by M. R. Hall
‘I suppose.’
There was silence as the doctor scanned his notes, then rubbed his eyes, straining with a thought his expression said he found troublesome but necessary to express. He looked up and studied her face for a moment before deciding to voice it. ‘Are you a woman of faith, Mrs Cooper?’ His use of her surname confirmed his unease.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘The trinity is a powerful Christian symbol. Father, Son and Holy Ghost . . .’
‘Lots of things come in threes: mother, father, child. Good, bad, indifferent. Heaven, earth, hell.’
‘An apt example. You were brought up in faith, as I remember. The concepts are vivid to you.’
‘We were sort of Anglican, I suppose. And there was Sunday school.’
Dr Allen looked thoughtful. ‘You know, I think you’re right. There is a piece missing – the girl, the space beyond the room. Whether it is emotional, or physical, or spiritual I couldn’t yet say. But sometimes what we fear most is what we need. The most powerful stories are often those about strange saviours, demons who become an inspiration . . . like St Paul, or—’
‘Darth Vader?’
He smiled. ‘Why not?’
‘This is sounding like a good old-fashioned diagnosis of suppression. Believe me, I’ve tried letting it all hang out; it wasn’t a happy experience.’
‘Would you do one thing for me?’ He was suddenly earnest. ‘I really would like to have one big push to crack this open.’
‘Fire away.’
‘For the next fortnight, keep a journal. Write down your feelings, your impulses, your extremes, no matter how bizarre or irrational.’
‘In the hope of finding what, exactly?’
‘We’ll know when we see it.’
‘You can be honest. Is this a last throw of the dice?’
He shook his head and smiled gently. ‘I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t think I could help you.’
Jenny pretended to be comforted, but couldn’t help feeling that psychiatry was a slow road to nowhere. She had a small grain of faith that somehow, some day she would look up into a clear sky and feel nothing but undiluted happiness, but how that would come to pass was something she couldn’t yet begin to answer. Perhaps her discussions with Dr Allen were worthwhile; at the very least he stirred her up from time to time, made her look into the corners she would otherwise avoid.
Later, as she drove home through the starless night, a single phrase of his kept repeating itself: strange saviours. It was a new idea to her. She liked it.
TWO
JENNY HAD BECOME USED TO living with the noise of a sixteen-year-old in the house, and part of her missed it when Ross spent the weekend with his father in Bristol. She would have phoned Steve, the infuriatingly free spirit she described as her ‘occasional boyfriend’, but he hadn’t called her for nearly a fortnight, even though he had been forced to acquire a phone; the architects’ practice he was articled to during his final year of study had insisted on it. She had encouraged him to break out from his self-imposed exile on the small farm above Tintern, where, for ten years, he had tried to live out a self-sufficient fantasy. Now that he went to work in the city and spent his nights at a draughtsman’s desk they scarcely saw each other.
She didn’t like to admit to loneliness – escaping from a suffocating marriage to live in the country was meant to be a liberation – but driving south along the twisting Wye valley early on Monday morning through the dense, leafless woods, she was glad that she’d shortly be relieved of her own company. A workaday week awaited: hospital and road deaths, industrial accidents and suicides. She drew a certain comfort from dealing with others’ unimaginable traumas with professional detachment. Being a coroner had given her an illusion of control and immortality. While Jenny Cooper the forty-two-year-old woman was still struggling to stay sane and sober, Jenny Cooper the coroner had come to enjoy her job.
With a take-out coffee in one hand and her briefcase in the other, Jenny shouldered open the door to her two-room office suite on the ground floor of the eighteenth-century terrace off Whiteladies Road. While her small domain had been made over, the common parts of the building remained tatty and the boards in the hallway still creaked under the threadbare carpet. The landlord’s refusal to pay for so much as a coat of paint irked her each time she crossed the threshold. Alison, her officer, was pleased with the compromise, however. Having spent most of her adult life in the police force, she was comfortable in down-to-earth surroundings and suspicious of outward show. She liked things simple and homely. The stylish kidney-shaped desk at which she now sat, sorting through the pile of documents that had arrived in the overnight DX, was home to a selection of pot plants, and her state-of-the-art computer monitor was decorated with inspirational message cards bought at the church bookshop: Shine as a Light in the World, encircled with childlike angels.
