“It’s been a distracting twenty-four hours,” Tayte said, trying to pacify her with what he thought was a reasonable defence.
“That’s no excuse.”
It fell quiet as the car reversed out of the parking bay. Tayte wanted to tell Jean not to worry, but he decided that telling a concerned mother not to worry about her child was asking for the same kind of thump she’d just given that seat. He turned to face her.
“We don’t know if anything’s happened,” he said. “You told me last night that he often stayed with friends. Why don’t you call them?”
Jean took a few deep breaths. She nodded to herself. “Yes, I told Daniel I would.”
She reached for her phone again and at that point Hampshire turned and put his face in the gap between the headrests.
“Let’s have his details and a description, Ms Summer. I’ll call it in anyway.”
Hampshire readied his pen, but as Jean began to give him her son’s description the windscreen exploded. Glass shattered into the car and everyone except Hues jumped in their seats. Hues just slumped forward over the wheel and the car began to swerve. A second later it slammed to a bone-jarring halt as it hit a parked car and set its alarm wailing.
“Stay in the car!” Hampshire ordered.
He got out, drawing a firearm from beneath his jacket as he went. Tayte didn’t know whether such an officer from what was fundamentally a civilian organisation was authorised to carry a gun but he was glad he did. Through the gaps where the windscreen had been Tayte saw a man striding confidently towards them, coming fast in tactical zigzag lines. He saw that novelty Prince Charles facemask again and the gun in the man’s hand as it levelled towards them.
“Who the hell is this guy?” Tayte said. “And how did he know we were here?”
“We’re following Marcus’s research, aren’t we?” Jean said. “He knows exactly where we’ll go. You said as much yourself last night.”
If we get it right, Tayte thought, concluding that they clearly were.
He heard two shots ring out, followed by the quick thump of the bullets as they hit the door Hampshire was using for cover. Then he heard return fire. Stay in the car, Hampshire had said. Tayte didn’t know what to do but he did know that playing sitting ducks wasn’t it.
Jean nudged him. “This side,” she said, shoving the door open, clearly thinking the same thing.
They crawled out. Keeping low. Another volley of shots was exchanged, buying them time. The glass in Hampshire’s door shattered and Tayte heard him on his radio, calling for backup. That was good. Help would come. The area would be crawling with police in a matter of minutes. Tayte followed Jean to the cover of the parked cars and they began to weave between them. Behind him, the firefight seemed to intensify, the sounds of the gunshots in constant reverb between the buildings to either side of them.
Then it all stopped.
Tayte listened for the all clear from Hampshire but it never came. He wanted to look back - wanted to call out to make sure he was okay - but the fizz of a bullet as it zipped past his ear told him everything he needed to know.
“Go!” he urged, and they ran.
“This way!” Jean called. “The Park’s too open.”
They cleared the cars, heading north on the opposite side of the street. Common sense told Tayte they needed the crowds but where were they? The few people he could see were running with them and ahead of them - clearing the area. As they reached the intersection with Pall Mall and hurried across, Tayte was disappointed to find it no busier. The gunshots had taken care of that, clearing a line of fire between them and the gunman.
He chanced a look over his shoulder, still running after Jean, already panting hard and wishing he’d left his briefcase in the car. There was no sign of the man in the novelty face mask and while a part of Tayte was glad about that, it made him feel all the more uneasy.
They quickly arrived at another intersection, this time with Charles II Street where Waterloo Place met the bottom of Regent Street. Tayte didn’t have a clue where Jean was leading him but he figured she knew London better than he ever would. Further into Regent Street it began to get busier. He saw faces around him at last: people with no idea what had just happened.
“Did you hear that?” he heard someone say.
“Was that a bomb?” someone else said.
The pavement began to get busy, forcing their pace to an uncomfortable crawl. Then Jean came to a sudden stop. Someone bumped into her but she was so tense she barely moved. She was looking through all the people to the other side of the road.
“What is it?” Tayte said. I think we lost him but we need to keep moving.”
Jean slowly shook her head, her stare unwavering. “He’s there.”
“Where?”
“He’s looking right at me. He must have been running with us on the other side of the road.”
Tayte felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He crouched and followed her gaze but he couldn’t make out who she was looking at. There were too many people.
“Right there,” Jean insisted. “Dark hair, grey suit. No mask. He’s looking away now.”
Tayte counted no less than four grey-suited men. They all had dark hair. In the distance he heard the wail of sirens growing louder by the second. He turned back to Jean. “Are you sure?”
“Shit!” Jean said. “He’s crossing over.”
She grabbed Tayte’s arm and before he could look back to see for himself they were moving again, maintaining a determined march as Jean guided them closer to the string of shop facades on their left, putting a wall of people between them and their pursuer.
“Where are we headed?” Tayte asked.
“Piccadilly Circus. It’s after the next crossroads.”
Tayte had been to the Criterion Theatre before and he remembered a little about Piccadilly Circus. He tried to make out the Eros statue, where people always seemed to congregate like pigeons. There were plenty of roads leading off that busy junction. Maybe they could lose him there.
