by SJ Bennett
‘Definitely for the better,’ the older woman agreed. ‘Come on up. Careful on the stairs in those heels – just don’t let them catch on the matting. I live above the shop. Funny, really, that’s what the Queen used to say. Here we are.’
They stood in a long, low-lit room, furnished in white and cream and hung with the same sort of pictures as downstairs. The television was showing Netflix with the sound off. Without asking, Aileen padded across the floor to a kitchenette in one corner and poured a third of a bottle of red wine into an enormous glass, which she handed to Rozie.
‘As I was saying, things have changed. And about bloody time, if you ask me. Anyway, how are you finding it?’
‘Fine, until now. Great, actually. Then it suddenly got complicated. Katie Briggs told me to say “It’s happened”.’
Aileen’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Tell me everything.’ She gestured to a corner of a squashy cream sofa, sitting cross-legged on the floor nearby, nursing her own glass of wine.
‘I’m not sure how much I can say.’
‘Look, I joined the Royal Household in the year dot,’ Aileen said, ‘and I did the job for over a decade. There’s nothing that’s happened in any of those residences that I don’t know about. No scandal or divorce or disaster. And I know about the other stuff, too. The things she doesn’t tell Simon. She’s on a case, isn’t she?’
‘She . . . what?’
Aileen grinned. She gestured to a side table temptingly laid out with bowls of Doritos and guacamole. Rozie suddenly realised how hungry she was. ‘Look, help yourself. You came to me because she’s asked you to do a bit of digging about, hasn’t she?’
Mouth full of Dorito and avocado, Rozie nodded.
‘You kind of know you’re not supposed to tell anyone, but it feels horribly wrong?’
Rozie nodded again.
‘Is it that dead young man at Windsor Castle?’
Rozie swallowed. ‘How did you know?’
‘Actually, I hoped it wasn’t,’ Aileen admitted, taking a swig of Merlot. ‘I saw a very low-key news report about a heart attack and hoped it was just that. But when you called me this morning . . .’
‘He didn’t die naturally.’
‘Damn! At Windsor!’
‘Why at Windsor, particularly?’
‘Because it’s her favourite place. How are the police getting on?’
‘They don’t seem to be doing much. It’s MI5 who— Look, are you sure we can talk about this?’
Aileen gave Rozie a sympathetic look and shrugged. ‘You called me. We’re not being bugged. Katie warned you something odd would happen, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it did, and here you are. You have to decide if you want to trust me, but I’m you, remember. If we can’t trust each other, who is there?’
Rozie had already thought about this. She quelled the panic that the Official Secrets Act always induced and took a deep breath. ‘The head of MI5 thinks Putin ordered a hit, but the Queen’s going in a totally different direction. The victim was an entertainer at the dine and sleep. She wants me to talk to one or two of the guests.’
‘And Box?’
‘They suspect the Household staff. Sleeper agents.’
‘Oh God, she’ll hate that!’
‘I think she does.’
‘And let me guess, Simon’s fine with it.’
‘He seems to be, yes. I mean, it’s a nightmare organising the interviews with them all, and the atmosphere is terrible and that’s upsetting, but he’s getting on with it.’
‘He would,’ Aileen said, with some finality.
Rozie was confused. ‘I mean, yes. Why wouldn’t he?’
Aileen stared into her glass for a moment. ‘I don’t know, exactly. But I do know that if the Boss thinks it’s a bad line of investigation, it probably is. Has she tested it out?’
‘Um . . . well, yes, she has.’ At last the meeting with Henry Evans made proper sense. ‘She met with a man who’s studied the subject for years,’ Rozie explained. ‘The death at Windsor didn’t seem to fit the pattern at all. The victim wasn’t high profile or well connected, like they usually are outside Russia. He wasn’t in his own home. And the murder was sloppy. She seemed to know the details didn’t fit.’
Aileen laughed.
‘Yeah. She doesn’t just trust her instincts – she trusts her experts. And she’s the best at knowing which ones to pick. You would be, after seventy-odd years, wouldn’t you?’
