The Disappeared

by Roger Scruton

  Chapter 24

  Justin lay on the leather couch, with ‘Insect’ in his ears. He could not make sense of anything – of Muhibbah, of Laura, of himself – and the crazy lyrics mimicked his mood. ‘Insect spawning, hybrids crawling/ In spinning cluster skies we’re soaring’. He reached down for the tumbler on the woollen carpet and raised it to his lips. To drink the whisky he had to sit up straight; the iPod earphones fell from his head and were swallowed by the silence. It was past midnight, and the sleeping city emitted only a few motorised snores. He went back again over the day’s events. Something was missing, some vital piece of information that would tie the narrative together and show what it really meant. Was Muhibbah’s story the truth? He doubted it. And her kiss, the first that she had ever bestowed: did it have some other motive than desire? He recalled the image that had flashed through his mind as he made that phone call: the image of a kidnapped girl, shipped in misery and humiliation to a life of sexual slavery. In some way slavery and honour were connected in Muhibbah’s world. Her rock-hard purity had to be paid for, and not paid for by her. ‘I am a gift or nothing’ she had shouted at the sun. But gift-giving cultures depend on covert deals, and in covert deals Muhibbah and her tribe were experts, not troubling to distinguish between the deals that were legal and those that were crimes.

  Once he had wanted to fight for her against every threat. But maybe, as Iona said, the real threat was not to Muhibbah, but from her. It was in such terms that he should interpret that kiss. In itself it was a sign only. But it promised something vast and engulfing in its fullness. It was the avatar of a complete bodily entwinement, a nuptial melting together from which there would be no return. Did he want that? Once, perhaps, he had wanted it. But only because, in his infatuation, he had not examined what it meant.

  And then there was Laura, whose beauty was the opposite of Muhibbah’s and who had seemed, at the first encounter, exactly what he hoped for – honest, open and engaged, with none of Muhibbah’s secret corners: the one who unravels mysteries, not the one who creates them. But meeting her again, after the strange and only partly explained day of her disappearance, he hardly recognized her. She was nervous, distracted, uncertain of herself. Her face had a bruised and slightly swollen look, as though she had been taking drugs. Yes, she was beautiful, exquisite in her way. But she seemed to have lost all interest in the job for which he had hired her. It was as though she were warning him off. Maybe she suffered from some debilitating disorder – bipolar syndrome, perhaps, which would send her plummeting to the depths of a familiar and dreaded depression. Yes, perhaps that was it. He felt sorry for her, but not so sorry as he felt for himself, who had invested his hopes in Laura, and once more lost them all at a go.

  He woke with a start, his head befuddled by whisky, his body on fire from a dream of Muhibbah’s kiss. It was eight o’clock and his mobile phone was ringing beside the bed, into which he had heaved himself six hours before. The voice that spoke in his ear was Muhibbah’s.

  ‘I’ve got to see you right away. It is urgent, I’ll come to the office. Please be there, Justin. Please, as soon as you can.’

  She was waiting in the street outside the office, the knuckle of one finger in her mouth, her thin shoes drumming on the pavement. They went in silence to the lift. As the door closed she uttered a dry sob and fell into his arms. He felt her hair on his cheek, her breasts against his body; he smelled her dry sandalwood smell. But they had reached the third floor and the door had opened before he could kiss her. As they went across to the office she averted her face.

  ‘I have no right to ask you for anything, Justin. I owe you already so much.’

  They were the only people in the office, and she was sitting across from him at his desk. Outside the spring sun was dusting the rooftops with gold. Her sleeveless coat was hanging on the back of the door behind her. Justin was astonished by this, and wondered whether the letter and the poem were still in the pocket. His brain was not working properly, and the most ordinary things were mysterious.

  ‘You owe me nothing, Muhibbah,’ he said. ‘Maybe an explanation though.’

  She put her hand to her mouth, stifling a sob.

  ‘It’s Yunus,’ she said. ‘Something’s happened on that ship, something terrible that he won’t talk about. And now he has to flee. He says he must disappear by tonight.’

