No Place of Refuge Read online

  ‘I wouldn’t say surrender. A truce would be more accurate.’ He held up the piece of paper Ruksh had given him. ‘Ruksh has given us access to her e-mails, but she’s asked that you read them and report to me.’

  Rachel’s soupspoon splashed into her bowl. He could tell she had plenty to say, though she had learned that sometimes discretion was the better part of valor. It didn’t stop her from trying to comfort him.

  ‘I know how it is with younger siblings, sir. They run you down every chance they get, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need you.’

  Which was her way of saying she fully expected to find Ruksh railing against his tyranny in her e-mails. He sighed. As he cleared his plate, he brought Rachel up to speed on everything he’d learned.

  He could tell from the way she tilted her head that she was picking up the scent.

  ‘So we have two things, sir. The money – was it for a boat? That would be good to know. And this family connection that can’t be traced. Audrey personally brought his case to the attention of Sanctuary Syria. Why this one? Why a boy who ended up shot by Audrey’s gun?’

  Rachel swirled her spoon in the bowl, letting the soup grow cold. ‘Sir –’ She shot him a diffident glance. ‘We need to talk about Nate. This is all a bit messy, isn’t it? He’s your friend, Audrey’s your friend, your sister’s involved…’

  ‘I won’t let that sway my judgment in the slightest, Rachel.’ The warmth in his voice cooled.

  ‘You know that that’s not what I meant – actually, what I’m suggesting is quite a bit worse than you fuzzing the lines.’ She paused, choosing her words.

  Khattak’s smile was wry. ‘Naturally.’

  Rachel plunged ahead.

  ‘Did you know Nate deleted quite a bit of his correspondence with Audrey? Gaff recovered a cache of e-mails.’

  ‘Did you read them?’ Khattak’s tone was sharp.

  ‘I thought I’d better check with you first. Something isn’t adding up. Why would Nate hamstring us? Is he hiding something?’

  Rachel dropped her voice. ‘And then, what if there’s something in the deleted e-mails that’s, well, incriminating. What if Audrey’s not missing? What if she’s fled the scene of a crime?’ Now she gestured with her hands, building to a conclusion. ‘The only way to know that is by reading the e-mails Nate deleted, so that raises consent issues, and ultimately, sir, we’re talking about subpoenaing the private e-mails of your oldest friend. The two of you have been on rocky ground before. I’m not sure how to proceed.’

  The waiter came to remove their plates and Khattak asked for coffee. It gave him a second to think. He wasn’t happy with himself for doing it, but his first instinct was to deflect the question.

  ‘What about you, Rachel? I know you and Nate have grown close. Working this case could upset that. Do you want me to ask Declan to step in?’

  Declan was the youngest member of their team. He was also the most eager to impress Khattak with his initiative. Rachel treated Declan much the same way she treated Zach: like an overgrown kid brother. But she was conscious of his shadow, Esa knew. The dynamics at CPS had changed with Declan’s and Gaffney’s renewed responsibilities. It was no longer Esa and Rachel on one side, with everyone else ranged against them. There was more openness, more collegiality, and less of a feeling of being battened down. Esa wanted that for Rachel. His battles shouldn’t be hers.

  Rachel cleared her throat, a film of sweat glistening on her upper lip. ‘That won’t be necessary, sir. Nate and I are just friends.’ She turned the words back on him. ‘I think I can weather the storm better than you can.’

  Khattak thanked the waiter for his strong, dark coffee. He didn’t try to sweeten it as Rachel had done, almost choking at its potency.

  ‘We shouldn’t assume things,’ he said. ‘Nate may have withheld those e-mails quite innocently, if he thought they were unrelated to our case. All we have to do is ask him.’

  He didn’t believe his own words. The mention of Laine Stoicheva at the Chateau Laurier had come as a shock to Esa. He’d read a certain sensitivity in Nate’s face – the way he’d interacted with Rachel, his discomfort at getting caught – Nate was hiding something. Khattak hoped it concerned Laine, and not Audrey’s disappearance.

  Rachel was right. He and Nate were overdue for a chat.

