is cheap.'
'Are
you telling me the whole truth, Mr Ali?'
'Those
two young men weren't just friends to me, they were my brothers . Why
would I lie?'
For
all sorts of reasons, she thought, but knew there was little point in forcing
the issue. The best she could do was appeal to his conscience and leave it with
him. 'I'll ask just one thing of you,' she said, 'that you'll think about Mrs
Jamal. Nazim was her only child.' She took out a business card and placed it on
his desk. 'She has a right to know even if the public doesn't.'
He
didn't get up to show her out. As she laid a hand on the door, he said, 'Be
careful whom you trust, Mrs Cooper – when a friend cuts your throat, you don't
see him coming.'
Ali's
parting words remained with her. She hadn't known what to make of him, except
that he inhabited a world she didn't understand and that he had made her
slightly nervous. She could believe that he had been a young radical, a fanatic
even, but she struggled with the thought that a Muslim mother would not have
been told by someone on the inside, even anonymously, if her devout son had
volunteered to fight for a religious cause. And if Nazim and Rafi hadn't gone
to fight or train with the mujahedin, where else could they have gone? They
were scarcely more than schoolboys, only nine months into their university
careers. Several dark scenarios presented themselves to her: perhaps they were
lured to London and press-ganged into an organization against their will?
Perhaps they were still very much alive, zealous and fanatical; or perhaps
they were fugitives, living underground, running scared.
Only
one thing was now certain: if Ali was connected with their disappearance,
whoever he was involved with would already know about her and her
investigation. Common sense told her to pull back now while she still could,
but every time she entertained the thought something deep inside her rebelled.
She
had felt like this before. It was as if she had no choice.
Chapter 5
In
order to obtain the Home Secretary's permission to hold an inquest into the
case of a missing person presumed dead, Jenny needed to convince him that there
was at least a strong likelihood that Nazim Jamal was in fact deceased.
Strictly speaking, she also needed reason to believe that the death had
occurred in or near her district - which could be impossible to prove - but she
hoped to argue by analogy with bodies flown home from abroad, that if the body
were ever to be repatriated it would be to within her jurisdiction. It was a
weak argument, and viewed in the cold light of day the arguments against
holding an inquest seemed even flimsier. It was clearly within the public
interest to know why two bright young British citizens had vanished. To refuse
to inquire would smack of official cover up, and the one-and-a- half million
British Muslims were too big a constituency for any government to risk
alienating.
Held
steady by her morning combination of beta blockers to calm her physical
symptoms of anxiety and anti-depressants to level her mood, she was ready to
face the world again. She wanted to write her report to the Home Office as soon
as possible, but first needed to carry out the two most logical lines of
inquiry: to discover what, if anything, was known about the missing boys at the
university, and what other documents the police still held from their original
investigation.
She
called through to the university offices during her morning commute while Ross
slouched half asleep in the passenger seat plugged into his iPod. She was
passed on to the office of Professor Rhydian Brightman, head of the department
of physics. His none-too-helpful secretary claimed he was booked solid for the
next week, but Jenny stood her ground and calmly reminded her that failure to
assist with a coroner's inquiry could land the obstructing party in jail.
Ross
looked round during this exchange and pulled out one of his headphones to catch
the result: a meeting was swiftly
'Are
you telling me the whole truth, Mr Ali?'
'Those
two young men weren't just friends to me, they were my brothers . Why
would I lie?'
For
all sorts of reasons, she thought, but knew there was little point in forcing
the issue. The best she could do was appeal to his conscience and leave it with
him. 'I'll ask just one thing of you,' she said, 'that you'll think about Mrs
Jamal. Nazim was her only child.' She took out a business card and placed it on
his desk. 'She has a right to know even if the public doesn't.'
He
didn't get up to show her out. As she laid a hand on the door, he said, 'Be
careful whom you trust, Mrs Cooper – when a friend cuts your throat, you don't
see him coming.'
Ali's
parting words remained with her. She hadn't known what to make of him, except
that he inhabited a world she didn't understand and that he had made her
slightly nervous. She could believe that he had been a young radical, a fanatic
even, but she struggled with the thought that a Muslim mother would not have
been told by someone on the inside, even anonymously, if her devout son had
volunteered to fight for a religious cause. And if Nazim and Rafi hadn't gone
to fight or train with the mujahedin, where else could they have gone? They
were scarcely more than schoolboys, only nine months into their university
careers. Several dark scenarios presented themselves to her: perhaps they were
lured to London and press-ganged into an organization against their will?
Perhaps they were still very much alive, zealous and fanatical; or perhaps
they were fugitives, living underground, running scared.
Only
one thing was now certain: if Ali was connected with their disappearance,
whoever he was involved with would already know about her and her
investigation. Common sense told her to pull back now while she still could,
but every time she entertained the thought something deep inside her rebelled.
She
had felt like this before. It was as if she had no choice.
Chapter 5
In
order to obtain the Home Secretary's permission to hold an inquest into the
case of a missing person presumed dead, Jenny needed to convince him that there
was at least a strong likelihood that Nazim Jamal was in fact deceased.
Strictly speaking, she also needed reason to believe that the death had
occurred in or near her district - which could be impossible to prove - but she
hoped to argue by analogy with bodies flown home from abroad, that if the body
were ever to be repatriated it would be to within her jurisdiction. It was a
weak argument, and viewed in the cold light of day the arguments against
holding an inquest seemed even flimsier. It was clearly within the public
interest to know why two bright young British citizens had vanished. To refuse
to inquire would smack of official cover up, and the one-and-a- half million
British Muslims were too big a constituency for any government to risk
alienating.
Held
steady by her morning combination of beta blockers to calm her physical
symptoms of anxiety and anti-depressants to level her mood, she was ready to
face the world again. She wanted to write her report to the Home Office as soon
as possible, but first needed to carry out the two most logical lines of
inquiry: to discover what, if anything, was known about the missing boys at the
university, and what other documents the police still held from their original
investigation.
She
called through to the university offices during her morning commute while Ross
slouched half asleep in the passenger seat plugged into his iPod. She was
passed on to the office of Professor Rhydian Brightman, head of the department
of physics. His none-too-helpful secretary claimed he was booked solid for the
next week, but Jenny stood her ground and calmly reminded her that failure to
assist with a coroner's inquiry could land the obstructing party in jail.
Ross
looked round during this exchange and pulled out one of his headphones to catch
the result: a meeting was swiftly
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