by Nick Louth
He wrote a press release for the foundation, expressing shock and regret at Cantara’s death and restating its charitable mission for refugees, but left Samantha Mason to field the press calls, and refuse all interview requests.
Though the police now knew everything, the true calamity of those few months a year ago was essentially private. There was only one snag, and her name was Tina. Wyrecliffe felt that Cantara’s downstairs neighbour would be more than happy dishing the same dirt to a tabloid that she had to the police. He considered contacting her, and offering to buy her silence. Could he do something that shameful? Maybe, but he also realised he couldn’t begin to outbid the tabloids.
It was Monday when the call he had been dreading came, from a reporter at the Guardian who had managed to get his private mobile number. The interview was short, Wyrecliffe dismissing the thesis of his relationship with her as ‘over-imaginative.’ But he knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. In the paper the next day, next to a large piece about the refugee camp where Cantara had grown up, was a sidebar about her life at the BBC. It was a classic piece of juxtaposition. The misery of Ain al-Hilweh, with a photograph of ragged children and rubble, next to a piece describing the BBC career that she had aspired to, and what her starting salary was. One particularly damaging paragraph was near the bottom.
Those who worked with Cantara al-Mansoor said they saw little evidence of journalistic energy in her. Though she was still on probation when she resigned, colleagues said she seemed lost in the hurly-burly of BBC production. ‘I think there was a certain amount of nepotism that put her there,’ one said. ‘It is a sad to realise that favouritism still rules the roost even in the BBC’.
They had even dug up the fact that on her visa, the very student visa that the Fouad Adwan Foundation had procured for her, she wasn’t allowed to work. And the BBC had apparently given her a job in contravention of that.
In the Daily Mail, in an otherwise less damaging story, was a photograph of Cantara at the Royal Opera House, on the arm of ‘BBC Radio 4 presenter and housewife heartthrob Chris Wyrecliffe.’ He knew now that he was just one day’s papers away from being outed. Later that day, Imogen left him an irate phone message to complain that she was receiving dozens of press calls at home. ‘And, quite unbelievably, it’s all about yet another bloody Arab woman.’
Whoever the Guardian source was, probably one of the aspiring and assertive young women who Cantara had worked with, would have seen him eating with her in one of the canteens. So far at least, BBC officialdom was keeping quiet, as much to save its own neck as his. Until one day, when Melanie Ferris, head of BBC HR, cornered him just as he emerged from the studio at 9am.
‘Quick word, Chris. Right away if you please.’
Wyrecliffe looked at his watch and shrugged his assent. Melanie ushered him into a small and anonymous briefing room and carefully closed the door. ‘It’s about the Al-Mansoor issue, I’m afraid. I’m under a lot of pressure from upstairs about this, how it was that someone so patently ill-qualified managed to get in to an editorial training programme without going through any of the normal channels...’
‘Look, I know, I know,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘I had a word with Jonathan, mentioned her Arabic, talked a bit about her self-confidence, and he said he’d see what he could do.’
‘I’m afraid there’s going to be a bit of an inquest, and given the media interest, it’ll have to be formal.’
Wyrecliffe looked heavenwards. ‘Melanie, look. The tabloids are bound to hear. They’ll put two and two together and make fifty. I’ll be “the bloke that shagged the BBC bomber”…’
‘And were you, Chris?’
‘No, of course not. I told you…’
‘Yes, you were trying to beef up our Arabic intake. But you must see how it looks. Did you know that we currently have six Arabic trainees, all of whom already have much more journalistic experience than she did?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘And you didn’t check before speaking to Jonathan?’
‘No, it was his decision. It’s up to him to check. He was the one who formally appointed her.’
