‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ I said to Bob as the door closed on Dr Michaela Satchell as she left, with our thanks for her cooperation, to contemplate the possibility of being a run-of-the-mill backbencher once more among all the people she had undoubtedly snubbed during her period of privilege. I’d liked to have been able to offer her more comfort, but I couldn’t.
I thought Bob had been too kind to her; the way I saw it, Satchell, a doctor, had declared someone dead who wasn’t. We’d found the pupil of her right eye slightly reactive to light. If she’d done that test, she’d have dialled 999 rather than call Norman Hamblin, and who knows what difference that might have made to an outcome that was highly uncertain, at best.
As a consequence, we, believing her to be dead, had withdrawn the supposed murder weapon from the wound. If she died, had we played a part in killing her?
Perhaps Bob was thinking the same thing, but if he wasn’t, I didn’t want to plant the seed of guilt in his mind.
‘Almost but not quite,’ he countered my remark. ‘I’d still like to talk to the Defence Secretary, just to complete the set. There’s the forensic people too; that toilet seat still bugs me.’
‘Me not so much,’ I replied. ‘I reckon you may be reading too much into that. For all we know, it may have been up for days. Maybe Emily is an atypical woman; not all of them care how the damn lavvy seat’s left.’
‘Grover Bryant thought it was down,’ he argued.
I’d seen Bob before when his stubborn streak set in, but he was my boss then, and it wasn’t my place to argue with him. He hates it when all of his lines of inquiry shut down, one by one by one, and he’s likely to clutch at the thinnest of straws.
‘Maybe he did,’ I argued, ‘but Grover Bryant’s half-sister is clinging on to life by her fingernails. That doesn’t make for the most reliable of witnesses. If you put the thought into his head, he might say “yes” because he thinks that’s the answer you want. You know this, gaffer; we get it all the time.’
‘Granted,’ he conceded grudgingly, ‘but still . . .’
He went no further because the door opened, and the Cabinet Secretary insinuated himself into the room. I say that because to my eyes he didn’t move like other people; he didn’t walk, rather he flowed. I’m not saying he was oily but if his middle name had been Olive I wouldn’t have been surprised.
‘I saw Dr Satchell on her way out,’ he said. ‘Did she have anything to add to your understanding of yesterday?’
‘No,’ Bob replied. ‘There was something I hoped she could help with, but it seems not. I’ll need to go back to Mrs Dennis about that.’
I wondered what he meant, but the time wasn’t right to question him about it.
‘I’ve hit a roadblock too,’ Hamblin continued. ‘I’ve been trying to arrange a meeting for you with the Defence Secretary, but without success.’
My colleague shrugged his shoulders; I had the sense that his mind was still in Emily Repton’s en suite. ‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.
‘The problem, Commander McIlhenney, is that I can’t find him. His Civil Service staff say he hasn’t been in the office this week, neither yesterday nor today. His parliamentary aide says that he isn’t in the Commons, and likewise hasn’t been seen there since last Friday. His protection officer told me that he and his colleague were due to collect him from his flat in Smith Square yesterday lunchtime, but he stood them down. Normally they’d have been with him round the clock, but he dismissed them some time on Sunday evening.’
The Cabinet Secretary had regained one hundred per cent of Bob’s attention. ‘Are you telling us, Mr Hamblin, that the Defence Secretary is missing?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, effectively I am.’
‘What the hell does that mean, I wonder?’ Bob grunted.
‘Your guess is as good as mine. All I can tell you for certain is that it doesn’t involve his royal friend. I made a discreet inquiry of Her Majesty’s staff, and received a very dusty answer. The young lady in question is currently skiing in Colorado, with the British Winter Olympic squad, of which she is a member.’
‘He goes off the radar on the day of the Spitfire announcement,’ I exclaimed. ‘That suggests to me that he decided to leave the Prime Minister to take the flak from the Opposition and the thousands of people whose jobs are dependent on Trident renewal.’
