by M. R. Hall
‘Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer, To heal your many ills . . . My Dark Rosaleen.’
She would see him again. She had to.
TWENTY-EIGHT
IT WAS FRIDAY MORNING. Gillian Golder and Simon More-ton sat alongside Alun Rhys at the reconvened secret inquest. They had come to ensure that the deal stuck. Only after lengthy and ill-tempered negotiations and having secured the personal approval of Mr Jamal and the Hassans, had Jenny grudgingly agreed to the terms: there would be no mention of Anna Rose Crosby or the ongoing investigation surrounding her; neither would there be any mention of Mrs Jamal or the continuing police inquiry into her suspected murder; and finally, as Dr Sarah Levin was in protective custody while she assisted the Security Services with their inquiries, her evidence was to be delivered by way of a statement to be read aloud to the jury. In return Golder had agreed that at the conclusion of the inquest Jenny would be fully briefed on why the secrecy measures had been necessary, and on what had become of Alec McAvoy.
Dr Andy Kerr produced detailed photographs of two complete skeletons, copies of which were shown to the horrified jury. He stated that DNA tests and dental records had confirmed that the remains were those of Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan. Both young men had met their deaths in a similar fashion: they had been shot through the base of the skull with a single nine-millimetre bullet. Each had an identical three-inch diameter exit wound on his forehead.
A ballistics expert, Dr Keith Dallas, confirmed that the same firearm had been used to kill both men. Two spent Corbon 115 gram DPX rounds had been recovered from the area near the bodies. These were hollow-tipped bullets designed to expand on impact: Nazim and Rafi’s brains would have been quite literally blown out of their skulls.
Neither Denton nor Havilland asked any questions of these witnesses, leaving Collins and Khan to extract every last gruesome detail. When there were no more physical horrors left to be exposed, Alison read Sarah Levin’s statement to the jury.
I am Dr Sarah Elizabeth Levin of 18C Ashwell Road, Bristol. This statement is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that if it is tendered in evidence I shall be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated in it anything I know to be false or do not believe to be true.
In October 2001 I was a first-year undergraduate student at Bristol university studying physics. Towards the end of that month I was attending a faculty drinks party when I was approached by an American man who introduced himself as Henry Silverman. Silverman said he was a Professor of Chemistry carrying out confidential research for an Anglo-American defence company. I would estimate he was in his early to mid-forties at the time. He was polite and charming and I was flattered by his attention.
Several days later Silverman telephoned me to ask if I could meet him to discuss a ‘professional matter’. He said my head of department, Professor Rhydian Brightman, had given him my number. I met him on a Friday evening after lectures in a café near Goldney Hall, where I was living at the time. It was during this meeting that he told me he was also helping to collect intelligence for the American government on British Muslim students suspected of being engaged in extremist activity. He said he was looking for a ‘bright young woman’ to work with, and that his employers could help me a great deal. He claimed to have helped other students gain scholarships to top American universities and said he could do the same for me. At that time my education was being funded through loans and I was tempted by the prospect of being able to pay off my debts and study abroad. I told Silverman I would think about it, and met him on one further occasion – at the Hotel du Vin restaurant in central Bristol – before agreeing to work for him.
During our third meeting, this time at a cafe in Whiteladies Road, he told me that he wanted me to pay special attention to Nazim Jamal, one of the students in my year group. He said that Nazim was involved with an organization called Hizb ut-Tahrir and that, along with other students, he was attending a radical mosque. I was told their mullah was a man named Sayeed Faruq, who was suspected of being a recruiting agent for terrorist groups. Silverman claimed that emails had been intercepted in which Nazim and a close friend of his – a law student by the name of Rafi Hassan – had discussed ways of ‘bringing off a British 9/11’. He admitted that it might just have been a case of young men fantasizing, but emphasized that they both exactly fitted the profile of those al-Qaeda was known to be recruiting. When I asked Silverman why he thought I could get close to Nazim, he replied that he liked to look at pretty blonde girls on the internet. I told Silverman right then that I had no intention of prostituting myself, but he assured me that wasn’t what he was asking of me – I was just to try to talk to and befriend him. He offered me £500 in cash and promised there would be more payments as and when I came up with information.
Getting close to Nazim proved easier than I had anticipated. I teamed up with him during a practical exercise in the lab and struck up a rapport. He wasn’t at all how I had expected. He’d been to a good school and it turned out that we had many interests in common. During the following weeks we worked a lot together and became genuinely fond of each other, although Nazim was uncomfortable about being seen with me in public. During the last week of term, at the beginning of December 2001, he invited me back to his room and we ended up spending the night together.
