The Inquiry Page 14

  The intercom buzzed.

  13

  It could have been a seance in a mortuary waiting room. An ambulance and two paramedics had arrived half an hour before and death was confirmed. Sara had phoned her father, saying she’d be late and would explain when she saw him, then Pamela Bailly and Patrick Duke; the three of them now hovered silently in the open-plan area. A police sergeant and constable were with the paramedics in Morahan’s office.

  Pamela spoke. ‘We need a list and a plan.’ Sara and Patrick looked up, waiting for her to pronounce. ‘Lists first. Those to be immediately informed. The Prime Minister’s and Home Secretary’s private offices. No. 10 and Home Office Heads of Press. Office of the Lord Chief Justice. The Inquiry’s panel members.’

  ‘What exactly is to be said?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘Oh,’ replied Pamela with an untypical airiness, ‘I think simply that Sir Francis Morahan tragically and suddenly died in his office, cause of death is being confirmed.’

  ‘There’ll be more questions.’

  ‘Then they will have to wait for answers.’

  ‘Should the Inquiry staff come in tomorrow or be stood down?’ asked Sara.

  ‘Come in. A common understanding will be more easily achieved if we gather together.’ Patrick and Sara exchanged looks at her choice of words.

  A scruffily suited man entered the open-plan area and directed himself to Sara. ‘Miss Shah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Buttler. Two Ts.’ He smiled cursorily. ‘I understand you discovered the body.’

  ‘Yes.’ She quickly registered him; a stocky figure, receding brown hair curling at the edge, twinkling eyes and loosely pulled tie which suggested a man confident in his role.

  ‘Perhaps we could have a quiet word.’

  Sara turned to Pamela for guidance though without understanding quite why. ‘Feel free to use my office.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Buttler, ‘and you are…’

  Pamela rose and offered her hand to shake. ‘Pamela Bailly, Secretary to the Inquiry. I should be your main point of contact here.’

  ‘As you will.’ He followed Sara inside the office; they sat down facing each other at the Secretary’s small conference table.

  ‘This is purely informal at this point, Miss Shah. Just to get myself up to speed on the basics.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘What is your role here?’

  ‘I’m junior counsel to the Inquiry. I work for the Government Legal Department.’

  ‘You’re a lawyer. Good.’ The twinkling in the eyes spread to form a grin.

  ‘Not every policeman would agree,’ said Sara, trying to respond in kind.

  ‘My favourite profession.’ The grin settled into sympathy. ‘It must have been a nasty shock.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you mind going over the timings?’

  Sara felt a prickle of sweat beneath her armpits. She went through the evening; her return to the office, Morahan looking in, briefing him.

  ‘His mood?’ asked Buttler.

  ‘Same as always. Polite. Clear. Positive.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I went home and soon after received a text from Sir Francis – around 8.30, I think – asking if I could come back in an hour or so if I was able to. I was surprised but assumed he wanted to go through some papers.’

  ‘Do you have that text?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Could I see it, please?’

  ‘It was sent confidentially.’

  ‘I understand but it might help.’

  ‘I suppose it can do no harm now.’

  Sara took her phone from a pocket and went to the inbox. She felt a sudden panic. She looked again, scrolled up and down. The text wasn’t there. Did she delete it? She hardly ever did – phones could store millions. A rash of sweat spread to her neck and chest – she hoped it wasn’t showing. Perhaps, with everything that was going on, she’d somehow deleted it on autopilot? Yet her memory was usually faultless.

  Feeling the heat in her cheeks, she looked up at Buttler. ‘I’m sorry, the text appears to have been deleted. I don’t understand it as I don’t remember doing that. Perhaps I did – seeing the body put me in rather a spin.’

  He eyed her for a few seconds. ‘You mean seeing the Chairman’s body half-naked and dead may have impelled you to delete his text?’

  ‘Yes. No. I mean there was nothing unusual about the text. Just saying he wanted to discuss something in the paperwork.’

