by SJ Bennett
In his study in the Norman Tower, overlooking his private garden in the old moat, Sir Peter Venn went over his list of meetings for the following week, ready to take over as titular head of the castle while the Queen was away. He sensed the unrest in the kitchens and corridors. Normally, that would calm down once a big event was over, but at the same time, he was acutely aware of the police team in the Round Tower next door, still busy with their investigation. Yesterday, out of the blue, he had been contacted by a journalist asking awkward questions about the Russian, and why the autopsy report was not available. It was only a matter of time before idle curiosity turned into something more serious and somebody really started digging. Then all hell would be let loose.
Meanwhile, the head housekeeper had given him the updated plans for guest accommodation during the horse show. His wife, who was normally a paragon of unflappability, was in a bit of a panic. Over the years she had hosted ambassadors, field marshals, two astronauts and several duchesses, but even she wasn’t sure how to impress the likes of Ant and Dec and Kylie Minogue.
Rozie felt the rumblings in the air like summer thunder. She tried not to worry, but she saw how hard everyone was working, and sensed that something fragile was holding the castle family together. It was the same thing that made her not mind too much when cousin Fran had to schedule the wedding around her. And made her want to work on her days off, and put up with a damp outside wall in her bedroom, and accept that she wouldn’t be around for family Christmases and birthdays.
It was something about duty, and trust, and affection, but it worked both ways. What was happening to Sandy Robertson felt as if it was shaking the foundations of the castle. And what would happen then? What would all these people do who were giving up their lives – giving them willingly – to make one person happy? If the trust was gone, if the affection soured? It would be an earthquake, and the whole edifice could come tumbling down.
Rozie did what she always tried to do when she sensed that the stress was getting to her: she got changed and went for a lunchtime run. Putting the miles behind her round the Great Park, she tried to make sense of what she knew. It was Rachel Stiles the police should be focusing on, surely? The girl drank; she took drugs; her DNA was found in Brodsky’s room. Did she kill him and commit suicide? But what about the new girl – Anita Moodie? Did Stiles kill her too?
After forty minutes of lung-punishing exertion, Rozie knew she hadn’t made much progress in fixing the problem – but she felt better anyway.
‘You’re looking chipper,’ Sir Simon observed when she got back to the office. ‘Good news about your mother?’
Lying shamelessly, she gave a detailed health update on the hip. The endorphin high got her through the afternoon.
*
The week was coming to an end. Billy MacLachlan sat at the wheel of his four-year-old Honda Civic on Saturday lunchtime and marvelled, not for the first time, at how bloody far away Suffolk was from . . . anywhere. Very nice when you got there, but for God’s sake. Bloody miles.
His car radio lost signal for the classical station he’d been listening to and he used the silence to mull over the conversation he’d had with a young woman in Edgware yesterday. She was a teacher at a posh girls’ school in north London. Music, with a sideline in netball coaching. He’d caught her between lunchtime choir practice and a warm-up session for the Year 10 B team, huddled at the back of an empty classroom cradling staffroom coffees in thick, ceramic mugs.
Escort.
She had definitely said the word ‘escort’. After about half an hour of talking, when she’d warmed up and the coffee had gone cold. He’d check his phone recording later, but he was sure of it. As in, ‘I know she was doing well, but even so, she liked nice clothes and, like, once I saw her in this amazing coat and then I realised it was this season Gucci. And she had an Anya Hindmarch cross-body bag I’d wanted for ages, and when I asked if she found it on Vinted she said no, it was new. And her main bag was Mulberry, and that looked new too. Not being funny or anything, but I did even wonder a couple of times . . . I shouldn’t say this.’
‘Go on.’
‘OK, so . . . not being mean, but I wondered whether she was an escort. I know, it’s silly. Anita wasn’t that kind of girl. I mean, she was quite private mostly, with men. But she had a lot of nice things, and she wasn’t the best singer in our year. She was good, but . . . she was just lucky, I suppose.’
