by Owen Mullen
Out Of The Silence
Owen Mullen
Contents
Also by Owen Mullen
Preface
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part II
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part III
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Afterword
Epilogue
A Note From Bloodhound Books
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2019 Owen Mullen
The right of Owen Mullen to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2019 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Also by Owen Mullen
PI Charlie Cameron Series:
Games People Play
Old Friends and New Enemies
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
And So it Began
In Harms’ Way
Praise for Owen Mullen
A dark, gritty and suspenseful thriller that tickles the taste buds to the max and another cracking read from Owen Mullen! Keep up the good work. – David’s Book Blurg
The plot is dark and Mackenzie’s ordeal is terrifying, the scenes are graphic, written very realistically. – Between the Lines Book Blog
…an intriguing and dark read which once again proves that Owen Mullen is an author who is always on the lookout for new directions to take with his characters, his plots and his novels. – Chapter in my Life
I can’t give this story anything less than five big stars. It gripped me from start to finish and I can’t wait to read more from this author. – Cheekypee Reads and Reviews
.. this is a wonderful example of crime fiction doing what it does best, thrill the reader. Chilling, unnerving and exciting to read. – booksaremycwtches
The only thing wrong with this book is, you will race through it and will be left bereft waiting on the next one from Owen. – BertyBoy123
* * *
Clever book with great character development." Janice Lombardo – reviewer
* * *
"Wow! Atmospheric dark gripping and brilliant." Sarah Hodgson - reviewer
* * *
"an excellent novel, part cop thriller and part study of human relationships." Chris Nolan – reviewer
* * *
"If you like a good detective thriller you'll love this one." Annie Belford - reviewer
* * *
"A truly believable story of misconceptions and being alone even when you are with your loved ones." Breakaway Reviewers
‘A man first loves his son, then his camel, and then his wife.’
Arab proverb
This book is dedicated to legendary drummer Ted McKenna...we started laughing at age 13 and never stopped. One less friend in the world.
Preface
1998
National Press Awards,
The Dorchester, Mayfair
A rainy evening in London: from the window, Hyde Park is grey and forbidding in the fading light, as unwelcoming as the sweltering heat of the subcontinent the day I stepped off the plane, hungover and fortunate to still have a job.
This city used to be my home. Tonight I feel like a stranger – worse – an imposter; a teller of half-truths.
But they asked me, so I came.
Not long ago, I would have relished an occasion like this and the ballyhoo that goes with it. I see it differently now. Soon, we’ll go downstairs, have dinner with colleagues, listen to speeches from the great and the good of the newspaper world, and applaud in the right places. Towards the end, I’ll be called on to say a few words and accept an award for something I rejected until a pretty face persuaded me to take a second look.
In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined the reaction the piece would provoke, or the praise it would receive. Some have called me courageous for putting my name to it. That makes me smile. There was courage, certainly, but it wasn’t mine. Nothing changed because of me: I was the one who was changed.
The truth about what really happened will always be a mystery. I have my own ideas, of course: Jameel and Gulzar; Doctor Simone Jasnin; Ali and Idris; and the irredeemable Dilawar Hussein family, all carried a part of it.
I never knew Afra, yet she spoke to me. She speaks to me still. I owe her my life.
It began in a Punjab village, a dusty settlement miles from the road, and ended in the city of Lahore. Not the story that brought me here, this story – the one I didn’t write.
Prologue
Rural Punjab
One year earlier
Nurse Idris Phadkar’s shift had been uneventful. Now it was almost over. Out here the air was warm and heavy, the monsoon was coming. She walked as far as a giant jacaranda standing guard at the edge of the hospital compound and gazed at the stars, enjoying the time alone. Idris was twenty-four, petite, unmarried, and at a crossroads in her life.
At first, she thought what she’d heard was an animal, a rat perhaps. The Punjab was full of rats and everything above and below them in the food chain. She heard it again, closer than before. The nurse panicked and ran for the hospital lights. In the darkness, she tripped and crashed to the ground, winded and shaking. A sound nearby rekindled her fear. She stifled a scream, afraid to move, and waited for her breath to return. Idris felt something against her feet. She screwed up her courage and let her fingers search the grass.
