by Paul Torday
I felt a little ‘ting’ of anxiety going off in my head. I walked along the front of the shop, looking at all the checkout queues, but couldn’t spot her. She wasn’t in any of the aisles. I hurried from one end of the shop to the other, attracting curious glances from one or two shoppers. Still no Adeena.
I ran outside, my heart thumping within my chest, as if it would burst. She wasn’t in front of the shop. She wasn’t in the street anywhere that I could see. I went a few yards in one direction, and then a few yards in the other. Every now and then I blinked, as if a film showing another world had fallen across my eyes, and if I wiped it away, there would be Camden High Street as it really was, with Adeena standing there smiling at me. Perspiration was running down my forehead. I stopped for a moment, trying to make myself think.
There was no Adeena. There was no sign of her anywhere. She had vanished. It was as if she had never been.
Thirteen
I don’t know how long I stood there, opening and shutting my mouth like a stranded fish. I took a step, and then another step, quite unable to think of what I should do next. My mind was utterly blank. Then a question formed in it, like a single message scrawled on a huge sheet of paper:
‘Did she run, or was she taken?’
I needed to do something. I could not stand here for the rest of my life. In any other emergency I had ever been in, training and reflexes took over. I never hesitated; I went straight into action. But not on this occasion. I tried to get a grip of myself and started to walk rapidly along Camden High Street in search of Adeena. As if I would find her, among ten million people. As if she wasn’t miles away by now, being carried off in a car, or walking rapidly away down side streets, doubling and turning to confuse any pursuer. After a few more moments I gave up and walked slowly back to my flat. There was no point in going anywhere else now.
When I arrived at the entrance to the flat the door was still locked. All the same, when I opened it and stepped inside I called out: ‘Adeena? Nadine?’
There was no answer.
I went into the sitting room, sat down in a chair near the window and tried to think. She wouldn’t have left me; someone had taken her. It must have been Aseeb. In a few minutes, when my heart had stopped racing, I would get up, go to Oxford and find that house again. Aseeb was no different to some of the people I’d dealt with in Baghdad. I could deal with him too. It wasn’t a great plan, but in my present state of mind I could not think of a better one.
Then a new thought struck me. She was gone: did it matter? Wasn’t that the idea? I should thank whoever had so neatly removed Adeena from my life. Yes, it was a bit brutal. But I had had no idea what to do about her. She was a problem. Of course, she was also my wife – legally or illegally – but easy come, easy go. Problem solved. Job done. Tomorrow I would use Aseeb’s money to pay off the arrears on my rent, and start looking for work.
I got up and went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. An image of Adeena talking to me on the train suddenly came into my mind, her body leaning forward, her face vivid and animated. It was as if I could reach out and touch her.
While I stood there waiting for the kettle to boil I realised that in the last few days Adeena had got inside my head in a way that nobody had done since Emma. There was no question about it: I had to find her, and bring her back.
As I was getting ready to go I heard faint sounds outside: a step on the stairs; a sound that could have been a whisper; a creak. Before I could react there was a bang as the front door of the flat flew open. Several men were suddenly in the kitchen with me: large men, moving very fast. Someone kicked my feet from under me and I was on the floor, catching my forehead on the edge of the kitchen table as I fell. A man dropped on top of me, pinning me to the ground. More doors banged, and someone shouted:
‘No one else here.’ Another voice replied: ‘Well then, go back to the van and wait while I have a word with Matey here.’
From my vantage point on the floor I could see little. Then two pairs of feet came into view: one wearing trainers, the other, battered suede shoes.
‘Let him up,’ said the voice that had spoken a moment ago. I was released and I heard someone leave the room. I took a moment or so to get my breath back and then got slowly to my feet. I found my handkerchief and wiped away the trickle of blood that was running into my eyes from the cut on my forehead. I was not at all surprised to see the man in the pale raincoat I’d spotted outside Hartlepool Hall, standing in front of me. He didn’t look happy. His thin, unshaven face was scowling as he held up a warrant card.
