The Last Queen of England (25 page)

“Oh, it’s much more than that,” Cornell said.
 
“Although, it’s not really my fault.”
 
He sat back and crossed his arms.
 
“I’m a product,” he added.
 
“You can’t ask a man to do the things I’ve done without expecting it to change him.
 
That’s not right.
 
It’s not fair.
 
Results were all they cared about and I got them.
 
The people who wanted those results made me who I am.”
 

Tayte doubted that.
 
“Let me guess.
 
The military?”
 

Cornell didn’t answer directly.
 
Instead, he gritted his teeth so hard that the muscles at his temples bulged.
 
“Then they criticise your methods and before you know it you’re a fucking bus driver!”

He grabbed a chunk of rubble from the debris and hurled it against the wall beside Tayte’s head.
 
Fragments of brick shattered around Tayte and he flinched away.
 
He knew the best thing to do now was to shut up but he had the man talking.
 
That was good.
 
Keep him busy.
 
Buy some time.

“So what about Harper and Walsh?” he said.
 
“You weren’t following orders then, were you?
 
Walsh had a young family, for Christ sakes.”

Cornell was suddenly right in Tayte’s face.
 
“Don’t expect any sympathy from me.
 
I enjoyed their suffering.
 
I enjoyed it almost as much as I’m going to enjoy watching you suffer.”
 
He stood up.
 
“And you’re wrong.
 
I’m still following orders, only these orders were written three centuries ago.”

He got up and blew Jean a sickly kiss as he passed her and went to the door.
 
He was almost outside when her BlackBerry rang, shrill and loud from inside her jacket.
 
It brought Cornell back at a sprint and he went through her pockets like a frenzied animal to find it.
 
When he did, he read the display, dropped the phone and crushed it beneath his boot.

“Who’s Daniel?”

Jean spat at him and he slapped the back of his hand across her face, sending her glasses flying.
 
The blow knocked her onto her side and when she got up again Tayte saw that there was blood on her lip.
 
Cornell raised his hand again and Tayte figured she didn’t owe her cheating husband enough to go a second round with this madman.

“He’s her ex-husband,” Tayte said.
 
He looked at Jean apologetically but he couldn’t see that it mattered.
 
What mattered was that they did have a phone and now they didn’t.

Cornell lowered his hand.
 
“That’s all I wanted to know,” he said, speaking softly to Jean.
 
He retrieved her glasses, straightened one of the arms where it had bent and slid them back onto her face.
 
“I don’t want you to miss anything.”

He searched them both then and tossed what he found across the room: Jean’s motorbike keys and disc lock, a lipstick and a small hairbrush, Tayte’s wallet, notebook and a few Hershey’s miniatures.
 
When he was satisfied he went outside, closing the door behind him.

“Sorry,” Tayte said, “but I don’t think we should make this any worse than it already is.
 
If we give him what he wants maybe it’ll give us some time.”

“Time for what?”

“For the police to get here.
 
Fable must have worked out what’s happened by now.
 
He’ll realise who Cornell is and find out where he works.
 
And that will lead him here.”

“You really believe that?”

Tayte wasn’t sure he did and the doubt Jean had put in his mind made him struggle with his cable-ties all the more now that Cornell was outside.
 
He wrestled with them for a full minute, trying in vain to snap them from the pipework.
 
Then he tried to force the pipe loose until his arms ached and his wrists began to sting.

Jean stopped him.
 
“Quiet.”

Tayte heard a diesel engine start up: the taxi that had brought them there.
 
It grew louder, like it was getting closer.
 
It passed around the back of the boiler house until Tayte could clearly hear it through the high windows.
 
Then it stopped.
 
A minute later he heard the main gate clatter shut and he figured Cornell had brought the taxi into the compound to conceal it.
 
Then he’d locked up again.
 
Tayte wondered which side of the gate he was on and it didn’t take long to find out.

When Cornell came back he passed them without speaking.
 
He crossed the room and returned with a wooden crate and a folding metal chair, which he set down a few feet in front of them.
 
He took off his jacket and put it over the back of the chair, revealing his shoulder holster and gun against the white of his shirt.

“I have something to show you,” he said, and he walked away again, returning with a black leather holdall.
 
From it he produced a leather roll case, which he placed on top of the crate.

“This once belonged to a physician I know you’ve heard of - Dr Bartholomew Hutton.”
 
He rolled the case open and the surgical instruments gleamed in the firelight.
 
“More recently it belonged to a woman called Sarah Groves.
 
I expect you’ve heard of her, too.”

Tayte nodded.
 
“She was murdered in Sherwood Forest twenty years ago.
 
Did you steal it before or after you cut her head off?”

That seemed to amuse Cornell.
 
He gave a wry half-smile.
 
“Actually, my dad left it to me.”

“Your father?” Tayte said, considering the ramifications.

“He left me this set of mathematical instruments, too.”
 
He produced an oak box from the holdall and opened it for Tayte and Jean to see.
 
“I got a similar set from Julian Davenport a few months ago.”
 
He rummaged inside the holdall again.
 
“Here it is.
 
Both sets once belonged to a man of the cloth called Charles Naismith.
 
He gave one to each of his twin sons.”

Jean scoffed.
 
