11:59

by David Williams

  “The car crash, you mean?” says Liam. I’m listening fully now.

  “The police came in the middle of the night, pounding at the door. Everyone was in a panic, hiding. The imam told me to stay in my room, and he opened the door himself. That was when he first claimed to be my uncle. When the police asked for me he told them I was not yet decent and wheedled the story out of them, then left them on the doorstep while he came up to tell me – better coming from a member of the family, he said. Pghwah!” Amina mimes a spitting gesture and scowls at the memory. “He warned me not to say a word out of turn, if I valued my baby’s life. That’s how the lie about Hassan’s death began. It was so simple, actually. The checks were...Well, they had no reason to disbelieve.”

  I glance across at Liam, who looks suitably embarrassed. The interview room door opens and the second MI5 man slips in. He makes as if to join us, then recognises the tension in the room and retreats to the wall, watching proceedings with his arms folded as his colleague asks Amina, “How did Hassan take the news that he’d been disappeared?”

  “Strangely. Tell me Marc, what is the word for a person who feels many different things at once?”

  She’s asked me directly, I have to answer. “Mmm, ambivalent? Schizoid? Conflicted?”

  “Conflicted, yes, that’s a good description of Hassan. Sometimes around people it was like he was really a ghost. Of course, now he could hardly ever go out of the house except the rare times he slipped out at night, but around our home too he would sometimes walk around aimlessly, vacantly, as if he wasn’t really seeing people. Or he would kneel and pray or sit in a corner reading the Qur’an for hours. Other times – especially around Ahmed – he would laugh and tease, as if it was the world’s biggest joke that he was meant to be dead. He said then it suited the purpose, it was meant to be. But then, upstairs, with just the three of us, he would wrap his arms around Tarik and me like a condemned man, as if he was afraid of losing us. Then one night he quietly kissed our little boy in his cot, embraced me, and he left us for good.”

  “The night of February 14th?” Fuck their protocols, this is where I come in.

  Amina nods. I hold myself back, out of respect for her feelings, but now our agente incognito presses on, wanting more. “Was the cell still active at that time?”

  “Everything changed that week,” Amina replies. “For two days they mounted a huge clear-up operation downstairs. All the computers were taken away, the furniture, the fax... They were rubbing down the doors and walls, painting over marks. Even the rubbish was cleared away. Then everybody left without another word – I have no idea where they’d gone off to, but I was so happy, because the one person who didn’t go was Hassan. He stayed with us all evening, and I really thought, this is it, we can get our life together now. We didn’t bother moving back downstairs - there wasn’t a stick of furniture left down there – so we sat upstairs as usual, getting Tarik to bed, listening to the radio. I’d even started making plans for buying furniture, designing a new layout for the front room. But it was like being at the ball with Cinderella because, just before midnight, Hassan told me he had to go. Just like that – he had to go.”

  I feel so much for Amina as she lifts her arms from the table, palms up, demonstrating that look of pain and surprise she must have shown at that moment when Hassan said his final goodbye. I feel part of the moment too, as I was there, or my voice was, filling the background of his leaving from the upstairs radio.

  “He must have called me from the phone in the hall,” I’m saying, almost to myself, reconstructing the scene in sound.

  “Yes. He asked me to stay with Tarik, and closed the door behind him. I was looking out of the window to watch him down the steps – there was a dark blue van waiting at the kerb, and I was just wondering if it was waiting for Hassan when I suddenly heard you say the name Hassan on the radio, and then his voice. It was the strangest thing. I rushed over and turned the volume up so loud I woke the baby. By the time I’d shushed him and got him back again it was all over. Hassan had gone. The van had gone. That was it.”

  Amina stops again, looks as if she might spill over into tears. The agent shifts forward in his seat – either to comfort her or question her – but he is distracted by the sudden, insistent ringing of a mobile phone. Next to him, Liam reaches into an inside pocket. “Sorry,” he mumbles to the room in general, and seems about to switch off the phone when a peek at the screen changes his mind. “Sorry, I’ll just have to take this,” and he swings his long legs away from the table. “Yeah?” he’s saying, the phone already at his ear as he leaves the room. The agent standing against the wall takes the chance offered by this break in proceedings to join the group. He parks himself on Liam’s seat and immediately leans sideways, whispering into the ear of his colleague for several seconds, while Amina and I, excluded, exchange an awkward glance across the table. I give her an encouraging smile and she returns an anxious one. I know her mind is on Liam’s telephone call. The two MI5 men finish their tête-à-tête and settle back in their chairs simultaneously. The first agent addresses Amina.

  “So at this point you were on your own in the house? You and your son.” She nods. “But somebody came back, didn’t they? Was it bin Ali, or somebody he sent for you?”

  “Nobody came near at first. I think they expected me just to get on with my life without Hassan. Muslim women, they know, are passive and stoical. Sadly, that is indeed what I was going to do. From what the imam had said to me I truly believed that Hassan had gone to fight alongside the Taliban, and that he knew he would be killed, which is why he left me that last message. As far as my neighbours were concerned he had died weeks ago. He was dead to me, except in my heart. I realise now that this was just what the imam and the others wanted, it suited their plans. But everything changed when I started to receive these strange telephone calls, then people started coming round to my door, ringing and knocking, waking Tarik. Eventually I called the police.”

