The Disappeared (25 page)

She did not look at him as she spoke, but addressed the wall of the office, as though testifying before an imaginary judge. Justin regretted the whisky he had drunk the night before, and which was impeding his thoughts. He recalled Iona telling him that there can be a multicultural society, but there cannot be multicultural love. And he wondered whether Muhibbah's words were a proof or a disproof of that maxim. She could have let him know months ago that she wanted the closeness she now was claiming; she could have made an effort to be in touch from her village hideout; she could have broken away from her criminal brother at any time had she chosen to turn to Justin for help. But it was only now, when he was the last recourse and the least of the three evils confronting her, that she was declaring her love for him. And whether she was discovering her love or inventing it he could not tell. Nevertheless, he rose to his feet, turned to her, and held her beautiful face in his hands. She looked at him steadily, as a proud desert girl looks at her fate, be it love or death. And she returned his kiss with a passion that surprised him.

‘So what are we going to do, Muhibbah?' he asked as he broke away.

‘It is up to you, Justin. Here I am, if you want me.'

‘And how do I know that this time you really will have nothing more to do with that family of yours?'

‘Because they will have nothing to do with me. My cousin already told you that, when you visited them in the Angel Towers.'

‘So you know about my visit?' he asked in surprise.

‘How could I not?'

‘And you weren't moved to get in touch with me?'

‘Being moved to do things is not in my nature Justin. I can make decisions. Or I can receive orders. At the moment I am waiting for orders.'

‘In that case, can you wait a little longer, until after our meeting with the accountant, when I have had time to think?'

‘I am meeting Yunus at twelve. So you have till then, three hours by my watch.'

She smiled, a firm, hard smile that gave nothing away. Then she kissed him tenderly on both cheeks and sat down across from him at the desk. He was still in a state of confusion, both elated and apprehensive, when his secretary arrived, looked through the door, greeted Muhibbah with a gasp of astonishment, and then withdrew again.

Muhibbah begged him to be understanding about the accounts. She had not meant to damage the business, had kept meticulous records of which transactions belonged to the Shahin account and which to Copley Solutions. It could all be disentangled and rewritten. The loss of the computer wasn't important: she had copied her work, and told her brother that the copy was lost. She took a CD from the little carpet bag she carried and placed it on his desk, with an earnest look as though to imply that this was a sufficient exculpation. When Laura arrived a moment later Justin rapidly withdrew his hand from Muhibbah's, which she had reached towards him across the desk. Muhibbah's hand, however, remained where it was. And it was on the long fingers of that outstretched hand that Laura's eyes rested, as she paused in the door.

As they worked together on the accounts, checking the print-out from Muhibbah's CD with the transactions contained in the file, and collating both with the company account book, Justin became yet more convinced that Laura was not quite right in the head. He could understand Muhibbah's confused and shame-faced reaction, understand why she refused to say what the Shahin business involved, or why the sums were so large. He could understand why Muhibbah sat for long moments with her elbows on the desk and her face buried in her hands. But he could not fathom why Laura, who managed everything with brisk and cold instructions, kept looking Muhibbah up and down, her eyes often wide with astonishment as though trying to match that face with another in the archive of her memory. She spoke to the girl as though addressing a ghost. And once or twice Laura trembled involuntarily.

It was evident from her way of proceeding that Laura was efficient and clear-headed. It was evident too that she would dissociate herself from any attempt to cover up illegalities, and that her recommendations would be entirely transparent. But it was also clear that she was working under considerable emotional strain, as though fighting a depression that threatened constantly to get the better of her. At the same time there was a gentleness and concern in her attitude to Justin that contrasted vividly with her cold, even vindictive, approach to Muhibbah.

At a certain point Laura asked to look in the archive. While she was out of the room Muhibbah took Justin aside and whispered to him.

‘My brother will be here soon.'

‘You mean he is coming
here
?'

‘Yes, I asked him to. He wants to meet you. After all, you know too much about him.'