Lucky, possibly. Talented, certainly. Anita Moodie had been at college with this girl, studying for her diploma in vocal performance. MacLachlan was building up a picture of her through conversations with old friends. To some, he was an old teacher, devastated to hear of her death and keen to find out about her later life. To others, he was a reporter, doing a piece on suicide. The police might pass this way later, and if they did, he didn’t want them to notice who exactly had gone before. In a couple of hours, when he eventually got all the way to Woodbridge, he would be an old family friend, gathering reminiscences to pass on to her relatives in Hong Kong.
The Anita he was getting to know was a fiercely ambitious girl. After boarding school in Hampshire she had studied music at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, focusing on the musical traditions of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. She had followed it with the diploma at the Royal College of Music, where she was known as a steady if not stellar performer.
It was in her final year at SOAS that friends started noticing her improved lifestyle. She rented the same kind of flats as them in grotty parts of London, but she went on more holidays, wore better clothes and drove her own car, a bubblegum-pink Fiat 500 – all captured to perfection in her stylised Instagram posts.
With the exception of the teacher friend, they put the new bling down to Anita’s success finding work on cruises and at elaborate parties in foreign locations. There were several images of her in grand hotels in hot places: the kind of places that had fountains in the courtyard and McLaren supercars parked under palm trees. Anita looked increasingly at home in ballgowns, under glittering chandeliers. She eventually put a deposit down on a nice flat in Greenwich with a river view, not far from the O2.
What girl in her twenties could afford her own flat in London? Some friends assumed it was family money, but those who knew her well said her parents lived modestly in Hong Kong, running a language school, and that it had been a struggle to cover her boarding school fees.
So. Who paid for the rent and the fancy handbags? Did she have some sort of sugar daddy? One of her schoolfriends said that she had remained very close to her A-level music teacher. Maybe a thing for older men? The guy had retired to Suffolk and had agreed to a meeting. MacLachlan kept his mind open. Maybe Mr de Vekey had been . . . paternalistic. Or maybe he hadn’t been in touch for ten years and would have nothing to say.
But it hadn’t sounded like that when MacLachlan had called to arrange a meeting. He had seemed shocked and shaky and unsettled. A man with a lot on his mind.
As the A12 gradually unfurled its way through Essex towards the coast, MacLachlan wondered what exactly that might be.
Chapter 23
A
fter tea, the Queen made her way to her private chapel. Following the fire in ’92, the old one had been made into the Lantern Lobby and used as a hall for welcoming guests. As it was where the blaze had started, the thought of worshipping there had been simply beyond her.
She would have come round in time, she saw now. Time heals almost everything. But she still didn’t regret the decision.
The new chapel, created out of a converted passageway, had a glorious faux-Gothic ceiling made of green oak lined with cerulean blue. It was a family affair: her most personal contribution to the fabric of the place. Charles had been on the architectural committee; David Linley had made the altar, which was quite plain, as she liked them; and Philip had worked with a master craftsman to design the stained-glass window, which she passed on her way in.
The window was a wo
rk of art threaded with memories. The top trio of images depicted the Trinity, raised serenely above a grey-green vista of the castle and the park. God was looking down on them, holding the Household in his loving care. The bottom three encapsulated the day of the fire itself. In the middle, St George stood over a red-eyed dragon; to the left, a volunteer held a rescued portrait; to the right, a firefighter battled the flames, with the Brunswick Tower lit like a torch behind him. Philip’s original idea for this last had been a phoenix, rising, which she had liked very much, but she preferred the final version. The castle did not rebuild itself: a tight-knit team did that, brilliantly, after the firemen battled night and day to contain the damage.
They were all part of her wider family and she still felt indebted to them, as one would. Though ’92 remained her annus horribilis, she felt grateful each time she came in here for what had followed. ‘Fear not, for I am with you’. ‘I am your strength and shield’. As a little girl she had been taught that if one was steadfast, one would see good triumph in the end. During the war, it was at Windsor that she had sheltered. It took a long time, sometimes, but it was true.
