by M. R. Hall
A further email arrived as she was clicking away from Murphy’s. It was from Gillian Golder copying a link to an article on BRISIC’s website. She signed off, All best, Gillian. The piece was written anonymously under the headline, ‘Coroner Adjourns Inquest into the Disappeared’. The unnamed writer speculated that government agencies had been panicked by the speed at which the inquest had commenced and had stepped in to bring a halt to proceedings before any compromising evidence came to light. The author cited unsourced rumours alleging the existence of shady agents provocateurs who were said to have induced young British Asian men to go abroad, where they were secretly arrested and imprisoned. The final paragraph ended:
Don’t expect the coroner’s inquest to tell us anything we don’t already know. The small window of opportunity has closed. Mrs Cooper has given in to pressure and denied the grieving families and their communities their one chance of discovering the truth.
For a brief moment Jenny toyed with the idea of trusting Gillian Golder, even with asking her to help hunt down the Toyota and its occupants. The familiarity of the brief email had disarmed her into believing they were on the same side, that she wasn’t alone after all. She checked herself. Golder was a spy for God’s sake, a professional deceiver. Her job was to forge false friendships and make the isolated feel loved.
She replied tersely: Thank you. Contents noted.
Her immediate task was to review the evidence and decide where to put her limited energies. She fetched out the legal pad on which she’d made a note of the testimony she’d heard on the first day of her inquest and read it through. She had an uneasy feeling about Anwar Ali. He was close to BRISIC and something in his demeanour had suggested that, despite appearances, he was still the Islamist he had been eight years before. Until she’d heard Madog’s story, she had assumed Ali’s role might have been to hook Nazim and Rafi up with a third party who had helped them to leave the country. Several more outlandish possibilities now presented themselves. One was that Ali was working for the government, spotting and informing on potential radicals. It seemed unlikely, but she was aware she was entering a world where the normal rules didn’t apply.
Dani James was less mysterious, but her evidence raised troubling questions. The fact that she had slept with Nazim days before his disappearance chimed with Mrs Jamal’s account of the change she’d seen in her son. What didn’t fit was McAvoy’s memory of Mrs Jamal mentioning her suspicion of a previous relationship. Everything Mrs Jamal had told her to date suggested that Nazim had become pious and outwardly observant during his first term at Bristol. Yet his behaviour late the following June seemed to be that of a young man freshly released from doctrinal bonds.
She needed to talk to Mrs Jamal again. Strictly speaking, the proper course would have been to recall her to the witness box to deal with McAvoy’s recollection. In reality, Jenny knew that she was far more likely to open up in private. It would be easy to hide behind the rules and let the law take its course, but the same instinct which had prompted her to take the case in the first instance wouldn’t let her. This was one occasion on which the law could take second place to what felt right.
Amira Jamal lived in a modern five-storey building on a leafy, comfortable street north of the city centre. She buzzed Jenny through the main door and met her by the lift on the third floor, dressed soberly in a dark suit and long batik scarf. She led her into a small, tidy apartment, where they sat in the living room surrounded by mementos of Nazim’s brief life. In her short career as coroner Jenny had already lost track of the number of homes she had visited that were maintained as private shrines to lost loved ones. The only unusual feature was a shelf lined with neatly labelled box files, all of which related in some way to Nazim’s disappearance and the long slog of letter writing that had followed in its wake. A small desk was set up beneath it. On it were a laptop, assorted papers and a book entitled A Family’s Guide to Coroners’ Inquests.
Mrs Jamal had made tea and set out her best china. She poured Jenny a cup with a shaky hand. ‘I’m sorry for how I was on the phone, Mrs Cooper. Sometimes I just can’t stop myself.’
‘I understand.’
‘I see his face when he was a little boy. It’s as if I’m still holding him . . .’
‘You seem better today.’
‘I did what you told me, went to the doctor. She gave me some pills.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve never taken drugs in my life.’
Jenny picked up her teacup and placed it down again, finding the situation even more uncomfortable than she’d anticipated. ‘Mrs Jamal, there are a couple of questions—’
‘I have one first, Mrs Cooper. Why did you stop the inquest – the real reason?’
‘It’s not stopped, it’s adjourned until Monday. Your former solicitor, Mr McAvoy, told me about something I ought to investigate.’
A look of alarm bordering on terror spread across Mrs Jamal’s face. ‘What?’
‘I’m telling you this on the strict understanding that it goes no further than this room. Do I have your word on that?’
‘Yes . . .’
‘You remember that, before he went to prison, he hired a private investigator who found an old lady who claimed to have seen a black Toyota outside her house along the road from the halaqah?’
‘I spoke to that man, Mr Dean – he said she was confused. She might even have got the night wrong.’
‘She didn’t. Mr Dean was probably trying not to raise your hopes . . . About six months later McAvoy asked him to follow it up. He found a toll collector on the old Severn Bridge. I spoke to him yesterday. A black Toyota came past his booth on the night of 28 June 2002. He remembers two white men in the front, two young Asian men in the back. He said they seemed frightened.’
