them queuing round the block by
then.'

Jenny
skimmed through the list of requests. It was unbelievable how many apparently
well-adjusted young people there were who had vanished from their previous
lives. Where did they go? Alison assured her there were hundreds if not
thousands of cases every year, mostly people who'd had breakdowns or who were
escaping from debts or bad relationships. The good news was that all but a
fraction turned up eventually.

Jenny
handed Alison a letter she had written to the Bristol and Avon Chief Constable.
It requested that she be given access to all their archived files relating to
the boys' disappearance and their observation of the A1 Rahma mosque and
Marlowes Road halaqah.

Alison
glanced at it dismissively. 'You'll be wasting your time, Mrs Cooper. They
haven't got them any more.'

How
do you know?'

'I
spoke to Dave Pironi last night. A couple of suits came up from London
yesterday afternoon with a certificate from the Minister and took them away.'

'Do
we know who these people were?'

'He
can't tell me that.'

'He
must have given you some idea.'

Guardedly
Alison said, 'I didn't get the impression they were police.'

'Then
they'll have been MI5.' Jenny clicked onto her internet browser and started to
search for a phone number.

Alison
stood watching her from the doorway.

'What?'
Jenny said.

'I
wouldn't normally say anything like this, Mrs Cooper, but Dave doesn't think
you should get involved.'

'Oh,
really?' She found the number for MI5's central switchboard and scribbled it
down. 'What's he got to hide?'

'Nothing.
The fact is the police got pushed aside more or less straight after they went
missing. The people who do know, if there are any, are so far up the food chain
it's pointless even trying to go after them. All you'll do is make trouble for
yourself.'

'He
told you this?'

'Not
in so many words, but if he says don't go there, it's for a reason.'

'Maybe
he'd like to share that with my inquest.'

Alison
sighed in frustration. 'I'll grant you there wasn't much sympathy around for
those two boys, but even in CID they weren't happy with the way the
investigation ended. I know you think all the police are closet racists, but as
far as they were concerned they had a major investigation stepped on. For all
they knew at the time, those lads could have disappeared to a safe house to
strap bombs to themselves. They weren't even allowed to put pictures—' She
stopped herself mid-sentence, realizing that she had said too much.

'They
weren't allowed to put pictures where?'

'It
doesn't matter. Just canteen gossip.'

'Are
you telling me that Pironi's people were ordered not to carry out a normal
missing persons investigation?'

'He's
never said that.'

'Maybe
you should be giving a statement. What else were they saying in the canteen?'

'I
wish I hadn't said a word. You won't even be allowed to hold this inquest
anyway.'

Jenny
looked up from her computer screen and sensed in Alison something approaching
mild panic. 'Pironi's asked you to try to steer me away from this, hasn't he?'

'He
would never ask me to do such a thing. But we all know how blame gets shifted
downwards, and Dave's a year away from retirement. He paid for his wife's
treatment out of his own pocket and he needs his pension. If you have to get
into this, I'd at least ask you to accept my word that he would never have done
anything wrong.'

Alison
had a history of putting men other than her husband on a pedestal - Harry
Marshall, the previous coroner, eight months dead, had been one of them. Jenny
didn't doubt that Dave Pironi could be perfectly charming, but she was equally
aware that when it came to men she found attractive, her officer had no
judgement.

Jenny
said, 'I'm sure you're right, but I'd be grateful if you sent the letter
anyway.' She grabbed a legal pad and dropped it into her briefcase. 'I'll see
you later. I've got a meeting at the university.'

Rhydian
Brightman was a tall, fidgety man with a permanently distracted expression. He
could only have been a year or two older than Jenny, but had already embraced
middle age and wore thick glasses that balanced in a groove halfway down his
nose. They met in a busy canteen on the physics department's ground floor,
Brightman claiming his office was being used by a colleague for a meeting. She
assumed the real reason was that her presence had unnerved him. He looked to
her like a highly strung man who was comfortable only in his own world among
his own kind. That did not include prying coroners.

They
sat at a small, sticky table and drank foul-tasting cups of tea purchased from
a vending machine. At the next table several boisterous undergraduates were
exchanging lurid stories of drunken sexual exploits, but the professor didn't
seem to notice. He had one eye on Jenny and the other on the door.

'You
remember Nazim Jamal - he started as an undergraduate in the autumn of 2001,'
Jenny said.

'A
little. He would have been to my lectures. We probably met in the seminar room
once or twice.'

'You
do remember his disappearance?'

'Yes,
of course. We all remember that. Terrible.'

'I
assume the police must have asked you a lot of questions at the time.'