‘Yeah,’ my friend agreed. ‘Me too. And,’ he continued, ‘it makes me wonder about the unanimity about Spitfire in the core group that took the decision.’
‘I assure you,’ Hamblin told him, ‘that it existed. In the final analysis, there was no dissenting voice. All ministers were in agreement.’
I raised a hand, to attract his attention. ‘This might be naive,’ I said, ‘but I take it that this new system actually works.’
‘Oh yes,’ Hamblin replied, with barely a second’s delay. ‘Balliol’s team computer-simulated a pre-emptive attack on Ascension Island, and then, under their control, it was done for real, using a prototype vehicle with a payload matching the weight of several independently targeted miniaturised warheads.’
‘Neil’s right, though,’ Bob muttered. ‘Wheeler’s chosen an extraordinary time to go walkabout from his duties. What are you going to do about it, Mr Hamblin?’ he asked.
‘What can I do about it?’ he countered. ‘I am a servant, that’s all. If the man decides to take a couple of days to recharge his batteries I can’t order him back to work. Only the Prime Minister can do that.’
‘Or her deputy,’ I suggested. ‘Isn’t Mr Kramer concerned?’
‘I don’t know that he even knows about it. I haven’t advised him of the situation.’
‘He’ll work it out,’ Bob said, ‘when he sees an empty chair at the Cabinet table in an hour or so.’
‘Very true.’ He turned towards the door, having been standing since he came into the room. ‘And that is something for which I must now prepare.’
He was reaching out for the door handle when it turned, and his hound-like assistant stepped into the room. She didn’t look like a woman who exuded happiness at any time, but her expression was doom laden as she handed Hamblin a note, then pivoted on her heel and left.
He read it and his face changed, to match hers. It was noticeably paler as he looked at us. ‘Gentlemen, this is a message from the Prime Minister’s consultant. Ms Repton went into cardiac arrest half an hour ago, and could not be resuscitated. This puts everything on hold; I must convey this news at once, and cancel the Cabinet meeting.’
‘Sure, you have to tell Kramer,’ Bob agreed, ‘but won’t he want to press on with the meeting, more than ever?’
‘He might, but he can’t, not in that format. It’s not the Home Secretary that I have to advise of the Prime Minister’s death, it’s Her Majesty’s Private Secretary. The Queen didn’t invite the Conservative Party to form a government, nor did she appoint its ministers. She invited Emily Repton, and the authority of the Crown was vested in her, and her alone. Constitutionally, that’s not something she could delegate, or bequeath.’
He paused, and we could both see that he was trembling with excitement. ‘There’s no modern precedent for this situation. It’s no exaggeration to say that at this moment we don’t have a government.’
Twenty-Five
When Hamblin told us that Emily Repton had finally lost her tenuous grip on life, I could see that Neil was rattled, and I thought I could guess the reason. I’d been wondering whether pulling that blade out of her head had done even more damage; if I had, I was pretty sure he had too.
‘I would be grateful if you would remain here, gentlemen,’ the Cabinet Secretary said. ‘I have no idea what will happen in the next hour or so. The one thing I do know is that you are no longer investigating an attack on the Prime Minister but her murder. There can be no more subterfuge. The truth must be told, and as you have play
ed a major role so far, you will need to be available to whomever carries the matter forward.’
‘Who’s going to do the truth-telling?’ I asked him. ‘You and I both know that the cover-up was Kramer’s idea, but do you see him putting his hand up and admitting it? I’m bloody sure I don’t. Watch yourself, Norman, that man will throw you to the wolves.’
‘I am quite sure . . . Bob . . . that the Home Secretary will ask me to explain the course of events to the media, and my guess is in line with yours. Somehow he will try to divert blame to the Security Service or to me, or both.’ He threw me a shrewd glance.
‘That’s not going to happen,’ I snapped. ‘If there’s any suggestion of that, I’ll sit beside you when you meet the press.’
