A chill ran through her. She told herself to return to the practical task of planning the next moves. While the Inquiry was headless, she and Patrick must pursue Morahan’s remit, inspired by the Sayyid documents. Their window of opportunity might be short; in these circumstances no government could allow such a high-profile Inquiry to meander. It was still only late afternoon as she drew into Waterloo.

Half an hour later, she was turning into Webster Road, a briskness in her stride and mind. Outlines of a picture of Kareem and the ugly project that might be the darkness at the end of Sayyid’s arrow were beginning to emerge. There was no time to waste. She would get straight to work. Files, chronology, connections, coincidences.

She glanced up and down the street – no sign of unexplained cars or visitors. She fished the front door keys out of her bag. The mortice was unlocked; her father was at home – after the sadness of a distant Devon valley, the welcome of a smiling, chubby man who, not once in his life, had harboured a malicious thought.

She turned the Yale lock, opened the door, and, with a broad smile, entered the hall.

‘No,’ she cried out. ‘No, no, no!’

Chapter 19

19

Looking at him, she felt a love and a dread incomparable to anything she’d felt before.

He was sprawled unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. She put a hand to his mouth and nose; he was breathing, but the rise and falls in his chest were weak, almost imperceptible. An ugly purple bruise spread around his right eye; she guessed he must have fallen down the stairs and hit his head against the bottom newel post. There were signs and smells of vomiting; reporting that injected urgency into the woman’s voice on the other end of the 999 line.