Assassins

by Ray Timms

  Incensed by the Scot’s audacious attack on their monarch, COBRA agreed on a series of punitive measures designed to punish the Scots for the attack and for having the audacity to leave the UK. A blockade of Scottish seaports would disrupt their fishing industry. In addition to this, tariffs were to be imposed on all imports to the UK. The UK will forthwith cancel all grants and loans and all current and impending government contracts were to be cancelled. Then, should these not work a number of other sanctions would be put in place.

  Sir Roger, having got these measures agreed, said.

  ‘Whilst these sanctions will undoubtedly hurt the Scottish economy I firmly believe this situation cannot possibly be contained until we have dealt with this usurper king.’

  When the meeting had finished, walking back to his office, Sir Roger rolled his eyes heavenwards and said. ‘Thank you God.’

  *

  Ten past four that afternoon, alone in his apartment library, Gavin looked up from his book when he heard the sound of approaching footsteps.

  ‘What’s happened Cruid?’ Gavin said laying the book aside. The man looked grey with worry.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some rather shocking news. Earlier today two tanks that were crewed by Scottish troops mounted an assault on Balmoral Castle and in that attack a shell went through the roof of Balmoral Castle. Fortunately, Her Majesty and the Duke, who were in residence at the time, were unharmed.’

  ‘Oh my word! Are you serious?’ Gavin said alarmed. ‘That is dreadful. And you say it was the Scots who did this? That can’t be right. The Scots love the Queen. You must have got that wrong Cruid?’

  ‘I’m afraid there can be no doubt who did it. The Castle staff recognised the perpetrators as local people who had formed some sort of local militia.’

  ‘And you say the shell came from a tank?’ Gavin said. ‘But I thought we didn’t have any weapons.’

  ‘The Houseman at Balmoral Castle thinks the tanks were very old World War Two tanks abandoned by the British army.’

  ‘Ok, say it was the Scots who did it, which makes no sense at all. They would have been acting on someone’s orders? I want know who sanctioned it.’

  Cruid was thinking that Mary was behind it but he wasn’t prepared to say that.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Following his rather low-key, slightly disappointing Coronation, King Robert IV, was rather hoping that he could now roll up his sleeves, metaphorically speaking, and get stuck in and help his newly adopted country withstand the punitive sanctions imposed by Westminster that was putting tens of thousands out of work. When he reminded Mary Dewar that he was the Head of Parking Enforcement in Marbury and was in charge of a staff of almost a hundred people and that she should make use of his experience, she had him go plant a few trees and open a few garden fetes.

  After a few weeks of this and growing impatient he demanded that he be given something useful to do.

  Upon hearing this Mary Dewar smiled. ‘He is playing right into our hands Cruid. Time to put our plan into action. Starting right away, get him signing off bills, overload him with them.’

  ‘Oh ok,’ Gavin said to Cruid who had just dumped a stack of folders on his desk. ‘So this is what you mean by Royal Assent eh? And all I have to do is sign them off? Ok, show me where I need to sign.’

  Cruid opened up one of the Parliamentary Bills and tapping his curved fingernail on the dotted line next to the wax seal he said. ‘You sign just here.’

  Flicking through the pages Gavin said. ‘What exactly is this law that I am supposed to sanction? I don’t understand a word of this legal mumbo-jumbo.’

  ‘Quite,’ Cruid said about to leave Gavin with it. ‘Me neither but the legal people do. All you need do is sign it.’

  ‘Leave them with me Cruid,’ Gavin said going to the first page of the topmost folder. ‘I expect I shall soon learn how to translate them.’

  Cruid paused at the door. ‘If I were you I wouldn’t bother reading them through. I’m sure the Queen doesn’t.’

  ‘Ah but she has any number of advisers to help her and all I have is you.’ Gavin said, pointing his pen at the Minister.

  Stung by this and with his hand on the door handle Cruid said. ‘As I said I wouldn’t bother reading them. You’ll spend all day at it and still not understand a word of it.’