‘Richard Gaunt?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘Security services,’ he said. ‘My name is Nick Davies. Where’s the girl?’
There was another man in a leather jacket, jeans and trainers beside him. I recognised him as well. He was the second man who had got out of the silver people carrier. Nick Davies pushed past me and went into the sitting room. I followed, while the other man lounged against the door jamb, watching us both.
‘Where the hell did you go this morning?’ asked Nick Davies, without any further preamble. ‘You were at Hartlepool Hall last night, weren’t you? Why did you run? What are you afraid of?’
‘Hang on a second,’ I said. ‘Before we go any farther with this, I don’t know anything about you. Who are you, and why the hell did you break down my door and assault me?’
‘We didn’t break down the door,’ said Nick Davies. ‘We slipped the catch. And I’m sorry if our entry was a little noisy. My colleagues from CO15 didn’t quite know what to expect when we got here. You’ve seen the warrant card. You know why we want to talk to you and the girl.’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ I replied. My head was aching from where it had struck the kitchen table and I wasn’t feeling very helpful.
‘Eck Chetwode Talbot rang us and told us you had met up with a man called Aseeb. He also emailed us a photograph of a girl. We understand she has some connection with Aseeb, and that she’s a foreigner. We want to interview her. We also very much want to find Aseeb.’
‘I’m not responsible for what Eck does, or says. I barely know him.’
‘Don’t waste time,’ said Nick Davies. ‘Where’s the girl? And Aseeb?’
I hesitated. I didn’t know what to say. Nick Davies reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small photograph in a clear plastic envelope. He handed it to me.
‘Do you know who this is?’
It was a picture of Adeena at Hartlepool Hall, looking straight into the camera, an expression of displeasure on her face. For a moment I didn’t understand: then I remembered Eck holding up his mobile phone and fiddling with it. The sneaky bastard had been taking a picture of Adeena.
‘Her name is Adeena,’ I said. Then I added: ‘She’s my wife.’
‘She’s your wife, now, is she?’ Nick Davies leaned back on the sofa and yawned, then said to the other man, who was still leaning against the kitchen door frame:
‘Basil, make us all some coffee, would you? I’m dead. We’ve been up and down the length and breadth of this country chasing after you, Mr Gaunt, and a cup of coffee would be much appreciated. Your wife’s name again?’
‘Adeena.’ I spelled it out for him. ‘She’s from Afghanistan.’
‘You say you’re married. For how long?’
‘We were married at Oxford Register Office four days ago,’ I told him.
‘And where is your wife now? Out shopping in the dark?’
‘I don’t know where she is.’
Nick Davies looked at me as Basil came back in and handed us both mugs of coffee.
‘You don’t know where she is,’ he repeated. ‘Married life going a bit stale already, is it, Mr Gaunt? Not too bothered about her whereabouts? And how do you know Aseeb?’
The sudden switch in the questions threw me off balance.
‘I met a man who called himself Mr Khan in a house in Oxfordshire,’ I said.
‘Is this him?’
Nic
k Davies pulled another photograph from his pocket, and showed it to me. It was of a man in a dark suit, getting out of a car. He was half turned towards the camera and it did not look as if he knew he was being photographed. I could see just enough of the face: the high forehead, the dark hair brushed straight back, the dark eyes and aquiline nose. I nodded.
‘That’s him.’
‘Then your Mr Khan is our Aseeb. Where exactly in Oxfordshire was this house? What were you doing there?’
I told Nick Davies the name of the house and where I thought it was. He turned to his colleague.
‘Phone it in, Bas. Ask them to get someone down to the location to take a look. Not a copper in a panda, though. Send a team with a search and entry warrant, as soon as they can get one.’
He turned back to me.
‘So how exactly did you come to be Aseeb’s guest at this house? How did you meet?’
