The Inquiry Page 27

  In silence, they pretended to listen to the two men in front. Through the tinted window, Sara saw the lights of King’s Cross and St Pancras struggling against the evening sun as they headed west, finally turning into Edgware Road and towards Marble Arch. Mothers on pavements in black burqas wheeling babies in smart new buggies, and the occasional open-topped Ferrari or Lamborghini with Kuwaiti or Qatari number plates, driven by white-shirted young men wearing gold neck chains, revealed the oil-enriched tip of England’s inverted pyramid of Islam. It wasn’t like that in the suburbs of Bradford and Birmingham.

  Stopped at traffic lights, Kareem turned round. ‘Bayswater. Full of Arabs like me. And the best Lebanese restaurant in London.’ The funds continued to flow.

  There were six of them gathered round the table, the four who had arrived in Kareem’s car and two other men out of her direct eyeline – Asians in their late twenties from Pakistan or Bangladesh, Sara guessed, hardly making them out in the dim lighting of the restaurant. Sara and Maryam automatically sat down next to each other, Kareem placing himself to Sara’s left.

  ‘You were one person I had not expected to see,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  He lowered his voice. ‘I never forget what you said. Perhaps your eyes have since been opened.’ She felt the charge in his use of the word ‘eyes’ as his burned into hers. She winced, fearful of his ability to beguile her and flushed with irritation at his assumption of superior knowledge.

  ‘If you’re speaking of 9/11, my eyes have seen what followed,’ she said. ‘Of course I’ve had to rethink. Hasn’t everyone?’

  ‘In that case it has had its effect.’

  ‘Of which you approve, I suppose.’

  He stared inscrutably at her. ‘Or perhaps of which I was prophetic. The war of the West against the East, reaction and counter-reaction. The Bush and Blair folly of Iraq. My God, can you imagine a surer way of arousing our world against theirs?’

  ‘Our world?’

  ‘Of course, our world of Islam.’

  ‘No, that is not our world of Islam. It may be yours. But if I manage to find my world of Islam, it will be a world I want to share, not one I want to dominate others.’

  ‘Sara, you are still too young. Too blind.’ She felt herself warming, anger building at the condescension, the arrogance that was now insufferable. Why had she not seen that early enough? He moved closer, whispering. ‘Great things have happened in the world. Great deeds. There will be more to come. Believe me.’

  ‘What do you mean, Kareem?’ He watched her silently, adopting his most mystical expression. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Can you not feel it all around you? Not just the Middle East but the whole world beyond. Even here, in this, our – I mean your – country. Do you ever think, Sara, that you should be trying to do something, not just be part of the chorus on the sidelines? Instead, become an actor at the centre of the stage.’

  ‘What is your play?’

  ‘Who can predict that? You are an intelligent young woman.’ He lowered his voice even further to a murmur, his lips almost touching her left ear. ‘History will dictate that the rain of death on our people cannot go unavenged.’

  She shifted in her seat, trying to edge away, but felt his body following hers. To her right, Maryam was engaged in a conversation across the table and almost pushing into her. She must disconnect, switch him off. ‘You’re talking rubbish, Kareem,’ she whispered back, ‘it’s just boasting. Seeing yourself as some kind of prophet. You know as well as I do it’s all an act. You even said it yourself.’ She broke away. ‘Time for me to leave.’

  ‘No.’ His loud whisper hissed it as an order. ‘There is nothing to fear,’ he continued, softening, ‘I understand your feelings. Do you think I would ever want to frighten you?’ His voice lowered again. ‘You have meant more to me than anyone. I always see your face in my dreams.’

  As once she’d felt love and then fear, now she felt a dulled contempt. She must leave before it turned to hatred. She turned away from him, fished in her bag, pulled out from her purse a five-pound note and an old receipt. Furtively, she scrawled a number on it. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, looking at her watch and rising. ‘I’ve lost track of the time. I promised to be home for my father.’ She waved the five-pound note. ‘Can I—’

  Kareem cut across her with a magisterial wave of the hand. ‘Of course not. This is my evening.’

