The Unquiet Dead

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  “I want to be the exact opposite. I want to do good things with my life, Zach. I want to help kids, if I can. Kids like you and me.”

  Two days later, Zach was gone.

  * * *

  She’d seen the blame in her mother’s eyes every day after that. What they’d had wasn’t perfect, but it had been a family. The best kind of family her mother could manage under the pressure of her husband’s outbursts. That’s what Rachel’s actions had destroyed. She and her brother living together under their parents’ roof. A roof that provided little in the way of shelter for her mother or her brother, but she’d promised she’d never leave as long as Zach lived there. Rachel pitied Lillian, but she hadn’t been able to understand the chains that bound her parents together. It was no kind of life for them. It had been no kind of life for Zach. And when Zach had left, Lillian Getty hadn’t shared Rachel’s introspection or her inner struggle. She’d blamed her daughter for the absence of her son.

  I didn’t make him leave, Mum. It was Da’s belt and your silence that chased our precious boy away.

  Zach hadn’t lived in this house in seven years, which raised the question as to why Rachel was still there, living under the same roof, drinking the same poison night after night.

  She hadn’t stopped searching for her baby brother and she never would.

  One day Zach would turn up.

  And she’d be here when he did. Waiting for him to forgive her. Waiting for him to love her again, the one person in the world who did.

  * * *

  She bypassed her parents in the living room. Her Da was in for the night, his glazed eyes watching World’s Worst Police Chases. Her mother sat quietly in a corner, carefully folding down magazine pages to avoid any telltale rustle. Neither greeted her.

  She took the narrow wood stairs to her bedroom, set down her bag, hooked her jacket over the back of a chair. There was no game tonight, and she was too tired to play if there had been. With dragging movements, she turned her computer on.

  She’d given the Drayton case less than half her attention, pushed Khattak much less than she normally would have, for a single, pressing reason. She’d turned up a lead on Zach.

  After all this time, she’d been looking in the wrong place. Halfway houses, homeless shelters, rehab centers, addiction programs. All the things she’d imagined could happen to a boy fending for himself on the streets. She had a friend in every division in the city and she’d called in a lot of favors. Zach’s image was on posters and flyers she’d circulated year after year.

  She’d tried bus stations, train stations, other metropolitan areas. Zach’s friends, his school, everyone who’d ever met him. Even the cops who’d come to the house.

  There’d been nothing. Just seven years of silence.

  And a folder of e-mails to a long-defunct address that he’d stopped accessing seven years ago.

  How would a kid on the streets get e-mail, after all?

  And now this hit, from a friend in North York who had a daughter in the arts program up there. A student exhibit at a gallery inside the university.

  Her friend had sent her the list of five exhibitors, five students in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program.

  Four of them meant nothing to her.

  The fifth was Zachary Getty.

  * * *

  It was maybe her brother, maybe not. She’d chased down leads like this before, only to end up with nothing, coming home to her mother’s silent, reproachful eyes.

  Because Lillian knew.

  She knew why Rachel had joined the service. She knew why Rachel’s temper had quickly derailed her career—she knew where that temper came from, and what fostered Rachel’s constant need to prove herself.

  She hadn’t said, “Sweetheart, it’s all right. What happened with Zach wasn’t your fault. We miss him too. We’re searching too.”

  They hadn’t searched.

  Zach dead or Zach alive was all the same to them.

  All they needed was each other and their mutual dysfunction.

  Lillian Getty had certainly never said to her, “Forgive yourself, Rachel.”

  Was it because her mother couldn’t forgive her? Was that why she withheld her grace and her guidance? Was it the reason for her silence? The conversations that tapered off, the half starts, the eyes haunted by secret knowledge?

  What had happened to Lillian Getty?

  Had Don Getty happened?

  Had there never been any more to her mother than martyred sighs and silent compliance? Had it become Lillian’s choice in the end?