  ‘Did you get hold of Suha Obeidi?’

  She nodded. She finished the piece of baklava served alongside their coffee, not at all embarrassed that her fingers were sticky again.

  ‘She’s at Eglinton West, maybe twenty minutes away. She said to come any time.’

  Khattak checked his phone. It had buzzed with a message from Nate. Their travel arrangements had been made. Their flight to Greece was first thing in the morning.

  He frowned. That didn’t leave him much time to track down the family Nate had spoken of or to speak to Suha Obeidi. Or to sort through the e-mails, though he supposed he and Rachel could make their way through most of them on the plane. And he still had to let his mother know he’d be out of the country again.

  He sent back a brief message.

  Need to speak with you about your e-mails before we leave. Send me the information for the Syrian family you met with. I’ll drop by Winterglass tonight.

  Nate texted back, OK. A second later, he texted again. Don’t bring Rachel.

  Esa slipped his phone back in his pocket, his caution reawakened. What wasn’t Nate telling him?

  He advised Rachel of their travel arrangements. Like him, she would have expected a day or two more in Toronto to follow up leads from the e-mails and to interview the Syrian family who claimed not to know the boy named Sami al-Nuri.

  ‘Should I call them, sir? Set up a time to see them?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Rachel. If they lied to Nate about knowing the boy, it may be better to give no warning.’

  Suha Obeidi lived in an apartment block on a small street close to the intersection of Yonge and Eglinton. The thoroughfare was lined with boutiques and restaurants, the corners anchored by a busy subway station and a shopping complex. A bookstore and theater ate up the rest of the block.

  Khattak found paid parking on Lillian Street. Rachel noticed the name with a pang. It was her mother’s name. She hadn’t seen or heard from her mother since she and Esa had returned from Iran.

  Suha Obeidi buzzed them into her apartment, where she lived alone.

  A dynamic woman in her thirties, she wore jeans and a blouse with a bow at the neck, and a head scarf that matched the tight blouse. Her skin was milk-toned, her eyes as dark as Rachel’s. She didn’t seem surprised to see them; she didn’t seem worried either, her attention preoccupied with finding them somewhere to sit. There were stacks of folders on the sofas, chairs, and tables. Each was stamped with Sanctuary Syria’s logo and a file number.

  Her apartment was otherwise rather bare, as if she’d just moved in. There were no knickknacks or family photographs, just a book with a bookmark jammed halfway through it. Rachel glanced at its cover: it was called The Calligrapher’s Secret, and it featured an image of Islamic architecture.

  Looking around the small apartment, Rachel guessed Suha did most of her work on the plain wood dining table, where more of the folders were stacked.

  It was an open-concept space and Rachel could see through to the kitchen, as well as to the small bedroom. It was as neat as the rest of the apartment, with a night table, a lamp, and a twin bed, the décor strictly neutral, and to Rachel’s critical eye, even a little bland.

  Suha cleared a couch with some haste and invited them to sit, asking them to call her by her name.

  ‘Linh said you wanted to speak with me. She said you’re trying to track down a case.’

  She spoke with a Niagara-region accent. Rachel was familiar with it because her hockey team included a couple of worthy stalwarts who drove in for their games
from west of the Welland Canal. Perhaps Suha had moved to Toronto from Grimsby or Lincoln, or some other small town farther west.

  Khattak gave Suha the photograph with the same warning about its graphic nature that he’d given Linh. She looked at it without flinching, though not without dismay. Her expression of concern made her seem more approachable.

  ‘Do you know who he is? Linh Pham didn’t know his name. Or at least she didn’t recognize the name we gave her.’

  Suha tilted her head at Khattak. ‘What name was that, Inspector?’

  ‘What name do you know him by?’

  She dropped the photograph onto a stack of folders. ‘I haven’t said I recognize him.’

  Her reply was surprising. They had counted on Linh Pham’s certainty that Suha would be able to help them.

  ‘But you do, don’t you?’

  Her mouth twisted. She was an attractive woman; the worry that had crept into her eyes was at odds with her offhand elegance.