  ‘For good?’

  ‘Yes, for good. And before they catch up with him.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘His partners in the business. Hassan has had an accident, a burst ear-drum and a cracked skull: he’s in hospital in Hull. Likely to be there for a month or more. Hassan has ways of collecting money – he could have found the cash they are asking for. But Yunus has no, what do you call it, no leverage. He is just a boy. And there’s something else too. Yunus won’t tell me what it is, but something they want from him – something that he cannot give. So he’s going to slip away, back to Yemen, melt into a warrior tribe as our father did. And I am to go with him. Britain, he tells me, is no place for a Muslim girl.’

  ‘Not possible, Muhibbah. You simply can’t. And anyway, who says you’re a Muslim girl?’

  ‘But who is to prevent me?’

  ‘You yourself,’ he replied.

  She looked at him narrowly and nodded.

  ‘So you haven’t understood what I told you yesterday, Justin.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You could prevent it. I cannot.’

  ‘Explain yourself.’

  She got up and began to walk around the office. At one point she stopped by the desk she used to occupy, picked up her accountancy textbook, and gave a wry smile. Then she came across and stood beside him, one hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Look at me, Justin.’

  He did as she commanded, and the beauty of her face disarmed him. She was watching him from a region that he could never enter, where the rules by which he had lived did not apply.

  ‘I am talking about people who have no standing in your society Justin, illegal immigrants, criminals, people who live in the shadows, who have to enforce their deals by means that you need never use. I am the only part of Yunus that they could punish. If he goes then no one else in my family will lift a finger to protect me. You are all that I have.’

  ‘You might have had me, but you rejected me.’

  His voice trembled, and against his better judgment he laid a hand on the hand that still rested on his shoulder.

  ‘You are wrong, Justin. I did not reject you. I was never in a position to reject you, or to accept you either. Of course I had a chance to free myself from the world I come from, to be a modern British girl, Justin’s girl, for however long he might be interested. But that would not have been right for you or for me. When the crisis came and I had to choose I made the wrong choice. I should have told my brother to back away from me. But I didn’t and you don’t forgive me.’

  She stated it as a matter of fact, part of that world of rigid law and custom, which a solitary girl has no power to change.

  ‘So what are you asking, Muhibbah?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? If I were to marry someone it could only be you. As your wife I would be safe; as Yunus’s abandoned sister I would be punished in the normal way of the girls who have fallen foul of them. So I have three possibilities: to go with Yunus into the desert, to stay here with you, or to kill myself. Which is it to be?’

  ‘You make marriage sound like a move in a game of chess, like castling, or something. But I was brought up to think that marriage is about love.’

  ‘Bismillahi, Justin, isn’t it obvious that I love you?’

  Justin, to whom it was not obvious at all, nevertheless pressed his hand on hers, and nodded silently.

  ‘All these months, shut away in that place, with neighbours who looked at me as though I were a terrorist or something, keeping house for Yunus and dealing with so many mysteries, all with a single meaning which is money, can you imagine what I felt? I longed to be b
ack in the office, listening to you talking about your music, about poetry and painting and landscapes and all those peculiar English things that I wanted to know, like whether the Queen could sack the Prime Minister or why there are two archbishops and not three or one. You know I joined the travelling library that comes twice a month to Buckton, and I read the novels that you talked about – have you not noticed how my English has improved? Well, I did that because it made me close to you again. And although I was shocked and frightened when I heard that a stranger had discovered what Yunus is up to and where he lives, it was a joy to discover that the stranger was you. At last I could put things right, and do what I should have done all those months ago, which is to join myself to you.’

