‘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.

Chapter 4

4

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.’

‘Duty. Hmmm…’ He affected to examine her. She silently held his eye. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

He spoke with an unusual tenderness. ‘Then you must do it. But stick to your guns and don’t get bogged down. These inquiries go on for ever. Do the job he wants and then come back.’

‘That’s a deal.’ She stuck her hand out and he formally shook it, both now at ease. ‘I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch, Ludo.’

‘It’s fine. Next week’s prep and I’m not back in court till the week after. I’ll grab Sheila instead.’

‘Not literally, I hope.’