The Last Queen of England (37 page)

“Coffee shop drugs deal?” Jean said.

“Who knows?”

“How did he know where to find us?
 
We didn’t tell him we were going to St Paul’s.”

“The BlackBerry,” Tayte said.
 
“He took it out of his pocket and showed her the pieces.
 
“I took the battery out so the Security Service wouldn’t be able to find us again the same way.
 
I’m sure they’ll be trying so we don’t dare use it for now.”

“I don’t think it’s going to take them long to find us again anyway.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, unless by some unlikely chance they weren’t listening to a word we said back there, they know exactly where we intend to go.”

Tayte sank his head into his hands.
 
“Of course,” he said.
 
“The St Paul’s churches.”
 
He sat up again.
 
“So, we’ll have to be careful, that’s all.”

Jean eyed him doubtfully.
 
“Are you kidding me?
 
Look at you.
 
You’re an outsize American with a standout foreign accent, wearing a bright, if a little smudged, tan suit.
 
What chance have we got?”

“So we’ll have to be
extra
careful,” Tayte said.
 
“Look, we don’t exactly have time to work on our disguises, do we?
 
This is all we’ve got.
 
Besides, they don’t know what order we plan to visit the churches in.”
 

“They’ll cover all of them.”

“Probably,” Tayte conceded, “but we’ve got a head start.
 
They won’t be out of that fix in any kind of a hurry.”

“Why are we going to Marylebone?
 
The church in Covent Garden’s nearest.”

“I know, but it’s too predictable.
 
Better if we start further afield.
 
They might not expect that, and I want to avoid public transportation if we can.
 
Didn’t Fable say this was the most surveilled nation in the world?”

“My bike?” Jean said.

Tayte nodded.
 
“It’s not foolproof.
 
They’ll be looking for the registration when they check the hotel and realise it’s gone but we’ll get around quicker.
 
Maybe we can stay ahead of them.
 
Where are Hammersmith and Shadwell located?”

“Hammersmith’s in the west - four or five miles from Marylebone.
 
Shadwell’s east.
 
It’s a little further out but there’s not much in it.”

“I wish my laptop still worked,” Tayte said, eyeing the bullet holes in his briefcase.
 
“I could have accessed the parish register indexes.
 
We might have been able to pinpoint the right church from that.”

“What about The National Archives?
 
Couldn’t we access the registers from there?”

“We could,” Tayte said, thinking about it.
 
“But it’s out of our way and we’d need to visit the church to confirm things anyway.
 
More often than not the registers only give names and dates.”
 
He paused.
 
“There are only three churches.
 
Let’s start with Hammersmith.
 
We’ll work our way west to east across London.”

The taxi continued northwest to Marylebone.
 
Jean stared out the window most of the way, leaving Tayte with his thoughts as she seemed to wrap herself in her own.
 
They hadn’t been able to talk about her son since leaving the hotel earlier and Tayte imagined she was thinking about him now.
 
When she spoke again she confirmed it.

“Did you tell Fable about Elliot?
 
About the note?”

“No, I didn’t.”

Jean fidgeted with her hands.
 
“If we don’t make it,” she said, pausing.
 
She looked tearful just thinking about what might happen to her son if they didn’t.

“I know,” Tayte said.
 
He placed a hand over hers to steady them.

“Did Fable say anything about Joseph Cornell?
 
I don’t suppose they’ve found him yet?”

Tayte shook his head.
 
“He never came up.”

“He must know where Elliot is.”

Tayte didn’t reply straightaway.
 
A moment later he said, “Look, all the while the police are searching, there’s hope, right?
 
They won’t stop looking - not for Joseph Cornell or your son.
 
I know it’s hard but let’s stay focused.
 
When we find what we’re looking for at least we’ll have something to bargain with.”
 
He squeezed her hands.
 
“Elliot’s going to be fine.”

Jean forced a smile.
 
She gave a resolute nod.
 
“Okay,” she said.
 
“But I hope to God you’re right.”

Tayte hoped he was, too.
 
He turned away and stared out the window, taking nothing in.
 
All of London could have sped past him for all he knew or cared.
 
He was oblivious to it.
 
The real challenge had now begun.
 
How to save Elliot was foremost in his mind, but in doing so, how could he hope to prevail against whoever had kidnapped him?
 
He wanted no part in any implied threat to Britain’s national security either, and he supposed whoever was offering the exchange for Elliot might also have been behind Marcus Brown’s murder.
 
How then could he simply hand everything over?
 
The answer was simple: he couldn’t.
 
But where did that leave Elliot?

Tayte’s head began to spin, like the Ouroboros was inside him, chasing the questions round and round, each one coming back to itself in an endless, unanswerable loop.
 
When he factored in the latest information Fable had imparted - that the government were bent on preventing anything from getting out - he couldn’t see how any of them would be allowed to just walk away from this.

He had to find a way to change that.

Chapter Twenty-Three

S
t Paul’s Church in Hammersmith was located in the centre of town to the north of the River Thames.
 
It was besieged by fast dual carriageways and the busy Hammersmith flyover, and the swarming traffic filled the air with a constant drone.
 