‘I guess,’ Rozie said. ‘Sixty-four years, I suppose. Officially.’
‘Oh, she’s been doing this for much longer than that.’
‘What do you mean?’
An enigmatic smile stole across Aileen’s face. She closed her eyes briefly and rolled her shoulders. Then she put down her glass and fixed Rozie with a steady gaze. ‘The Queen solves mysteries. She solved the first one when she was twelve or thirteen, so the story goes. On her own. She sees things other people don’t see – often because they’re all looking at her. She knows so much about so many things. She’s got an eagle eye, a nose for bullshit and a fabulous memory. Her staff should trust her more. People like Sir Simon, I mean.’
‘But he trusts her totally!’
‘No, he doesn’t. He thinks he does, but he also thinks he knows best. All her private secretaries do. They always have. They think they’re brilliant, which to be fair they usually are, and they think the other men in their clubs are brilliant, and the heads of the big organisations who went to Oxbridge with them are brilliant, and they’re all being brilliant together and she should just sit there and be grateful.’
Rozie laughed out loud. She was really very fond of Sir Simon, but this described his style exactly. ‘OK,’ she agreed.
‘They should trust her. But they don’t. She’s one of the most powerful women in the world, supposedly, but she spends her whole bloody time having to listen to them and they don’t listen back. It drives her bonkers. I mean, she grew up with it. She was a girl in the thirties – male domination was normal. God, even now I bet you get it too, but at least we know it’s wrong. She’s had to work out for herself how good she is, what she can do. And what she can do is notice things. See when something’s “off”. Find out why. Unpick the problem. She’s a bit of a genius at it, actually. But she needs help.’
Rozie bit into the last green dip-laden Dorito and looked regretfully at the empty bowl. ‘Female help,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Uh-huh. The help of someone who isn’t trying to constantly buck her up. Someone discreet. A listener. Our help. Oh, look, you’re still starving, aren’t you? Let me get the pasta on.’
They moved to the kitchen corner and Rozie put together a small salad from the leaves and tomatoes Aileen set out in front of her while her hostess whipped up a dish of smoked salmon, cream and tagliatelle in what seemed like no time at all.
‘Did you help her a lot?’ Rozie asked as they sat down either side of the kitchen bar and Aileen lit a candle and topped up their glasses.
‘A few times. Thank God mysteries don’t crop up every day. But Mary – she was my predecessor’s predecessor back in the seventies – she could tell you a dozen hair-raising tales of missing ambassadors and stolen jewellery and goodness knows what. They were a real team, those two. The Queen must miss her. It must be odd when your fifties were forty years ago, don’t you think?’
Rozie shrugged. Her fifties were still twenty years ahead. She couldn’t begin to imagine them, really, never mind life beyond. Also, she was wondering about something else. ‘So how come, if she’s solved all these mysteries, nobody talks about it? I mean, even at the palace? Not a whisper.’
Aileen’s face lit up. ‘Ah, good! I’m so pleased. It’s because that’s her style. My favourite part. She’ll get you running round like a mad thing, finding out details, lying like a trooper where you have to, and then, when it comes to the big showdown . . . it never happened.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ll see. You have to savour the moment.’
‘But I – I really don’t understand.’
‘You will. Trust me. Ah, I envy you a little.’ Aileen reached for the thin stem of her glass and lifted it until the bowl glowed blood red in the candlelight. ‘Here’s to the real queen of crime.’
Rozie lifted hers too. ‘The real queen of crime.’
‘God save her.’
Chapter 9
T
he Queen surveyed the outfits laid out for her today. After lunch she would change from her comfortable skirt and shirt into a raspberry wool dress and diamond brooch, because later there was a Privy Council meeting to attend. Windsor was not all fresh air and fun.
