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‘Sara, you hug me tight. Are you OK?’
‘’Course I’m OK, just pleased to see you.’
He felt her relax. ‘You looked agitated to me. That’s not like my girl.’
‘Pressure, I guess.’
‘You gotta take it easy. Like me!’
‘If only,’ she laughed.
‘Anyway, I got something to celebrate. I landed a better squeeze tonight even than that one you just gave me.’
She shook her head in mock disapproval of him and handed him the sheet of paper she’d been holding. ‘You remember a while ago the government set up an Inquiry into the security services under a judge called Sir Francis Morahan?’
‘Rings some kind of bell.’ Tariq Shah was a news junkie, addicted to Channel 4 News and Newsnight. Sara was grateful for the short cuts it offered whenever she wanted to discuss something.
‘Read.’
Her father read the letter once quickly, a second time slowly. ‘I see why you’re jumpy.’
‘What should I do?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘For once I’d like you to tell me.’
‘You know I’d never stand in your way.’
‘But would you approve?’
She could feel him trying to read her. ‘You don’t need that, Sara.’ She looked silently down at the floor. ‘See the man. Maybe he’s in trouble, needs help. Maybe it’d be good for you. For your career.’ He handed back the letter.
She raised her eyes. ‘You’ll promise never, ever even to hint about it to anyone. Anyone at all.’
‘Why would I do that? Don’t you trust me?’
‘Sorry, Dad, ’course I trust you.’ She felt a burn of shame. ‘It’s just that…’
‘I know. It’s… what’s the word? It’s peculiar.’ He inspected her with an unfamiliar curiosity. ‘You’re afraid of something, aren’t you?’ he said.
It was the enduring sadness within the love she felt for her father – far greater than for any other human being – that made her, even eighteen years later, unable to answer him.
2 (#ulink_bb0047d4-2556-5a95-ace3-62f4dd3305f9)
Two days later at 12.55 p.m., Sara Shah arrived at the Afghan restaurant on Farnwood Road, between Tooting High Street and the Common. She’d quickly replied to the letter after discussing it with her father; he’d driven to Chelsea Place Upper that night to put it through No. 45’s front door. She’d ended the note by reminding Morahan, if he cycled, to wear a helmet; after her father set off, she wondered what on earth had possessed her to do so.
She’d proposed to Morahan a lunchtime meeting – somehow evening felt inappropriate. She was not in court that day and Ludo, as always, had happily agreed to her studying the next case files from home.
In one corner of the small restaurant, a young Asian family with two toddlers were faces down in a huge plate of sizzling mixed grill and chips. The mother and father showed traces of middle-aged bulge; she imagined the sweet slim little figures with their smooth cheeks and searching eyes going the same way. A jeans-clad boy and high-cheeked girl in a flowing red linen dress and cardigan, laced with a string of glass beads, were ordering; they must have sat down just before her. Pashtuns, she assumed. In the corner a Pakistani man sat alone munching, reading the Mirror.
Morahan had not replied to her letter; she understood that he must be nervous about communications. Her instincts told her that he would show up, even if it meant cancelling the Palace. They were correct; one minute after the designated time of 1 p.m., a tall figure strode past the window, turned through the door, and cast a wary eye over the restaurant. She rose, saying simply, ‘Hello.’
‘Hello,’ he replied. He seemed unsure whether to offer a hand to shake, finally keeping it to himself. Culturally conflicted, she noted. He sat down across the Formica table and buried himself in the menu. He cast a further eye around and behind; none of the other diners caught it.
She hesitated, wondering whether to test his humour. ‘It’s hardly the Garrick or the Temple.’
‘No.’ Expressionless, he peered back down; she couldn’t help noticing the thin prominence of the aquiline nose, with its near-perfect shallow curve. His skin was surprisingly smooth and unblemished for a man of his age; there was no sign of stray hairs emerging from nostrils or ears. His uniformly grey hair flopped elegantly over his collar edge. A good-looking man who had looked after himself. ‘What will you eat?’ he murmured.
‘Just a salad, I think.’
‘Yes, good.’ He shot another glance at their fellow customers and out of the window. ‘And then perhaps a walk. It seems too good a day to waste.’
As they made small talk, she tried to remember him as Attorney General but she had then been only in her early teens – try as she might, she couldn’t place his face among the Cabinet of that time. He had a presence, but not that of a showman; she couldn’t imagine him shouting and waving paper about in the Commons.
He rushed through his salad, a man on edge, itching for open spaces.
‘Let me get the bill,’ said Sara.
‘No, please…’
‘I insist. You have come to me. It’s the least I can do.’
They stepped outside. ‘I have my bicycle,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll be here when you return. We’re not the badlands.’
A few yards down the pavement, he spun abruptly. She followed his eye; the Pakistani man from the restaurant was scurrying into the street. As they turned, he halted and made to study the menu in the window.