‘That is not going to happen either,’ he declared. ‘Whatever Mr Kramer may say, it is for the next Prime Minister to explain what happened. If it’s him, so be it, but I’ve been in this post too long to step in front of a bus. If I go under it anyway, I’ll make damn sure the world knows who pushed me. Now I must go; I’ll advise you as matters evolve.’
He left us and headed off to play his part in an event that was truly historic, way beyond Olympic gold medals and similarly hyperbolic uses of the word by today’s media.
My thoughts went back to Neil’s unspoken worry. ‘Not to be dwelt on,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Drawing out that letter-opener. If you hadn’t pulled it out, it could easily have stayed there until she was on the autopsy table, and maybe . . .’ I stopped; no point in expressing the horrible vision I was seeing in my mind, a pathologist making a Y incision to reveal a beating heart.
But as I fell silent, another thought occurred to me, one to be considered at length.
‘Okay,’ Neil replied, ‘but I’m still going to have nightmares about it for a while, that I know.’ He paused. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We do what Hamblin says. We wait here. And while we’re doing that . . .’ I took out my mobile and called Amanda. ‘Have you heard?’ I asked her.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Where are you?’
‘Cabinet Office.’
‘What’s happening there?’
‘Mr Hamblin’s gone off to save the world, we’re on standby: for what, I don’t know.’
‘Are you all right with that?’
I laughed. ‘You’re twenty-four hours too late to ask me that. I’m beyond the point of walking away. And anyway, I don’t want to; my blood’s up and I want a kill.’
‘Anyone in mind?’ she asked.
‘The people with most to gain have conspicuously good alibis, apart from one. Do you know where Nicholas Wheeler is?’
‘No. Why should I?’
‘Because they’ve lost him. He hasn’t been seen for a day and a half.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ she spluttered. ‘You can’t lose the Defence Secretary.’
‘According to Hamblin that’s exactly what’s happened. He’s stood down his protection team and disappeared. He called off his pick-up yesterday morning.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means,’ I told her, ‘that when Emily Repton was stabbed, Wheeler was unaccounted for.’
‘He’s a suspect?’
‘A person of interest,’ I suggested. ‘No more than that, for now. You might want to have a word with his Ministry of Defence staff; he may have a private channel to them, but if he has they’re keeping it from Hamblin.
‘Now,’ I continued, ‘how about those scientists of yours? Neil says I’m fixating about the Prime Minister’s toilet, but have your people come up with anything?’
‘Lots,’ she replied, ‘on the seat, the door handle, taps, everywhere you’d expect to find prints, they’re there in abundance. Nearly all identifiable; they’ve identified hers, Grover Bryant’s, the Chancellor, Dr Satchell; they’re all pretty smudged up, but there’s one clear set on the underside of the seat, on the flushing lever, and on the door handle. Those have not been identified, not yet, but they’re still trying.’
‘Are Merlin Brady’s prints on file?’ I asked.
‘No. Bob, you’re not suggesting . . .’
‘No, I’m not, but we know he was in the vicinity at the time, so don’t let’s rule him out yet.’
‘On the other hand,’ she murmured, ‘he is on a DNA database. We don’t talk about it, but we keep samples of prominent people in parliament in case of, em, extreme situations.’
‘You mean in case someone blows them to bits and there isn’t enough left for conventional identification?’
‘That or a plane crash.’
‘Yuck.’
‘Yeah, I know. I’ll ask the scientists to extract DNA from the unidentified print. Anything else you need while we’re all stuck here in a governmental vacuum?’
‘Just one more thing,’ I said. ‘That CCTV you sent us. Was it yours?’
‘No, we don’t do that in Parliament. It came from the Serjeant-at-Arms’ office. Why?’
‘Just something I want to query about the timeframe.’
‘The man you want is Rudy Muttiah,’ she volunteered. ‘That’s if you’re still around once the smoke clears and Kramer’s officially installed in Number Ten.’
‘Don’t count your chickens,’ I suggested. ‘He may have miscalculated.’
‘Twenty-four hours in town and you’re a pundit?’ she chided me.
