The Disappeared (11 page)

'Mrs
Jamal, this is Mrs Cooper, the—'

'Oh,
thank goodness,' she cut in. 'I knew I could trust you. You were sent by God, I
know you were. No one else understands, no one else.' She continued without
drawing breath. 'These people are hounding me day and night, Mrs Cooper, they
won't leave me alone. They're watching my flat, they follow me in the street.
They've been in here at night, I know they have. They've moved things. They've
put bugs in the flat, that's what they've done. They're listening to this now.
I've got to leave, I have to go —’

'Hold
on a moment. Calm down. Let me speak.'

'Yes,
yes, of course, but you have to believe —’

'
Listen
to me.'

Finally,
Mrs Jamal stopped talking.

'Now
keep calm. Getting worked up is going to achieve nothing.'

'No,
you're right. I'm so grateful —’

'Tell
me who you think is watching you.'

'I
don't know who they are. They're men. White men. I don't know what they want
with me. I don't know anything. I'm just a mother . . .' She sniffed back
tears.

'Remember
last time we spoke - you went to the window and there was no one there.'

'They
listen to me. They know when to disappear. That's why I have to go somewhere
they can't find me.'

'Mrs
Jamal, you're upset. You're going through one of the most stressful experiences
anyone can imagine. You've lost your son and you're desperate to know where he
went. Now think about this: you don't know where he went, that's why you want an
inquest. No one has any reason to follow or listen to you. I know it may be
hard to understand, but I think your mind may be playing tricks.'

'No
. . .' Mrs Jamal said, but without much conviction.

'What
I want you to do is go to your doctor and talk about how you're feeling. This
won't get better by itself and I want you to feel calm enough to sit through an
inquest if we can hold one.'

'I'm
not insane, Mrs Cooper, I know what I see. I can't stay here. They'll come in
the night—'

'
Trust
me
. Please. I know enough about how people react to understand exactly how
you're feeling.' She paused and sensed that, now she had got the attention she
craved, Mrs Jamal was actually listening. 'You're feeling very alone, very
exposed and very uncertain,' she continued, 'but once you start to see some
progress these feelings will pass. You'll have to take my word on that.'

'But
I'm frightened, Mrs Cooper.'

'That's
perfectly natural. You've lived with an unanswered question for seven years.
You're frightened of what the next few weeks might bring.'

Mrs
Jamal spoke through quiet sobs. 'I know he wouldn't leave me. He was a good
son. He always came to see me, even when his father tried to stop him. Nazim
wouldn't leave me.'

Jenny
said, 'I'll make you a deal. I'll get on and do my job the best I can, and you
get yourself some help to see you through the next few weeks. Can we agree on
that?'

'Yes
. . .' came the feeble reply. 'Thank you.'

Ross
spent the evening locked in his room talking to friends over the internet and
listening to music, anything rather than come downstairs to spend time with his
mother. To stave off the pangs of rejection Jenny retreated to her study and
tried to make an impression on her ever-increasing pile of untended paperwork.
Corpses were a good indicator of social trends. In recent weeks she'd had two
women under twenty-five who had died following sudden and catastrophic
alcohol-related liver failure, and a third who had collapsed and died in a
nightclub toilet from alcohol poisoning; two depressed fifteen- year-old boys
who had committed suicide after meeting in a chat room; and a married father of
thirty-five who had jumped from a motorway bridge when his mortgage company
foreclosed. If the young seemed unhappy, the old were scarcely better off. In
front of her lay a photograph of an eighty-year- old widower who had rigged up
the bedroom in his tiny flat as a makeshift gas chamber. He had left a note
explaining that the struggle of making ends meet was too much to bear.

Depressed,
Jenny dumped her papers into her briefcase and picked up the phone to call
Steve, hoping he might welcome an hour or two away from his draughty barn.
There was no reply, not even a machine on which to leave a message. And he
didn't have a mobile. She supposed he was out walking his dog, who was now
confined to a chicken-wire pound during the weekdays, but when she tried again
later, and again and again until midnight, she accepted he wasn't at home.
There were any number of explanations why he would be out late on a Wednesday
evening, she told herself: he was probably with friends, or staying over with a
colleague in Bristol. He wouldn't be with another woman. He couldn't be. Their
relationship, however tenuous, was too significant to be betrayed by the temptation
of casual sex. And she had never turned him away when she sensed he wanted to
spend the night.

Too
restless for once to write in her journal, she took two pills and lay in the
darkness listening to freezing rain beating on the window. The leaded panes
rattled in their shrunken frames and the wind moaned fitfully under the eaves,
conjuring ghosts and darker spirits, as she dipped in and out of
consciousness. Her last sensation before being pulled into a deep, uneasy sleep
was of the ground shifting beneath her, a groaning of the earth, and a sense
that something had changed profoundly.

Preoccupied
and disturbed as she was, she clung to a semblance of normality throughout the
morning routine, making Ross breakfast and keeping up light conversation until
she had dropped him at college. Only when he merged into the stream of kids
pushing through the school gates did she succumb to the mild attack of panic
which had been bubbling under since she had stood under the shower and barely
felt the water on her skin. Dr Allen had convinced her that the worst symptoms
of her disorder had been confined to the past. He'd drawn her graphs explaining
how the medicated brain retrained itself, returning the fight-or-flight
response triggered deep in the amygdala to normal levels. He had promised her
she wouldn't go back to where she had once been. Yet six months later, trapped
in rush-hour traffic, her heart felt twice its normal size and a band was
tightening around her diaphragm.