  She did not look at him as she spoke, but addressed the wall of the office, as though testifying before an imaginary judge. Justin regretted the whisky he had drunk the night before, and which was impeding his thoughts. He recalled Iona telling him that there can be a multicultural society, but there cannot be multicultural love. And he wondered whether Muhibbah’s words were a proof or a disproof of that maxim. She could have let him know months ago that she wanted the closeness she now was claiming; she could have made an effort to be in touch from her village hideout; she could have broken away from her criminal brother at any time had she chosen to turn to Justin for help. But it was only now, when he was the last recourse and the least of the three evils confronting her, that she was declaring her love for him. And whether she was discovering her love or inventing it he could not tell. Nevertheless, he rose to his feet, turned to her, and held her beautiful face in his hands. She looked at him steadily, as a proud desert girl looks at her fate, be it love or death. And she returned his kiss with a passion that surprised him.

  ‘So what are we going to do, Muhibbah?’ he asked as he broke away.

  ‘It is up to you, Justin. Here I am, if you want me.’

  ‘And how do I know that this time you really will have nothing more to do with that family of yours?’

  ‘Because they will have nothing to do with me. My cousin already told you that, when you visited them in the Angel Towers.’

  ‘So you know about my visit?’ he asked in surprise.

  ‘How could I not?’

  ‘And you weren’t moved to get in touch with me?’

  ‘Being moved to do things is not in my nature Justin. I can make decisions. Or I can receive orders. At the moment I am waiting for orders.’

  ‘In that case, can you wait a little longer, until after our meeting with the accountant, when I have had time to think?’

  ‘I am meeting Yunus at twelve. So you have till then, three hours by my watch.’

  She smiled, a firm, hard smile that gave nothing away. Then she kissed him tenderly on both cheeks and sat down across from him at the desk. He was still in a state of confusion, both elated and apprehensive, when his secretary arrived, looked through the door, greeted Muhibbah with a gasp of astonishment, and then withdrew again.

  Muhibbah begged him to be understanding about the accounts. She had not meant to damage the business, had kept meticulous records of which transactions belonged to the Shahin account and which to Copley Solutions. It could all be disentangled and rewritten. The loss of the computer wasn’t important: she had copied her work, and told her brother that the copy was lost. She took a CD from the little carpet bag she carried and placed it on his desk, with an earnest look as though to imply that this was a sufficient exculpation. When Laura arrived a moment later Justin rapidly withdrew his hand from Muhibbah’s, which she had reached towards him across the desk. Muhibbah’s hand, however, remained where it was. And it was on the long fingers of that outstretched hand that Laura’s eyes rested, as she paused in the door.

  As they worked together on the accounts, checking the print-out from Muhibbah’s CD with the transactions contained in the file, and collating both with the company account book, Justin became yet more convinced that Laura was not quite right in the head. He could understand Muhibbah’s confused and shame-faced reaction, understand why she refused to say what the Shahin business involved, or why the sums were so large. He could understand why Muhibbah sat for long moments with her elbows on the desk and her face buried in her hands. But he could not fathom why Laura, who managed everything with brisk and cold instructions, kept looking Muhibbah up and down, her eyes often wide with astonishment as though trying to match that face with another in the archive of her memory. She spoke to the girl as though addressing a ghost. And once or twice Laura trembled involuntarily.

  It was evident from her way of proceeding that Laura was efficient and clear-headed. It was evident too that she would dissociate herself from any attempt to cover up illegalities, and that her recommendations would be entirely transparent. But it was also clear that she was working under considerable emotional strain, as though fighting a depression that threatened constantly to get the better of her. At the same time there was a gentleness and concern in her attitude to Justin that contrasted vividly with her cold, even vindictive, approach to Muhibbah.

  At a certain point Laura asked to look in the archive. While she was out of the room Muhibbah took Justin aside and whispered to him.

  ‘My brother will be here soon.’

  ‘You mean he is coming here?’

  ‘Yes, I asked him to. He wants to meet you. After all, you know too much about him.’

  ‘I cannot imagine what we have to say to each other.’

  ‘Can’t you? I have asked you a question. The answer is yes or no. And whichever it is, you should say it in front of him.’