  ‘I can’t do that Cruid,’ Gavin called out as the door closed. ‘I shall have to read them.’

  Out in the corridor, Cruid shook his head and muttered. ‘Shit!’

  After a week of signing off the Parliamentary Bills Gavin was starting to think that Cruid was right, they made no sense to him. He was now frustrated at the apparent lack of urgency and the ineptitude of Mary Dewar who should be in Scotland working hard to save the Scottish economy rather than spend much of her time in Brussels trying to convince the EU Commissioners to let Scotland join them via a back-door deal.

  Frustrated that the Bills were making no sense at all, he began signing them off willy-nilly.

  When Cruid relayed this to Mary Dewar she rubbed her hands. ‘Time to set the trap.’ She said gleefully. ‘Do you have the Bill prepared?’

  ‘This is it.’ Cruid said laying on her desk another unremarkable looking folder. ‘Pages of waffle and then buried at the back is the clause that will end the need for Royal Assent.’ Cruid looked relieved. Mary looked delighted.

  ‘Give it to him today and place it at the bottom of a pile of other pointless ones. By tonight he will have signed his own death warrant.’

  At his desk, alone in his study, Gavin stared hard at the pile of bills that Cruid had just dropped in. Cruid had left with hardly a word. He gave Gavin a: “Good morning” and a “Goodbye,” and that were all! That was unusual. Gavin counted the spines of the folders. There were twenty-four in all, about the average. Taking the top one he flicked to the back page and added his signature alongside his title: King Robert IV Of Scotland. He needed to remind himself that this was important Royal Assent stuff that only a monarch had the authority to do.

  When he got to the last folder, having heard enough of the voice in his head telling him, read it, you are getting very sloppy… and lazy. One page at a time he started reading it. ‘Waffle’, he decided. ‘Thank God it’s the last one.’

  Fiona was watching TV when her husband hurried into the lounge carrying one of the brown folders that she always leaves him to deal with, he’s good at that sort of thing. ‘What wrong honey?’ She said seeing the look on his face.

  ‘Take a look at this,’ Gavin said sitting down beside her on the sofa and hitting the off button on the TV remote. Gavin pointed out the relevant paragraph. He trusted Fiona’s sharp mind.

  She read it twice. She looked up at Gavin, her eyes wide.

  ‘Is this saying what I think it does?’

  Gavin nodded. ‘Cruid and Mary Dewar have been planning this all along. They kept feeding me with these until I got bored of reading them and then slipped this one in at the bottom of the pile.’

  ‘What would have happened if you had signed it?’ Fiona said.

  ‘I would have annulled the law that required all Parliamentary Bills to have Royal Assent and as a consequence Scotland would no longer need a king.’

  Fiona felt her blood chill. ‘The rats!’

  ‘Exactly, but luckily they didn’t get away with it.’

  ‘What are you going to do now Gav. It’s clear they got us up here under false pretences. They only ever wanted a king to kill off the Royal Assent clause. I feel gutted and bloody angry actually.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘We could just pack up and go home and leave them in a mess and that would serve them right.’

  ‘Yes we could, if that’s what you really want, but I am thinking about the Scottish people who have taken us to their hearts. Having fought for their Independence they don’t deserve this. I really don’t think that I can abandon the Scottish people at this time. Sir Roger Bottomley announced yesterday that he was imposing further san
ctions against us. With millions now out of work and thousands made homeless by the heartless actions of the banks, how could I leave.’

  ‘But if we stay, I don’t see what you can do to help. You are a King but you don’t have any real power. We have to face the facts Gav; you are a king in name only.’

  ‘I know that but I want to fight back Fi. Will you support me?’

  Fiona pulled her husband into a hug and kissed him firmly on the lips. ‘You know I will Gav. I love your courage but we must be careful. I don’t trust Mary Dewar or Cruid.’

  ‘Then we will stay and see this through.’ Gavin said smiling. ‘And if at any time you decide that this isn’t working for you and you want to go back to Marbury, you only need say.’

