The Inquiry Page 6

‘I think I’ll unstick it and call you Patrick if that’s all right.’

  ‘Suits me. Sugar and milk?’

  ‘Just as, please.’

  He wandered over to a window. The view was dominated by one corner of the American Embassy which she had seen more fully from Morahan’s window. ‘Good to know our cousins watch over us,’ said Patrick.

  ‘What are those conical steel things hanging off the walls?’ asked Sara.

  ‘Secret anti-aircraft whizzbangs,’ said Patrick. ‘That’s why it’s such a monstrous mass of a building, not a nice slender spire. Packed full of rockets and helmeted men in black special forces suits ready to scale down the walls and occupy the streets shouting Delta and Zulu.’

  Sara laughed. They sat down at neighbouring desks.

  ‘Well…’ he began. She tilted her head to the side, encouraging him. ‘Our Chairman says he wants you to get out and about. Talk to people. He feels he’s lacking actual, unmediated accounts from young Muslims themselves.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Rather unusual? For counsel, I mean.’

  ‘Not really, I did on-the-ground work for Rainbow.’

  ‘But that’s a campaigning chambers.’

  ‘And we shouldn’t be here?’

  ‘There’s no should or shouldn’t. It’s whatever Sir Francis wants. With one condition.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I accompany you.’

  She looked down at her hands. ‘That might be awkward. It may be hard to win their confidence.’

  ‘That’s fine. You see them alone. Initially anyway. But you may need me to witness. Or for affidavits.’

  ‘If I get any.’

  ‘I’m sure you will.’ He switched off the grin. ‘And some of these characters won’t be friendly. I’ll stay out of the way but you can’t be alone.’

  ‘So you’re to be my chaperone?’

  ‘No, Sara, I’m just to be there. Even if all I am is your driver with a leather jacket, a Nigerian accent and a lucky zebra dangling from the rear-view mirror.’ She couldn’t help smiling and the grin reappeared.

  Shortly before lunch, Morahan arrived and poked his head around the Legal department door. ‘Sara. Welcome. Come and chat.’ After the earlier conversation, she felt guilty about leaving Patrick; he gave her a friendly nod of the head.

  Morahan guided her to one end of his brown leather office sofa while he sat down at the other. ‘Coffee? Tea?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. Patrick’s been the perfect host.’

  ‘Good. Decent chap.’

  She hesitated. ‘I hadn’t realised he would be accompanying me on research trips.’

  ‘Yes, I should have told you first thing. Would have but for our friend Atkinson’s summons.’

  ‘Oh, how was that?’

  ‘He just wants it over. I suspect the appearance of enthusiasm in front of the Prime Minister was purely for show.’ He gave a clipped chuckle, then frowned with what seemed to her embarrassment. ‘Patrick persuaded me that you shouldn’t be on your own. He is after all the instructing solicitor who would normally be running evidence gathering.’

  ‘As long as he doesn’t get in the way.’

  ‘He won’t.’

  She hesitated. ‘There’s an issue.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Racism is not just white and black. It grieves me to say it, but there is often strong prejudice in my community against Africans and West Indians.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It was one reason Patrick couldn’t do the task I need you to do. Nor is he in your league.’

  ‘I’m sure he—’

  ‘No, he’s not, Sara. You are an outstanding young lawyer with the right credentials, both as a professional and as a human being.’

  Sara saw him smiling at her with an almost paternal fondness and tried not to show her pleasure.

  ‘I’ve no doubt you’ll get on with him,’ he continued.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘And there won’t be any complications,’ she added, immediately wishing she hadn’t. She made to rise but he held up a hand to halt her and went to his desk. He opened the middle drawer, extracted a key and unlocked the bottom left pedestal drawer. He pulled out an unmarked white A4 envelope.

  ‘This contains photocopies I’ve made from Sayyid’s folder.’ He handed the envelope to her. ‘For Patrick, and anyone else, the story is that you are working initially from cases you came across at Rainbow which you hope will lead to others. It would appear that your first trip will be to the North.’

  ‘Wherever it leads.’

