Whatever the motives for Morahan’s delay in telling her, if he wasn’t a half-naked spread-eagled corpse straddling a sofa, she’d be silently cursing him. Instead she was the inheritor of his baleful legacy. And Sayyid was the bacillus that had evolved to confuse and devour them all, beginning with Morahan himself.

Nor was this second offering his ending. ‘…a final folder of material…’

Had he delivered it? If so, where had Morahan concealed it? At least, she told herself it would not be his office – he’d surely run out of hiding places there.

The texts, the files, Sayyid… someone who knew about her past was tracking her. She sensed ever more vividly the long tail of the secret she had kept hidden for so many years.

Events and her history were ensnaring her. She had to break out.

Chapter 14

14

The night, at this moment, might feel unreal but it was pregnant with momentous, unknowable consequences. It would be just hours until the outburst of TV and radio reports, soon followed by the scream of tabloid headlines.

The story would run and run. Was Morahan always a flawed character subject to unusual passions and desires? If so, the chorus of media and online chatter would demand, what on earth was he doing in such a prominent position of trust? Or was it murder by sinister forces of some sort, mocked up to look like a sex game? She remembered the storm and speculation when that GCHQ operative was discovered trussed up in a suitcase. They would be as nothing compared with the fireball Morahan’s death would ignite.

Awful times lay ahead for Iona Morahan: the sheer humiliation; the scurrilous ripping apart – in the name of psychoanalysis – of their marriage and relationship; the titillating questions of what could drive a man of such stature and respectability to an end like this.

Sara went to her window and looked down on the back gardens and roofs beyond; how many sordid secrets were housed within those walls? Who knew what their closed curtains concealed?

She needed air. She went downstairs, let herself out and looked upwards. Nothing, no stars, no moon, no outlines of clouds. She walked fast in the direction of the high street, imagining even its nocturnal murmurs might comfort her.

Pointless. She turned round – had to find sleep to prepare for the horrors of the morning. A few yards from home, she saw a car on the other side of the street, its sidelights on, inside the outlines of two figures. She thought she caught a head turning towards her.

She let herself back in, double-locked the front door and attached the security chain.

A marked police car was outside the Inquiry’s office, along with a couple of unfamiliar vans. Inside, the staff were grouped in the open-plan area. Patrick beckoned her over.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘Hardly slept.’