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Morocco

A long time ago

It is the spring of ’85 and he has never been to such a place before. Through the shimmering heat and the glare and the insane buzz of dusty cars and motorcycles, they enter the Medina of Marrakech, the ancient walled city within a city. A thousand years old, and at its labyrinthine heart lies the souk.

The street market is like nothing the young Ben has ever seen or imagined, with its dazzling arrays of meats and fish and fruits and exotic spices heaped in baskets; hanging displays of tapestries and rugs and ornate clothing and shoes and scarves and carvings and glittering lamps that seem to go on and on forever. The air is filled with the jabber of vendors and customers haggling and bargaining in a language he does not yet understand; he can have no way of knowing that one day he will speak it fluently. The merchants of the souk are the sharpest salesmen on earth, but the intricacies of buying and selling are concepts that the boy has yet to encounter in his overprotected middle-class life. Men who look like characters from the Bible walk the narrow street, yelling, ‘Balak! Balak!’ as a warning to get out of their way as they lead their overladen donkeys through the crowd, the animals’ flanks swaying with everything from garbage to goods for sale in the souk. All around him Ben sees veiled women in kaftans, bearded men wearing long, embroidered robes and skullcaps.

He will never forget the smell of this place. The garden at home smells of fresh-mown grass and apple blossom. This is another planet, rich with the pungent scents alien to a young boy’s nose, intermingled with the heat and dust, the sweat of men and animals.

As well as a new smell that he will soon experience for the very first time in his life. The feral raw-blood smell of fear and desperation and stark despair.

‘Ben! Look!’

It’s the excited voice of Ben’s sister, Ruth. Nine years old, with tumbling hair more golden than his that catches the sun as she beams up at him and tugs at his sleeve while pointing at something. Her eyes are glowing with happiness and as blue as his own, vivid as the ocean. Her older brother smiles down at her and follows the line of her waving arm, to where a legless man in a black tunic sits on an upended bucket in a corner of a crumbling wall. He is playing a crude pipe and is surrounded by six hooded cobras, half-coiled, half-standing to attention and swaying in front of him as though hypnotised by his strange music. To Ben, the otherworldly spectacle of the snake charmer is like one of the scenes from Sinbad the Sailor or The Arabian Nights that fired his imagination in the comfort of his bedroom back home. Such is the cosy world of the sons of circuit judges.

Ruth has no fear of the snakes. ‘Can I feed them?’ she asks. ‘They look hungry.’

Ben thinks the snake charmer looks hungrier. He’s never seen people so lean and hard before, with skin like leather burned dark by the sun. ‘I don’t think we’re supposed to feed them,’ he tells her. ‘They bite.’

‘They won’t bite me. Can’t I go and see them?’ she says, disappointed.

‘Stay close to me, okay?’

Ben and Ruth aren’t alone in this strange and fascinating place. Martina Thomann is a Swiss girl he met at the hotel only yesterday, the second day of the Hope family holiday here in Morocco. Martina’s family are leaving tomorrow. Ben is sad that he will probably never see her again after today. She is seventeen, a year older than him, though she seems infinitely mature in all kinds of ways that he finds mysteriously compelling but can’t quite express or understand. Girls back home have asked him out from time to time, but he has never met one he was drawn to this way, so strongly he can almost taste it. The first time she reached out to hold his hand, he almost died.

His secret wish is that it could have been just the two of them, without Ruth tagging along. The kid is cramping his style. He feels guilty just for thinking it. He feels guilty, too, for breaking his promise to his parents to stay in the hotel and keep an eye on his little sister while they are off visiting a museum. But the temptation of Martina’s company, and her desire to see the souk, were forces too powerful to resist.

He will soon learn what a guilty conscience truly feels like.

When it happens, it is literally in an instant, while his back is turned, distracted by Martina. He looks back … and his little sister is gone.

Ruth?

His first thought is that she’s simply wandered off. Perhaps back to see the snakes. He lets go of the older girl’s hand and starts pushing through the crowd, calling his sister’s name. The men in robes seem to press in on him from all directions, hampering his progress. He’s calling more loudly now.

‘Ruth! Ruth!’

A cry that will echo on in his nightmares for many years to come.

She isn’t with the snakes. She isn’t anywhere. The realisation stabs him like an icy blade, making his heart pound and his ears ring and his guts writhe as though he had to throw up. There will be time for that later. He sprints through the twisting passages of the souk, shoving people out of his way, constantly expecting to tear around the next corner and see her standing there smiling up at him, saying, ‘Here I am, silly. What are you making such a fuss about?’ But she’s not there. She could have been sucked into another dimension.

Gone. Taken. Swallowed by the crowd, as though she had never existed.

Blinded by panic, he grabs Martina and runs all the way back to the hotel to wait for his parents to return and tell them what happened. He can’t cry. He can’t be weak.

He knows they will never forgive him, and that he cannot forgive himself, not ever.

And so the nightmare begins.

Within hours, the Marrakech Brigade Touristique and detectives from the regular Morocco police will be scouring the streets, searching for the missing child. Soon afterwards, British embassy officials are joined by envoys from the Foreign Office as the abduction investigation widens.

All for nothing. No trace of little Ruth will be found, either in the city or the surrounding area. Ben’s mother Kathleen will be treated for the near-catatonic state of grief that will ultimately claim her life, while Ben’s father, Alistair Hope, desperately draws on every shred of official influence his position as a senior legal figure can lend him. But there is no power that can bring her back.

She is gone.

The worst is imagining what is happening to her at the hands of the men who took her. The young Ben will no longer be able to close his eyes without hearing her screams in the darkness. When things feel darker still, he will secretly wish her dead rather than enduring tortures he cannot imagine. Just as part of him is now dead inside.

That day is the day that will change everything for him. The day that will light the fuse that will destroy his family and set him on a path that dictates the rest of his life. A life he could not have envisaged before now, but is all that remains for him. He will never be weak. He will never turn his back again. He will learn to become stronger than strong, and to devote himself utterly to finding people who are lost. The people who need him. The people you don’t turn your back on.

Whatever it takes. Bring it on.

Even if it means losing himself in the process. He doesn’t care any more.