We kept in touch during the vacation and our relationship continued into the following term. By this time I had become extremely attached to Nazim and had almost allowed myself to forget how the relationship had started. But Silverman began calling me in January and pressing me for information. Over the course of the spring term Nazim and I became closer. We spent several nights a week together, although he was very conflicted over this and would get up to pray at dawn, even when I was in the room. He didn’t talk much to me about religion or politics, but I could see from the books he read and by checking the sites he visited on the internet that he had become very committed to the Islamist cause. Several times I overheard him talking to Asian friends about Israel and Palestine and the war in Afghanistan. On the few occasions I tried to speak to him about his beliefs, he would invariably change the subject and say that it was irrelevant or that I wouldn’t be interested. Increasingly, I got the feeling that he had two lives: one he shared with me, the other with his Asian friends, and he never allowed them to cross. As a result I didn’t have much to tell Silverman, who became frustrated by my lack of progress. He started phoning me most days, suggesting ways I could ask more questions. He even said I should talk to Nazim about converting to Islam.
I was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the situation, and quite frankly I was looking for a way out when, at the very end of term Nazim announced that he wanted to end our relationship. He wouldn’t give any reasons, but he was visibly upset. I remember thinking that it was almost as if he’d been found out and had been ordered to stay away from me.
I told Silverman what had happened and he was furious. He said he had other information that Nazim and several friends had been discussing an attack on one of the four nuclear power stations along the Severn estuary. They’d been followed one weekend driving to Hinkley Point, then on to Maybury. He ordered me not to take no for an answer. By this time I was really frightened of him and had no one to turn to for help.
At the start of the summer term I tried to get back with Nazim, but he became hostile towards me, telling me to stay away from him. Silverman responded by giving me several miniature listening devices and told me I had to hide them in Nazim’s room. That was the one time I did prostitute myself. I went to see him late in the evening and begged him to let me in. We spent the night together, but he made me swear not to tell anyone. The next morning he was in tears: he’d missed his dawn prayers and he blamed me. He said I was a whore and had been sent by the devil to tempt him. He was very emotional and left the room while I got dressed. I was angry with him and disgusted with myself. I locked the door and searched though his papers. I found a pad on which he’d
taken down notes at one of his religious meetings and discovered that at the back of it he’d written a list of times and places. I remember the first entry: it was Avonmouth fuel depot. I photographed the page with a miniature digital camera Silverman had given me.
He was delighted with the list and said it was evidence that Nazim and his friends were planning to hijack a fuel tanker and crash it into one of the four power stations. He even speculated that they were planning multiple hijacks and hoping to blow a hole in the side of a reactor. He wanted to know more. I told him the relationship had broken down, but he insisted I get as close to Nazim as I could. No detail was too small – changes in mood, the slightest alteration in appearance – he wanted to know everything.
I did what I was asked. Throughout June I contacted Silver-man nearly every day. I observed Nazim become increasingly distracted and withdrawn. He missed lectures and classes. He wouldn’t speak to me or any of the other students. I became concerned and asked Silverman what was going to happen to Nazim. He wouldn’t answer. He just told me to keep reporting.
By mid-June I had convinced myself that Nazim was genuinely involved in a terrorist conspiracy. Then something happened to change my mind. Out of the blue he stopped me in the corridor – I think it was on the 24th – and said that he was sorry he had behaved so badly towards me. His mood had completely altered: it was the first time I’d seen him smile in weeks. I asked if he was OK. He said he was fine. He touched my hand and then walked away. We never spoke again.
On Saturday 29 June 2002 Silverman phoned and arranged to pick me up outside Goldney Hall. He drove me up to Bristol Downs and handed me an envelope containing £5,000. He told me that Nazim and Rafi Hassan had been arrested – he didn’t say by whom – and that I wasn’t to say a word to anyone. He didn’t make any specific threats, but he didn’t need to: his manner told me everything I needed to know.
About a week later he called again and instructed me to give a statement to the police, saying that I had overheard Nazim talking to Asian friends in the canteen about going to fight in Afghanistan. He told me to keep it short. I didn’t dare disobey him.
He contacted me once more in late July. He said he was leaving the country to work abroad but that he’d hold good to his promise. In the first term of my third year I was sent an application form to apply for a Stevenson scholarship to Harvard. I was successful: I studied there for three years and gained a doctorate in 2007.
I have no knowledge of what happened to Nazim Jamal or Rafi Hassan. From the little that Silverman told me, I formed the impression that they had been arrested by the Security Services. As I became better informed about the political situation, I speculated that they had been taken into custody by the US authorities and removed to a foreign country, but I have no evidence for this.
I am now in the protective custody of the British Security Services and make this statement freely, willingly and am receiving no reward or favour in exchange.
Khan shot to his feet.
‘Ma’am,’ he said, with an expression of complete incredulity, ‘are you honestly proposing that the contents of this statement cannot be reported or made known to anyone outside the immediate families of the deceased? If what Dr Levin says is true, words cannot describe the depth of corruption that this represents.’
Collins, sitting alongside him, nodded in agreement. Havilland shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Martha Denton wore an expression of impassive detachment.
‘I’m not proposing anything, Mr Khan. How each of us behaves with a gun pressed to our heads is a matter of individual conscience.’
Khan was defiant. ‘I refuse to be silenced. I intend to make the evidence we have heard public by whatever means possible.’
Jenny felt the eyes of Golder, Rhys and Moreton on her. She realized that the wall of silence that had been erected around her proceedings would never be breached. Immediate imprisonment awaited any newspaper editor or broadcaster who disobeyed the order. If Khan wanted to spread the word he would be restricted to megaphone and soapbox or an obscure extra-territorial corner of the internet, where he would compete for attention with the cranks and conspiracy theorists.