‘Let’s wait and see.’
And that’s what we did; we waited. Pretty soon we ran out of things to say to each other. Neil passed the time by checking in with his office. His job is extremely sensitive, the kind that requires twenty-four seven availability, and it’s full of anxiety, assuming that you care about the people under your command, the men and women you are sending into dangerous, volatile situations. Big McIlhenney might look like a boulder with legs, but he’s one of the most caring people, so I knew that his role weighed heavily on him. His HQ was less than a mile from where we were sitting; I suggested that he go back there to see for himself that all was well, but he refused. ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish,’ he grunted.
I called Alex while we waited; she had a high-profile case on her hands, on top of an ever-growing pile on her in-tray as a criminal defence advocate, as we Scots call our barristers. She had been instructed by one of the co-accused in a case on which we’d both worked very recently, on that occasion for the original accused. The Crown had declined to accept her client as a prosecution witness, leaving her with a defence of impeachment as her only option.
‘Any progress?’ I asked her.
‘There won’t be any until we get to trial,’ she replied. ‘The indictment will be served on Thursday, and a date set. The sooner the better.’
‘You do know that your client’s as guilty as sin, don’t you?’
‘The jury decides that, Pops. The Crown is alleging a conspiracy to murder; they have to prove all of that. The conspiracy part is easy, there was one, but my client will argue that murder was never part of the plan, that the co-accused was alone with the victim at the time of the crime and acted of his own volition and without premeditation in the killing.’
‘Good luck with that one, my darling daughter,’ I chuckled.
‘I won’t need it. My defence is logical and the Crown can’t prove intent to kill on the part of my client, only intent to abduct . . . and rather carelessly, that won’t be in the indictment. I can sniff a result, I’m telling you.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Aileen told me once that in elections, every candidate, no matter how unpopular their party or their cause, or how far they’re behind in the polls, has a moment of irrationality when they believe they can win.’
‘They have to persuade thousands,’ she countered. ‘I only have to persuade eight people out of fifteen. Have you seen t
he witch, by the way?’ (Alexis and her one-time stepmother never did hit it off.)
‘Yes, I’ve seen Aileen,’ I replied, refusing the bait. ‘She’s fine; this place is where she’s belonged all along.’
‘Will you be joining her?’ she asked me, bluntly.
‘It has its attractions,’ I admitted, ‘but they aren’t overwhelming.’
‘There might be a vacancy for a prime minister soon, I hear from the telly. That’s about your entry level, Pops.’
‘It’s arisen already,’ I murmured. I hadn’t planned to tell her; the words just fell out of my mouth. From the age of around fifteen, my first-born daughter has been my closest confidante. I keep nothing from her, nor she from me, not any more. The only time we’ve ever fallen out seriously was the one time that she did, when she became involved with Andy Martin, my former friend, who was closer to my age than hers.
I heard a gasp. ‘What? She’s dead?’
‘Yes. It’ll be announced soon, I think. There are formalities to be gone through, and maybe stuff after that. This situation hasn’t arisen for over two hundred years.’
‘Did they identify the illness?’
‘You didn’t hear what I said; for over two hundred years, not since Spencer Perceval.’
There was a silence, as Alex trawled through her memories of high school history. ‘Spencer Perceval: are you saying she was assassinated, like him?’
‘That’s maybe not the word I’d choose, but effectively, yes.’
‘Bloody hell, Pops. How do you know all this?’
‘I got bloody roped in, didn’t I? Somebody knew I was here, and before I could catch a breath . . .’
‘Do you know who did it?’
‘No. It’s fucking Holmesian,’ I murmured. ‘Not quite a locked-room mystery, but near as damn it.’
‘What happens next?’
‘Dunno. I think the Indians gather round the camp fire and have a pow-wow . . . the ruling tribe, that is.’
As I spoke, the door opened, framing Norman Hamblin. He was carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and three mugs. ‘Got to go,’ I whispered. ‘There’s a man coming in who might tell me.’
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