Cornell laughed again. “Oops, there is now, but don’t worry about the noise. No one else can hear us.” He went to Tayte and pulled his head back again. “No more Russian roulette,” he added. “The next one’s for real and if it’s any consolation I’m going to spare your girlfriend for now. She’s too pretty to waste so soon.”
Cornell was trying to force the gun into Tayte’s mouth when the boiler house door swung open and a man in a beige mac walked in. It was Michel Levant, and he was seemingly unfazed by the bloodstained body in the corner of the room.
Cornell froze, his face expressionless as Levant took a step closer and fired a Taser gun at him. Two wire coils streaked across the room and fixed into Cornell’s chest. His face twisted and contorted as his muscles locked and went into spasm. A second later he fell to the ground, kicking up the dust.
Tayte’s jaw dropped. What was Levant doing there? He had just about given up any hope of a rescue, but Michel Levant? He was the last person Tayte expected to see.
Levant dropped the Taser and sprang at the crate where the heirlooms had been. The scalpel was still there and he grabbed it and proceeded to cut Jean’s bonds.
“Amazing what you can pick up these days,” the Frenchman said, indicating the discarded Taser.
He went to free Tayte and as Jean stood up Cornell began to groan and stir. She went for the Taser gun to give him another blast while the wires were still attached, but Levant stopped her.
“It’s only good for one charge.”
Cornell was suddenly on his feet, still dazed and unsteady. He flicked the Taser darts off his chest and Jean didn’t waste a second. She ran at him screaming.
“What have you done with my son?”
She crashed into him and he staggered back, but he stopped himself, recovering fast. Tayte was on his feet then. His eyes quickly found the gun on the floor where Cornell had dropped it. He saw that Cornell was looking right at it.
“Jean, be careful!” he called, and as he and Cornell went for the gun together, Jean charged Cornell a second time.
“Tell me!” she screamed.
She knocked Cornell back. Tayte reached the gun and took aim but Jean was in the way. He watched Cornell throw a loose punch like a brawling drunk and Jean easily avoided the blow that came with such force that in his unbalanced state it spun Cornell around. Then with all her adrenaline fuelled anger and hatred for the man who had come so close to ending their lives, Jean kicked him so hard in the side that it sent him tripping over the pipework and the rubble.
“Jean! Get down!” Tayte called.
She turned to him. He had the gun trained on Cornell and given what that man had put them through he knew he would have no hesitation pulling the trigger. But he didn’t have to. Cornell was caught up in his own momentum, unable to steady himself on the debris that littered the ground. Tayte lowered the gun, staring wide-eyed as he watched Cornell trip and fall headlong into the fire. The mesh grate collapsed under his weight as he landed and the white-hot coals fell in around him and began to consume him.
Cornell made no sound as he burned.
His back arched impossibly over as he twisted and thrashed in the flames, kicking hot, smoking coals from the makeshift grate that had now ensnared him. As Tayte reached Jean, all he could think about was her son and the ahnentafel that Cornell had been gathering, both of which now appeared to be lost to them. Out of humanity Tayte tried to grab the man’s boot, thinking to pull him out, but the heat from the flames, augmented now by Cornell himself, was too intense. In just a few seconds it was too late.
Cornell was dead.
Jean stepped back with her hands to her mouth. “Elliot,” she said. “What have I done?” Her voice was tiny, almost lost in the hiss of the fire and the roar of the flames in the chimney.
Tayte put an arm around her and turned her away. “It was an accident. You didn’t mean to kill him.”
Jean kept shaking her head.
“And we’ll find your son,” Tayte added, leading her away from the heat.
As they approached Levant, who had backed away towards the door, Tayte saw Jean’s personal effects and his wallet in the rubble where Cornell had thrown them. He gathered them up and returned them to her: motorbike keys and disc lock, lipstick and hairbrush. The Frenchman was still staring at the flames when they arrived beside him, an expression of disbelief hanging limp on his face.