  Rachel remembered another woman altogether. A woman with a bright spark in her eyes when Rachel had rescued a broken-winged bird on their porch, or played her mother’s records. A woman whose loving hands had stroked Rachel’s hair when she had cried herself to sleep at night, after her father had turned on Zach again. A woman, who despite Don Getty’s strictures, had packed little treats in their lunch, along with notes that reminded them of her love.

  She wished she had kept even one of those notes from her childhood, as a means of holding on to the woman she had once fiercely loved—instead of the enemy she had made with her decision to follow in Don Getty’s footsteps.

  It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Zach dead or alive, hurt or harmed, lost and confused—none of it seemed to matter to Rachel’s parents.

  It mattered only to her.

  She had a name and a place and a time. And it was three nights to the exhibition.

  She wasn’t about to share any of that with Don or Lillian Getty.

  12.

  Whoever was on the list to be killed would be killed.

  Friday morning Khattak called her. He gave her directions to the Bosnian community’s mosque, which wasn’t far from her home at the corner of Birmingham and Sixth. It was too early for the Friday prayer, so she found a spot in the parking lot close to the main entrance, a freshly painted white door. The word Dzamija was inscribed above the door, the Bosnian spelling of the Arabic word for congregation or community, a fact Rachel had learned during her training at CPS.

  The gray building indicated its character with a modest spire of minaret and a phalanx of long, narrow windows topped off by tiny arches. Sunlight warmed the stone; on its grounds the maples were a soft, crushed gold.

  Rachel found the women’s entrance and left her shoes in a caddy near the door. She proceeded inward by intervals: through a narrow aisle, a tidy library and the outer chamber of the women’s prayer space. At the threshold to the main hall, she met Khattak.

  The week had not worn well on him. His dark hair was disheveled, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes were more pronounced, there was even a hint of shadow about his jaw. Instead of his usual sleek splendor, he was dressed in a loose-fitting white kurta and tapered cotton trousers. His green tasbih was wound about his wrist.

  “What are we doing here, sir?” was her greeting. “I thought Drayton was a dead end by now.”

  Khattak shook his head.

  “I’ve been asked to tread carefully so I’ve done a little digging, called in some help. And I have a couple of visits lined up for us today. You’ve had the letters printed. Did you find anything?”

  “Someone was careful. Only Drayton’s prints are on them.”

  “Did you learn anything else?”

  “Very little.” She’d elaborate later if he wished, though she imagined there were only so many ways she could tell Khattak he was right. He must be tired of hearing it.

  “If this is as sensitive as you’re suggesting, this might not be the best place for us to be.” She cocked her head at the members of the Bosnian community milling about.

  “We’ve a meeting with Imam Muharrem. I was hoping he might know something about Krstić.” He lowered his voice as he said the name. “I’ve brought a photograph of Drayton.”

  Rachel didn’t ask where he’d obtained it. She’d gotten used to the element of mystery peculiar to her boss. She knew he’d tell her everything sh
e needed to know eventually.

  They found the imam at the mihrab in the main hall. He was dusting the prayer niche in the wall behind him, a selection of Qur’ans reposing on the lectern before the minbar, where he would stand to give the afternoon sermon.

  He set down his duster and embraced Khattak, kissing him on each cheek, then holding on to his hands in a prolonged handclasp as he studied him.

  “Inspector Esa,” he proclaimed. “I am very glad to have the chance to meet you, Asaf has told me so much about you. And this is your colleague, Sergeant Rachel.” His bright blue eyes beamed at Rachel. “It’s a pleasure to welcome you here.”

  Asaf, she’d gleaned from Khattak earlier, was the regular imam who gave the services at this location. Imam Muharrem was a visitor from Banja Luka in Bosnia, whose presence allowed his overburdened host to take some time off with his family.

  Rachel liked the look of him. He was excessively tall, clad in long, white robes that she thought of as Turkish, with a clean-shaven face and a warmth of manner that enhanced his natural authority. His English was lightly accented, his movements calm and deliberate.