  She threw him a short smile, replaced the note in her bag, and turned back to embrace Maryam. ‘Good luck,’ she murmured, ‘I hope everything works out well for you.’ Her back to Kareem, she pushed the creased receipt into her hand, mumbling, ‘If you ever need…’ As Maryam took it, Sara saw bruising on her arms and wrists. She waved a hand at the other three men, looked past Kareem and walked as fast as she dared into the street, promising herself that, whatever else happened in her future life, Kareem Abdullah bin-Jilani would never come near her again.

  ‘I want to find him,’ she said.

  ‘You just told me,’ said Patrick, ‘you left that night, wanting him never again to get near you.’

  ‘Correct. This is me going to him. Don’t put your own life on hold – that’s what the surgeon said. He’s right. What better purpose could there be right now? To track him down and hold him to account. For whatever it is he might have done.’

  ‘Wherever he might be, we still need evidence of deeds done.’

  ‘I want to see Isobel too. Confront her. She must know where he is.’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘Who else then?’

  ‘Has to be J.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But I can think of someone who will. We’ll need to call by the office.’

  The open-plan area was still hushed – Clovis and Rayah turning bleak faces and murmuring insipid hellos. There was no sign of Pamela; the door to Morahan’s office remained shut. Patrick unlocked the Legal office door.

  ‘I’ve brought the files in,’ he said, ‘we’re going to show them to someone.’

  ‘What?’ murmured Sara.

  He extracted a folder from his case, and headed for the door. ‘Come with me.’ He turned left and knocked on the adjoining door; it was unlocked and he entered without waiting for an answer.

  A surprised face whipped round, lowering broad, grey-rimmed spectacles. ‘Oh, the invasion of the Legals,’ said Sylvia Labone without enthusiasm.

  ‘Have you a moment, Sylvia?’

  ‘My God, what a question,’ she rasped.

  ‘I’ve something to show you. But first I want to know something.’ She examined him with an almost imperceptible show of interest. ‘Why didn’t you say? All these weeks and months you and I have been here, why didn’t you say?’

  ‘Don’t give me riddles, Patrick.’

  ‘That we’d met, of course. It came back to me in the night.’

  ‘You must have been dreaming.’

  ‘No. Not at all. Thames House. 2005. J had me in for a grilling. He went off to find a completely unnecessary cup of tea and you popped your head around the corner. I know, it’s thirteen years ago, but it was you. I was sitting alone and you said something like, “Can I help?” I looked up at this long-skirted ex-hippy – well, not quite – her face lined with the experience of life, and I think I said something like, “I’m fine, thanks, just waiting for him, et cetera.” You stared hard at me, said something and disappeared.’

  ‘Did I really?’ she mused, softening in a way Sara hadn’t seen before. ‘Did I really?’

  ‘Yes, Sylvia, you did,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve only just clocked. J wanted you to give me the once over, didn’t he? The cup of tea was a feint.’

  ‘J,’ she said.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I said I thought you were suitable.’

  ‘Suitable for what?’

  ‘Goodness, he’d never tell me that. I was just the archivist. When we had proper archives.’

  ‘Keeper o
f the secrets.’

  ‘So sad.’ She looked at her computer mournfully. ‘All kept in these machines now with their codes which any bright boy who can add two and two can enter. A real secret can only be held in the palm of a hand.’

  Patrick dropped two slim folders on her desk. ‘Put these in your hand.’ Patrick sensed Sara’s agitation. She was frowning, her eyes begging silent questions. As Sylvia repositioned her spectacles, extracted the Blackburn files and buried her face in them, he put a forefinger to his mouth and signalled a quiescent ‘shush’.

  ‘Hmmm. Unredacted. The real thing.’ Sylvia spoke with little more than a murmur. ‘How did you get these?’

  ‘Do you have any friends called Sayyid, Sylvia? A nickname maybe. Even an alias.’

  ‘If I did, I couldn’t tell you. If I say I don’t, you won’t know whether to believe me.’

  ‘I’ll believe your answer, Sylvia,’ said Sara. It was her first intervention.

  ‘Sara Shah,’ she hissed. ‘Sara Shah. Do I remember?’ Sylvia frowned at her, then shook her head. ‘No. Distraction. You wanted an answer.’