“Thank you, Mr Levant,” Jean said, snapping him out of the daze he was in.
Tayte still couldn’t understand how Levant came to be there but he figured there was plenty of time to ask. Right now all he wanted to do was get out of there.
“Do you have a phone?”
“Oui, of course, but -”
“Are the police on their way?”
“No,” Levant said. He took his phone out and showed them why. The display was blank. “The battery’s dead. I must have forgot to charge it last night.”
Tayte made for the door, taking Jean with him. “The cab driver should have one,” he said. “We’ll use that.”
“What about the key,” Levant said. “For the gate?”
Tayte stopped. “It’s locked?”
Levant nodded and Tayte eyed him with scepticism.
“Just how come you’re here, Levant? How did you get in if the gate’s locked?”
Levant sighed. “Ah, I must confess. I’ve been following you. Just like I followed dear Marcus. That’s why I was at Rules restaurant the day he was murdered.”
Tayte asked why. He had a good idea but he wanted to hear it from Levant.
“Marcus was on to something. I knew it. Something big. Now you know it too, eh? I’ve been following you since Kew this morning. You were on the news last night.”
Jean cut in. “Well, Mr Levant. I for one am glad you were following us.” She shot Tayte a glare.
He sighed. “Yeah, I guess some thanks are in order. But I’d still like to know how you got in if the gate’s locked.” He eyed Levant’s slight and feeble frame. “I know you didn’t climb that barbed fence.”
Levant pursed his lips and smiled playfully. “No, of course not. The taxi I followed you in stopped at the end of the cul-de-sac. By the time I walked up to the gates you were gone and the gate was open. I went through and saw you coming from the main building so I hid behind the portacabin. When I heard that gunshot I had to do something.”
Tayte wished he’d done it sooner. “You always carry a Taser around with you?”
Levant shrugged. “Personal protection,” he said. “It’s more effective than Mace and I’m afraid I would be quite ineffective in a fistfight.”
“I’m going to get one myself,” Jean said. “Now can you leave Mr Levant alone so we can get the keys and get out of here?”
Tayte considered himself scolded again. He went to the jacket that was still on the back of the folding chair. “I hope they weren’t in his trouser pocket,” he said as he picked the jacket up and shook it. It rattled. The keys were there.
“What about a phone?” Levant said. “Maybe he had one?”
Tayte gave a slow nod. “I saw him with it at the house.”
He went through all the pockets and found it. Battery good. Signal good. He checked the call history, wondering whether Cornell was the loner type he imagined him to be or whether he was working with anyone else.
“No calls,” he said. “Not a single one, in or out.”
“Odd,” Jean said. “What about text messages?”
Tayte checked. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s like the phone’s never been used. Unless he deleted everything as he went.”
Levant was suddenly close beside Tayte, looking at the phone’s display. “Maybe the police will find something, no?”
“Maybe,” Tayte said. He stepped away to put some space between them. Then he made for the door again. “It’s too damn hot in here. I’ll call Fable outside.”
He reached the door and froze when he heard a sound from the opposite corner
of the room. It seemed barely human but he knew it had to be. It came from Peter Harper. He was still alive.
Chapter Sixteen
By the time the police interviews were over it was gone seven p.m. and during the hours that had passed since Tayte and Jean were liberated from their own private Hell, Tayte had had plenty of time for reflection. Foremost on his mind was Marcus Brown. His death might have been avenged but the void Robert Cornell had created inside him when he took his friend’s life was still there, eating away at him, and he knew it wouldn’t stop until he fully understood why. To achieve that he had to finish Marcus’s research, but the ahnentafel - the binary digits Cornell had memorised - was gone. Knowing that only served to make the hole inside him bigger.