  They stood up together. ‘Three people know about Sayyid. You and me. And my wife, Iona. I’ve put her in the picture and she understands the meaning of the word “secret”. She also knows about you.’ He ushered her to the door, then stopped. ‘Of course there’s a fourth person who knows too. Sayyid him- or herself. But once you start ringing doorbells, other ears and eyes may be alerted. For good or bad, we are a surveilled society.’

  Sara returned to the Legal office. Patrick peered up, noticing the envelope under her arm. ‘Secrets from the Chairman?’ he asked teasingly.

  Sara kicked herself for the carelessness and hoped she betrayed none of the thuds with which her heart had just rattled her ribcage. ‘Chairman’s induction,’ she replied. ‘He strikes me as a man who likes things done in a certain way.’ She put it in her case. ‘I honestly don’t think I’ve the energy right now for house rules and regs. Might make my mark with Sylvia instead.’

  ‘Good luck.’ Patrick pulled a child-like grimace and returned to his screen.

  Deliberately leaving the case by her desk to suggest nothing unusual, she went next door to the library.

  Sylvia Labone looked up fiercely. ‘You’re back.’

  ‘I thought I’d give you a rough idea of prayer times – though they keep changing, of course.’

  ‘Would you like me to vacate?’

  ‘Not at all, you won’t be disrupted.’

  She looked Sara up and down. ‘Do you smoke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of course not. Right, let me show you around.’

  She walked Sara up and down the shelves, describing her colour coding for submissions, authors, reports and originally commissioned research. ‘Of course, this material is all digitally stored too but our distinguished panel members often prefer to read hard copies. When they read anything at all.’

  ‘It’s impressive,’ said Sara, trying to soothe a woman whom life seemed to have made congenitally angry. ‘What about police and intelligence files?’

  ‘Coming to that,’ replied Sylvia irritably. ‘Their research reports and general assessments are handled in the same way. However, since Snowden, anything classified, shall we say, is, frankly, fog and mist, subject to endless redactions. Most of them look like a sea of black waves.’

  ‘Surely we can get more,’ asked Sara brightly.

  ‘You’d better get to work on our chairman,’ she replied. ‘Names. Names, places, times, addresses. It’s all scrubbing brush without those, isn’t it?’

  At 5 p.m., Sara tapped on Morahan’s half-open door.

  ‘Come in, Sara, come in,’ he beamed. His informality continued to surprise her.

  ‘I’ve looked at those files,’ she said. ‘There’s no guarantee of finding any of those five names or of them talking if we do.’

  ‘Let’s see. I trust your ingenuity.’

  ‘And I’ve no idea anyway what story they have to tell.’ She cast him a trenchant look. ‘Do you?’

  ‘No. Nor do I know whether Sayyid does or if he’s leaving us to find out. And we have only his word that they lead to significant wrongdoing relevant to this Inquiry’s remit.’ He gave an encouraging smile. ‘But at least there seems the one link, doesn’t there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘As you say, let’s see.’

  She hesitated, wondering whether or not to raise her nagging question. He read her. ‘Is there something you want to ask?’

/>   ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘It’s just – I know I’ve asked it before – why me? You’ve been so emphatic that it could be no one else.’ She took the plunge. ‘Is there anything you’re not telling me?’

  He rubbed his eyes and looked straight into hers. ‘I promise you there is no one more suitable for this task. Every word I’ve exchanged with you since has confirmed that view.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. We’ll be a good team. You look after yourself. And have faith in me.’ It seemed a strange choice of words from a senior figure more than thirty years older than her and with such greater experience. He was a likeable man but there remained something impenetrable about him. The niggle would not go away.

  As she shut the door behind her, Morahan felt unease. The urge to confess the true reason for her recruitment had been almost irresistible. He tried to comfort himself; she would at least have Patrick’s protection and he was thereby honouring his commitment to her – though he still didn’t understand why the government solicitor had been so insistent on accompanying her. Sara agreed arrangements with Patrick for an early train in the morning and he’d left for the day. Alone, she tried to work out why the Inquiry’s office seemed somehow so unfamiliar, discomforting even. The only sound was the near inaudible hum of internal ventilation, breathing air into sealed units with sound-proofed windows and newly laid carpets. Not even the occasional click of shoe heels broke through. Nor voices.

