‘No.’
‘Of course not. Right, let me show you around.’
She walked Sara up and down the shelves, describing her colour coding for submissions, authors, reports and originally commissioned research. ‘Of course, this material is all digitally stored too but our distinguished panel members often prefer to read hard copies. When they read anything at all.’
‘It’s impressive,’ said Sara, trying to soothe a woman whom life seemed to have made congenitally angry. ‘What about police and intelligence files?’
‘Coming to that,’ replied Sylvia irritably. ‘Their research reports and general assessments are handled in the same way. However, since Snowden, anything classified, shall we say, is, frankly, fog and mist, subject to endless redactions. Most of them look like a sea of black waves.’
‘Surely we can get more,’ asked Sara brightly.
‘You’d better get to work on our chairman,’ she replied. ‘Names. Names, places, times, addresses. It’s all scrubbing brush without those, isn’t it?’
At 5 p.m., Sara tapped on Morahan’s half-open door.
‘Come in, Sara, come in,’ he beamed. His informality continued to surprise her.
‘I’ve looked at those files,’ she said. ‘There’s no guarantee of finding any of those five names or of them talking if we do.’
‘Let’s see. I trust your ingenuity.’
‘And I’ve no idea anyway what story they have to tell.’ She cast him a trenchant look. ‘Do you?’
‘No. Nor do I know whether Sayyid does or if he’s leaving us to find out. And we have only his word that they lead to significant wrongdoing relevant to this Inquiry’s remit.’ He gave an encouraging smile. ‘But at least there seems the one link, doesn’t there?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘As you say, let’s see.’
She hesitated, wondering whether or not to raise her nagging question. He read her. ‘Is there something you want to ask?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Try me.’
‘It’s just – I know I’ve asked it before – why me? You’ve been so emphatic that it could be no one else.’ She took the plunge. ‘Is there anything you’re not telling me?’
He rubbed his eyes and looked straight into hers. ‘I promise you there is no one more suitable for this task. Every word I’ve exchanged with you since has confirmed that view.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘Yes, that’s it. We’ll be a good team. You look after yourself. And have faith in me.’ It seemed a strange choice of words from a senior figure more than thirty years older than her and with such greater experience. He was a likeable man but there remained something impenetrable about him. The niggle would not go away.
As she shut the door behind her, Morahan felt unease. The urge to confess the true reason for her recruitment had been almost irresistible. He tried to comfort himself; she would at least have Patrick’s protection and he was thereby honouring his commitment to her – though he still didn’t understand why the government solicitor had been so insistent on accompanying her. Sara agreed arrangements with Patrick for an early train in the morning and he’d left for the day. Alone, she tried to work out why the Inquiry’s office seemed somehow so unfamiliar, discomforting even. The only sound was the near inaudible hum of internal ventilation, breathing air into sealed units with sound-proofed windows and newly laid carpets. Not even the occasional click of shoe heels broke through. Nor voices.
That was it – the hush. In Knightly Court, there were interruptions of chatter, meetings along the corridors, the odd joke told in reception, a wheezing splutter from Ludo, the creaking of badly fitting doors. Here, in the open-plan office, there was silence; eyes glued to screens, only occasional murmured questions, overseen by the headmistressy figure of Pamela Bailly. Patrick, now she thought about it, bantered in their own office, not outside it; Sylvia, she suspected, gave up banter a while ago. Morahan himself, however forthcoming with her, was hardly gregarious. In this silence she detected not calmness, but tension.
Her phone sounded – a text. She clicked to view.
A colleague may not be what they seem.
Thought you should know. Take care.
Her heart racing, she checked the number. Not from her contacts. Not familiar. Her fingers burning, she hit reply and typed a single word.
Hello.
She awaited the ping, somehow sure of the worst.
Message sending failed.
Heading north out of King’s Cross, they exchanged idle chitchat before burying themselves behind laptops. Sara forced herself to act naturally with Patrick; the anonymous text preyed on her every waking moment, distorting the lens through which she grabbed occasional glances at him, in touching distance across the table, peering down at his screen.
She tried to convince herself there could be another explanation. It was more than a decade since that last text, sent in precisely the same form of language from an unknown number, had cast its shadow over her life. But people texted all the time, she told herself, without bothering with names. Except, as she well knew, the receiver would know the name from the number – or at least have a number that responded when they checked.
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