The Inquiry Read online

  ‘You still had nothing concrete.’

  ‘He begins to work the student Islamic Society circuit, initially in the Midlands and the North. One-day trips, innocent enough stuff, no apparently significant meetings. Then we hear he’s on the bill in London at Queen Vic’s. We decide to attend in person.’

  ‘We?’ said Patrick, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Yes, a young lady there who’s occasionally helpful to us.’

  ‘Muslim?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Really, Patrick, the questions you ask. More tea?’ With a hint of ceremony, J topped up their cups, helped himself to a splash of milk and dropped in two lumps of sugar which he stirred in with great deliberation as if the circling stew of pale brown might contain unsuspected secrets of its own. ‘We’re logging the phone numbers Kareem’s calling – cheap surveillance tool and surprisingly productive – it shows a call that morning to a red velvet-lined restaurant in W2 – London’s little Arabia. We send along a girl and boy team, camera in his tie-pin, microphone and recorder in her handbag.’ J took the second, thicker file from below the first and extracted a document and a single photograph. ‘Pay dirt.’

  Patrick examined the photograph; one face was just recognisable from the saturation press coverage of the 7/7 bombings, the profile of a second from the photographs J had already shown him. The backs of two female heads were in silhouette, impossible to identify. The document was a verbatim transcript of a multi-party conversation. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Mohammad Sidique Khan dining with Kareem bin-Jilani.’

  ‘Yes,’ said J, ‘wow, as you put it. The oddity is that this was taken because we were monitoring Kareem. Not Sidique Khan. His name had come up but he was never considered a serious threat. That was the tragedy.’ He pointed to the transcript. ‘When you plough through this, you can see that Kareem was unfamiliar with Sidique Khan. It was this other chap – turned out he’s called Aaqil – who’d brought him along.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘The girl with the hijab was – is – called Maryam Saeed Britaniyah, once upon a time the rather less exotic Marion Green. Middle-class family, wellish-heeled, she was working as a PA at a city hedge fund. Where, by coincidence, the bin-Jilani family had investments which Kareem, as the London presence, kept an eye on. She apparently fell in his thrall.’

  ‘The other girl?’

  ‘We put a tracker on her but she ended up clear. Not part of the picture now. He tended to whisper to her so we didn’t get much.’

  ‘A tracker?’

  ‘Yes, soft tail, not a combined op. Just two of ours. Girls, of course. Show respect and all that.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Couple of months. I seem to recall she spent rather an uneventful summer.’

  ‘You’re saying I was under surveillance for two months,’ said Sara dully. Up till now, she’d been listening in silence. ‘Just because once at a restaurant I sat next to a man they suspected.’

  The grey sky was blackening, promising rain. ‘Let’s move,’ said Patrick, ‘we’ll go back and cross the road. There’s a Pret we can take cover in.’

  The skies opened as the pedestrian lights turned green to allow them over the bus lanes and carriageways, Sara protecting her head and scarf with her coat. Inside they dumped their bags and coats on a corner table at the back, furthest away from the counter. Sara settled, watching the onslaught of rain.

  ‘Not as good as mine at the office,’ said Patrick, returning with coffees. He forced a smile as he set plastic cups on the table.

  She didn’t move, eyes apparently magnetised by the downpour. ‘He gave you a transcript,’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sayyid gave Morahan just the recording.’

  ‘Less bulky. Or he couldn’t access it.’

  She thought. ‘Or because what mattered was that he listened to the voices.’ Silence as the depth of Sayyid’s manipulation of Morahan sank in ever further.

  ‘Shall we go back to the photograph?’ Patrick asked softly. She nodded her head. ‘I’d no idea it was you. I was never given a name. I didn’t even know of you till now. But yes, according to J, the second woman in the photograph – you – was under surveillance for two months.’

  ‘No wonder some of us hated them.’

  ‘But wouldn’t they have asked themselves the obvious question?’ She turned. ‘As I ask myself that question now.’

  ‘Ask it.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the obvious question. But they could have come and asked me instead of watching me.’

  ‘Perhaps. But you must see they might have thought you could lead them somewhere.’

  She sipped her coffee and moved closer to him.

