by SJ Bennett
So the girl had been here. And yet she couldn’t explain her own father’s medal.
‘You look surprised, ma’am.’
‘Not really,’ she said, regaining her composure. ‘Did they know each other?’
‘Not as far as anyone knows. But she did say she had a brief conversation with him in the corridor the night before he died. One of the housekeepers confirms that. Maybe that’s how the hair got transferred. DCI Strong is liaising with the divisional CID in the Isle of Dogs, where the body was found. They’re going to get someone to look into whether they knew each other before. But it doesn’t seem likely, and if she did, it doesn’t explain much. She didn’t know she’d be sleeping over until late afternoon, so she could hardly have planned to kill anyone.’
‘I see. Thank you for letting me know.’
‘Ma’am.’
And there it was. The President was about to climb into Marine One to fly down to Windsor, and the whole investigation into Brodsky’s death had just taken two steps backwards. Not MI5’s investigation, obviously: that still continued down the straight, firmly blinkered. But one’s own theory, which was only half-formed anyway, and was now back at the starting gate.
So be it. One would simply have to, as Harry reliably informed her was the current lingo, ‘style it out’.
*
After much toing and froing between offices, it had been decided to meet the President and Mrs Obama in person as they landed at Home Park, just below the East Terrace. It wasn’t normal procedure, but then, one didn’t normally get to celebrate one’s birthday with the President and First Lady at one’s favourite castle. She would pick them up in a Range Rover. Philip would drive.
There were three helicopters in all, and it was a relief when they managed to navigate their way through Heathrow airspace to land safely on the golf course. The day was breezy, and the Queen protected her hair with a headscarf, while Philip stayed warm in a mac. Emerging from Marine One, with his protection team in place, the President was all smiles.
There was a bit of a question mark about who was going to sit where in the car, but that was soon sorted. The staff seemed to have assumed it would be like a state dinner, where the visiting gentleman accompanies the lady host – but it felt to the Queen more like a shoot, where obviously the men would like to go in front together so they could chat. She sat in the back with Michelle, who was as charming as always once her nerves began to settle.
The First Lady was unusually tall. The Queen got a bit of a crick in her neck looking up at her. However, she still radiated that star presence one was rather fond of. It was nice not to be the only woman the press wanted pictures of. Mrs Obama’s every public move was commented on and dissected, and she was used to being both adored and vilified, and never entirely alone. They had quite a lot in common – although of course one had been on the throne for nearly a decade before Michelle Obama’s husband was even born.
The castle was crawling with security by now, and TV cameras and crew. There was a quick press call in the Oak Room to keep everyone happy, and then at last they could relax. There was a lot to talk about, what with the upcoming referendum and the elections, and the couple’s plans for life after the White House. She would miss them. But the idea of a female president of the United States was an interesting one. How the world had changed since 1926. Who could possibly have foreseen such an eventuality back then?
It wasn’t until after the lunch, walking back towards the cars to say goodbye, that the President leaned down to her and said, ‘I understand you’ve been having a little local difficulty. With a young Russian. If there’s anything we can do to help –’
The Queen turned to him gravely, before flashing a quick, dismissive smile.
‘Thank you. The Security Service seem to have it under control. They seem to think the butler did it.’
‘That would be in keeping.’
‘I hope he didn’t. I’m rather fond of my butlers.’
President Obama thought of his auntie’s house in Hawaii, and his student digs in New York, and now the diligent team in the White House who catered to his every whim, and nodded sagely, but with a wicked glint in his eye.
‘Aren’t we all, ma’am? Aren’t we all?’
Chapter 20
R
ozie sat in her bedroom with the light on, willing herself to go to bed after the most exhausting day she could remember, but she was still too wired to sleep. It was two in the morning. Almost all the windows in the castle were dark. She wanted to FaceTime Fliss in Frankfurt, but her sister would be asleep, like everyone around here – and also like everyone around here, she would be getting up early in the morning.
