by M. R. Hall
'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.
She walked back across the campus, taking the opportunity to observe the students and absorb the atmosphere. The first group she passed were dressed in stylish casual clothes, carried laptops and had cellphones pressed to their ears. Young men and women seemed to mix easily with one another and the political meetings advertised on the student noticeboards were far outweighed by announcements for parties and happy hours at local bars. Hedonism, not idealism, was the order of the day. She couldn't pretend that things had been that different during her time at Birmingham. She'd marched for the striking miners and CND, but in truth had been more interested in her guitar-playing boyfriend and cadging drinks in the student union. She and her friends had been a little less hung up about money, career and possessions perhaps, but apart from the odd spell of pre-exam cramming, it had been three years of more or less non-stop partying.
Then she saw something which made her change her mind. A group of ten or so young women, all wearing identical niqabs - the black robes and veils which revealed only their eyes - crossed the quadrangle in a tight huddle. When they passed a group of boys, they looked away or at the ground. Their separateness was absolute. Masked and impenetrable, they had cut themselves off from the public realm. When Jenny was a student she'd had lots of Muslim friends, girls who came from strict orthodox families but who were only too keen to cut loose and behave and dress like everyone else. Twenty years on, the next generation were adopting clothing more conservative than their grandmothers'. Faced with a bewildering and hostile world they had chosen religion as their crutch. They weren't being made to do it: it was a choice.
A black hybrid saloon drew up silently behind her and slid into a space as she approached the front door of her office. She was reaching for her keys when a suited woman and a male colleague, both barely over thirty, climbed out and stepped towards her.
'Mrs Cooper?' the woman said.
'Yes?'
The woman, dark, attractive, but tired around the eyes, offered her hand. 'Gillian Golder. This is my colleague, Alun Rhys.'
Rhys said a polite hello. He was a solid, stocky young man who could have come straight from a college rugby field.
Gillian Golder said, 'This is just a friendly visit. We're intelligence officers with the Security Services. Have you got a moment?'
'Sure,' Jenny said lightly, and led them along the dim hallway.
Jenny couldn't decide if Golder and Rhys's relaxed pre- business chit-chat was reassuring or sinister. She had met enough government officials of various stripes to know that the modern way was to give the appearance of approach- ability and reasonableness, even if the underlying agenda hadn't changed. Coolness, in the teenage sense, had replaced uprightness as the common virtue. Body language was to remain open, language euphemistic and non-confrontational. If you played by these rules, you were considered an insider. If you exhibited signs of aloofness or appeared too starchy, you had 'issues' and weren't to be trusted.
'I suppose you've guessed why we're here?' Gillian Golder said, taking the lead, Rhys adopting the role of observer.
Jenny smiled, straining not to appear threatened or defensive. 'I assume it concerns Nazim Jamal.'
'Yeah. We obviously heard about the judge's ruling last week and presumably Mrs Jamal has been to see you about holding an inquest.'
Jenny knew full well that they knew. DI Pironi would have lifted the phone the moment she had asked to meet him. It was all part of the dance, Golder trying to see if Jenny would adopt an attitude.
'She has.'
'Uh-huh. Well, it's hardly surprising. It's got to be tough for her.'
'Sure.'
'So . . . how do you feel about that?'
'How do I feel?' Jenny was thrown by the question. 'I'm just doing my job, compiling a report to go the Home Secretary, who has to authorize the holding of an inquest.'
'Do you think it will happen?'
'I've no idea.'
'For what it's worth, we think you'll get the go-ahead. It would only look as if there was something to hide if permission were refused.' Rhys nodded in agreement. 'And we're all obviously trying to do our best to build bridges with the Muslim community.'
There was a pause in which Jenny felt as if she were expected to respond. Growing confused and more than a little irritated by Gillian Golder's obliqueness, she asked, 'Is there something specific you wanted to discuss?'
Golder said, 'Obviously this is a case in which sensitive issues will come up. And we all know the media have a tendency to pounce on stories like this and sensationalize . . .' She glanced at her colleague, 'But from our end we feel that if we could head off any potential mistrust at the outset, we can avoid setting off major hysteria.'
'Mistrust?' Jenny said, pretending to be confused by the notion.
'Yes.' Gillian Golder shifted in her chair. 'Clearly Mrs Jamal is very upset, anyone would be in her position, but she might be tempted to see an inquest as an opportunity to vent her more irrational feelings in public ... It would be unfortunate if a perfectly proper inquiry were to be hijacked in that way, especially as we've worked so hard to earn the trust of young British Asians in recent years.'
'I can't stop her talking to the press, if that's what you mean.'
