The Inquiry. Will Caine

The softness had gone.

      The next morning, Sir Francis Morahan wrote to the Prime Minister that it would be an honour to chair the Inquiry. A few weeks later he agreed its terms of reference with the Home Secretary:

       1. To inquire, after twelve years countering of the terrorist threat, into the reasons for security failures and the lessons to be learnt in preventing future terror attacks in the UK.

       2. To inquire into present security policy and strategy towards British Islamist extremists returned and returning from conflict zones.

      Over the coming months premises were leased, a Secretary to the Inquiry appointed and supporting secretariat hired, a Government Legal Department solicitor seconded, a panel of independent experts assembled. Morahan gave a media conference at which he asked for submissions from interested parties. His secretariat found itself deluged by a torrent of paper, particularly from government departments apparently able to locate an unending supply of data and research with only limited relevance to his terms of reference, all of which had to be logged in, read and summarised for the panel of experts. Once this work was completed a senior QC and junior counsel would join the Inquiry to initiate its interrogative phase.

      Occasionally, Morahan smelt the whiff of an unholy alliance between the likes of the Cabinet Secretary and the civil and intelligence services, to appear to be doing a naïve Prime Minister’s will but all the while finding ways to thwart him.

      ‘And then,’ Morahan said, ‘something happened.’

      The Common had burst into tea-time life with the noise of mothers, toddlers just out of school, and bawling babies in prams. The café was filling up with ice-cream and sweet-hunters, the background noise forcing Morahan and Sara ever closer together.

      Glancing around, he narrowed his gaze. ‘You see, just as my envelope has dropped into your Chambers, a few weeks ago a similar envelope dropped through the front door of my house.’ He peered from the café towards the green open spaces of the Common. ‘It’s become rather noisy here. Shall we take a walk?’

3

       Three weeks earlier

      As usual on weekdays except Thursdays, Sir Francis Morahan drew into Chelsea Park Upper promptly at 6 p.m. to allow time to change for whatever engagement his wife or his bar obligations had committed him to. He stowed his bicycle in the side passage hut and entered through the front door. An A4-size brown envelope lay on the mat – on it was stuck an address slip, typed only with his name.

      A reading light was on in Iona’s study ahead; if she was at home and had not picked the envelope up to leave it on the hall shelf – she disliked clutter – it must have been recently delivered. He wondered if the deliverer’s timing was deliberate to ensure that it would go straight into his hands rather than hers.

      He nudged open her study door. She raised her head and peered through light-blue titanium varifocals. ‘Good, you’re back.’

      He hesitated. ‘You didn’t hear anyone at the front door just now, did you?’

      ‘No.’ She frowned. ‘Should I have?’

      ‘Nothing. Just wondering.’

      ‘How strange you are sometimes.’ She raised herself. ‘Grosvenor House Hotel, 7 p.m., car booked for 6.30. Minnie Townsend’s refugee charity do.’

      She brushed past him and went upstairs. A dinner jacket was so much part of evening life that he could do the change in ten minutes. He retreated to his own study; he couldn’t leave the letter until they returned – the label begged too many questions. He sat down, switched on his desk lamp, opened it with a paper knife and read. There was no letter heading and no date.

       Dear Sir Francis

       I write to you as a result of my involvement with a secret arm of government relevant to your Inquiry. Therefore I must remain anonymous.

       It is within your remit to investigate certain activities by the state whose exposure will have devastating consequences. I can supply you with information, so far withheld from you, which will enable you to launch such an investigation.

       I will deal only with you personally. Please understand that any communication by you via phone, email or any other electronic means may be being noted.

       Neither my contact with you, nor my communications with you, nor any material I give you is to be logged into the Inquiry’s database. They are for your eyes only. If you do log the material, I will know and contact will cease.

       If you wish to proceed, please leave me a message saying simply Yes or No using the methodology in the accompanying note.

       Please know me simply as ‘Sayyid’.

      It felt like a punch in the ribs; Francis Morahan had never received a communication that so startled him. He sat, eyes fixed, rereading it for a second and third time. He checked his watch; at the same time a cry came from above. ‘Francis! It’s twenty past six.’

      He opened the middle right drawer of his desk, restored the letter to the envelope, placed it beneath a pile of other papers, stood to find a key concealed behind a particular book in a shelf above and locked the drawer with it. Beads of sweat formed on his cheeks – locking drawers was an unfamiliar act since he had left politics.

      Upstairs in his dressing room, his cufflinks seemed to slide into their eyes less smoothly than usual; his hands tying the black bow were jittery. He sensed his wife watching through the door.

      ‘Are you all right?’

      ‘Yes, fine.’ He completed the struggle with the tie. ‘Don’t know what’s the matter with the bloody thing tonight.’

      ‘I’ll go down and tell the driver to wait.’

      Their car turned onto the Embankment from Beaufort Street, the reddening sun casting shadows from the pillars of Battersea, then Albert Bridge. Morahan watched joggers evenly, rhythmically striding beside the river and fought for air against the seatbelt entrapping him. The accompanying note insisted that the ‘simple yes or no’ should be given by midnight. He tried to work out why ‘Sayyid’ was granting so little time. Did he know that Morahan would be occupied this evening in chit-chat with whatever members of the do-gooding plutocracy his wife had lined up at their table? That he would have no time to consult or discuss – even if he could have found anyone with whom to share? He flicked a look at Iona. They survived – and, in their ways, prospered – because they had decided at the crossroads in their lives that there would be no secrets in the alliance they would forge. But not tonight. Too soon. Too – how could he put it? – too baffling; too improbable that he, of all people, was entering into a secret world of ‘dead letter boxes’ and heaven knows what else.

      ‘Sayyid’ was asking him to act alone, to operate outside the system. The request flew in the face of the orderly due process by which, rightly in his view, he conducted his business. Yet, there was something about the letter which made him believe it was important. It felt not just cowardly but wrong to reject it – whether by logging it (he was sure Sayyid meant what he said and somehow had the means to know) or by failing to follow its instructions.

      He considered the name ‘Sayyid’. He’d had no time to check its meaning – perhaps it was just to indicate inside knowledge of the world he was entering. He would look it up later.

      They were home by 11 p.m. He escorted his wife from car to front door and unlocked it to usher her in. Instead of following her upstairs, he headed towards the kitchen.

      ‘Just remembered I’ve a letter to post,’ he shouted up.

      ‘Can’t it wait till morning?’

      ‘I rather need some air.’

      ‘Well, try not to squeak that floorboard.’

      He tore a strip off a cellophane roll, retreated along