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  “They’re onto it. I promise you, if that phone and the cot and the baby are still together we’ll be able to find out just where he is.”

  A tear starts in the corner of Amina’s left eye, and she uses the fabric of her hood to dab it away. I wonder if, like me, she’s thinking of the opposite condition – if the phone and the cot and the baby are separated, what that implies. I also know that Liam is not being altogether candid. Even if the mobile stays switched on and the battery lasts, there is no guarantee that the engineers will be able to get a precise enough fix on it.

  “Can I get you a drink of something?” Liam asks Amina as she composes herself.

  “No, I’m fine, thanks.”

  “OK. Listen, I want you to know that you’re not under arrest or anything, not in any kind of trouble as far as we’re concerned. In fact, you’ve been a very brave woman.”

  “Thank you. I don’t feel brave, I feel frightened. I don’t mean of you. I just want my son back. I do not want him hurt.” There’s a flash in her eyes as she says it, a warning to us that she won’t be responsible for her actions if we fail to take the utmost care.

  “We all want the same thing, I promise.” Liam looks at me, and I nod, but I’m thinking, we all want the same thing; can we deliver?

  “You can help us,” says Liam, “By maybe providing us with some of the information we don’t have yet.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Good girl.” (Fern would pull a face at that.) “Let’s start with this woman you were with today.”

  “Fatima Bhat.”

  “You know her?”

  “I heard her name for the first time at the check-in desk. I had never seen the woman until a few days ago, and she has never really spoken to me, just given me orders. She is not from our community, I’m sure.”

  “Is she the woman who was outside the toilet, the night you phoned me?” I ask.

  Amina turns a little bashful. “Yes.”

  “Where was that?”

  “I don’t know. Sorry...” She sighs, loses focus. “I’m not being much help. Since I was taken from my home I haven’t really known where I’ve been. Some of the time I have been made to wear a blindfold.”

  “By whom?” says Liam, trying to bring her back in.

  “Different people. That woman. A couple of the men who used to live downstairs.”

  “Downstairs?”

  “In my house.”

  Liam and I glance at each other. He permits himself a sly smile for the first time since his put-down by the secret service agent. He has a right to it. Looks like his theory about Prince Albert Road as a terrorist cell is spot-on.

  “OK, we’ll come back to that,” he says. “What about Imam Zaid bin Ali? Where does he fit into this? I’m assuming he’s not your uncle.”

  “No, he is not my uncle,” says Amina, back in the zone, and we can see her bitterness rising with the volume as she speaks. “He’s my gaoler. He’s a kidnapper, baby-snatcher. And a husband-killer!”

  In the silence following Amina’s outburst I see the woman security guard stand up and take up a position next to the door, as if she expected Amina to try escaping from the room any second. Liam gives the guard a nod of reassurance, then mimes a cup to his mouth as he indicates Amina, who’s hiding her weeping, head down. The woman goes quietly out through the door. Liam reaches out to place a hand on Amina’s arm, tensed on the table. “It’s OK, it’s OK.”

  We wait while the security woman comes back into the room with a plastic beaker of water that she places at Amina’s elbow. “Thank you,” Amina says, straightening up to show the woman some courtesy, then, to us, “Sorry.”

  “No problem,” says Liam. “You’re doing well, you’re doing great.” In the softness of his voice I detect for the first time the hint of an Irish lilt – I’d assumed an educated Northern upbringing like my own. “Can we talk about your husband for a minute, Amina? Is that OK?” She nods. “How long were you two married?”

  “Coming up, four years.” I notice how she establishes the date in terms of the future.

  “Right,” says Liam. “And, do you mind me asking, was that an arranged marriage?”

  There’s a sad, reflective smile on Amina’s face as she says, wiping her eyes. “Oh, no, not at all. We did not do the traditional Muslim thing. We weren’t...” She pauses, sips at the water, then continues her story with a simple list. “We met at university, fell in love, simple as that. Got jobs, eventually got married, had a baby, bought a house. Same as most people. Normal, normal. Until last year.”