“There’s an Underground entrance,” Jean said, contradicting Tayte’s thoughts as they arrived at Jermyn Street and crossed with the crowd that had become an unwitting human shield around them.
“The subway?” Tayte said. He didn’t want to share such a confined space with a killer who had made it very clear that he wanted them dead. “Are you serious? What if he makes it too?”
“Trust me,” Jean said, and when they arrived at the steps that led down to the station they took them two at a time.
Tayte didn’t have a ticket. That fact was foremost in his mind by the time they reached the last step because he knew he didn’t have time to stop and buy one. The turnstiles were busy - three or four people at each. Jean headed straight for the luggage gate and they ducked beneath it, still running, heading for the escalators and the sign for the Bakerloo line.
“Hey!” someone shouted.
Jean flashed her Oyster card. “Sorry,” she called. “We’re in a hurry.”
They reached the escalator and Jean looked back as they began to descend.
“He’s coming through,” she said. “I’m sure he’s seen us.”
“He’s using a ticket?” Tayte said. He was incredulous. He imagined such a man would have leapt the barriers and come right at them, gun blazing.
“He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself,” Jean said. “Come on.”
She started down the left side of the escalator, which was clear of people not already walking or running down themselves. It was a long escalator and Tayte knew the gunman had to be right behind them, closing on them for all he knew. He wanted to look back but it took all his concentration not to trip over the steps as he tried to keep up with Jean, briefcase clutched to his chest.
When they reached the bottom Jean grabbed Tayte and led him into a white-tiled tunnel that was bright with overhead strip-lights. He saw maps and signs for train destinations. All were a blur as they ran through the people aga
inst a warm breeze that grew with the rumble of an approaching train. A second later they were on the northbound concourse just as a train arrived, clicking over the tracks, screeching as it slowed.
“We made it!” Tayte said.
He ran out to meet it but Jean grabbed him again and pulled him back, pinning him to the wall as people continued to pour onto the concourse behind them, all predictably heading for the train. Tayte saw plenty of grey suits go past, their backs to him and Jean as they went with the flow of the commuters heading home.
“There he is,” Jean whispered. “Keep low.”
Then they ran back out, following the signs to the streets above where Tayte filled his lungs with the cool city air. He pulled out his phone to call DI Fable and smiled to himself, just happy to be alive.
DI Jack Fable was in a control room at New Scotland Yard studying live CCTV feeds from the national surveillance network. A manhunt had begun. All available police units in the area had been called in and a perimeter was fast being established, locking down a quarter-mile radius around the scene of the shooting at Waterloo Place where two Security Service officers were confirmed dead. They had no idea where the passengers of the silver Audi were until Fable answered his phone.
“DI Fable.”
“Fable? It’s Jefferson Tayte. We’re at Piccadilly. We’ve been attacked.”
Tayte sounded out of breath. A little panicked.
“Try to remain calm, Mr Tayte. We know what happened.”
Fable had already seen footage of a silver Ford Mondeo blocking the road at Waterloo Place where the Audi had come under fire. He’d seen a masked man in a grey suit get out of the Mondeo and he’d seen the Audi veer and crash. The entire gunfight between Hampshire and the assailant had been caught on camera from two different angles, right up to the point where Hampshire went down and the masked gunman walked up and put another bullet in him for good measure.
“Are you safe?” Fable asked.
“We’re okay. We managed to give him the slip on the subway. I think he could have taken a train on the Bakerloo line, heading north.”
Fable cupped a hand over his phone and spoke to one of the surveillance team. “Put a call out,” he said. “SO19 to Piccadilly station. Cover all terminals on the Pic line and Bakerloo.”
He went back to Tayte. “Firearms officers are on their way to you,” he said. “Can you give me a description of the man?”
The surveillance team had been busy working on the continuity of the images between the camera handoff points. They had followed the gunman north towards Piccadilly Circus, losing him somewhere along Regent Street as the rush hour hit full flow. They had little by way of a description to go on. After a pause, Tayte came back on the line.
“I didn’t see him myself,” he said. “But Jean did. He’s about six feet tall. Medium build. Dark hair. She says she’s sorry but she can’t single anything else out about him. Just a regular looking guy, I guess.”
Great, Fable thought. A regular looking guy with dark hair, wearing a grey suit in London during the Monday evening rush hour.
Fable sighed, “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. There’s a department store opposite the Eros statue - Lillywhites. Go inside and wait there. I’ll have someone bring you in.”
“No,” Tayte said. “We’re not coming in. We’re getting a cab.”
Fable thought he heard the familiar chatter of an idling diesel engine in the background. “You’re not safe,” he said. “You need to come in.”
“We’re no good to you if we do,” Tayte said. “And we don’t need another escort. They draw too much attention and I don’t want anyone else’s death on my conscience.”
Christ, Fable thought. I need a cigarette.
He was about to suggest they at least meet up somewhere to share information. He had plenty to tell them about his investigation into the death of Douglas Jones twenty years ago and he thought they must have something for him by now. But what he heard at the other end of the line cleared all thoughts from his mind.
“Tayte!”
He heard gunshots. Two, in quick succession. The sound was unmistakable.
“Tayte!”