  Nothing about multiculturalism antagonized Rachel. She liked all kinds of food, clothing, cultural customs, and music. The one thing that held her aloof was a fear of offending through ignorance.

  She apologized for her uncovered hair, but the imam waved the apology aside.

  “You were good enough to remove your shoes. It is an honor for us when any guest chooses to visit the Dzamija.”

  “I didn’t realize the imam was responsible for maintenance here.” She nodded at the duster, one eyebrow aloft.

  His answering smile was immediate.

  “There is no work of God’s too minimal for His caretaker. But let me take you into my office and give you some tea.”

  He swept them along the hall to an office at one end of an adjacent corridor. It was a well-proportioned space made smaller by rookeries of books gathered up in piles. On top of these, letters in several different languages were stacked at random. Dictionaries, travel guides, and Arabic-language Qur’ans filled up a bookcase behind the imam’s desk, a tidy space anointed with a desk lamp, clock, and laptop computer. The impression of mild chaos was balanced by the neatly organized bulletin boards that ran the length of one wall.

  He poured them small cups of lightly scented tea from a samovar arranged precariously close to his printer. Glass-green light filtered through the open windows, framed by the yellow branches of maples. They could hear birdsong from the trees.

  It was an environment of great charm, and Rachel relaxed into her seat.

  “Now, tell me why you have come and what it is I may help you with.”

  Enjoying the tea that tasted of green apples, Rachel let Khattak present his information.

  A close-up photo of Drayton was passed across the desk. “Do you recognize this man, Imam Muharrem?”

  In one of his deliberate gestures, the imam steepled his fingers under his chin and bent close to study the photograph. “He isn’t a member of our congregation, not that I recognize—but I am still a newcomer here.”

  “What part of Bosnia and Herzegovina are you from?”

  “As so many of us are, I am a refugee and a wanderer.” The answer wasn’t a circumvention, for he went on to add, “Most recently, I have been conducting historical research in Banja Luka.”

  A shadow crossed Khattak’s face. The sun settled at the window’s edge.

  “Could I ask you to be more specific? What type of research?”

  “You know Banja Luka?”

  A slight nod from Khattak.

  “We are trying to document what remains of our heritage—the heritage of the Muslims of our sorrowful country. A study was done on the mosques of Banja Luka.” He smiled at Rachel, his teeth white and even. “I was a scholar at Ferhadija, the Ferhad Pasha mosque complex. A jewel of our Ottoman past, modest perhaps in scale, but certainly our finest example of sixteenth-century architecture.” He brooded over the photograph. “Of course, all the mosques of Banja Luka were destroyed, not just Ferhadija. Let me show you.”

  He set down his glass of tea and turned to the bookshelf behind his desk. There he searched for a few moments before finding the one he wanted and opening it to a centerfold that displayed two photographs side by side. One was a photograph taken in 1941 of the Ferhadija complex. The second was a flattened area of grass where what remained was the merest outline of the mosque’s foundation.

  “Razed to the ground in 1993.” He fingered the photograph. “That was the last time I stood under the doomed shadow of its minaret. Even then Banja Luka was not safe.”

  “You were a refugee in Banja Luka?”

  “I am from Brčko,” he said simply. “I ended up in Manjača.”

  Names that meant something to Khattak, if not to Rachel. The imam was quick to seize on it. “You know Bosnia,” he said. “I should have known the name Esa signified a connection.”

  Not from her CPS training but from Khattak himself, Rachel had learned that Muslim names could transcend sects, ethnicities, communities, and nations. The name Esa could be found in the Arab world, the Indian subcontinent, the villages of Turkey and Persia, or further east in Malaysia and China. It simply meant Jesus.

  “I’ve been to Sarajevo,” Khattak answered. “During the war.” He took the imam’s book and leafed through its pages, one at a time.

  “You were mujahid?” The imam’s question was reverent, a tone Rachel had never formerly associated with the word.