  ‘I see.’ He paused. ‘Never mind,’ he continued brightly, ‘we should be able to retrieve it. And it’ll be on Sir Francis’s phone too.’

  She looked down at her phone to check the ‘Sent’ box and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Look, here’s my text replying to him, saying I’m coming in. That shows I must have got his.’

  Buttler, expressionless, inspected her for a split-second. ‘Perhaps you could continue.’

  ‘I got the tube – it’s an easy journey for me which he knew so perhaps that’s why he felt able to make the suggestion. I arrived soon after 9.30. His door was shut, so I poked my head through it but there was no sign of him. I returned to my office and waited, assuming he was taking a break. I was bemused. I wondered if I’d misunderstood something and he’d wanted me to come to his home.’

  ‘You had his address?’

  ‘Yes, he’d given it to me.’

  ‘Were you a frequent visitor to his house?’

  ‘No, not at all. I’d only just met him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Buttler, sounding surprised. ‘But he’d given you his address.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘When he hadn’t reappeared after another fifteen minutes or so, I decided to check again. I didn’t want to interrupt so I just edged the door open. I was still bemused so I decided to look further in. Then I saw it.’

  ‘It?’

  Sara patted an eye with a handkerchief. ‘The shape. The shape on the sofa.’

  ‘I’m sorry to take you through it,’ said Buttler. ‘Were there any lights on?’

  Sara, recovering, put on a tiny show of straining to recollect. ‘No, I don’t think so. The curtains were open so there was some light coming in from the American Embassy lights and construction sites.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘I went closer. You’ve seen it. I’d rather not describe it in detail.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘I touched it… him. There was no movement. I tried to find his pulse. Then I phoned 999. From his desk phone.’

  Simultaneously, they looked round – there was movement outside. A woman had entered the open-plan area, accompanied by a policeman. Sara knew it could only be Lady Morahan. She turned back to Buttler.

  ‘We can resume tomorrow,’ he said, understanding too what he was seeing. ‘If there’s anything more.’

  They entered the open-plan area; Iona Morahan was heading towards the corridor leading into her husband’s office. Buttler followed to join her. Sara sat down beside Patrick and Pamela, all holding their silence till she disappeared.

  ‘I just can’t imagine…’ said Patrick.

  ‘No,’ said Sara. More silence.

  Iona and the two policemen reappeared within a couple of minutes. She broke away from them to join the Inquiry staffers.

  Pamela stood to offer a hand, ‘Lady Morahan… a tragedy… we are all so sorry.’

  Iona turned to Patrick and Sara. ‘Mr Duke and Miss Shah, I presume.’

  ‘Yes,’ they answered in unison.

  ‘My husband spoke highly of both of you.’

  ‘He was a great man,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Yes,’ echoed Sara. ‘I wish I’d known him longer.’

  ‘I suspect he would have thought the same about you,’ she smiled bleakly. Sara caught the eye of Buttler listening in.

  Iona looked across at the policeman who had escorted her. ‘I think perhaps I will go straight ho
me now.’ He moved towards her offering an arm; she rejected it, instead striding alone toward the stairs.

  ‘It’s late,’ Buttler said. ‘There’s no need for any of you three to stay. A police guard will be posted overnight – Miss Bailly, perhaps we could run through security and entrance procedures here.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Pamela.

  ‘Because of the nature of the death, a scene of crime officer will attend as soon as possible and also a pathologist. There may be biological evidence still intact.’

  ‘Evidence of what, Mr Buttler?’ asked Pamela abruptly.

  ‘Simply confirmation of timings and causes,’ he replied with the expression of a benign assassin. ‘In a case involving a prominent person, you’ll appreciate that police conduct will be under scrutiny and all procedures and avenues must be followed.’ Sara suspected that, for once, Pamela Bailly knew she’d overplayed her authority.