Tayte and Jean arrived little more than forty minutes after parting company with Security Service officers Jackson and Stubbs, and Tayte supposed that was plenty of time for them to confirm to the police who they were.
 
They would be free men again by now and Tayte had no doubt that they were hungry to reacquire them.
 
As Jean revved the bike up onto the pavement by the low trees that lined the church grounds, Tayte felt his heart race just knowing that they had now become the hunted.

“Let’s get this done with as soon as we can,” he said.
 
“We could have company any minute.”

They followed the path towards the early-English, Gothic-style church and Tayte wondered if they already had the kind of company he was talking about, perhaps waiting for them around the corner or inside the building.
 
He had to remind himself that neither he nor Jean knew what to look out for.
 
These people were just like everyone else: regular clothes, ordinary cars.
 
He’d recognise Jackson and Stubbs but he didn’t expect to see them so soon.

He scanned the area.
 
It wasn’t busy, which came as a welcome change to Central London, although he thought the whine of the traffic up on the flyover spoiled an otherwise pleasant environment.
 
Beyond a mighty oak tree that stood adjacent to the church’s impressive tower, Tayte saw a young couple holding hands as they walked the path beside the lawn.
 
There was an elderly woman by the oak, talking to a mother who had a child in a pushchair.
 
No cause for concern
.
 
Tayte wanted to see the churchyard first so they kept to the path.

“It doesn’t look promising,” he said, noting that the grounds were small and unremarkable: a strip of mown grass here and a barely larger triangle of grass further down.
 
“It all looks pretty new.”

“Even the trees,” Jean said.
 
“Apart from that oak.”

Given how long there had been a church on the site, Tayte had hoped to find a graveyard of considerable age, replete with crooked, lichen-stained headstones.
 
But this was a memorial garden bereft of any planted shrub or flower.
 
They continued around the path and Tayte saw that several of the paving slabs were actually headstones laid horizontal.
 
The dates he saw were mid to late nineteenth century and of no interest.

“This whole area’s recently been redeveloped,” he said.
 
He pointed to the church wall ahead.
 
“Look there.
 
The headstones have been moved.”

The wall was lined with grey headstones, secured to the wall in close proximity to one another.
 
Further inspection revealed similar dates that were too late to be of any value to their investigation.
 
All were clearly inscribed and easy to read.
 
They reached the end of the wall and stopped.

“I suspect the less legible stones were destroyed,” Tayte said, gazing around and seeing nothing of relevance.
 
He headed back to the church.
 
“Let’s see what we can find inside.”

The church appeared considerably larger on the inside than Tayte had expected, and that lifted his hopes.
 
The walls were festooned with memorial plaques and he concluded that the grounds had indeed diminished over the years because of the extensive infrastructure of public roads in the vicinity.
 
The details from the headstones that had not survived were now either consigned to the parish records or had found their way into the church as plaques on the walls.

There was no service today.
 
As they moved further in, beneath a high vaulted ceiling, Tayte’s eyes became alert for trouble again.
 
He saw the backs of several heads seated in the pews, facing the altar.
 
They were exclusively elderly people.
 
Retired people, he supposed.
 
Towards the altar, someone who clearly worked there was polishing brass.

So far so good
.

Tayte stopped when his eyes fell on a memorial at his feet.
 
“This is more like it,” he said.
 
“Timothy Walker, 1788.”

They moved on, scanning the walkway until they found another.
 

“Thomas Bowden.
 
1761,” Jean said.
 
“Apothecary.”

The date was still over sixty years too late but Tayte felt they were getting closer.
 
When they came to a monument for Sir Nicholas Crisp, who died in 1665, he knew there was a good chance that a memorial covering one of the dates they were looking for might be there.
 
They moved into the south aisle where they saw several plaques dating from the eighteenth century but all were decades too late.

“We should split up,” Jean said.

Tayte looked around.
 
There were so many memorials.
 
He knew that even if they did, it would take too long to check every inscription and he didn’t want to risk missing anything

“I don’t think we have the time.”

He glanced at the entrance, checking for trouble.
 
As he looked away again his eyes were drawn to a man in black, wearing a clergyman’s dog collar.
 
He was a young man with dark hair and a six o’clock shadow that might have been designer stubble.
 
As he came towards them along the nave, Tayte stepped out to meet him.

“Excuse me.”

The clergyman paused and smiled and Tayte introduced himself and told him how he made his living, saying nothing of the real reason they were there.
 
They quickly found out that the clergyman was called the Reverend Johnson and he was interested to hear that Tayte was a genealogist.

“I’m a bit of an amateur myself,” the Reverend said.

Tayte didn’t want to deviate from their objective just now.
 
“That’s great,” he said.
 
“Look, I was wondering if you keep any parish records here?
 
I’m interested in the late seventeenth century?”

“Copies,” the Reverend said, hesitating.
 
“But they’re only for church use.
 
The originals are held at the Archives and Local History Centre on Talgarth Road.
 
You can view them there but they’re closed on Wednesdays and Fridays.
 
You could try tomorrow.”