‘Ha! Funny girl.’ He screwed up his eyes. ‘Just as well you’re the joker. We’re not allowed to laugh at that sort of thing any more, are we?’

As instructed, Sara arrived the next Monday at the Inquiry offices at 9.15 a.m., having hung around to avoid being early. The tube journey, Tooting Broadway to Vauxhall via Stockwell, was a breeze after the twists and turns to the Temple. She was met at reception by the PA to the Secretary, a squat, bespectacled young man with straggly black hair who announced himself as Clovis Hobbs-Fanshawe and managed nervously to stretch out a hand to shake while forgetting the accompanying smile.

Morahan, in a surprising and warm phone call over the weekend, had told Sara he’d chosen Pamela Bailly as the Inquiry Secretary – effectively its chief executive. She was a Treasury high-flier and therefore, he explained, not from a Department he might be investigating. He also said she was extraordinarily efficient. Sara wondered if Clovis had been terrorised by her. No doubt a bulging Oxbridge brain lurked behind his jumping eyes.

As she was ushered by Clovis into the Secretary’s capacious office, Pamela Bailly sprang up and strode round her desk to offer a firm handshake. Brisk with an edge of brusqueness, tallish, trim, precise, a smart cut of auburn hair shaped to the neckline, she projected a force field of compressed energy. Sara suspected some of it was a cloak, though there was no obvious sign of brittleness on the sculpted red fingernails.

‘Welcome, Ms Shah, delighted to meet you.’

‘Do call me Sara.’

‘I will. Pamela.’ She paused. ‘Not Pam. So… you’re here to chivvy us along.’

Sara smiled, determined to forge some form of bond. ‘I can see that no chivvying is needed.’

‘In some ways not. A great deal of information, research and expertise has been gathered but we’re still some way from formal hearings. Indeed, we’ve only just started the search for counsel. Now his Lordship appears to have pre-empted it.’

‘I think it’s more because he has some specific tasks in mind.’

‘That would appear to be between you and him.’ Was there an edge in her tone? As if her own special access to her Chairman was being disarranged? She seemed a woman for whom control was important. ‘At any rate,’ continued Pamela, ‘he seems to me a reinvigorated man and that is all to the good. We will all do everything we can to help you.’

Sara chided herself for the suspicion. ‘I appreciate that.’

‘Shall we do the tour?’