Tayte caught up with Jean again outside one of the statement rooms at New Scotland Yard where he’d given his account of the events following his arrival at Robert Cornell’s home. Jean had been through the same mill, both having had to relive those hours of their lives they would sooner forget, and it wasn’t until the police arrived at the construction site that Jean was made aware of the full implications of her actions against their captor. She’d been told there would be an inquest into Cornell’s death, but DI Fable, who had led the interviews, told her not to worry. A man was dead and there was a process to follow, but he didn’t expect anything to come of it.
“We need to talk,” Fable said as soon as he joined them in the corridor. “I can see you’re tired, Mr Tayte, and you must be too, Ms Summer, but it won’t take long. Think you can give me another half hour?”
“Of course,” Jean said.
Tayte just gave a weary nod and they followed Fable to his office via a lift, grabbing a coffee along the way. Through the office windows Tayte saw that the sun had all but set, slowly relinquishing the day to the night and the bright city lights. Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben were all lit up beyond the framed glass like a nightscape painting.
“Take a seat,” Fable said. He lifted something up from beneath his desk and turned to Tayte. “I thought you might want this back.”
“My briefcase.”
“It was found in the back of the taxi.”
Tayte smiled as he opened it and looked inside. Battered and travel-worn as it was, he figured it had fared better than he had that afternoon. Everything seemed to be as he’d left it.
“Thanks,” he said. “Much appreciated.”
“Here, take this too,” Fable said. “Before I forget.” He took a mobile phone from his pocket. “It’s just a loan so we can keep in touch. It’s got Internet if you need it. I couldn’t get you a laptop.”
Tayte took it. It was a BlackBerry, like the one Jean used to have. He eyed the tiny keyboard and the size of his fingers and figured she would have to do the typing if they wanted to look anything up.
“Business use only,” Fable added. “I don’t want to see any calls back home to the States on the bill when it comes through.”
“No problem,” Tayte said, thinking that there was no danger of that given that he didn’t have anyone back home to call.
There was a pencil sharpener fixed to the end of the desk by Jean’s elbow. She studied it as she spun the handle slowly around. When she stopped she looked up at Fable.
“Do you think I’m ever going to see my son again?”
The many rivulets on Fable’s face deepened into chasms as he turned to her. He was an honest man and he gave her an honest answer. “Right now, I don’t know,” he said. “I wish I had something more encouraging for you. I’m sorry.”
Jean just nodded.
“I have recovered something of yours, though,” Fable said. “Your bike. It was illegally parked outside the Star Café in Clapton. Don’t worry. I had it taken to the hotel.”
Jean thanked him. “And what happened to Mr Levant?”
Tayte wanted to hear the answer to that, too. He thought the Frenchman was probably waiting for them outside.
“He’s long gone,” Fable said. “We had to caution him for the Taser - that’s now the property of Her Majesty’s Government. After his interview he was released with the thanks of the Metropolitan Police Service. Last I saw, he was talking to the news people camped outside. They were all over him.” He sighed. “I’ll give the wolves a statement later this evening.”
“And Peter Harper?” Tayte said. “Did he make it?”
“So far, but don’t hold your breath. He’s in bad shape.”
“What did Cornell do to him?” Tayte asked, curiosity getting the better of him in light of the kind of treatment he might otherwise have been in for.
“You don’t want to know, Mr Tayte, believe me you don’t. He’s lost a lot of blood though. Would have bled to death before much longer if things hadn’t turned out the way they did.”
“Will he live?” Jean said.
“I’m no doctor, Ms Summer. All I can tell you is that he’s critical. The next couple of hours will decide which way it goes.”
“We need to talk to him,” Tayte said.
He didn’t mean to sound so cold about it, but now that Robert Cornell was dead, Harper was the last remaining descendant of the five Royal Society Fellows. He was perhaps the only person alive who could tell them what was going on and why.
“We’re just as keen to talk to him as you are,” Fable said. He paused, took out a packet of cigarettes, looked at Tayte and Jean and put them away again. “Look, I’d normally be celebrating at this point in an investigation. Cornell is dead. We have his firearm and it won’t take long to match it to the murders, but there’s a complication that’s bugging the hell out of me - Joseph Cornell.”