  “Why didn’t you take the chance then to tell them what was happening?”

  “Tell them what? I had no idea what was happening. Besides, by the time they got there Mr Ali was back – I believe Hassan’s cousin Anwar had told him about the fuss on the radio. He was furious, but very charming with the police. He told them he would see that I was safe.” Amina pauses, then repeats, in a hollow tone. “Safe. Tarik and I were taken away that night.”

  “Taken where?”

  “I really don’t know. Somewhere not far, that first night, judging from the length of the journey, somewhere in the city. I think it may have been some kind of store-room, I could feel cardboard boxes at my back. They separated me from Tarik and I was straining all night to hear if he was crying, but all I could hear was the sound of men talking and arguing. One voice was Ahmed’s, I think.”

  “What were they arguing about?” I ask, caught up in this. Amina shakes her head.

  “I really couldn’t follow much.” (Again that use of the word really, as if she sensed that someone in the room was doubting her story, or believed she knew more than she was letting on.) “I heard Hassan’s name mentioned a couple of times. Something had gone wrong, that was certain. And I think they were quarrelling about what to do with me and the baby.”

  “You must have obtained some hard information, however,” says the Oxbridge man. (Amina, like me, must notice the slight narrowing of his eyes. That’s her doubting thomas. But what would she have to gain by lying?) “Enough to know of their intention to pull something off, and to use Marc, or at least his programme, to advertise themselves.”

  “I found that out later,” says Amina, “When they moved us.” She turns away from her interrogator’s cool stare, finding more empathy in mine as she continues. “They seemed a lot more organised by then. Eventually they gave Tarik back to me. He’d been changed and fed, and there was a big bag of clothes for us both in the back of the van. When we got to the place where Fatima was waiting the baby’s cot was there, and a few other little thi
ngs from our home.”

  “Was it out of town?” I ask her.

  “Pretty sure, yes. We travelled a few miles. There were no windows in the back of the van, so I couldn’t see where we were going, but the driver answered his phone on the way and I listened to his end of the conversation as much as I could, especially after I heard your name, Marc. He talked about my husband as well, he said he didn’t know what Hassan was playing at, but it was fine, it would turn out for the best. It will be just as big, he said, bigger with the new plan. I heard him ask whose idea was it for Hassan to call Marc Niven? then he laughed and shouted out Genius. I thought he meant the other call, the one from the house, but then the driver said, Tell him from me, that call will make up for it. Tell him - Hassan, when Allah hears your voice praising him, he’ll have those virgins lined up ready. He was laughing just as if he’d told a dirty joke. What a horrible thing that is.”

  “Virgins?” I’m confused.

  The secret service man has the pleasure of enlightening me. “According to Islamic tradition, the reward for male martyrdom is the enjoyment of 72 virgins in paradise.” What immediately springs to my mind, unbidden, is a snapshot from my nightmare - the image of Edona, strapped down on a marble plinth, naked and frightened.

  Liam steps back into the room, looking pleased with himself. Finding his seat taken, he remains standing behind Amina. He places his hands lightly on her shoulders, cocking his head on one side to attract her attention. “I’ve got some good news,” he says. “The signal from Sam’s phone is still strong, and the engineers have fixed a location, right in the middle of town. I think we’ll be able to protect Tarik. There’s officers moving into position as I speak.”

  The Home Office man stands up, uncharacteristically urgent. “Call back, right now!” he orders Liam. “I want them well away from there.”

  “Obviously they’re not going to wade in...”

  “I mean, right back. And tell them to make plans for a possible evacuation of the area. We’re on our way now.” As Liam, bemused, steps away to make the call, the agent turns his attention to me. “I think you’ll find you are needed tonight, Marc.”

  “How do you know?”

  His colleague, still seated, speaks for the first time. “I’ve been talking to our people in Birmingham about Mrs Bhat, but actually the most interesting information they gave me concerns Mr Ali. Apparently he’s making a guest appearance at his old mosque this evening. Special event. We believe that’s more than a coincidence.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “We think that’s his alibi,” says his partner. “Lots of people to confirm he was many miles from the scene of the crime, whatever the crime might be.” He places his palms together as if to suggest we wrap things up here, then, almost as if it’s an after-thought, he speaks directly to Amina. “You did tell us earlier, didn’t you, that you were not acquainted with Fatima Bhat?”

  “Not until she became my prison guard, no.”

  “Hmm, curious. We liberated Mrs Bhat’s mobile telephone from her a short while ago, and we’ve been having a little look at her call history. A series of calls in the last week or so have been made to a cell phone registered in the name of Amina Begum Khan.”

  Amina looks stunned. “I don’t know what to say. I... My phone must have been stolen.”

  The agent smiles. “I don’t think so.” With the air of a conjuror he fishes out from his pocket a neat little light-blue flip-top. “We found this buried in your luggage.” He releases the cover with the holding hand and shows the face of the cell phone to everyone in the room. The screen display lights up to reveal in close-up a cute Asian child, about two years old, with a broad grin on his face.