  Patrick stood. ‘I drove in. Any south Londoners want a lift home?’ No replies. ‘Sara?’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  The second they closed the car doors and he’d started the engine, he pounced.

  ‘So what really happened to Morahan?’

  ‘God, Patrick, you’re not allowing much time.’

  ‘We may not have much time.’

  ‘OK. The appearance is that he died from auto-erotic asphyxiation.’

  ‘Except that you and I know he didn’t.’

  She turned fiercely to him. ‘Actually, it just could be.’

  ‘No. It all smells wrong.’ He accelerated angrily. She watched him as he concentrated on driving.

  ‘Patrick?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘’Course I’m OK.’

  ‘It’s like you’re sitting on hot coals. It’s not like you.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’

  She didn’t answer, sure there was something else. Speeding through the empty streets of south London in the small hours, they reached the junction of Tooting Broadway with Webster Road.

  ‘Where’s your copy of the Blackburn files?’ he asked.

  ‘At my house.’

  ‘I’ll take them. We don’t have the original so we need to make a further copy. And put both copies in safe storage.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘You’ve got to.’

  ‘Morahan gave them to me to keep.’

  ‘Sara,’ he said urgently, ‘if you get caught with those files – even being in possession of them, you’d be breaking the Official Secrets Act. That would be it. Operation over. And think what would have happened if Morahan hadn’t given them to you. It wouldn’t just be him dead – the evidence would have died with him.’

  ‘OK,’ she said weakly.

  ‘Another thing. When you were talking earlier, did Morahan finally tell you his source?’ Patrick asked. ‘’Cos knowing that puts you in danger too.’

  ‘No,’ she lied. Morahan, from the outset, had sworn her to secrecy about Sayyid. With the changed circumstances, she suspected she would have to tell Patrick soon enough – but not yet. It was certainly too early to tell him about the envelope behind the radiator – she had first to come to terms with it herself. But if they were both holding things back, she knew that either they must engineer a means of declaring their full hands together or their joint pursuit was over.

  They drew up outside her home. The lights were on, Tariq still up. Patrick parked, switched off the engine and made no movement to get out. He turned to her and waited.

  ‘You’ve hardened since we drove down from Blackburn,’ she finally said. ‘And I don’t think it’s just Morahan.’

  ‘If it’s not, it doesn’t matter. It’s not relevant anyway.’

  ‘Patrick, if we’re carrying on with this, we’ll have to go all in, both of us.’ Her voice was low, her eyes liquid with intensity. ‘No holding back.’

  Face to face, just inches from each other, their breaths audible in the silence of the night, he felt transfixed by her. He mustn’t allow that. He turned away and opened his door. Still in his seat, he looked rigidly ahead, cutting the moment. ‘And you’re saying you’re holding nothing back?’ he murmured.

  He jumped out of the car, not awaiting or wanting a reply, and strode around the bonnet as she opened her door and jumped out. They walked in silence to the front door. She waved him inside, introduced him to Tariq and explained his role in the Inquiry. She left the two of them together, wondering what her father would think of her new colleague.

  She went up to her room to retrieve her photocopies from the Blackburn folder and handed it to Patrick.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.

  She waited for his car to start and the engine noise to die away.

  On the way back to his Brixton flat, Patrick stopped in the Waitrose car park on Balham High Road. He checked the files. There were no other documents. For the moment the threat, it seemed, was contained. The unknown was what else would emerge – and whether Morahan’s source would dry up now that he was dead. If there was more to come, he assumed it would be routed to Sara.

  She was right. To keep going, they would have to tell each other everything – almost. That was the catch – if no further evidence or documents did emerge, there was no need, from his point of view, to open the can. It might all blow over. The question, after the two events of the past seven hours, was whether that was the outcome he now wanted – or they should be allowed to have.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Tariq as Patrick shut the front door.

  Sara gave her father the headlines in as brief and understated a way as she could. He asked no questions, seeing she just needed to bury herself away. Blessing him for it and hugging him goodnight, she rushed up to her bedroom.

