The Disappeared (41 page)

The
choir was rehearsing in the vast, resonant interior. It smelt of incense, cold
stone and polished oak. Great iron coke stoves gave out an inadequate but
welcome heat. She drifted along the nave, past the transepts and into the Lady
Chapel and sat, for no conscious reason, in one of the rows of chairs facing
the altar, at the side of which, guarding the sacrament, an eternal flame
flickered.

In
the stillness, an image of Mrs Jamal returned to her; the pain in her face as
she talked of her missing son. Jenny imagined her final thoughts being of
reuniting with him, of seeing him again wherever souls go. It was a comforting
notion, but not one she could sustain. The building in which she sat was built
as much through fear of hell and damnation as it was out of the love of God.
She seldom prayed except in desperation or self-pity, but something moved her.
Words sprang from nowhere.

She
pleaded for the souls of Amira and Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan. 'Please God,
don't let them be lost.'

The
reception area was sleek and expensively furnished with tasteful original art
and cream leather sofas. It belonged in central London, not a rural backwater.
The receptionist was no more than twenty-five, pretty, and spoke with a crisp,
educated voice without a trace of local accent.

'How
can I help you?' she asked.

Despite
being dressed in her best suit and coat Jenny felt clumsy and inelegant next to
the girl. She handed over one of her business cards. 'Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale
District Coroner. Is Colonel Maitland in? I'd like to speak to him.'

'No,'
the girl said, sensing danger. 'He's out of the office today, I'm afraid.'

'Tomorrow?'

'I
think he may be back.' The second lie was less assured than the first.

Jenny
reached into her coat pocket and brought out the envelope containing the
summons and a form of receipt.

'This
is what's called "personal service". This is a witness summons for
him to attend my inquest tomorrow. I've even included the taxi fare - it's a
legal requirement. If he really can't attend he can contact my office today to
make further arrangements. If I could just ask you to sign the receipt?'

'Well,
I—'

Jenny
pre-empted her evasion. 'If you don't, you'll become a witness to the fact that
I've served the document -' Jenny checked her watch - 'at eight forty-two a.m.
on Tuesday, 9 February, and you'll be coming to court with or without him.'

She
passed the girl a pen. She looked at it for a moment, then took it and
hurriedly scribbled her signature on the receipt. It was illegible.

'If
you could print it as well.'

She
did as she was told, reddening with either anger or embarrassment, Jenny
couldn't tell. As she completed the task, Jenny said, 'One last thing, I just
need to confirm the up-to-date address for your employee, Mr Christopher
Tathum.'

The
girl's eyes flicked uncertainly to her computer.

'You're
going to tell me you can't give out private addresses, right?'

'Yes,'
the girl stammered.

'Technically
I could force you, but let's do it this way - I'll tell you what it is, you
tell me if I'm wrong.'

Jenny
repeated Tathum's address. The girl hesitated for a moment, then tapped on her
keyboard. Sideways on, Jenny saw a list of addresses scroll up.

'Anything
to say?' Jenny said.

She
shook her head.

'Good.
You'll make sure Colonel Maitland gets his letter this morning, won't you?'

Jenny
drove back to Bristol with a weight lifted from her shoulders. McAvoy hadn't
lied to her. Tathum was employed by Maitland and if needs be she had a witness
who could be persuaded to confirm it. There were many obstacles to be overcome
in court, but for the first time in days she felt she was standing on something
approaching solid ground. She trusted McAvoy again, and was beginning to trust
herself.

She
arrived at her office feeling big enough to deal with Alison and ready to heal
the jagged edges. Since her painful faux pas the previous day they'd hardly
spoken, except to exchange a few words as Jenny had hurried out to her
emergency appointment with Dr Allen. She braced herself for a frosty reception
and prepared a conciliatory speech.

'Good
morning, Mrs Cooper,' Alison said with pointed formality as Jenny entered.

She
noticed the room was unnaturally tidy: the magazines on the table were neatly
arranged, there were fresh flowers in a vase, the inspirational messages had
been removed. It felt . . . sanitized.

'Good
morning, Alison,' Jenny said with a note of contrition and took her mail -
stacked in size order - from the tray on her desk.

'You
got to your son on time, did you?'

It
took Jenny a moment to recall the excuse she'd muttered as she bolted from the
office an hour earlier than usual.

'Yes,
thank you. Just.'

She
flicked through the envelopes bracing herself to make an apology. If she left
it any longer it would become impossible: they would pass the whole day in
frigid silence.

'Look,
Alison, I'm sorry for what I said yesterday ... I had no business mentioning
your daughter, or passing judgement on your personal life. I was angry with
Simon Moreton, not with you. He had no right to ask for confidential
information.'

'Apology
accepted, Mrs Cooper,' Alison said, her eyes fixed firmly em the desk.

'You
didn't have to take the cards down.'

'They're
not appropriate in the workplace. They wouldn't be tolerated in the police. Not
nowadays.'

'Whatever
you think best.'

There
was an awkward silence, neither sure how to end their exchange.

'I
know I fly off the handle sometimes, but we both know I wouldn't get very far
without you.'

Jenny
offered a smile. Alison's jaw remained rigid with tension.

'I
may have made a fool of myself over Harry Marshall,' Alison said, referring to
the former coroner, her ex-boss, 'but it's different with David. Not that
there's anything improper between us,' she added hurriedly. 'I've seen him go
through some of the most trying situations a person can face. He's not a liar,
Mrs Cooper. He's doing his duty.'

'I
respect that, of course, but the coroner's duty is different from a
policeman's. No one else seems to get it, but my duty, my legal duty, is to do
whatever it takes to get to the truth no matter who would rather I didn't.
Until the Lord Chancellor picks up the phone to tell me I'm fired, I have to
keep on digging.'

