Then You Were Gone (8 page)

He had already seen at least four girls who could have been her – all tall, all slim, all black with long, straightened hair, all wearing skinny jeans and carrying cheap cotton shopping bags over their shoulders. To his utter mortification, he had jumped up and run after one of them, getting halfway across the plaza before he realised it wasn’t her. For God’s sake, he was lucky the police hadn’t already turned up to question him on suspicion of grooming. He forced in a deep breath and tried to calm himself; after all, he could easily be a lecturer taking a break between classes. Or, a much more disturbing thought occurred to him, he could be the father of one of these kids. He paused and did the maths; yes, it was a stretch but it was just about possible that he could be the dad of one of these heavily made-up young girls or skinny-jeaned young lads, all strutting around looking as though they were posing for a prospectus photo. He shook his head. That thought did not make him feel any better.

It was hopeless sitting here, he realised. So many students were constantly bustling in and out of the plate glass and chrome entrance hall that he could easily have already missed Ayanna. He needed to get inside and find his particular needle in this seething haystack of adolescent hormones.

The building was huge, and, as he stood gormlessly in the entrance lobby looking at the signs pointing to Rooms L8 – M22 and Floor G, every corridor that led away from the atrium looking identical, Jazzy saw at once that his only chance was to brazen it out. Not for the first time, he thanked whatever force of creation it was that had endowed him with such a trustworthy, unthreatening demeanour. OK, maybe he would never be CEO of his own multi-million-pound company, but he did come across as a nice guy, and sometimes that could be worth a lot.

He put a hand in his pocket and strode, smiling towards the central reception booth. ‘Hi.’ He leaned forward onto the counter and broadened the smile still further. If he acted as though he and the young man behind the desk had met before, he felt sure the guy would feel obliged to play along. ‘How’s it going?’

The young man smiled, only the smallest amount of wariness behind his eyes. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I’m just here to see Ayanna. Ayanna Abukar? I’m supposed to be meeting her outside her class but I’ve left my diary in the office so I don’t have a note of which room she’s in just now.’

The man blinked. He did not look much older than twenty. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude but… who are you?’ He flashed Jazzy an apologetic grin.

Jazzy laughed, as though acknowledging the absurdity of his having to ask. ‘I’m Sam, I’m her case worker.’ It was the vaguest job title he could think of that also sounded sufficiently important to allow him access to a student. Petra always told him that the main thing that prevented people achieving what they wanted in life was not knowing their limitations. Jazzy knew he was never going to be able to pass himself off as a nurse or a lawyer or a probation officer. He would be laughed out of the place in seconds. But he hoped he was both scruffy enough and middle class enough to pass muster as some kind of generic pastoral worker.

That, or maybe just the smile, seemed to work. The man typed something into his computer. ‘She’s in Chemistry right now,’ he said. He turned to look at the clock behind him. ‘She’ll be finished in about five minutes.’

Jazzy nodded. ‘OK. Thanks. And, erm, where exactly is…’

The man regarded him for a moment. ‘The labs,’ he said, gesturing behind him. ‘In the science block. If you just wait in the main corridor you should see her as she comes out.’

‘Brilliant, thanks a lot, mate.’ He turned and walked the way he had indicated. Shit. The whole point of making up those stupid lies was so he would not have to loiter in the corridor like a deviant or a dead-beat dad.

He found the science block and followed a long corridor with classrooms either side. Most of them were occupied and he peered through the doors’ glass panels trying to work out which one might be A-level Chemistry.

Jazzy had done Chemistry himself at sixth form and, scanning the white board in the first room he looked in, he was able to dismiss that class immediately. A cross-section of a spinal column. Biology. The next one was also Biology, the one after it was empty, then one with a class of fourteen teenage boys copying the longest mathematical formula he had ever seen. Physics, surely. The one after that, though, was more promising. The slide on the screen was titled:
The electron configuration of an element
. Jazzy felt his eyelids growing heavy with boredom at the mere memory. Bingo. Doing a quick scan of the corridor, he ascertained that the remaining two labs were empty. The electron configuration group must be Ayanna’s. Jesus, poor kid.

