Jenny Cooper 02 - The Disappeared

by M. R. Hall

  Pushing these troubling thoughts aside, she asked Yusuf Khan if he wished to cross-examine.

  ‘Only briefly, ma’am.’ He turned to the witness. ‘Mr Ali, you must have heard the rumours, as I have, that in the preemptive war on terror, agents provocateurs have been used to lure potentially radical young men abroad to a fate we can only guess at.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard those rumours.’

  ‘Has anyone ever approached you, or anyone you know, in this way?’

  Ali stalled long enough before answering no for Jenny not to believe him. And from the look Yusuf Khan gave him, she could tell he didn’t believe him either.

  Dani James was twenty-eight years old and now practised in a prosperous solicitor’s firm in Bath which specialized in handling the estates of the seriously wealthy. She had an open, attractive face which inspired trust, and spoke with an endearing trace of a Manchester accent. Uncomplicated, was Jenny’s first impression: straightforward. Dani had waited patiently all morning and didn’t seem to begrudge her enforced absence from a busy professional life.

  Jenny established that she had been a law student in the same year as Rafi and Nazim and had occupied a room on the first floor of Manor Hall. She hadn’t had much to do with Rafi, she said, apart from attending the same seminars; he was a quiet student and kept mostly to himself. She had seen him talking with other Asians in the common room and had formed the impression that he liked to be among his own. Nazim, on the other hand, was more sociable. She remembered seeing him at a number of parties in the autumn term – he was a good dancer and always full of energy. What she saw of him, she liked.

  In the spring term she hadn’t recognized him when he passed her in the corridor wearing a beard and a prayer cap. She tried to say hello a few times, but didn’t receive much of a response. She noticed that he and Rafi had taken to dressing the same way and had seemed to have withdrawn from student society. They didn’t come to parties or hang out in the bar as they had in their first term, even to drink orange juice. She remembered thinking it was a shame, but it had happened to a number of Muslim students. They seemed to develop chips on their shoulders and form cliques. There was a girl on her course who had started out wearing mini-skirts and sleeping with a different man each weekend, who, by the end of the spring term, was teetotal, celibate and fully veiled. Each to his own, had been Dani’s attitude. She didn’t blame them for being defensive when everyone talked about Muslims as terrorists.

  ‘You made a statement to the police on 8 July 2002,’ Jenny said. ‘What prompted that?’

  ‘They were coming round the halls knocking on doors, asking everyone what they knew about Nazim and Rafi. What was the last time we saw them? Who were they with?’

  ‘Were you able to help?’

  ‘Not really. I just remember telling them that I’d seen someone strange coming out of Manor Hall on the Friday they were meant to have disappeared.’

  ‘Friday, 28 June?’

  ‘Yes. I’d been out late somewhere. It was about midnight. I was coming through the main door, not exactly sober, and this tall man, fortyish, came rushing down the stairs and shoved past me. He was in a real hurry and didn’t seem to care he’d thrown me halfway across the room.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Thinnish . . . kind of wiry. He had a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, so I couldn’t see his face. He had a blue puffy anorak on, which seemed odd as it was the middle of summer. I think he had a rucksack over one shoulder.’

  ‘In your statement you said “large rucksack or holdall”.’

  ‘I don’t remember in detail, just that it seemed strange. I do remember thinking he had a real attitude shoving me like that.’

  ‘Have you any idea what the police did with this information?’

  ‘No. I made a statement, that was it.’

  ‘Do you know if anyone else saw him?’

  ‘Not that I know of. It was late.’

  Jenny said, ‘My office has made contact with a lot of students from your year, yet virtually none of them seems to have anything to say. Do you have any idea why that is?’

  ‘Because they didn’t know them, I guess.’

  Jenny nodded. Her own brief excursion through the university precincts had been enough to convince her that Dani was probably right: devout, politicized Muslims would have occupied a world apart.