His phone clicked and fell silent. He heard static. Then the call went dead.
Frenchman Michel Levant was reclining on a Louis XIV chaise somewhere in southwest London, sipping chocolate from a delicate golden tulip cup. The sweetly rich drink, made in the old style of part cream, part bitter chocolate and sugar, was one of the many decadent pleasures he afforded himself. His thin lips pursed as he swallowed the warm liquid.
He was thinking about the American and Professor Jean Summer. He wondered how productive their day had been; what they had discovered on their predictable visit to The National Archives and on their telling visit to the Royal Society of London. He pondered these things at great length, but most of all he wanted to know who this American was and Michel Levant was not the kind of man who waited long for anything.
Levant was an avid collector of French antiques from the Baroque period. He admired the delicate craftsmanship and the opulent gilding that embodied the style. He often thought that his appreciation came not from the furniture itself but from his adulation for the man after whom it had been named. Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, took many mistresses and had a highly favourable opinion of himself. He was a man who knew what he wanted and he took it. At just five years of age, when called to his father’s bedside and asked his name, he told him that it was Louis XIV - to which his father replied, “I did not die yet, my son.” As far as Levant was concerned, the man who had reigned as King of France for seventy-two years was to be greatly admired. His portrait hung in every room.
Levant sat up sharply when the expected knock came at his study door. He swung his legs around and slipped his bare feet into a pair of blue velvet slippers that, like his silk gown, were emblazoned with the crest of his family coat of arms.
“Un moment,” he called.
Despite living in London much of the time he insisted that the language of his forebears be used exclusively within the walls and grounds of his far from humble abode. As far as his staff were concerned, to speak any other language in his presence was an offence that would earn their instant dismissal. He sauntered to the regal writing desk that dominated the room and set his chocolate cup down.
“Entrez!”
It was Françoise, of course. The beautiful Françoise, whom he had taken in several years ago and so delicately broken at the tender age of just fourteen. Françoise, his secret, whom he had named after the Sun King’s young and secret wife, Françoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon. She wore a flowing cornflower-blue dress with flat patent shoes and pure white ankle socks. How tantalising he thought she looked today as every day. She came to him and Levant slowly extended his hand, offering out the ring he always wore on his left index finger: a thick banded gold ring with black enamel detail. It was the size of a full sovereign and bore a likeness of Louis XIV, centred within a flaming sun.
Françoise bowed her head and kissed the ring. “Monsieur,” she said, smiling, always smiling for him. “Il y a quelqu’un pour vous.”
Levant knew that she had brought someone to see him as soon as she had knocked. Just as he knew who it was. He flicked his limp hand towards the door, the ring seeming to weigh it down. “Faites-le entrer,” he said, and she showed the man in.
His name was Cullen, although Levant never used his name and rarely saw him in person. He was a stocky Irishman who, to Levant’s chagrin, spoke no French. Instead, he grunted words that were hardly recognisable as English in such coarse tones that Levant could not bear to listen to him for more than a few minutes at a time. But, c’est la vie. Cullen was too good at his job to be bloody-minded about house rules.
Nonetheless, as the man lumbered across the room with his oafish gait and his eternally dour expression, Levant regarded his every movement with displeasure.
“For me?” he said, indicating the brown m
anila folder beneath Cullen’s arm.
Cullen nodded. He was about to speak when Levant rushed up to him and pinched the man’s lips together. If he had been anyone other than Michel Levant, he had no doubt that such an act would have proven fatal, but he was Michel Levant and he did not want the day tainted with Cullen’s crass vulgarity.
“Uh-uh-uh,” Levant said, smiling through his thin lips as he snatched the folder away and retreated to his desk.
From one of the drawers he produced a thick roll of banknotes. He tossed it to Cullen and tinkled an engraved glass bell, prompting Françoise to return.
“Au revoir,” he said, waving Cullen away. “Françoise will show you out.”
He studied her with hungry eyes as she re-entered the room and withdrew again, following the contours of her dress, lingering and longing. Then begrudgingly he turned his attention back to the manila folder, reminding himself that business had to come before pleasure. It was the dossier he’d been expecting. He opened it, wondering how that oaf, Cullen, managed to do it. On this occasion he hadn’t even been able to give him a name, saying only that the subject was an American genealogist and a close friend of the late Marcus Brown.
Ah, mais oui! Levant thought as he read Jefferson Tayte’s name and saw his image, which he supposed had been grabbed from the Internet. Levant thought that Cullen must have obtained the American’s name from the police after the interview statements were taken. He had contacts everywhere. Or perhaps it came from the list of attendees at the genealogy convention. It didn’t matter.
He read the report and discovered that Tayte lived in a rented apartment in Washington DC, where after college he had attended the University of the District of Columbia. He learnt that he’d been in foster care from infancy and was later adopted, and that his adoptive parents died in a plane crash when he was seventeen years old. He was unmarried, had no children and seemingly no other family connections, and he drove a 1955 Ford Thunderbird. Levant smiled to himself. Cullen had even provided bank and passport details along with his Social Security number.
The Last Queen of England: A Genealogical Crime Mystery #3 (Jefferson Tayte) Page 8