She
railed against the symptoms. She shouted and swore at them, drawing stares from
other drivers. How dare they return to pollute her life? She fought through
each diminishing wave, refusing to pull over and succumb, until the adrenalin
at last subsided and left her feeling tired, heavy and hollow. She stopped at
lights and pulled down the vanity mirror to look at herself. Her pupils were
wide and staring, her face pale: both classic signs of acute anxiety. Fury gave
way to despair. Why? Why on an ordinary morning, with nothing to threaten her,
was she terrified? What was stirring in her? And why now, when she needed more
than ever to be in control, had it chosen to resurface?

Her
mobile rang as she pulled into a parking space opposite her office. She nudged
the car behind as she fished it out of her handbag. There was a crunch of
plastic. She pretended she hadn't heard.

An
agitated voice said, 'Mrs Cooper? It's Andy Kerr at the

Vale.
I wondered if you had signed release for the removal of the Jane Doe.'

'I
beg your pardon?'

'I
thought perhaps you might have authorized its removal . . . it's gone.'

'
What
?'

'The
body was here yesterday evening and it's missing now.'

'You're
serious? Who was on duty?'

'There
was only one person on last night. I guess it's possible if someone managed to
break in . . .'

She
could hear the alarm in his voice. She could already imagine the newspaper
headlines:
Unidentified Body Stolen from Morgue
.

'It's
not here, Mrs Cooper. It was in your custody. What should we do?'

'I'll
be right there.'

Dr
Kerr looked even more ashen than she felt. She followed him along the corridor
and stared down at the empty drawer. He explained that the assistant who'd been
on night duty was more of a watchman, a Filipino who worked a cleaning shift in
the day and sometimes remained overnight. Chances were he would have spent most
of his time asleep in the staff rest room, which was around the corner, at
least thirty feet from the refrigerator. Intruders could either have come
through the door opening onto the car park or along the underground tunnel
which led over from the sub-basement level of the main hospital building. There
were no signs of forced entry, but the locks were hardly sophisticated.

Jenny
said, 'You're sure there hasn't been a mix up? It's not unknown for undertakers
to take the wrong body.'

Andy
Kerr shook his head. 'We've got thirty-six here at the moment. Every one
accounted for.'

Jenny's
mind raced over the possibilities, but there was only one logical conclusion:
the Jane Doe had been stolen. But why would anyone steal a body?

Nervous,
Andy said, 'There's one other thing. You know you mentioned the missing girl
who worked at Maybury?'

'Yes?'

'I
couldn't get hold of any sophisticated kit, but I did manage to borrow a basic
dosimeter from the radiology department. . . The body was emitting low levels
of beta and gamma radiation. I couldn't say what isotope, but she'd definitely
been exposed to a significant source at some point.'

'So
what are we talking about - nuclear accident?'

'No.
Nothing like that. But more than double what you'd expect to find, even in
someone who works at a plant. It's not that uncommon in East Europeans.'

'Enough
to cause a thyroid tumour?'

'Maybe.
But exposure probably took place some time ago, years possibly.'

'Still,
I think it's time we called the police, don't you?'

The
detective sergeant's name was Sean Murphy. A man of no more than thirty-three
in a crumpled suit with a shirt open at the collar, tousled hair and a thin
beard that ran along his jaw-line to hide the first signs of sag under his
chin. And when he turned to the side, Jenny saw he was wearing a miniature
diamond stud at the top of his left ear.

They
stood around the empty drawer in the refrigerator as if it might yield some
clue. Murphy said, 'How do you know which is which?'

'They're
all toe-tagged,' Andy said. 'And we keep a separate record on the whiteboard
over there.'

'Ever
get mix-ups?'

'I
couldn't say - it's only my fourth day here.'

Murphy
said, 'Oh,' and nodded, as if that might explain what had happened.

Jenny
said, 'It's very rare. Dr Kerr is adamant that the body went missing overnight.
There's no record of any undertaker having been here during that time or having
signed for a body. I think we can assume it's been stolen.'

'Any
idea who might have done it?' Murphy said.

'None
at all,' Jenny said. 'We've had maybe twenty-five groups of relatives through
here in the past week, all of whom have missing daughters. None of them ID'd
her. We've got more who were meant to be coming in tomorrow.'

'And
you've no idea who she is?'

Andy
shook his head.

Jenny
said, 'The families have all been put in touch with a lab who are running DNA
tests.'

'Uh-huh.'
Murphy reached out with his foot and nudged the drawer shut with the toe of his
loafer. 'Have we got any pictures of this body?'

Andy
said, 'I can email some over to you.'

'It'd
be good.' He glanced up and down the corridor. 'What about this guy who was
meant to be looking after the place?'

'He
went home at eight. He'll be back on a cleaning shift at midday.'

Murphy
rubbed a hand over his mouth and scratched his whiskers while pulling a face.
'What's he like, this bloke?'

'Very
reliable, according to the other staff.'

Jenny
guessed what was coming next and interjected to save the detective the trouble.
'If you're wondering whether he might have abused the body in some way, I'd say
it's unlikely. The eye sockets were empty, most of the abdomen was missing and
last time I was here it didn't smell too good. If you have a look around there
are plenty more attractive propositions.'

'I'll
take your word.' He gave her a leering smile, his eyes
still shot through with broken veins from the previous night's excess. 'No
cameras or anything, I suppose?'

'Not
in here,' Andy said, 'only in the hospital's main reception and maternity unit.
It's unlikely they would have passed any.'

'There'll
be some out in the street I expect. I guess we ought to get a team down here,
see if these body snatchers left any prints behind. Been a lot of people
through this morning?'

'Five
or six,' Andy said.