M.R. Hall - The Disappeared

She chose her moment - while Alison was caught up in another tense, whispered phone call with her husband - and slipped out of the office. Alison still coveted her role as the investigator in their professional partnership, treating any attempt by Jenny to speak to potential witnesses without her as an act of trespass on her territory. It was true that most coroners chose to operate largely from their desks, preferring to send their officers to collect statements and gather evidence on the ground, but there was no reason - apart from a misplaced sense of propriety - why they couldn't pursue their search for the truth as far as they were able. According to centuries-old law, the coroner's duty was to determine the who, when, where and how of a death. Jenny had never understood how that was possible without getting your hands dirty.

Morfa was a 1960s housing estate on the outskirts of Newport, thirty miles to the north-west of Bristol on the Welsh side of the Severn; a neglected corner of a largely forgotten city. Conceived at a time when coal mines and steel works still employed the bulk of men in south Wales, the estate was a sprawl of identical prefabricated concrete boxes built to house the workers and their families. It now housed the non-workers. Groups of shaven-headed boys and pasty- faced, overweight girls stood at corners; broken-down cars sat wheel-less on bricks; a stray dog scavenged on a patch of litter-strewn wasteland that had once been a park. It wasn't a neighbourhood, it was a holding pen.

To add to the estate's problems, it had also become a dumping ground for asylum seekers. Here and there, as she drove through a disorientating network of similar streets, Jenny saw Middle Eastern, Asian and occasional African faces. In an arcade of shops there was an Indian takeaway protected by heavy steel shutters, and next to it a burned-out and boarded up former off-licence.

She drew up outside the address in Raglan Way, which, being near the end of a terrace, at least had the benefit of a view of distant mountains. In contrast with the neighbouring houses, the path and patch of grass at the front were clean and swept and the front door had been recently painted. A small oasis of pride in a sea of apathy.

She rang the bell. There was no answer, though she thought she heard sounds of movement from inside. She tried again and was met with silence. She looked for a letter box to call through and found that it had been screwed shut. Resigned to having to return later, she was turning to leave when she noticed a twitch of one of the heavy net curtains in the upstairs windows. A veiled woman retreated quickly behind it. Jenny returned to the front door and called through. 'Is that Mrs Ali? My name's Jenny Cooper - I'm a coroner. I'd like to speak to your husband. He's not in trouble, it's just a routine inquiry.'

She waited for a response and thought she heard hesitant footsteps on the stairs.

'What do you want?' a frightened female voice said from behind the door.

'I'm investigating the disappearance of a young man in 2002. His name was Nazim Jamal. I understand Mr Ali knew him.'

'He's not here. He's still at work.' She sounded young, her accent a fusion of northern British and Pakistani.

'When will he be home?'

'I don't know. He's got a meeting.'

'Is this his wife I'm talking to?' There was no reply. Jenny took a visiting card out of her wallet and fed it under the door. 'Look, this is my card. You can see who I am. I'm not a police officer, but you are obliged by law to cooperate with my inquiry. All I need to know is where I can find your husband to talk to him.'

She could feel the woman's panic and indecision. Eventually the card was pushed back out again, a phone number written on it.

The refugee centre was housed in a two-storey concrete building in the centre of the estate. It had once been a pub. Foot-high letters had been unscrewed from the front, leaving their ghostly impression in a lighter shade of grey: The Chartists' Arms. Through the partially closed blinds covering the ground-floor window, she could see a stick-thin Asian man with a wife and two small children in tow gesticulating across the desk at a tired-looking white woman. Oblivious to his remonstrations, the woman was straining to make sense of a large envelope stuffed with papers he had handed her. The walls were lined with ex-civil service filing cabinets, and there were steel bars at the windows to protect the few shabby computers and an elderly photocopying machine.

Anwar Ali answered the door himself. She placed him in his early thirties, though his full beard and suit and tie made him look older. He uttered a brief greeting and ushered her upstairs to a small, tidy office. Directly across the narrow corridor was a classroom in which a language class was taking place, the students chanting, 'Pleased-to-meet-you.' She glanced at the tidy shelves and noticed a collection of books both in English and what she assumed was Urdu. Among them were several political biographies of Middle Eastern figures whose names she didn't recognize.

'How can I help you, Mrs Cooper?' Ali said, his anger at her presence covered by only a thin veneer of politeness.

'Your name was given to me as someone who was associated with Nazim Jamal and Rafi Hassan before their disappearance.'

'By whom?' He spoke precisely, his bearing that of a man with a sharp analytical mind: the kind of person who made Jenny feel anxious. Ali was prickly and she'd have to tread carefully.

'The police. Apparently you went to A1 Rahma mosque with Jamal and Hassan in the months beforehand and ran a halaqah at your flat in Marlowes Road - I hope I pronounced that correctly.'

'Your pronunciation is fine. The police are still peddling this story?'

'They certainly had you marked down as a radical at the time. How they feel about you now I've no idea.'

'Thankfully we've had very little to do with each other. My brief spell in unlawful custody was sufficient. I still don't know if it was the police or the Security Services holding me. I was punched, kicked, deprived of food and sleep, not permitted to wash, disturbed at prayers, forced to urinate on the floor. They found no evidence against me, I was not charged, nor have I ever been.' He leaned forward in his chair. 'I should be extremely wary of taking notice of what people who behave in this way tell you, Mrs Cooper. They were not concerned with guilt or innocence, or even with the truth. All they wanted was to put Muslims behind bars.'

'They told Mrs Jamal you were a member of Hizut-Tahrir.'

'You're sounding very much like them. I thought the coroner's functions were separate from the police?'

He sat back, regarding her calmly, waiting for her explanation.

'Nazim Jamal has been pronounced legally dead. My function is to find out how that happened.'

'I thought he was only presumed dead? That's not sufficient grounds for an inquest.'

'This is a preliminary inquiry. Mrs Jamal has spent many years in limbo; I feel it's the least I can do for her.' She affected what she hoped would appear a genuine smile. 'I presume that you were close to the two of them, friendly even?'

'Yes, for a while.'

'Is there anything you'd like their families to know?'

'There's nothing to tell. We went to mosque, studied a little together. That's it.'

'Would you mind telling me what you studied?'

'Facets of our religion.'

She nodded towards his bookshelf. 'Would these discussions have had a political slant?'

'We were students. We discussed all sorts of things.'

'Seven years is a long time. I expect you've changed.'

He shook his head. 'You really have missed your vocation,

Mrs Cooper. I am not - ' he paused for emphasis - 'nor have I ever been, an advocate of violence.'

'Do you know where they went, Mr Ali?'