Alison
nodded, but without conviction. She was still a dutiful detective at heart.
Legal distinctions and high ideals weren't for her. She preferred the comfort
of belonging to a powerful tribe and was fearful of being out on her own. But
she kept Jenny's feet on the ground, which is why they were still together
after eight often turbulent months. Jenny had come to need her like a tree
needs roots.

Alison
said, 'There's a message from that woman at MI5. She wants you to call. I
expect it's about the report from the Health Protection Agency - it came last
night.' She handed Jenny a print-out of a document headed, 'Radiological
Assessment'. It was stamped 'Highly Confidential'.

Jenny
turned to the final paragraphs:

The
caesium 137 particles taken from the address were chiefly concentrated in the
fabric of an armchair. Several particles were also found in the common parts of
the building and on the skin of the deceased, Mrs Amira Jamal, notably on her
lower back and buttocks. It is safe and indeed logical to conclude that the
deceased was contaminated through contact with the armchair in the period
shortly before death. It is not possible, however, to say for how long the
particles had been present on the armchair or in the building. Circumstantial
evidence suggests a recent contamination: there were no traces of contamination
in either the vacuum cleaner in Mrs Jamal's premises or in that used by the
caretaker of the building in the common parts.

In
conclusion, it is suggested that contamination occurred at some time during the
days immediately preceding Mrs Jamal's death
.

Alison
said, 'If it's any comfort, the police haven't got a clue. They're guessing it
was someone her son was mixed up with. Some of them are even saying it might
have been him coming out of the woodwork. There are all sorts of wild ideas
flying about.'

'On
an armchair? It's as if someone who was already contaminated sat on it,' Jenny
said.

'Imagine
if it was Nazim,' Alison said. 'That would have shocked her - seeing him back
from the grave.'

Jenny
shook her head. 'No. That doesn't make any sense.' 'Why not? There's no proof
he's dead. All we've got are two contradictory sightings of him alive and
heading in different directions. He might even have come back to shut his
mother up. They don't care about life, these jihadis - if you die a martyr's
death, you and seventy of your relations get a free pass to paradise anyway.'

Jenny
could tell Alison had been in the thick of the police- canteen gossip and had
soaked it up. And as usual the police had concocted theories to suit their
prejudices: an all-Asian affair with a matricide thrown in would absolve them
entirely; no need to feel guilty for caving in to the Security Services and
letting two young men vanish into thin air.

Jenny
said, 'You haven't mentioned Madog's statement to anyone?'

'Of
course not, Mrs Cooper,' Alison said, affronted. 'I do talk to my
ex-colleagues, but I'm not indiscreet.'

'I
wasn't suggesting—'

'I
know you're putting a lot of store by him, but I really shouldn't, if I were
you.'

'I
haven't told you everything yet. There's a chain of evidence building—'

'Before
you do tell me, there's probably something you ought to know - about Alec
McAvoy.'

'Oh?'
Jenny felt her hackles rise but resisted the urge to snap back. It would be
better not to tell Alison about the Maitland connection before court. The last
thing she wanted was her best evidence leaking to the police and Security
Services before it had been heard.

'Just
so you're clear what kind of man he is,' Alison said. 'He's been part of the
team defending Marek Stich. He's the Czech fellow who shot a young traffic
policeman dead last October. I don't know if you heard the news yesterday?'

'I
try to avoid it.'

'Stich
got off. It's not that surprising - all they had was a couple of ID witnesses
who only saw him further down the street driving away from the scene. The thing
is, there was a car which had stopped behind Stich's. According to another
witness the driver was a woman who must have seen it all. CID never tracked her
down, but last night they had an anonymous call. An emotional female caller
said Stich pulled the trigger - she watched him do it. She was going to give a
statement, but later that afternoon she was approached by a man with a Scottish
accent who stopped her outside the gates of her son's school. He told her that
if she said a word she'd lose her child. This was in front of him, mind you, an
eight-year-old boy.'

Another
apocryphal story to explain away CID's failure, was Jenny's immediate thought.
How they must have hated to see a troublesome lawyer they thought they'd seen
off for good return to humiliate them.

'I'm
sure it'll be looked into,' Jenny said, seeking to avoid another confrontation.

'It's
what I told you, Mrs Cooper. He fixes witnesses - finds them or shuts them up -
that's all he knows.'

Avoiding
the issue, Jenny said, 'Talking of witnesses, are we on track for tomorrow?'

Alison
pushed a list across the desk towards her. It contained the names of Detective
Sergeant Angus Watkins, the officer who had examined Nazim and Rafi's rooms for
signs of forced entry; DI Pironi; David Skene, one of the MI5 agents attached
to the initial inquiry; Donovan; Madog; Tathum; Sarah Levin; Professor
Brightman; McAvoy; Hugh Rees, the owner of the car rental firm in Hereford; and
a name she didn't recognize - Elizabeth Murray.

Alison
said, 'She's the old lady who thinks she saw the Toyota. You asked me to see if
she was still around. She is. I took a statement from her on my way home last
night. She's eighty-six, but still game.'

She
passed Jenny another piece of paper containing a few brief sentences in which
Mrs Murray said little more than that she had seen a stationary black car with
two men inside. Reading it through, Jenny tried and failed to recall asking
Alison to trace the witness. She wondered what else she might have forgotten or
missed ... It was McAvoy again, absorbing all her attention, even when she
wasn't aware of it. And Alison knew: she could see it in the wary, concerned
way she was looking at her, registering her mental slip. Her detective's
instinct was telling her that Jenny's mind had been skewed, that she was in
danger of favouring the mad and illogical, of ignoring obvious truth because a
corrupt and dishonest man had fascinated her.