The Inquiry Page 22

  The surprise was sprung over ice cream and a chocolate sauce that matched the baby’s eyes.

  ‘We’re naming her after you,’ said Nusrat.

  ‘What?’ Sara replied, incredulity giving way to delight. The baby’s parents were paying her the greatest possible compliment.

  Sara.

  ‘You never had a brother or sister,’ said Salman. ‘So we thought you could be special to each other.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘That means so much to me.’

  She examined the tiny, two-week-old ball of new life; creased cheeks, half-opened eyes, wisps of dark brown hair. Earlier she’d watched the mouth feeding greedily from her mother; how could a being so fragile pulsate with such energy and hunger?

  There was a further reason to smile. That morning, in Singapore, it had been announced that London had beaten Paris to host the 2012 Olympics – billions of pounds of investment, a new Olympic city, new stadiums; the greatest show on earth would be coming to the home city of the small group supping around that kitchen table. The baby would be a sevenyear-old girl when the games arrived.

  As they cleared plates, Sara saw that the parents were near to dropping with a happy fatigue. Just after 9.30 p.m. she rose to leave, embracing them both and planting a gentle kiss, the tickle of a daisy, on the baby’s forehead. She walked to Holloway Road tube station, taking the Piccadilly line to King’s Cross to change for the rest of the journey home to Tooting. It brought another reminder of the contented family she’d just left. Salman had recently started a new job at Cambridge Science Park; despite the commute – tube to King’s Cross, train to Cambridge North, then all the way back each evening – it was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down. If it worked out, they were already talking of moving out of London to a different life of country markets, green fields and space for a growing family.

  It was an exciting time for Sara too. She’d just finished her articles and in a few weeks was to begin her pupillage at a forward-looking Chambers in the Temple.

  She was home by 10.40 p.m., her father still up, watching, as was his custom, the first half of Newsnight. She told him about the baby and the honour they’d bestowed on her. He beamed.

  ‘Amazing about the Olympics,’ she said.

  ‘Hey, I’ll be retired by then! I’ll get booking my seats.’ The beam broadened even further and he gave her a big hug. ‘Off to bed now. Can’t all be on holiday.’

  Happily tired in a world that seemed calm and beautiful, she had a night of dreamless sleep.

  And then, at 6.47 a.m., her mobile had sounded.

  The horrors of memory.

  The memory of how on the next day, July the 7th, when it was too late, she stayed safely in the confines of her own home and watched the burnt-out bus above ground and the white-suited helmeted figures heading below ground working to retrieve the blackened fried bodies of the dead.

  Of never being able to live with herself if her cousin, Salman, heading into King’s Cross for his daily commute to work, was caught in it.

  Of her shame that Salman living would be, to her, more important than others dying.

  Of the baby girl called Sara.

  The memory of 2005. The year of birth and death.

  Without realising it, staring out of the window, she’d slumped against the side of her seat. Fields and trees had been replaced by London’s suburbia slicing through her reflections. She straightened. She remembered Elizabeth’s parting words and typed ‘sociopath’ into her phone. The phrases and adjectives brought bile to her throat. Superficial charm; lack of shame; promiscuous sexual behaviour with a tendency to violence; changes image to avoid being caught out; needs stimulation; authoritarian; desire to enslave victim; callousness; may state goal is to rule the world.

  A chill ran through her. She told herself to return to the practical task of planning the next moves. While the Inquiry was headless, she and Patrick must pursue Morahan’s remit, inspired by the Sayyid documents. Their window of opportunity might be short; in these circumstances no government could allow such a high-profile Inquiry to meander. It was still only late afternoon as she drew into Waterloo.

  Half an hour later, she was turning into Webster Road, a briskness in her stride and mind. Outlines of a picture of Kareem and the ugly project that might be the darkness at the end of Sayyid’s arrow were beginning to emerge. There was no time to waste. She would get straight to work. Files, chronology, connections, coincidences.

