The Disappeared jc-2

by M. R. Hall

  'In the same university?'

  'That's where he had the contacts,' Golder said. 'But we think his big idea this time was rather different.' She paused for a moment to weigh her words. 'Let's just say that, despite outward appearances, certain of our American cousins still harbour a residual frustration with Britistan, as they like to call us. They think we still need shocking out of what they see as our complacency over the radical elements among our Muslim population. Anna Rose was to be less of an informer and more of an agent provocateur.'

  Golder gave Jenny a look as if to say that was as far as she was prepared to go.

  Jenny wasn't satisfied. 'He was using her to set up Salim Hussain. She was to pretend she could get hold of the ingredients for a dirty bomb, but they actually came from Silverman. Then what . . . she took fright and ran?'

  'You understand that we're not at liberty to disclose.'

  'What does Silverman want? What's his agenda? He surely wasn't going to let a radioactive bomb go off?'

  I wouldn't have thought so, no, but the propaganda value would have been, well . . . immeasurable. And I'm sure our American colleagues would have been more than happy to advise us on the necessary cleansing measures to prevent any future occurrence.'

  'What's happened to him? Have you got him, too?'

  Gillian Golder glanced at her watch. 'I'm afraid we have to go.' She gulped a mouthful of tea and stood up from the table. She told Rhys she'd see him outside and headed for the ladies' room.

  Faintly embarrassed, Rhys said, 'Regarding Mr McAvoy, you wouldn't know who this might be for, would you? It was found in his car.'

  He produced a clear plastic evidence bag from his jacket pocket which contained a folded scrap of lined paper. Written in an elegant cursive hand in ink that might have been spattered by rain or teardrops, were the words, 'My Dark Rosaleen'.

  'May I?'

  'Of course,' Rhys said, awkwardly. He opened the bag and handed her the note.

  She turned away from him, pretending to need the vestiges of daylight afforded by the window to read it. The verses were set out with copybook neatness:

  Roll forth, my love, like the rushing river,

  That sweeps along to the mighty sea;

  God will inspire me while I deliver,

  My soul of thee!

  Tell thou the world, when my bones lie whitening

  Amid the last homes of youth and eld,

  That once there was whose veins ran lightning

  No eye beheld.

  Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble,

  Deep in your bosoms: there let him dwell.

  He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble,

  Here and in hell.

  'Does it mean anything to you, Mrs Cooper?' Rhys said. 'Mrs Cooper . . . ?'

  Throughout Saturday Alison drip-fed Jenny snippets of information gleaned from ex-colleagues in CID. She learned that photographs of Marek Stich's missing girlfriend appeared to match those of the Jane Doe, and that Stich himself had been arrested on suspicion of murder and conspiracy to commit arson. McAvoy was being sought as an accomplice to the 'unlawful concealment, disposal or destruction' of a corpse. There had been no activity on his credit cards or bank account for forty-eight hours and his phone hadn't been used since his final call to Pironi. There were unconfirmed reports of a smartly dressed middle-aged man seen walking along the public walkway at the edge of the Severn Bridge late on Friday morning, but no one had witnessed a suicide. The clever money in CID was still on him turning up in a few weeks' time to cut a deal: immunity from prosecution in exchange for giving evidence against Stich.

  But Jenny sensed he had gone; not out of self-pity or despair but willingly to receive his judgement. Just how he had touched her, just what his brief presence in her life had meant she couldn't yet discern, but that she soon would she had no doubt.

  Epilogue

  Jenny crossed the yard at Steve's farm. She found him at work in the vegetable garden behind the barn, a flurry of hungry birds scrapping over the worms and insects he'd turned up in the black earth. He was too absorbed in the physicality of his task to notice her leaning on the rail watching him. He'd dug a whole row before a sixth sense made him glance over his shoulder.

  'Jenny, how long have you been there?' He wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his plaid work shirt.

  'A while. You looked like you were miles away.'

  'I was.' He planted the spade in the soil and wandered over.

  'I'm sorry not to have been in touch,' she said. 'You left a message days ago. I got caught up with things at the office.'