  ‘Linh must have told you I would. I’m not surprised. As case coordinator, I’ve had each one of Sanctuary’s cases cross my desk at some point.’

  She hugged her arms to her torso, warding off a chill that only she felt.

  Khattak asked a different question.

  ‘How long have you been with Sanctuary Syria, Ms Obeidi?’

  He didn’t take up her offer to call her by her first name. Nor had he offered her a conventional salaam.

  She didn’t seem to expect one, which meant she didn’t recognize Khattak’s name, nuances Rachel had come to understand through her training at Community Policing. Khattak was a Muslim of South Asian background. Suha clearly wasn’t, though Rachel couldn’t hazard a guess as to her ethnicity.

  ‘Is that relevant to your inquiry about this boy?’ She avoided looking at the photograph again.

  Rachel followed Khattak’s lead. ‘We’d be grateful if you’d just answer our questions, Ms Obeidi. We’re investigating a murder, time is of the essence.’

  Restlessly, Suha Obeidi rose from the couch, tugging at the sleeves of her fitted cherry blouse. It outlined her figure with some clarity.

  Rachel wondered at the contrast to the woman’s hijab, but otherwise passed no judgment.

  ‘I see.’ Suha paced in front of the living room windows. ‘I’ve been with Sanctuary since its founding; I’ve worked for the organization in several different capacities. Case management coordinator is a kind of catch-all because I’ve had to try my hand at a lot of different things.’

  Khattak gave a non-committal murmur. Rachel wondered if this had anything to do with the staff reorganization Linh Pham had mentioned. ‘I was brought in to grow our sponsor base. Community engagement, additional partners, that kind of thing. But we’ve always been a little understaffed, and when our volunteers returned to school in the fall, we were under a great deal of pressure.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve seen you before,’ Rachel said, studying the other woman’s face.

  Suha took that in her stride. ‘You may have done. Sanctuary gets a lot of media requests, and for a time, I handled media liaison as well.’ A self-mocking note entered her voice. ‘Case management, partnership development, communications, social media, hiring volunteers – I’ve done all those things at one time or another. I think that’s why they gave me the title of co-chair. They know I can step into any of those roles.’

  She wasn’t boasting, simply running down the facts. And her onerous responsibilities might have been the reason she had asked for a little time off.

  Rachel wondered what she was doing with this backlog of files if she needed a break.

  ‘Are you a lawyer? Are you responsible for fast-tracking these cases?’ Rachel glanced around the small apartment. ‘I’m wondering why these files aren’t at your offices.’

  The question didn’t faze the other woman. Which meant that in this respect at least, she wasn’t holding back.

  ‘I’m a paralegal, not a lawyer, and these aren’t active cases. These files represent refugees who’ve been in Canada for some time. I’m trying to build a database of those who might be willing to volunteer to help more recent arrivals – acting as translators, and so on. Helping to lessen the fear and anxiety a little.’

  A reasonable explanation that provoked a question from Khattak. ‘I’ve heard that after they’ve been resettled, refugees from Syria don’t necessarily wish to congregate. They haven’t established their own communities.’

  Suha raised her well-defined eyebrows. ‘That may be true of some of our arrivals, particularly the reunion cases. We’ve tried to settle them in neighborhoods with mosques and halal grocers, places where community has already been established – and not just Syrian communities, mind you, but other Muslim communities. They haven’t been keen to mingle.’

  She raised her hands and let them fall. ‘It’s a mistake, I think, to make assumptions about what would benefit refugees immediately upon arrival. They may be traumatized, they may be frightened. They certainly don’t want to relive their most recent experiences. Mixing with other refugees reminds them of the horrors they’ve left behind, things they’re trying to shut from their minds.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s the only reason.’

  Suha paused in front of the window, her troubled gaze fixed on Khattak. ‘You seem to be acquainted with the subject.’

  ‘I’ve met a resettled family through a private sponsorship group. To put it bluntly, it seemed to be an issue of trust.’