  That was it – the hush. In Knightly Court, there were interruptions of chatter, meetings along the corridors, the odd joke told in reception, a wheezing splutter from Ludo, the creaking of badly fitting doors. Here, in the open-plan office, there was silence; eyes glued to screens, only occasional murmured questions, overseen by the headmistressy figure of Pamela Bailly. Patrick, now she thought about it, bantered in their own office, not outside it; Sylvia, she suspected, gave up banter a while ago. Morahan himself, however forthcoming with her, was hardly gregarious. In this silence she detected not calmness, but tension.

  Her phone sounded – a text. She clicked to view.

  A colleague may not be what they seem.

  Thought you should know. Take care.

  Her heart racing, she checked the number. Not from her contacts. Not familiar. Her fingers burning, she hit reply and typed a single word.

  Hello.

  She awaited the ping, somehow sure of the worst.

  Message sending failed.

  5

  Heading north out of King’s Cross, they exchanged idle chitchat before burying themselves behind laptops. Sara forced herself to act naturally with Patrick; the anonymous text preyed on her every waking moment, distorting the lens through which she grabbed occasional glances at him, in touching distance across the table, peering down at his screen.

  She tried to convince herself there could be another explanation. It was more than a decade since that last text, sent in precisely the same form of language from an unknown number, had cast its shadow over her life. But people texted all the time, she told herself, without bothering with names. Except, as she well knew, the receiver would know the name from the number – or at least have a number that responded when they checked.

  She’d repeatedly gone over the core words: ‘… A colleague may not be what they seem…’ They were too vague to be meaningful. A nothing. Anyone could have made that up.

  She needed to stop kidding herself – this was not a random coincidence. Either it was the same sender or someone who knew about, or once had some contact with that sender, and knew their modus operandi. But for what? To scare her? To help her? To undermine her?

  She grabbed another look at Patrick, then found herself seeing those other faces in the Inquiry office floating by.

  If only she could discuss it with someone. But she understood all too well the logic of her position. The text was a dagger only to her because of the message that July morning fourteen years ago. Unless she owned up to that, anyone looking at this message would simply tell her to ignore it. Some joker trying to wind her up, they’d say. Or the detritus of office politics and rivalries.

  Perhaps, when she next saw Morahan, she might ask him whether he had reason to suspect that anyone on his staff was operating to a different agenda. He’d probably look at her with mystification. If he did, she could just about imagine herself showing him the text. She could already hear his reaction – don’t worry, some idiot…

  She was going round in circles. She could never, and would never, tell a single soul about the 2005 text. She had set that in concrete when the Met detective called on her a few weeks after 7/7. He knew only that she, like many others, had attended meetings where people now of interest to the police might have been present. She said she couldn’t help him; she recognised none of the names he raised. He had no reason to doubt her.

  The questions the text raised, the guilt it ignited were impossible, unthinkable to admit to anyone but herself. At that crucial moment, however much she could be forgiven for not instantly interpreting it, she had, as it turned out, failed in the most devastating possible way – a failure she’d carried like a death row prisoner’s shackles ever since. The texts, past and present, were a weight she must bear alone. The only means of sidelining them was to focus single-mindedly on the task ahead.

  Trying not to catch Patrick’s eye she retrieved from her bag the Sayyid folder Morahan had given her. Wherever they now were – if they were even still alive – the five individuals named in the files all hailed from the town of Blackburn in East Lancashire. The files shared the same template, headings running vertically down the left column. The left heading was TOP SECRET, right side OPERATION with the following word blacked out. The next line began KV2 followed by a further redaction. The headings below ran: PICTURE; NAME; DOB; LOCATION; PHONE; HOME ADDRESS; FAMILY ADDRESS; FIRST CONTACT; CURRENT STATUS; NOTES; HUMINT; COMINT; LAST CONTACT; FILE STATUS.

  One name was Samir Mohammed. His photograph showed a young Asian, probably taken in his late teens. Date of birth was 12 October 1987; home and family addresses the same number and street in Blackburn; current status ‘inactive’; file status ‘Closed 31 December 2006’. One entry withstood clear interpretation. Humint read ‘Contacts not pursued after closure.’