  'I guessed as much.'

  He leaned against the opposite side of the fence, out of touching distance she noticed, squinting against the sharp stabs of winter sunlight. He'd lost weight, the skin drawn tight against his jawbone, a slight hollowness to his eyes. He seemed pensive.

  'Ross still with his dad?' Steve said.

  'Yes ... I don't know, maybe he's better off in town for the time being. I'm not much company for him.'

  'You said David took him.'

  'It was my fault . . . Ross found me in a bit of a state one night. Had to put me to bed.'

  Steve picked at a splinter on the weather-worn fence rail. 'You want to talk about it?'

  'You must be sick of me coming to you for therapy. It's about time I got a grip on myself.'

  He looked up at her. 'Can I say something?'

  She nodded.

  'It makes you tense having him around. It's as if the responsibility frightens you,'

  She shrugged. 'It does. He's my son.'

  'What are you frightened off?'

  Jenny shook her head, feeling the tightness in her throat that meant she was resisting tears. 'If I knew that. . .'

  Steve moved towards her and brushed her face gently with his hand. 'You don't need to get a grip, Jenny, you need to let go.'

  'Yeah, right - an emotionally incontinent coroner. That'd inspire confidence.'

  'You've got to try . . . And I think you want to.'

  He ran his hand through her hair and stroked her neck, grazed her cheek with his lips.

  It felt good to be close again, to feel the warmth of his skin.

  Jenny said, 'On your message you said there was something you wanted to say.'

  'There is . . . but I wasn't expecting . . .'

  He closed his eyes, trying to find the words.

  'I don't know how you feel,' Steve said, 'whether you want to be with me or . . . but I want to be with you, Jenny. I've spent months trying not to say it, but I have to. I'm in love with you.'

  She was shocked. 'You don't mean that.'

  'You've got enough to deal with without me saying things

  I don't mean.' He kissed her lightly on the forehead. 'There, I've said it. Over to you.'

  He stepped away and picked up his spade. 'I promised myself I'd finish this section before lunch. Do you want to stay?'

  'I'm meant to be going to see my father.'

  'Oh ... I didn't know he was still around.'

  'He's in a nursing home in Weston. There's something I need to ask him about the past. Doctor's orders.'

  'Then you'd better go . . . But if you're going to turn me down, I'd rather you put me out of my misery now.'

  Jenny looked up at the ice blue sky. 'I could come back afterwards.'

  'Will you stay?'

  'Yes. I'd like that ... It feels like a day for a new beginning.'

  For the previous five years Brian Cooper's life had been an eight-by-ten single room on the second floor of a large pebble-dashed villa a short walk from the sea front. He was only seventy-three years old and physically in robust health, but dementia had struck during his mid-sixties and his second wife, a woman for whom Jenny had never had any affection, took less than a year to dump him in the home and find another man to take her on cheap Mediterranean cruises. There had been plenty of visitors at first, but as Brian's lucid moments became rarer they dried up to a dutiful trickle
. Jenny hadn't seen him since Christmas Eve, when he'd thrown his dinner at the television, believing it was his first wife, Jenny's mother, reading the evening news.

  The nurse warned her that she might find him a little quiet. He was taking new tablets to help control his increasingly erratic and explosive moods. Jenny felt in no position to criticize.

  She tapped on the door and pushed it open.

  'Hi, Dad.'

  He was sitting in his shirtsleeves, his armchair facing the window which looked out onto the street below. He was clean and shaved, his hair cut neatly.

  'Dad? It's Jenny.'

  She came to the corner of the bed by his chair and sat down.

  'I haven't seen you for a while. How are you?'

  His eyes flicked suspiciously towards her; his mouth started to move, but he made no sound. Then, seeming to lose interest, he turned his gaze towards a seagull which had landed on the windowsill clutching a crust of burger bun in its beak. He smiled.

  Jenny said, 'You're looking well. How are you feeling?'