‘Yes, of course. But he’s not a nationally-known figure. You are. There are serious issues here for the BBC, as well as for you. Not to mention breaking visa rules. How we slipped up on that, I will never know. But if it becomes difficult for you, that reflects on us. The BBC, as you know, is incredibly lax about many things that other organisations take seriously. Relationships between staff, on-air gaffes, drugs even. Within reason. You know as well as I do. But here we have an issue where because of an abuse of power we recruited someone who may already have been a terrorist. And you are going to get the blame. The question now is what we do about it.’
Chapter Eighteen
It was six days after the bombing. Wyrecliffe had been trying, unsuccessfully, through the Egyptian consulate in London, to get permission to see Cantara’s body, but he had finally made telephone contact with Cantara’s closest relative, an aunt now living in Syria. But right now there were pressing matters. The police rang him and requested that he come for interview at Paddington Green Police Station at 8am the next morning. Though it was made clear he was not under arrest, the tone was such that one could hardly refuse. He sought some hurried advice from an old friend. Martin Turner-Crossland, now a successful criminal defence barrister, accepted Wyrecliffe’s invitation for an after-work drink.
‘I shouldn’t worry too much about being questioned under caution,’ Turner-Crossland said, as he tucked into shepherd’s pie in the dark, low-ceilinged bar of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, his favourite Fleet Street pub. ‘In all probability it isn’t that they suspect you of complicity per se, just that they recognise you may have an incentive to be economical with the truth.’
‘But the police have three fixed and false ideas: That I am an abuser, that Cantara was a terrorist, and that we were having an affair.’
‘You can’t change that by complaining. You need hard evidence. They will be terribly annoyed if you slow down the investigation,’ he said, chewing thoughtfully. ‘So just tell them the truth.’
‘I was planning to,’ Wyrecliffe responded.
‘The whole truth. But keep to the facts. You’ll need representation of course. I’ll send Simon Deakin from my chambers to join you tomorrow morning, just to keep them on their best behaviour and we’ll seek some disclosure of what they plan to ask you. But there’s someone else I’d really prefer if it starts to get sticky.’
‘That’s wonderful. Thank you.’
‘Think nothing of it. You have in one particular way been quite fortunate,’ he said, waving his fork vaguely, to emphasise the point.
‘How so?’
‘Ms al-Mansoor died in the explosion, so she cannot be tried. She is a Lebanese national, and died on Egyptian soil, so the primary forum for an inquest will be in Egypt. Though there is clearly a prima facie case that she, with others, commissioned an act of terrorism from and within British soil, the import of that assertion entirely depends on finding the others involved. Conversely, with her nationality, it may be construed that she conceived the plot with others while abroad. For the British security services, if they have no clue to her co-conspirators here, that may be a convenient conclusion.’
‘Is it a likely one?’
Turner-Crossland laughed. ‘That depends. From what you have told me they have her credit card and bank records, which obviously show where she has been and what she bought. They don’t know where she was living, you say. It might have been a safe house somewhere. Did they say where the transactions took place?’
‘Not exactly. Everything traceable seems to have been in London. She didn’t use her cash card after March this year, and only used her credit card once, for the airline ticket.’
‘Online purchases. So they’ll know the e-mail address she had to give with it.’
‘Yes, but the police say it was a Gmail account which hadn’t been used for anything else,’ Wyrecliff
e said. ‘She had changed her account soon after we lost contact. I know that she always worked from a laptop.’
‘Ah yes, webmail is the bane of the security services,’ Turner-Crossland said. ‘The CIA of course filter the entire lot, looking through all e-mail traffic for key words and terror signatures, in their characteristically heavy-handed way. But what one may term waterboarding the Internet isn’t any more successful than waterboarding individuals,’ he laughed. ‘Plotters know how to code their conversations. The real break-throughs always come from intercepts of known suspects, not random trawling.’
‘The police haven’t intimated to me that they have any other suspects.’
‘Well they probably wouldn’t. Anyway, from your perspective, the less successful the investigation, the better. If they do get the others, you would inevitably be called as a witness. In fact your evidence, which doesn’t rely on intelligence intercepts, would probably be one of the few parts that could be heard in open court.’ He chuckled. ‘The tabloids would have a field day.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Well, Chris, you’ve only got yourself to blame. You’ve always sailed close to the wind, haven’t you?’