Less than five hours until the alarm. Rozie knew she should have a quick shower and a warm drink and switch off that bit in her brain that kept going over the day in five-minute intervals, grading every decision and reaction according to how well it had gone. Instead, she went over to the decanter tray (as normal at Windsor as a kettle in Notting Hill) and poured herself a whisky. She’d already eaten all the plantain chips she’d brought back from Lagos, so she also helped herself to some little jam sandwiches, cut to the size of old pennies, from a Tupperware pot. These were leftovers from the children’s teatime yesterday, passed along by the kitchens. What would her grandfather say if he knew she had shared a joke with the Crown Prince of Denmark, and was eating Prince George’s spare jam pennies?
Her laptop was still open and she checked tomorrow’s schedule before cycling through Twitter, the BBC, the FT, the New York Times and Washington Post. Then, on her sixth jam penny, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the other rags that followed the Royal Family, to make sure they hadn’t misreported today’s events with any greater magnitude than normal. From her playlist she picked Art Blakey, hoping that some Blue Note jazz would compensate for her cortisol crash. She went down several rabbit holes on YouTube: ‘President Obama arrives at Windsor Castle: LIVE’, ‘Hillary Clinton Addresses Her Losing Streak Cold Open: SNL’, ‘Top 9 Funniest Julia Louis-Dreyfus Old Navy Commercials’. (By now she was hating herself.)
On Facebook, she stalked her sister and various cousins, before randomly searching for people she knew. The clock on her screen told her it was nearly 3 a.m. If she didn’t turn off the laptop soon she would . . . She was too tired to think about what might happen tomorrow, but it would be bad. Whatever. She ate another jam penny and typed Meredith Gostelow’s name, but the architect did not appear as a Facebook member. How weird. Did the woman not have a life? Then she tried Masha Peyrovskaya, hoping for endless photographs of exotic holidays and high-powered ladies who lunch. But though there was a profile, it was private. Fair enough, Rozie thought. On a roll now, prompted by that day in London, she typed in ‘Vijay Kulandaiswamy’ – not an easy name to forget.
This time, it was different.
Only one entry appeared in the search, and the profile photo matched the man she had met in Brodsky’s Covent Garden flat. Vijay was a sharer. His feed was full of updates for anyone to see. He liked gifs and memes from the US elections, which made Rozie feel right at home, and pictures of himself and friends at bars and restaurants around the world. Rozie scrolled up and down, feeling welcome sleepiness finally descend, but when she got back to the top of the feed she was wide awake again.
The most recent photograph, which she had ignored at first, was an old one of Vijay with a group of dishevelled friends, looking drunk and happy at the end of a party. ‘Miss you forever. RIP’, the caption began, and as she had Maksim Brodsky on her mind she assumed at first that it was prompted by his death.
But this farewell message wasn’t for Brodsky. It was for someone else – a girl. Rozie felt bad for Vijay. What an unfortunate coincidence to lose your room-mate and a female friend within two weeks of each other. This girl was twenty-six, the caption said. Her name was Anita Moodie and it wasn’t clear how she had died. She had been a talented singer, a linguist who had travelled the world. Vijay also shared
a picture of her and his brother, taken on the Peak in Hong Kong a couple of years before. Their smiling faces spoke of hope and promise.
For no obvious reason other than rabbit-hole internet curiosity, Rozie wanted to know what had happened to the girl. It felt as though Vijay was being coy about it. Had it been a terrible accident? A disease?
She clicked on Vijay’s brother, Selvan, who was tagged in the photos and turned out to be another sharer. His feed was full of pictures of himself as a teenager with Anita and friends. In a couple of them, Maksim Brodsky was stretched out on the floor, his limbs languidly arranged for the camera, or sitting, laughing, with one of the girls on his knee.
Rozie checked out Selvan and Vijay’s bios: they had gone to Allingham School. She remembered Vijay telling her he and Maksim were old schoolfriends that day in the flat. Rozie clicked the link to Anita Moodie’s page. She had gone there too. According to their birthdates, she must have been in the same year as Selvan, which would be the year between Maksim and Vijay. Judging from the old photographs, she could see that they had all hung out together at least a few times.
