The Disappeared (23 page)

‘I know nothing about this girl who disappeared. But I do know about the file, about the phone number, and about the holes in your accounts.'

‘Then tell me that at least.'

She began a story. She did not look at him but either stared at the earth so as to whisper into its ear, or looked up at the sky to blurt out some note of self-justifying triumph to the sun.

It was a curious story, about her two brothers, one by her father's first wife who was an unruly psychopath, the other, by her father's second wife and her own mother, whom she loved more than anyone in the world. She whispered of her childhood in the old Yemeni town of Tarim, where her father had brought them from Afghanistan. She evoked her first years with images one after the other like pictures in an album. There was the beautiful old house with its cool courtyard and tinkling fountain. There were the two mothers, creating peace, halwa and wisdom in some dark recess. There were trips to the rocky desert for worship in the open air among men with guns. There were formal visits from tribesmen who looked at the Afghan visitors as though trying to settle whether to kill them or to die for them, and who always left with the question unresolved.

‘But we had come as fighters, Justin, as
mujahidin
,' she said, addressing the sky. ‘We were the elite, the
zahrah
.'

Somehow it had gone wrong. The money ceased to come, and her father left with his wives and daughter for England, waving his Afghan passport and claiming asylum for some fictitious cause. The boys, however, who had Yemeni passports, were left behind. And that is why everything changed for her. In all the troubles of a Muslim girl – the threat to send her back to Afghanistan, the offers of marriage from disgusting old men, the moment when she was taken away from the Tarim Girls' School and locked for a week in her room – her brother Yunus had fought for her. She was a stone of the desert, pure, clean, dry and hard, and he would not let that stone belong to anyone except the man who could mount it in gold. And she had fought for Yunus too, had kept him at home when their father and Hassan had left with their gaggle of gun-toting tribesmen to take paltry revenge on the world as it is, the world made in America. Again she raised her eyes to the sky.

‘There are flowers in the desert, blooming suddenly when there is rain, otherwise buried, hidden and impossible to destroy. Our love was like that.'

And then she whispered of her desolation, a twelve-year old refugee, struggling with the language that she and Yunus had begun to learn from the television, going each day to St Catherine's Academy, and coming home to that grim cave where her father sat motionless like a deposed god, and she was shut away with frightened females. She begged and begged for them to bring Yunus to her. She threatened to kill herself. She refused all food. And so at last he came.

It costs a fortune to smuggle people from Yemen to the drained marshes of Iraq, from there through Turkey to Azerbaijan, through the Russian Federation to the Baltic coast and thence to England, social housing and benefits. To achieve it they had to work closely with the Poles who had been housed by the Council in the Angel towers, and also with Afghan and Iraqi families who were prepared to pay for their relatives to be brought across. By the time Yunus and his troublesome half-brother arrived the Shahin family were well into the business of people smuggling, in conjunction with a Polish ship operating out of Kaliningrad.

‘I'm telling you something, Justin, that you shouldn't know. And I have lost every right to swear you to secrecy.'

She looked at him and again the two perfect tears welled up in her perfect eyes and stayed like pearls on her cheeks until he quietly removed them with his finger. And when he had done so he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. She did not move, did not close her mouth or open it further than it had opened from her flow of words. But her eyes narrowed slightly as he moved away.

‘I don't know why I did that,' he said, embarrassed.

‘Don't you?'

He looked down in silence. Why was she telling him this story? And why was he listening, when he should be actively searching for Laura, the girl who was to rescue him from Muhibbah's malevolent charms, and who was now in danger? And yet he listened. He heard of the trouble caused by Hassan, and his gang of Iraqis who picked up vulnerable English girls, promised marriage, and then sold them on to the highest bidder. She whispered the verse of al-Baqara in which it says that there is nothing wrong in any allusion to marriage you make to a woman, and that Allah knows that you will say things to them. But the verse does not permit the things that Hassan did, and which he encouraged Yunus to do as well.