  ‘Sayyid,’ prompted Sara.

  ‘Sayyid. Sayyid.’ The same mantra, the memory whirring – no fakery, thought Sara. ‘Nothing. Nothing comes.’

  ‘How deaf are your walls?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘Stone deaf. Deaf and dumb.’

  ‘We need to see J.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. As we all do.’

  ‘I mean now.’ He began to retrieve the files. ‘I want him to see these. So we understand.’

  ‘Don’t make his life difficult.’

  ‘If you tell me where he is, I promise I won’t.’

  She turned to Sara. ‘I promise too.’

  Sylvia leafed through a Rolodex file and stopped at an initial that was neither J, W nor T. Sara wondered what her code was – it certainly didn’t delay finding the information she needed. She leant down, picked up a mobile phone from her handbag and dialled a number from the Rolodex rather than the phone’s memory. It was answered immediately. Sylvia walked over to a window, turned her back and had a brief conversation out of their earshot. In what seemed no time at all, she was walking back – the call seemed too short to contain the information it needed to convey. She sat at her computer and entered a website – neither dared to peep over her shoulder as she searched.

  She looked up. ’11.37, St Pancras to Deal. He’ll be waiting for you at the pier at 1.15. He said it’s either now, in the hope that word of your arrival doesn’t get out in time, or not at all. Now go, and we’ll never speak of this again.’

  Without a ‘thank you’, understanding it might not be appreciated, Sara and Patrick turned on their heels, exited, locked themselves inside the Legal office and walked over to their window.

  ‘It worked,’ said Patrick.

  ‘You took one big risk there,’ she replied. ‘You still can’t be sure she’s on-side. I sometimes have the feeling she’s watching us.’

  ‘Me too. But not like that, I think. More the guardian angel.’ He stared out of the window, confirming some distant truth. ‘I’ve sensed it for a while. She hates them. But honestly, I didn’t remember that encounter till just now. Even when I said it, I wasn’t confident.’

  ‘She remembered.’

  ‘Oh yes, she certainly did. She doesn’t forget. Or forgive.’

  25

  He stood alone halfway along the concrete pier. Patrick recognised him from the coat – the same brown corduroy jacket, fraying at the edges like the man wearing it. But as they neared him, there was nothing changed about the glint in the eye, illuminated against a dull blanket of grey cloud stretching down to a muddied, churning sea.

  ‘No one’s arrived yet,’ said J, not bothering with a greeting. A man, thought Sara, who’d decided to act but not to prolong the action.

  ‘Hello J,’ said Patrick. ‘Who are we expecting?’

  ‘There won’t be more than two of them, they won’t have had time.’

  ‘We can go inside somewhere. Less visible.’

  ‘They’ll know by now you’re coming for a chat. No point in hiding that. At least with this infernal racket,’ he gestured at the swell booming into the pier’s supports, ‘their recorders should be stuffed.’

  ‘How are you so sure?’

  ‘Don’t be an arse, Patrick. Sylvia’s phone, my phone, bugs in the office, you two in their sights…’ He checked himself and turned to Sara. ‘You’re the new lawyer.’

  ‘Yes, hello.’

  ‘Well, hang on tight to that bloody scarf of yours, it gets windy out here. Right, what do you want?’

  ‘We need to make a huddle—’

  ‘For fuck’s sake—’

  ‘Against the wind. We’ve something to show you.’

  Patrick fished the Blackburn files out of his case. J looked at them briefly. ‘Where d’you get these?’

  Patrick nodded to Sara to answer. ‘They were delivered anonymously to Sir Francis Morahan. He passed them on to me. It appears he’d hired me so that a proper investigation could be done within the relevant Muslim communities, by someone they might trust.’

  ‘Where did he get ’em?’ J was gruff and curt; she took it as brevity, not discourtesy.

  ‘He told me the source had identified himself only as Sayyid.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘Sayyid?’

  ‘It’s only a name.’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘Sara’s initial investigations have added to the picture,’ said Patrick. He described her encounter with Samir and the story of his incarceration and appearance before the Adviser. ‘We’ve assumed both from that, and from your and my encounter in 2005, that this so-called Adviser was Kareem.’