  “When, unfortunately, Hassan had his car accident and died,” Liam fills in as gently as he can, knowing she might not want to conclude the story herself.

  Amina looks at him for a long moment, her fingers absently squeezing the top of the plastic cup near to breaking point before she releases it. A little water slops over onto the table as the cup springs back into shape. Amina looks down at the spill. “Sorry,” she murmurs as she tries to smooth the water away with her hand, then, almost matter of fact, “Hassan Malik did not die in a car crash. As far as I’m aware, at this moment, my husband is still very much alive.” She catches my eye across the table. “I told you he was dead to me, but he’s not dead to the world. Not yet.”

  “Mystery solved,” I say, my mind on Valentine’s Day, 11:59.

  Liam demurs. “Not quite. Amina, there were remnants of Hassan’s documents in the car. We also have a DNA match. You provided it yourself from...”

  “From the disgusting toothbrush,” says Amina, “Of a horrible Afghani man called Rasoul." The bitterness rising again.

  “I’m losing the plot here,” I say.

  Liam leans back on his chair, lacing his fingers together to support his neck. He is quiet for a while, ruminating, then he says, “OK, I think I’ve got it. Rasoul – that his name? - was an illegal, housed with you, presumably one of the cell members. Hassan basically loaned him his identity, his papers, as well as his car. Big problem was, Rasoul smashed the car into a motorway bridge, and wrote himself off along with the vehicle. Hassan panicked, thinking everything was going to fall apart. He persuaded you to provide a false identification while he went into hiding, effectively became a non-person. Is that about right?”

  “Except it wasn’t Hassan who did that,” Amina replies. “Hassan wasn’t even there at the time. It was the imam. He was controlling everything. Him and Ahmed between them, they ruined our lives.”

  “Ahmed?”

  “Ahmed Aziz. Hassan’s friend.” There’s a degree of venom in her pronunciation of the word. Amina turns to me. “Actually, you met him, too, Marc, at the awards night.”

  “Really?”

  “Ahmed runs the business Hassan did the website for. An Islamic bookshop - Hassan helped him bring it online.”

  Liam stands up and takes a few steps around the room, stretching his long frame. He comes back to us, hands on the back of his chair. “There’s a lot to take in. Amina, would it be all right with you if I brought a colleague in to hear what you have to say? I can’t tell you how helpful this is. I think the more we learn from you now the more chance we have to stop what’s happening, help you get your little boy back.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Liam walks over to speak with the woman at the door and they go out together. Amina and I are left sitting opposite one another, silent at first as I’m not sure I should continue the questions with no-one else about. It’s Amina who breaks the silence. “Was it you who rang the night after Hassan left? You asked to speak to him.”

  “I rang the night after he called me, is that when you mean?”

  “Yes. Sorry, I was so rude to you then. I was just... I was left on my own. Just Tarik and me. I did not realise who it was until I thought about it later.”

  “You don’t have to apologise to me. If I hadn’t been so slow on the uptake...Well, you might not be sitting here now. I could have done something.”

  Amina purses her lips, dabbl
ing a finger in the puddle of water on the table. There’s another pause before she says, “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know quite what Hassan was thinking – it was a strange... In some ways very romantic, but...” She looks up and there are tears welling in both eyes now. “But he was leaving us, Marc. That very moment. Even when he was struck with love and wanting to stay, he was leaving. How could he do that? How could jihad be so powerful in him that he could leave his wife and child forever? Can you tell me how?”

  I reach out for her hand, as much for my comfort as hers. Amina’s fingers feel slightly wet in my palm from the spilt water. I’m not sure what to say. If she can’t understand, as his wife, as his lover, as a person brought up in the Muslim faith... what chance have I got? My response, when it comes, struggles for any coherence. “I... I don’t know, Amina. He must have been so close to changing his mind. I think now that his call to me wasn’t just a goodbye to you, it was a cry for help, you know, like a suicide reaching out for someone to rescue him from himself, without even knowing that’s what he’s doing. I’ve had some experience...”

