The Inquiry. Will Caine

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      She’d repeatedly gone over the core words: ‘… A colleague may not be what they seem…’ They were too vague to be meaningful. A nothing. Anyone could have made that up.

      She needed to stop kidding herself – this was not a random coincidence. Either it was the same sender or someone who knew about, or once had some contact with that sender, and knew their modus operandi. But for what? To scare her? To help her? To undermine her?

      She grabbed another look at Patrick, then found herself seeing those other faces in the Inquiry office floating by.

      If only she could discuss it with someone. But she understood all too well the logic of her position. The text was a dagger only to her because of the message that July morning fourteen years ago. Unless she owned up to that, anyone looking at this message would simply tell her to ignore it. Some joker trying to wind her up, they’d say. Or the detritus of office politics and rivalries.

      Perhaps, when she next saw Morahan, she might ask him whether he had reason to suspect that anyone on his staff was operating to a different agenda. He’d probably look at her with mystification. If he did, she could just about imagine herself showing him the text. She could already hear his reaction – don’t worry, some idiot…

      She was going round in circles. She could never, and would never, tell a single soul about the 2005 text. She had set that in concrete when the Met detective called on her a few weeks after 7/7. He knew only that she, like many others, had attended meetings where people now of interest to the police might have been present. She said she couldn’t help him; she recognised none of the names he raised. He had no reason to doubt her.

      The questions the text raised, the guilt it ignited were impossible, unthinkable to admit to anyone but herself. At that crucial moment, however much she could be forgiven for not instantly interpreting it, she had, as it turned out, failed in the most devastating possible way – a failure she’d carried like a death row prisoner’s shackles ever since. The texts, past and present, were a weight she must bear alone. The only means of sidelining them was to focus single-mindedly on the task ahead.

      Trying not to catch Patrick’s eye she retrieved from her bag the Sayyid folder Morahan had given her. Wherever they now were – if they were even still alive – the five individuals named in the files all hailed from the town of Blackburn in East Lancashire. The files shared the same template, headings running vertically down the left column. The left heading was TOP SECRET, right side OPERATION with the following word blacked out. The next line began KV2 followed by a further redaction. The headings below ran: PICTURE; NAME; DOB; LOCATION; PHONE; HOME ADDRESS; FAMILY ADDRESS; FIRST CONTACT; CURRENT STATUS; NOTES; HUMINT; COMINT; LAST CONTACT; FILE STATUS.

      One name was Samir Mohammed. His photograph showed a young Asian, probably taken in his late teens. Date of birth was 12 October 1987; home and family addresses the same number and street in Blackburn; current status ‘inactive’; file status ‘Closed 31 December 2006’. One entry withstood clear interpretation. Humint read ‘Contacts not pursued after closure.’

      Assuming he was alive – and had not since been involved in anything of interest to the police or intelligence services – Sara judged that he might be the easiest to approach. Whether or not he still lived in Blackburn was unknown. There was no hint of what story he, or any of the other four, might have to tell.

      Announcing herself as a lawyer working for a government inquiry would guarantee doors slammed in her face. Tempting though it was – and even though she suspected it was the easiest way to get a foot in the door – she decided against presenting herself as an ambulance-chasing lawyer on the lookout for Muslim clients seeking financial redress against the police (a role she was all too familiar with). Instead she would introduce herself as a market researcher working on a project seeking to learn lessons on the past twenty years of governmental relationships with the young Muslim community.

      She told Patrick her protocol. Despite that moment when he’d seen her returning with the folder from Morahan’s office, she stuck to the line that she was following up cases from Rainbow.

      ‘Maybe when you arrive in the street of one of the addresses, you should knock on every tenth door,’ suggested Patrick. ‘Then if someone answers and is willing, do the survey with them. Just for show. It might protect not just you but your target.’ He paused. ‘Whoever they are.’ He was grinning; there was no edge, just a hint of playfulness.

      She smiled back. ‘That’s a great idea, thanks.’ She’d already planned something similar but his helpfulness pleased her and she didn’t want to discourage him. She’d been worried that their professional relationship, even without the anonymous text, would be uneasy after her show of resistance to him accompanying her. She had a further card up her sleeve but, for the moment, kept it to herself. She might not need to play it.

      In the time left on the train, she checked websites on Blackburn and its environs, accumulating small details of local knowledge. At Preston, they picked up a hire car, Patrick easing into his promised role as driver.

      ‘Do you sit in the back or the front?’ he asked with the customary grin.

      As they headed south out of Preston, she found herself glancing at him. Assuming, as she told herself she must, that things were as they seemed, she wondered what he was thinking about his role as bit-part player. She also noted his perfectly angled jaw-line and broad but straight nose. The edges of his black hair were touched with a few flecks of grey; otherwise there were no signs of age or sag and, even seated in the driving position, no bulge at the waist.

      ‘You’re inspecting me,’ he said abruptly.

      ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I do it to everyone.’ She paused. ‘Including Morahan. I can give you a precise facial description if you want.’

      ‘I can manage without.’ The grin returned.

      ‘I know it’s not easy, this,’ she said.

      ‘It’s fine.’

      ‘You’re not a fool. You must want me to share.’

      ‘It’s OK. You’ll tell me what you want when you want. Though I’d like you to know this: you can trust me. If you speak to me in confidence, it remains between you and me.’ They turned off the motorway to a sign marked ‘City Centre’. ‘But there’s one thing you do have to tell me right now. Where are we going?’

      ‘Straight to the hotel, please. And if it’s a dump, take me home.’ Patrick set the SatNav for the out of town ‘Savoy Inn’ into which Clovis, with a blind loyalty to the name, had booked them. It turned out to border an industrial estate filled with garages and self-storage units. Ten minutes after checking in, Patrick opened the passenger door to a Sara dressed in a long broad black skirt which gathered by her ankles, dark brown jacket and marginally lighter brown hijab replacing the usual blue scarf. He cast a fleeting look of amusement and was reprimanded by a silent raise of her eyebrows.

      Even if the Asian and white population split was similar, Blackburn seemed a different world from her part of south London. Though the people were the same, here there was just a distinct lack of bustle. She imagined the place in its Victorian prime; a boom town of the industrial revolution. Then it had been the weaving capital of the world; dotted with textile mills, over a hundred and forty of them according to her recent research, driving a massive churn of activity within the green fold of the hills where they lay. Granted, there had been little joy there for the sweating workers, lungs saturated by fine clouds of cotton dust, particularly the hand weavers who would eventually be overtaken by mechanisation. But there СКАЧАТЬ