Reconciliation - AJ Davidson (top 100 novels of all time txt) 📗

they decided to spend a year as volunteers in a Gaza hospital before starting university. What the young ones now call taking a gap year.”
Quayle took the picture from Anne and examined it closely. It had clearly been taken in the Middle East, the sky a deep clear azure, the parched terrain burnt ochre by the sun.
“How could Dan or I say no to her? We had brought her up to help others less fortunate, so we could not stand in her way. And I had always liked Nisreen. Her family had friends in the Gaza strip and it was arranged for the girls to stay with them.”
Massad shrugged. “What do I care if your infidel daughter cleaned bedpans for a year? Many Westerners salve their consciences this way, while still turning a blind eye to what Israel has done to Palestine.”
“Carol only worked in the hospital for three months.”
Dan searched his wife's face for an explanation.
Anne gently took the photograph from Quayle's hand and returned it to her bag. “Less than a week after they took up their posts, both girls were gang-raped by four men.”
It was evident from Massad's reaction that it was as much a revelation to him as to Dan.
“They were called into the hospital late one night. A curfew had been imposed and the streets were empty. They needed to be careful not to be seen, so they cut through the back alleys. They ran into some men hiding inside an abandoned building.”
“Sons of devils,” Massad hissed.
“I never knew,” Dan said softly. “Carol never told me.”
“Telling me was the hardest thing she ever had to do. Carol and Nisreen flew back to London and she telephoned me from the airport,” Anne said, turning to face her husband. “She was carrying a rapist's child.”
Dan found breath hard to find. The room became to swim in front of him. He loosened his tie and ran a finger round his shirt collar. Sweat trickled down his back.
“What has this to do with me?” Massad asked, suspicion creeping into his voice.
“The three of us met at Nisreen's sister's house. Carol told me everything that had happened in Gaza and how she had already decided that abortion was out of the question. She would carry the child to full term. Nisreen had suffered some internal injuries from the rape and was no longer capable of conceiving. She had agreed to adopt the child. Under the circumstances they felt the Social Services would not stand in their way. I had to promise not to tell Dan. In return for my silence Carol would return to her home at the expected time, as though nothing had happened.”
“I don't believe a word of it. My mother would have told me if I had been adopted,” Massad snarled.
Anne dipped into her bag a second time and withdrew a folded sheet of paper. She opened it carefully and handed it to Quayle. “Would you confirm to your client that this is a properly registered birth certificate?”
“Yusif Black, born 2nd March 1987, Hammersmith Maternity Hospital,” Quayle read aloud in his Eton accent. “Mother's name's given as Carol Black, father's name is unknown.”
Dan reached out and put an arm round his wife's shoulder. It was the first time he had touched her in over a year. He buried his head in her silver hair, his body wracked with deep sobbing.
“What has Allah to say about allowing those who kill their own mothers into eternal paradise?” Anne asked.
Massad grabbed the tyres of his wheelchair and reversed backwards from the table. His chair slammed against the rear wall of the cramped room.
“This is nonsense. A total fiction created by a sad old woman seeking revenge,” he screamed, spittle trailing from his mouth.
Dan raised his head and stared at the Arab, a faint smile spreading across his face.
“You may have thought,” he said, “that it took courage to be a suicide-bomber, but it was nothing compared to what my wife and daughter did. Every day for the rest of my life I will pray to my God that you burn in hell.”
Massad shook his head, a sneer on his thin lips. “She was an infidel. Allah's will was done. I will receive my promised reward.”
“There's one further point I should mention,” Anne said. “The men who raped my daughter weren't Arabs, they were Jewish soldiers.”
Massad's scream reverberated against the claustrophobic walls. He smashed the empty chair against the floor, and then started to bang the back of his head against the wall.
Dan rose and helped his wife to her feet. He took her arm solicitously. “Let's go home, dear.”
The warders burst into the room; all set to intervene in what from outside must have sounded like quite a fracas.
Jennings held up a placating hand to signal that their assistance was not needed. As Quayle pushed Massad's chair away from the wall, he was the only one in the room to see Anne Black silently mouth something to his client.


One of the warders volunteered to escort the Blacks to the prison exit and Jennings had tagged along with them. It had taken some serious advocacy on Quayle's part, but a quarter of an hour later he and his client were finally left alone in the room. Ten minutes was all the warder would permit.
Quayle withdrew from his pocket a perfectly crisp linen handkerchief and folded it into a pad so he could dab at the blood on the back of Yusif's head. He bent down and made a perfunctory triage.
“You'll live,” the solicitor said.
“But not for long.”
Quayle handed Yusif the handkerchief so the Arab could minister to his own needs. He grabbed a seat and sat facing his client.
“I want to know what just happened here,” he said.
“You heard what I heard. Mrs Black accused me of being her grandson. I had inadvertently killed my biological mother. The Jewish rapists were a nice touch.”
Quayle snorted in contempt, sounding rather like a horse whinnying. “London's a populous city, and South Ealing is a very busy tube station, but I just don't buy the coincidence that the only two people injured were mother and son who hadn't seen each other in over twenty years.”
“It was Allah's will.”
“Don't give me that crap. Mrs Black mouthed something to you as she left. It looked a lot like 'Thank you'.”
“Did she? I'm afraid my vision was blurred at the time.”
Quayle took a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket. He offered one to his client who declined. The solicitor lit up and inhaled a hefty drag.
“Prison is one of the few places you can still enjoy a good smoke,” he observed, before losing himself in thought.
After a few moments of further contemplation, he said, “If I had known who Carol Black was, I could have fought your prosecution. Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, put yourself in the dead woman's mind. Your long forgotten son contacts you. The son given up at birth. The son conceived during an unimaginably savage sexual assault. The son you have spent two decades trying to block out of your mind. The son's adoptive mother is dead and he has tracked down and requested a meeting with his biological one. A primitive home-made bomb explodes at that reunion and the police jump to a conclusion. The investigation has just one focus. But what if it had been the mother who had constructed and packed the bomb in the plastic carrier bag?”
“Who's going to believe that a middle-aged Englishwoman would know how to make a bomb?”
“Five minutes on the internet is all it would have taken. Or perhaps she had seen it done in the Gaza strip. Had Carol Black considered taking her revenge against the occupying soldiers? Then she changed her mind after discovering her pregnancy.”
“You're forgetting that I pleaded guilty.”
“Second rule of a criminal lawyer, never believe your client.”
“What's the first?”
“Always get your fees upfront. Anne Black would have made a bloody good defence barrister.”
“In what way?”
“Juries can be a lot like people. There are arrogant juries, dumb juries, even prejudiced juries. A smart defence barrister knows that to win he has to convince the jurors that he's on their side.”
“Reconcile them?”
“Exactly.”
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Publication Date: 03-17-2010

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