The Disappeared Read online

  He reassumes his expression of argumentative reasonableness. You notice that he has put the hand holding the condoms into his pocket.

  ‘OK, but see the girls normally dunna have nowt family. That’s the whole point. We’re the only family they has. There’s no honour involved, see? Except what we decide.’

  ‘There’s the difference. I do have a family. Let’s assume it’s a family like yours. They are not going to be happy with this.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says with a shrug. ‘But I dunna give a fuck about ’em, do I?’

  ‘I’m not asking you to feel anything about my family. Nor even about me. I just want you to imagine your sister, going through what I’m going through.’

  His eyes shift uneasily from side to side and he purses his lips.

  ‘So what’s your name?’ he says after a moment.

  ‘Catherine,’ you reply. You have always liked the name, which was that of your best friend at school. Even now, saying it aloud, you feel a soft breeze from the dormitory where you lay side by side, sometimes in her bed, sometimes in yours, reading aloud from The Wind in the Willows. It is the first comfort that you have felt on this ship.

  ‘Here’s the deal then, Catherine. We dunna talk about families. We leave my sister out of this. And what happens is just between you and me, right?’

  You cannot suppress a bitter laugh.

  ‘And if what happens is rape?’

  Again his eyes shift from side to side.

  ‘It’s rape if you make it rape. For fuck’s sake. It’s up to you.’

  ‘The philosophy of Yunus, in three sentences,’ you return. ‘Ask your sister if she agrees.’

  It jolts him.

  ‘I said to leave her out of this.’

  ‘Fine, if we can agree the other terms.’

  ‘I’ll say this for you. You’ve got guts. There’s none else on this ship would put up with that much fucking cheek.’

  ‘It’s why I’m talking to you.’

  He looks at you and a kind of experimental acceptance enters his expression. It strikes you that he was not cut out for this career, and you almost feel sorry for him, as he sits on the bunk without touching you, takes his hands from his pockets and folds them in his lap. He is no longer holding the packet of condoms.

  ‘Shit!’ he says. He stares at the floor in silence. You notice that the humming of the engines has ceased. The ship seems to be rocking slightly. As idle as a painted ship/ Upon a painted ocean. With the familiar words comes the image of the classroom where you learned them, at the desk next to Catherine’s. You recall her girlish confidences, how she was to marry someone like Coleridge, a poet and a scholar, and maybe make a career as viola in a famous string quartet. You recall her dimpled smile, her quiet laughter and her way of greeting you at the end of each long holiday, putting her arms around your neck and her nose in your hair. Strange that you lost touch when you left for Cambridge and she for the Royal College of Music. Where is she now, you wonder, and has anything like this, anything so unspeakably horrible, happened to Catherine? You weep for Catherine, pitying her imagined woes. You weep and weep, and it is as though the whole world had fallen away from the scene of her imagined violation.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he says. ‘I’m not gonna do nowt. Just you stop crying.’

  There are noises on deck, feet slapping on the metal, machinery cranking, people shouting in a foreign language, Russian maybe, perhaps Polish. You feel a sudden rush of hope. The ship is turning round. The ship has been boarded by the coast guards. The Royal Navy has sent a frigate. There has been a change of plan and you are to be put ashore in a lifeboat. A hundred unfounded stories flit through your mind and put an end to your tears.

  ‘Yunus, can you do something for me?’

  He looks startled by your tone and turns to you.

  ‘I’m thirsty. Can you fetch me some drinkable water? And maybe pass me that apple.’

  The appeal to everyday considerateness places him in a quandary. You see him struggle for a moment before wriggling from his throne.

  ‘Sure. I’ll get some water. No bother.’

  He stands, picks up the apple and then hesitates, before throwing it across to you.

  ‘You’re fucking cute, Catherine.’

  He goes out quickly and locks the door from outside.