  She glanced up and down the street – no sign of unexplained cars or visitors. She fished the front door keys out of her bag. The mortice was unlocked; her father was at home – after the sadness of a distant Devon valley, the welcome of a smiling, chubby man who, not once in his life, had harboured a malicious thought.

  She turned the Yale lock, opened the door, and, with a broad smile, entered the hall.

  ‘No,’ she cried out. ‘No, no, no!’

  19

  Looking at him, she felt a love and a dread incomparable to anything she’d felt before.

  He was sprawled unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. She put a hand to his mouth and nose; he was breathing, but the rise and falls in his chest were weak, almost imperceptible. An ugly purple bruise spread around his right eye; she guessed he must have fallen down the stairs and hit his head against the bottom newel post. There were signs and smells of vomiting; reporting that injected urgency into the woman’s voice on the other end of the 999 line.

  The paramedics came quickly; it seemed more like seconds than minutes – the shock must have been distorting all her senses. A specialist resuscitation doctor, they said, was on the way. They checked the exact time she’d discovered him. Was there any regular pattern of behaviour to indicate when he might have returned home? That, at least, might give them an outer window for the time of the injury. She nervously asked whether he would be all right; they said, with a possible brain injury like this, it was best to wait until the CT scan. Fortunately, the local hospital just minutes away had a state-of-the-art neurological unit, one of the best in the country. The resuscitation doctor arrived and told her simply that it looked like a severe injury; but ‘your father is still breathing and his heart is still beating’. There was no reason yet not to be hopeful, though she might wish to pack a small bag for the night. They suggested she took her time to allow the scan to be done, and her father settled in his bed, supported by the stimulants and pain relief that would make him comfortable. She was not to worry if they kept him in an induced coma – there was nothing unusual about that.

  Their every word terrified her.

  Tenderly they slid his body, their arms cradled around his head and neck, onto a stretcher and strapped his chest and legs. A drip was set up over him and clear liquid began to sink through a tube to a needle planted in his wrist. They carried his still, prone body into the ambulance; she stayed by the front door, watching, not wanting to be in their way. For someone whose life was so often about problem-solving, she felt useless. As the ambulance door slammed shut and its rear end receded and disappeared at the junction with the high street, she felt bereft too.

  She turned back inside, pushed the door shut, went to sit at the kitchen table and stared blankly ahead at the dresser holding cups and saucers, seeing nothing. Her thoughts were the flotsam and jetsam of a pilotless ship adrift at sea. Would he need a toothbrush, washing and shaving things? Would he ever be able to use them again? Maybe it was just a sort of concussion. Maybe he was subsiding in the ambulance. Was he dead already? She told herself not to be ridiculous. Like thousands of other old men and women, he’d fallen down the stairs, taken a bash on the head, and would recover soon enough.

  Who should she phone? Uncles, cousins, aunts? The prospect of their fussing and worrying, the drama it would instantly become, was intolerable. She would wait till she was at the hospital and had more certainty to impart. For now, she would face it alone – as she had faced so much of her life.

  She would give it an hour; the ho
spital was no more than a few minutes by Uber, the one stroke of luck. What if they had been in that sleepy Devon village, hours away from anywhere that could cope? How often must Elizabeth Green live on her nerves, awaiting her daughter’s next crisis?

  She needed to rid herself of disorderly thoughts. There were fifty minutes to prepare for whatever ordeal lay ahead. She went up to her bedroom and laid out a small travel case on her bed. It smelt fusty. Other smells floated at her. An after-scent of unfamiliar sweat disguised by deodorant, perhaps cologne? She went to open the back window overlooking the garden to breathe the evening’s freshness. It was ajar, the latch in place on the second slot. She was sure she’d closed it before setting off in the morning; she always did unless she knew her father was at home all day. But this was a Thursday, his regular lunchtime club, a fixture in his diary.