‘Bugger off, Martin,’ Wyrecliffe chuckled. ‘Maybe in the past. But in Cantara’s case I at least tried to behave pretty honourably.’
‘I strongly suggest that this would not be the Daily Mail angle. More like: “Radio Four Luvvie’s Lust for Terror Girl.” Come on Chris. You represent everything they hate. So far it seems that the focus is just on the impropriety of you giving her a job, bad enough I suppose. Has it affected your day-to-day work?’
‘It didn’t help when the police burst into TV centre with a warrant and took away my BBC computer, as well as Cantara’s, in plastic bags.’
‘Still being paid?’ Turner-Crosland asked.
‘It is the Beeb, Martin,’ huffed Wyrecliffe. ‘And my contract still has a few months to run. But I’d really like a frontline reporting job, in the Arab world.’
‘Well, you are lucky. If that’s the worst that has happened,’ Turner-Crosland said. ‘Still, your biggest concern has to be the press getting hold of your e-mails and texts. That would be the real disaster.’
Wyrecliffe winced at the prospect of further judgment in the court of public opinion. But he had to admit that so far nothing had emerged of his relationship with Cantara. His thoughts went back to Tina, Cantara’s neighbour who knew more than anyone else. He just hoped she would keep her mouth shut.
* * *
The concrete monstrosity that is Paddington Green Police Station seems designed to intimidate. Squat lower floors, small blast-proof windows, a brutalist tower block above, and finally a roof crowned with aerials and radio masts. None of it sits well with the small and well-tended West London park, still visible along Harrow Road, which gives it its name. Paddington Green may sound like a place of leisure. But it is actually Britain’s Lubyanka, where those suspected of terrorism are taken to be questioned and held overnight. Seven days after the bombing, Wyrecliffe seemed to be all they had.
Things got off to a bad start. As he emerged from the taxi with lawyer Simon Deakin, he noticed a denim-clad photographer aiming her telephoto lens at him. The reflex reaction, lifting his document wallet to shield his face, was enough to make him look a guilty man. He knew he’d regret it as soon as he saw the papers, but couldn’t stop himself.
Unlike his first two police interviews, informal and in part deferential meetings in BBC offices, he was received coldly here. The civilian receptionist pointed to a stained flip-down plastic seat. He took it and waited. And waited. It was more than an hour after his appointed time when three detectives, one moustachioed male and two female, arrived to take him and Simon down to an interview suite in the basement. The place seemed built to induce depression. Grey walls, grey ceiling, strip lighting and no windows. Table and chairs were screwed to the floor, and a huge reel-to-reel tape recorder visible through a scratched perspex window in a metal cabinet.
‘Not quite up to BBC standards I suppose,’ smiled the male officer. ‘But it does the job.’ One of the women explained what the caution was, then read it out. It certainly made it sound like he would be called upon in court to account for his actions.
The police had retrieved all his e-mail correspondence and text traffic with Cantara. Then for the next five hours, bar one toilet break and thirty seconds to sample then discard an absolutely vile Met Police canteen hotdog, the two female detectives relentlessly went through it with him. They took apart his friendship with Cantara, line by line, word by word, and for the texts, character by character. They reconstructed every conversation, every meaning that could be construed from them, every facet that could shed light on Cantara’s religious views, her state of mind, and her associates. And just when he thought he had covered everything, two male officers came in to replace the women. Then they started all over again, checking the notes made earlier. They had made it absolutely clear that there was no point in holding back on any fragment of the truth. So he had not. Perverting the course of justice, as one officer reminded him, carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Given the lives lost in the EgyptAir bombing, he couldn’t expect any leniency. When Shah had first spoken to him, she had smiled and shaken his hand. No one was offering him a hand now.