  What despicable residue of female vanity causes you to get up from the berth and smooth your tear-stained face before the bathroom mirror? What irrational hope of re-joining the world of your ambitions, of putting this vile episode forever out of mind and reassembling not your features only but the neat self-confident soul that spoke through them, causes you to dab cold water on your eyes and on the slight bruise between them, or to take pleasure in the fact, if it is a fact, that no one will notice it? What absurd renewal of trust in your social gifts leads you to accept the presence in the mirror of another face behind your own? And why believe that this Yunus, who is clearly the weakest member of the gang that kidnapped you, has any power to keep them at bay? Why especially now, when you realise with fainting heart that it is not the face of Yunus that stares at yours from the mirror, but that of the man with stringy black hair who had already taken a leading part in defiling you? You spin round and shout at him.

  ‘Get away from me!’

  And he laughs.

  Chapter 14

  A woman with a Yorkshire accent answered Justin’s call. She told him that, if Muhibbah Shahin is on their list, they can act immediately, provided they receive a call from Muhibbah. The personal emergency line is just that: personal.

  ‘If you have evidence of something wrong,’ the woman added, ‘then you must report it to the police.’

  ‘But I am reporting it to the police,’ he protested.

  ‘I can put you through to them,’ she responded.

  ‘Do that.’

  After a few rings a man’s voice told him to hold the line. There followed late night background noises: a burst of laughter, a woman singing in the distance, and a loud crash as though someone had fallen over. Eventually the man returned to the phone, with the words ‘how can we help?’ Justin realised at once that the answer was ‘not at all’. He explained that his assistant had disappeared from his office, leaving her coat behind, but of course that was no crime; he referred to the signs of a scuffle, but they were paltry and inconclusive; he mentioned that she was an Afghan refugee who had been threatened in the past by her family, but of course that was long ago and he had no evidence that the threat was still a live one. His narrative petered out with the assurance that he felt in his bones that something was wrong. To which he was told to bring those bones along for a closer inspection.

  ‘At least,’ the policeman added, ‘you canna say this sounds like an emergency. Rather summat for the local force. Where did you say it happened?’

  Justin gave the address of Copley Solutions, and the policeman referred him to the neighbourhood police station, which was open for public consultation every weekday between 9 and 5. He promised to alert the staff, and advised Justin to ring them to make an appointment the next morning.

  Lying on the black leather sofa that occupied the centre of his living room, piecing together what he had learned from this conversation and from Millie, Justin came to the conclusion that he alone was concerned by Muhibbah’s disappearance, and that he alone could rescue her. He clenched his fist and beat hard against the back of the sofa, shouting ‘I will do it!’ But he had neither the knowledge nor the weapons for the task, and the harder his blows the more hollow and desolate they sounded. He would never have imagined that he could be reduced to helpless grief by losing someone whom he had never possessed. Yet the thought of Muhibbah, staring in stoical revulsion, as the unwanted flesh of an unloved man left slug-tracks of desire all over her sweet body, caused him to cry out in jealousy and rage.

  After a brief attempt to drown his grief in whisky Justin lay sleepless on the sofa, sometimes listening to Spiral Architect on his iPod, taking a small amou
nt of comfort from ‘Black Sabbath’ with its tale of ‘fictional seduction on a black snow sky’, but ending in the early hours writing Muhibbah’s name again and again in his notebook.

  Arriving for his appointment with Chief Superintendent Peter Nicholson he felt haggard and grim. To his consternation he was shown at once into the Superintendent’s office, which was at the rear of the building, overlooking a small garden of shrubs. He had hoped to be held at bay by a secretary, so as to work up resentment towards the person who was keeping him waiting. But the unsmiling officer who rose to meet him put Justin at once in his place, as someone with a heap of qualifications and not an ounce of power. It was not only the round youthful face above the smart jacketless uniform that spoke of Peter Nicholson’s rapid rise to the position of Chief Superintendent. There was a brisk application of manner, a way of making prepared statements and impeccable summaries, that revealed a perfectly digitised mind, an advanced piece of office software that was able to replace the fallible human in every conceivable bureaucratic task. Superintendent Nicholson had already absorbed all that there was to know of the case of Muhibbah Shahin, had put together a summary of the relevant law and best practice, and was busily ticking boxes almost before Justin had accepted his invitation to sit down.