  ‘It was a coincidence,’ she said softly. ‘The meeting sounded interesting. I’d no idea he’d be there. He recognised me and I thought it would be rude to refuse the invitation to join him and his friends for dinner.’

  ‘He recognised you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about the woman? The one J said was called Maryam, previously Marion.’

  ‘I hadn’t met her before.’ She paused. ‘I’d heard the name. When she was just Marion.’ She paused. ‘If this part of it ever becomes significant for what we’re doing, I’ll tell you. Right now it isn’t. OK?’

  Part of him wanted to test her – how could it possibly not be significant? – but he felt he’d touched some buried grief. It would come in time. ‘Look…’ he said, as if searching for consolation, ‘I was never entirely sure I could believe every word J’s big rich voice uttered. At least it’s better than if you’d been the young Muslim woman helping MI5.’

  ‘Could you have believed that of me?’

  ‘Some might see it as patriotic.’

  She inspected him, her eyes narrowing harshly. ‘Perhaps you really could.’

  ‘We were all younger then. Perhaps we all did things.’ He breathed in deeply, a bead of sweat on his normally cool brow. ‘I know I did.’

  17

  2005

  ‘Good morning, Patrick,’ J bellowed, jumping up from a leather sofa in the back lounge of a rotunda style hotel on Cromwell Road and offering his hand. ‘How extraordinarily nice to see you.’

  He greeted Patrick with a delighted but puzzled smile, as if the last thing he expected was to bump into him at this place at this time. A grey-suited man and pink-skirted woman sitting in the opposite corner and dressed for executive action whipped round with pained disapproval. ‘Just in case they might be interested,’ said J sotto voce, gesturing Patrick to sit alongside. ‘But happily that reaction says not. Coffee?’ They sat, looking out upon a narrow stretch of green lawn, two floor-to-ceiling aluminium-framed windows lending the room an ugly functionality. ‘Right. There’s stuff you need to know and stuff you don’t.’

  J made a visual sweep, then produced a small silver rectangular object. In a tiny hole he plugged in the needle-like jack of a single earphone, handed it to Patrick, indicated to pop it in his ear, and switched on. Patrick found himself listening to a conversation; one voice, well-spoken and deep, was clear; the second presumably was at the end of a scratchy telephone line.

  ‘It was a failure,’ said the first voice.

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘Too inelegant. Too unfocused. Too indiscriminate.’

  ‘It’s not easy.’

  ‘It was wrong.’

  The conversation cut out, replaced by a hiss. ‘That was friend Kareem,’ said J, ‘apparently showing some remorse.’

  Patrick himself checked the room, removed the ear phone and returned it to J. ‘He could have been putting it on.’

  ‘Yes. But not in my – our – view to the person we think he was speaking to.’

  ‘Our?’

  ‘To come,’ replied J sharply. ‘He’s been caught dining out a month before with the lead bomber of 7/7, it shows he’s implicated. We�
�ve also now got a financial trail a criminal mile long. That’s why we decided it was time to bring him in for a chat.’ J took a final gulp of coffee and crashed the cup back onto its saucer. ‘He’s going to be your new friend.’

  He grabbed his brown coat off the sofa arm, jumped nimbly up and strode out of the room. In the hotel lobby, without stopping, he stretched out a hand for a brown trilby on a hatstand and skipped down the front steps, Patrick trailing in his wake. A sharp shower, filtered through arrows of sunlight, was bouncing shiny pellets of water off the pavement. J put on the trilby and turned to Patrick. ‘Important lesson of life, never be caught without a hat.’ A hundred yards or so down Cromwell Road, he made the diagonal turn into Lexham Gardens. Patrick peered up through the rain to the tall terraces of stucco-fronted Victorian houses. Perhaps it was J’s presence that moved him to see them as a box-set of anonymous hidey-holes for the affluent; the sort of place where a certain sort of gentleman might house his mistress – or an intelligence agency its spy.

  J stopped at the seventh house on the south-east side of the street and descended the basement steps. The external door opened before him; he entered, waving Patrick in with uncharacteristic energy. A lean-faced, wiry figure dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform, his black hair greased down to preserve a crisp parting, glanced out and closed the door.

