Will Caine - The Inquiry

‘But you didn’t turn him down,’ she said softly.

‘No. No, I didn’t. You know why? I feel affronted. Personally affronted. It’s not just their country to protect. It’s my country too. All of ours.’

She wanted to do something alien to her – to place an arm around his shoulder, to comfort him. She leant towards him, then stopped herself. ‘Are you afraid?’

He stirred. ‘I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t believe our intelligence services shoot people in the head or drop them out of helicopters, or out of boats with lead in their boots. Or “disappear” them into cement mixers and car crushers or stuff them into suitcases or any of the other crude rubbish so beloved by the fantasists.’ He paused; the late breeze rustled leaves and stroked the pond. ‘My fear is different. It’s not for me, I’m getting on. It’s what there may be to find out. Not what may be about to happen, but what has happened. That there was some kind of more sophisticated… more invisible… evil.’

She had an overwhelming, even oppressive, sense that this was the most important conversation of both their lives.

‘There was one other thing Sayyid indicated,’ he said. ‘If I move on what he’s given me, it must be fast. In his words, I – we – have to stay ahead of them. It’s immediate or not at all.’

He stood up, plea made, apparently no more to say. He made to leave, then halted, looking down on her.

‘I know there’s risk. Perhaps danger too. Terrorists and those who fight to contain them occupy another place. Albeit on opposing sides, they breathe the same air. The rest of us get occasional sightings – most of us through the distorting filter of the screens we watch and the newspapers we read. But I promise you, even if you and I must now breathe that air, I will look after you. Judges are a protected species.’ A gentle smile softened him. ‘My protection extends to you. I will always be there.’ He turned and strode briskly away, allowing no reply.

Morahan was uncertain whether he had done enough for Sara Shah to bite. He couldn’t remember the last time he had pushed so hard for something, surprising himself with the passion of his parting words. She was clearly perfect for the job. As she herself had said, there were other such young men, and women too, though very few, he suspected, to match her. But that was not the point.

That evening, returning briefly to the Inquiry office, he unlocked the desk drawer containing the Sayyid material and took out not one, but two folders. He had told Sara an incomplete story, one that deliberately missed its next chapter. Three days after the first delivery, a further note from Sayyid had dropped through his front door, instructing him to collect a second delivery from a different graveyard.

Morahan retrieved it without incident. This time the folder was thin, containing a single envelope. He’d wondered why Sayyid could not simply have dropped the envelope through his door. Perhaps, he reflected, it was because he was somewhere out there watching, making sure that he personally collected it.

Inside the envelope was a folded A4 print-out of a photograph and profile of a newly recruited barrister at Knightly Court chambers. Morahan vaguely recognised the face and name – perhaps he had seen her in court or at a conference. Stapled to it was a brief note.

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

Sayyid’s tone and his assertion of some poison at the heart of the state chilled Morahan. Even more chillingly, he was now being asked to embroil a young woman into a project with unknown consequences and dangers without, he felt, being able to give her the reason why. It was one thing to tell her that he had been approached by an apparent whistleblower calling himself ‘Sayyid’; quite another to say that Sayyid had specifically pinpointed her as the route to whatever wrongdoing he wanted to expose.

Yet, however much he disliked himself for it, however much he had found Sara Shah a sympathetic, intelligent woman, he must resist the urge to come clean and tell her everything. For now anyway.

‘What are you going to do, Sara?’ her father finally asked, as he sipped his coffee and she her peppermint tea in the kitchen.

She’d explained the job offer but not the events described by Morahan that had led to it. She wished now that she had paraphrased his initial letter for her father, rather than allowed him to read it fully. If he ever knew the full circumstances, he would try to stop her.

‘What would you do in my shoes?’

‘How could I ever be in your shoes?’ he spluttered. ‘OK, let me ask this. Might it put you in danger?’

‘No, Dad,’ she smiled. It was her chance to row back. ‘He was being alarmist.’

‘I’m glad to hear that. So will it be good for your career? That’s the main thing.’

She rose, walked round the table behind him, and gave the top of his shiny bald head a gentle kiss. ‘I love you, Dad. Time to think.’

Two evenings later, mulling for the umpteenth time over the conversation on the Common, Sara sat at her desk staring out over the rooftops, sensing a door closing behind her. The question she’d raised at the very beginning lurked. Why her? Or rather, why only her? Yes, she did not underrate herself; yes, she could see how well-suited to it she must appear. But she was not the only one; to think that would not only be arrogant but untrue. Why was he so insistent?

Over those forty-eight hours memories dogged her with an uncontrollable viciousness. Was it to remind her that she’d once before had her chance to intervene, to save innocent lives? That time she’d failed. Was this her second chance? If she opted out or delayed for a second time now, would those memories ever fade away? Would she be consumed by guilt for the rest of her life?

She began to write the letter. Once it dropped through Morahan’s front door, there would be no turning back. As the thought sank in, she felt a first tinge of fear.

She gathered herself and went downstairs.

‘Dad, would you mind driving round with a second letter? Same address.’

He silenced the TV. ‘What did you decide?’

‘As you said, might be good for the career. So why not?’

What mattered was that he should never fully know what she was stepping into, nor Morahan’s fear of where it might lead.

4

Within an hour of her arrival at Knightly Court the next morning, another envelope addressed to Sara Shah and marked ‘Private and Confidential’ was hand-delivered. This one contained a typed letter on Inquiry notepaper, signed by Sir Francis Morahan himself, offering an initial three-month engagement as junior counsel; a contract from the Government Legal Department would arrive within twenty-four hours, proposing a start on the upcoming Monday. All Sara now had to do was make her confession to Ludovic Temple. Fortunately, or not, he was in chambers, not court. She knocked on his door.

‘Come!’

She entered. He rose with a giant grin. ‘Sara, you don’t need to knock, you know that.’ She looked down at the letter in her hand and then her feet. He followed her eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You remember that letter, Ludo?’

His face sagged like a collapsed soufflé. ‘Hell, someone’s made you a better offer. I bloody knew it.’

She looked up, the colour restored to her cheeks. ‘It’s not as bad as that.’

She gave him a broad brush picture of Morahan’s initial letter and her unorthodox dealings with him since, though she did not speak of his secret information, nor its source.