  ‘You will appreciate, Mr Fellowes, that our powers in matters of this kind are strictly limited,’ he said after giving his expert review of the facts. ‘Whether or not you agree with the report of Sir William MacPherson, which accused us of being ‘institutionally racist’, you will understand that we must now take special care that no well-meaning member of the public can use this charge to make our job impossible. We live in a multicultural society, Mr Fellowes, and we are committed to sensitive policing. Different communities and different cultures among us see things in different ways. You will remember the headmaster of a school, not so far from here, who insisted that Muslim children should obey the same rules as whites, and that the alternative to integration was disintegration. Well, it caused quite a stir in its time, and the imams united in calling for his resignation. Muslim children were, in their view, Muslims first, and British only by adoption. The Headmaster, you will recall, was condemned as a racist and eventually dismissed from his post. Naturally we don’t want any of that on our watch.’

  ‘Does multiculturalism mean accepting forced marriage, abduction, honour killing, and slavery?’

  ‘You misunderstand me, Mr Fellowes. We have already cautioned Ms Shahin’s family about this. We cannot assume that a crime has been committed, however, until there is sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation. A quarter of a million persons go missing every year, and most turn up in the end. Meanwhile our rule is sensitive policing. The Afghan community has customs concerning marriage and the family that we, or some of us, do not share. You say that there were signs of a struggle when Ms Shahin left your office, and it is of course significant that she left her coat with her mobile phone behind. But you also say that she appeared later at her rented accommodation, in the company of a man, to collect her belongings. For us to assume on such slender and conflicting evidence that she is being abducted would be to invite the charge of gross prejudice. Of course, we can send someone to inspect your office, and to give a professional opinion as to whether a struggle occurred. But there are struggles and struggles, Mr Fellowes. An embrace can seem very like a fight, if you get my meaning.’

  Justin did get his meaning, and his gorge rose at the implication. Everything about Muhibbah could be put in question, but not her purity, not the thing she had wrapped up so completely in herself that no one could take it without taking all of her. But behind this vivid thought came another: that Muhibbah belonged indeed to another culture, that all her eager sallies into the modern world had not broached the inner sanctum where the gods of honour and purity reigned. In this the Superintendent was right: to assume that Muhibbah had been abducted was to assume that she had been removed from a place and a life where she belonged. But she had belonged to nothing and to no one around her. Always, even in the most intimate moments, when she had allowed her eyes to rest on Justin and a brief flutter of tenderness had appeared in their depths before plunging back into darkness, even in those moments the real Muhibbah was elsewhere, beyond his reach and unobtainable.

  He stared at the photographs on Superintendent Nicholson’s desk: the smiling face of a pretty wife, the teenage son in a rugby shirt holding a silver trophy high above his head, the clumsy looking daughter in her graduation gown, the incontrovertible testimonies to success in the art of belonging. Justin had never achieved that success: had never wanted it. And his love for Muhibbah was the proof.

  Sensitive policing, the Superintendent reassured him, meant dealing sensitively with Justin too. The police would certainly keep an open eye and mind, would welcome any information that Justin might from time to time acquire, and would be ready to take action as soon as there should be an indication of foul play. In proof of his impeccable intentions, the Superintendent gave Justin a telephone number, which he could call at any time. And as he shook hands he looked glaringly into Justin’s eyes, as though challenging him to find fault with anything that had been transacted between them. Then, for the first time, he smiled – a quick, theatrical flash of good humour, which signified ‘problem solved’. And the problem was Justin.