* * *
Next day at the BBC, just as he was about to go into a meeting, Wyrecliffe was surprised to get a phone call from Karena Shapiro. An old girlfriend from Oxford days and always considered the brightest of the bright. Karena had worked at the BBC, Channel Four and now, he had heard, ITV. She was as chatty and amusing as he recalled, but running short of time, he said: ‘Let’s do lunch, then. How about Monday?’
‘That would be great,’ she giggled, almost flirtatiously. ‘It would be great to catch up. I’m glad the bad press hasn’t inhibited your social life.’
As he hung up, Wyrecliffe smiled to himself. Karena had nursed a decades-long grudge against him because three days after they had broken up he slept with her room-mate. The woman in question was a biochemist from Market Drayton with pert breasts that he could call to mind as if it was yesterday. But her name, he was horrified to realise, he could no longer remember. He and Karena had avoided each other since.
It was only later that day when Wyrecliffe realised he had fallen into a trap. A quick search of Google revealed that Karena was now editorial director at the ITV current affairs programme Tonight. Of course. They’re bound to be making a bloody programme about the BBC Bomber. And I’ve just invited myself to be part of it.
* * *
Wyrecliffe picked a South Bank restaurant that specialised in Japanese food and quick lunch specials for the National Theatre types who frequented it in droves. Karena arrived on time, looking slim, poised and younger than her fiftyish years. Short blonde hair, a shortish mauve dress with a wide, fashionable belt and matching dangly earrings. Being the place it was, air-kissing and shrill greetings were de rigueur, and Wyrecliffe followed suit.
‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it Chris?’ Karena said, a heavily-ringed hand resting on his. They ordered wine and tempura prawns, while she sketched out the seemingly effortless steps of her career to date. Then she put her hand over his again. ‘But of course, you won’t have heard the big news. We’re having a baby!’
Wyrecliffe tried not to let the shock show. He’d heard about fertility clinics in Italy working with older women. And who was the father? He’d thought Karena was divorced. At least twice, come to think of it.
‘Congratulations. You’re looking very well and slim on it, I must say.’
‘Not me, silly. I’m fifty-three. Susie, my partner. She’s only thirty-eight. The baby’s due in a fortnight.’
‘Well, double congratulations. I’m sorry, I didn’t know about Susie.’
‘We’ve been together four years now. Of course it’s the old turkey-baster trick.’ Karena did a fairly lewd impersonation of the impregnation techniqu
e. ‘Still need bloody sperm. Unfortunately, can’t ditch male DNA completely, more’s the pity.’
Wyrecliffe was already feeling fairly battered by the conversation by the time, two glasses in, that Karena got on to the real subject of the lunch. ‘So, this Cantara al-Mansoor woman, you must be a bit shocked.’
‘Karena, are we off the record here?’
‘If you like…’
‘Okay, look. I know you are making a documentary about the BBC bomber. I have contacts at Tonight, so let’s stop beating about the bush.’
‘Ah, you can’t fool a real professional.’ She smiled. ‘Yes, we’re following it up. It’s so juicy! Suicide bomber, a world away from the typical jihadi, works at the BBC, then ups sticks and kills a hundred and seventy-six people. How could we not?’
‘Of course, but a chance to bash your arch-rival the Beeb too.’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe. But there’s really nothing for you to worry about in that.’ The light that had lit her face had gone. Behind narrowed lips was a more calculating expression.
‘Well, there is, actually. I’m this far from losing my job,’ he made an O with finger and thumb, a millimetre apart. ‘So I’ve got to be very careful.’
‘Will you go on camera for us? Please? It would really help your case.’
‘Not to mention yours.’
‘We want to give the world Cantara’s story. If anyone knows it, you do.’
‘As you know I’ve refused all interviews thus far. I get five hundred and fifty e-mails a day and as many voicemails from reporters. I’m pretty sick of the whole damn thing.’