Back on Selvan’s page, buried in the recent comments were references to Anita’s life ‘cut short’. ‘I had no idea about her mental health’, somebody said. Selvan had answered with a crying emoji and a ‘Me neither. Shock to us all’.
Rozie took a sip of whisky and felt a tingle travel up her spine. Three people in their mid-twenties had died in the past eighteen days, and two of them went to school together. She couldn’t begin to put together how Anita Moodie’s death could be connected to Maksim Brodsky’s, never mind Rachel Stiles’s, but it couldn’t be pure coincidence, could it? Well, it could – but was it?
Behind her and up the hill was the Round Tower, housing DCI Strong’s office. I should go there in the morning, she thought. But she knew she wouldn’t. Sir Simon had told her how uninterested the police were in the detail of Rachel Stiles’s hair on Brodsky’s body. Yes, it was part of their inquiry, but they were much more excited by the knickers. Rozie had studied enough statistical theory at the bank to know how easy it would be to argue for coincidence in the school connection. Young people died. They took drugs and committed suicide. It was tragic, but they did. And anyway, how would she explain her late-night online stalking of Vijay Kulandaiswamy – a man she was supposed never to have met?
She felt strangely calm, though. Knocking back the last of her whisky, she left Art Blakey playing on the laptop, crawled into bed in her clothes and turned out the light.
*
It was 9 a.m. when she woke up, with a blinding headache, having somehow failed to set the alarm. Her first thought was to thank heaven it was Sir Simon’s day to deliver the boxes. Rozie knew they would be fuller than usual after the relative ease – from paperwork at least – of the last two days. Yesterday she had personally put together a small selection of letters and cards written to the Queen by members of the public, which she would also want to see. Yes, of course the nonagenarian monarch would be working over the weekend to make up for lost time. Sir Simon said she had looked startled and offended when he had gently suggested otherwise.
He would be taking the boxes through in an hour or so. He, and not Rozie. She hadn’t thought about that last night. She wasn’t scheduled to see the Queen at all today, or tomorrow, which was Sunday. She wondered for a minute whether she could wait until Monday to share her discovery. It might not mean anything, after all.
But a man was dead. The Queen cared deeply. So did Rozie.
She made herself a cup of tea and finished off the last of the jam pennies. The headache abated slightly and she felt better after a shower. Ten minutes later she was dressed in a body-hugging pencil skirt, white shirt and a tailored jacket that had cost her first month’s wages, her hair and minimal makeup done, her feet shod in her signature heels. She had thought of a plan and it just needed a couple of carefully timed phone calls to make it work.
Sir Simon was talking to the Master of the Household when she walked past his open office door. He merely tapped his wristwatch and gave her a quizzical look as she went to her desk in the room next door. Timekeeping was not quite so essential at weekends when one was not ‘on’ with the Boss.
Rozie brought up the Queen’s updated schedule for the day on her desktop monitor, paying close attention to the hour before lunch. She made a quick call to the Prime Minister’s office to talk to Emily, the PM’s private secretary, who had become a friend in the last couple of months.
‘We’ve had some thoughts about presents the Cabinet might like to get for the Queen,’ she said. ‘Sir Simon has a list.’
‘Oh, does he? Because David’s desperate. He keeps coming up with all these ideas but she’s either got one already, or got it in gold, or Sam thinks it would be silly, or one of the ministers makes a face and David changes his mind.’
‘Simon thought of some brilliant ones yesterday.’
‘Fabulous. Because we’ve only got till June and it doesn’t feel like very long if it’s bespoke. Plus of course David’s got a lot on his mind. Thank God she didn’t want anything for her actual birthday. Did the President get her anything?’
‘I don’t know.’
Rozie had been manning the office phones during the visit. Sir Simon would have been the one to see. For a second, the surrealness of her job hit her again. If she wanted to know what Barack Obama gave the Queen for her birthday, in private . . . she could just ask.
‘Can I talk to him now?’ Emily asked. ‘Simon, I mean.’