He bent towards her ear, his voice a hiss of panic. ‘It’s not my imagination,’ he said softly. ‘That man is watching us.’
She grinned. ‘That man is my father.’
He frowned, then smiled. ‘Oh dear. I feel a fool.’ For the first time, she felt him relax.
‘It’s all right, he’s just a little over-protective.’
‘I hope my presence is not too alarming.’
‘I’ll give him a wave to go home.’ She looked back at her father, shooing him away. ‘He’d make a terrible spy, wouldn’t he?’
‘I think perhaps if he wanted to achieve success in that profession, it might only be via the double-bluff.’
She looked at him; there was a twinkle in his eye. She tested him further. ‘Shall we walk to the Common and find a park bench? Isn’t that what spies do?’
They sat down, not at a park bench but an outdoor café. Morahan twisted around and, apparently satisfied they were out of ear-shot, leaned towards her.
‘Before you begin,’ said Sara, ‘I must ask you a question. This is a public Inquiry. You said in your letter that normally it would be for the Government Legal Department to hire counsel, after discussing it with the Chair of course.’ She lowered her eyes at him. ‘Why the secrecy? Why you alone?’ She paused. ‘And why me?’
‘If you allow me to tell you my story, Ms Shah, you will begin to understand.’
2018 – nine months earlier
Hooded brown eyes beneath heavy brown brows, familiar to him from television, bore in. ‘I’m going to do this,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘I’m going to find out what went wrong.’
Francis Morahan had been mystified by both the summons and the secretiveness of the private secretary’s phone call. ‘All I can say, Sir Francis, is that it is to discuss a project close to the PM’s heart, and one which he considers of great importance in advancing the government’s agenda.’ He could hardly refuse the summons but it was more than a decade since he had crossed the threshold of 10 Downing Street – an address he would happily have never returned to.
At 4 p.m. precisely the policeman stationed outside No. 10 opened the black door and Morahan was faced by a young man with floppy fair hair who seemed just out of school.
‘Good afternoon, Sir Francis, I’m Andrew Lamb, assistant private secretary.’ The schoolboy stretched out a hand. ‘The PM is in the study if you’d like to follow me. Though of course you must know…’
‘No, it’s been many years.’
Robin Sandford, in charcoal grey suit trousers and a white shirt symmetrically divided by a crimson tie, rose from a stiff-backed armchair along with two other men. The sight of one sank Morahan’s heart. ‘Sir Francis, I don’t think you and I have actually met…’ the Prime Minister began.
‘I think not, Prime Minister,’ said Morahan, accepting the handshake.
Sandford turned to the fleshy figure to his right. ‘But… er…’
The figure, grinning, stretched out bulbous fingers. ‘Hello, Francis, long time.’
Morahan forced a smile. ‘Hello, Geoff.’ Feeling the same old revulsion, Morahan took in the drooping jowls, multiple chins, the roll of girth pushing into trousers held by braces, gold cuff-links glinting from a striped pink and white shirt and a purple tie. Steely hair in puffed-up waves and broad spectacles failed to mask the piggy eyes and calculating mind of Geoffrey Atkinson, Home Secretary – the enduring survivor from that distant era when the party had last been in government.
Sandford turned to the second man. ‘I imagine you two have crossed paths?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t quite put it like that,’ said Sir Kevin Long, the Cabinet Secretary and most powerful civil servant in the land, upbeat in voice, rotund in shape, razor-edged in mind.
‘Good,’ said Sandford, waving them to seats. ‘Francis – if I may…’
‘Of course,’ agreed Morahan lightly, distrusting the mutual courtesies.
‘Some context first,’ continued Sandford. ‘On winning the election, I said this government would be different. We would be open and unafraid to confront ourselves as a nation, both the good and the bad. In my view – forget Europe, forget Russia, forget the economy – there’s one bad that continues a year on to outstrip all others. And, in my time, will go on doing so. Extreme fanatical Islamism.’
For the second time, Morahan felt a sinking of the heart, a sense that he was being suborned into a morass of political game-playing.
‘And yet,’ said Sandford, ‘for nearly twelve years, between 7/7 in July 2005 to Westminster Bridge in March 2017 and all that has followed since, we kept the lid on Islamist terror. I want to know what went right for so long. And what then went wrong.’ He paused, locking eyes with Morahan. ‘And may still be wrong.’ He withdrew his gaze, eyes shifting to address a window. ‘Secondly – and related to this – I want an independent examination of our security policy with regard to the hundreds of young Britons who went abroad to fight for Islamist terror and have now returned – many of whom seem to have disappeared or gone off our radar.’
‘Are these not matters purely for the police and intelligence services?’ said Morahan, calculating how to remain at one remove.
