The Last Queen of England (43 page)

Tayte and Jean exchanged glances, saying nothing.
 
Then Jean turned away and Tayte thanked the man.
 
He caught up with her and they walked a few paces in silence, passing puddles of children who had settled onto the grass in pairs: one holding the tracing paper, the other rubbing the crayon.

“I guess that saved us some time,” Tayte said, trying to focus on the positives.

Jean stopped abruptly and turned to him.
 
She gave a cheerless laugh.
 
“Time for what?” she said.
 
“Don’t you see?
 
It’s over.”
 
She crossed her arms and locked eyes with him.
 
“This is the last church on our list,” she added, drumming the reality home.
 
“We’ve got a connection back to St Paul’s Cathedral, which leaves me thinking that this is probably the right church, but where does it leave us?
 
All the old graves are gone and the only records were destroyed during the Blitz.”

Tayte knew she was really worrying about where that left her son and it was easy to understand why.
 
How would things turn out for Elliot if they had nothing to exchange for him?
 
He’d already considered the ramifications but now was not the time to stand around discussing it.
 
He grabbed Jean’s hand.

“You may think it’s over but it’s not,” he said as they walked.
 
“There are people who still want us dead.
 
They don’t know it’s over, so we need to leave this place.”

They reached the street and Tayte looked for a taxi.
 
It was late afternoon and the traffic was building.
 
He was about to start walking again, if only to get away from the church, when he heard something that sent a shiver through him.
 
He turned towards the sound, back to the churchyard.
 
One of the schoolgirls was turning in slow circles between the headstones, singing his name.

“Jefferson Tayte...
 
Jefferson Tayte...”

Tayte sprinted back through the gate and stopped several feet from her.
 
In her hand she had a letter and a toy rabbit.

“Are you Jefferson Tayte?” she asked.

Tayte stepped closer.
 
“Yes, I am.”
 
He indicated the letter.
 
“Is that for me?”

The girl gave a quick nod and held the letter out.

“Thank you,” Tayte said as he took it.
 
Then he turned away and ripped it open as Jean caught up.

“What is it?” she said.

Tayte showed her.
 
“Further instructions.
 
There’s a number to call when we’ve identified the heir.”

Jean knelt in front of the girl.
 
“Who gave you this?”

The girl pointed towards the road - to the iron railings and the path that ran alongside them.
 
“The lady.”

There was a woman dressed in black, heading off to their right.
 
Tayte dropped his briefcase and ran across the graveyard.

“Hey!”

The woman turned and Tayte saw that it was a girl who looked like she was in her late teens.
 
She had gum in her mouth, a silver stud through her lip, and she wore dark makeup, Goth style.

Tayte showed her the letter through the railings, side-stepping to keep up with her.
 
She eyed it briefly and turned away again, unfazed by the fact that he knew she’d delivered it.
 
Clearly, this was not her note.

“Who gave this to you?” Tayte asked.

The girl turned back to him.
 
“Man in a van,” she said.
 
“Gave me twenty quid and a cuddly-toy for the girl.”

Tayte looked along the street.
 
There was no van there now.
 
“Did you see this man?
 
What did he look like?”

“Fat,” the girl said, snapping her gum in Tayte’s face.

“What kind of van was it?”

“A white one, stupid.”

The railings ran out.
 
The girl kept walking.
 
Tayte gave a frustrated sigh and turned back.
 
He figured it was no use pursuing the matter.
 
The girl clearly wasn’t interested and the man in the van was probably a couple of miles away by now.
 
Tayte supposed he’d probably been paid for his services, too, but by whom?
 
And how did they know where to find him?
 
He was sure no one could have followed them from Covent Garden.
 
He returned to Jean who was waiting by the gate with his briefcase.
 
He didn’t have to say anything.
 
His expression said it all.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and they started walking with the flow of the traffic.

They hadn’t long cleared the church when Tayte saw a taxi and stuck his arm out.
 
Then as it pulled over, he froze.
 
A blue Ford he recognised was heading towards them.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

A
s soon as Tayte saw the blue Ford approaching St Paul’s, he crouched beside the taxi he’d just hailed and pulled Jean down with him.
 
As she got in, Tayte watched the Ford arrive in a hurry and pull up onto the pavement outside the church.
 
Two men he recognised got out and he didn’t wait around to find out whether they had seen them.
 
He threw his briefcase into the taxi and jumped in after it.

“Thames House,” he said to the driver.

Jean was looking out the rear window and Tayte looked with her.
 
One of the men, the gaunt-looking scarecrow of a man, was heading into the churchyard.
 
His blonde associate remained by the car, watching the street.

“They can’t have seen us,” Tayte said as the taxi pulled away.
 
He faced the front and slid lower.
 
“Better keep down until we’re clear, though.”

Jean turned back into the taxi and sank down beside him.
 
She eyed him questioningly.
 
“Thames House?”

Tayte nodded.
 
“We’re going in.
 
It’s the only way to stop this.
 
The people at the top of the chain need to know it’s over.
 
Maybe then they’ll leave us alone.”

“You think?” Jean said.
 