  There was no answer. There seldom was, but the specialist had told her to keep talking to him like an adult as long as she could bear to. There was always a chance that some of it might be going in, he had said; she would know when he stopped comprehending entirely. Jenny looked for signs of recognition and saw a childlike quality in his face; almost playful as he gazed at the gull tearing at the scrap it had pinned beneath its foot.

  'Dad, I need to ask you something. I've been trying to remember some things about when I was little. I thought it would be good to record them for Ross, put them together with some of the old photographs - something he can show his kids one day.'

  Brian nodded, as if he understood perfectly well.

  She dipped into her handbag and brought out several old Polaroids she'd dug out from a shoebox earlier that morning.

  She showed them to him: pictures of her on a swing aged four or five in the back garden of their house, Brian smiling, pushing her with one hand, a cigarette in the other.

  'I remember you putting that up. It was a birthday present, wasn't it?'

  'Yes, that was your birthday. You were a little smiler. Look at you.' He took the photograph from her and stared at it.

  Jenny felt a surge of excitement. 'You remember that?'

  'That was the dress my mother made you. She slaved over that, cost her eyesight, she said.'

  They were well-worn phrases, words she'd heard a thousand times before, but they'd been prompted by the pictures, not thrown up at random like most of what little he offered these days. She had to strike while she could.

  'Oh damn, I must have forgotten to put it in. There was one I found with Katy written on the back. I couldn't think who she was . . .'

  'Cousin Katy?'

  Cousin? Jenny could only think of three first cousins, all of whom were boys.

  'Katy's my cousin? You're sure?'

  'Jim and Penny's little girl.'

  Jim and Penny were Brian's brother and his wife. They only had one child, a son who was ten years younger than Jenny.

  'I don't think that can be right, Dad.'

  Brian dropped the photograph on the floor. 'You wouldn't get a cup of tea in this place if you were dying of thirst.'

  Jenny picked it up. 'I don't remember a Katy. Jim and Penny only had Christopher, didn't they?'

  'Oily bastard all dressed up in his suit and tie. Your mother thought he had money. Hah!'

  Another familiar, but this time disconnected refrain – he was referring to the estate agent who had run off with Jenny's mother.

  'I'm not talking about Mum now,' Jenny said. 'What happened to Cousin Katy?'

  A second gull joined the first on the windowsill and snatched the remainder of the bun from its beak. Brian chuckled.

  'Dad, it's important. I need to know.'

  His eyes faded and seemed to mist over.

  'Dad, please try.'

  She took hold of his arm and shook it. He wrenched it away, the muscles in his forearms hard as iron.

  'You remember, Smiler,' he said. 'You killed her.'

  Acknowledgements

  Writing a first book is an act of pure speculation. So what if it doesn't work, you say to yourself; at least I gave it a try. Writing a second, with a deadline to meet and people waiting expectantly for your manuscript, is a different enterprise entirely. Fortunately for me those people have been unfailingly supportive and encouraging. Special thanks go to Greg Hunt, my straight-talking screen-writing agent, who propelled me into writing novels with the unerring assertion that 'no one takes you seriously until you've written a book', and to Zoe Waldie, my literary agent, who has given me nothing but faultlessly sound advice. Huge thanks also to Maria Rejt, my publisher and editor at Macmillan, who has many fine gifts including the rare ability to convey her great wisdom in the subtlest and most respectful of ways, and also to all her friendly and highly professional team.

  I would also like to thank my colourful and lively family and extended family, all of whom lend their unconditional support. In particular, my mother and stepfather, writers both, are always there with an understanding of what it takes to return day after day to the lonely task of putting one word after another, and my father, a musician, has consistently proved to me that a level head can rest on artistic shoulders. My wife and sons, daily spectators to the many ups and downs of the writer's life, make everything possible.

  Ed Husain's book The Islamist (Penguin, London, 2007) was a great help in understanding the mind of the young Muslim radical. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to comprehend how young men raised in the West can be seduced by ugly extremism and also be delivered from it.

  Finally, thanks to all those friends and former colleagues in the legal profession upon whom I rely for their experience and anecdotes, especially James Mclntyre, who leave me in no doubt that truth is always stranger than fiction.

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  M.R. Hall

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