‘Who is this man? Why didn’t he say any of this before?’ Mrs Jamal asked, breathless with shock.
‘It seems he was intimidated. I can’t be sure he’s telling the truth, but he claims one of the men in the front of the car tracked him down the following week and assaulted his young granddaughter – sprayed her hair with paint.’
Mrs Jamal held her head in her hands. ‘I don’t understand . . . Why now? Who was driving this car?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
‘You say Mr McAvoy knew? I never trusted that man.’
‘Only some of it. Mr Dean died when Mr McAvoy was in prison.’
Mrs Jamal reached for a box of tissues.
‘I know it’s a lot for you to deal with,’ Jenny said, ‘but Mr McAvoy also remembers you mentioning that Nazim might have had a girlfriend before Dani James.’
‘My son never touched her. She’s a prostitute. She’s staining his memory.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You heard what she said – she had a disease.’
‘It could be important. Did you tell Mr McAvoy about another girl?’
She fell silent and held a Kleenex to her eyes.
‘It’s no disgrace, really it isn’t. It’s what young people do.’
‘Not my people.’
‘Mrs Jamal, I can’t conduct an inquest without all the information . . . You do have a legal duty to assist me.’
‘You’ve come here to threaten me?’
‘Of course not.’
Mrs Jamal blew her nose loudly. ‘All these questions. What’s the point? You don’t know who’s lying. None of us can.’ She lifted her gaze to a portrait photo of Nazim aged sixteen or thereabouts: a boy posing as a man. He had wide, soulful eyes and smooth, dark, unblemished skin. He was almost seraphic.
‘I’d have fallen for him, so other girls must have,’ Jenny said.
She waited for Mrs Jamal to recover herself.
There was a long, unbroken stretch of silence before Mrs Jamal said, ‘I don’t know what she was to Nazim. It was near the end of his first term. He’d left his phone here. A girl called and asked for him.’
‘Did she say her name?’
‘No.’
<
br /> ‘What did she sound like?’
‘About his age. Well spoken. White.’
‘You could tell she was white?’
‘Of course.’
‘How do you know she wasn’t just a friend?’
‘When she heard my voice, she sounded guilty, as if I’d caught her out. She ended the call very quickly.’
‘Did you ever mention this to Nazim?’
Mrs Jamal shook her head. Jenny saw in her face something almost bleaker than grief – the thought of her son loving another woman more than her.
‘I’m going to need to find out more about Nazim’s life at that time. Do you think Rafi Hassan might have told his family anything?’
‘They won’t help you. They blame Nazim. I know they do. The looks his mother gave me, she might as well have spat in my face.’
‘I think I’ll go there this afternoon. I’ll let you know if they have anything to say.’
Mrs Jamal shrugged.
Jenny sensed that the meeting had reached an end. The air was growing thicker with emotion with every passing second. But there was one more question, ridiculous as it seemed, that she felt obliged to ask. ‘When you gave evidence, you claim to have been followed in the street—’
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Tell me what happened.’ Jenny gave a comforting smile. ‘Please.’
‘It started about two months ago when I filed the case with the County Court to get Nazim declared dead. A car would come and sit across the road. There were two men inside it, sometimes just one. Young men, in suits. I could see their faces from there.’ She pointed over her shoulder to the French window that opened onto a small balcony at the side of the building. ‘They were there when I left the house. Sometimes they’d follow in their car, sometimes on foot.’
Keeping her scepticism hidden, Jenny said, ‘What did they look like?’
‘Twenty-five to thirty. White. Both tall and with short hair, shaved at the sides – like the army.’
‘Could you tell them apart?’
‘Not really.’
‘Have you seen them recently?’
Mrs Jamal shook her head. ‘Not this week. But I still have phone calls in the night. It rings four, five times, then goes off. If I answer, there’s no one there . . . Who do you think they are, Mrs Cooper?’
Imaginary demons, Jenny thought: white devils that look like soldiers.
Instead of the usual battle with rising, claustrophobic anxiety she fought when driving along a motorway, she felt at once removed from herself. Detached. It wasn’t just the chemical veil of her medication still lying heavily across her halfway through the day; it was a sense of building unreality. There were so many unanswered questions, so many bizarre and alarming possibilities, that she couldn’t make sufficient sense of things to find her way through them. Why would Nazim have been sleeping with a white girl at the height of his religious enthusiasm? Who was the man with the ponytail? Did he even exist? Was Mrs Jamal a fantasist? Was McAvoy? And why did he cast such a long shadow over her, his face hovering constantly at the back of her mind?
What was he saying to her?
She didn’t have answers to any of it. It was as if she had stepped onto a moving walkway from which there was no exit, only a destination that remained an indistinct pinprick in the far distance. The spirit was moving her, as McAvoy might have said, and she had no choice in the matter.
Hassan’s Grocery and Off-Licence had grown into a small supermarket specializing in Asian and West Indian foods. It was housed in what had once been a filling station, the forecourt now a customer car park. The dowdy area of Kings Heath, a sprawl of identical, faintly grubby Victorian terraces, was showing signs of going up-market. Jenny parked next to a shiny Mercedes, out of which climbed an Asian couple in matching his and hers leather jackets. Their infant daughter wore a pink one in the same style.
