The Last Queen of England (7 page)

“Come on!” Jean urged.

Tayte backed away.

Jean was already at the door.
 
“Here, take these.”

Two crash helmets were thrust into his stomach and he felt like he’d suddenly awoken from a sleepwalking episode, wondering where he was.
 
He saw that Jean already had a leather jacket on.
 
She had a pair of boots in her hand and he heard a metallic jangle like she’d just picked up a set of keys.
 
Then they were heading for the lift.

Inside, Jean began to pump the button for the basement parking level.
 
“Come on, damn you.
 
Come on!”

The door began to close.
 
A shot was fired, wild and untrained.
 
It peeled the plaster from the wall outside and they moved away from the opening.
 
The gunman was out in the hallway now heading straight for them.
 
Tayte watched him run at the doors, eyes on the gun the whole time as he thrust the silencer forward, presumably in the hope of jamming it between the doors and forcing the safety mechanism to open them again.
 
It was a close call but he didn’t make it.
 
Tayte ducked back as the gun clanked against the doors.
 
Then they were descending.

Tayte reacquainted himself with his briefcase and gave a nervous laugh.
 
“I changed my mind.”

Jean was putting her boots on.
 
When she’d finished she took the smaller of the two helmets from Tayte and put that on, too.
 
“I’m glad you did.”
 
She nodded at the other helmet.
 
“See if it fits.”

Tayte didn’t really care.
 
Attracting police attention for not wearing a helmet seemed like a good idea right now.
 
The helmet was an open face type.
 
It was tight but he got it on.

“He would have seen the helmets,” he said.
 
“He’ll know where we’re headed.”

“Then get ready.”

They watched the countdown together.
 
Four, three, two.
 
They reached the lobby.

“Next level,” Jean said.

They ran as soon as they could fit through the gap in the doors and they were instantly lit up by the harsh overhead strip-lights.
 
The motorcycle area was off to the right and they kept running.
 
All Tayte could see were scooters and he hoped Jean hadn’t been teasing him about the kind of bike she had.
 
None of them looked big enough to carry him let alone both of them.
 
They passed a blue 4x4 and the view opened up.
 
He could see a few sports bikes now and something big with a yellow tank.
 
It had panniers and high mudguards and Tayte thought it looked like it belonged in a Dakar rally.
 
He watched Jean bend down and take a key to the U-shaped lock that was dangling from the front brake disc.
 
He eyed the BMW roundel and the letters R1200GS on the tank.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Jean climbed onto the thing like she was mounting a horse, and somewhat disconcertingly Tayte noticed that her feet could barely reach the floor.
 
Behind them a door opened and slapped hard against a concrete wall.

“Are you just going to stand there?”

Tayte swung himself on, grabbed the pillion handrail with one hand and cradled his briefcase to his chest with the other.
 
The engine fired up and Jean rocked the bike forward, tipping it off the centre stand, dropping it a several centimetres.
 
Then they were moving again, racing for the exit.

Tayte looked back.
 
He still hadn’t had a good look at this man yet.
 
Somewhere close by he heard glass pop and shatter and he decided not to try.
 
He shrank into himself, clutching his briefcase tighter.
 
The gunman was right behind them, running fast, showing no sign of letting up.
 
Another shot fizzed by, taking out one of the overhead lights.

“Brace yourself!” Jean called.

Tayte looked up again and saw why.
 
They were heading towards a barrier and the bike wasn’t slowing down.

“It’s automatic on the way out!” Jean called.

Automatic or not, Tayte had never seen a barrier of any kind respond as quickly to an approaching vehicle as he knew this one would have to if they were to clear it in time.
 
Jean ducked as they approached and the barrier began to lift.
 
The biked slowed a little then, but sitting on the back, Tayte was higher than he knew he needed to be.
 
He closed his eyes and ducked after Jean, leaning forward as best he could with his briefcase between them as they arrived and the barrier broke across the top of his helmet.
 
An alarm began to sound.
 
Then the engine revs picked up again and they turned out into the night.

Chapter Five

A
n hour later, Tayte and Jean were climbing into the back of a silver Audi saloon.
 
As soon as they felt it was safe to stop, Tayte had called Fable’s number from the card he’d given him and by then Fable already knew about the attempt on Jean’s life.
 
He’d told them to stay put at the 24-hour service station Tayte called from.
 
A car was on its way.
 
Fable had also said that he was keen to talk to Tayte about another matter concerning something that had been found at Marcus Brown’s home earlier that day.

As they settled into the journey, Tayte thought the setup didn’t feel quite right.
 
He wasn’t particularly worried given that Fable had said the car was coming for them.
 
It was just that he felt sure the two suits sitting up front were not regular police officers, detective grade or otherwise, and the car didn’t exactly seem like police issue either, not that he really knew what the inside of an unmarked police car should look like.
 
He couldn’t put his finger on it but he thought the whole thing had more of a military feel.

He asked the obvious question.
 
“Where are we headed?”

“It shouldn’t take long, sir.”

That’s all the reply he got, and after exchanging bemused glances with Jean he decided to sit back and keep quiet.
 
Ten minutes later they began to track the Thames to their left, following its dark course for several minutes until they arrived at a roundabout at the top of Lambeth Bridge.
 
They went straight over and turned right.
 
Jean gave Tayte a nudge, indicating the floodlit facade of the grey building complex they were heading for.