‘You may think so, Francis,’ replied Sandford. ‘And, in different ways, over the year since we were elected, I’ve tried to ask them. I am not satisfied with their answers. There is no pattern, they say. We can’t watch every sort of “lone wolf”. At times, I have even sensed evasion. As if there’s something they don’t want to talk about. It’s not enough. Therefore, I intend that the Home Secretary,’ he nodded to Atkinson, ‘should establish a public inquiry, deploying a range of expertise, to answer these questions.’ He was edging ever closer to Morahan. ‘I – and he – would like you to chair it.’
‘Aren’t you reaching for the unknowable?’ asked Morahan softly. ‘Indeed the impossible.’
Sandford grimaced. ‘Nothing is ever unknowable. And in politics nothing should be impossible or undoable.’
‘Have you consulted the chiefs?’
‘You may recall – it was leaked to a newspaper – that the previous government attempted to have a judge inquire into the security services but they lobbied successfully against it. So no, I have not consulted the chiefs. And in anticipation of your next question, neither has this time attempted to stand in the way.’
‘I think you’ll find, Francis,’ interjected Atkinson, ‘that the Security Service – Dame Isobel in particular – understands this Prime Minister has a stiffer backbone than his predecessor.’
‘And Six?’ asked Morahan, repressing a rush of revulsion.
‘Sir Malcolm,’ replied Sandford, ‘assures me of the Secret Intelligence Service’s full co-operation. He is always keen to point out that SIS’s involvement is restricted to its activities with regard to these people while they were, or are, out of the country.’
‘You mean Five and Six are still…’ Morahan hesitated, ‘defecating on each other?’
‘Not at all,’ said Sir Kevin Long. ‘Communications, I am delighted to report, are better than ever.’ It was the Cabinet Secretary’s first contribution; his beam spread broader than ever as he made it. ‘The Cs meet once a week in my presence to iron out any turf issues. All most amicable.’
Morahan imagined the politely expressed arguments and precedents the Cabinet Secretary must have used to dissuade his headlong Prime Minister from unnecessarily opening potential cans of worms – and the gracefulness with which the civil servant would have accepted his defeat. Surrounded by these powerful figures and, despite himself, moved by Sandford’s plea, he sensed the noose tightening.
‘I can understand why you’ve come to me. I’m a senior judge. We sometimes have our uses, even for politicians. And, however briefly, I was once an MP and Cabinet member, so have an element of political understanding.’
‘Precisely,’ said Sandford. ‘You are uniquely well-qualified.’
‘There is the issue of my resignation.’
‘I see no issue,’ said Long.
‘Nor me,’ added Atkinson.
‘Really, Geoff?’ Morahan sighed.
‘As I recall,’ said Atkinson, ‘Frank Morahan, as you were then generally known, resigned as Attorney General in the summer of 2002 to resume a highly successful career at the Bar and spend more time with his family.’
‘Yes, that’s what I said,’ agreed Morahan. ‘You may recall the timing. Six weeks after President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed in Crawford, Texas to go to war with Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. Come what may. As the government’s senior law officer, I would be the one who would have to approve its legality. My view was that any such war would be illegal.’
‘That’s not what you said at the time,’ said Atkinson. ‘Not even in Cabinet.’
‘It was less than a year after 9/11. I had no wish to be disruptive. I also believed the then Prime Minister to be an honourable man.’
‘As we all did,’ said Atkinson. ‘As we all did.’
‘I’ve never sought to justify myself publicly,’ continued Morahan, ignoring the lie, ‘but, as has been speculated, this was the real reason for my resignation. I also view that war as a prime cause of the very tragedy unfolding in our country which you are now asking me to investigate. I am therefore parti-pris.’ Morahan stopped abruptly, stared down at his crossed hands. No one spoke. He raised his head in anguish at the three men around him.
‘Hey,’ said Sandford with youthful vigour, ‘slow down. We’re sixteen years on. That’s hardly a partisan view, we all recognise it. All it means is that you got there first. We as a nation reaped the whirlwind you saw gathering.’
‘Prime Minister,’ said Morahan, ‘sixteen years ago I left the world of politics to return to the law. I would prefer to stay there.’
‘If you accept this role,’ said Sandford, ‘so you will. It may be enabled by government but it is a judicial inquiry. I’m asking you to both help me and perform a duty for your country.’ With that, Sandford rose to his feet. The meeting was over.
Heavy-legged, Morahan pulled himself up, shook the three proffered hands and, exchanging parting courtesies, headed for the door. The cherubic assistant private secretary magically appeared and escorted him out.
As the door clicked shut, Sandford turned to Atkinson. ‘You knew him then. Will he do it?’
‘He’ll fall in line,’ replied Atkinson roughly. ‘Always a supine streak to him in my view.’ Sir Kevin Long raised a discreet eyebrow.
‘He had the guts to resign,’ said Sandford.
