‘Did they think Muhibbah had come back here?’ Justin asked. For a brief moment he allowed the image of Muhibbah fleeing from her captors: the hair swept back, the dark eyes set on the road, her hopes fixed on Justin.
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Millie with a shake of the head. ‘They were asking whether I had seen an unmarked CD she had left behind. I asked them why they had broken in. They said they were her brothers and were within their rights. After all, she had paid rent she had never used.’
‘And did they tell you where she is?’
‘Yes, because I asked. And the reply (expletives deleted) was Afghanistan, and none of your business. The taller guy began to ogle me, and that really bugged me. He had a disgusting leer, and for a moment I thought of calling the police. But I dropped the idea, thinking that maybe this information would be useful to you.’
‘Not exactly useful,’ Justin said grimly. ‘Except in the way that unwelcome truths are useful.’
Millie looked at him softly.
‘I confess I never believed your story about kidnapping,’ she said. ‘Now I am not so sure. But God what a rotten lot you have got yourself mixed up with. The secretive Muhibbah was bad enough, but when you discover the world she was concealing you can begin to understand why she took so much trouble to hide it.’
Justin sat through this narrative in a state of resigned disengagement. It was the final humiliation to learn that Muhibbah had not, after all, escaped the fate from which he had tried to rescue her, and perhaps had been preparing for it all along. Of course the other men in her life were not lovers but brothers, spreading the seed of their migrating tribe sideways through the host community, treasuring their sister as the price of new alliances, roaming the world with predatory indifference to the pleasures snatched along the way. He resolved to rid himself of his obsession, and to look for the person who would replace Muhibbah in his feelings – Millie for instance, who had such a practical and neatly presented allure, and whose breasts, bubbling at the lip of a low cut blouse, reminded him of the many months of abstinence that his futile love had caused.
‘Ah well, Millie,’ he responded, ‘I guess I knew. Thanks for telling me, and please…’
He began putting the lever-arch files together while Millie gathered up the CDs and the copies of Rolling Stone. At the sight of Muhibbah’s virginal handwriting he suffered a pang. But she had abused him and abused his love. She was to join his rank of villains, along with the rest of her family. At the end of twenty minutes, when the flat had been restored to order, he felt bold enough to ask Millie for a date.
‘Phew,’ she said, ‘rebound at last. We could go somewhere now, if you like. I want to get out of this place.’
Iona approved of Millie, when she met her at one of Justin’s Thursday gigs. Most of all she approved of the change that came over him, as the image of Muhibbah receded. But she had news for him too. They were sitting together in the Horse and Trumpet in the city centre, which was near to her office and had a young and modern clientele among whom Iona felt at home. She was treating Justin to her opinions in the matter of the Sharon Williams case, concerning which she now had a substantial file. As Iona saw it the girl was a target for sexual abuse, and there were three people about whom she had her suspicions.
‘Isn’t this a matter for the police?’ Justin asked.
Iona laughed cynically.
‘For Superintendent Nicholson? Don’t make me laugh. Remember his attitude to Muhibbah? Is he going to risk a charge of racism, just because of a rumour? He needs evidence, and the evidence must be so overwhelming that he can say that he had no alternative but to act on it.’
‘Are you going to tell me that the Shahin family are involved?’
‘One of my suspects is the elder brother, Hassan, the one with the squint. He has been making a fuss lately on behalf of the Koran and the Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him, demonstrating in front of St Catherine’s Academy, and threatening the teachers. Methinks he doth protest too much, if you get my meaning. Though I’m not sure what he is trying to cover up. Maybe sexual abuse is only a side-line. We have served notice on the family that they are not entitled to Council accommodation. And this means that he has been round to our offices too, accusing us of racism, Islamophobia, human rights violations, insulting the Prophet, eating pork, shaking hands with women and so on and so forth. It brought back some poignant memories.’