‘He’s away from his desk. Try him at around eleven.’
‘No worries. Thanks, babe.’
Rozie put the phone in its cradle with a satisfying click. Emily was diligent, persistent and obsessed with the Prime Minister’s to-do list. The present from the government for the Queen’s official birthday had been high on that list for a long time and she would do anything to tick it off. Rozie then made a couple of other calls.
At 11.00, she made sure she was discussing the debrief from yesterday with Sir Simon and the head of castle security. At 11.15, as instructed by Rozie, a clerk from St Paul’s Cathedral rang him to talk about details of the official birthday thanksgiving service. As the minutes ticked by, Sir Simon kept glancing at his watch. The Queen would be finished with the boxes soon. But at 11.30 his secretary came over to say the Prime Minister’s office were on the phone for the third time and wanted to talk to him directly, about something quite urgent.
With a sigh and an eye-roll, he nodded to her. ‘I’ll take it.’ He gestured to Rozie. ‘Go and get the boxes. Do you mind?’
Rozie didn’t. When the call came, she walked smartly out of the office, making him marvel once again at how she managed such rapid strides in those skirts and heels.
*
‘Ah, good, it’s you,’ the Queen said without surprise, putting the last of the papers back in its box and making sure she hadn’t missed anything.
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ Rozie curtsied. Mastering that in a tight skirt had been an interesting learning curve.
The Queen put her teacup in its saucer. ‘Thank you.’
The coffee maid, who had been hovering in the background, picked up a tray and left the room. The Queen turned back to Rozie.
‘Is there any news?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Rozie had practised several times what she would say, and how to do it without wasting precious time. She told the Queen about Vadim Borovik being beaten up in Soho, reassured her that he had been discharged from hospital, and mentioned how Masha Peyrovskaya was worried her husband was the cause. She then explained about last night’s internet session, and the curious coincidence of Anita Moodie’s death.
The Queen was intrigued.
‘This girl was good friends with him, you think?’
‘Well, they knew each other. And, there might be a link with the music department at Allingham. Maksim played piano, of course, and I looked up Anita this morning. She studie
d music at uni. In fact, she got a diploma in singing.’
‘And that’s what she did afterwards? Sing?’
‘From what I could tell. She didn’t post much on Facebook, but friends referred to her performing.’
This didn’t entirely fit. The Queen absorbed the information without really knowing what to do with it. ‘Is it certain it was suicide?’ she asked.
‘That’s what her friends seem to think. They were all surprised, though.’
‘Do you have a picture of her?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Rozie had used her phone to screenshot various pictures from Selvan’s timeline and Anita’s own Facebook page. She leaned down and scrolled through them now, as the Queen peered through her bifocals. They showed a pretty young woman with serious, dark brown eyes and a glossy, reddish bob that swept sharply below her jawline. In each picture she looked nicely presented, in feminine, well-cut clothes. The Queen’s mind was whirring.
‘Thank you, Rozie. Very much. You might ask Mr MacLachlan to look into Anita Moodie for us, would you? It would be interesting to find out a little bit more about her life. Would you mind asking him to find out if she spoke Mandarin Chinese? Also, I wanted to ask, could you possibly discover what sort of underwear Sandy Robertson is supposed to have bought online?’
‘Actually, I already have, ma’am. Yesterday,’ Rozie said. She regularly popped up to DCI Strong’s little incident room in the Round Tower for a word. Often bearing jam pennies or spare slices of Dundee cake, which went down well.
The Queen looked surprised. ‘Really?’
‘I thought you might be concerned about the purchase.’ Which was the polite way of saying they both thought the knicker theory was ridiculous. ‘They were bought from Marks and Spencer last summer. They were the own-brand’s third most popular line and they sold over a hundred thousand pairs of them. Mr Robertson maintains he bought them for his daughter, Isla, who lives at home with him. She’s sixteen. He regularly shops for things for her and she has various pairs like it. Of course, that doesn’t prove he didn’t buy others for a different purpose.’