  She sat down at her desk, retrieved the envelope, unfolded it and took out the contents. She placed Sayyid’s note beside the print-out of her profile and stared at it.

  This is the person you must recruit as your investigator. She has special knowledge and a connection which I will make clear to you when I know that you have recruited her. At that time, I will also give you a final folder of material.

  Please trust me when I say that this investigation is vital for preserving this nation as a law-abiding, accountable democracy.

  Sayyid.

  Whatever the motives for Morahan’s delay in telling her, if he wasn’t a half-naked spread-eagled corpse straddling a sofa, she’d be silently cursing him. Instead she was the inheritor of his baleful legacy. And Sayyid was the bacillus that had evolved to confuse and devour them all, beginning with Morahan himself.

  Nor was this second offering his ending. ‘…a final folder of material…’

  Had he delivered it? If so, where had Morahan concealed it? At least, she told herself it would not be his office – he’d surely run out of hiding places there.

  The texts, the files, Sayyid… someone who knew about her past was tracking her. She sensed ever more vividly the long tail of the secret she had kept hidden for so many years.

  Events and her history were ensnaring her. She had to break out.

  14

  The night, at this moment, might feel unreal but it was pregnant with momentous, unknowable consequences. It would be just hours until the outburst of TV and radio reports, soon followed by the scream of tabloid headlines.

  The story would run and run. Was Morahan always a flawed character subject to unusual passions and desires? If so, the chorus of media and online chatter would demand, what on earth was he doing in such a prominent position of trust? Or was it murder by sinister forces of some sort, mocked up to look like a sex game? She remembered the storm and speculation when that GCHQ operative was discovered trussed up in a suitcase. They would be as nothing compared with the fireball Morahan’s death would ignite.

  Awful times lay ahead for Iona Morahan: the sheer humiliation; the scurrilous ripping apart – in the name of psychoanalysis – of their marriage and relationship; the
titillating questions of what could drive a man of such stature and respectability to an end like this.

  Sara went to her window and looked down on the back gardens and roofs beyond; how many sordid secrets were housed within those walls? Who knew what their closed curtains concealed?

  She needed air. She went downstairs, let herself out and looked upwards. Nothing, no stars, no moon, no outlines of clouds. She walked fast in the direction of the high street, imagining even its nocturnal murmurs might comfort her.

  Pointless. She turned round – had to find sleep to prepare for the horrors of the morning. A few yards from home, she saw a car on the other side of the street, its sidelights on, inside the outlines of two figures. She thought she caught a head turning towards her.

  She let herself back in, double-locked the front door and attached the security chain.

  A marked police car was outside the Inquiry’s office, along with a couple of unfamiliar vans. Inside, the staff were grouped in the open-plan area. Patrick beckoned her over.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘Hardly slept.’

  ‘How could you have?’ He smiled weakly. ‘Forensics are in Morahan’s office and they want to go through Legal and Archive too.’ Sylvia Labone had parked herself in a corner, peering, as far as Sara could see, over half-moon spectacles at The Times crossword.

  ‘They’ll do a sweep through Pamela’s office too,’ he said, quietly enough for the words to drift no further.

  ‘Why bother with that?’ asked Sara with the same caution.

  ‘Every stone will be turned, I guess,’ said Patrick. ‘As our friendly copper warned last night.’

  ‘Where is Pamela?’

  ‘Home Office. They must be hopping around like crickets. Chirruping away.’

  ‘What’s been said to the staff?’

  ‘The bare bones. They’ve been asked to stick around so a note can be taken of names, roles and their movements yesterday.’

  ‘What are the police saying?’

  ‘I saw Buttler briefly – thought I should get in early – they’ll be calling it an “unexplained death”. I said why not “accidental” and he gave me a world-weary look. He’s gone back to Kennington.’

  ‘So we sit and wait.’