Her thoughts were in London, though, where she felt the answer to the death of Maksim Brodsky lay. If Henry Evans was right, there had been no castle-based plot to murder Brodsky – so he must have been killed by one of the people he travelled down with, surely? Or someone he met at the dine and sleep. Fiona Hepburn’s comments about that late-night dance had given her pause for thought. Did Brodsky perhaps already know this woman? Did they meet up later? It was an interesting idea. She wanted to know more.
And what about Peyrovski? He had rather insisted to Charles about bringing Brodsky down with him that night, even though it was most unusual for a guest to suggest the entertainment. Almost unheard of, in fact. Could it be a coincidence that the entertainer in question had ended up dead? What was Peyrovski’s relationship with him? There was so much she needed to find out, and she had hoped that Rozie could help, discreetly, on that front, but last night Sir Simon had sent a message to warn her the APS was off for a day’s compassionate leave, because her mother was unwell.
It was so frustrating! What bad timing. But it couldn’t be helped. She would have to see what the girl could do when she got back.
*
At 8.30 in the morning, a week after the discovery of the body, Rozie parked in a loading bay outside a small row of shops near Ladbroke Grove. Normally she wouldn’t dream of dumping the Mini somewhere so obviously begging for a ticket, but she didn’t have twenty minutes to spend circling for a proper space. And this was her manor. She grew up round here, knew every side road – and knew that at this time on a Tuesday morning such spaces were as rare as invitations to a dine and sleep.
With a quick check in the mirror that the scarf she’d wrapped around her head to protect her hair from the rain was immaculately in place, she got out and ran across to Costa Coffee, where her cousin Michael was waiting for her at a table. He caught sight of her immediately and grinned.
‘Hi, baby girl! Long time no see. You baff up good.’
She smiled, a bit embarrassed, as she slunk into a free chair at his table. ‘Have you got it?’
‘Of course.’ He took a small, cheap, black plastic phone out of his backpack and handed it over. ‘Locked and loaded. Fifty quid on it. Plus the fifty to buy it.’ He watched as she swiftly stashed the phone in her handbag. ‘I s’pose it’s not worth asking what you want it for. A nice, well-brought-up girl like Rosemary Grace Oshodi? Ex Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. Ex La-di-da Posh Boys Investment Bank? You dealing, or what?’
‘You got it,’ Rozie deadpanned. ‘The Queen’s got me pushing tea round the back of Windsor Great Park.’
‘I don’t think that’s the lingo, fam. What programmes have you been watching? I took time off work to get this for you.’ He looked slightly pained, mostly teasing, and Rozie realised how much she had missed him.
There were three levels of cousin in Rozie’s life. In the outer ring were the family in Nigeria and America. Newly married Fran was among them, running a yoga studio in Lagos while her new husband Femi managed several of the nightclubs where Rozie and her sister Felicity had danced the night away on the wedding trip. In the middle ring was the Peckham crew, who grew up in south London where she and Fliss were born. And then there were Mikey and his brother Ralph.
They were the inner circle, and Rozie thought of them more as brothers. Her mum and his had always been close. They’d moved together from Peckham to Kensington when Auntie Bea married Uncle Geoff. That was a cataclysm for the family. Uncle Geoff was not a member of the church; he was not a native of Peckham; he didn’t speak Yoruba. And he was white. But he was a great artist and musician, he adored Auntie Bea and when Rozie’s mum had uprooted her own young family to be with them, Rozie learned what love and loyalty meant. Growing up in the mean streets of Notting Hill, Mikey and Ralph had watched out for her and Fliss, and saved Rozie once or twice, before her self-defence skills matched up to her gift for sass.
He’d changed his hair too, Rozie noticed: three sharp lines were shaved into a close-cropped cut. Rozie felt jealous. In her pre-army days, she was known for dyeing the top of her hair gold. Now it was back to its natural colour and, despite the new cut, she missed the drama.
‘Thanks for doing this for me. It’s good to see you, Mikey.’ She took out her wallet and extracted five £20 notes, withdrawn from the cashpoint outside the minimart in Kingsclere that morning. ‘Here you go.’
‘Nice one.’