  Her hand tenses in mine. She leans forward. “Hassan was... he is a suicide. He would be dead now if he had not made that stupid mistake. I mean in Ahmed’s eyes. Calling you.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Before she can say any more the door opens and Liam returns with the agent that drove us to the airport. He stands and looks at us for a while without saying anything, but a glance from me to the doorway provides the clue to what’s on his mind – he thinks it’s time for me to leave. I start to rise from my chair. Amina notices the movement and immediately puts her hand out, nervously. “Please.” I make eye contact with the agent. Your call. The slightest inclination of his head allows me to settle back again, at the same time sealing my silence. Amina dries her tears on her hood and prepares herself for a more formal explanation.

  Hassan had not been attracted to any kind of activism, even after 9/11 when they were still students. 7/7 was different, only because they did seem to encounter a degree of prejudice for a while after that but ironically, in Amina’s opinion, it made them more determined than ever to show they were no different from any young British couple. They worked hard enough to be able to afford a mortgage in time for the baby coming. They enjoyed themselves socially, liked music, drank in moderation with the occasional binge, as neither of them were particularly observant Muslims except as a courtesy around their elders or when they travelled home to visit either set of parents. Similarly with dress. Amina would follow hijab rules when it was seemly - attending weddings, say - but generally adopted a simple western style. The change in Hassan sprang from his involvement with Ahmed, and it was surprisingly rapid.

  “Hassan looked up to Ahmed,” says Amina. “I could see why. Ahmed is clever, successful, good-looking too, actually. He was a sort of role model for my husband – in fact Ahmed was the inspiration for Hassan to start up on his own as a website designer instead of working for others. I think that accelerated things, once he was away from a corporate environment. More and more of the contracts he got came from Islam-related organisations. To be fair, it was actually Ahmed that found him a lot of that work. And they spent more and more time together.”

  Amina found herself increasingly on the edges of Hassan’s friendship with Ahmed. In fact the awards evening was one of the last occasions they went out socially. Hassan gave up alcohol, stopped listening to western music, started attending the mosque regularly, which he hadn’t done since he was a child. The rest of his spare time he’d spend with Ahmed, either in the bookshop or at home, discussing politics for hours.

  “Ahmed was always asking Hassan what he stood for, what he thought his purpose was on earth. For a long while that bothered Hassan – it bugged him that he didn’t seem to have an answer except to say us, his family. That didn’t satisfy Ahmed. He kept pushing and pushing. Ahmed’s big thing was the supposed western conspiracy against Islam. ‘They want to keep us down, keep us poor’, he’d say. ‘They call us terrorists when they are the greatest terrorists, the western governments, attacking our people, invading our lands, taking our resources for themselves.’ I was so tired of his rantings, I would go upstairs and lie next to Tarik in his cot, listening quietly to the radio while those two kept on talking half the night.”

  “Was Mr Ali involved in these discussions?” our man from MI5 asks.

  “Not at first, no. Hassan met him at the Springhill mosque. I didn’t know who he was until Hassan told me one day he’d invited some people round for a religious discussion. Ahmed was there, of course, and Hassan’s cousin Anwar, who is a student here. About half a dozen more, all young men, parked like great bears in our front room, and this imam turned up. He looked at me as if I shouldn’t be there, in my own house. And stupidly, he got to me. I took Tarik out in his buggy. We walked around for hours, even after it started raining. When I got back, fortunately Mr Ali had gone, but a lot of the men were still there. I had to ask Hassan to get them to leave eventually – I could not get Tarik to sleep with their noise downstairs. It became a regular thing, this discussion group.”

  “Is that why you had the door added on the landing?” Liam asks. Amina’s smile is so cynical it spoils her good looks for a moment.

