Chapter 22 #2
Penny sends Nadeeka home with another fierce embrace and a packet of butterscotch for the girls, and Frank claps her on the back and tells her to drive carefully.
‘Drop us a text to let us know you’re home safe,’ he says gruffly, and Nadeeka bites the inside of her cheek before their kindness undoes her.
‘And . . .’ Penny hesitates. ‘If you wanted to meet for coffee some time? Only if . . . I mean, I’m sure you’re very busy—’
‘I’d love that.’ Nadeeka hugs her again. From the corner of her eye, she sees Frank cuff away a tear.
On the long drive home, Nadeeka goes over all the conflicting information.
Jamie loved her, but had been behaving oddly before he died.
He’d been happy for his parents to have a photograph of Nadeeka and the girls, yet hadn’t wanted it displayed at work.
He’d attended the meetings of a white supremacy group, yet his parents were adamant he’d never held racist views.
She stops at the library on her way home. Maya and Nish love it here, and they often pop in on a Saturday to choose more books or try out the 3-D printer.
The woman on the desk smiles as she approaches. ‘How can I help you?’ Her name badge reads Josephine Capstick.
‘My partner recently died,’ Nadeeka says, ‘and I’m not sure if he has any overdue library books.’ Her voice sounds unnaturally formal, as though Jamie’s death is nothing but an administrative inconvenience.
‘I’m so sorry to hear that. Let me check for you.’ Josephine takes Jamie’s name and hums under her breath as she taps her keyboard. ‘Hmm . . . it looks like he’s never checked any books out, actually; just reserved them to read here.’
‘Would you be able to tell me what he reserved?’
‘Just a sec . . .’ There’s more humming, and then the printer whirs and spits out a sheet of paper with a list of around twenty titles.
Nadeeka hadn’t known what to expect from Jamie’s reading list. More of what she saw at his parents’ house perhaps: thrillers, literary fiction, a few biographies.
But the book at the top of the list is Mein Kampf.
They instruct their members to read Mein Kampf, DI -Stratman had said. A leaden feeling solidifies at the pit of Nadeeka’s stomach. She was so sure the police had been wrong, but now . . .
‘Pretty serious stuff,’ Josephine says, with a smile Nadeeka doesn’t return. If the librarian had any idea just how serious this is . . .
They Were White and They Were Slaves.
The International Jew.
The Turner Diaries.
White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century.
‘Open University, is it?’ Josephine says, and for a second Nadeeka thinks that maybe that’s it; that Jamie was secretly studying at the library, and the police’s New Dawn theory is nothing but a horrible mix-up.
And yet . . . she doesn’t know all the books on the list, but they are all of a type.
This is the reading list of someone obsessed with issues of race, of leadership, of identity.
The reading list, Nadeeka thinks despairingly, of a white supremacist.
‘Did he access anything online?’ she asks Josephine, remembering her earlier thought about archives. ‘You have computers people can use, right?’
‘Oh, yes, and he did – his log-in details are here.’ The librarian taps the side of her computer, and Nadeeka’s fingers itch to turn the screen around.
‘Can you see what he looked at?’
‘Yes, but it’s a breach of data protection, we’re not allowed to—’
‘For God’s sake!’
Josephine frowns.
Nadeeka bites her lip. ‘Sorry.’ She forces a smile.
‘He said he was doing something special for me for Christmas, you see. Said he couldn’t organize it from home in case adverts started popping up on my phone – you know how spooky they are nowadays.
I just . . .’ Her voice cracks. ‘I just can’t bear the thought that I’ll never know.
’ Nadeeka’s eyes fill with genuine tears.
It feels so unfair that she never got to spend Christmas with Jamie.
She’d been so busy with work and the girls’ nativity costumes, and picking up bits and pieces for their stockings, that she’d only recently turned her attention to Jamie’s present.
What would you like? she’d asked him. I want to get you something you’ll love.
Jamie had pulled her close. I already have it, he’d said.