“MI5,” she mouthed.

Tayte had no trouble reading her lips, but he did have trouble trying to understand why they were being taken to the home of the British Security Service.
 
He relaxed a little though when the car arrived at Thames House and he saw DI Fable waiting for them.
 
As they walked under escort, Tayte further explained what had happened at Jean’s apartment, putting his finger through the hole in his jacket sleeve as if to prove it.
 
His arm was okay: barely a scratch that he’d cleaned up in the service station men’s room.

“The building’s night watchman wasn’t so lucky,” Fable said.
 
“His body was found behind the desk where he’d fallen.
 
Two bullets in his chest.”
 
He turned to Jean.
 
“There’s a forensics team at your flat now.
 
You’ll need somewhere else to stay tonight.”

“What about my bike?” Jean said.
 
“Do I get a lift back to the service station when we’re done here?”

“I get the feeling you won’t be needing it for a while,” Fable said.
 
“Let me have the key and I’ll get it picked up for you.”

Jean handed it to him and described the bike.
 
She still had the brake disc lock in her jacket pocket.
 
The ignition key was all he needed.

“Registration?”

“H15 TRY.”

Fable smiled.
 
“I’ll see that it’s taken home for you.”

“No, not there.” Jean said.
 
To Tayte, she added, “Where are you staying?”

“The Hyatt Regency in Marylebone.”

“Have it taken to the hotel,” Jean said.
 
“I’ll stay there until this is over.”

They were escorted to a meeting room.
 
There was a long oval table in the centre with twenty or so chairs around it - dark windows to Tayte’s right as he entered.
 
There were three other people in the room: two men in dark suits and a woman in black-and-white dogtooth.
 
All wore serious expressions.

“Good to meet you, Mr Tayte,” one of the men said.
 
He was a slight man with a nasal tone to his voice.
 
“Ms Summer,” he added, greeting Jean.
 
The man didn’t give his name and neither did anyone else.

Tayte put his briefcase on the table and they were invited to sit down.
 
Fable placed two manila folders in front of him.

“I was going to call you about this first thing in the morning,” Fable said.
 
“You told me yesterday you were a genealogist like your friend, Marcus Brown.”

Tayte nodded.

Fable slid the folders closer.
 
“We found these at Mr Brown’s home and wondered if you’d take a look.”

Tayte opened the folders.
 
The first contained a three-month-old newspaper cutting of a double murder in Bermondsey: Julian Davenport and his wife.
 
Fable quickly filled Tayte in on the high-level details of the case.
 
Beneath the clipping was a sheet of A3 paper folded twice.
 
It showed Davenport’s ancestry dating to the 1600s with plenty of gaps, particularly further back as Tayte would have expected.

The second folder contained another ancestry chart much like the first: a left to right expanding pyramid of names also going back to the 1600s.
 
The subject on this chart was a man called Douglas Jones and according to his entry he died twenty years ago.

Tayte sat back in his chair.
 
“They’re ancestry charts.”

The woman in the dogtooth suit came back at him before he could elaborate.
 
Her tone was sharp and to the point.
 
“We know that much, Mr Tayte.”

Tayte gave her an apologetic smile.
 
He laid the charts out side by side and studied them more closely.
 
His only idea at this point was to see if any of the names matched, but there were so many, the handwriting small and written by Marcus Brown, which added another level of difficulty.
 
He didn’t quite need his degree in palaeography to read his friend’s writing and he knew he could sit there and work through it, but he didn’t think that was what the people around him had in mind.

He turned one of the charts over, thinking it wouldn’t mean anything even if they did share a common name.
 
It would prove that the people on the charts were related, but so what?
 
Then as he leant in and smoothed the paper out he noticed a small three-digit number by the crease where the folds converged.
 
It was on the chart for Julian Davenport.
 
He checked the other chart and noted that it had no such marking.

“Unless Marcus singled a name out,” Tayte said under his breath.
 
“Then it would mean something.”
 
He felt the room close in around him.
 
“Can I get a pencil?
 
It might be an ahnentafel number.”

Someone handed Tayte a pencil and he wrote down the number, ‘594’ in large print so everyone could see it.
 

“Ahnentafel?” Jean said, asking the question that must have been on everyone’s lips.

Tayte looked up. “It’s a German word that literally translates to
ancestor table.
 
The system’s been around for centuries.
 
It was invented by an Austrian historian named Eytzinger and later popularised by de Sosa and Stradonitz.
 
Basically, it’s a construct that allows us to show someone’s ancestry in text form, either as a numbered list or even as a binary table.”

Tayte put his finger on the chart entry for Julian Davenport.
 
“Using the system, everyone on this chart has a unique reference number in relation to the subject.”
 
He turned to Fable.
 
“Your murder victim in this case.”

“How does it work?” the woman in the dogtooth suit asked.

Tayte smiled.
 
“The beauty really lies in its simplicity.
 
The subject is always number one.
 
The father is double that and the mother is double plus one.”
 
Tayte started writing numbers against the names.
 
“So Davenport’s father is number two on the chart.
 
His mother is number three.”
 
He wrote the numbers in.
 
“His paternal grandmother will be number five - that’s twice the father plus one.
 
And his paternal great-grandmother will be twice that plus one again, which makes her number eleven.
 
It’s easy once you get the hang of it.”