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Of these five persons some are, or have been, combatants, others not. Some have disappeared. If you wish to fulfil your remit, you must attempt to trace these individuals or their families and take evidence. You must not use police or intelligence services to carry out this investigation. Those channels are compromised.
Knowing the potential consequences, I need your confirmation that you wish to continue. I will then advise you on obtaining the help you need.
These few files that I have been able to give you are the tip of a large iceberg. They are also its inception. From them a decade-long pattern follows.
A final warning. Once you knock on the first door, you must move fast.
Sayyid
Morahan lay the note aside, absorbed the accompanying instructions and began to leaf through the files. They contained print-outs of photographs; phone call intercepts; logs of suspects’ movements. They were each headed by a brief biography containing a name, present suspected whereabouts, and previous addresses.
Who was this secret informant? Sayyid. Was he, or she, to be trusted? What position was he in to have access to raw classified files? If the operation he claimed to know of had really existed, how and why was he one of the few who knew of it? Were his warnings genuine or for effect?
Were the files themselves genuine? As a judge he was accustomed to recent police files, but his own experience of intelligence files on suspected terrorists went back to his brief time as Attorney General, mainly in the wake of 9/11, when the net was being cast far and wide. He tried to remember what these looked like; then realised it would be remarkable if the means of recording information in the digital age had not moved on. Did these print-outs have the ring of truth? Of authenticity? He stared at them again, working his way slowly through them, seeking out flaws or artificialities. If they were there, he could not see them.
If he could trust Sayyid it meant he must find an unusual kind of investigator. The memory of the Watergate ‘Deep Throat’, the prime cause of President Richard Nixon’s downfall in 1974, flashed before him. ‘Deep Throat’ had passed his secrets to journalist investigators – the celebrity duo of Woodward and Bernstein. He could hardly imagine himself entrusting anything to the modern breed of British journalist. To maintain control, he must recruit an investigator to work within his team. Sayyid had already said he could not trust any part of the security or police services but indicated he might offer further pointers.
It was late. He could not do this alone. He needed to find someone he could trust with the know-how to track down and win the confidence of the men in this file – men who might be both frightened and frightening.
Over breakfast, Francis and Iona sat opposite each other in their usual seats, he with The Times, she with the Guardian. She lowered her paper and folded it with a crack; he followed suit.
‘So…’ she began in her customary way.
He told her a great deal; the first approach, the methodology – he needed to explain the late-night strolls – and the nature of the printed-out files Sayyid had given him.
The telling prompted him to reflect on the rigmarole of Sayyid’s procedures. Surely there were simpler ways of doing this. It suddenly crossed his mind that Sayyid could be in some way playing him; deliberately conjuring him through a twisting chain of hoops. But why? To impress him? To whet his appetite? Even to compromise him? The idea that someone was setting a trap was monstrous; if he began to think that way, he was lost. He, part of an untouchable judiciary, was the independent chair of a government inquiry trying to seek out truth. What mattered was the information, not how it arrived.
‘And that’s it?’ Iona said.
‘So far.’ He did not mention the grave tone or the warnings contained in the accompanying letters from Sayyid, not wishing to alarm her further. ‘There will be more.’
‘How much more?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How are you going to proceed?’
‘I’m trying…’ he began.
‘You’ve not always been the strongest of men, Francis.’
‘I know. You have been the strength in our… in our partnership.’
She sighed. ‘The most important thing now is that you and I maintain the trust we’ve built. It hasn’t been easy.’
‘You know how much I appreciate it. And how much I rely on you and your judgement.’
‘Thank you. It’s not often said.’
‘I hope I never give you reason to doubt it.’
‘No.’ She stared at him grimly. ‘Are you truly set on pursuing this trail?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ He sensed the inner steel flexing. ‘Yes,’ he repeated curtly.
‘I warned you that taking on this Inquiry might have consequences we couldn’t anticipate.’
