by SJ Bennett
‘Ma’am?’
‘About Brodsky’s family? Has someone come to take the body?’
Singh paused for a moment. Nobody had asked that question recently. ‘No, ma’am. I imagine it’s still in the morgue. Would you like me to find out what we know?’
‘Yes, please. That’s very kind. And do tell me, how are the new stab vests working out?’
With that, following her lead, Singh pivoted on a sixpence and talked instead about the new uniform his staff had been issued, about which the Queen was remarkably well informed. She misses nothing, he thought. Now she reminded him of his great-grandmother Nani Sada, who was, if anything, more terrifying than Mrs Winckless in her panelled office. But at least he could tell Gavin that she was happy with the way the investigation was progressing.
Chapter 14
T
he block of flats was long and low, four storeys of reddish-brown brick with matching balconies and modern plate-glass windows. It might have been built in the 1960s, Rozie thought, though she was no expert on architecture. It was not a prepossessing building in itself, but what marked it out was the view: beside the River Thames, overlooking the massive hulk of Battersea Power Station through the trees.
This was Pimlico, home to many an MP’s London pad, and an odd mixture of posh, stucco-fronted houses and post-war flats, like these. It would be about half an hour’s walk to Buckingham Palace from here, she reckoned. A nice one, on a sunny morning. And not a bad place to come back to, with that view.
She manoeuvred a wicker hamper marked with Fortnum & Mason’s distinctive ‘F&M’ logo from the back seat of the car. It had been a hair-raising drive from Piccadilly, racing through the morning rush-hour traffic, knowing she had two deliveries to make and must still be back by three. A ‘day off’, in the Queen’s Private Office, really meant half a day, and lateness was not an option. She closed the car door with her knee, locked it with the key fob dangling from her fingers and carried the hamper to the nearest entrance.
The inside door to Flat 5 was opened by an unshaven man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing baggy gym shorts and a sweaty T-shirt, with a towel around his neck. He had only answered on the third ring of the bell. At first, she was horrified to think how he had really let himself go, but then she realised he’d been exercising. This was encouraging.
‘Mr Robertson?’
‘Yes?’ He was staring at the hamper, which was as large as could fit in the back seat of the Mini, and seemed out of place in the narrow communal corridor where she was standing, with its strip lighting, peeling paint and missing carpet tiles.
‘I’m here from the Private Office.’ He would know which one. ‘This is for you.’
‘What?’ He rubbed the side of his face with the towel. ‘You’d better come in.’
She followed him across a little hallway that somehow managed to seem immaculately tidy despite containing two road bikes, a coat rack, several framed photographs and a shelf of running shoes. The room beyond it was the kitchen, which was half the size of Meredith Gostelow’s in Westbourne Grove, but had the benefit of uninterrupted views towards the abandoned power station’s iconic chimneys. Surfaces were white or stainless steel, and gleamed.
‘Can I offer you something?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you. I’d better be quick.’
She put the hamper on the counter next to the sink, and smiled at the royal page. ‘My name’s Rozie. I – the office wanted to give you this as a token of our understanding of everything you’re going through. I really must emphasise that it’s from the office. Not Her Majesty personally.’
Lady Caroline, in passing on the Queen’s message, had been very specific about this. Also, she must not apologise. One did not say sorry for the things one’s public servants, such as the Security Service, did in one’s name. That would be hypocritical and wrong.
Sandy Robertson rubbed the side of his head again, looking perplexed. ‘You must emphasise that, must you?’ he echoed. His voice was deep, with a gentle Scottish burr, and very pleasant to listen to. Rozie imagined him offering drinks to the Boss, pulling out her chair, ensuring everything was just as she wanted it. He seemed the sort of person you would want to have around. ‘Well, let’s have a look at it.’
He unbuckled the hamper and lifted the lid. Inside was wine and whisky, jars of thick-cut marmalade and eau de Nil green tins of shortbread, tea and ginger biscuits. There was also a card, blank and unsigned, featuring a watercolour image of a white camellia.