It wasn’t an animal; it was a woman.
Doctor Simone Jasnin marked the shredded clothing, the dust and the blood, and heard the tortured sounds escaping the lips. It was essential to establish how bad the woman’s injuries were but her position made it difficult; a salwar and a kameez covered her torso.
‘Easy. You’re safe now. Easy.’
The nurses stood by the door. She caught them looking at each other. Had they injured this patient bringing her in? That better not be the case. The doctor moved to the other side of the bed and immediately understood why they were subdued.
She bent, reluctant to believe what she was seeing. One side of the face was almost without feature, livid and white. An eye was missing, leaving a covering of bloodied film in its place. Some of the nose definition had been lost too, and part of her lips had melted together. Where the hairline should have been, a scorched raw mass extended into the scalp. At the edges, singed strands of hair fell over the vanished skin. The
pain must be beyond imagining.
An acid attack.
She’d seen several, never as bad as this. Acid attacks on women were not uncommon in rural areas where wives were considered the property of their husbands without rights of any kind. Reports of these atrocities were on the increase.
‘Morphine! Now! Now!’
The doctor completed her diagnosis. On the woman’s wrist she noticed six carved rounds of dark wood. They’d survived the attack better than their owner. The poor creature lying scarred and broken had been the subject of a prolonged and vicious assault: raped and beaten. The extent of internal damage was as yet unknown and her throat was bruised.
After all she’d gone through someone had tried to strangle her. It was a miracle she was alive, though it was impossible to say for how much longer. What could anyone have done to deserve this?
In the following days, the woman was kept sedated. The doctor thought of her often. Who was she? Where was she from? What had happened to her? And how had she managed to get to the hospital?
The local police were called and didn’t respond. They weren’t interested.
Simone lifted the telephone on its first shrill ring.
‘She’s regaining consciousness, Doctor.’
‘I’ll come at once.’
She replaced the receiver and pinched the sides of her nose. Good news in other times. This time no, not good news at all. She hadn’t ever wanted someone to die. Even when there was no hope she did what she could; efficient, effective, detached. But for the last four nights the woman in her had won over the medic and she’d wished, hard and often, that this one would slip away. Simone was shocked by the effect the case was having on her. Her professional disinterest was little more than a veneer, and a doctor who shared their patient’s pain needed to find another line of work.
The light from the lamp on her desk more than filled the book-lined box. It was cramped, yet she liked it. Just as well, half her working life was spent here.
She had arrived at the hospital to find neither desk nor office, not even a cupboard with her name on it. Simone hadn’t been discouraged. She knew the way of it. She was a woman in a man’s world: a woman in Pakistan.
At thirty-two, the only child of a French mother and a Pakistani father, she had her mother’s high cheekbones, her father’s deep brown eyes and the intellect of both. Long black hair and perfect teeth, skin lightly coloured and unblemished; Simone Jasnin was a beautiful woman, fluent in French, English and Punjabi. Her first seventeen years were spent in Lahore, the thousand-year-old capital of the Punjab, where Shah Jahan, creator of the Taj Mahal, built the Shalimar Gardens. The young Simone had often walked with her father in its marble pavilions, through its terraces, past the many cool fountains, listening while he told the history of the Mogul emperors as if it had been yesterday and he’d known them personally.
How she’d devoured the glories of the past, determined to keep pace with his longer stride, her small hand lost in his, while he explained the architectural legacy from a time when reverence for art and beauty was at its height.
The memory made her sad. Because, like her father, that civilisation was gone.
She took her white coat from its door-peg hanger and shrugged it on, dreading what would come next.
she’s regaining consciousness, Doctor
Simone sat on the edge of her desk. She wouldn’t leave yet. She wasn’t ready. Another minute would make no difference. Her gaze fell on the picture in a simple wooden frame, a tall man and a smiling girl. The adult curved a protective arm round the child’s shoulders. She leaned in, accepting the safety. Simone looked at her father – if only she could speak to him now. His deep confident voice would coax her to find the courage she lacked, to recognise herself, and be the person on the nametag: Doctor Simone Jasnin.