Standing alongside the door, he sneaked a sidelong look into the room. The teacher had switched the smart whiteboard off and the students were beginning to pack away their things. There were only five girls in the class, two of whom were black, both of them sitting near the window on the far side of the room. Jazzy moved to the other side of the corridor to see if he could get a better angle, but could only make out vague details from that distance. Just then, the lab door opened and the first students began to emerge, chattering and rummaging in their bags and shoulder barging each other out of the way without even noticing while they dabbed at their phones.

At last he spotted her. ‘Ayanna!’

The girl turned, saw Jazzy and stopped, a puzzled frown on her face. ‘What you doing here, man?’ She sounded nervous.

What could he say?
I came here because I literally couldn’t think what else to do and I was going nuts in the office on my own? I came here because I know Simone will ask me what I’ve been doing to look for Mack and I need to be able to tell her something? I came here because even though you’re some skinny sixteen-year-old kid you’re the only person I’ve talked to who actually might be able to help me?

‘Mack’s still not back,’ he said flatly. ‘I need to be sure that you’re telling me the truth.’ In fact he was one hundred percent certain that Ayanna had been telling the truth. Her feelings for Mack had been pretty transparent; she could have had no possible reason to lie.

‘Of course I am! Jesus!’ She had already started walking down the corridor, back towards the main entrance. ‘Don’t you think I want to help you?’

‘I know you want to help.’ Even with his freakishly long legs, Jazzy was having trouble matching Ayanna’s huffy pace. ‘But I wondered if there could be a reason you’re not telling me everything. Perhaps because you’re trying to protect your brother?’

She whipped round to face him without breaking stride. ‘Protect my brother? Are you actually serious?’ She shook her head and turned to face forwards again, her pace not slacking. ‘I already grassed up my brother to you, didn’t I? I did it straight away, you hardly even had to ask me and I blurted it all out. For all I know you could have been one of them UKIP freaks, you could have been all anti-immigration and called the feds on him the minute I was out of the office. But I did it anyway, didn’t I? My own brother…’ She took a sharp breath, then hissed the last words at him. ‘I did it to help – to help Mack, but to help you as well.’ Shaking her hair back from her face, she went on, ‘You looked so lost and freaked out, and I thought, these people don’t deserve this sort of shit. You know, you and Mack – and that Simone too, I suppose – you’re all right. You’re just working for a living – yeah, fair enough, you work for that creepy old guy Keith, but that ain’t your fault – you’re just trying to get on with your boring life.’

‘Thanks,’ Jazzy snorted.

Ayanna suppressed a smirk, her head down. ‘Yeah, no offence, but you know what I mean. Anyway, it made me sick to think of Mack or you caught up in some of the shit Hakim gets himself involved with.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jazzy kept his voice low. They were nearly back at the central reception area and there were crowds of students flowing past them on all sides. ‘Is it dangerous?’

Ayanna sighed and her pace slowed. ‘Look, I don’t really know what Hak gets up to, and I try not to ask. I don’t like the fact that he does it – he don’t even need to do it, he’s got a good job with the council, it’s not like he needs the money, he gives it all to my mum and dad anyway…’ as her steps grew slower her speech grew faster, ‘but whatever, he thinks he’s doing the right thing. See, we’re lucky really. Things were pretty shitty when my mum and dad got out of Somalia, but they were a fucking weekend at Center Parcs compared with what it’s like now. And we’re here legally, we followed the rules, did the right thing and we’re allowed to stay. We’re home safe now, you know?’

Jazzy nodded, as though he did know. As though he could ever know. Home for him was, and always had been, a vast and prosperous arable farm that had been in the family for five generations.

‘So anyway, I think Hakim feels like he has to help other people to have what he’s got. Like it makes up for something, makes up for the people we left behind, you know?’

Again Jazzy nodded. Again he didn’t know at all. ‘That’s pretty brave in a way then, isn’t it? After all, sounds like he’s got a lot to lose.’

Ayanna shrugged. ‘Pretty stupid more like. Not all the people he helps are just frightened families like we were. Not all of them are good. One day his luck’s going to run out.’

They were back in the central atrium now. The young man on reception gave Jazzy a nod as he passed, visibly relieved that Ayanna appeared to be accompanying Jazzy willingly and he hadn’t accidentally let a deviant have free access to the student body.

‘Anyway, look, he’s here now,’ Ayanna said. ‘You can ask him yourself if he knows anything more.’