“And I suppose your father took that other set when he murdered Douglas Jones?”

“They were weak.
 
All of them.
 
When it came down to it they lacked the conviction to do what was required of them.
 
My dad was the only one.
 
They gave him no choice.”

“So now you’re finishing what your father began?” Tayte said.

“It became mine to finish.”

“What did?”

Cornell gave no reply.
 
He opened the holdall again and the sight of that novelty Prince Charles facemask as he took it out and set it to one side, brought the sickening tableau of Marcus Brown’s murder back to vivid life.
 
But Tayte was given little time to dwell on it as Cornell produced what was clearly another heirloom, the polished brass glowing in his hands as he lifted it up.

“This is an altazimuth theodolite,” Cornell said, offering it up.
 
“It’s used for surveying.”

Tayte knew what a theodolite was.
 
“Who did you kill for that?”

Cornell stopped admiring the craftsmanship and stared at Tayte.
 
“No one,” he said.
 
“This one’s all mine.
 
It belonged to my ancestor, Sir Stephen Henley.”
 
He paused.
 
“But I did kill Alexander Walsh for this microscope,” he added as he brought it out.

“What about Peter Harper?” Tayte asked.
 
“What did you get from him?
 
Why did you bring him here?”

“The final piece of the puzzle,” Cornell said.
 
He put the microscope down and this time he lifted an ebony and brass sextant from the holdall.
 
He brought it closer to Tayte.
 
“Harper thought he was being clever,” he added.
 
“Thought he could scratch the markings off and that would be that.”
 
He showed Tayte the scratch marks to prove it.
 
“But I think the last laugh’s definitely on him, don’t you?”

Tayte’s eyes followed the sextant as Cornell moved away again and set it down on the box with the rest.
 
There were six heirlooms in all and Tayte now understood that it wasn’t the objects themselves that were important to Cornell but the markings on them.

Parts of a puzzle...

He was eager to study the instruments but he didn’t think there was much chance of that now.
 
Then Cornell said something that confirmed his thoughts.

“Too bad I have to burn them.”

Tayte drew a deep breath.
 
“But they must be valuable.”

Cornell looked surprised.
 
“Sell them?”
 
He shook his head.
 
“I suppose I look stupid to you, do I?”
 
He picked up the roll case and brought it to Tayte’s side.
 
He shouted in Tayte’s ear, “Stupid Cornell!
 
Is that it?”
 
He took out a scalpel and showed it to Tayte: bone handle, gleaming white metal.

“Look, what do you want from us?” Tayte asked.

Cornell fixed on him with emotionless eyes - dead eyes.
 
“Nothing,” he said.
 
“And everything.
 
For the trouble you’ve caused me.
 
You forced me to take chances I shouldn’t have.
 
You got in the way and now we’re going to have to deal with that, aren’t we?”

Tayte couldn’t take his eyes off that scalpel.
 
He couldn’t help but say what he was thinking.

“What are you planning to do?”

Cornell showed him.

The man moved suddenly.
 
He grabbed a bunch of Tayte’s hair and yanked his head back, bringing the scalpel close to Tayte’s face, hovering the shimmering steel barely half a centimetre from his right eyeball.

“Believe me,” he said.
 
“You wouldn’t be so keen to find out if you knew.”

Trenton McAlister’s office reeked of expensive cigars and fine Scotch.
 
With him were five notable figures - distinguished gentlemen in tailored suits whose backgrounds included both current and former MPs and members of the House of Lords.
 
They represented an essential and powerful network of republican support that was as useful to McAlister as the considerable sums of money they had each contributed to the cause.
 
The Scotch and cigars had been brought out merely to pacify.
 
McAlister’s associates were not happy people.

“What the hell kind of complication?” one of the men said.
 
He was a balding, older man in charcoal pinstripes whose words were preceded by a dense puff of smoke.

“I know only what I’ve told you, Brian,” McAlister said.
 
“That the circumstances surrounding the procurement of our ‘trump card’ for the coming campaign have become a tad more, shall we say, involved.”

“Are you screwing with us, Trent?”

McAlister turned to a man who was perched on the corner of his desk.
 
“On the contrary, Michael.
 
In fact, it could very well work to our advantage.

“How do you mean?”

“Haste, Michael.
 
I mean that this little complication has merely facilitated the need for speed as it were.”

“Did he give you a timescale?”

“Perhaps sooner than I’d hoped,” McAlister said, thinking that the next call from his contact couldn’t come soon enough.
 
The people in his office had high expectations.
 
They were paying for results out of their own pockets.
 
He knew that to let them down now after building them up so high would be to his utter ruin.
 
His career, perhaps even his life, depended on a positive outcome.
 
He smiled as if to show that he wasn’t worried in the least.

“Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place,” another man said.
 
“That sounds like a real reason to have a drink.”

McAlister raised his glass, thinking that he’d turned the situation around rather well.
 
“To the campaign,” he said.

He stepped back and watched his associates drink and smoke and talk amongst themselves.
 
His stomach was in knots and he knew his anxiety would remain with him until his anonymous contact called again.
 
The man held all the cards.
 
And yet if the things he had spoken of were true - if they could be substantiated - the scandal he would unleash would surely turn the nation to their cause.