The Disappeared (4 page)

Despite
protests from both families, the police remained reluctant to investigate. Mrs
Jamal was writing to her local councillor and MP, desperate for help, when she
had a visit at home from two young men, one white, one Asian, who said they
worked for the Security Services. They said they suspected that Nazim and Rafi
had become involved with Hizbut-Tahrir and that they had been observed by the
police attending a radical halaqah.

'It
was the first I'd heard of it, although I'd suspected something like this,' Mrs
Jamal said, 'but I didn't want it to be true. I put those thoughts out of my
mind. They kept asking me questions. They wouldn't believe I didn't know about
what he got up to at college. They virtually accused me of lying to protect
him.'

'What
did they think had happened to him?'

'They
kept asking whether he'd mentioned going to Afghanistan, whether he'd talked
about al-Qaeda. I told them he'd never said anything like that. Never, never.'

'They
thought he and Rafi might have gone abroad to train with extremists?'

'That's
what they said. But his passport was still at his father's house.'

'And
Rafi's?

'He
didn't even have one. And they went through all their bank records - there was
nothing suspicious.'

'Did
either of them use their bank accounts or credit cards after the 28th?'

'No.
They just vanished. Disappeared.'

Jenny
felt a jolt of anxiety pass through her, the feeling of mental constriction
that was the first stage of panic. She took a breath, relaxed her limbs, trying
to let the sensation drain away. 'Did you ever find out anything more?'

'Two
weeks later, a man named Simon Donovan gave a statement to the police saying
that he was on a train to London on the morning of the 29th and saw two young
Asian men who met their description. Both with beards and traditional dress, he
said. His statement's in the file. This made the police think they had gone
abroad, so they spoke again to all the students at the hall. A girl called
Sarah Levin claimed she'd once heard Rafi say something in the canteen about
"brothers" who were going to Afghanistan.' Mrs Jamal shook her head
adamantly. 'He wouldn't have done that, Mrs Cooper. I know my own son. He
wouldn't have done that.'

Jenny
thought of Ross, of having to fetch him from school last summer when he was
high on cannabis; of his unpredictable moods and occasional outbursts of
staggering hurtfulness. She thought she knew the sensitive boy underneath, but
sometimes she wondered; sometimes it occurred to her that we can't truly know
even those closest to us.

'What
did the police do with this information?' Jenny said.

'They
looked for evidence, but they didn't find any. They said they would have left
the country on false papers, gone to Pakistan.'

'Did
they check passenger lists? It's not easy to get through an airport unnoticed.'

'They
told us they checked everything. They even said they could have gone through
another European country, or

Africa
or the Middle East ... I don't know.' The energy had drained from her. She
seemed a smaller, more fragile figure than before.

'How
did it end?'

'We
had a letter in December 2002. The police said they had done everything they
could and that the most likely explanation was that they had gone abroad with
an Islamist group. That was all. Nothing more. Nothing.'

'What
about the mosque and the halaqah?'

'The
police told us that the mosque had closed in August that year and the halaqah
as well. They said that the Security Services had been following their
activities, but nothing else had been learned about Nazim or Rafi. They
promised us they would tell us if anything became known.'

'Did
these people from the Security Services ever contact you again?'

Mrs
Jamal shook her head.

'You
mentioned lawyers . . .'

'Yes.
I tried to get them to ask questions, to speak to the Security Services and
police, but all they did was take my money. It was left to me. I found out for
myself that after seven years a missing person can be declared dead.' She met
Jenny's gaze. 'And I also read that the coroner must find out how a person
died. His father's address, Nazim's official residence at the time, is in your
district, so that is why I am here.'

From
the moment she had seen the judge's declaration Jenny had assumed that Mrs
Jamal had come seeking an inquest, but the prospect threw up a raft of
problems, not least the fact that there was no body and only a presumption of
death. In such circumstances Section 15 of the Coroner's Act required her to
get the Home Secretary's permission to hold one. That would only be granted
where holding an inquest was judged to be in the public interest, which was as
much a political as a legal decision. And even if that hurdle were cleared, it
would be no easy task so many years after the event to cajole reluctant police
officers and government officials to dust down their files and release
whatever information wasn't deemed a threat to national security. Broad as they
were, the coroner's powers would, in this instance, struggle against the
powerful machinery of the state.

'Mrs
Jamal,' Jenny said, with what she hoped was an appropriate balance of caution
and concern, 'I will gladly look into your son's case, but all I can do is
write a report to the Home Secretary requesting—'

'I
know that. The judge told me.'

'Then
you'll know that the chance of getting as far as holding an inquest is slim,
probably non-existent. It's extremely unusual in cases where is there no actual
proof of death.'

Mrs
Jamal shook her head, her expression hardening with disappointment, 'What are
you telling me - that I should give up after all this struggle?'

If
she were being completely honest, Jenny would have told her that in the absence
of a body, and after the passage of seven years, the best thing she could do
would be to treat the court order as final proof that Nazim was dead, allow
herself to grieve, and then move on. She would have told her that the main
obstacle to her happiness was her obsession with her son's fate, and that an
inquest was unlikely to satisfy or cure it.

'It
would be wrong of me to hold out any hope of finding out what happened to your
son,' Jenny said. 'I think perhaps you should ask yourself what purpose you
think an inquest might serve. It won't bring him back.'

Mrs
Jamal started to gather her jumble of papers. 'I'm sorry I wasted your time.'

'I'm
not refusing to investigate —’

'You're
obviously not a mother, Mrs Cooper, otherwise you would understand I have no
choice. My life is nothing compared with my son's. I would rather die trying to
find out what happened to him than live in ignorance.'