  She was ready to hand the witness over for cross-examination by the lawyers when she remembered the statement that Sarah Levin – a witness not listed to appear until tomorrow – had given to the police a short while after Dani had spoken to them. She reached for a file and turned up the flagged page. It was brief, only two paragraphs, the first giving her personal details and stating that she was in the same year and faculty as Nazim, and the second detailing a conversation overheard some time in May 2002.

  ‘Do you remember a student in your year called Sarah Levin?’ Jenny said.

  ‘Vaguely. I think she lived in a different hall.’

  ‘That’s right – Goldney. She gave a statement to the police on 10 July saying that in May 2002 she overheard Nazim talking to some other young Asian men in a canteen on the main campus.’ She read aloud. ‘“I overheard him saying that some of the “brothers” were volunteering to fight the Americans in Afghanistan. That’s all I heard, just a snatch of their conversation, but I got the impression they were talking a lot about other young Muslims who were committed enough to fight for their beliefs. I remember the expression on Nazim’s face – he seemed to be in awe of them.” Did you ever overhear any conversations like this?’

  Dani gave an uncertain shake of her head.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She glanced from Jenny to Mrs Jamal, then back to Jenny again. ‘I don’t find it surprising – he was quite macho, the way he held himself . . .’ Another flick of the eyes to Mrs Jamal. ‘But what his mother said about him changing . . .’ She paused and swallowed, the colour leaving her face.

  ‘Yes?’

  Dani opened her mouth to continue, but stalled, startled, as the door opened at the back of the hall and a tall man dressed in a long coat entered. Jenny recognized McAvoy immediately. He picked her out with those still blue eyes and gave a lawyer’s nod before finding standing room among the young men lining the back wall.

  Jenny drew her gaze away from him. ‘You were about to say, Miss James?’

  ‘I think a lot of it might have been posing,’ she said, her voice shaky. ‘He wasn’t as religious as all that . . . not in late June, anyway.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Dani turned her face away from Mrs Jamal. ‘It was on the night of 26 June, a Wednesday. Nazim came into the bar and we got talking. He wasn’t drinking, obviously, but he was fun, more like his old self . . .’ She paused, then lifted her eyes. ‘We spent the night together.’

  A whisper went around the room. The journalists crouched over their notebooks. Jenny noticed McAvoy give a bemused shake of his head. Mrs Jamal wiped away a bewildered tear. Jenny felt a burst of excitement. At last, a revelation.

  ‘You slept with Nazim on the night of the 26th?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Dani seemed relieved to have made a public confession. ‘There was no relationship or anything, it was just impulsive. Only the one night. He left my room early next morning and that was fine with both of us.’

  ‘Did you talk?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Did you get any insight into his state of mind?’

  ‘He was laughing, cracking jokes . . . like someone who was demob happy. And I was quite far gone, to be honest. I don’t think I put up too much resistance. It just sort of happened.’

  ‘Did you see him again?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea why he chose that night to approach you?’

  ‘I was nineteen and partying. It didn’t matter enough to ask.’

  ‘Wait there, Miss James.’

  Fraser Havilland and Ma
rtha Denton had their heads together in animated conversation. Seeming to reach an agreement, Havilland stood and addressed the witness.

  Sleek and polished, he gave her a disarming smile. ‘You didn’t tell the police about this night together at the time?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Because?’

  ‘It didn’t seem relevant.’ She let out a breath, her face twisted in a frown. ‘And I suppose I felt guilty somehow . . . There was no reason to, but I didn’t know what was going on in his mind.’

  Havilland glanced down at his notes. ‘You said he seemed “demob happy”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Demobbed from what?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was just his mood.’

  ‘He wasn’t wearing traditional dress at the bar, I take it?’

  ‘No. He’d stopped that. I’d noticed a few weeks before.’

  Havilland drummed his fingertips thoughtfully on the table as he searched for a suitable form of words. ‘Did it occur to you that this elation of his might have had something of the final fling about it?’