Justin squeezed her hand, as he always did when the conversation turned to their two disasters, the one that had closed her heart to the opposite sex and the other that had done something comparable to him. But he did not want to hear more about Muhibbah’s family. He no longer visited the sanctuary that he had erected around her image, and if from time to time he paused at the entrance, it was only to notice the cobwebs that now hung over every part.
‘So who are your other two suspects?’ he asked.
‘Oh, there is the Polish guy who has moved in with the adoptive mother. And then…’
‘And then?’
‘And then there is her teacher, who to my mind has an interest in the girl that is not, you might say, healthy. To put it simply, he is hooked on her. A pretentious bastard too: imagines that he lives in some poetic universe, way above types like you and me, and that she has somehow managed to join him there. He wants her body, so he has invented her soul.’
‘Poor sod. So what’s the girl like? Does she justify all this attention?’
‘She is pretty, slight, frail, vulnerable – just made for abuse. And she is clever too. The bore is I shall have to interview her, and I know she’ll clam shut, with a few tantalising snippets hanging out of the shell. But back to the Shahin family…’
‘Must we talk of them?’
‘Have you not asked yourself why they were so anxious to find the CD that they were looking for in Millie’s flat?’
Of course he had asked himself. And he had veered away from the question, as he had veered away from so much else that had happened in the wake of Muhibbah’s departure. The hole that had emerged in Copley Solutions’ accounts, for instance; the collapse of the scheme for the carbon-neutral houses, following erratic deliveries of Lithuanian timber; the growing awareness, as he spent his days staring from his desk at the place where she should have been, that his projects were in disarray, and that the green agenda no longer had any appeal for him – all these things seemed connected. But to think of them was to think of Muhibbah, and that was not allowed.
‘Well,’ Iona said, dropping her chin into one hand and resting her elbow on the beer-splashed table, ‘here is what I reckon. That girl and her slimy brothers were all along in cahoots. Maybe she tried to run away from them at a certain stage. And maybe she was serious in wanting to live as a modern woman. But something drew her back, and that thing was business. Not legitimate trade, but a shady business involving her brothers, for whom she was keeping accounts. Why else should she have walked off with the office computer, when her brother came to collect her? Have you thought of that?’
‘Listen, Iona, I have thought of every explanation, and none of them casts credit on Muhibbah. So all I can do is forget about it. And that’s what I am trying to do. If there is something shady going on, then that’s not my problem.’
Iona laughed again.
‘What I am telling you, Justin, is that it is your problem, as much your problem as Sharon Williams is my problem. And it could even be – who knows? – that the two problems are connected.’
‘How so?’
Iona’s eyes were shining, with the inner glow that he had often seen, and which entirely transfigured her so that she became, in her own way, almost beautiful. When her face came alive like this it was as though she were taking electricity from some transcendental source and passing it on. For a few months now Justin had been plugged in to her, dependent upon Iona for the energy that kept him alive. He nodded, not wanting to hear what she was about to say, and also wanting her to say it.
‘Look at it this way.
There is the perfect sister, the shining treasure shut away in its box, to be exchanged only for something beyond price – for instance, for an alliance of families, a tribal bond, a source of indefinite social power. All around there are the abused and frightened girls, who cost nothing more than lying promises, and who exchange on the market at the going rate. And then there is the Prophet, PBUH, who in their view ratifies both types of exchange, the priceless and the priced, and who provides the perfect cover for all transactions.’
‘The perfect cover?’
‘Yes. When deals are authorised in that way the guys who make them have no motive to question them. And we cannot question them either, since for people like Superintendent Nicholson and me that would be political suicide. In short, here is a girl brought up to believe that human beings, women especially, divide into the priced and the priceless, and who puts herself in the latter class. Wouldn’t she go along with her brothers, when they ask her to apply her brain, her contacts and her knowledge to the profitable business of people trafficking? What obstacle would she see?’
‘The obvious one: that she herself will be a victim.’
‘Not if she adheres to the one conviction that you discovered in her, which is that she is beyond price.’