She sat in her usual seat, a crimson chair near the altar. Turning her thoughts to the present, she prayed for the Russian, and the City girl, and also for the singer, whose role she was yet to fully understand. She prayed for her family, small and large, and gave thanks for the future generations who were starting out so well. Now, if only Harry could find a decent girl, that would be something. She prayed for insight, and the power to use what she had already learned to bring light into the current darkness before any more young lives were lost.
She was tempted to pray for insight into the 3.15 at Wincanton tomorrow, but God did not answer betting prayers. The race required luck and judgement, born of years of experience and application, much like life.
*
It was at about this time, as he joined the North Circular from the A13 on his way back from East Anglia, that MacLachlan noticed the black BMW M6 Coupe three cars behind. He’d happened to spot one just like it on the way up. It had caught his eye because it was sleek and fast, and a model he wouldn’t mind upgrading to – if ever they decided to double his pension. And because he was that way inclined, he’d noticed the diplomatic plates. He braked gently and pulled into the inside lane. The M6 slid by a few moments later. Same plates. The driver even turned his head to look.
Numpties, he’d thought to himself. If you’re going to do it, at least find some nondescript car and do it properly. All the same, he’d felt his heart rate go up as he put his foot back on the accelerator.
Now that he was fully concentrating, he noticed the white Prius, too, about twenty minutes later. This one was older and had standard licence plates, just like a thousand Ubers. But it had started to sit about six cars behind soon after he reached Tower Bridge. He saw it drift in and out of view, never more than a couple of minutes out of sight, until he turned off the A4 at Chiswick, the other side of London, not far from home. Which could have been pure coincidence, except he’d added half an hour to his journey by going a convoluted route via Battersea, crossing the river north to south at Chelsea Bridge and south to north again at Putney: a journey that no satnav, however bonkers, would take. They were definitely following him, until they were sure where he was going. Good enough to use two cars. Amateur enough to use both of them badly, thank God.
So it was later than he’d anticipated by the time he got home, and too late to put in a call to Windsor Castle tonight. He’d have called the APS, but on a weekend he judged it would be just as efficient to call Her Majesty direct, if he timed it right. Around sevenish, between drinks and dinner, usually did the trick. It used to surprise him, how quickly she took his calls, if she was free to talk privately. Now he just accepted it as one of the things the gutter press would kill their grannies to know – but would never find out. He’d have to wait till tomorrow, but he was a patient man.
*
The Queen was about to dress for dinner on Sunday evening when her assistant dresser brought in a telephone: the old-fashioned kind, anything but ‘smart’, with a base and a receiver.
‘Call for you, ma’am. Mr MacLachlan.’
‘Thank you.’
The dresser retired. The Queen glanced at herself in the dressing table mirror (tired, a little puffy) and lifted the receiver.
‘Billy, how nice of you to call.’
‘Pleasure, Your Majesty. I think I’ve got what you were looking for. That Moodie girl didn’t take her own life – not if all my sources are correct. Also, you asked if she spoke Chinese, and she did. She studied Mandarin at school and spoke Cantonese at home in Hong Kong. I had a nose around to see if she spoke Russian too, just in case, but I don’t think so. She led an interesting life, you might say. Definitely something not quite right about it.’
‘Tell me as much as you can. I have about seven minutes.’
‘That’ll be ample, ma’am.’
He proceeded to fill her in on his investigations into the Instagram account and conversations with Anita Moodie’s friends. ‘Then, yesterday, I visited her old teacher,’ he added. ‘She was in a bad way when she went to see him, a couple of days before she died. He assumed it was boy trouble, put it down to her artistic temperament, et cetera, but she hadn’t ever been like that before. And she was really bad, you know what I mean, not just sad and weepy but really losing it. She was sitting in a spot on his lawn, he said, and rocking backwards and forwards, mumbling things he mostly couldn’t understand. She’d seemed beside herself. Despairing.’