Yunus was a failure. He left St Catherine's Academy without any GCSEs; he had tried for jobs and never held one for more than a week; and he clung to Hassan as his guide. Together they could live on the edge of this decaying society, exploiting the residue of doubt, guilt and repudiation that made the English in general, and their girls in particular, such easy prey. He had said that England was no place for a decent Muslim girl and that she should return to a country where girls were respected. He repeated the message several times, saying that it was a matter of honour. And then he wept for an hour on Muhibbah's shoulder, telling her that he hated what they had done to a girl called Moira and that nothing like that could happen to this hard jewel from the desert, which he had polished for year upon year.

‘And that,' she said, ‘is why Yunus would not help me, when the marriage offer came from that bloke in Afghanistan.'

So that was when she had fled, and Justin had saved her, she did not deny it. She owed everything to Justin, and if she had not loved him as he wanted then he must recognize that she could love only the person to whom she belonged. But to belong she had to be given, transferred, as Yunus might have transferred her.

‘I am not something to be bought and sold,' she told the sun. ‘I am a gift or nothing. That is how I have always been and nothing can change it.'

After she left, she kept contact with Yunus, whom she had never ceased to love and whom she wished to detach from her family, and from Hassan in particular. Hassan, she whispered, had joined a group of madmen with beards who called themselves
muhajjiroun
, the ones in exile, who were going to install the reign of the Prophet in these kafr lands. What is it with psychopaths? For most of the time they act as though they had no conscience at all, needed no-one's forgiveness, not even Allah's, and then suddenly they get religion and decide that their relationship with Allah is the only thing that counts.

He started dressing up in a jalabiya and a chequered ghutra on his head. He let his beard grow into a tangled worm-infested bush, and the sight of him, with his loose blind eye and his mop of thick black hair in a dirty dishcloth, would be enough to cause any passing policeman to call immediately for reinforcements. He made trouble everywhere, organised protests about Iraq and Afghanistan, protests about the schools, protests about the Council. And then overnight he changed back to his hooligan persona, shaved off the beard, dressed in leather and a big black overcoat, and took up again with girls. Always Muhibbah was beseeching Yunus to get away from this madman, to set up house with her, and one day she saw how it could be done.

The people business was precarious. Some of the Iraqis were blackmailing the Shahins, saying they would report the whole thing to the police if their families weren't brought in for free. And the deals were in cash, with no documents to explain them, or to explain what a Polish ship was doing anchored offshore at the mouth of the Humber. Muhibbah loved her work at Copley Solutions, because it was so neat, so clean, and so perfectly accounted for, with files of letters explaining every deal, and figures balancing each other in double-entry books. And that gave her an idea.

She whispered to the earth how she and Yunus, together with the Polish captain called Bogdan, had set up the bogus firm of Lesprom, which made shipments of wood to Hull and was paid by Copley Solutions. And the money that Copley paid was secretly collected by Yunus and passed through the accounts by Muhibbah. Often there would be a real delivery of wood, but Muhibbah worked things out so that nothing would be noticed. Soon they had their own business going, the three of them, of which the Shahin family knew nothing, and Yunus promised to leave as soon as was reasonable and move in somewhere with Muhibbah. And then they would make the business entirely legal, offering a package deal to refugees, with an EU passport, easily obtainable in Poland, a passage to England and the chance of social housing.

‘How could you do that without me knowing?' Justin asked in astonishment.

‘Because you were looking straight at me and not asking yourself what I was doing,' she replied quickly.

‘And do you think you had the right to put my business at risk for the sake of you and your good-for-nothing brother?'

Muhibbah gave a tight, thin smile.

‘It was for your sake too, Justin.'

‘For
my
sake? How come?'

A lark sang high above them. A west wind was driving fluffy clouds across the sun, and shadows danced on the meadows like dolphins on the surface of the sea. And here beside him was the hard dry spirit of the desert.

‘How would it be possible for us to marry, if I had no brother to make the gift?'

‘I see,' said Justin in astonishment. ‘So what happened?'

‘Hassan, of course. Yunus couldn't keep our secret from him. Hassan insisted Yunus take me away from you, destroy all the records of what I had been doing through your office. The business was to go on as before, as a secret thing, full of shady corners. And I was to have nothing more to do with you, since that way lay danger.'

‘And you let this happen?'

‘I let it happen, Justin. Which is why you won't want to rescue me now, from the mess I have got into.'