Mrs
Jamal stood up from her chair as if ready to march out without another word,
but seemed suddenly to lose energy and falter. She slowly placed the file back
on the desk and folded her hands across her middle, her head dipping forwards
as if she hadn't the strength to hold it up. 'I apologize, Mrs Cooper. I
expected too much of you. I don't hope for miracles ... I know that Nazim is
dead. When he came to my flat that afternoon with a fever, I had a feeling. Yes
. . . when I think of waking and hearing him reciting the tajwid the next
morning, I still can't be sure if it was him or his ghost.' She looked up with
dry, desolate eyes. 'Maybe you are right. Too much time has passed.'

Jenny
had recoiled in the face of what she had perceived as Mrs Jamal's
all-encompassing self-pity, but not for the first time in their meeting she saw
beyond to the deep and profound grief of a mother in search of her lost child.
The last thing she needed was another fraught and time-consuming case, but her
emotions were already churning, the faces of the missing boys were already
vivid, their spectres already haunting her.

'Leave
the file with me,' Jenny said. 'I'll look through it this afternoon and get
back to you.'

'Thank
you, Mrs Cooper,' Mrs Jamal replied quietly. She reached for the scarf lying
across her shoulders and raised it over her hair.

'What
about Rafi Hassan - are his family seeking a declaration?' Jenny asked.

'We
don't speak. They were very hostile to me. They chose
to
believe that Nazim was responsible for what happened to their son.'

'And
your husband?'

'He
gave up long ago.'

Jenny
detected a frostiness in Alison's demeanour as she showed Mrs Jamal out. During
six months of working together she had learned to read every slight shift in
her officer's mood. Alison was one of those women with an uncanny ability to
let you know precisely what she was feeling without ever saying a word. What
Jenny read in her reaction to Mrs Jamal was suspicion bordering on outright
disapproval. When, several minutes later, she returned to the doorway to report
that the police were agitating to see the post-mortem reports on the bodies in
the refrigerated trailer, Jenny remarked that she seemed irritated by Mrs
Jamal.

Alison
crossed her arms. 'I remember her son's case. I was in CID at the time.
Everyone knew he and the other lad had gone off to fight abroad.'

Another
trait that Jenny had noticed: Alison's stubborn adherence to the consensus
amongst her former police colleagues.

Jenny
said, 'Everyone being . . . ?'

'The
squad who were on the obbo for five months. The extremists were operating
freely back then.'

Jenny
felt a twinge of annoyance. 'His mother still has the right to know what
happened to him, insofar as that's possible.'

'If
I was her, I'm not sure I'd want to know. We can't exactly call witnesses from
Afghanistan.'

'No.
You don't happen to remember who was in charge of the observation?'

'I
can probably find out. Just don't expect to get very far—the spooks are all
over this sort of thing.' Alison changed the subject: 'What about these bodies
in the lorry—do you want me to have a look? I expect the police will want that
one for themselves as well.'

'It
might be as well for you to make your own report,' Jenny said, and couldn't
resist adding, 'we know how our friends in blue can see one thing and write
down another.'

'I'm
only telling you what I heard at the time, Mrs Cooper,' Alison retorted. 'And
back then we still gave Muslims the benefit of the doubt.'

Jenny
held her tongue, sensing in Alison's reaction that Mrs Jamal had stirred
complicated emotions. Six months on, Jenny knew that Alison was still privately
grieving for the man she'd been in love with: the late Harry Marshall, her
predecessor as coroner. They had been close. The messy circumstances of his
sudden and unexpected passing had left a mess of unresolved feelings which she
was attempting to clear up with a dose of full-strength Christianity. When
insecure, Alison cleaved to institutions - the police, the church - and
resisted anything that threatened them. It was irrational, but who was Jenny to
pass judgement? Without her medication she was beset by irrational fears too.

'Her
son's been declared dead.' Jenny said. 'She's entitled to an investigation,
however limited. I doubt very much it'll amount to anything.'

Alison's
hostility hung in the air like an unwelcome presence long after she'd left the
office. Jenny felt almost guilty as she arranged Mrs Jamal's papers into a
semblance of order. She hadn't felt like this again since the first case she
and Alison had worked on together - that of the fourteen-year- old Danny Wills,
who'd been found dead in his cell at a privately run prison. Perhaps, as an
ex-policewoman, Alison sensed trouble more keenly than she did.

Although
numerous, Mrs Jamal's documents cast little light. There were lists of students
who lived in the halls of residence at the time; statements from members of
both families; statements from police officers who had searched the campus;
copies of ineffective correspondence with various councillors and politicians.
There was a copy of the original identification statement given by Simon
Donovan, in which he described the two young men on the train, and statements
from students Dani James and Sarah Levin, describing the mysterious intruder
and Rafi's overheard remark about Muslim brothers heading for Afghanistan.
There was a sketchy photocopy of Nazim's UK passport, confirmation from the
Passport Office that Rafi Hassan had never possessed or applied for one, and a
dry letter written by a DC Sarah Owens, Family Liaison Officer, explaining in
patronizing tones that the police had decided to suspend their investigation
until such time as further evidence came to light. The final document was a
'missing' poster put together on a home computer displaying various head shots
of the young men. Jenny was struck by how handsome they both were: keen- eyed
and slender featured. She stared at them for a long moment, then felt an
unexpected wave of almost unbearable sadness: they weren't even dead. It was
worse than that: they had simply
disappeared
.