A Three Dog Problem

by S. J. Bennett

  ‘Hello?’ the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff asked over the phone. ‘Are you there, Simon?’

  ‘Er, I’ll call you back,’ he said. His hackles were up. He didn’t know why exactly, but something was wrong.

  When he got to Rozie’s office, she was slumped in the armchair near the window, in stockinged feet. She looked utterly drained.

  ‘I thought you’d gone home. What happened?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said flatly.

  When she spoke, he noticed redness on her teeth. Her lip was bleeding. ‘What happened?’ he repeated.

  She didn’t want to tell him. His fear was suddenly of something truly dreadful. If she’d been attacked – assaulted – he wouldn’t let her go through it alone. Funny, he realised: he’d always thought of Rozie as indestructible. He pitied any man who might come up against her. But, right now, he saw a vulnerable young woman. Whatever resentment he still felt towards her melted away. His instinct was to hold her, which was obviously inappropriate, so he stood like a lemon and waited for her to talk to him.

  ‘I was downstairs,’ she admitted eventually. ‘In the cellars.’

  ‘What, near the kitchens?’

  ‘No. The ones underneath. The ones we’re not supposed to use. It was . . . something to do with that picture for the Boss.’

  ‘The navy’s one from the summer? Really?’

  ‘Yes.’ Rozie sat up a bit. She looked slightly less queasy. ‘I thought the original might be there. Stupid, really. But two of the Ops men came and found me. Said I was trespassing. That’s all.’ She smiled and shrugged, getting up as if to go.

  ‘It’s not all,’ he said, motioning her back down. ‘I know you, Rozie. Being shouted at wouldn’t even register. What did they do?’ His gaze fell on her bleeding lip again. ‘You look like you’ve been in a fight. Or . . .?’ He tried to give her the space to talk, to say the unsayable, if that’s what it was. He saw her eyes cloud with confusion, but they brightened again.

  ‘Oh, Simon, no. They were just a bit threatening, that’s all. And I hit my head on the ceiling and bit my lip. I think they were more scared of me than I was of them. It was nothing.’

  He kept scanning her face, looking for signs that she was lying or making excuses to avoid describing something unspeakable, but the longer she talked the more she came back to her old self. She wouldn’t lie if the men had done something terrible, would she? Simon didn’t know. He felt out of his depth, which was rare.

  ‘I just think you ought to know . . . I’m here,’ he said. How inadequate that sounded.

  The smile that spread across her face was slow and genuine, and good to see after such a long time. ‘I do know that,’ she said. ‘I’m OK. Really. Thanks for checking on me.’

  He felt he was being dismissed. If it were the Boss, she’d say, That’s very kind.

  ‘I’ll, er . . . Right. I’ll leave you to it. See you in the morning.’

  As he walked the short distance to his office, he wondered about the boots. Why did you wear wellies to go and inspect some cellars? Were they leaking? Oh, God – not something else for the bloody Reservicing budget, surely? Back at his desk, he poured himself another cold coffee and settled with his feet up, phone in hand.

  Chapter 34

  T

  he Queen did not have any time with Rozie in the morning. She was holding the investiture in the Ballroom, and in the skylit Picture Gallery people were lining up with hooks pinned to their jackets, ready to take the medals she would hang. However, she diligently read the handwritten note that had been included with her boxes. In it, Rozie explained about the hidden hinge, the tunnel in use and the encounter with Mr Clements and his sidekick from Operations afterwards. Rozie didn’t go into detail but the Queen imagined that, alone at night, underground, it had not been pleasant.

  As she held the letter, scanning it through her bifocals, she was furious with Rozie for explicitly ignoring instructions and going into the tunnels by herself, guilty that she was secretly pleased her APS had done it, and above all relieved the girl had emerged unscathed. There had been one or two women in the past, the Queen reflected, who had shown the same initiative and grit. ‘Derring-do’, they used to call it. It could get you into all sorts of trouble, but it made solving problems so much easier.

  Clements’s behaviour towards her had been unforgiveable. The man should be sacked, and he would be, but if it wasn’t he who was running the Breakages Business, the Queen didn’t want to alert whoever it was by making too much of Rozie’s encounter last night. Rozie was clear in her note that he seemed fearful when he found her. There was no obvious sign of theft of any sort: nothing in the storage rooms that shouldn’t have been there. And yet, he had only reluctantly let her go. It has to be the Breakages Business. I’m sure it’s still operational. The tunnel had signs of being used that day.

  It wouldn’t be used any more, the Queen reflected. After a shock like that, they would shut it down immediately. Even now, there would probably be no evidence at either end that it had been in service. Doors would be properly bolted; dust applied to surfaces; duckboards spirited away. Nevertheless, she mentioned casually to Philip that Rozie had been down there and it had reminded her to wonder when was the last time they had done a health and safety inspection? Philip wasn’t sure, but said she was damn right to think about it, and he’d bloody well ask. It had been years since anyone checked, as far as he knew.

  As she changed into a silk dress for the investiture, the Queen wondered what exactly Sholto Harvie had been thinking when he gave Rozie the tip-off about the Breakages Business. Should one be grateful? She had the strongest sense that he did it because he had something to hide. And yet, try as she might, she couldn’t make an adequate connection from that to the Gentileschis, to the notes to Mary van Renen, for example, and the body in the swimming pool. She felt certain a clue lay in Cynthia Harris’s former life. Chief Inspector Strong’s report on that was due imminently. Perhaps it would contain enough for her to take decisive action against Clements and whoever he was in cahoots with. She very much hoped so, because Rozie’s underground escapades had exposed her to potential danger. The girl could look after herself, but one didn’t like to think this was something she would need to do.

