The Last Queen of England

by Steve Robinson

  “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.

  He thought about the people and tomorrow’s rally and he reminded himself that this was surely his last and best hope of seeing Britain as a democratic republic. That was all that mattered to him now and he didn’t care how it came about - whether by fair means or foul. Although, given the asking price and the covert way the deal for this information was going down, McAlister suspected the latter.

  Jefferson Tayte’s heart was pounding. He tried to swallow but he couldn’t. The scalpel hovering millimetres from his eye locked every muscle in his body.

  “Get away from him!” Jean yelled.

  To Tayte’s surprise and relief, Cornell obeyed.

  The man seemed to study Jean as he rose, giving her his full attention. “You’ll get your turn, bitch.” He went to her. “We’ve got all the time we need and I’m really looking forward to it.” He straddled her legs and sat on them, pinning them down. From his trouser pocket he produced a rag, which he stuffed into her mouth. “But I don’t want to hear another word from you until I say so. You got that?”

  He got up and put the roll case back onto the crate with the other heirlooms, setting the scalpel down beside it in clear, intimidating view. Then he went to the fire, which by now was blazing, making the room hot despite the broken windows. He threw another bag of coal onto the flames and with a length of iron he worked it into the white heat at the base.

  Tayte looked at Jean and then at the tormented figure of Peter Harper again. He thought about the recording Fable had played them - how Alexander Walsh had been beaten with a towel rail before Cornell killed him, and all while his wife and children listened in the next room. Robert Cornell was a sick man, no doubt about it. He wondered how he could spare Jean the ordeal he knew was coming if Fable couldn’t figure out where they were.

  Cornell came back to the chair and the collection of heirlooms. “Soon be hot enough,” he said. “I’ll get started on you two afterwards.” He laughed to himself. “And to think I’m getting paid for this.”

  He removed something from inside his jacket. He showed it to Tayte. It was a slip of folded paper: white on one side, blue and patterned on the other. On the clear side, Tayte read an unfamiliar name, saw several numbers and the word, ‘payroll’.

  “That’s right,” Cornell said. “Mark Jennings. Who the hell’s he?” He put the payslip away. “I thought I’d show you. I don’t want you to think the cavalry’s coming, because it’s not. I want you to know how hopeless your situation is, and I want to feel your despair before I get to work on you.”

  Tayte snorted. “That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?”

  Without warning, Cornell brought the flat of his hand hard up into Tayte’s face, sending the back of his head into the wall. Tayte tasted blood. He coughed and spat onto the dusty ground. Then he smiled defiantly at Cornell, blood in his teeth.

  “Tell me about the markings,” he said. “On the heirlooms. You’re going to kill me anyway. Don’t I have a right to know why?”

  “You don’t have any rights,” Cornell said. “Not in here. As far as you’re concerned this is Hell and I’m the Devil.”

  He went back to the fire and stirred it again.

  “Tell me about Quo Veritas,” Tayte persisted. “What did they stand for? Something to do with Queen Anne, right? Is this a royal heir hunt? Is that really it?”

  Cornell stopped stirring the fire. He took the iron out and inspected it before thrusting it back into the coals. Then he rose, turning suddenly. He grabbed the microscope and brought it close to Tayte’s face.

  “Is this what you want to see?”

  Beside Cornell’s finger at the base of the mi
croscope Tayte saw a line of digits. Numbers without meaning.

  “Binary numbers,” he said under his breath.

  Cornell put the microscope back and snatched up his forefather’s theodolite. “Here’s another. See?”

  He held the theodolite in front of Tayte long enough for him to see that there were four binary digits engraved on the brass. This time he noticed a single decimal number tagged to the end.

  “Do you want to know how the heirlooms survived?” Cornell said. “How they remained with their respective families for three hundred years?”

  Tayte nodded. That many years represented around ten generations.

  “It was very simple. Each descendant had an obligation to fulfil. All they had to do was have a child to leave their heirloom to. If they didn’t, their life was forfeit and there were five others whose duty it was to take it - to ensure the digits were passed on. You never leave Quo Veritas.”