  XVI

  The agent’s name is Peter. That much I found out on the return journey from Manchester as he and I travelled together in a hire car while his colleague drove Amina and Liam back in the other vehicle. Perhaps we’re friends now; he’s just winked at me through the glass - encouragement I guess, as I slide up the fader to open the show. There’s more encouragement on the screen at eye level to my right – a simple good luck tapped in by Sam. I save my wink for her.

  “Evening all. Marc Niven here for your nightly fix of chat and choons till two. No special theme tonight, just whatever you want to get off your hairy chest – yes, you, madam – give us a ring. Sam’s flexing her fingers at the switchboard next door cos I’m going to squeeze as many calls in as I can tonight. Yeah, Squeeze, remember them?” I fade in Labelled with Love and push away from the desk, swivelling slightly, urging myself to relax. I’m glad I managed to knock back Neville’s arse-covering proposal to have our company lawyer in the studio – I already feel like somebody flying by the seat of his pants under scrutiny from the Health & Safety Executive. Too many suits, too much tension in the air. Relax. Relax.

  Peter and I have competing theories. Mine is simply this – I believe Amina is telling the truth. All right, she may have been a tad disingenuous about how long it took her to realise her husband was planning for engagement in some sort of terrorist activity, but whenever she twigged I’m sure she genuinely thought his intention was to go abroad as a jihadi, not start waging war in his own country. Maybe she should have blown the whistle earlier than she did, but Hassan is her loving partner after all, and Afghanistan, where she thought he’d gone, is a long way from here. It’s a bit different when the bombs are aimed at people you actually know. The most important factor, though – what for me determined her willingness to act or not to act – was the threat to her own child.

  Peter suspects that I’ve been set up, which is why he wanted me to ride with him on the journey back home. Reluctant as he might be to share his conclusions with anyone who hasn’t signed the Official Secrets Act or been thoroughly vetted and pronounced one of us, Peter appreciated he could no longer keep the innocent conduit of the action in the dark.

  “In a nutshell,” he said after a preamble that took us past Preston, “I think that Hassan and Amina are in this together.”

  “Despite all the evidence to the contrary?”

  “Do you mean the evidence, or your interpretation of the evidence?” he asked, with that air he adopts of being one step ahead of everybody else in these matters. “Or indeed Amina’s representation of the evidence.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Well, to take a simple example, the famous lockable door at the top of the stairs. Your interpretation, and Amina’s representation, has it acting effectively as a prison door, with Amina as the victim.” (Actually my original interpretation of the door’s purpose was something altogether different, but I was not about to undermine my pretensions to be a detective by admitting that to Peter.) “Whereas, if you accept the alternative reading that both Hassan and Amina are born-again radical Islamists, there is nothing more likely than that they would want to protect Amina’s modesty and create a tangible barrier against the community of males living downstairs. That does not preclude her from taking an active part in the conspiracy.”

  “You seem to be neglecting the fact that Amina has come to us off her own bat. How many conspirators do you know that give themselves up to the enemy before they even start to execute their plan?”

  Peter smirked at the windscreen in front of him and started reciting in his best public school Latin:

  equo ne credite, Teucri.

  quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Virgil’s Aeneid, Book II.”

  Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.

  Peter consciously shifted his view off the road for a second so I could get a good look at his ironic eyebrow.

  Sam’s voice seems steady enough as she comes through on talkback, surfing over the music in my cans. “Colleen from Wynburn, wants to have a moan about school homework. Line 1.”

  I nod at Sam through the glass, and a few seconds later get Liam in my sights a
s I do the cross-fade. “Let’s talk to Colleen on line 1. Now, that’s an Irish name you’d be having there, Colleen, is it? Is it?” Liam shakes his head in grim amusement at my dreadful attempt at the accent.

  “No, well it is, Marc, yes, but I’m not, if you see what I mean.”

  “Well, there’s Irish for you.”

  “It is, isn’t it? No, well, anyway, I’m just on about homework.”

  Normal voice. “Colleen, if you don’t mind me saying so, you sound a wee bit mature to be doing homework. Housework possibly, unless your husband does that...”

  “I wish.”

  “But homework, no.”

  “Exactly the point I want to make. Only I’ve just finished mine about twenty minutes ago. My son’s, I should say. I’ve been on half the night with it, Marc, seen no telly or nothing. It’s hardly fair, is it?”

  Sam’s too busy on the phones to see me trying to catch her eye. Pity - I wanted to try a little telepathy with her, find out what she’d think about helping our boy out with his homework. A few years down the line, that is. When we have one.

  “Now, Colleen, talk about fair. What about all the other kids in... What’s your son’s name?”

  “Harry.”

  “What about these kids in Harry’s class that have to compete with you, Colleen?”

  “But they’re not competing with me, are they, Marc? It’s their dads that are, or their mams, like me. That’s what I’m on about. We’re all at it.”

  She’s a star, this Colleen. Even Peter’s having a little smile there to himself. This could be a runner tonight. Hassan might struggle to get on.

  “So you’re saying Amina deliberately targeted me so she could get in on this side of the fence?”