‘I cannot imagine what we have to say to each other.'

‘Can't you? I have asked you a question. The answer is yes or no. And whichever it is, you should say it in front of him.'

She swept the hair from her forehead to reveal blazing and defiant eyes. Her lips lay together without pressure, soft, sand-coloured, sphinx-like. He shuddered at the thought of what she asked for – not love only, but an absolute unity of being.

‘Good God, Muhibbah, you are not going to tell me that the decision is really his?'

‘No. It is really yours.'

She turned away. When, a second later, the door opened and the familiar young man with Muhibbah's regular features stood beneath the lintel, Justin's heart sank. It was immediately clear that what Muhibbah had asked of him was impossible. To be brother-in-law to this confused delinquent, who could hardly look him in the eye and who, on being introduced, collapsed at once into a chair as though suffering from some congenital weakness – this was simply off the agenda. Even if the boy should be lost somewhere in the Yemeni desert among Salafi fanatics – even then there could be no alliance between them. He made up his mind to say this, to say it directly to Muhibba, ignoring whatever presumptuous rights over her the boy might claim. He stepped forward, holding up his hand.

‘There is something I want to say to Muhibbah, which in my view concerns her alone.'

The boy looked up at him with a nervous smile. Then the smile suddenly gave way to a look of shocked recognition and he rose from his chair.

‘Fucking Hell! Catherine!' he cried.

Justin swung round to see Laura, her face tense, silent and full of resolve, standing in the door of the archive.

You are going to be in shock for a long time. Whatever normality you are able to maintain will be a mask, and occasionally the mask will drop. This you know from those months after Father died. But you also know that there is one person who can help you. That person is Justin Fellowes. You think of him in the taxi, on the way to your 9.30 appointment. He is what a man should be: sympathetic, considerate, but imaginative and ambitious. If you were to tell your story to anyone – to any man at least, and what woman could help you? – it would be to Justin. You can even imagine him stroking your hair, your words overflowing as he wipes your tears away. And he would join you unhesitatingly in the search for revenge.

Crazy to have become attached so quickly to a person you hardly know. But perhaps he too is attached. In the labyrinth into which you both have strayed maybe you are gripping a single string.

The taxi is driving through the older part of the city: Victorian offices, neo-Gothic churches, banks in the style of Renaissance villas, and a town hall of stone with a giant Corinthian portico and a clock tower above. Well-dressed people are hurrying to work, and a modern-looking café has set up tables on the pavement. A few office workers are already sipping cappuccinos and engaging in the conversation of the day. Again normality, a modern English normality that says in genial accents that what happened to you could not have happened.

By the time you enter the office at 9.30 you are able to smile. How nicely Justin greets you, and with what a gentle protective look in his bright blue eyes. Or was the look intended for the Afghan girl, who is already there, and who seems to be reaching across to him on the desk with those long, fine walnut-coloured fingers, the very same fingers that were yesterday wrapped around a knife?

Your shock returns and for a moment you are trembling. She turns to look at you. The same eyes, the same oval face and sandy lips, the same dark olive hair – but neat, clean, self-contained, as though she has mastered her problems and can fend for herself.

The suspicion that she is Yunus's sister is already immovable as you begin to observe her tricks. She is a cheat and a manipulator. Not the untouchable jewel that her brother has placed in the only sanctuary that his broken soul acknowledges, but a canny and scheming fraudster, who has made a set at Justin in order to slip past the barrier of her crimes. She is utterly bewitching of course, and Justin is bewitched. You feel an almost motherly concern for him, a desire gently to prise his fingers loose from this toy before it explodes in his face. For you know, as he does not, the stuff the toy is made of.

She is clever too. She has kept exactly the records required in order to unpick the ravelled accounts. She has foreseen the very event that has been sprung upon her, when she has to come clean without describing her business – the business that no doubt brought the little witch to this country in the first place. How cleverly she and her brothers have used their privileges as immigrants, always linking to operations beyond our national borders, and relying on political correctness to protect them from investigation at home. And why speak of home? This country is not home for them, but a hunting ground, an unbounded lucrative elsewhere. You would like to see them all in gaol.