  Now Khattak smiled, his hands open on the book that documented the ravaged history of a people. “I was a student,” he corrected. “A humanitarian aid worker alongside other students concerned about the siege of Sarajevo.”

  Imam Muharrem shifted in his seat. Rachel had the impression that Khattak’s words were not entirely welcome.

  Rachel thought of his words: I am from Brčko. I ended up in Manjača.

  Hesitating, she said, “I don’t know the names of those cities you mentioned, sir.”

  “Brčko is my home town. It has the misfortune to lie on the Serbian border to the north. Manjača was a camp the Serbs ran on the mountain. First, it was where they held Bosnian Croats. Later, it was mainly us they detained.”

  “Prisoners of war?”

  A curious expression crossed the imam’s face: part memory, part judgment.

  “It was where they sent many of the people of Banja Luka. All the educated people. The community leaders they hadn’t killed outright. The teachers, the doctors, the businessmen, religious leaders—myself. It was a place of unrelenting misery.” Under his breath, he recited a prolonged prayer. She caught the word rahem—mercy. “I should not speak of it, because then I would speak not only of Banja Luka and Brčko but also of Prijedor and Foča. Of the terrible places where the Serbs ran their rape camps.” He took the book back from Khattak and closed it with a snap. “I have counseled too many of our sisters. I do not wish to relive their suffering.”

  Rachel swallowed. She was a police officer with seven years in the service, but there were entire areas of war crimes testimony she had deliberately avoided in her research.

  She was unfamiliar with the names Imam Muharrem had recited. Since Khattak remained silent, she offered, “I thought the great tragedy of the Bosnian war was Srebrenica.”

  The imam flinched as if she had knifed him in the ribs. “Each of us is the citizen of a fallen city. The killing in Brčko took place three years before the Serbs overran safe area Srebrenica.”

  Three years. He said it with exactly the same note of bitterness that permeated Rachel’s research. She wanted to know more, yet felt she had no right to ask. After all these years, did anyone have the right to send survivors of the war plunging into the pitiless void of memory?

  “We’ve no right to encroach on your privacy, Imam. I’ve wanted to understand a little better, that’s all.”

  Imam Muharrem held her gaze across the desk. Something in h
er face must have reassured him.

  “If we do not speak of it, it does not mean we do not dream. Survivors are quiet because they are haunted, because they still cannot entirely accept what happened. Yes, there was a method to the madness of their killing, but what was the reason for it? In Brčko, they loaded refrigerated trucks with bodies and dumped them off at the kafilerija to be burned in the furnace. In two months, they killed three thousand people. They slit their throats, drained their bodies, and dumped them into the river. Or they killed people with three bullets, the Chetnik salute, and then robbed the dead. They mutilated the bodies and raped the women in front of their husbands, parents, and children.” He went quiet for several moments before adding, “Luka-Brčko also had a torture room. I will not tell you what happened there.”

  He turned his head to the side, light settling softly on his shoulders. “I was in Banja Luka when they took my family. I thought I would carry the guilt of that forever. Until the day I was sent to Manjača, where my friends were murdered before my eyes. I was the only imam to survive. They asked me to care for their families, and I have tried to do the best that I can.”

  He spread his hands wide as if what he had done was no more than his duty, when he had just conjured up an unfathomable horror. Her face, like Khattak’s, was abnormally pale.

  “I don’t think you came here to hear this,” he said, when neither of them said anything further. Condolences were out of the question. She hoped Khattak would know how to proceed.

  “I’ve troubled you with painful memories of the war, Imam Muharrem,” Khattak said at last, sharing Rachel’s struggle for words.

  The imam’s hands were steady as he decanted more tea for them. They took a minute to sip it, its soothing fragrance a balm on the air.

  Imam Muharrem’s lids lowered over his eyes.

  “It wasn’t a war, my dear Inspector Esa. What happened in my country was simply a slaughter.”

  He managed a smile. Rachel admired his ability to do it.

  “Didn’t our president say, after all, ‘Sleep peacefully. There will be no war’?”