  ‘Good morning, Len,’ said J.

  ‘Good morning, Mr J,’ came the reply in a strong Ulster accent. For some reason, Patrick instantly imagined him as J’s one-time silent assassin.

  ‘This young man is called Patrick, we’ll be seeing more of him.’

  Len stuck out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’

  Patrick read the ‘sir’ as the gnarled sergeant-major’s nod to the raw officer cadet. He realised he hadn’t asked J the obvious question. ‘You never said why you’re bringing me here.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’ he replied ingenuously. ‘Kareem’s asked to see a solicitor.’

  ‘A solicitor?’

  ‘Yes, thought you’d have figured that out.’

  ‘Whose side am I on?’

  The reply was raised eyebrows. ‘You’re about to meet the person in charge of this little operation,’ said J. ‘Ask her if you want.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Good lord, no, I’m a mere outrider these days with the occasional idea.’

  ‘Anyway, what operation?’

  J grinned. ‘Stuff you don’t need to know, Patrick. She’s called Isobel Le Marchant, rising star of the service. If she gets this right, she’ll be headed straight for the top.’

  They walked down a passage past a study-like room – Len’s domain, Patrick assumed – then an opening into a kitchen, followed by a closed door. J opened it, switched on the light and peered in, Patrick at his shoulder. It was a large bedroom, no window, two abstract paintings on stone-coloured walls, an en-suite bathroom leading off. The bath, shower and basin taps were gold; a scent of lavender sweetened the enclosed air. ‘Gloriously vulgar,’ said J. He scanned both rooms. ‘Just want to make sure someone’s bleaching the loo.’

  They continued to a wider wood-panelled door at the end of the passage. J knocked and entered without waiting for a reply. A spacious room stretched out, the end glass panels revealing a small basement courtyard with high whitewashed brick walls. At the room’s centre was a rectangular table, also glass, with two mounds of magazines and catalogues; among them Patrick could see copies of Country Life and a catalogue for a recent Old Masters’ auction at Christie’s. Between them lay a tray containing a large cafétière full to the brim, white china milk jug and sugar bowl, four piled saucers and four cups. Two white-leather sofas at ninety degrees to each other were grouped around the table, separated at the corner by an oversize television. The natural subterranean darkness was relieved by a dazzling montage of sunken ceiling spotlights, a slender serpentine trail of smoke from a resting cigarette curling its way through their shafts of illumination.

  Two figures rose from a sofa. The taller one was wearing brushed blue jeans and a crisp white linen shirt. His jet-black hair was neatly cut, allowed at the back to fall to the base of his neck. A cropped, shaped beard and moustache enhanced the symmetry and angularity of a starkly defined face, straight nose and almost black eyes, topped by brooding lashes and brows. The beardless spaces of skin and neck were of a spotless purity, unusual in such a masculine face.

  The other figure was also tall and slim, a tight-fitting cream skirt stopping at the knee, below which were incongruously stocky legs. Her pale hair was on the turn to grey, but delayed in its progress by blonde highlights creating tiny waves on layers descending to a taper on the shoulders. A pink shirt outlined slim breasts and upper body but the face itself was plainish, neither ugly nor alluring, hazel eyes sunken, nose just too thin and long, lips falling short of generous.

  J stopped short of the glass table which separated them. ‘Isobel. Kareem.’ He glanced at Patrick. ‘May I introduce Patrick Duke. He’s come in response to your request, Kareem.’

  ‘My request?’ said Kareem. A man, Patrick instantly suspected, more used to delivering orders than asking questions.

  ‘You wanted a solicitor,’ said J.

  Kareem looked Patrick up and down. They were both tall, lean, athletic men; the contrast was the colour of their skins, black and tan. Patrick, in a charcoal grey suit, striped shirt and blue tie was the more formally dressed but, somehow, less elegant. Kareem presented a gliding, harmonious flow from top to bottom; it appeared to be attracting the rapt attention of the woman standing beside him.

  ‘So,’ said Kareem, with an audible hiss, ‘you are a solicitor.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Patrick, adopting a suitably deferential relationship to his ‘client’.