‘And in your eyes, Iona, that makes her worthless.’
‘I wouldn’t say worthless. Just a waste of time.’
‘Yes, I got the point. So are you going to pursue this daft line of enquiry?’
‘I might. After all, I promised to find her.’
‘But I no longer want you to find her. I have moved on.’
‘I doubt it, Justin. But you see, I don’t believe what they said to Millie, that she is back in Afghanistan. I think she is close by and dangerous.’
Justin was glad when the conversation shifted to Metal. Someone had transcribed the two guitar parts of ‘Cloud Constructor’ and placed the result on the Internet. He was amazed by what he read: two measures of 4/4 and then lost in the rhythmic jungle, with fifteen, eighteen, even twenty one equal notes to the bar. He told Iona he would make variations of his own, find some better words than those that Spiral Architect provided: it would be a new song. Maybe he would dedicate it to her.
‘Surely you should dedicate it to Millie,’ she said with a wry smile.
‘Oh, that…’
In truth things had not worked out with Millie. It had been a solace after months of tortured isolation to spend time with an honest and plainspoken English girl. It had been flattering to be asked to explain his former life as an environmental activist and to show how she could follow in his footsteps at the end of the year, when she had her degree in chemistry. He had enjoyed talking to her about his music, playing endless riffs while she watched admiringly from the black leather sofa in his flat. He had felt a surge of protective affection, as he gently reproved her taste for the Pixies and the Kooks, and explained the difference between routine and rhythmical drumming. But when, after what he assumed was a normal prelude of contrived hesitations, she yielded to his kisses, and slipped all hot between the sheets of his bed, he felt, in the moment of pleasure, a strange, bleak loneliness. Afterwards he rolled over and sat for a long moment staring at the carpet from the edge of the bed. She was sweet, concerned and affectionate, but she suspected he was thinking of Muhibbah and the offense went deep. From that moment onwards Justin and Millie were just good friends, a fact that he was too embarrassed to explain when Iona insisted on treating them as a couple.
He knew that he was drifting. He avoided his flat, often, on leaving the office, going directly to a pub, to spend whole evenings drinking with people whose names he had forgotten by the next day. He sometimes went alone to the cinema, and apart from his Thursday gigs and Sunday rehearsals he lost contact with his former friends. Once a week he and Iona would go out to dinner, or eat a Chinese takeaway in his flat. And from time to time he would meet up with Millie, when they would exchange erotic kisses and look at each other quizzically before making vague arrangements to meet again.
The worst part was the day in the office. With Muhibbah at his side, spurred on by her lively curiosity, he had contemplated from his desk the serene landscape of their mutual future. He was going side by side with this woman into a new world. They were making plans for a carbon neutral society; and also for their own carbon neutral, nation neutral, religion neutral home. His eyes turned to the desk she had abandoned and which he did not dare to touch. And he was overcome by a sense of hopelessness and unreality. New projects came to him, accumulating in piles of half read documents. There was a contract to install solar panels on all the municipal housing in the north of the city; a scheme to introduce a first degree in environmental management into the university, with Copley Solutions PLC as consultants; a request for a water-flow assessment and contamination tests for a suburban sewage system – and all such projects, which would once have kept him at work eagerly and late in the search for the right solution, seemed overcast with dreariness and futility. Yet, as his interest declined, so did his responsibilities increase, since he alone could get results, and no one at Copley Solutions had the authority to take the work elsewhere.
It was in mid-April that things began to change. The financial year had ended, and the CEO in Amsterdam raised questions about the accounts that Justin could not answer. Before an audit was done, the CEO told him, a proper investigation should be undertaken, and Justin was to find a reputable firm of financial investigators who could act quickly to stem any leaks or to identify sources of dishonesty. After a day of searches Justin came across the website of Milbank and Company, with the profile of their junior partners. Looking at him demurely from the screen, blond hair neatly parted across her brow and blue eyes sparkling with humorous intelligence, was a girl whose beauty was the equal and opposite of Muhibbah’s. His enquiries suggested that no one was more suited to the job than Laura Markham, and arrangements were quickly made to bring her to Yorkshire.