  Perhaps, in the rush of anticipation as she’d left for the journey to Devon, she had, for once, overlooked it. Unless her father had opened it when he returned after the lunch club. Was that why he was upstairs – and had then fallen on the way down? It didn’t fit. He never entered her room – it was her private space which he honoured.

  She packed her computer, the Qur’an and a novel into the case. She imagined that hours of sleepless waiting might lie ahead, and went to her desk to retrieve the charger. It seemed somehow tidier than usual; she must have done a quick sort before she left – she couldn’t remember. She checked the drawers – nothing had changed. Not that there was anything to find – Patrick had the Blackburn file copies and she’d left him with the photograph and tape. She hardly needed to see or hear those again.

  The evening sun shafted across the leather inset on which her computer sat. There was something missing; she couldn’t think what. She suddenly realised – the motes of dust on the leather usually illuminated by the rays, or caught by shafts cutting through the casement window, were absent. Perhaps the cleaner had called in today – her fortnightly three-hour visits had become irregular and they’d given her a key to come and go. That could explain the window too. She felt a surge of relief – this was not the time to start imagining things. Though the after-scent was not of a woman. Maybe the cleaner was ill and sent her husband instead. None of it added up. Stop thinking…

  She put a change of clothes, nightgown, slippers, washbag and make-up bag into the case. Forget the taxi, she needed air – if she cut through by the footpaths, the hospital was close enough to walk to. She googled the hospital map to locate the neurology unit. Her father would be there by now. There’d been no phone call; she assumed that was good.

  Night had fallen as she reached the hospital; inside, it buzzed with the electricity of artificial light and air-conditioning. The duty sister in the neurological unit tried to give her a comforting smile which she found dismaying, and led her to the intensive care unit. Her father was on his own in a separated corner of the recovery ward with its own entrance, bordered by glass and blinds. She was shown into a small ante-space; a nurse sat there alone in front of a computer and shelves of medical supplies.

  Sara introduced herself.

  ‘Hello, Sara. My name’s Bridget and I’m looking after your father.’ The nurse had curly red hair and chubby cheeks. A soft Irish accent. Like the ward sister, she offered a smile of sympathy. ‘We’ll be doing our very best for him.’

  ‘How is he? Can I see him?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  Sara entered – ‘room’ was too domestic a word but it was his own unit and gave him privacy and quiet. She felt grateful to them for it.

  His appearance was ghastly – her chest and stomach tightened; she had a momentary breathlessness. Bridget noticed. ‘Don’t be put off by what you see, it’s all there for a reason.’ Tariq was lying on his back, two, if not three, drips fed into him from different sources and a metal tube hung out of his mouth, like the hook from a caught fish, gasping for air. Sara felt the direction of her gaze being watched by the nurse. ‘We’re pleased with his breathing but that there in his mouth is the artificial respirator. So we can give him a helping hand if he’s faltering.’ Sara looked at her, noting the choice of language, and then back to the bank of monitors. ‘Heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, temperature,’ said Bridget.

  Sara peered more closely and tried to remember the last time she’d had her blood pressure taken and what sort of figures they showed. These seemed much lower. Again, Bridget needed no prompting. ‘The blood pressure’s a little low but we’re pumping in stimulants to raise it. You can see from his vital signs that he’s giving it a good fight.’ Sara saw nothing but felt too overwhelmed to ask for further explanation. She sat down on a chair beside the bed and laid her hand on the back of his right hand.

  ‘So what happened, Dad? What on earth were you up to?’

  She sat silently for half an hour, hoping for the instant miracle that would open his eyes and animate his face into its familiar smile. Nothing was going to happen quickly.

  Bridget hovered at the door. ‘We have a small room with a sofa for families,’ she said. ‘There’s no one else there tonight so you might find it comfortable. Room for a few others if you want too.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sara, ‘yes, I’ll need to make some calls.’

  ‘The senior registrar’s just called to say he’ll be down in five minutes to explain everything. Maybe best you see him in the family room. Then make your calls after that.’