‘One of his employees knocked me down with a Range Rover, and then took me there in the boot of the car.’
Nick Davies stared at me. Then he laughed.
‘Well, that’s different. Are you capable of telling me the whole story, or do I have to drag it out of you bit by bit?’
I saw there wasn’t any point in concealing anything from him. I needed this man’s help, now I knew for certain he was not the one who had taken Adeena. So I told him the full story: the kidnap; the ‘arranged marriage’; my escape. As I told it I felt a renewed sense of self-loathing. How could I have behaved like that? Nick Davies did not bother to hide the look of contempt that spread over his face as I talked.
‘So you married this girl for money, did you, Mr Gaunt? No wonder you’re not that bothered where she is. You’ve cashed the cheque, I suppose, had a bit of fun with her, so now she can just look after herself. Is that the idea?’
I shook my head. I wanted to object to this view of my behaviour, but I couldn’t find the right words.
‘So you really don’t know when she’ll be back? I can’t decide, Mr Gaunt, whether you are just another one of the people Aseeb has duped, or whether you are working for him. You tell me that he paid you ten thousand pounds. That puts you on his payroll, doesn’t it? A court might consider your evidence to be contaminated by that payment.’
He paused and looked at me.
‘We work in counter-terrorism. The girl appears to be an associate of someone we think organises and finances terrorism so we need to talk to her as a matter of urgency. She will know something about Aseeb and what he is doing back in this country. She may not know she knows it, but she will know something.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ve been sat here for a quarter of an hour already. Is she coming back here?’
‘Adeena has disappeared,’ I told him.
‘How do you mean, she’s disappeared?’
‘I mean that one minute she was with me, in a supermarket, the next she was gone.’
I had to go over that part of the story again, in detail. When I had finished Nick Davies asked, ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’
‘Call the police? By the time I’d finished explaining everything to them they’d think I was mad. I’d probably have been arrested.’
‘So what were you going to do?’
‘I was just about to go back to Oxfordshire and look for her,’ I told him.
‘You were going to go and get her back? Who do you think you are? James Bond?’
Nick Davies stood up. He took a card from his pocket.
‘Leave that kind of thing to us. That’s our job. We don’t want civilians interfering. We’ll check out the house in Oxfordshire as soon as we can get a warrant. In the meantime, don’t go anywhere. We’ll keep an eye on your flat in case your friend Aseeb decides to come here, but you stay put. This is our business now, not yours. Here’s my phone number,’ he said, handing me the card. ‘If I don’t answer, someone else will. What’s your mobile number?’
‘I don’t have one,’ I told him.
‘Then go out and buy one as soon as the shops open tomorrow. If the girl gets in touch, you need to speak to me straight away. Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything; just call me. We’ll be looking for Aseeb, now that we know he’s in the country, and if we find him or the girl, we’ll let you know.’
A moment or so later the two of them left. I didn’t feel I had made a very good impression on them but I didn’t much care. At least they would be looking for Aseeb. They had the resources to do it. My own plan had been a little thin on the detail. Leave it to the professionals, I thought.
Just then the phone rang. I snatched up the receiver, wondering whether it was Adeena.
‘Don’t you have any manners?’ a voice asked. After a moment’s confusion, I realised who was speaking. It was Ed Hartlepool.
‘I’m sorry? Is that you, Ed?’
‘Yes, it bloody well is me.’
‘What’s all this about manners?’
‘Don’t you know how to behave?’ he asked, sounding annoyed. ‘You borrow my house, you borrow my horses, you even borrow my butler. Fine. We agreed you could stay at Hartlepool Hall for a few days. But then you up and leave – you and your girlfriend – without so much as saying thank you or goodbye. Horace was really upset. He rang me to say that Mrs Dickinson had gone into Darlington and bought some kippers for your breakfast, and you just disappeared without saying goodbye: without a word, in fact.’