  She swept the hair from her forehead to reveal blazing and defiant eyes. Her lips lay together without pressure, soft, sand-coloured, sphinx-like. He shuddered at the thought of what she asked for – not love only, but an absolute unity of being.

  ‘Good God, Muhibbah, you are not going to tell me that the decision is really his?’

  ‘No. It is really yours.’

  She turned away. When, a second later, the door opened and the familiar young man with Muhibbah’s regular features stood beneath the lintel, Justin’s heart sank. It was immediately clear that what Muhibbah had asked of him was impossible. To be brother-in-law to this confused delinquent, who could hardly look him in the eye and who, on being introduced, collapsed at once into a chair as though suffering from some congenital weakness – this was simply off the agenda. Even if the boy should be lost somewhere in the Yemeni desert among Salafi fanatics – even then there could be no alliance between them. He made up his mind to say this, to say it directly to Muhibba, ignoring whatever presumptuous rights over her the boy might claim. He stepped forward, holding up his hand.

  ‘There is something I want to say to Muhibbah, which in my view concerns her alone.’

  The boy looked up at him with a nervous smile. Then the smile suddenly gave way to a look of shocked recognition and he rose from his chair.

  ‘Fucking Hell! Catherine!’ he cried.

  Justin swung round to see Laura, her face tense, silent and full of resolve, standing in the door of the archive.

  Chapter 25

  You are going to be in shock for a long time. Whatever normality you are able to maintain will be a mask, and occasionally the mask will drop. This you know from those months after Father died. But you also know that there is one person who can help you. That person is Justin Fellowes. You think of him in the taxi, on the way to your 9.30 appointment. He is what a man should be: sympathetic, considerate, but imaginative and ambitious. If you were to tell your story to anyone – to any man at least, and what woman could help you? – it would be to Justin. You can even imagine him stroking your hair, your words overflowing as he wipes your tears away. And he would join you unhesitatingly in the search for revenge.

  Crazy to have become attached so quickly to a person you hardly know. But perhaps he too is attached. In the labyrinth into which you both have strayed maybe you are gripping a single string.

  The taxi
is driving through the older part of the city: Victorian offices, neo-Gothic churches, banks in the style of Renaissance villas, and a town hall of stone with a giant Corinthian portico and a clock tower above. Well-dressed people are hurrying to work, and a modern-looking café has set up tables on the pavement. A few office workers are already sipping cappuccinos and engaging in the conversation of the day. Again normality, a modern English normality that says in genial accents that what happened to you could not have happened.

  By the time you enter the office at 9.30 you are able to smile. How nicely Justin greets you, and with what a gentle protective look in his bright blue eyes. Or was the look intended for the Afghan girl, who is already there, and who seems to be reaching across to him on the desk with those long, fine walnut-coloured fingers, the very same fingers that were yesterday wrapped around a knife?

  Your shock returns and for a moment you are trembling. She turns to look at you. The same eyes, the same oval face and sandy lips, the same dark olive hair – but neat, clean, self-contained, as though she has mastered her problems and can fend for herself.

  The suspicion that she is Yunus’s sister is already immovable as you begin to observe her tricks. She is a cheat and a manipulator. Not the untouchable jewel that her brother has placed in the only sanctuary that his broken soul acknowledges, but a canny and scheming fraudster, who has made a set at Justin in order to slip past the barrier of her crimes. She is utterly bewitching of course, and Justin is bewitched. You feel an almost motherly concern for him, a desire gently to prise his fingers loose from this toy before it explodes in his face. For you know, as he does not, the stuff the toy is made of.

  She is clever too. She has kept exactly the records required in order to unpick the ravelled accounts. She has foreseen the very event that has been sprung upon her, when she has to come clean without describing her business – the business that no doubt brought the little witch to this country in the first place. How cleverly she and her brothers have used their privileges as immigrants, always linking to operations beyond our national borders, and relying on political correctness to protect them from investigation at home. And why speak of home? This country is not home for them, but a hunting ground, an unbounded lucrative elsewhere. You would like to see them all in gaol.