‘Hi, Alison.’
‘Good morning, Mrs Cooper. Fifteen death reports over the weekend, I’m afraid.’ She pushed a heap of papers across the desk. ‘And there’s a lady coming in to see you in about five minutes. I told her she’d have to make an appointment, but—’
‘Who?’ Jenny interrupted, running through a mental list of the several persistent obsessives she’d had to fend off lately.
Alison checked her message pad. ‘Mrs Amira Jamal.’
‘Never heard of her.’ Jenny reached for a spiral-bound folder of police photographs sitting in her mail tray and flicked through several pictures of the frozen corpses in the supermarket lorry. ‘What did she want?’
‘I couldn’t quite make it out – she was gabbling.’
‘Great.’ Scooping up the reports, Jenny noticed that Alison was wearing a gold cross outside her chunky polo neck. Not yet fifty-five, she wasn’t unattractive – she had curves and kept her thick bob of hair dyed a natural shade of blonde – but a hint of staidness had recently crept into her appearance. Ever since she’d become involved with an evangelical church.
‘It was a baptism present,’ Alison said, a challenging edge to her voice as she scrolled through her emails.
‘Right . . .’ Jenny wasn’t sure how to respond. ‘Was this a recent event?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Oh. Congratulations.’
‘You don’t have a problem with me wearing it at work?’ Alison said.
‘Feel free.’ Jenny gave a neutral smile and pushed through the heavy oak door into her office, wondering if she’d go the same way at Alison’s age. Organized religion and late-onset lesbianism seemed to be what hit most frequently. She couldn’t decide which she’d opt for given the choice. Maybe she’d try both.
Amira Jamal was a small, round woman barely more than five feet tall and somewhere in her fifties. She wore a smart black suit with a large, elaborate silk scarf, which she lowered from her head and draped around her shoulders as she took her seat. From a small pull-along suitcase she produced a box file containing a mass of notes, documents, statements and newspaper articles. She was clearly an educated woman, but emotional and overwrought: she spoke in short excited bursts about a missing son, as if assuming Jenny was already familiar with her case.
‘Seven years it’s taken,’ Mrs Jamal said, ‘Seven years. I went to the High Court in London last week, the Family Court, I can’t tell you how hard it was to get there. I had to sack the solicitor, and three others before him – none of them would believe me. They’re all fools. But I knew the judge would listen. I don’t care what anyone says, I have always believed in British justice. Look at these papers . . .’ She reached for the box.
‘Hold on a moment, Mrs Jamal,’ Jenny said patiently, feeling anything but. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to rewind for a moment.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Mrs Jamal flashed uncomprehending deep brown eyes at her, her lashes thick with mascara and her lids heavily pencilled.
‘This is the first I’ve heard of your case. We’ll need to take it a step at a time.’
‘B
ut the judge said to come to you,’ Mrs Jamal said with a note of panic.
‘Yes, but the coroner is an independent officer. When I look into a case I have to start afresh. So, please, perhaps you could explain briefly what’s happened.’
Mrs Jamal rifled through her disorganized documents and thrust a photocopy of a court order at her. ‘Here.’
Jenny saw that it was dated the previous Friday: 23 January. Mrs Justice Haines of the High Court Family Division had made a declaration that Nazim Jamal, born 5 May 1982, and having been registered as a missing person on 1 July 2002, and having remained missing for seven years, was presumed to be dead.
‘Nazim Jamal is your son?’
‘My only son. My only child . . . All I had.’ She wrung her hands and rocked to and fro in a way which Jenny could see would eventually have caused her lawyers to feel more irritation than sympathy. But she had spent enough years in the company of distressed mothers – fifteen years as a family lawyer employed by the legal department of a hard-pressed local authority – to tell melodrama from the real thing, and it was genuine torment she saw in the woman’s eyes. Against all her better instincts she decided to hear Mrs Jamal’s story.