'Of course not. The thing is, what we'd like to avoid is her making unwarranted allegations against the Security Services. We'll cooperate as much as we're able, but we might as well tell you now that we know virtually nothing about what happened to Jamal and Hassan. Really, we've looked through all the files - the trail went dead.'
'Will I be able to see them?'
'That'll be decided higher up. Sometimes we'll seek a public interest immunity certificate to cover our working files - to protect our methods and what have you - but we'll certainly provide you with a witness who can speak to the facts of our investigation.'
/> 'What about the police records? I assume you've looked at those, too.'
'Not much of interest in those, either, what's left of them.'
Jenny sat back in her chair and tried to see through the fog. She had the feeling that this was an attempt to gag and control her from the outset, but the messengers seemed so benign she couldn't be sure.
'Just so I've got this straight,' Jenny said, 'you're telling me that if I do get to hold an inquest, you'll provide one witness from the Security Services but I won't get to see your records.'
Gillian Golder nodded. 'Pretty much.'
'And you're asking me not to push for any more documentary evidence or to plant the thought in Mrs Jamal's head that there might be secret information to which I won't have access.'
Rhys cut in. 'We're not trying to clip your wings, Mrs Cooper, we just need to get two things clear. First off, the chances of any of our internal notes or records being released to a public inquest are zero. The most you can hope for is that you'll get to look at them in private. Second, we're asking you to trust us when we say we have absolutely no clue what happened to Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan. Apart from reviewing the papers, we've spoken to the retired officer who was heading up the case at the time. These two just vanished - I mean, off the face of the earth. OK, so the investigation was only live for a month or so, but there wasn't one solid lead after the sighting on the train.'
'So what do you people think happened to them?'
'We assume they went abroad. Plenty of others did at the time.'
'No other theories?'
'None that stand up. They were just a couple of Muslim boys flirting with radicals, who were most likely shipped off to be fighters.'
'Is it really that easy to escape the country undetected? I don't buy it.'
Both officers smiled at once. 'You'd be amazed,' Rhys said. 'Just because you've got CCTV doesn't mean the picture's any good, or that some klutz hasn't taped over it.'
'I hear the army have routinely taken DNA from dead insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Has any attempt been made to trace them that way?'
'They're both on a database. We'd have been told if anything had turned up.'
Jenny sighed. Something niggled. 'One more question: why was the police inquiry so short-lived? I've heard some officers felt it was closed down prematurely.'
Gillian Golder fielded the question without hesitating. 'Because they vanished so completely it was felt they might be in hiding. A decision was taken to tone things down and concentrate on picking up intelligence. It was thought that if we smoked them out too soon we might miss out on being led to something bigger.'
Jenny nodded, but if the meeting was intended to dispel her mistrust it hadn't succeeded. Golder and Rhys were young, but knew how to go about their business.
They had dangled the possibility of an inquest in front of her, but on condition that she played by their rules. They wanted it low key, not to ask too many questions of the Security Services, to appear to appease the Muslim community and above all to avoid inflaming it.
She considered her dilemma, then decided on the only course she could square with her conscience. 'I don't want my inquest descending into a media circus any more than you do,' she said, 'and I've no intention of providing a platform for wild, unfounded allegations. But as you've driven all this way to see me, you ought to know that I won't tolerate any outside interference in my inquiry. If it's done, it's done properly, thoroughly and independently and in accordance with the law. '
Gillian Golder said, 'We wouldn't expect any less. Honestly, Mrs Cooper, we're as keen to find out what happened as you are.'
Jenny couldn't tell if she had won or lost the encounter; whether she had guaranteed that an inquest would never happen or whether her display of honesty had marked her down as sufficiently naive to be trusted. Nor could she decide if she had been brazenly lied to or if there was more than a grain of truth in Golder and Rhys's claim that the Security Services were clueless as to what had happened to Rafi and Nazim. All she could be certain about was that she was entering a world of which she had no experience.
Fending off Alison's attempts to extract a verbatim account of her conversation with the two intelligence officers, she locked herself away for the rest of the afternoon to write her report to the Home Secretary. She kept it tight and uncontroversial, cited case law sparingly and strove to give every impression of reasonableness. Her conclusion was a model of restraint, arguing that while legally the Home Secretary would be perfectly entitled to conclude there were insufficient reasons to hold an inquest - not least the absence of a body - the interests of justice tipped in favour of a formal inquiry.
'Finally,' she wrote, allowing herself one rhetorical flourish,
while other agencies of the Crown are frequently accused by the deceased's relatives of pursuing self, or political interest, the coroner is a truly independent judicial officer whose only duty is to unearth truth. Although in this case the chances of that occurring are slim, a non-finding is surely preferable to no attempt having been made at all.
