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