‘I can face them. Now.’ Saying the words, he forced himself to believe them.
‘Yes, it’s time. After what those bastards tried with you.’ Her vehemence shook him, another punch in the ribs; his wife was a woman who hardly ever swore.
‘That pretty much,’ said Morahan to Sara, withholding just the final reference to his own past, ‘is what has led us to being here today. I’m sorry it’s taken so long to explain.’
Their circuit on the Common was drawing them back to the café, now becalmed in the lull between the afternoon mothers and children and the early evening mob of skateboarding teenagers.
‘It’s fine. Best for me to know everything,’ Sara said. Morahan averted his gaze. Her instant trust reminded him of what he could not yet tell her.
‘To put it bluntly, I need your help.’
‘Why me in particular? I can see you need someone trusted by young Muslims to be your foot soldier. I can certainly give you suggestions.’
She was sharp. He had prepared his response. ‘That’s not enough. This person – or people – must be able to take affidavits. To unlock witnesses.’
‘There are lots of Muslim solicitors. And it’s the solicitor’s job to provide evidence, counsel’s job to interrogate it.’
‘I realise that is the usual practice.’
‘My career at the Bar has taken a new direction.’
‘Yes.’
‘This feels like a return to old territory.’
‘For me, taking on the Inquiry feels like a return to a treacherous world of politics that I escaped fifteen years ago. But there’s a tug of duty.’
‘Duty?’
‘It’s an odd word these days, isn’t it?’ He paused and edged closer to her. She saw something different in his eyes; excitement, recklessness even. ‘This is not just legal niceties. It’s about the nature and the behaviour of the state – our nation. I need someone special. Trust me, I’ve looked around and, in discreet ways, asked around. There is no one better suited to the task than you. I am pleading with you to take on the role of junior counsel to my Inquiry.’
‘And to be your investigator too. Your own private eye.’
‘Yes, if you put it like that.’
‘Snooping into my own community.’ She paused. ‘So some might say.’
He turned on her. ‘Surely your intelligence would not allow you to say, or think, such a thing.’
For the first time she saw a force within – and a calculating mind intent on dissolving her objections. Even so, there was a desperation in his request. She remembered her father’s words: ‘Perhaps he’s in trouble, he needs help.’ None of that diminished the immensity of what he was asking her; to step aside from her career path and take a risk both personal and professional.
‘Effectively, you’re inviting me to go rogue.’
‘Some might say that. But I am entitled to define my own legitimacy.’ He sat back on the bench, disengaging eyes, peering blankly into the distance, trying to keep his shoulders straight. She saw a man battling to overcome his fears, confronting something he had never been faced with before, no more bolts to shoot.
He swivelled away from her towards the evening gloom. ‘I could have turned him down, you know.’
‘Who?’ She was bemused; the remark seemed so out of context.
‘Sayyid. The informant. Whoever it really is. He – she perhaps – gave me the option. I didn’t have to. I could have let it go by. Perhaps I should have.’ He suddenly seemed grieving over some loss or error; a fork in the road. This was something more than fear. Vulnerability – that’s what it was. A man, once wounded, who might be wounded again.
‘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 (#ulink_aef7793d-a08a-5627-b0cb-00663dbd1abc)
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.
‘Curious man, Francis Morahan,’ said Temple. ‘Something inscrutable, almost odd, about him. Never thought his resignation was what it seemed. Clever though. And affable enough. I wouldn’t have imagined him as a doer. Not in the way you’re now describing.’
‘He seems determined.’
‘Good for him. Give those rascals a kick up the posterior.’ He frowned. ‘But why you? Must be others he could get?’
‘I’ve asked myself – and him – that. He’s insistent.’
Temple sighed. ‘Well, dammit, he’s right. You’re the best. But do you have to?’
She worried about sounding pretentious. ‘I feel it’s my duty. He needs a specific job done. I said I’d give him three months, no more.’