  “So the society was run less out of loyalty to a cause than out of fear of death?”

  “The loyalty was there most of the time and between the two it was enough. Until his generation.” Cornell pointed at the bloodied figure in the corner of the room. “Twenty years ago, when the time came to act, every inner member was tested and all but one was found wanting.”

  “Your father?” Tayte said.

  Cornell nodded. “It became my family’s duty to do what had to be done - to gather the heirlooms and bring the digits together.” Cornell turned away. “But what can any of this mean to you?”

  It meant that with the heirlooms now gathered, the string of binary digits Cornell and his father had collected from their victims was complete, and that left Tayte wondering what next? What did Cornell believe had to be done? How did he mean to use the digits and to what end? A treasonable end, Tayte supposed. One that threatened Britain’s national security.

  “The digits mean nothing to you!” Cornell continued, aggravation in his tone, but he was wrong.

  “It’s an ahnentafel,” Tayte said.

  He recalled that as well as being keen on mathematics and heraldic studies the Reverend Charles Naismith was also a genealogist - by Royal Appointment for a time. In light of what else Tayte knew, he understood that this binary code could be nothing else. The decimal number at the end merely denoted the order in which that piece of the ahnentafel fitted in with the rest. And if Jean was right about Quo Veritas and their purpose, it was an ahnentafel that pointed to Queen Anne’s heir.

  But why?

  If such an heir existed and could be found, Tayte wondered what Cornell expected to do with them. What was his end game? Tayte didn’t know and right now he couldn’t think straight, partly because in light of their current situation it seemed academic to him now, but mostly because Cornell had started throwing the heirlooms into the fire. He was clearly destroying them not only to obliterate the digits they had carried all these years but because they were incriminating evidence against him - evidence he would have been foolish to keep or try to sell as he had earlier intimated. Tayte watched the penultimate piece fall into the flames where it burned and began to melt with the rest, thinking that Cornell must have recorded the digits elsewhere.

  “I take it you wrote all those numbers down first?” he said. It was stating the obvious but he wanted to know they had another chance to see them if they ever got out of that room alive.

  Cornell turned away from the fire, his face red from the heat. He tapped the side of his head.

  “You memorised them?” Tayte quickly did the maths: six heirlooms, four binary digits. “You memorised all twenty-four digits?”

  Cornell smiled but there was nothing pleasant about it. “I’ve had a long time to remember most of it. Zeros and ones. It’s not like there are many actual numbers to remember, is it?”

  He picked up the last of the heirlooms. It was the roll case of surgical instruments. Leaving the scalpel behind, he squatted between Tayte and Jean and slowly introduced the other pieces to them, leaving them to imagine how he might use them. Then he drew a deep breath and stood up again.

  “You know what? Sod it,” he said and he tossed the roll case into the fire. He pulled out his gun and came at Tayte like he was going to hit him with it but he paused instead and pressed it to Tayte’s forehead. “I think I’ll just shoot the pair of you instead. I’ve got important things to do.”

  Tayte swallowed hard and clenched his jaw. His head was shaking without awareness as Cornell twisted the muzzle of the gun into his skin. Tayte’s head was so far back against the wall now that he was staring at the ceiling. Beside him he heard Jean yell something indiscernible into her gag.

  “At least my life has purpose,” Cornell said. “Can you say the same thing about yours?”

  Tayte thought about that; anything to take his mind off that gun. What had he done with his life? He figured then that he’d wasted most of it feeling sorry for himself because he didn’t have the family he yearned for. Where was his real flesh and blood mother? His father? Did he have a brother or a sister somewhere? What about his family history?

  That was it.

  He’d spent most of his life looking for ghosts, and you can’t find ghosts, right?

  Wrong.

  His conviction couldn’t have been stronger. At times it had bordered on unhealthy obsession. They weren’t ghosts. He’d only ever called them that when he wanted an excuse to stop trying. He silently cursed Cornell for giving him cause to question himself. He began to push back against the muzzle of the gun. Defiant. His life had as much purpose as any life. Who did this arrogant son-of-a-bitch think he was to presume otherwise? He began to struggle with the cable ties again. Then he heard Jean’s voice.