“You think the brother’s involved?” Tayte said, thinking that the last thing they needed now was another menace from the same gene pool as Robert Cornell. He’d seen Joseph’s name on the census but the possibility of a double act hadn’t crossed his mind until now.
“I can’t rule it out,” Fable said. “Particularly since I discovered he works in Royalty Protection. There may be others for all I know. He didn’t show for duty this evening and no one he works with has seen him since his last shift ended early this morning.”
That information crashed through Tayte’s mind like a tsunami. He stared at Fable, thinking hard.
“I’ve had his access suspended,” Fable continued. “His house has been searched and we’re monitoring his banking activity. Our nation is the most surveilled in the world. Three million cameras and counting - that’s around ten percent of the world’s total. He’s been clever enough to leave his car at home or we’d have picked that up by now, but many of these cameras also have face recognition software. Our eyes are everywhere, so to speak. When Joseph Cornell pokes his head up we’ll find him.”
Tayte was only half listening. He was busy connecting the information Fable had just imparted about Joseph Cornell and where he worked with Jean’s theory about Queen Anne’s heir and Marcus Brown’s dying words: treason, hurry. He ran through the implications. If Joseph Cornell was involved, what was his role? He had access to the royal premises - probably to the Royal Family. Was this the treasonable act his friend had perceived? Was there a plot to somehow resurrect the Royal House of Stuart? A twenty-first century Jacobite uprising? It seemed too wild an idea to contemplate.
“Jean was in Nottinghamshire this morning,” Tayte said, knowing that Fable was missing a vital piece of the jigsaw. He turned to Jean and saw his own concerns about Joseph Cornell reflected back. “She was digging deeper into Quo Veritas.”
“Did you find anything?” Fable asked.
“I found a theory,” Jean said. “It puts a three-hundred-year-old royal heir hunt at the centre of your murder investigation. It could be the motive for the murders and the executions in Sherwood Forest twenty years ago.”
“Peter Harper may be able to confirm it,” Tayte said. “Couple that with what you’ve just told us about Joseph Cornell and where he works and I think the threat to your national security is p
retty clear.”
Fable was making fists with his hands, either because he was tense or because he needed a cigarette. It was probably both. “I hope to Christ you’re wrong,” he said. Then his sour expression changed to one of incredulity. “But supposing you’re right. What could they have hoped to achieve?”
“Does it matter?” Jean offered.
Tayte agreed. “I can tell you from personal experience that Robert Cornell believed in what he was doing, one hundred percent. He had a plan and he was going through with it, whatever the outcome.”
“But Robert Cornell’s gone,” Fable said. “And this ahnentafel you mentioned in the interview. That’s gone too, hasn’t it?”
“One way or another I literally saw it burn,” Tayte said.
“So maybe the threat died with Cornell,” Jean added.
Fable laughed sourly. “I won’t believe that until I’ve found his brother.”
“No,” Tayte said. “I guess I won’t either.”
A rap of knuckles on the open door behind Tayte drew his attention. A man in a brown sports-jacket and chinos was standing in the doorway. He had a thick caterpillar moustache under his nose and a pale blue folder under his arm. He didn’t wait to be invited in.
“Phone report, sir,” he said, holding up the folder.
“This is Detective Sergeant Harris,” Fable said.
Harris gave Tayte and Jean a cursory smile as he slid the folder onto the desk.
“Anything there?” Fable asked, opening it.
“The phone was unregistered.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“Apart from the call Mr Tayte made earlier today,” Harris said, “no other voice calls were made or received, but the service provider did manage to recover a number of text messages from their records. They were all sent between Robert Cornell’s phone and one other number.”
“I suppose that was unregistered, too,” Fable said.
“It was. Most of the texts look like garbage, as you’ll see, but there’s a few in there you’ll find interesting. Everything’s in the SMS log exactly how they sent it through. Chronological order.”
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