The Last Queen of England (20 page)

The new day broke with no recognition from Tayte and it was approaching eight a.m. when he thought he’d found who he was looking for.
 
He had an entry on his screen from the 1971 census.
 
It showed an address in Surrey, listing the head of the household as a Mr Peter David Harper, age twenty-six.
 
Below that were the names of the other people living at the same address at the time the census was taken.
 
There was only one name: Elizabeth May Harper, age twenty-two, whose relationship to the head of the household was wife.

Tayte checked the subsequent census entries for any dependants and noted that none were listed.
 
When he checked the most recent census he found that Peter Harper was still at the same address, but it now showed that he was living alone, suggesting that either through death, divorce or some other form of separation, his wife was no longer with him.
 
After confirming that Peter Harper had no record of death, Tayte borrowed a mobile phone and called Fable, knowing that there was a fifty percent chance that he was looking at the killer’s next victim.

When daylight broke at the windows of a grey portacabin somewhere in East London, a man in a navy-blue security guard uniform was saying goodbye to the skinny peroxide blonde who had been to visit him.
 
Most of the girls he’d used wouldn’t go back to the gasworks twice, but Lola Love as she called herself didn’t seem to mind the place, or him.
 
He followed her to the gate, having put enough cash in her purse to keep her going for another day on whatever Class-A drug she was addicted to.
 
He didn’t care.
 
He locked up again and watched her walk awkwardly down the derelict road, where weeds were growing tall through the cracks in the potholed Tarmac.
 
She had her arms crossed tightly in front of her, fishnets and high heels and little else on.

Does she feel the cold?

It was certainly a cool morning: clear and bright and dewy.
 
He supposed she didn’t, or more likely she no longer cared.
 
Returning to the portacabin he plugged the main gate surveillance camera back into the recorder and smiled to himself.
 
It was easier than deleting data from the hard drive like he sometimes had to.

If anyone ever asks to see it, you blame the missing video on a fault.
 
Simple.
 
What else could it be?

No one ever asked.
 
There was nothing of value at the old gasworks left to steal that hadn’t been stripped out long before the construction company he was contracted to bought the site.
 
He thought about that surveillance camera as he plugged it back in.
 
It had missed a lot recently.
 
He’d slipped out at eleven p.m. and was gone almost five hours.
 
But things hadn’t gone to plan.

This one is smarter than the rest.
 
Too smart for his own good.

The man he had visited in the night was quick to produce the heirloom he sought.
 
This time it was an ebony and brass sextant inlaid with ivory that once belonged to Lloyd Needham, astronomer and one-time hydrographer to William III.
 
But the digits were not there.
 
In their place he saw only the gouge marks where they had been purposefully obscured by the man who scoffed at him as he told him how he’d read all about Julian Davenport’s murder three months ago.
 
This man was one of the older generation and he knew all about the digits, too.
 
He’d said that they were now his insurance, committed to memory to keep him alive.

And that had been his mistake.

He’ll give up the digits
.
 
And you’ll know if he’s lying because you’re good.
 
Just like in Kuwait City.

He’d brought the man back to the gasworks with him and ordinarily that wouldn’t have bothered him, but the parameters had changed.
 
The American and the team of genealogists he’d seen on his portable television last night gave him cause to hurry now that the new day had dawned.
 
His guest had been left long enough in that draughty old boiler house.
 
Left to his thoughts.

That’s how you do it.
 
You show them what they’re in for and you leave them to their own imagination for a while.
 
They become more cooperative then.

 
He reached under the desk and slid out a black holdall from which he produced an old leather roll case that was once the property of a woman called Sarah Groves, descendant of Royal Physician and anatomist, Dr Bartholomew Hutton.
 
He untied the case and rolled it open.
 
It contained several antiquated surgical instruments, the metal still gleaming, the bone and tortoiseshell handles clean and bright.
 
His eyes fell on the lancet and he smiled to himself as he considered that this simple physician’s instrument, which had no doubt been used to bleed many of Dr Hutton’s patients three centuries ago, was about to be used again - over and over again until Peter Harper told him what he wanted to know.

“Abducted?”

Tayte was talking on the phone with DI Fable.
 
The detective was in Surrey at the address Tayte had given him an hour and a half ago.
 
It was almost nine-thirty a.m. now and the team of genealogists, who were all now working on the last name from Tayte’s list, had reached something of an impasse in the closing stages of their research.
 
A decision had to be made that Tayte did not want to make lightly and hearing that Peter Harper had been abducted from his home only served to compound the problem.

“When?” Tayte said.
 
“Are you sure?”

Fable coughed into the phone before he spoke.
 
“He was taken in the night,” he said.
 
“Couldn’t say when for sure but his bed was slept in.
 
It was unmade and -”

“How do you know it wasn’t some other night?” Tayte cut in.
 
Knowing they had failed Harper by what could amount to just a few hours grated on his tired conscience.

“I was about to say that the last number redial facility on his phone showed that he made a call close to eight o’clock last evening.
 