When he died, her mother struggled to cope with things that had been of little consequence to her before – the heat, the culture, and, of course, the loneliness. They arrived together one day, and from then on life in her husband’s country was no longer bearable. Going back to a world she understood had been an easy decision. The French capital was familiar, and to her teenage daughter, it was the beginning of a dream. The aesthetic brilliance of the Shalimar Gardens was no match for the clubs and discos near the Rue Saint-Germain.
It had been wonderful and soon her life in Asia might have been something Simone had been told, by her father maybe, on one of their walks. Memory faded, but it didn’t die, and sometimes in August when the city sweltered, the tree-lined boulevards reminded her of Lahore. If she closed her eyes, she could smell roses mingled with jasmine, and hear the childlike cry of wild peacocks.
Four years after she qualified, her mother died. Then the city seemed to her as Lahore had once seemed to her mother – dirty and vexatious; no longer home. She took the traditional route through grief, burying herself in her work, though its point had been blunted. The return to where she’d lived as a child was a return to purpose.
And here she was, sitting on the edge of a rickety desk at 3am, in a cramped excuse for a medical resource in the Punjab, struggling to function. Simone chastised herself. ‘Do your job, stupid. Give help don’t need it.’
She crossed the courtyard separating the administration offices from the ward. Lightning flashed in the distance, a dog barked, and miles away, another answered. Dogs bark at night. In Pakistan dogs barked all night. She entered the low whitewashed building where the corrugated roof made sleep impossible during the rainy season, keeping as quiet as possible. A few patients stirred. How strange, the incessant barking disturbed no one yet a muffled footstep – hardly a sound at all – brought some to the edge of consciousness. At the end, past the last beds, were two rooms. Doctor Simone drew a heavy breath and opened the door on the left. Two people were inside, a nurse – the one who had telephoned – and the tiny figure in the bed.
Simone said, ‘When did she start to come round?’
‘About two-forty she moved and spoke. A few minutes ago, she spoke again and tried to turn.’
The nurse offered the clipboard progress chart. Simone dismissed it with a shake of her head. It was a prop. A useless piece of hospital procedure.
‘What did she say, did you hear?’
‘Yes, she called out a name. Jameel.’
* * *
-------
* * *
The woman was on her back under the crisp white clothes, a tangle of wires running from her body to the monitors at the side of the bed. The left side of her face was hidden by a dressing but she was awake. The doctor smiled a reassurance she didn’t feel. ‘Don’t try to move. Everything’s all right. You’re safe here.’
The single eye stared.
‘You’ve had an accident. We’ll take care of you.’
It sounded lame. Jasnin was embarrassed by it. The woman said nothing.
‘Lie still, I’m here.’
‘Please, I have to tell you.’
‘I think it would be better – ’
‘Please.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘If you want to help me, listen.’
This might be her last wish.
‘Listen, and write down what I say. Please, Doctor.’
Simone was going to do whatever her patient wanted. She turned to the nurse. ‘Go to my office. Bring paper.’
‘How much?’
‘Just bring it. Quickly.’
The patient stared at the wall. Simone felt uncomfortable with the silence, though not as uncomfortable as hearing herself spew obvious untruths, all starting or ending with “everything’s all right”. The sister returned with a box and set it on the floor.
‘You can go. I’ll take it from here.’
She pulled up the only chair and took out a pen.
‘How long before the pain becomes too much?’
‘Fifty minutes, an hour – it’s hard to say. Is that enough?’
‘It will have to be. My family have to know what happened to me. Send what yo
u write to my village. To my mother, to Fatimah and little Shafi.’
‘Jameel?’
The half-face showed no surprise. ‘No, not Jameel. He must never know.’
Outside a dog barked and in the room, Simone readied herself.
‘I’ll tell you about my life. How I came to this. I am kari: black woman. In Lahore they will say I dishonoured them. It wasn’t so. When my family thinks of me they must remember that once everything was good.’
The doctor poised to begin. She looked at the pitiable figure in the bed and the tear rolling down the destroyed face.
The woman said, ‘My name was Afra.’
Simone began to write.
* * *
-------
* * *