‘I don't understand what the mess is.'

‘When you made that phone call our Polish contact got immediately in touch with Yunus. So my brother knows there has been a leak. He rang me to say that Hassan has had an accident, hit his ear on a metal spike, and that the ship has turned back. He had to threaten Bogdan, and the whole deal has been put at risk. It is likely there'll be scores to settle and attempts to settle them coming our way from Russia and Afghanistan. You don't really think we have fifteen grand in ready money do you? Yunus was frightened, Justin, and so am I. If we don't get out of this somehow it is either gaol or something worse.'

‘And you want me to help you get out of it?'

‘I didn't say that, Justin. No, I just felt that I owe you the truth.'

He looked at her, a long, searching look that she returned. And a deep trouble stirred within him.

‘In the Surah al-Imran,' she said, ‘God blesses those who are
sabin
, you have a good word for it, yes “steadfast”, and those who look for forgiveness before the dawn. I am one of those who look for forgiveness before the dawn, one of the
mustaghfirin al-asHari
, and there's that ‘Ha' again that you can never pronounce. That's all that's left of my religion. You used to play that R.E.M. song in the office, you remember? ‘Losing my Religion'. I thought of that verse from the Koran whenever I heard it, and I think of it now.'

‘Do you miss your religion, Muhibbah?'

‘I have not made a good job of life without it.'

‘Would you have made a better job of life with it?'

‘Of course not.'

They sat for a while in silence, as the sun began to go down. Then she turned to him, her face alive as though with a sudden idea.

‘You know something, Justin? Until a moment ago I had never kissed a man on the lips.'

‘I apologize,' he said, and again the trouble stirred in him.

‘What is there to apologize for? I wanted you to do it.'

‘Did you?'

‘Yes.'

She sat still, her face turned to his, waiting without excitement for whatever he might do. When he pressed his lips to hers she raised her arms slowly to his neck and buried her fingers in his hair. She drew gently away with downturned eyes.

‘Justin,' she said. ‘I've been so stupid.'

It was getting late and he knew he must telephone Iona. But they lingered side by side and silently as they returned to the village. It was dark when they entered Falkin's Yard. A blue Volkswagen was parked outside Muhibbah's holiday cottage.

‘My brother!' she said.

‘Which brother?'

‘Yunus of course. He's back already. Quick, you must go.'

‘When will I see you?'

‘Why should you see me?'

‘Many reasons, Muhibbah. But one in particular. Together we could sort out those accounts. Then there would be one thing less you have to worry about.'

She gave him a long and steady look. Again the tears welled up, and again he wiped them away.

‘Thanks, Justin. I'll come to your office tomorrow morning. You'd better get hold of that file.'

He rang Iona from the village square, and she insisted that they meet at once. Nothing that he recounted surprised her. But the only advice she would give was to go to the police and get the whole bloody lot of them arrested, Muhibbah included. He didn't dare suggest that he had formed the opposite intention, and that he would do what he could to save her.

‘And Laura?' Iona asked.

Yes, and Laura, what of her?

You stifle the impulse to scream. Someone has just let himself in to the living room, there is the sound of a chair moving, as though he were sitting down at the table. It must be nine o'clock. Fear stifles your sobs, and for a moment your body makes a secret of itself, like the body of a hunted animal. You find you are tip-toeing to the bedroom door and shutting it quietly. You find you are supporting yourself on the wall, sliding around the room on trembling legs, until you are in the bathroom, locking the door behind you and staring at a blanched face in the mirror above the sink. Whose face is it? Not yours. Not the face of that ambitious, clever girl who was on the verge of a career as an investigative accountant, whom so many men had wanted as a lover and who had re-made herself after two stupid mistakes. The face you see belongs to a brutalised victim, one who has not yet taken her revenge, and who owes the salvaged remains of her body to a confused slob of a boy who had been unable to take her by force because some spark of love had been suddenly lit in him. Maybe it is Yunus in the next door room. Maybe he cannot stay away from you. Maybe you have to repeat the whole miserable dialogue, to point out to him yet again that, whatever chance a vulnerable immigrant without education might have had with you was lost at once when he thought of possessing your body without your soul.