‘How’s work?’ she asked, breathing a bit more calmly.
‘Scintillating. Yesterday I spent four hours in a windowless room talking about sales targets.’
‘Ouch.’
‘When I got promoted I thought it would be all minibreaks in posh hotels. Not four hours looking at PowerPoint slides in some rank basement off Earls Court Road. Then I get back to the store and this guy asks me about a smart TV that you can plug into your PC and play games off and stuff. So I spend half an hour explaining everything, then he actually goes on Amazon and orders it right in front of me on his phone. Right in front of my face! So he could save a hundred quid. Nice, man. You go right ahead and use me like a walking Wikipedia.’
‘I’m sorry, Mikey.’
‘Not your fault. I bet you at least go outside before you get stuff off Jeff Bezos.’
‘I—’
‘I’m kidding you. But you didn’t need me for that.’ He indicated the cheap phone stashed in Rozie’s bag. ‘I mean, anyone can buy a pay-as-you-go phone. You could have got it yourself, you know.’
‘I didn’t want it to be traced to me.’
‘So you asked your cousin? Who works for PC World?’
‘I was in a hurry.’ Rozie knew it was hardly perfect tradecraft – but at least a call to Michael wouldn’t look unusual on her phone records. ‘You should be flattered I trust you.’
‘With your burner phone.’
He raised an eyebrow and flashed her a grin. Rozie decided it was time to change the conversation. Mikey was studying part-time for a degree now, and had a girlfriend she’d never met because they couldn’t afford to fly out for Fran’s wedding. She had so much to catch up on.
‘How’s . . .?’ she asked, hesitantly.
‘Janette?’
Was that the girlfriend’s name? She nodded.
‘She’s cool. Always busy. You’d like her.’
‘I’m sure I would.’
‘And Fliss?’ he asked. ‘She doing OK? How’s Germany?’
Rozie fought to keep her smile in place. Her sister’s recent move to Frankfurt hurt like an open wound. ‘She’s doing great. She loves it.’
It was true. Fliss worked as a family counsellor and therapist. Last year she had fallen in love with a German on one of her courses. Her skills were in such high demand that she could work almost wherever she wanted, despite her rudimentary grasp of the language at the time – although by now, being Fliss, she was nearly fluent.
Rozie remembered how the world had spun around her the day Fliss told her of the plan. ‘But you’ve got your new job,’ Fliss had insisted. ‘Your fancy career. You’ll hardly notice I’m not here.’ This was at Christmas, a few months after Rozie started at the palace. The worst Christmas she could remember. The long and short of it was . . . she noticed. She also noticed that Mikey hadn’t asked just now if Roz
ie herself was hooked up with anyone. And he was correct not to bother: it was never going to happen. Not in this job.
Mikey was staring at Rozie’s hands and she realised she was fiddling with her car key.
‘I got one of those too,’ he said. ‘Fran sent it to me, to remind me of their perfect love.’ With a sickly smile, he fished in his pocket and showed Rozie an identical keyring to the one she was using, featuring the heart-shaped shot of the happy couple on their big day. Rozie remembered the Mini. She made a face and got up.
‘Sorry, I’ve gotta run. I’m on a double red. Give my love to Auntie Bea. I wish I could stay, but—’
‘Duty calls,’ he finished for her with his best fake posh accent. ‘Queen and country.’
She nodded.
Mikey pulled her in for a bear hug. ‘Give Her Maj and the Duke a high five from me.’
‘Will do.’
Back in the car, Rozie thought of the phone in her bag, in the passenger footwell, like an unexploded bomb.
A burner phone! For goodness’ sake! She was turning into Jason Bourne.
She had discussed the idea with Aileen late last night, wondering how the ‘helpers’ had coped without getting caught by their own Sir Simons, before the age of prepaid phones. It was easier then, apparently. The various residences were full of rooms you could nip into, unobserved, all with a landline you could use and no one to say for certain who’d made the call. Not anymore. Smartphones were great, but you paid the price for convenience with traceability.