‘Doesn’t that suggest suicide?’ the Queen wondered. That was what the girl’s friends thought, though it had come out of the blue.
‘You might think,’ MacLachlan said, ‘but once Mr de Vekey got talking, he changed his mind about how she’d come across – her mood, you know what I mean. She thought she was going to die. He couldn’t calm her, he couldn’t console her. And he said now he came to think about it she hadn’t been upset so much as terrified. Scared out of her wits.’
The Queen didn’t like the sound of this teacher. ‘Didn’t he think to warn anyone? Her parents? If she was in such a bad way.’
‘He said she told him not to.’
The Queen didn’t bother to ask the chief inspector how he had got the information out of the man in that case, because MacLachlan’s talents in that direction were the reason she relied on him.
‘What would you like me to do now, ma’am? I ought to warn you, though, they’re on to me.’
‘Who?’
He told her about the black and white cars. ‘The diplomatic plates come from an Arabian embassy. Small country. Friendly. Hard to imagine them arranging an assassination.’ He named the country in question, and she agreed.
She thought about it.
‘Don’t do anything more for now. Thank you, but I think that’s enough excitement for the time being. Will you be all right?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he assured her. He’d like to see them try something. ‘Just let me know.’
But already her mind was elsewhere. The pieces of the puzzle were all there. She just needed to connect them. The basic shape of it was clear, and had been for a while, but some stubborn details refused to fit.
She could perhaps have solved it that evening, but as soon as she ended the call her dresser was back with fresh stockings to put on, and then it was time for the last dinner at Windsor for a week, which was full of friends and family.
*
That night, as she picked up her diary, she briefly thought about the police interview with Rachel Stiles in her flat in the Isle of Dogs (near the Millennium Dome, where one had spent what was truly one of the most ghastly nights of one’s life, which put a certain slant on things), and the eyes, and that single strand of hair. And those knickers. Why the knickers? She could not make sense of that at all.
As she often did when a problem seemed intractable, she decided to sleep on it. But the clock was ticking. If sh
e was right, that meant the hideous Humphreys was partly right, too, and that meant the country was in danger until it was sorted out.
Part 4
A Brief Encounter
Chapter 24
P
hilip had an event in town on Monday and was up and out, with his valet and his equerry, before she went for her last ride. She had hoped that the fresh air, the verdant parkland and the comforting smell of pony would unleash a revelation, but in the end she was too nervous about the horse show, too sad to be leaving and too busy with last-minute mental preparations for the week ahead to make any progress at all.
Rozie arrived with the boxes for her to look at before leaving. Rozie was available to travel with her, too, but the Queen wanted time to think.
‘I’ll see you at the palace.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘There are a few things we need to talk about.’
‘Of course, ma’am.’
‘Come and find me after lunch.’
An hour later, the Range Rover pulled discreetly out of the castle precincts and wound its familiar way towards the M4. Today was Princess Charlotte’s birthday. The Queen put in a quick call to Anmer Hall to mark the occasion. They were busy preparing for a little party. She would see them soon, at the horse show. For now, all she got was a shy little ‘Hello, Gan-Gan’ from Prince George. He was not a child who was normally backward in coming forward, but he was still nervous of technology. Perhaps one should be grateful. In a decade or so it would probably be impossible to prise him away from it.
She thought of the tight little Cambridge family, safe and secure and out of the spotlight in their Norfolk home. That was just as it should be. It had been like that for her too, growing up in Mayfair with the reasonable expectation, as a young girl, of a lifetime of privacy. Now it was hard to remember what it had been like: to trust more than a few close friends, to take risks and make mistakes in the happy certainty that it didn’t really matter. Now everything mattered. Almost everyone talked.