Across the library counter, Josephine’s expression softens. ‘You poor thing.’ She glances around, then makes a few swift keystrokes and scrutinizes her screen. ‘He didn’t access any of our online records . . . let me check his search history.’
Nadeeka holds her breath. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she knows there’s something missing from the pieces of the puzzle she has right now.
The picture Penny and Frank had painted was of a tolerant, compassionate man – the same tolerant, compassionate man Nadeeka had fallen in love with.
The books packed in boxes at their house were a far cry from the terrifying list of titles he’d requested from the library yet never brought home.
Surely one man couldn’t become a completely different one in the space of a few short weeks?
But even as she thinks this, she remembers the sudden claims to be working late; Jamie’s reluctance to spend time with her. The tense silences that had replaced his usual relaxed and gentle conversation.
‘I can’t see anything about Christmas presents, I’m afraid.’ Josephine’s finger scrolls on her mouse, eyes scanning her screen. She turns it around to show Nadeeka.
The most recent search term reads Why multi--culturalism doesn’t work.
Nadeeka grips the edge of the counter. She reels, a sudden wave of nausea bringing bile to the back of her throat as she reads on.
How the woke agenda is destroying Western values.
Examples of how the media is controlled by liberals.
Articles on white supremacy.
They could almost be essay titles, Nadeeka thinks. Open University, is it? Except that scattered among them are several searches that are far from academic.
How to conceal your identity.
What police unit deals with domestic extremism?
What sentence does arson carry?
Nadeeka can hardly bear to read them. She can no longer kid herself that this is all a mistake; that Jamie wasn’t involved in the far right.
But she can’t bring herself to believe Lauren’s theory that Jamie had always held such abhorrent views and had simply been hiding them.
Nadeeka isn’t stupid. She’s built a career in recruitment – she knows people. She knew Jamie.
So when did he change?
And what changed him?
She makes herself keep reading, caught off-guard by the mundane searches that appear in Jamie’s history, the contrast making his fevered research seem even more horrifying. Cinema listings this Saturday. Weather today. How do you make people like you?
Nadeeka stops. How do you make people like you? It sends a dart of pain through her heart, the way it does when Maya falls out with her best friend – a regular occurrence – or that time Nish was the only one in the class not to be invited to Sam’s party.
You’ll soon settle and make friends, Nadeeka had told Jamie when he moved in.
He’d claimed not to be worried about it, and Nadeeka had wanted to believe him, but deep down she’d known he was lonely.
That having a partner was very different from having a best mate around the corner; people to play cricket with at weekends.
She had pushed the thought away because she hadn’t wanted it to be true.
In the corridor outside Nadeeka’s office at Echelon Warehousing is an A3 poster bearing the word PREVENT in heavy bold type, followed by SPOT THE SIGNS.
Beneath it is a list of behaviours. Displaying mood swings, procuring extremist reading material, keeping secrets or lying to friends and family.
Someone had come to deliver training to the recruitment and HR team, educating them on what to look out for should any of their staff become a target for extremists.
Recruiters frequently target young Muslim men, the trainer had said, and they had plenty of those at Echelon. They look for anyone who seems disenfranchised or isolated; someone whose vulnerabilities they can exploit. Someone they can groom.
Nadeeka remembered being surprised. She had only ever thought of grooming in the context of young girls being targeted by sleazy older men.
But as she’d listened to the rest of the session she’d considered the brief stint she’d done as a head-hunter, and thought how recruitment was recruitment, whatever business you’re in.
Establish what your target wants, then tailor your offer accordingly.
Flexible working? A pay rise? Or the feeling that you belong. That you matter.
In the library, Nadeeka stares at Jamie’s search history.
He’d been new to the area; had no friends, no connections.
He was coming to terms with a new job, a new identity as step--parent.
Jamie had been far from what Nadeeka would consider vulnerable, but so are the disenfranchised youth targeted by Islamic extremists; the women sucked into pyramid schemes; the -middle-aged men swept up in conspiracies.
How do you make people like you?
A chill runs down Nadeeka’s spine.
Had Jamie been radicalized?