Jenny approached a teenage employee carting cases of cheap beer and asked him where she could find Mr Hassan. Only once she’d convinced him that she wasn’t a tax inspector did he go in search of his boss. He reappeared shortly afterwards with the unconvincing explanation that Mr Hassan had gone out to a meeting and wasn’t expected back until much later. Jenny glanced along the aisle to an office at the back, which was shielded from the shoppers by a pane of one-way glass, and told the assistant fine, but insisted he leave her card on Mr Hassan’s desk with instructions to call her as soon as he returned. In the meantime she’d see if she couldn’t speak to Mrs Hassan at home.
The young man’s expression sharpened. ‘What’s this about exactly?’
‘Something that happened eight years ago – his son went missing.’
‘You mean Rafi?’
‘Did you know him?’
‘I’ll give Mr Hassan the message,’ he said, quickly adding, ‘when he gets back.’
She hadn’t yet turned the key in the ignition when her phone rang. She waited for several seconds before answering, letting him sweat.
‘Hello, Jenny Cooper.’
‘Imran Hassan. What can I do for you?’
‘Would you rather not talk in front of your staff? If possible, I’d like to speak to your wife, too.’
The Hassans had made money. Their home was a large detached property in the affluent suburb of Solihull with a tarmac drive and electric gates flanked by a pair of stone lions. Mr Hassan, a man in his mid-sixties, drove a Jaguar. Quiet, well spoken and faultlessly polite, he led her inside to meet his wife, a still handsome woman dressed in an elegant black and gold embroidered salwar kameez. After formal introductions they sat in a warm conservatory surrounded by half an acre of formal garden, in the middle of which stood an ornate fountain fringed with palms: a golden carp spewed water into a pool lit with coloured lights.
Mrs Hassan said, ‘We’ve been expecting this, Mrs Cooper, but we have nothing of any use to tell you. We have long ago resigned ourselves to never knowing what became of our son.’
Her husband nodded in uncertain agreement.
‘I’ve no wish to stir up painful memories without good cause,’ Jenny said, ‘and I appreciate it’s not your son’s disappearance I’m investigating, but I’d be grateful if you would tolerate a few questions.’
‘Certainly,’ Mr Hassan said before his wife could protest.
Mrs Hassan glowered. ‘The police said Rafi went abroad. I’m happy to take their word. But it was not his idea. He was a good student and a loyal son.’
Jenny said, ‘Did you notice any change in him after he went to university? His religious beliefs, his appearance?’
‘I’m sure Mrs Jamal has told you all this. It was her son who took him to that mosque. This is a Sufi family. Politics has no place in religion – that’s what he was brought up to believe.’
Mr Hassan nodded. Dressed in a dark business suit and clean shaven, he showed no outward signs of observance. His store sold alcohol; they lived in a white neighbourhood.
‘When did this change in him occur?’ Jenny said. ‘Was it during his first term at Bristol?’
‘They put ideas in his head,’ Mrs Hassan said sharply. ‘He was going to be a lawyer—’
‘Yes,’ her husband interjected, ‘it was during the first term. We believed it would be a phase. All young men need ideals, mine was creating a business. We hoped it would pass.’
‘But it didn’t?’
‘Whoever these people were he’d been involved with, they poisoned them against their families, Mrs Cooper,’ Mrs Hassan said. ‘They convinced him our values were wrong. He came home for a week before Christmas and that was it. He stayed at college the rest of the time.’
‘Where? Weren’t the student halls closed out of term time?’
‘With friends was all he’d tell us.’
‘You must have been worried.’
‘We have six children,’ Mr Hassan said. ‘We worry about each of them.’
Jenny noticed the couple exchange a glance, which she interpreted as Mr Hassan ur
ging his wife not to let emotion overcome her. There was anger in her face, a need to cast blame.
‘What did your son say about Nazim?’ Jenny said.
‘Until they disappeared, we hadn’t even heard his name,’ Mr Hassan said.
She aimed her next question directly at his wife. ‘So why do you say that he was the one who led your son astray?’
‘They were friends – that’s what the police found out. They went to mosque together, and these meetings.’
Jenny pushed Mrs Hassan for further explanation but she could offer none. She had it fixed in her mind that Rafi had gravitated towards a fellow Muslim and fallen under his negative spell. Jenny asked for more detail of Rafi’s behaviour during his time at university but was met with shrugs and shakes of the head. There had obviously been a confrontation in the early part of the Christmas vacation which still remained painfully unresolved.
‘How often did you speak to your son between January and June?’ Jenny asked them both.
Mr Hassan stared at the tabletop, leaving his wife to respond.
‘I telephoned him a few times,’ she said. ‘Every week or two, to tell him we loved him, that we were still here for him.’
‘It sounds almost as if he’d disowned you.’
‘He was simply rebelling. That’s what the young do in this country, isn’t it? It comes with the luxury of not having to go out to work each day.’
Her husband nodded solemnly in agreement.