  ‘Not at the time. Later, when I heard what was being said—’

  ‘Thank you, Miss James,’ Havilland said, cutting her off, and sat down with the look of a man satisfied that he’d made a powerful point.

  Martha Denton rose. ‘Do you not think it dishonest of you not to have told the police this at the time?’

  Dani looked to Jenny. ‘Can I please finish what I was going to say?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Jenny said.

  Martha Denton rolled her eyes impatiently.

  ‘I’ve thought about it a lot, again and again . . . I don’t believe Nazim was going off somewhere. It felt exactly the opposite – it was as if he was coming back.’

  ‘It certainly seems dishonest of you not to have told the police that,’ Denton fired back.

  ‘It’s not easy to talk about those things, especially when you’re that young.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if you were particularly inhibited.’

  Stung, Dani said, ‘Believe me, it’s easier to go to bed with someone than to talk to the police.’

  ‘Miss James, whether or not you slept with Nazim Jamal, you have no idea whatsoever where he went, do you?’

  ‘No, I just have an instinct. I don’t believe he was ever a religious fanatic, not truly.’

  ‘You’re in the legal profession, you know an instinct’s not evidence.’

  Dani’s face hardened. ‘Devout Muslims don’t sleep around. I caught chlamydia from Nazim. I suffered severe inflammation and ended up in hospital a month later. I suffered permanent damage and may not be able to carry a child.’ She turned to Jenny. ‘You can check my medical records.’

  Rattled, Martha Denton said, ‘Perhaps you just don’t like the idea that he used you.’

  Dani didn’t answer; Jenny didn’t press her to.

  ‘Or perhaps we can’t trust your evidence at all. Keeping quiet on such a matter for eight years, then coming forward with a story which you know full well would kick up all sorts of dust—’

  ‘It’s the truth.’ She looked at Mrs Jamal. ‘I’m only sorry I didn’t say this before.’

  Martha Denton glanced sceptically at the jury. ‘I’m sure we all are.’

  Yusuf Khan, who had appeared embarrassed at the turn Dani’s evidence had taken, offered no cross-examination, and requested only that she give permission for her medical records to be made available to the court. She consented.

  Before releasing her, Jenny asked Dani if she’d had other sexual partners before Nazim. She admitted to one, a boy she had slept with during the first term, but insisted they had used condoms. With Nazim she’d taken a chance. There was no doubt in her mind that it was he who had infected her.

  Jenny asked Alison in open court to make copies of both Nazim and Rafi’s medical records available to the lawyers and told the jury that from what she’d seen there was nothing to suggest Nazim had an STD or any health problems at all. According to his GP’s notes he hadn’t visited the doctor in three years.

  Dani James left the witness chair and walked out of the hall, drawing a mixture of admiring and suspicious looks. Jenny was impressed with her. She was a successful lawyer with a reputation to uphold. It had taken a lot of courage to give the evidence she had.

  There was time for one more witness before breaking for lunch. She decided to call Simon Donovan and use the recess to plan her questions for McAvoy. She had a long list accumulating.

  Donovan was a fifty-three-year-old managing accountant for a Ford dealership. He was married and lived in the suburb of Stoke Bishop. A man remarkable only for his overwhelming blandness, he told the court that several weeks after Nazim and Rafi’s disappearance he had seen their photographs in the Bristol Evening Post. He immediately recognized them as the two young Asian men who had been sitting across the aisle from him on the ten a.m. train from Bristol Parkway to London Paddington on Saturday, 29 June. He had been en route to a football match, as had many of his fellow travellers, and had noticed them mainly because they seemed not to approve of the sometimes boisterous fans. As far as he could recall they were both dressed in smart casual clothes and had only small items of luggage with them.

  Jenny said, ‘You remembered the faces of two strangers that clearly after three weeks?’

  ‘They were different, I suppose,’ Donovan said. ‘Maybe it was because they were young lads with beards. And we were all pretty jumpy about terrorists at the time, weren’t we? You notice these things on a train.’