‘Perhaps you could tell me what happened, from the beginning?’
Mrs Jamal looked at her as if she had briefly forgotten why she was there.
‘Can we get you some tea?’ Jenny said.
Armed with a cup of Alison’s strong, thick, builder’s tea, Mrs Jamal started falteringly into the story she had told countless times to sceptical police officers and lawyers. She appeared mistrustful at first, but once she saw that Jenny was listening carefully and taking detailed chronological notes, she slowly relaxed and became more fluent, pausing only to wipe away tears and apologize for her displays of emotion. She was a highly strung but proud woman, Jenny realized; a woman who, given different chances in life, might have been sitting on her side of the desk.
And the more Jenny heard, the more troubled she became.
Amira Jamal and her husband Zachariah had both been brought to Britain as children in the 1960s. Their marriage was arranged by their families when they were in their early twenties, but fortunately for them they fell in love. Zachariah trained as a dentist and they moved from London to Bristol for him to join his uncle’s practice in early 1980. They had been married for three years before Amira fell pregnant. The pregnancy came as a huge relief: she was becoming frightened that her husband’s very conservative family might put pressure on him to divorce her, or even to take another wife. It was a moment of great joy when she gave birth to a healthy boy.
With all the love and attention his doting parents lavished on him, Nazim sailed through primary school and won a scholarship to the exclusive Clifton College. And as their son became absorbed into mainstream British culture, so Amira and Zachariah adapted themselves to their new social milieu of private school parents. Nazim went from strength to strength, scoring highly in exams and playing tennis and badminton for the school.
The family’s first major convulsion occurred when Nazim was seventeen, at the start of his final year. Having spent so much time mixing with other mothers, Amira had come to appreciate what she had been missing cooped up at home. Against Zachariah’s wishes she insisted on going out to work. The only position she could find was that of a sales assistant in a respectable women’s outfitters, but it was still too much for her husband’s pride to stand. He made her choose between him and the job. She called his bluff and chose the job. That evening she came home to find her two brothers-in-law waiting with the news that he was divorcing her and that she was to leave the house immediately.
Nazim gave in to irresistible family pressure and continued to live with his father, who shortly afterwards took a younger wife, with whom he was to have a further three children. Amira was forced out to a rented flat. Nazim loyally visited her several evenings each week, and rather than leave her isolated refused an offer from Imperial College London, and instead took up a place at Bristol University to study physics.
He started at university in the autumn of 2001 in the weeks when the world was still reeling and the word ‘Muslim’ had become synonymous with atrocity. Uninterested in politics, Nazim barely mentioned events in America and went off happily to college; and in his first act of rebellion against his father he decided to live on campus.
‘I didn’t see much of him that year,’ Mrs Jamal said with a touch of sadness tinged with pride. ‘He got so busy with his work and playing tennis – he was trying to get on the university team. When I did see him he looked so well, so happy. He wasn’t a boy any more, I saw him change into a man.’ A trace of emotion re-entered her voice and she paused for a moment. ‘It was in the second term, after the Christmas holidays, that he became more distant. I only saw him three or four times. The thing I noticed was that he’d grown a beard and sometimes he wore the prayer cap, the taqiyah. I was shocked. Even my husband wore Western dress. One time he came to my flat wearing full traditional dress: a white robe and sirwal like the Arabs. When I asked him why, he said a lot of his Muslim friends dressed that way.’
‘He was becoming religious?’
‘We were always a religious family, but peaceful. My husband and I followed Sheikh Abd al-Latif: our religion was between us and God. No politics. That’s how Nazim was brought up, to respect his fellow man, no matter who.’ A look of incomprehension settled on her face. ‘Later they said he’d been going to the Al Rahma mosque, and to meetings . . .’
‘What sort of meetings?’
‘With radicals, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the police said. They told me he went to a halaqah.’
‘Halaqah?’