  All the rest of that day Justin sat at his desk, the plans for the carbon-neutral houses spread before him. He stared gloomily at the chair in the corner from which Muhibbah had gone, rehearsing every possible interpretation of her mysterious behaviour. Only at the end of the afternoon did he recall the clinching piece of evidence, which was that her computer too had vanished. Why had this slipped his mind? He reached for the telephone, and began to dial the number that Superintendent Nicholson had given him. But he quickly replaced the receiver, arrested by a disturbing thought. Would he be reporting a theft? And would the police be looking for her now, not as the victim but as the perpetrator of a crime? From this too he must protect her.

  Chapter 15

  The two grey-green blocks of Angel towers stood in an arena of bare concrete, in one corner of which was the remains of a children’s playground. Struts that had once supported a metal slide were twisted together like crossed fingers, and the sawn-off remnants of a climbing frame stood vigil over a heap of litter. All the ground-floor flats had been boarded up and sprayed with graffiti. The wheel-less frame of a bicycle lay across the path between the towers, and heaped against the walls were black rubbish bags, plastic bottles, a grease-covered cooker and a disembowelled mattress from which the rusting springs hung out like entrails. Outside the entrance to Block A two shopping trolleys were jammed against the wall in a close embrace. Justin had to hold them back with one hand while pushing on the wired glass door with the other.

  The afternoon sun shone into the hallway, glinting on a bank of vandalised letterboxes. Next to them was an intercom with a hundred buttons, five for each floor. Beside each number was a space for a name. One or two of these had been filled in, but most were blank. Muhibbah had once said how nice it was to live with Angela and Millie, after five years on the eighth floor of a Council block. Her family were unlikely to have moved, so Justin had only ten addresses to explore. The first four of the eighth-floor bells in Block A produced no response, while the fifth awoke a male voice that shouted in a language that Justin guessed to be Polish. The five 8th-floor flats in Block B all responded to his call in Yorkshire English, and none had heard of a family called Shahin.

  Justin returned to Block A and took the lift to the eighth floor. A corridor ran the length of the building from North to South. On the side next to the lift and stairwell were the two doors of larger flats, which faced the three doors of smaller accommodation across the corridor. It was to the first of the larger flats – number 8/1 – that Justin, after a moment of doubt, addressed himself. The door, which was scuffed and smeared and looked as though it had been repeatedly kicked, was without a nameplate.
The bell was broken and made no sound. Justin bent down to peer through the letterbox, but it had been blocked up from inside. He was about to turn away when he heard a slapping noise inside the flat, and a faint sound of music. He knocked hard with his knuckles on the door.

  In truth Justin had no idea what to say should he stand face to face with one of Muhibbah’s family. He felt no fear, only a deep desolation at the thought that he might never see her again, and a pressing need to speak of her to someone for whom she mattered, even if that person were her enemy. When the door opened at last, he found himself confronting a man whose angular face seemed to be made of hardened steel, with charcoal rubbed into the crevices. Behind him was a dark interior where two large women wearing veils of white muslin were kneading dough on a wooden table. The only words that occurred to Justin were ‘does the Shahin family live here?’ to which the reply was an intensification of the man’s hostile stare.

  The two women looked up from their work, and a door opened in the background darkness, revealing a dishevelled young man in a T-shirt. The music came from the room behind him – a woman’s voice wailing on the word Habib, darling, another of the love words with which Muhibbah taunted him, saying she would never allow him to use it in its feminine form, Habibah, unless, perhaps, he pronounced it as he should. But the guttural ‘Ha’ defeated him, and from behind the screen of her impregnable language he sensed Muhibbah looking on his love with mocking curiosity.

  He repeated his question and the young man came quickly forward to interpose himself.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked. Justin recognised the even features, the steady eyes, the smooth skin and delicate straight nose of Muhibbah.

  ‘My name’s Justin Fellowes. Muhibbah Shahin works in my office; but she seems to have left without an explanation. I gather she used to live here; maybe she has been in touch with you?’