Sandy looked up sharply at Rozie, who said nothing, then down again at the provisions. He ran his fingertips over a marmalade jar, picked up a tin of biscuits to examine it, and put it back again. Then he rested a forefinger on the card, without lifting it, and looked at Rozie again.
‘The Queen Mother’s favourite flower, the white camellia. Did you know that?’ There were tears in his eyes, Rozie thought.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘My wife’s, too. I told her that once, seven years ago, when Mary died.’
‘Oh.’ Rozie did a rapid mental calculation. The Queen Mother had died in 2002 – Sandy wasn’t referring to a conversation with her.
‘Once,’ he repeated, his finger still resting on the card. ‘Seven years ago. What a woman.’
Rozie coughed. ‘As I say, we at the office just wanted to . . . We probably shouldn’t have . . . But we—’
‘Tell her thank you,’ he interrupted, in his Highlands burr. ‘Thank you very much.’
Rozie found she had a lump in her throat. She nodded, unable to help herself, and said she had better leave.
Her visit to Adam Dorsey-Jones’s flat was slightly different. For this, she drove south of the river to a row of converted Georgian houses in Stockwell. There was no card with a white camellia this time, but the man in jeans and green woollen jumper who let her in reacted similarly to her protestations that the Queen was not involved.
‘Of course she wasn’t,’ he said. ‘You did this out of the goodness of your heart.’
‘You could say that.’
‘Well, thank you very much, Assistant Private Secretary Lady-I’ve-never-met.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘You’re very generous.’
Rozie fought not to grin.
He put the hamper on the coffee table of his art-filled living room and said, ‘You obviously don’t think that because I have a boyfriend who’s been to St Petersburg I must be a Russian spy.’
‘I’m not qualified to say,’ Rozie told him evenly.
‘And yet . . . this hamper.’
‘It’s just . . . from the office.’
He sat her down then, and told her about the two years he had spent on the digitisation project he’d been put in charge of. He recalled his excitement at finding long-lost papers from George II, the nights he’d worked late to meet the deadlines they had given him, the fact that he’d missed his boyfriend’s birthday party to go to Windsor Castle to get the final info he needed before giving a progress report to visiting dignitaries a fortnight ago.
‘They won’t tell me what they think I’ve done,’ he said. ‘But it’s obvious from their line of questioning they think I’m KGB or FSB or whatever it is. They seem to think that if you like Russian literature you must be a fan of the Kremlin. I wrote my thesis on Solzhenitsyn. If you really want to see how they tortured the human spirit, read Cancer Ward. Jamie’s gallery specialises in early twentieth-century art, when the Russians were leading the way in abstraction and experimentalism. The revolutionaries hated it. They killed or exiled practically everyone, or just made their lives impossible. Doesn’t endear you to the Russian state. But what do I know?’
‘This will blow over,’ Rozie said. She knew she didn’t have the right to reassure him. She could see herself as a minor character in a historical analysis twenty years from now: the naive figure from the palace who took pity on the spy. But she felt his bitterness at the way he had been summarily cast aside, and tho
ught that could possibly be the greater danger. ‘I’m sorry.’
He looked across the coffee table at her. ‘Yeah. I do believe you are.’
On the way home, she listened to Radio 4 as she negotiated her way back through heavy traffic on the Cromwell Road. The World at One was full of the latest sightings of the Cambridges on tour in India. Rozie couldn’t quite believe that in a couple of weeks she’d be seeing them in person at the castle, and probably hearing some of their adventures first-hand.
Among other news stories was a report about two City analysts found dead from cocaine overdoses. The journalist, her voice brimming with urgency, wondered, ‘Is recreational drug use in the Square Mile reaching a dangerous level? And how far are middle-class drug takers responsible for fuelling the deadly trade that decimates communities in South America?’
