Sam Bourne - The righteous men

Friday, 4.10pm, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

His first reaction was confusion. He got off the subway at Sterling Street and walked straight into what looked to him like a black neighbourhood: Ebony, Vibe and Black Hair on sale at the news-stand, murals on every other wall, knots of young black men standing around in baggy combat clothes.

But once he crossed New York Avenue, he felt his pulse quicken with a reporter's sense that he was getting nearer to the story. Signs appeared in Hebrew. Some of the words were written in English characters, though their meaning was no less opaque. Chazak V'Ematz! promised one, enigmatically.

Another word appeared several times, on bumper stickers, on fly posters, even on notices collared to lampposts, like flyers seeking lost cats. Will soon learned to recognize the word, though he had no idea how to pronounce it: Moshiach.

Next he passed a black man the size of a large refrigerator, with a little girl in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Will's confusion returned. He was now on Empire Boulevard, noticing Indian restaurants and vans decked out in the national flag of Trinidad and Tobago. Was he in the Hassidic neighbourhood or wasn't he?

He turned off, into residential streets. The houses were large brownstones or made of a firm, red brick, as if once, in a long-ago Brooklyn, they had been positively posh. Each had a few steps up to the front door, which sat alongside a porch. In other American homes, Will guessed, these porches might feature a swing chair, perhaps a few lanterns, certainly a pumpkin at Hallowe'en and very often, the Stars and Stripes. In Crown Heights they looked mainly unused, though even here Will spotted that word again — Moshiach — on window stickers, and once on a yellow flag with the image of a crown, which Will took to be some kind of local symbol.

Directly above each porch, one storey up, was a veranda, complete with wooden balustrade. Will thought of Beth, held behind one of these front doors: his legs suddenly tensed with the urge to run up the stairs of each house and knock down door after door, until he had found his wife.

Coming towards him was a group of teenage girls in long skirts, pushing strollers. Behind them were perhaps a dozen, maybe more, children. Will could not tell if these girls were older sisters or exceptionally young mothers. They looked like no women he had ever seen before, certainly not in New York. They seemed to be from a different era, the 1950s perhaps or the reign of Queen Victoria. No flesh was exposed, the sleeves of their white, prim blouses covered their arms; their skirts fell to their ankles. And their hair: the older women seemed to wear it in a preternaturally neat bob, one that barely moved in the wind.

Will did not look too hard; he did not want anyone to think he was staring. Besides, he no longer needed confirmation.

This was Hassidic Crown Heights, all right. As he walked, he honed his cover story. He would say he was a writer for New York magazine doing a piece for its new 'Slice of the Apple' slot, in which outsiders wrote dispatches from different segments of New York's wonderfully diverse community, blah, blah. He would pose as the safari-suit explorer, sent to note down the curious ways of the natives.

And this was certainly an alien landscape. Will searched desperately for something that might give him a handle — an office perhaps, where he might discover who ran this place.

Maybe he could explain what had happened and they would help him. He just needed a foothold, something in this strange place he at least understood.

But there was nothing. Every bumper sticker seemed to convey a message that might be worth decoding, but was indecipherable. Light Sabbath candles and you 'II light up the world! There was an ad for a show: Ready for Redemption. Even the shops seemed to be part of this religious fervour. The Kol Tov supermarket carried a slogan: It's all good.

He kept walking, stopping at a store front whose window was full of notices rather than goods. One leapt out at him straightaway.

Crown Heights is the neighbourhood of the Rebbe. Out of respect to the Rebbe and his community we request that all women and girls, whether living here or visiting, adhere at all times to the laws of modesty, including:

Closed neckline in back, side and front. (Collarbone should remain covered) Elbows covered in all positions Knees covered by dress/skirt in all positions Proper cover of the entire leg and foot No slits Girls and women who wear immodest garments, and thereby call attention to their physical appearance, disgrace themselves by proclaiming that they possess no intrinsic qualities for which they should garner attention…

So that explained the dress code. But the word that leapt out at Will had nothing to do with necklines or slits. It was 'Rebbe'. This sounded like the man Will had to meet.

He looked up to get his bearings, noticing for the first time the street sign. Eastern Parkway. He had barely walked ten yards when he saw another sign: Internet Hot Spot. He had arrived.

His stomach heaved as he walked in. This was surely the scene of the crime. Someone had sat at one of these cheap blondwood desks, surrounded by fake wood panelling and grey floor tiles, and typed the message announcing the theft of his wife.

He stared hard at the room, hoping his would suddenly become a superhero's gaze, magically able to absorb every detail, seeing with X-ray vision the clues that must be here.

But he only had his own eyes.

The room was a mess, not like the latte-serving internet cafes he knew from Manhattan or even his own patch of Brooklyn. There was no espresso or mocha here, no coffee of any kind in fact. Just bunches of exposed wires, peeling signs on the wall, including a picture of an elderly, white bearded rabbi — a face Will had now seen at least a dozen times. The desks were arranged haphazardly, with flimsy partitions attempting the separation into individual workspaces.

At the back were a stack of empty computer cartons, still leaking their Styrofoam packaging, as if the owners had simply bought the equipment, unloaded it and opened for business the same day.

Will got a few upward glances as he came in, but it was not nearly as bad as he had feared. (He had visions of his occasional student forays into out-of-the-way pubs in big English cities, places so hostile the locals seemed to fall into an instinctive, sullen silence the moment a stranger was among them.) Most of the customers in the Internet Hot Spot seemed too preoccupied to be interested in Will.

He tried to assess each of them. He noticed the two women first, both wearing berets. One was sitting side-saddle on her stool, allowing her to keep one hand on her pram, rocking her baby to sleep as she typed with the other. Will ruled her out immediately: a pregnant woman could surely not have kidnapped his wife. He eliminated the other woman just as quickly: she had a toddler on her lap and wore perhaps the most exhausted expression he had ever seen.

The rest of the terminals were either empty or used by men. To Will, they all looked the same. They wore the same rumpled, dark suits, the same open-necked white shirts, and the same wide-brimmed black trilby hats. Will looked hard at each one in turn — Did you kidnap my wife? — hoping that a guilty conscience might at least send one of them blushing or rushing out of the door. Instead they kept staring at the computer screens and stroking their beards.

Will paid his dollar and sat at a screen himself. He was tempted to log onto his own email, so that anyone checking him out and reading over his shoulder would immediately know who he was. He half-wanted them to know that he was here, that he was onto them.

Instead, he took time to absorb what was in front of him.