She sounded doubtful.

Tayte settled back for the ride.
 
“I don’t know what to think,” he admitted.
 
“The way I see it though is that if the heir can’t be found - if this thing can’t be proved one way or the other - why kill us?
 
And that goes for Elliot, too.
 
Why harm him if there’s nothing to gain from it?
 
I don’t see why anyone would.”

“I wish I shared your faith in humanity.”

Tayte reached into his pocket, pulled out the pieces of the BlackBerry and reassembled it.
 
He read the note again, the last part aloud.

“Once the heir is confirmed, Elliot will be released.”

“Only, the heir can’t be found,” Jean said.
 
“War and redevelopment have seen to that over the years.”

Tayte stared at the phone, hesitating.

Am I doing the right thing?

When it came to it he couldn’t see any other way through this.
 
He began punching numbers into the phone.
 
“And that’s the message I’m going to deliver,” he said.
 
“The heir is lost.
 
It’s over.”

Jean began to protest but Tayte stopped her.

“You need to trust me.”

He pressed the phone to his ear and the call picked up on the second ring without greeting.
 
He’d expected an answering machine but he got a real voice: a young and clearly perturbed, male voice.

“Speak your information clearly,” he said, like he was reading from a cue card.
 
“Once it has been confirmed, I will be released.”

“Elliot?”

The colour drained from Jean’s face.
 
She grabbed the phone.
 
“Baby?
 
Is that you?”
 
She had tears in her eyes.

“Mum!”

Tayte heard the plea.
 
He took the phone back and put the call on speaker.
 
“Whoever’s listening to this,” he said.
 
“The trail ends at St Paul’s, Shadwell.”
 
He paused.
 
Silence.
 
“It’s over,” he said.
 
Then he explained why, laying out the trail they had followed from the ahnentafel to St Paul’s Cathedral.
 
Then to the St Paul’s churches, ending at Shadwell.
 
“You can confirm it easily enough,” he added.
 
“The heir is lost, you hear me?”

When Tayte paused again, waiting for a response, all he heard was a click from the speaker.

“Elliot!” Jean called.
 
Tears streaked her face.

Tayte put an arm around her.
 
“It’s no use.
 
They’ve hung up.”

“They’re going to kill him!”

“No,” Tayte said.
 
“They’re not.”

He believed it, too.
 
He still thought ‘they’ were Michel Levant and he figured he was too smart a man to kill someone without good reason, and since the trail had ended at Shadwell, Tayte couldn’t see what he would have to gain from doing so.
 
He knew it was a gamble but he’d witnessed Levant’s reaction to Jean’s plea back at the hotel the night he’d shown up uninvited.
 
Something she’d said had reached the man, he was sure of it.

As the taxi passed the Tower of London on their left, heading east along Lower Thames Street, Tayte picked up the phone again.

“Who are you calling now?” Jean asked.

“Fable.”

Tayte selected his number from the address book.
 
This time the detective picked up.

“Tayte,” he said.
 
“Sorry I missed your call earlier.
 
Everything okay?
 
I tried to call back.”

“The phone was off,” Tayte said.
 
“And no, everything’s not okay.
 
We’re coming in.
 
The heir hunt’s over.”

“Where are you going?
 
Scotland Yard?”

“Thames House,” Tayte said.
 
“The heir can no longer be identified and your Security Service needs to know that.
 
Can you meet us?”

“I’m twenty minutes away.”

“Good.
 
We’ll meet you there.”

Tayte ended the call and noticed that the taxi had slowed down.
 
Looking out the window he could see that the traffic had built since reaching Central London.
 
There were traffic lights every few hundred yards - queues of ten or twenty cars at each.
 
Tayte loosened his seat belt and leant towards the driver.

“How long will it take?”

“In this traffic, maybe half an hour.”

Tayte sat back again and closed his eyes as Lower Thames Street slowly drained into Upper Thames Street.
 
When he opened them again they were on tree-lined Victoria Embankment, tracking the river on their left where he caught glimpses of the London Eye and Waterloo Bridge, passing boats in permanent mooring that at night became restaurants and nightclubs.

Jean had gone very quiet and Tayte couldn’t think of anything to say that would make her feel any better, so they shared an uncomfortable silence for a time.
 
Further down, when they came to Westminster Bridge, the taxi turned right, making a left turn at Parliament Square towards
Millbank
, where the traffic cleared a little and they picked up speed.

“Not far now,” the driver called back.

Tayte recognised the view from their first visit to Thames House: the heavy shade from the mature trees to either side of the road, the tall, stone buildings to their right and the gardens that had momentarily replaced the river to their left.
 
That was just two days ago but it felt more like two weeks.

He turned to Jean, saw that her eyes were shut tight so he turned away again.
 
He felt he had to say something.
 
He didn’t know what.
 
Anything.
 
It didn’t matter.
 
Just something to get her talking again and maybe take her mind off Elliot for a few minutes.
 
He was about to say how nice the river had looked in the late afternoon sun - just useless small talk - but as he turned to her again the words stuck in his throat.
 
Through the window he saw a blue Ford careering towards them.