  ‘Is this a polite way of saying their presence made you anxious?’

  ‘I’m not a racist,’ Donovan said. ‘I haven’t got a racist bone in my body. But you just can’t help wondering, can you? Especially when they’re looking so serious.’

  Jenny said, ‘I see. Thank you, Mr Donovan.’

  Havilland asked only a few soft questions designed to shore up Donovan’s credibility as a reliable and concerned member of the public with no axe to grind. Martha Denton delved a little further and managed to prompt him into saying that both young men seemed worried or apprehensive. Jenny pointed out that this detail was missing from his statement made three weeks after the event. Donovan replied that the police officer who took his statement had been in a hurry and seemed only to want the bare facts. Jenny wasn’t convinced by his explanation.

  Yusuf Khan looked at Donovan for a long moment, his head cocked thoughtfully to one side, before asking how many bearded young Asian men he came across in his daily life at that time. Very few, Donovan had to admit.

  ‘But the newspapers at the time were full of them, weren’t they? We all remember the hysteria. Every time you caught a train or a plane, the media would have had you believe, you took your life in your hands.’

  ‘What’s your question for the witness, Mr Khan?’ Jenny said.

  ‘My question, Mr Donovan, is whether you think you could have told one bearded young man with Asian features from another? That’s all you recognized, wasn’t it – their beards and the colour of their skin?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have called the police if I wasn’t sure it was them.’

  ‘What was your motivation?’

  ‘I thought it the right thing to do.’

  ‘Do you make a habit of calling the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you under the impression they might be terrorist suspects?’

  ‘Well, I . . . I suppose it might have crossed my mind.’

  Khan nodded calmly. ‘When you first called the police, did you say to them, “I definitely saw the two missing men”, or did you say, “I saw two young Asian men who might have been them”?’

  Donovan moved uncomfortably in his seat, his thick neck reddening. ‘I said I’d seen these two lads . . . They came round to my house with photographs. When I’d seen a few, I was sure it was them. Why would I have made it up?’

  Jenny heard a sudden sharp derisive laugh from the back of the hall. She
looked up, angry, and saw that it had come from McAvoy.

  TEN

  ALISON WAS FRANTICALLY DEALING WITH a hitch in the jury’s catering arrangements – the promised sandwich delivery had failed to arrive and she was organizing a convoy to the nearby bird sanctuary’s waterside restaurant. Outside, at the front of the hall, clusters of angry young Asian men were courting the media pool gathered incongruously in the quiet village lane. Two television news vans had appeared and make-up girls were busy powdering faces. The lawyers hurried through the melee, refusing to answer any questions, and took off in a posse of expensive cars. A cluster of puzzled locals watched the chaotic scene from a safe distance, wondering what could have brought such madness to their quiet corner of the countryside.

  Feeling suddenly drained, Jenny slipped out of the back door and found a damp plastic bench which looked out over a field. A tractor was ploughing, a swarm of assorted birds followed after it, fighting over the worms thrown up in the freshly turned earth. Huddled in her thin raincoat, she ate the chocolate bar Alison had dredged up for her, and sipped coffee tasting vaguely of detergent from a cracked mug.

  She attempted to process the morning’s events and unravel the various parties’ competing agendas. She understood that the police mainly wanted to cover their backs, and she presumed that the Security Services were keen to vindicate their theory that Nazim and Rafi had gone abroad. Yusuf Khan and his friends, who appeared to include Anwar Ali, were harder to fathom. Khan’s mention of agents provocateurs entrapping young radicals had caught her attention, but on reflection it struck her as another baseless conspiracy theory. Khan was representing a lobby with a positive message to sell – that young British Muslims were good, responsible citizens – and this didn’t sit well with the proven fact that a few of their number had taken up arms against their country.

  ‘Is this the best those stingy bastards can do for you?’

  She looked up to see McAvoy rounding the corner of the building. The sound of the tractor had masked his footsteps.