‘You must do as you see fit, Mr Khan,’ Jenny said, and began her summing up to the jury.
A sense of anticlimax greeted the verdict of unlawful killing. There was no sense of a blow being struck for justice, no surge of satisfaction that the truth would now be made known to a waiting world. Rather it was a guilty, furtive moment in which everyone in the room felt as if they had tacitly participated in the concealment of an evil too monstrous and powerful to confront. The uneasy feeling of complicity was completed when Jenny reminded the jury that every last word they had heard must remain absolutely secret, even from their immediate familes.
She couldn’t decide whether she had uncovered the truth, or buried it more deeply.
As the jurors shuffled from their seats, she looked across at Mr Jamal. He wiped tears from his cheek, gave her a brief nod of acceptance, and made his way to the back of the hall, where police officers waited to escort him to his car. It was cold comfort, but she sensed he was glad there would be no publicity.
Not so Khan. He burst outside and announced to waiting supporters that their brothers had been murdered by American and British agents. A minor riot broke out. There were scuffles and arrests, cracked heads and screams of pain, but no reporters to witness them.
Jenny met Golder and Rhys in the restaurant at the bird sanctuary. They sat by the window overlooking the pond. The light was fading from a brilliant sky and the flamingos wading in the water gleamed fluorescent pink.
‘Do you like birds?’ Gillian Golder asked, stirring sweetener into milky tea.
‘Most kinds. Don’t you?’
‘As long as they’re not grubby,’ Golder said. ‘I think all the pigeons in London should be exterminated.’
‘I rather admire their tenacity.’
Alun Rhys cut in, ‘What do you want to know, Mrs Cooper?’
Jenny sipped her tepid coffee. There was so much she wanted to be told, and she trusted them so little.
‘Who is Silverman?’
Golder answered. ‘As far as we can ascertain he was an American agent operating outside the usual channels of cooperation. He appeared to have access to our intelligence, but we knew nothing of him or his activities.’
‘You’re denying all knowledge of him?’
‘They were fearful times. The Americans were understandably jumpy and we had let the grass grow under our feet rather. Not that that’s any justification for summary killing, I grant you.’
Jenny remained sceptical. ‘If they thought they’d identified terrorists, why not just hand them over to you or fly them out of the country?’
Golder and Rhys exchanged a look. Golder said, ‘We’re still working on that. All we have at present is the little Alec McAvoy told us. Apparently Tathum confessed that he and his colleague – since killed in Iraq, if that’s any consolation – brought the two boys straight from Bristol to the woods, where they were met by Silverman. He interrogated them for most of the night, extracted nothing except denials, then shot Hassan as an incentive to Jamal. Seemingly it didn’t have the desired effect.’
‘You’re in contact with McAvoy?’ Jenny tried not to show her excitement.
‘He made a single call to the police. There’s been no other communication.’
‘Will he be prosecuted?’
The loyal Crown servants exchanged another glance. ‘That’s a decision that depends on many factors,’ Rhys said, ‘not least of which is whether he’s still alive. The police found a vehicle yesterday which we think may be his.’
‘Where?’
‘Just along the estuary from here, at Aust, near the bridge.’
Jenny gazed out at the birds and told herself it was a ruse on McAvoy’s part. He was buying time, that was all, throwing them off the scent while he worked out his next move. He wouldn’t leave her now, he had promised . .
.
Golder’s harsh, businesslike voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘We’re informed by the police that he’s also wanted in connection with another suspected killing. He recently orchestrated the defence of a Czech nightclub owner by the name of Marek Stich, who shot dead a young traffic policeman but got a miraculous not guilty. Stich’s girlfriend went missing shortly before his trial. She was Ukrainian. Apparently CID are working on the theory that hers was the body that was famously stolen from your local mortuary last week.’
‘That can’t be right . . .’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ Gillian Golder said, ‘I suggest you talk to the police.’
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t have . . . But why else would he have come to view the Jane Doe that day? She remembered now: he had told her a story about a client with a missing daughter which he never repeated again. It was a fiction – his client was Stich. He must have sent McAvoy to identify the corpse that had unkindly washed back up on the tide. But that wasn’t illegal, it wasn’t complicity, it was just what criminal lawyers did for their clients. McAvoy would have had nothing to do with the murder or with the theft of a body.
‘I presume you’d like our thoughts on Mrs Jamal?’ Golder interrupted her reverie.
‘Yes,’ Jenny said, distracted.
‘We’re assuming Silverman was involved in her death. Our best guess is that the prospect of a public inquest rattled him somewhat. From what we gather he’s not the most stable of individuals. We’ve no concrete evidence that he forced her to strip naked and drink half a bottle of whisky, but it seems as likely an explanation as any.’
‘Why? She didn’t know anything.’
‘She might have known about Dr Levin. She might have approached her, prodded her conscience, got her to talk.’
‘But he knew Levin. He could have talked to her directly.’