She had the report sent to London by motorcycle courier. As it went, she found herself mouthing a silent prayer.
Chapter 6
Mrs Jamal had somehow managed to get hold of Jenny's home number. She arrived back to Ross's announcement that a mad woman had been calling every ten minutes. The answerphone was jammed with messages. In ascending degrees of hysteria, they all rehearsed the same allegations: that she was being watched, followed in the street, that her post was being intercepted and that secret cameras had been placed in her apartment. 'I am a prisoner in my home,' was a phrase she repeated many times. The final call was so tearful Jenny could barely make it out.
Personal contact with the next of kin should be kept on a formal footing: to enter into a relationship with surviving family members could only lead to trouble. Relatives seldom understood that the coroner was acting purely in the public interest, and that any appearance of friendliness was out of courtesy and a desire to make the process as painless as possible for those left behind. The correct way to deal with Mrs Jamal would have been to write her a letter politely explaining that it was inappropriate for her to behave in this way and asking her to desist. To respond to such behaviour by phoning back would risk creating expectations she could never fulfil. But what sort of person could ignore such desperate pleas for help?
Mrs Jamal snatched up the phone on the first ring. 'Yes. Who is it?' She sounded fraught.
'Mrs Jamal, this is Mrs Cooper, the—'
'Oh, thank goodness,' she cut in. 'I knew I could trust you. You were sent by God, I know you were. No one else understands, no one else.' She continued without drawing breath. 'These people are hounding me day and night, Mrs Cooper, they won't leave me alone. They're watching my flat, they follow me in the street. They've been in here at night, I know they have. They've moved things. They've put bugs in the flat, that's what they've done. They're listening to this now. I've got to leave, I have to go —’
'Hold on a moment. Calm down. Let me speak.'
'Yes, yes, of course, but you have to believe —’
'Listen to me.'
Finally, Mrs Jamal stopped talking.
'Now keep calm. Getting worked up is going to achieve nothing.'
'No, you're right. I'm so grateful —’
'Tell me who you think is watching you.'
'I don't know who they are. They're men. White men. I don't know what they want with me. I don't know anything. I'm just a mother . . .' She sniffed back tears.
'Remember last time we spoke - you went to the window and there was no one there.'
'They listen to me. They know when to disappear. That's why I have to go somewhere they can't find me.'
'Mrs Jamal, you're upset. You're going through one of the most stressful experiences anyone can imagine. You've lost your son and you're desperate to know where he went. Now think about this: you don't know where he went, that's why you want an inqu
est. No one has any reason to follow or listen to you. I know it may be hard to understand, but I think your mind may be playing tricks.'
'No . . .' Mrs Jamal said, but without much conviction.
'What I want you to do is go to your doctor and talk about how you're feeling. This won't get better by itself and I want you to feel calm enough to sit through an inquest if we can hold one.'
'I'm not insane, Mrs Cooper, I know what I see. I can't stay here. They'll come in the night—'
'Trust me. Please. I know enough about how people react to understand exactly how you're feeling.' She paused and sensed that, now she had got the attention she craved, Mrs Jamal was actually listening. 'You're feeling very alone, very exposed and very uncertain,' she continued, 'but once you start to see some progress these feelings will pass. You'll have to take my word on that.'
'But I'm frightened, Mrs Cooper.'
'That's perfectly natural. You've lived with an unanswered question for seven years. You're frightened of what the next few weeks might bring.'
Mrs Jamal spoke through quiet sobs. 'I know he wouldn't leave me. He was a good son. He always came to see me, even when his father tried to stop him. Nazim wouldn't leave me.'
Jenny said, 'I'll make you a deal. I'll get on and do my job the best I can, and you get yourself some help to see you through the next few weeks. Can we agree on that?'
'Yes . . .' came the feeble reply. 'Thank you.'
Ross spent the evening locked in his room talking to friends over the internet and listening to music, anything rather than come downstairs to spend time with his mother. To stave off the pangs of rejection Jenny retreated to her study and tried to make an impression on her ever-increasing pile of untended paperwork. Corpses were a good indicator of social trends. In recent weeks she'd had two women under twenty-five who had died following sudden and catastrophic alcohol-related liver failure, and a third who had collapsed and died in a nightclub toilet from alcohol poisoning; two depressed fifteen- year-old boys who had committed suicide after meeting in a chat room; and a married father of thirty-five who had jumped from a motorway bridge when his mortgage company foreclosed. If the young seemed unhappy, the old were scarcely better off. In front of her lay a photograph of an eighty-year- old widower who had rigged up the bedroom in his tiny flat as a makeshift gas chamber. He had left a note explaining that the struggle of making ends meet was too much to bear.