But by now Rozie wasn’t listening. The reporter had named the two analysts: a thirty-seven-year-old man called Javier something who worked at Citibank, and a twenty-seven-year-old woman called Rachel Stiles, who worked for a small boutique investment firm called Golden Futures.
‘Rachel Stiles’ and ‘Golden Futures’ were familiar names to Rozie: she had seen them on the spreadsheet listing all the visitors given rooms in the castle the night of the dine and sleep. The one the Master of the Household had pulled together for the police, and that the Queen had asked for. ‘Golden Futures’ had stood out to Rozie because it seemed to hold so much promise.
And now, at the age of twenty-six, the girl was dead.
Part 3
Belt and Road
Chapter 15
‘I
t’s nothing to do with the Russian,’ Sir Simon assured the Queen that evening, after Rozie had mentioned the coincidence. ‘Chief Inspector Strong checked with the local CID team in Shepherd’s Bush, where Dr Stiles died. She had a bit of an alcohol problem.’
‘Goodness. Did she?’
‘The City takes its toll, I suppose. She took a lot of pills, then the cocaine on top. Almost certainly accidental. Tragic, of course.’
He meant it. Sir Simon and his wife did not have children, but his niece was twenty-seven. She, too, had worked in the City, before setting up a company that seemed to mean she worked day and night from her laptop at home. She was a beautiful young woman, an only child with a shining future ahead of her. Sir Simon knew his brother and sister-in-law would never recover if anything happened to her.
‘What was this young woman doing at the castle, precisely?’ the Queen wondered. ‘Remind me.’
‘She was a guest of the governor,’ Sir Simon said. ‘He was hosting a little meeting about foreign intelligence for the Foreign Office.’
‘Ah, yes. The young man from Djibouti.’
‘Ma’am?’
‘I remember the governor was very impressed with a man who had flown in from East Africa. Though I had rather thought his meeting was more about China. I must ask him about it sometime.’
‘Yes, ma’am. That would make sense, actually. Dr Stiles was an expert on the Chinese economy.’
‘Oh?’
‘She had a PhD in Chinese infrastructure funding. Golden Futures has several investments in Asian markets. She was a rising star.’
‘You’re very well informed, Simon.’
‘I try to be, ma’am. There is another thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘You asked the commissioner about Mr Brodsky’s family – whether anyone has come to collect the body. Well, they checked with the embassy and, no, nobody has as yet. They think – the embassy does – that his mother is in a mental institution. He had a half-brother, who seems to have died on exercise in the army. Their army, not ours. We know about the father. You may recall he died when Brodsky was a child. That seems to be it. I imagine the Russians will repatriate the body eventually.’
‘Thank you, Simon.’
She was looking grim again, he thought. Well, she was a mother of sons. These conversations were never easy.
*
‘Cheer up, Lilibet,’ Philip insisted. ‘Nobody’s died. Oh.’
They were in the car on the way to a private dinner with a trainer they had known since William was a baby. His horses had beaten hers twice last year, but she didn’t hold it against him. It would simply be a pleasure to talk nothing but racing for a whole enchanting evening. And his eldest son ran a large estate up in Northumbria, so Philip could talk livestock yields and advances in organic farming, and the vagaries of the shooting season.
She had been looking forward to it all day, and was resplendent in silver lace and a new pink lipstick, of which she had high hopes. Philip, of course, was like something out of a magazine, even at ninety-four. She had never known a man look as good in uniform, or in black tie. He had been the most eligible man in Europe when they’d married. She felt lucky then, and lucky now – even though he was, of course, utterly maddening half the time.
‘Nobody has come to collect the body,’ she said, to explain her expression.
‘Well, no doubt somebody will.’
‘I really don’t think so.’
‘That’s hardly your problem though, is it?’
She sighed. ‘It feels as if it is.’
‘Come on, Lilibet. You’re not responsible for the whole world, you know. You had one dance with the man. That hardly constitutes a date.’
‘Philip. Really.’