  “I did not get my own prison made, no. Just as it was not my idea to have that poky lavatory put in where the cupboard used to be. That was when they had taken over – after Rasoul arrived.”

  “The illegal immigrant,” says Liam, partly as a reminder to his colleague. “How did he come onto the scene?”

  “They called him the fundraiser.” She sneers at the description. “Pity he did not raise any funds for us to live on. By now Hassan was doing very little paid work. He was spending most of his time on the project.”

  “What was the project?”

  “Oh, the thing, the cause, that’s how they would refer to it. Actually, that was the first time Hassan lied to me. He told me they were raising money for an Islamic centre in the neighbourhood. Devoted to all things Islamic. Culture, the arts... and these religious discussions. He said I would be able to claim back my front room once it was built. Of course, that was the same day he told me this man Rasoul would be living there. Temporarily, he said. A friend of the imam. He had come specially to help raise money for the project. I hated Rasoul from the moment I set eyes on him. He was a weasel, and his breath was bad. I can’t tell you my private nickname for him. This man was living in my house, in a sleeping bag in our front room. Soon he was even driving our car. Hassan told me he needed to drive for the work he was doing.”

  “Which was?”

  “I had no idea at first. One day I came in from shopping and for once I used the back door, to unload all my groceries in the kitchen. I found Rasoul there, making up bags and bags of brown powder, there on my own kitchen table. He just grinned when he looked up and saw me, as if I’d discovered him baking bread.”

  “Drugs?” says Liam, redundantly.

  “The worst. Heroin.” Amina looks directly at me, her fellow-citizen, wanting to share her disgust and frustration as so many callers do night after night on my programme. “This man had been brought to our community, to our home, by someone who set himself up as a religious leader - to raise money by selling drugs on the street. What kind of hypocrisy is that? How can that be justified under Sharia law?”

  If Amina is looking for an answer from me I’m in no position to provide one. My brain is overheating with suddenly-plugged-in connections. Rasoul. Emmanuel. Hassan’s car. The crash on the coast road. Finally, the link is made. Meanwhile, the man from the Security Service is making his own. “Al Qaeda regularly funds its operations through the sale of illegal drugs,” he says. “There’s a ready supply in Afghanistan. As for justifying it, anything that further corrupts and weakens the kuffs is OK by their logic. All part of the jolly jihad.”

  I’m only half-listening as Amina talks about the row she had with Hassan over Rasoul, about retreating
for a week to visit her parents with Tarik and coming back to find the alterations done to the house, and more strangers living at her address. My brain is still reconfiguring the scene between Rasoul and Emmanuel. A drug deal turned sour? Or, more likely, Emmanuel trying to run a rival out of town. A high-speed chase late at night, leading to the accident? Or the crash engineered – a nudge, a bullet in a tyre? The thought of my own tyre-burst reverberates like a gunshot. When Emmanuel visited the hospital it wasn’t, as I’d supposed, on Amina’s behalf, it was to double-check that Rasoul was good and dead.

  “Shut away in my own home,” Amina is saying. “In purdah. Hassan tried to persuade me of the moral obligation, but I believe my incarceration with Tarik in the bedrooms was to stop me learning more of what was going on downstairs. There was a small group of men living there now, as well as Rasoul. They ate together, prayed together, but also there were computers around the walls, a fax machine, papers lying about... Hassan was working all the time down there on this project, whatever it was. When he came to me at night he would say nothing about what he was doing. Then for one whole week he and Ahmed and another man went off on a trip, he didn’t say where. Worse, Zaid bin Ali came to our house and stayed. He kept me under lock and key all day and night. When I asked him where Hassan and the others were he just laughed, said they had gone to find their souls. On another occasion he told me I should be proud that my husband was fighting for the return of the Caliphate. I believed then that Hassan must have travelled abroad, to Afghanistan perhaps – but later a man who brought a meal up to our door told me Hassan and the others were simply camping in the Lake District. I did not know what to believe, I was frightened. Then, while my husband was away, this thing happened with Rasoul...”