‘Some people we didn’t want to see turned up. We had to leave in a hurry.’
‘Some people?’ repeated Ed. He sounded more and more angry. ‘They told Horace they were from the security services. He nearly had a heart attack. What kind of people are you mixing with these days, Richard? Who was the girl?’
‘I’m awfully sorry, Ed. They were just some old army acquaintances I wanted to avoid.’
‘That sounds likely. What opinion do you think the staff will have of me if I let people like you stay in the house?’
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I repeated. I was beginning to get annoyed with Ed. He hadn’t finished ranting.
‘You didn’t even leave a tip for Horace. He didn’t say so, but when I asked if you’d left anything in your rooms he said, ‘‘Only their clothes, sir.’’ I could tell from his tone of voice that you hadn’t left anything for him. I call that thoroughly bad manners. Or are you going to tell me you were unhappy with the way he looked after you?’
‘He looked after us beautifully,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to have left Horace in the lurch like that. I’m sorry about the kippers too. I’ll put a cheque in the post. What’s the going rate these days?’
Ed sounded slightly, but only slightly, mollified.
‘A hundred quid at least.’
‘I’ll send him a cheque today.’
‘What do you want done with your clothes?’ he asked. ‘I hope you don’t expect Horace to post them to you?’
‘Burn them,’ I told Ed, and hung up.
I sat by the phone, trying not to think about what might be happening to Adeena. I had a very bad feeling about Aseeb. If he was some kind of terrorist and if Adeena was in his way now, or a risk to him, then he might do anything to her.
Whenever I tried to empty my mind of unpleasant thoughts, it often happened that even more unpleasant ones came along and filled it. The medical officer had told me I might have flashbacks. ‘You’ll get over them,’ he had said.
*
We tried hard not thinking about what happened in the interrogation rooms, but it was no use. One of the men said he thought they were waterboarding people. He had seen Mr Harris going up the stairs one night with a roll of plastic film in his hand. It was used to wrap people from head to toe and then strap them to a board. The interrogators would then pour water over the subject so that he felt as if he were drowning. He was drowning, but the process allowed the interrogator to cause the sensation of imminent death to recur over and over again.
Sergeant Hawkes once had the courage to ask Mr Harris about it when he attended a briefing session.
‘Just asking, sir.’ Sergeant Hawkes went on calling Mr Harris ‘sir’ and Mr Harris had given up correcting him.
If his answer was meant to be reassuring, it wasn’t. And anyway, I didn’t believe it. I had heard other noises through the music that still haunted me. Not just the screaming. Twice now I had heard the unmistakable whine of an electric drill. That didn’t sound like something approved by the US authorities. I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, although I knew that if I had heard the sound, then some of the others probably had as well. But if we admitted we knew what was happening upstairs we would have had to say something, or else remain silent and be complicit. So we said nothing to each other. It didn’t happen, and we didn’t hear it happen. Yet the sounds that were audible at night haunted my dreams so that sometimes I awoke covered in perspiration, sweating at the shame of my knowledge and my silence.
Then we started to take casualties ourselves.
The first had been a month previous: Corporal Gerrard had been shot in the back by a sniper while on foot patrol in Rashid Street. He died on the spot. The second was Trooper Samuelson. He went mad: that was the only way to describe what happened. Over the last couple of weeks, he’d become withdrawn and very jumpy. I’d noticed this and put in a request to Task Group Headquarters that the man should be allowed some leave or at least be restricted to duties in the villa for a while. Instead I was told that we were undermanned; request denied.
I nearly went and told headquarters to get a grip, but of course I didn’t. Then Samuelson had some sort of fit when we were leaving the compound one morning. He jumped out of the back of the jeep just as we were about to set off on a patrol, and ran back into the building. Sergeant Hawkes was after him like a cat. I followed a moment later. I found Sergeant Hawkes pinning Samuelson against a wall. A pistol lay on the floor.