  ‘At least you have manners. You may call me Kareem.’ He looked across to J. ‘Others were not always so courteous. Is my relationship with my solicitor confidential?’

  ‘Of course, Kareem,’ said Isobel. Patrick noticed that J did not react at her assumption of command. The voice was deep, the accent classless; he wondered whether she had changed it upwards to match the clubbiness of the intelligence services at the time, well over two decades before, when she would have been recruited. Or perhaps, when the organisations themselves changed to be open to all, she adapted – a posh girl from a well-connected family assimilating to the new egalitarianism.

  ‘Thank you, Isobel,’ said Kareem, enveloping her in a radiant smile.

  She smiled back and turned to J, reshaping the creases as a frown. ‘Shall we make ourselves scarce?’ J cast a regretful glance at the undrunk cafétière and followed her out of the room.

  ‘Come, Patrick,’ said Kareem, waving him towards the sofa. ‘Now you can tell me why they selected you.’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Perhaps it is because you are black and I am brown. The Nigger and the Arab.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Because they misunderstand the racism that might divide you and me – or because they understand it all too well.’

  ‘You overestimate them.’

  ‘In any case, neither you nor I would fall for it as we do not share their own racial misconceptions.’

  ‘Correct. I was just the next cab on the rank.’

  ‘The rank of Her Majesty’s Government’s Treasury Solicitors.’

  ‘Why do you make that assumption?’

  ‘Because it is true, of course. There is no need to embarrass yourself by confirming or denying it. You also are a young and inexperienced lawyer who might do as he is told.’

  ‘You’re my client, Kareem,’ said Patrick. The taunting liberated him. However many secret cameras and buried microphones were being watched and listened to by Len, whoever he was, no doubt with Isobel and J alongside, he would play the role they’d allotted him under his own rules. ‘I take my instructions only from you.’

  Kareem shrugged. ‘No matter. Let us start with how I come to be here.’
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br />   ‘They’ll be monitoring,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Of course they will be.’ Patrick hoped the admission would build confidence but it cut no ice. He needed to be smarter. The speech patterns of the man beside him were an indication of a precise mind, perhaps also a need to show perfect mastery of a second language. No contractions, every word delineated, all in the same modulated, clipped pitch. A man who had learnt not to raise his voice, whatever might seethe inside.

  ‘However,’ continued Kareem, ‘this part of the story is about their actions, not mine.’ He stood and peered at the ceiling, addressing it in the same monotone. ‘Why does one of you not come and retrieve the coffee you left behind? Let us not be the cause of waste.’ He turned to Patrick. ‘Unless you would like to pour yourself a cup first.’

  Patrick attempted a conspiratorial smile. ‘I’ll leave it for them. J is always thirsty.’

  ‘Yes, J. A fluid, slippery character.’ He moved closer, lowering his voice. ‘The woman is more to be trusted. Not unattractive, do you think?’ The voice was not low enough to evade the invisible listeners – deliberately so, Patrick assumed. A small move in whatever game Kareem was playing. ‘They brought me here illegally.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I believe the correct word is kidnap. I was walking near my flat. It is a quiet residential street. A large black car with tinted windows drew up. Three men jumped out and bundled me inside, placing me on the back seat between two of them. They were fast and professional.’

  ‘Did you try to resist?’

  ‘I do not deploy personal violence.’

  Kareem leant towards the table and extracted a cigarette from a pack of black Russian Sobranies. Beside it was a gold Dunhill lighter. He drew lightly from the filter-tip and exhaled a gentle plume of smoke. ‘They supplied the cigarettes. It is good when people do their research. The lighter, however, is mine. Perhaps their budget could not match it.’ Taking another draw, he gazed at the bricked courtyard through the window panels; Patrick detected in him a satisfaction, pride even.

  He rested the cigarette on a glass ashtray sitting on the sofa arm. ‘After twenty minutes or so we arrived. I had the impression that a space in front of the house had been vacated. The man who spoke in the car showed me the rooms, invited me to make myself at home and inquired whether I would like any refreshment. He said a visitor would soon arrive.’ He looked up again at the ceiling. ‘This was J.’