  ‘Correct,’ said J.

  ‘We need you to tell us what exactly Kareem was doing,’ said Sara.

  J looked over their shoulders to the shoreline and the white frontage of Deal with its strikingly asymmetrical roof lines. ‘Christ, you don’t ask much, do you?’ A splutter turned into a hacking cough.

  ‘Are you OK, J?’ asked Patrick, seeing his cheeks go purple.

  ‘None of your fucking business. Now where were we?’ He conjured up a limpid smile and directed it towards Sara.

  ‘What exactly was Kareem doing?’ she asked.

  J had a further glance around. ‘Pay attention. You go first, Patrick. I’m only going to do this once. Wind back to our other modern terrorist enemy.’

  ‘The IRA,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Yes. How did we beat them?’

  ‘You tell me, J.’

  ‘No. You try.’

  ‘Information. Intelligence.’

  ‘Correct. Where from?’

  ‘Eavesdropping, watching, moles, touts.’

  ‘Yes. What was the weakness the IRA had that our Islamist bomber brethren don’t?’

  ‘Pass.’

  ‘It was this. Despite all the attempts at cell structures and separate brigades, as they liked to call them, the IRA was at heart a centralised organisation. They had a unitary command. It was called the Army Council.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Question. What makes any such group paranoid and ultimately destroys it?’

  ‘That it’s been infiltrated, I guess.’

  ‘Correct. Heard of Stakeknife?’

  ‘Yes, there’ve been stories about it. Bad stories.’

  ‘Idiot stories. I’ll tell you how it started. In the late 1970s I…’ J turned to Sara, catching her eye, ‘yes, that’s me, young lady… I was working with something called the Force Research Unit, FRU, in Belfast, when a Provo chappie walks in off the street one day. To cut a long story short, he says he’s had a fall-out and wants to get his own back. Worst mistake they ever made to rile him. He pretends to eat humble pie, rises and rises, eventually becomes a senior cog in their internal security apparatus – it’s charmingly known as the “Nutting Squad”. Over the next decade, he’s so successful in weeding out inform
ers that he becomes its head. He’s also chief vetter of potential recruits. The electrical circuit of intelligence. Vets, recruits, cleanses. He convinces the leadership the organisation is riddled with spies. No future operation is safe. Best pack our weapons bags. Start of so-called peace process. Geddit, Patrick?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That was my plan for friend Kareem. We called it Operation Pitchfork. Get that too?’

  ‘Mirror of Stakeknife?’

  J spluttered again. ‘Nearly. Pitchfork. Pitch for K. K for Kareem. Geddit now?’

  ‘Yes, I get it. But you just said the Islamist threat wasn’t unitary.’

  ‘That was the whole bloody point. To make it like that.’ J wheezed, searching for air. ‘Kareem was perfect. His tendrils proliferated. So we offered him a job. To be our super-spy within British jihad. Like Stakeknife inside the IRA. From the end of 2005 till 2016 we had him in place. Tell me this. How many deaths were there from Islamist terror in the UK over that period? Just one. Right. That poor sod in Woolwich barracks. And what’s happened since? London, Manchester, jihadists lying in wait all over the country, security services overwhelmed. But then…’ There was a sudden gleam in his eye. ‘Then… Al Qaeda, ISIS, recruiters, fighters – they all bought into it. Kareem was their rising, internal star – a man with drive, charisma and access to money. He succeeded. He built an internal security unit to expose their traitors and informers. In fact, he was vetting the likely lads for us and telling us who the bad guys were.’

  ‘How could he convince them he was genuine?’ asked Sara.

  J turned from Patrick to her, as if to lecture the new girl in the class. ‘By delivering them informers, of course. Touts, enemies within, traitors.’

  ‘Delivering?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘For God’s sake. Giving Imam Ali Baba the bad news that little Baba Ali has been working for the other side. Of course, he’s not delivering any little Baba Ali’s actually working for the other side – because that’s our side, isn’t it? And he’s working for us.’

  ‘Then who is he delivering to them?’