She looked out of the window at the cars overtaking the Bentley, which resolutely stuck at sixty-nine miles per hour, and was so smooth it hardly seemed to be moving at all. This car was a treat. They saved the Bentley for special occasions, so it still smelled of fresh leather, rather than old dog and the cleaning fluid they used to disguise the smell of dog – with limited success. It was disconcertingly quiet, though, like speeding along in one of those padded listening booths they used to have in record shops.
‘Come on, spit it out. What is it?’
She wasn’t sure what it was that bothered her, until she turned back to Philip and saw the gleam of light on his white-blond hair, the curve of his jaw, the confident way he sat, even relaxing in the car, as if poised for action.
‘He reminded me of you,’ she said, before she could stop herself.
‘What, the Russian? Did he?’
‘When you were younger.’
‘Pah! Thank you very much!’
Philip was one of the best-looking men she had ever encountered, but not the most sensitive. He knew her inside out, and one of the things she loved most about him was that he didn’t kowtow to her as most people did. He saw her as ‘Lilibet’, much as she saw herself. He was straightforward, but hardly tender. So, he was not the best person to explain her feelings about the young Russian to, even though he was responsible for them.
Without her realising it, Maksim Brodsky had taken her back to the days in Valletta, when she had danced the night away with the other Navy wives and rejoiced in her freedom with her glamorous man, safe in the knowledge that her father was King and would be a wise monarch and personal guide for years to come. He was dead a year later. Those months in Malta were preserved in amber.
Now she knew why the image of the young man in that wardrobe was so hard to take. Knowing didn’t make it easier, exactly, but at least she understood.
‘Feeling better?’ Philip asked, without really looking.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said.
He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. The car whisked them on through the Berkshire night.
*
Sir Peter Venn, asked to drinks before lunch at Windsor on Saturday morning, accepted without question. He and his wife had been planning to see an exhibition at the National Gallery with some old friends from his posting in Rome, but he put them off without a murmur. If the Queen wants you to go to drinks, you go.
There was no obvious indication of why he’d been invited, and with a courtier’s discretion, he didn’t ask. As governor of the castle he was very familiar with the room – in this case,
the Octagon Room in the Brunswick Tower, overlooking the park. He mingled with Lady Caroline Cadwallader, the Canon Chaplain of St George’s Chapel, down the hill, and the few other senior members of the Household scattered about. Her Majesty was in upbeat form, looking forward to the Windsor Horse Show in a month’s time, which was always one of her favourite events. She chatted about her hopes for Barbers Shop, which she had entered in the Ridden Show Horse category. Unlike others in the small group that had clustered round, Sir Peter was not a horseman and was not entirely sure what a ridden show horse was (surely all show horses were ridden?), but it was obviously something important if the Queen was excited about the chance of winning.
‘I know you’ve been busy recently, Governor,’ she said, turning her bright blue gaze on him, and he wondered if he had looked unsuitably bored just now.
‘Have I?’
‘That meeting you hosted. You introduced me to a painfully shy young man from Djibouti.’
She did a rather brilliant imitation of a young man avoiding eye contact and staring at his shoes. The rest of the group, having the finest-honed diplomatic skills in the country, realised that they were not needed for this conversation and melted away. Sir Peter, who had been somewhat disappointed by Kelvin Lo’s failure to shine that day, was pleased to have the opportunity to talk about him a little bit more.
‘You remembered, ma’am! Yes, Kelvin’s rather a genius. He started working for us a few months ago. He’s already unearthed untold amounts of information about the Belt and Road.’
‘The Belt and Road?’
‘Yes. That was the real focus of the meeting. China’s grand plan to connect Asia, Africa and Europe. Awfully confusing, really, because “belt” is for the land bits, which are often roads, and “road” is for the sea bits, which never are. Except metaphorically. The Chinese are very metaphorical, I find.’
‘Oh.’ It rang a bell. ‘Is that the same as the New Silk Road? We talked about it when President Xi came last year.’