'They
were very busy here for a week or two. I didn't get the impression they found
much to enlighten them. It all seemed to remain rather mysterious.' He gave an
awkward, apologetic smile. 'The thing is, there's not that much connection
between staff and undergraduates, not on a personal level. I could recognize
most of our first years, but I couldn't tell you what they got up to outside
the department.'

'Who
was the main point of contact for the police while they were investigating?'

'Me,
I suppose. I was technically responsible for our undergraduates at the time. We
had a number of meetings. As I say, not a lot transpired.' He became aware of
his restless fingers drumming on the table and thrust his hands selfconsciously
into his lap.

'
Technically
?'

'In
an academic sense. Of course, if they wanted to come to me with a personal
problem . . . But we do have other avenues for those sorts of things.'

'What
I really want to know at this stage is what was being said amongst the students
or staff. There must have been endless speculation; others who were closer to
him must have had theories.'

'Surprisingly
few, actually. That's what seemed so odd. The police spoke to a lot of
undergraduates, but the other chap — '

'Hassan.'

'Yes.
He seemed to be the only one Jamal was really close to. Even those in his
seminar group knew very little about him.'

'His
mother gave me the impression he was sociable - came from Clifton College,
played tennis — '

'You
would have thought there would have been more to go on, wouldn't you?'

Jenny
recalled the student noticeboards she had parsed on the way in covered with
flyers and announcements for societies and political meetings. There were
several from Muslim groups organizing speaker meetings, and debates on US
foreign policy and the future of Palestine.

'Was
there much in the way of Islamic activity on campus at the time?'

'So
the police said, but I can't say that I was aware of it as a live issue.
Science students tend to be rather less politicized than others - too busy
working, I assume.' He let out a burst of nervous laughter and cast an
apprehensive glance at two colleagues who had seated themselves at a nearby
table.

Jenny
lowered her voice, attempting to bring him into her confidence. 'I'll be
straight with you. I doubt there's much you could contribute to an inquest; I
probably won't even have to call you as a witness -' the muscles in his
forehead relaxed, smoothing the creases from his brow - 'but I do need more
than this.' She paused, fixing him with a look, trying to reach the man
underneath. 'Can I assume that it wasn't just the police who interviewed you
and others here at the time?'

'It
would be a logical assumption.'

'In
which case, you were doubtless told to keep the content of your discussions
secret.'

'Believe
me, Mrs Cooper, there really isn't much to tell.'

'I'm
not asking you to breach a confidence, but if you could just tell me whether
Nazim Jamal was believed to be a member of an extremist group - Hizb ut-Tahrir,
for example?'

'It
may have been mentioned.'

'This
one may be harder for you: were any other students, apart from Rafi Hassan,
also suspected of being members?'

Brightman
hurriedly shook his head. 'No one said anything to me.'

'Did
you make a formal statement at the time?'

'No.
There was nothing like that. Just a few "chats".'

She
studied him closely for a moment, wondering what reason a professor of physics
might have for withholding information. She reasoned that the university would
have been the subject of close attention by the Security Services for a
considerable period, that members of staff would have been issued with
directives to report any students they suspected of having extremist leanings
to a senior manager, that effectively all tutors were recruited as spies. And
once a spy, always a spy. Professor Brightman probably still had a number in
his address book that he was tempted to call periodically, if only to cover his
own back. To reveal all of this to Jenny would be compromising to say the
least. His MI5 contact would have stressed the vital importance of discretion:
to identify radicals the university would necessarily have to tolerate a
certain amount of their activity. If it was known that all staff were potential
informers, the extremists would be driven underground.

She
said, 'I appreciate the delicacy of your position, but perhaps you could help
me make contact with some of Jamal's contemporaries. You never know, someone
might remember something that didn't seem relevant at the time.'

'I
can certainly put you in touch with the university offices,' he said. 'They'd
have a record of that year group. Actually, one of our junior staff here was
one of them, but I'm afraid she's at a conference in Germany for the next
couple of days - her team discovered a new particle.' He smiled, relieved at
the prospect of their interview drawing to an end.

'Great.
What's her name?'

'Sarah
Levin, or Dr Levin should I say. One of our rising stars.'

The
name was familiar. 'Didn't she give a statement to the police at the time?'

'Quite
possibly. I'm sure she would have done whatever she could to help.'

Professor
Brightman called through to the university offices to arrange for Jenny to meet
one of the administrators, who printed a list of alumni and their contact
details from Nazim and Rafi's year. Jenny took a hard copy and had the file
emailed through to her office so Alison could start making phone calls straight
away.