  Fiona gave Gavin a high-five. ‘Ok. That’s a deal.’

  Gavin nodded, His face became grave. ‘Fi, we are going to need a plan and we shall need allies. I want you to do me a favour.’

  ‘Of course,’ Fiona said quite excited now. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Do you get a sense that both, Penny and Henry, don’t care much for Cruid and Mary Dewar? I think they are unhappy at the way the pair of them carry on.’

  ‘Yeah, I do actually. I look at Henry whenever Mary Dewar’s name comes up and he looks as if he is growling.’

  ‘If we had them both on our side, I would feel a lot happier.’

  ‘So, you want me to come right out and ask them?’

  ‘Start with Penny,’ Gavin said. ‘Maybe take her out shopping, do some girlie stuff to get her talking. Sound her out. Find out her views. And then casually ask her about Henry’s loyalties.’

  *

  The next day when Cruid arrived at the Palace apartment to collect the pile of bills that he’d left for him to sign, Gavin sensed there was an air of frostiness in his manner. Seeing as Cruid was expecting to collect the one bill that would end the monarchy, his demeanour was not so surprising. The Minister seemed anxious to get away.

  ‘All done then?’ Cruid said nodding at the neat stack of uniform brown folders on Gavin’s desk. ‘All signed off?’

  ‘Uh uh.’ Gavin said keeping his arms folded.

  ‘I’ll just get them out of your way then shall I?’ Cruid gathered the pile up in his arms. ‘I imagine you must be bored signing these off? I know I would.’ Cruid made a sound that could have been a laugh. ‘All this legal, stuff, frankly, leaves me cold. Still, it has to be done and I am sure the people of Scotland appreciate your valuable contributions.’ Cruid headed over to the door. ‘Well, I had better dash off. I have a lot on today. I’ll get these over to Mary.’ Cruid dipped his head. ‘Why don’t you take a day off? You and Fiona should do some sightseeing. I don’t think you both get out enough.’

  ‘See you around Cruid.’ Gavin said, waving the Minister away.

  Outside in the corridor Cruid reflected on the way Gavin had said that. It was as if he knew something!

  After leaving the Palace, Cruid went straight over to Mary’s office. When he dropped the pile of government bills on Mary’s desk he was actually grinning.

  ‘It worked then?’ Mary said getting up off her chair and looking down on the heap of identical folders.

  ‘He handed them over with hardly a word.’ Cruid said, looking gleeful. ‘We did it Mary. We can now get rid of the King and we can now sign off our own laws.’

  ‘Which one is it?’ Mary said spreading the folders out on her desk.

  ‘It’s this one,’ Cruid said pointing out one from the heap of anonymous looking brown folders. ‘See, I put a spot of red ink on the top corner.’

  ‘Brilliant Cruid,’ Mary said, snatching it up. ‘Let’s see where he signed it.’ Mary opened the folder, licked her finger and then flicked through the pages till she got to the page the King had to sign.

  When he saw Dewar’s face go dark with rage the smile fell from Cruid’s lips.

  ‘What’s up Mary?’ Cruid had to crane his long neck to see where Mary was stabbing her finger. ‘Oh, no!’ Cruid groaned. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  Mary thrust the papers into Cruid’s chest. ‘See what he did? He wrote: ‘Good try folks. I am not leaving.”

  Mary straightened up and glared Cruid. ‘He’s on to us.’

  Cruid nodded. ‘I don’t understand it. For weeks now, just as we planned, he has been signing them off without checking them. Now that he knows what we were up to he is never going to sign that bill and he is not going to abdicate. So what ideas you got now? ‘

  ‘Ok, so that didn’t work. We don’t panic. Now we go to plan B.’

  ‘Do we have a plan B?

  ‘I do, but you won’t like it.’

