The Disappeared

She said, 'I appreciate the delicacy of your position, but perhaps you could help me make contact with some of Jamal's contemporaries. You never know, someone might remember something that didn't seem relevant at the time.'

'I can certainly put you in touch with the university offices,' he said. 'They'd have a record of that year group. Actually, one of our junior staff here was one of them, but I'm afraid she's at a conference in Germany for the next couple of days - her team discovered a new particle.' He smiled, relieved at the prospect of their interview drawing to an end.

'Great. What's her name?'

'Sarah Levin, or Dr Levin should I say. One of our rising stars.'

The name was familiar. 'Didn't she give a statement to the police at the time?'

'Quite possibly. I'm sure she would have done whatever she could to help.'

Professor Brightman called through to the university offices to arrange for Jenny to meet one of the administrators, who printed a list of alumni and their contact details from Nazim and Rafi's year. Jenny took a hard copy and had the file emailed through to her office so Alison could start making phone calls straight away.

She walked back across the campus, taking the opportunity to observe the students and absorb the atmosphere. The first group she passed were dressed in stylish casual clothes, carried laptops and had cellphones pressed to their ears. Young men and women seemed to mix easily with one another and the political meetings advertised on the student noticeboards were far outweighed by announcements for parties and happy hours at local bars. Hedonism, not idealism, was the order of the day. She couldn't pretend that things had been that different during her time at Birmingham. She'd marched for the striking miners and CND, but in truth had been more interested in her guitar-playing boyfriend and cadging drinks in the student union. She and her friends had been a little less hung up about money, career and possessions perhaps, but apart from the odd spell of pre-exam cramming, it had been three years of more or less non-stop partying.

Then she saw something which made her change her mind. A group of ten or so young women, all wearing identical niqabs - the black robes and veils which revealed only their eyes - crossed the quadrangle in a tight huddle. When they passed a group of boys, they looked away or at the ground. Their separateness was absolute. Masked and impenetrable, they had cut themselves off from the public realm. When Jenny was a student she'd had lots of Muslim friends, girls who came from strict orthodox families but who were only too keen to cut loose and behave and dress like everyone else. Twenty years on, the next generation were adopting clothing more conservative than their grandmothers'. Faced with a bewildering and hostile world they had chosen religion as their crutch. They weren't being made to do it: it was a choice.

A black hybrid saloon drew up silently behind her and slid into a space as she approached the front door of her office. She was reaching for her keys when a suited woman and a male colleague, both barely over thirty, climbed out and stepped towards her.

'Mrs Cooper?' the woman said.

'Yes?'

The woman, dark, attractive, but tired around the eyes, offered her hand. 'Gillian Golder. This is my colleague, Alun Rhys.'

Rhys said a polite hello. He was a solid, stocky young man who could have come straight from a college rugby field.

Gillian Golder said, 'This is just a friendly visit. We're intelligence officers with the Security Services. Have you got a moment?'

'Sure,' Jenny said lightly, and led them along the dim hallway.

Jenny couldn't decide if Golder and Rhys's relaxed pre- business chit-chat was reassuring or sinister. She had met enough government officials of various stripes to know that the modern way was to give the appearance of approach- ability and reasonableness, even if the underlying agenda hadn't changed. Coolness, in the teenage sense, had replaced uprightness as the common virtue. Body language was to remain open, language euphemistic and non-confrontational. If you played by these rules, you were considered an insider. If you exhibited signs of aloofness or appeared too starchy, you had 'issues' and weren't to be trusted.

'I suppose you've guessed why we're here?' Gillian Golder said, taking the lead, Rhys adopting the role of observer.

Jenny smiled, straining not to appear threatened or defensive. 'I assume it concerns Nazim Jamal.'

'Yeah. We obviously heard about the judge's ruling last week and presumably Mrs Jamal has been to see you about holding an inquest.'

Jenny knew full well that they knew. DI Pironi would have lifted the phone the moment she had asked to meet him. It was all part of the dance, Golder trying to see if Jenny would adopt an attitude.

'She has.'

'Uh-huh. Well, it's hardly surprising. It's got to be tough for her.'

'Sure.'

'So . . . how do you feel about that?'

'How do I feel?' Jenny was thrown by the question. 'I'm just doing my job, compiling a report to go the Home Secretary, who has to authorize the holding of an inquest.'

'Do you think it will happen?'

'I've no idea.'

'For what it's worth, we think you'll get the go-ahead. It would only look as if there was something to hide if permission were refused.' Rhys nodded in agreement. 'And we're all obviously trying to do our best to build bridges with the Muslim community.'

There was a pause in which Jenny felt as if she were expected to respond. Growing confused and more than a little irritated by Gillian Golder's obliqueness, she asked, 'Is there something specific you wanted to discuss?'

Golder said, 'Obviously this is a case in which sensitive issues will come up. And we all know the media have a tendency to pounce on stories like this and sensationalize . . .' She glanced at her colleague, 'But from our end we feel that if we could head off any potential mistrust at the outset, we can avoid setting off major hysteria.'

'Mistrust?' Jenny said, pretending to be confused by the notion.

'Yes.' Gillian Golder shifted in her chair. 'Clearly Mrs Jamal is very upset, anyone would be in her position, but she might be tempted to see an inquest as an opportunity to vent her more irrational feelings in public ... It would be unfortunate if a perfectly proper inquiry were to be hijacked in that way, especially as we've worked so hard to earn the trust of young British Asians in recent years.'

'I can't stop her talking to the press, if that's what you mean.'

'Of course not. The thing is, what we'd like to avoid is her making unwarranted allegations against the Security Services. We'll cooperate as much as we're able, but we might as well tell you now that we know virtually nothing about what happened to Jamal and Hassan. Really, we've looked through all the files - the trail went dead.'

'Will I be able to see them?'

'That'll be decided higher up. Sometimes we'll seek a public interest immunity certificate to cover our working files - to protect our methods and what have you - but we'll certainly provide you with a witness who can speak to the facts of our investigation.'

'What about the police records? I assume you've looked at those, too.'

'Not much of interest in those, either, what's left of them.'

Jenny sat back in her chair and tried to see through the fog. She had the feeling that this was an attempt to gag and control her from the outset, but the messengers seemed so benign she couldn't be sure.