M.R. Hall - The Disappeared

'Do you know for certain your son was involved with radicals?'

'I knew nothing. I still don't, only what the police tell me.' She motioned towards the file of papers. 'They say they saw him going in and out of a house in St Pauls every Wednesday night for halaqah. Him and Rafi Hassan, a friend from university.'

'Tell me about Rafi.'

'He was in Nazim's year. He studied law. They had rooms in the same building, Manor Hall. His family comes from Birmingham.'

'Did you meet him?'

'No. Nazim hardly mentioned him. I got all this from the police . . . afterwards.' She pulled a fresh handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her eyes, rocking back and forth in her chair.

'After what?' Jenny said, tentatively.

'I saw Nazim only once in May. He came on a Saturday, my birthday. His aunties were there and cousins. It was a wonderful day, he was himself again . . . And then once more in June, the 22rd, another Saturday.' All the dates were etched on her memory. 'He arrived in the morning looking pale. He told me he wasn't feeling well, a fever and headache. He lay in the spare bed and slept all afternoon and evening. He ate a little soup but said he was still too tired to go back to college, so he stayed the night. I woke at dawn and heard him praying: with perfect tajwid - reciting from the Koran like he'd learned as a boy.' She took a shaky breath and closed her eyes. 'I must have fallen asleep again. When I got up to make breakfast he'd gone. He left me a note. Thanks, Mum. Bye. Naz . It's there in the papers ... I never saw him again.' Tears ran down her cheeks. She pressed her mascara-stained handkerchief to them and tried to steady herself. 'The police said . . . they said they saw him come out of the halaqah at ten-thirty on the night of Friday, 28 June 2002. That was in Marlowes Road in St Pauls. He walked to the bus stop with Rafi Hassan and that was it. He didn't go to tennis the next morning and neither of them was at class on Monday. The police spoke to all the students in the hall, but no one saw them over the weekend, or ever again.'

For the first time in their interview Mrs Jamal was overcome. Jenny let her weep uninterrupted. She had learned that the best response to grieving relatives was to observe a respectful silence, to offer a sympathetic smile but to say as little as possible. However well meant, words seldom eased the pain of grief.

When her tears eventually subsided, Mrs Jamal described how the college authorities had telephoned her husband, who then called her when Nazim failed to attend his tutorial the following Wednesday. He had been due to hand in an important dissertation. Zachariah and several of his nephews scoured the campus, but no one had seen Nazim or Rafi since the previous week, and neither boy seemed to have any close friends apart from one another. Even the students who lived in adjoining rooms could claim only a nodding acquaintance.

Initially the police responded with their usual indifference to reports of missing persons. A liaison officer even went so far as to suggest that the two young men might have fallen into a sexual relationship and run away together. Mrs Jamal knew her son well enough to know this wasn't likely. Then it emerged that both boys' laptop computers and mobile phones were missing. The police sergeant who had searched their rooms found evidence that their doors had been forced with a similar implement, probably a wide screwdriver. And then, nearly a week later, a girl who had a room in a neighbouring building, Dani James, came forward to tell police that she'd seen a man in a puffy anorak with a baseball cap pulled down over his face walking quickly out of Manor Hall at around midnight on the night of 28 June. She thought he had a large rucksack or a holdall over his shoulder.

Despite protests from both families, the police remained reluctant to investigate. Mrs Jamal was writing to her local councillor and MP, desperate for help, when she had a visit at home from two young men, one white, one Asian, who said they worked for the Security Services. They said they suspected that Nazim and Rafi had become involved with Hizbut-Tahrir and that they had been observed by the police attending a radical halaqah.

'It was the first I'd heard of it, although I'd suspected something like this,' Mrs Jamal said, 'but I didn't want it to be true. I put those thoughts out of my mind. They kept asking me questions. They wouldn't believe I didn't know about what he got up to at college. They virtually accused me of lying to protect him.'

'What did they think had happened to him?'

'They kept asking whether he'd mentioned going to Afghanistan, whether he'd talked about al-Qaeda. I told them he'd never said anything like that. Never, never.'

'They thought he and Rafi might have gone abroad to train with extremists?'

'That's what they said. But his passport was still at his father's house.'

'And Rafi's?

'He didn't even have one. And they went through all their bank records - there was nothing suspicious.'

'Did either of them use their bank accounts or credit cards after the 28th?'

'No. They just vanished. Disappeared.'

Jenny felt a jolt of anxiety pass through her, the feeling of mental constriction that was the first stage of panic. She took a breath, relaxed her limbs, trying to let the sensation drain away. 'Did you ever find out anything more?'

'Two weeks later, a man named Simon Donovan gave a statement to the police saying that he was on a train to London on the morning of the 29th and saw two young Asian men who met their description. Both with beards and traditional dress, he said. His statement's in the file. This made the police think they had gone abroad, so they spoke again to all the students at the hall. A girl called Sarah Levin claimed she'd once heard Rafi say something in the canteen about "brothers" who were going to Afghanistan.' Mrs Jamal shook her head adamantly. 'He wouldn't have done that, Mrs Cooper. I know my own son. He wouldn't have done that.'

Jenny thought of Ross, of having to fetch him from school last summer when he was high on cannabis; of his unpredictable moods and occasional outbursts of staggering hurtfulness. She thought she knew the sensitive boy underneath, but sometimes she wondered; sometimes it occurred to her that we can't truly know even those closest to us.

'What did the police do with this information?' Jenny said.

'They looked for evidence, but they didn't find any. They said they would have left the country on false papers, gone to Pakistan.'

'Did they check passenger lists? It's not easy to get through an airport unnoticed.'

'They told us they checked everything. They even said they could have gone through another European country, or

Africa or the Middle East ... I don't know.' The energy had drained from her. She seemed a smaller, more fragile figure than before.

'How did it end?'

'We had a letter in December 2002. The police said they had done everything they could and that the most likely explanation was that they had gone abroad with an Islamist group. That was all. Nothing more. Nothing.'

'What about the mosque and the halaqah?'

'The police told us that the mosque had closed in August that year and the halaqah as well. They said that the Security Services had been following their activities, but nothing else had been learned about Nazim or Rafi. They promised us they would tell us if anything became known.'

'Did these people from the Security Services ever contact you again?'

Mrs Jamal shook her head.

'You mentioned lawyers . . .'

'Yes. I tried to get them to ask questions, to speak to the Security Services and police, but all they did was take my money. It was left to me. I found out for myself that after seven years a missing person can be declared dead.' She met Jenny's gaze. 'And I also read that the coroner must find out how a person died. His father's address, Nazim's official residence at the time, is in your district, so that is why I am here.'