It was a crazy feeling, that he might, by falling in love with this unknown girl, cure himself of his fatal attachment. But he hoped for some such result, and if, through her investigations, Ms Markham were to implicate Muhibbah in wrongdoing, and perhaps even confirm Iona’s suspicions about the Shahin family, then would that not make it all the simpler finally to transfer his affections, and to start life again?
So it was that when he met Laura Markham from the London train on a pleasant afternoon in April Justin was, for the first time in many months, in a state of eager anticipation. He had invented a story about the need for a place that would be secure against the leaks and breaches that arise in hotel guestrooms. And he had found a furnished flat not far from the office, in a pleasant suburb blighted only by the two stark blocks of concrete panels known as the Angel Towers, which you could just see from the kitchen window. He had asked for two sets of keys, only one of which he intended to pass to Laura, not knowing whether he would find a use for the other set, but hoping nevertheless that something would happen to give him the right of entry into her space.
Laura Markham did not disappoint him. Her pretty girlish features shone with a ready intelligence, and she seemed as interested in him as he in her. Not that she was forward: there was a demure quality to her enquiries, and when she smiled at him it was with a little flutter at the corners of the mouth, as though she were awaiting his permission. But they were immediately at ease together, and as he showed her round the office his enthusiasm for his work suddenly returned. He steered past Muhibbah’s vacant space without a qualm, and explained the project for the carbon neutral houses without withholding any relevant fact, even confessing that one member of staff had, on leaving, taken her office computer with her, so making it difficult to trace the transactions that she had placed on it.
The hour spent with Laura over a glass of wine was the best he had spent in many months. She was interested in music, preferring classical in general and Mozart in particular, and her taste in modern poetry – Yeats, Larkin, Hughes –
coincided with Justin’s. She loved her work for both its human contact and its intellectual problems. She was self-confident, optimistic and yet with a poetic streak that was withheld from ready exposure. Justin was sure that she had been much loved as a child, had retained the indelible image of home and happiness, and was working to find them both again. By the time he dropped Laura off at the front door of the block of flats, he was half in love. He went cheerfully home and did as he had once been in the habit of doing: he picked up groceries from the corner store, cooked himself a meal of lamb chops and peas, and opened a bottle of Rioja.
When she did not appear at the office next morning he rang the mobile number she had given him. There was no reply. By midday he was seriously concerned, and drove round to the flat, sounding the buzzer without eliciting a response and finding a use for his spare set of keys that he had not anticipated. He called her name into the silence. There was a disconcerting hospital smell, suggesting the aftermath of a serious accident. But he found no trace of Laura.
The suitcase flung on the bed in the bedroom looked as though it had not been opened, and the only clear sign that she had installed herself in the flat was a file from Copley Solutions, lying open on the table in the living-room window. He was surprised by this, since he had not seen her take the file from the archive. It dated from the weeks before Muhibbah’s departure, and dealt with a consignment of wood from Lithuania, delivered via Lesprom. He came across the little illiterate note, inserted between its pages – ‘complete off-shore until delivery. MS advise. Reference Squirrel’, followed by a mobile phone number, beginning 0048, which he knew already as the code for Poland. And the narrative that then unfolded before his mind filled him with fear.
Chapter 21
There was only one place that Stephen could begin his search for her and that was the Angel Towers. He took the stairs to the fifteenth floor of Block A, with the faint hope that he might find her in a corner somewhere. From behind the doors came shouts in many languages and the sounds of loud TVs. But on the stairs and in the corridors there was an eerie emptiness. At one point he passed two urchins in a corner of the stairs, who scowled at him. On the twelfth floor a woman in a burqa appeared from a half-open door and then hastily withdrew. But elsewhere there was only absence, the absence that was Sharon.
The Disappeared Page 15