  Suha nodded. ‘I suppose that could be true. Syrians have fled from different parts of their country, they don’t necessarily know what others were fleeing or what role they may have played in the civil war: soldier, civilian, Assad supporter, revolutionary. Or someone who wanted to keep out of it, and was praying for the carnage to end.’

  Bashar al-Assad was a name as familiar to Rachel as it would have been to anyone who’d watched the news the past five years. He was Syria’s ruler, and she used that word advisedly. Syria wasn’t a democracy. A single family had ruled the country for nearly fifty years. Bashar al-Assad’s father had been a dictator. The son was immeasurably worse.

  ‘An Assad supporter wouldn’t qualify for asylum in Canada, surely?’

  Suha’s response was dry and a little bleak. ‘Barrel bombs don’t take names. The damage they do is indiscriminate.’ She turned to Khattak. ‘But that’s not what you were getting at, is it? Or maybe it is, a little. You think that even over here, far removed from the war, Syrians might have reason to distrust each other.’

  Khattak watched her closely. ‘Do they?’

  ‘That hasn’t been my experience.’ She made a helpless gesture. ‘It’s more that they want to leave it all behind. They don’t want the stigma of being known as refugees. They’ve made a choice, they’ve risked everything for that choice. They want to be known as Canadians. They want to become Canadian.’

  Khattak rose to his feet. From his glance at her, Rachel saw he wanted her to stay put. He moved closer to Suha. He’d picked up the photograph and now he handed it to her again.

  ‘Do you know this boy? His name was Sami al-Nuri.’

  Again, the lift of her eyebrows indicated her surprise.

  Without looking at the photograph, she said, ‘I’m very sorry that he’s come to this end, and sorrier than I can say that he’s the subject of your investigation. I processed his case myself.’

  ‘Processed?’ Khattak’s voice sharpened. ‘He’d been granted refuge in Canada? A single young man on his own?’

  Suha looked confused for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, that was a clumsy choice of words. I meant I opened a file on him – he hadn’t gotten very far through the system, I believe. And you’re right. He was alone, he wasn’t going to be approved. But I did it as a special favor to a member of one of our partners. A group called Woman to Woman. They have a long-established record as a sp
onsorship agreement holder. This isn’t the first time we’ve partnered with them. Sadly, I doubt it will be the last.’

  Suha threw open the window to let in the fresh April breeze. The plangent noise of traffic floated up from the street.

  ‘Did you speak to Audrey Clare? Was she the one who asked you to process Sami al-Nuri’s case?’

  Suha nodded. ‘She called from Lesvos sometime in late February. She said the matter was urgent, a case of life and death.’ The corners of her mouth drew down. ‘Isn’t that the way of things? Every one of our cases is a question of life and death. That’s what Sanctuary deals in.’

  This was an overstatement in Rachel’s view. Canada wasn’t a destination of choice for all of Syria’s refugees. Most had sought asylum in Germany, given Chancellor Merkel’s promise of government assistance. Rachel remembered the magazine cover that had cast Angela Merkel as Mother Teresa, a saintly figure wearing a blue-and-white wimple. Refugees called her Mama Merkel, mother of the Syrian nation.

  ‘Did she say why?’

  ‘Not in any great detail. I had the impression she was reluctant to do so on the phone. But my general impression was that this particular young man was a target. He was known to Assad’s forces and they wanted him dead.’

  This struck Rachel as peculiar. ‘But he was out of Syria.’

  Suha grimaced. ‘So are a lot of others.’

  ‘Then weren’t you concerned that Sami wasn’t properly vetted?’

  ‘That never crossed my mind.’ She studied Sami’s photograph. ‘I know Audrey quite well. If she vouched for someone, if she worried for someone, I had no reason to doubt her.’

  Fair point, Rachel thought. She waited to see what Khattak would make of this.

  ‘I understand the young man might have had family in Toronto. Do you have the file with you here? Or anything else that might help us?’

  Just as he hadn’t mentioned it to Linh Pham, he didn’t tell Suha that Audrey was missing. It was vital they keep that information from as many people as possible. But Suha proved to have an intuitive grasp of the facts.