‘A small group. A cell, they called it.’
‘Let’s stop there. When did he start going to these meetings?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Some time after Christmas.’
‘OK . . .’ Jenny made a note to the effect that whatever had happened to Nazim was linked to people he met in the winter of 2001–2. ‘You noticed a change in your son in early 2002. What then?’
‘He was much the same in the Easter vacation. His father didn’t speak to me so I didn’t know how he behaved at his house, but I was worried.’
‘Why?’
‘Nazim didn’t talk about religion in my presence, but I’d heard things. We all had. These Hizb, followers of that criminal Omar Bakri, it’s all politics with them: telling our young men they have to fight for their people, for a khalifah – an Islamic state. It’s poison for young minds.’
‘Do you know for certain your son was involved with radicals?’
‘I knew nothing. I still don’t, only what the police tell me.’ She motioned towards the file of papers. ‘They say they saw him going in and out of a house in St Pauls every Wednesday night for halaqah. Him and Rafi Hassan, a friend from university.’
‘Tell me about Rafi.’
‘He was in Nazim’s year. He studied law. They had rooms in the same building, Manor Hall. His family comes from Birmingham.’
‘Did you meet him?’
‘No. Nazim hardly mentioned him. I got all this from the police . . . afterwards.’ She pulled a fresh handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her eyes, rocking back and forth in her chair.
‘After what?’ Jenny said, tentatively.
‘I saw Nazim only once in May. He came on a Saturday, my birthday. His aunties were there and cousins. It was a wonderful day, he was himself again . . . And then once more in June, the 22nd, another Saturday.’ All the dates were etched on her memory. ‘He arrived in the morning looking pale. He told me he wasn’t feeling well, a fever and headache. He lay in the spare bed and slept all afternoon and evening. He ate a little soup but said he was still too tired to go back to college, so he stayed the night. I woke at dawn and heard him praying: with perfect tajwid – reciting from the Koran like he’d learned as a boy.’ She took a shaky breath and closed her eyes. ‘I must have fallen asleep again. When I got up to make breakfast he�
��d gone. He left me a note. Thanks, Mum. Bye. Naz. It’s there in the papers . . . I never saw him again.’ Tears ran down her cheeks. She pressed her mascara-stained handkerchief to them and tried to steady herself. ‘The police said . . . they said they saw him come out of the halaqah at ten-thirty on the night of Friday, 28 June 2002. That was in Marlowes Road in St Pauls. He walked to the bus stop with Rafi Hassan and that was it. He didn’t go to tennis the next morning and neither of them was at class on Monday. The police spoke to all the students in the hall, but no one saw them over the weekend, or ever again.’
For the first time in their interview Mrs Jamal was overcome. Jenny let her weep uninterrupted. She had learned that the best response to grieving relatives was to observe a respectful silence, to offer a sympathetic smile but to say as little as possible. However well meant, words seldom eased the pain of grief.
When her tears eventually subsided, Mrs Jamal described how the college authorities had telephoned her husband, who then called her when Nazim failed to attend his tutorial the following Wednesday. He had been due to hand in an important dissertation. Zachariah and several of his nephews scoured the campus, but no one had seen Nazim or Rafi since the previous week, and neither boy seemed to have any close friends apart from one another. Even the students who lived in adjoining rooms could claim only a nodding acquaintance.
Initially the police responded with their usual indifference to reports of missing persons. A liaison officer even went so far as to suggest that the two young men might have fallen into a sexual relationship and run away together. Mrs Jamal knew her son well enough to know this wasn’t likely. Then it emerged that both boys’ laptop computers and mobile phones were missing. The police sergeant who had searched their rooms found evidence that their doors had been forced with a similar implement, probably a wide screwdriver. And then, nearly a week later, a girl who had a room in a neighbouring building, Dani James, came forward to tell police that she’d seen a man in a puffy anorak with a baseball cap pulled down over his face walking quickly out of Manor Hall at around midnight on the night of 28 June. She thought he had a large rucksack or a holdall over his shoulder.
