M.R. Hall - The Disappeared

'I'll deal with that woman, Officer,' he shouted at the constable, waving his warrant card.

The constable took a reluctant step back.

Pironi erupted. 'Do you think you're bigger than all this? Someone's running around with a dirty bomb and you're playing beat the detectives.'

'I've a legal right to speak to Anna Rose.'

'You have a right to remain silent, Mrs Cooper. Withholding information — '

Jenny shouted over him. 'I saw the American. He was right there.' She pointed to the corner of the trailer. 'He took a shot at those men snatching Anna Rose.'

Pironi fell silent for a moment. 'Where'd he go?'

'He took off just after they did. I think he might have been hit.'

'Stay here.'

Pironi strode over to the corner of the trailer.

'What's his problem?' Jenny said to Alison.

'He's been told to nick you.'

'Who by?'

'There's a question.'

'What's that meant to mean?'

'He doesn't know. It just gets passed down the line.'

'And what are you here for, moral support?'

'I think he needed to talk.'

Pironi marched back towards them. He looked at Alison, then at Jenny, fear and indecision in his eyes. 'Did you get a look at his face?'

'I saw him at the mortuary ten days ago. He claimed to be looking for his missing stepdaughter.'

Pironi looked down at the dirty snow. 'You weren't here. Get lost.'

Jenny said, 'What about my car?'

'Give me the keys. Wait over there.'

She handed them over. 'Are you going to tell me who this man is?'

'We haven't got a fucking clue.'

The events at the service station played repeatedly behind her eyes like a disturbing fragment of rolling news. After all her efforts, they had got to Anna Rose first. And as surely as they had put her beyond reach, they would by now have silenced Sarah Levin. Jenny felt nothing except an absence of sensation. Like her own frustrated inner journey, her inquest had reached the foot of an unscalable cliff.

A thin crust of snow lay on the ground outside Melin Bach. The earlier storm had passed, leaving the air deathly still. The night was as silent as any she'd known. Even the restless timbers of the house had stopped their quiet groaning. There was only the sound of her breath and her footsteps on the flagstones. Huddled in a nightgown and cardigan, she paced restlessly to and fro from the living room to the study groping for any argument or authority that might keep her inquest alive. She was beyond the territory covered by the textbooks. They spoke grandly of a coroner's powers to apply to superior courts for orders for production of witnesses and documents, but they presumed a due process, a system of law that didn't bend to political pressure, impartial judges who looked on all agencies of the state as equal. They didn't provide for tricks, fixes, official denials and deliberate misunderstandings.

It was four a.m. when her mind finally folded. She collapsed into a chair and tried to relax her still-agitated body. There's nothing more to be gained, she told herself. You tried, you did more than any other coroner ever would. Slowly her muscles began to unwind and grow heavy. Some things are simply beyond your grasp; let yourself off the hook, Jenny .

Her eyelids began to droop. She rocked forward, meaning to take herself to bed, but instead fell into a doze, then into a deep, defeated sleep.

It felt like only moments later when she was painfully jolted to consciousness by the phone. Disorientated, she reached for the receiver and murmured a croaky hello.

'Jenny? It's Alec.' McAvoy's voice was quiet and sober.

'My God.' Jenny blinked at her watch: it was nearly four- thirty. 'Where the hell did you go?'

'I didn't think you'd get to me today ... I had things to do.'

Her thoughts came at her in a jumbled rush.

'I need you. You've got to give evidence tomorrow. I need you talk about the American - you know something, don't you?'

'I've plenty to tell you, Jenny. Plenty. I could fill a book with it.' He sounded tired.

'Alec . . . you are all right, aren't you? Pironi told Alison you didn't seem well.'

'Oh. Was this a physical or a spiritual diagnosis?'

'I'm bringing him to court to hear your evidence. There's a chance he could be persuaded to come round, at least as far as to say who made him halt his original investigation. He might even admit that he was ordered to put you away.'

'That'd be the day.'

'I think he's had an attack of conscience. Something happened this evening . . .' She checked herself. 'I'll tell you after you've testified. You will, won't you?'

McAvoy was silent.

'Alec, listen to me, listen. You have to come. I'd begun to think there was no hope, but there is still some, isn't there? . . . Alec?'

'There's always hope.'

'And when this is over, we'll talk?'

'We will. Goodnight, Jenny.'

'Goodnight . . . Alec — ' You didn't tell me why you called was what she wanted to say, but the line had already gone dead. She could have rung him back, but it would have spoiled the moment. Besides, she knew what he wanted to say, she could feel it: that she wasn't alone. He was with her.

Chapter 27

From her office on the first floor Jenny could hear the protesters chanting outside the hall. The crowd of angry young Asian men had swelled to more than thirty, but they remained outnumbered by the police. Still not a word about the inquest had been published in the papers or broadcast on radio or television. Nor had the snatching of Anna Rose and the exchange of gunfire in a motorway service station made it to the news. As far as the outside world was concerned, none of it had ever happened.

Alison knocked on the door and entered wearing an apologetic expression.

'There's no sign of Mr McAvoy yet, nor Dave Pironi. I've left another message for Dr Levin. She knows she's meant to be here.'

'What about Salim Hussain - did you manage to trace him?'

'I got an address and phone number from the university office. He's not answering. I spoke to his tutor, who says he's missed his last two supervisions.'

'When was the last time he saw him?'

'Nearly three weeks ago.'

Jenny fought back the suspicion that her witnesses were being deliberately withheld from her.

'What do you want to do?' Alison said. 'We should have sat fifteen minutes ago. Miss Denton's getting impatient.'

Jenny drew on her dwindling reserves of strength. Deep tiredness combined with the overwhelming anxiety about everything slipping through her fingers was threatening to overwhelm her medication. Her heart was hammering against her lungs.

'I ought to tell the jury something,' she said, and got up from behind her desk. 'Keep trying McAvoy and Pironi. Who knows? Maybe they're on their way together.'

Alison raised her eyebrows. 'Stranger things have happened.'

Martha Denton rose impatiently as soon as Jenny had taken her seat at the head of the courtroom.

'May we have a word before the jury are brought in, ma'am?'

Jenny could think of no reason to refuse.

Denton produced a document. 'You won't be surprised to hear that the Secretary of State has issued a certificate of public interest immunity covering the intelligence relating to the whereabouts of Nazim Jamal or Rafi Hassan during the time immediately following their disappearance.'

Alison took a copy over to Jenny. She glanced over the impersonal text and noticed that Mr Jamal looked older today, resigned.

Jenny said, 'I suppose if I demand to see this intelligence I'll be refused.'

'If it's any help, ma'am, there is a High Court judge currently sitting in Bristol who can make himself available this afternoon.'

With his appeal-proof judgement already written, Jenny didn't doubt.