  ‘Yes, good idea.’ For once in her life, Sara was pleased to be told what to do.

  ‘Your father has sustained a severe brain injury,’ said the senior neurological registrar, who had introduced himself as Azhar Mahmoud. He seemed young to Sara, as young as herself – though she quickly realised there was no reason why he shouldn’t be. He was tall, bespectacled, and closely and elegantly bearded; his blue surgeon’s smocks anointed him with a halo of authority.

  ‘I see,’ said Sara feebly.

  ‘The CT scan shows considerable bleeding inside the brain and what we call a subdural haematoma. Our first priority is to stabilise him and very carefully drain some of the excess blood from his brain. When that’s done, we’ll consider operating.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  He smiled and shrugged. ‘I don’t believe in holding out false hopes – or false dangers for that matter. The good thing is that we don’t consider from the CT scan that your father’s injury is what we call “un-survivable”. If that were so, we could do nothing but make him comfortable and allow him to slip away in peace.’

  ‘This all sounds so bad,’ said Sara, unable, for the first time, to restrain a tear.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Shah, I truly am.’

  ‘Please call me Sara.’

  ‘Of course. There’s a reasonable chance that he can pull through this.’

  ‘How reasonable?’

  ‘Please don’t ask me to give odds, I’m not a betting man.’

  ‘I think he was sometimes,’ said Sara, smiling through the tears.

  ‘Well, let’s hope he fancies his chances. In the meantime, for the next few hours, perhaps a day or two, just allow the time to pass. If he gets through that and we can operate, I think we can give him back to you.’

  ‘In what state?’

  ‘Again, I give no guarantees.’

  She could see that, while he had finished delivering his verdict, there was something left hanging. ‘So is that it for the moment?’ she asked.

  ‘There was one other thing. This was a very considerable blow to the head from a fall down the stairs. Do you have particularly steep or long stairs? Might he even have fallen over more than one flight of stairs through gaps if the staircase was wide?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Sara. ‘It’s a modest terrace house. Not very high ceilings. Just ordinary stairs.’

  ‘Oh well. If he’d had a heart attack or stroke and fell without being able to protect himself in any way, that could explain it more. But there’s no sign of that. Possibly he was rushing and tripped and his
momentum took him into a hard object.’

  ‘It must have been the newel post. But he never rushed.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now. If I may advise you, don’t put your own life on hold while we’re waiting.’

  He stood up, Sara followed suit. ‘Thank you.’

  He locked eyes with hers. ‘I won’t let him down.’

  It was past 10 p.m.; she wouldn’t yet start the family phone calls and ignite a nocturnal panic. She’d be in trouble if he died during the night, but the surgeon would have said if he thought it at all likely.

  She wanted to be alone with him. She was fond of her aunts, uncles and cousins, particularly of Salman, after the honour he and Nusrat had given her – but she’d never confided in them. Nor they in her. She’d wondered sometimes if they saw her as too much of an ‘achiever’, breathing the Everest-high air of the Inns of Court. Or perhaps her adult seriousness towards her religion – and her choice to wear the hijab – had created a distance. The same went for her friends – she had plenty, the majority these days from her work – but never that one close, life-long friend to turn to in distress. It had always been her father – except when it would have agonised him too much. In the end, that’s perhaps who she was – or had become. A woman alone. Currently, the only person she could imagine sharing her despair with was the one who’d understand the meaning and consequence of the moment.

  She checked her watch. 10.20 p.m. Would he mind? Particularly after the peremptory way she’d rejected his wish to come with her to Devon. Would she be sending a signal she might regret?

  She dialled his number. There was not a second of hesitation. ‘I’m on my way,’ said Patrick.

  She was beside her father when he arrived, creeping shyly into the room, silently pulling up a chair. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  She briefly rested the hand that was not attached to her father on his arm. ‘I’m OK. Thanks for coming.’