  Gavin, his head full of conspiracy theories, was pacing his office. Now that he thinks about it, the way Mary Dewar has been acting towards him, hardly able to speak to him, it all fits. She had never wanted a monarch. She had Cruid track him down only because without his signature on her Parliamentary Bills they would be useless. Not only had she fooled him, she had also fooled her own party and the Scottish people. For a moment he wonders if he should go public with what he knows. Then he thinks, what exactly do I know? I know that Dewar tried to get me to sign a bill… then isn’t that what I do? How does that prove anything? On reflection, other than bide his time, play his cards close to his chest, there isn’t a lot he can do. He then thinks, there is one thing I can do. It won’t make much difference but it will make me feel a little better.

  Gavin crossed the road in front of the Queen’s Gallery with its huge oak doors and arched stonework picked out in gold, and entered the Scottish Parliament Building by way of the public entrance. Following the hype of his Coronation, admittedly, not the grand affair, he’d been expecting, he was now getting recognised when he went out and about. The armed policeman just inside the entrance nodded in recognition. Gavin smiled and nodded back. Ok, so he doesn’t need a security pass to get inside the building. To get into the staff areas he was going to need a pas and he couldn’t see Mary Dewar permitting that. It must have been his lucky day because as he crossed the coolly lit entrance lobby with its curved polished concrete celling embossed with the cross of St David, a young female tour guide came running over.

  ‘Your Majesty, gosh!’ She said, her smile beaming. ‘Can I help you?’

  Marie, the name on her blouse badge, was from Idaho. She was studying European History at Edinburgh University.

  ‘Thank you Marie,’ Gavin said smiling. ‘I do believe you can. You see without a security pass I’m not able to get up inside the building, and to be truthful I haven’t had time to arrange one. Would you be good enough to get me one?’

  ‘Oh, wow. No problem Your Majesty. You just come right on through to the back office and I will take a quick photo of you and then get it done. It’s that simple.’

  Five minutes later, after chatting amiably to the back office staff, Gavin left with his security pass attached to a special lanyard with the royal yellow lion embroidered on it.

  It was a Tuesday, which meant Parliament was in recess. The MSP’s would all be back in their constituencies. The only people about were a handful of tourists, a couple of tour guides, the security people and the folk who worked in the café and the shops. When Gavin tried out his new pass in the lift. It worked!

  When he was told the First Minister and the Minister for Internal Affairs was not expected in today, for now, Gavin was satisfied that he could now make his way around the Parliament Building.

  Gavin left via a staff exit that took him out onto Cannongate. Turning left he carried on past Cannongate Kirk, the church where the Queen and her family worshipped on their Edinburgh visits. To keep people from recognising him he kept the peak of his baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes.

  A couple of hundred yards on, he crossed the junction with Jeffrey Street. On his right was St Mary’s Street. This part of town was always packed with tourists. Up ahead he could see the towering heights of Edinburgh Castle. When he reached North Bridge where
it crossed the High Street, the tourists and the street buskers were clogging up the pavements. A Japanese tourist’s selfie-stick almost took his eye out. Wanting to get away from the crowds he ducked into a side alley and stopped just inside the entrance. What had attracted his attention was the faded sign painted in white on the brickwork: Old Fishmarket Close.

  The narrow sloping foot-worn passage was deep in shadows. His skin under his clothes feels damp. He looks up at the towering tenement buildings on either side of him. They feel as if they were about to fall in on him. He could imagine the cold stones beneath his feet had never have seen daylight in five hundred years. His guidebook told him, in Tudor times, deep beneath his feet and below the bustling shops, families of twenty or more people along with their cattle and fowl would lived in stinking dark hovels. He shuddered recalling how the Black Plague carried on the fleas of rats had decimated the population of Scotland. In part, it was the plague that drove the Scottish King, James the First of Scotland from Holyrood Palace.

  On 5th April 1603, following the death of Queen Elizabeth King James became King James VI of England. He then moved the Royal Court down to London promising the Scottish people that he would return every three years, a promise he never he kept. Despite the dereliction of these ancient buildings it was still a wonder to Gavin how the property developers hadn’t moved into the area. He hoped they never would.