It’s boy-scout stuff.”

“I see,” Tayte said. “Sorry.
 
Go on.”

Fable coughed again and cleared his throat.
 
“His visitor didn’t use the front door like before.
 
We believe he went in through an open bathroom window on the first floor - must have gone up the drainpipe.
 
It’s a 50s terraced house.
 
Still has the original iron pipework.”

“Terraced?” Tayte said.
 
“Did any of his neighbours hear anything?”

“I’ve got people conducting a door-to-door now but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
 
We won’t know anything for a few hours.
 
How’s the next name coming?”

“You mean the last name,” Tayte said, reminding them both that they only had one more chance.
 
He sighed.
 
“We’ve kind of lost the thread.”

“How’s that?”

“The Great War,” Tayte said.
 
“During the Fourteen-Eighteen, a father and his young firstborn son - who must have lied about his age to get into the fight - were both killed.
 
The father, Captain John Cornell, died in 1917 in Ypres.
 
The son, Robert Cornell, didn’t make it that far.
 
He fell in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme so the line of firstborn descendants from Sir Stephen Henley came to an abrupt end.”

“So that’s it?” Fable said.

“I don’t believe so.
 
And this killer doesn’t seem to believe so either, does he?
 
I’m sure it’s just a case of working out what contingency the father adopted before he died.
 
Robert wasn’t an only child.
 
He had a younger brother called Joseph.”

“Well that’s your man.”

“Probably, but I don’t like guesswork.
 
There’s too much resting on us getting this right.
 
I want to be sure.”

“Look Tayte.
 
That might be a luxury you have in your world but you’re half into mine now.
 
Don’t call it guesswork if it makes you uneasy.
 
Call it a hunch.
 
Christ, I work with them all the time.
 
Besides, what else have you got?”

“Not much.”

“So do what I would do and run with it.
 
You said the son died in 1916 and the father in 1917?”

“That’s right.”

“So the father had a whole year to make other plans before he was killed.
 
If we’re talking about handing down a family heirloom then the younger brother was next in line to receive it, wasn’t he?”

Tayte knew it made sense.
 
He’d even considered that as the Cornells had lived during uncertain times, such a contingency might already have been established by the time the war began.

“I’m heading back to London,” Fable said and Tayte heard him groan as if he wasn’t happy about it.
 
“I’m giving an update briefing at Thames House.
 
The Security Service want to hear the case progress from the horse’s mouth.”

“Tell them we’re close,” Tayte said.

“How close?
 
Give me a number.”

“Another hour.
 
Maybe two.”

“Okay.
 
Well, you call me as soon as you can.
 
I won’t be in that meeting a second longer than I need to be, believe me.
 
I just hope to Christ we get there first this time.”

“We have to,” Tayte said.
 
“It’s our last chance.”

The call ended with the words,
last chance,
spinning through Tayte’s mind.
 
He knew they could rest no hope on finding the abducted Peter Harper alive and of the six current descendants of the Royal Society Fellows only one remained to be identified: the one person who might be able to shed some light on the killer’s motive.
 
Tayte was also painfully aware that it was probably his last chance to understand why his friend was dead.
 
He needed that closure and he had no doubt that this killer already knew who his last victim was and that he would waste no time paying them a visit now that he was so close to his goal.

Tayte turned to the 1911 census that was still on his screen.
 
A name stood out that he’d seen before.
 
It was a family name, handed down since it had been adopted after the English Civil war in 1645.
 
The name was Naseby.
 
It had been given to Sir Stephen Henley and despite a change or two in surnames through marriage over the years it had also been given to John Cornell and to his sons, Robert and Joseph.
 
That unusual name, if its usage had been continued by the descendants of Joseph Cornell, would make the remainder of their work at Kew all the easier.
 
He went to the whiteboard and wrote it down, hoping that it was the right name, knowing that they could ill afford the delay if it was not.

Sitting on a low wall outside The National Archives, Michel Levant snapped the collar up on his beige designer
mac and re-crossed his legs as he continued to watch the main entrance, waiting for Jefferson Tayte to emerge.
 
He rarely diverted his gaze, having done so once to assess the weather as high white clouds came and went in the blue, and another time to watch a pretty teenage girl go by, unable as he was to resist what he considered to be such a simple pleasure.

The number of visitors to The Archives surprised him that morning as they arrived and were turned away again.
 
Clearly they had neither seen the news last night nor read the morning papers, or they too would have known about the American genealogist and his team, whose work for the police had forced The Archives to close.
 
It was of no consequence to Michel Levant.
 
If anything the volume of people coming and going just helped to mask his presence.
 
And he would sit there all day if he had to.

Chapter Thirteen

I
t was late morning by the time Jefferson Tayte left The National Archives.
 
Despite feeling drained from having worked through the night with the rest of the team, he sprinted to the taxi that was waiting for him, hoping again that the hunch DI Fable had suggested he run with was right and that this time they wouldn’t be too late.