  “Leave him alone!”

  She’d managed to spit her gag out and now Cornell turned on her. He stood over her and put the gun to her head.

  “If there’s anything you want to say to your girlfriend I’d suggest you do it now.”

  Tayte saw the fear in Jean’s eyes as they stared at one another. He was shaking his head, unable to think or say anything.

  “Too late,” Cornell added.

  Then he paused just long enough to take in the sense of utter helplessness that had washed over Tayte before he smiled and pulled the trigger.

  Jack Fable was sitting in his office, breaking the occupational health and safety law that prohibited smoking in the workplace. Tanner could shit on him all he wanted over it. He didn’t care. It was his office and he was the only person in the damn thing. Usually he stood by the window when he needed a covert puff but he didn’t have time for that now. He was breaking the law for several reasons that all seemed perfectly reasonable to him. He was disappointed that the phone trace on Jean Summer’s mobile had come up empty. And he was angry with himself for not being able to procure a single lead that could tell him where she or Tayte or Robert Cornell were. He had people on the streets where Cornell lived, visiting the pubs and shops with photographs, asking questions, but he wasn’t holding his breath.

  Like looking for piss in a bathtub, he thought.

  Several folders and loose sheets of A4 cluttered his desk. An MoD file painted a far from exemplary picture of Robert Cornell, who began service as an Officer Cadet, receiving training at Sandhurst before gaining his commission as Second Lieutenant, which Fable figured was on account of his highly decorated father. Cornell junior on the other hand had been in trouble for fighting and bullying on several occasions before being busted back to the regular soldier ranks, ultimately being discharged for misconduct during the Occupation of Iraq. No specific details.

  After that, Robert Cornell had been a London bus driver for a few years and for the last two he’d been unemployed, claiming benefit, which to Fable’s mind made the man a bum; he figured he could have continued working as a bus driver somewhere but it seemed he had chosen not to bother. When it came to the killer Fable was looking for, Robert Cornell’s profile was an ideal match.

  All he had to do now was fin
d him.

  And his brother.

  Joseph Cornell, like Robert, was a single man who had served in the British Army, but that was where any similarity between them ended. Joseph had served his full term and judging from his military record Fable was sure that his father would have been very proud of him. Flying colours was an understatement as far as Joseph’s career was concerned. And yet, he was perhaps the main reason Fable was chain smoking in his office. He couldn’t find Joseph either. He wasn’t at home and he wasn’t at work. But it was where he worked and for whom that really bothered him.

  It was all there in the internal profile on his desk. Joseph Cornell worked for the Metropolitan Police in SO14: Specialist Operations Royalty Protection Branch. Another sheet of A4 somewhere in the jumble of papers told him that he’d been present at the first briefing Fable had given in that very building less than thirty-six hours ago. He stared at Joseph’s photo ID again. He recalled seeing him. He was the tall SO14 supervisor with the severe crew cut who had spouted a mouthful of questions he hadn’t been able to answer. As far as any of his records were concerned there wasn’t a single black mark against him. If anything, Joseph Cornell was too good to be true.

  Fable knew he couldn’t arbitrarily tar both brothers with the same brush. On paper at least, he was looking at opposites - one good, the other far from it. Maybe their lives today were just as contradictory, but he knew from the photographs he’d seen at the house in Clapton that they had been close at one time. Either way, he supposed Joseph would know where to find his brother and right now he was the only lead Fable was interested in. And while he didn’t know where he was, he knew where he was going to be. He was rostered on duty in two hours time.

  Click!

  Cornell pulled the trigger but nothing happened. He stepped away from Jean, laughing. “You should have seen your face,” he said to Tayte. “There’s no round in the chamber.” He held the gun up and purposefully racked the slide, making sure he had all Tayte’s attention. Then he took aim and fired two shots at the wall above Tayte’s head, making him cower as fragments of brick showered the room. This time the sound was deafening.