  Assuming he was alive – and had not since been involved in anything of interest to the police or intelligence services – Sara judged that he might be the easiest to approach. Whether or not he still lived in Blackburn was unknown. There was no hint of what story he, or any of the other four, might have to tell.

  Announcing herself as a lawyer working for a government inquiry would guarantee doors slammed in her face. Tempting though it was – and even though she suspected it was the easiest way to get a foot in the door – she decided against presenting herself as an ambulance-chasing lawyer on the lookout for Muslim clients seeking financial redress against the police (a role she was all too familiar with). Instead she would introduce herself as a market researcher working on a project seeking to learn lessons on the past twenty years of governmental relationships with the young Muslim community.

  She told Patrick her protocol. Despite that moment when he’d seen her returning with the folder from Morahan’s office, she stuck to the line that she was following up cases from Rainbow.

  ‘Maybe when you arrive in the street of one of the addresses, you should knock on every tenth door,’ suggested Patrick. ‘Then if someone answers and is willing, do the survey with them. Just for show. It might protect not just you but your target.’ He paused. ‘Whoever they are.’ He was grinning; there was no edge, just a hint of playfulness.

  She smiled back. ‘That’s a great idea, thanks.’ She’d already planned something similar but his helpfulness pleased her and she didn’t want to discourage him. She’d been worried that their professional relationship, even without the anonymous text, would be uneasy after her show of resistance to him accompanying her. She
had a further card up her sleeve but, for the moment, kept it to herself. She might not need to play it.

  In the time left on the train, she checked websites on Blackburn and its environs, accumulating small details of local knowledge. At Preston, they picked up a hire car, Patrick easing into his promised role as driver.

  ‘Do you sit in the back or the front?’ he asked with the customary grin.

  As they headed south out of Preston, she found herself glancing at him. Assuming, as she told herself she must, that things were as they seemed, she wondered what he was thinking about his role as bit-part player. She also noted his perfectly angled jaw-line and broad but straight nose. The edges of his black hair were touched with a few flecks of grey; otherwise there were no signs of age or sag and, even seated in the driving position, no bulge at the waist.

  ‘You’re inspecting me,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I do it to everyone.’ She paused. ‘Including Morahan. I can give you a precise facial description if you want.’

  ‘I can manage without.’ The grin returned.

  ‘I know it’s not easy, this,’ she said.

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘You’re not a fool. You must want me to share.’

  ‘It’s OK. You’ll tell me what you want when you want. Though I’d like you to know this: you can trust me. If you speak to me in confidence, it remains between you and me.’ They turned off the motorway to a sign marked ‘City Centre’. ‘But there’s one thing you do have to tell me right now. Where are we going?’

  ‘Straight to the hotel, please. And if it’s a dump, take me home.’ Patrick set the SatNav for the out of town ‘Savoy Inn’ into which Clovis, with a blind loyalty to the name, had booked them. It turned out to border an industrial estate filled with garages and self-storage units. Ten minutes after checking in, Patrick opened the passenger door to a Sara dressed in a long broad black skirt which gathered by her ankles, dark brown jacket and marginally lighter brown hijab replacing the usual blue scarf. He cast a fleeting look of amusement and was reprimanded by a silent raise of her eyebrows.

  Even if the Asian and white population split was similar, Blackburn seemed a different world from her part of south London. Though the people were the same, here there was just a distinct lack of bustle. She imagined the place in its Victorian prime; a boom town of the industrial revolution. Then it had been the weaving capital of the world; dotted with textile mills, over a hundred and forty of them according to her recent research, driving a massive churn of activity within the green fold of the hills where they lay. Granted, there had been little joy there for the sweating workers, lungs saturated by fine clouds of cotton dust, particularly the hand weavers who would eventually be overtaken by mechanisation. But there must have been a surge of energy. Now, except for civic relics like the museum, and one half of the town hall incongruously attached to its modern glass and steel extension, the great Victorian buildings had largely gone – except for the foul-smelling brewery – and the streets appeared lifeless, tinged with sadness. Shops and pubs were boarded up. People seemed to move more slowly, with less purpose.