Will Caine - The Inquiry

WILL CAINElives in South London. He is a BAFTA award-winning and highly-acclaimed investigative film-maker and journalist.

He has spent much of his life delving into the secrets of state. The Inquiry is Will Caine’s first thriller.

Copyright Copyright Dedication Epigraph Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Acknowledgements About the Publisher

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Will Caine 2019

Will Caine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008325633

In memory of

my brother-in-law James

and his son Miles.

‘There were one or two big ones. That’s how we kept a lid on it for so long. But we were never fully sure about them. How could we be? They were from a different world.’

Ex-MI5 Officer, private conversation

Contents

Cover

About the Author WILL CAINE lives in South London. He is a BAFTA award-winning and highly-acclaimed investigative film-maker and journalist. He has spent much of his life delving into the secrets of state. The Inquiry is Will Caine’s first thriller.

Title Page

Copyright Copyright Copyright Dedication Epigraph Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Acknowledgements About the Publisher An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019 Copyright © Will Caine 2019 Will Caine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008325633

Dedication In memory of my brother-in-law James and his son Miles.

Epigraph ‘There were one or two big ones. That’s how we kept a lid on it for so long. But we were never fully sure about them. How could we be? They were from a different world.’ Ex-MI5 Officer, private conversation

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

2005

The ping of a phone. She jerks awake, grabs it, brings it close to her face, checks the time.

6.47 a.m.

Odd. No one messages her this early.

She lies back on her pillow, pulls up the duvet, clicks on ‘view’.

Don’t use the buses or tubes in London today.

She rubs sleep from her eyes. What the f— is this?

She scrolls down. Just a number. No name, no one in her contacts. She rechecks the number – nothing familiar about it.

She screws her eyes shut, kneads them with her knuckles, thinks. She hits reply, thumbs on keys.

Who is this?

She waits. After a few seconds, the phone pings again.

Message sending failed.

What is this? She clicks back on the message, hits ‘options’, adds the name as ‘Anon’ and the number to her contacts. She hits call. The ringtone is instantly interrupted by a woman’s voice. ‘The number you have dialled is unobtainable.’

Weird. Totally random. Has to be a mistake.

She gets up, washes, dresses, applies make-up, the everyday rhythms. The words still churn in her head. Butterflies jig in her stomach. She begins to realise she can’t get rid of the nagging thought.

What if the text is for real? And the sender’s chosen to vanish…

Stop imagining. It’s a rogue message – people get them all the time from all sorts of weirdos. She wonders how many others must have had it. Thousands probably – some madman trying to create a scare. That’s probably easy – a simple piece of code can do mass send-outs of texts.

Or just a sick joke from a sick mind.

She goes downstairs, makes her usual cup of coffee, toasts her usual slice of bread. She turns on the radio, volume low. All the chatter’s about London’s great victory the day before, winning the 2012 Olympics to be held in seven years’ time. She feels better.

The nag’s still there.

Should she show the text to her father? She goes back upstairs, creeps along the landing, peers in. Curtains drawn, no lights. He’s still asleep, she shouldn’t disturb him. Shouldn’t worry him. In her bedroom, she straightens the duvet, puffs her pillow, goes to the mirror to brush her hair. She looks out of the window. The line of terrace roofs is the same as always. A dog barks. She jumps, her heart thumps. She shakes her head violently to shift the nag.

Down in the hallway, she grabs her coat and stands stock still. The text is just… she comes back to the same word. Weird. What weirdo would send something like that?