But Yunus? The confused boy who rescued you, and who begged you to keep quiet? Of course he should be punished. But he appealed to you, and by freeing you he placed his life in your hands. Should you think of him, one of your kidnappers, as a fellow human being, to whom you are bound by moral obligations? And what would this clever manipulative girl say, if she knew that her place in her brother's heart had prevented him from raping you? And then again, do you not owe something to that other girl they mentioned, the one that is going to replace you as a sex slave? Should you not be thinking of her and how to save her? And how can you save her without betraying Yunus? And is it really a betrayal, when the boy has conducted the whole affair, from start to finish, by force? All these questions are spinning in your head as you search for the remaining Lesprom correspondence in the archive. And not one of them has received an answer when, emerging into Justin's office, you see Yunus seated in the chair by the window, looking nervous and defeated, his all too perfect sister gleaming at his side.

‘Fucking Hell! Catherine!' he cries, and you are obliged to correct him.

‘My name is Laura. Laura Markham.'

‘Why did you tell me Catherine?'

He gives you a hurt look, and then glances at his sister, whose face shows every sign of alarm.

‘It is not as though you had any right to honest dealings, Yunus. Why should I let you steal my name as well?'

He is blushing now.

‘OK, OK,' he mutters, and again looks sheepishly at his sister.

‘What's going on?' asks Justin. ‘How come you two know each other?'

‘Maybe Yunus would like to explain,' you say.

The Afghan girl says something to Yunus in Arabic, and he nods. Clearly she is trying to get him out of the door, since her whole body gravitates in that direction. But Yunus remains slumped in the chair, addressing you with a baffled look.

‘This is just great, man, meeting you here, you and my sister in the same place. And you gonna tell her what a shit her brother is.'

He seems to be crumbling visibly before you. You decide to address Justin instead.

‘You see, Justin, I spent yesterday with Yunus here. You laughed when you spoke of me being kidnapped. But it was true.'

‘It wasn't me did it!' Yunus cries, starting forward from his chair.

‘Whoever
did
it,' you reply, ‘hardly matters. I was kidnapped, and you were part of the action.'

‘Yes, but it was a mistake see, a mistake!'

Yunus is looking at his sister imploringly, and shame is written all over her face. It is not a face made for shame. Its impeccable symmetries are designed to meet the other eye to eye, to outstare fate, and to go toward death in proud defiance. Now it is beginning to soften and collapse. She has raised a hand to her temple, and tears are gathering, ready to mar those perfect cheeks as they burst the banks of eyelids that were never meant to flutter as they are fluttering now.

‘It was not a mistake on your brother Hassan's part that he tried to rape me.'

‘Hassan!' the girl cries, and claps both her hands over her eyes.

‘But he dinna do it. You said so yourself.'

Yunus's tone is urgent. It is not that he is trying to exculpate his brother. He is trying to shield his image of
you
. Somehow you have broken into the sacred space where the image of the weeping girl beside him has until now been the sole occupant. You are a woman he could love, and he is helpless before you.

‘Listen, Justin,' you say. ‘You can see that I fell in with a nasty crowd after I left you, when was it? Only the day before yesterday. But even if Yunus is not entirely innocent, he rescued me in the end.'

Justin has gone white and is staring at you speechless. For a moment there is no sound in the office apart from the girl's stifled weeping. Then she stops and speaks in a whisper.

‘We had better go. I'm sorry, Justin. I made such a stupid request this morning. Let's not refer to it again.'

She pulls at her brother's arm and he half rises from his seat.

‘Just a minute,' you say. ‘There's someone else we need to think about. It was a mistake to kidnap me, because I was the wrong girl. Who was the right girl, and are you going to deliver her to that evil man Bogdan?'