‘What?’ For a second Jazzy thought she must mean Mack, must mean Mack was here amongst this throng of hairstyles and trainers, hiding in plain sight. ‘Who?’

‘Hakim.’ She lifted a skinny arm and waved at a tall, lanky young black man dressed in a cheap suit. ‘He’ll be on his lunch, he often comes across to meet me.’

The man’s face lit up as he spotted Ayanna and he ducked across to them. ‘All right, Anna, you OK to go for lunch? On me, of course.’

Ayanna rolled her eyes affectionately and turned to Jazzy. ‘He hates to eat on his own so he bribes me to keep him company, don’t you?’

Hakim nodded good-naturedly but Jazzy could tell he was eyeing him suspiciously.

‘I’m Jazzy,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘I – erm – I work with Ayanna.’

‘He’s the one I was telling you about,’ she put in quickly, which was not necessarily the introduction Jazzy had been hoping for. ‘You know, the one whose partner’s gone missing.’

‘Business partner,’ Jazzy clarified hurriedly, as though this guy could give a shit about Jazzy’s sexuality, or indeed his employment status. ‘I understand you helped him out though? Helped him out with some papers?’ He didn’t have the vocabulary to deal with this, he realised; he had no idea how those who dealt in false identities as indifferently as he himself dealt in cheap knock-off Russian wedding dresses referred to these things.

Hakim glanced at Ayanna, and she nodded to indicate he was safe to speak freely in front of Jazzy. ‘Well, yeah, kind of.’

Ayanna ushered them to one side of the curved atrium, waving a sheepish hello to a crowd of young girls as they passed. ‘For god’s sake, you two come over here where it’s a bit quieter. I look enough of a freak as it is, hanging around the front entrance with two old men.’

‘What do you mean “kind of”?’ Jazzy asked.

‘Well, you know, it wasn’t exactly him I was helping out, was it?’

‘Wha – er…’ Jazzy glanced at Ayanna, who was looking as baffled as he felt. ‘Wasn’t it?’ he finished apologetically. Why did he always feel as though the fact that he never knew what the hell was going on was all his own fault?

‘Well,’ Hakim shrugged and looked over his shoulder nervously. He seemed so mild mannered and self-effacing, Jazzy had a hard time imagining him as the ruthless go-between for a people-smuggling racket. ‘I mean, it was him doing the asking, wasn’t it?’ He looked at Ayanna, who nodded as though this fact required confirming. ‘But, you know, the stuff wasn’t for him, was it?’ This too was directed at Ayanna, but this time she shook her head in confusion.

‘What do you mean? Course it was. Who else would he have wanted it for?’

Hakim looked puzzled, then afraid. His glance darted quickly between Jazzy and Ayanna as though they might be trying to trick him. ‘Well, a girl. It was for a girl.’

Jazzy immediately thought of Simone. Perhaps Mack had initially intended to take Simone with him. ‘A woman, you mean?’

‘No,’ Hakim winced, aware of the delicate nature of the subject. ‘I wouldn’t say a woman no, not yet.’

‘So…?’

Hakim nodded. ‘Yeah, a young girl.’ He indicated Ayanna. ‘Someone about my sister’s age – seventeen or so.’

Chapter Eight

The man had talked to Jessica more that day than he had in the whole time they had been together up to this point. It was like he had been questioning her, but not like a job interview or an interrogation, more like he was doing an interview for a magazine or a newspaper. He had asked her about everything, about life at home with her mum when she was little; had it been hard it being just the two of them? Had they been all right for money? Did her and her mum get on well?

It had made her want to cry of course, talking about Mum, thinking about home, about those days, so recent they could be counted in months rather than years, when she had been a child with a child’s problems, rather than what she was now; a woman facing every problem a woman could face all at once. She had not wanted to let him see her cry though. He actually seemed quite kind really. She had come to the conclusion that he probably would not harm her, or at least not intentionally. But still she did not trust him; what could possibly have motivated him to come and get her in the dead of night like he had? Why was he here with her when he presumably could have been off living a normal life somewhere warmer and brighter that smelled less of pine resin? Mum had said to trust him, even though Jessica had seen in her mother’s eyes something akin to hate when she looked at the man. But she said that Jessica should trust him, should go with him even though she had cried and begged to be allowed to stay at home. Mum had promised it was better, that it would be better for everyone in the family if she went, and so she had and here she was.