  She was too busy to give it much further thought. After the investiture and various meetings with ambassadors and officials, there was a reception to attend in Cheyne Walk, beside the river in Chelsea, to celebrate Co-operation in Ireland. Her visit in the summer had been deemed a big success. It had been a diplomatic skating pond: how does one greet former terrorists, and indeed, how do they greet a reigning monarch? But everyone had got through it, and it had felt like the positive contribution to history she wanted it to be.

  She had been very aware, back in June, that she was treading a path of peace and reconciliation that had been laid by many others before her. So many of them women, she reflected now – with a woman on the brink of becoming the most powerful person in the world. Mothers, daughters, sisters had joined forces in Northern Ireland to condemn the violence and find another way. The stop-start process had been helped from the British side by another renegade woman. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland at the time, Mo Mowlam, had been a brave and charismatic campaigner too. She died of a brain tumour a few years later and the Queen still missed her. This was the Labour MP who had called for Buckingham Palace to be pulled down and replaced with something more modern. They had joked about it, the two of them.

  ‘There are times,’ the Queen had admitted, ‘when the soup is perfectly cold and the bill for new carpets arrives, that I don’t disagree with you.’

  ‘See?’ Mo said, ‘I’d be doing you a favour.’

  Now, in a shimmering pink suit, with Philip at her side, the Queen entered the building beside the Thames that had once been home to Thomas More, transplanted brick by brick and stone by stone from one side of London to the other by someone with a greater love of history t
han common sense. Inside, among canapés and Tudor panelling, the mood was jolly.

  The highlight of the reception was the unveiling of a portrait she had sat for in May, commissioned by the charity. After one ninety-minute sitting she had expected something small and neat. Instead, the canvas hiding behind the glossy purple satin curtain was as tall as she was – taller, in fact, balanced on its little stand. She hoped it wasn’t ghastly. Standing so close, Philip would find it hard to restrain himself and now was not the time. Everyone clustered around and she was handed the rope attached to the curtain. Making sure to hide any hint of anxiety, she pulled and the curtain fell.

  There were smiles, a couple of cheers, a ripple of applause. She stared hard at the pink and turquoise canvas and breathed a secret sigh of relief.

  ‘I think it’s got all your wrinkles,’ Philip observed with a snort.

  She stood back a little, to get a better view. It was true. Her face was the size of a horse blanket, with every crease and fold acquired over ninety years unflinchingly portrayed. But one was wrinkled – what was the point of denying it? The artist had caught the hair, which was never easy, and done a decent job with the jewellery. Best of all were the mouth and the eyes. She was almost smiling, but not quite. She looked quite wise in it, she thought, rather liking it. She would have liked it even more if he could have made it three foot tall instead of five.

  The artist moved towards her.

  ‘What do you think, Your Majesty?’

  ‘It’s very big, isn’t it?’ she remarked.

  ‘They pay by the yard,’ he said, which made her laugh. ‘I like to think it looks as if you’re still talking to me.’

  ‘It does, a bit. Did I talk a lot?’

  ‘Oh, just the right amount, ma’am.’

  He was being diplomatic. She remembered having a long, wide-ranging conversation while he worked. But the more she looked, the more satisfied she was, especially considering some of the horrors she’d unveiled in her time. He had captured something very few artists managed, which was a sense that she was reflecting on more than the act of being captured on canvas, or being Queen. In fact, she was rarely thinking about either. There was so much to absorb her attention. She was glad that future generations might get a glimpse of her actively contemplating a world beyond one’s own.

  Chapter 35

  I

  t had been a long day.

  The Queen woke up to the news that Hillary Clinton, poised to celebrate her victory under the largest glass ceiling in Manhattan, had admitted defeat and that a rather stunned Donald Trump had been voted in as the forty-fifth president of the United States of America. Which was not quite what one had been led to expect. Not only that, but Harry had thought to put out a press release – in the form of a tweet, God help him – asking for his new girlfriend’s privacy to be respected by the media. One sympathised, of course one did, but it never paid to take the press on at their own game. They always won. It was only a matter of time.

  Philip had a lot to say on both subjects at breakfast.

  ‘Bloody fool.’ This in relation to his grandson. ‘What is it that model said? The Moss girl. Could have been about you, I always thought. Never something, always something. No, I’ve got it: Never complain, never explain. She could teach the lad a thing or two.’

  Everyone would have a lot to say. But with decades of practice – like Kate Moss, who was a friend of Eugenie’s, the Queen seemed to remember – she herself would be sphinx-like and inscrutable. She was not her grandson – and in her experience, anything one said would inevitably be leaped on, taken out of context and almost deliberately misunderstood. Silence was the only safe option. Or rather, saying nothing worth repeating. Unlike her husband, who didn’t always practise what he preached.

  Luckily, Philip was soon distracted. They went to open the new Francis Crick Institute in King’s Cross and he was in his element, talking about science. They were given a rather fascinating little lecture about the flu. Quite terrifying, these viruses, if unchecked – and how wonderful to have places like the Institute to stay on top of them. Then there had been the weekly audience with the Prime Minister. Mrs May was already keen to build relations with the new leader of the free world and wondering about booking in a state visit. The Queen observed that it was normally a couple of years before such things were put into the calendar and asked the PM to take it up with Sir Simon. One didn’t want to look too keen. If they weren’t careful, the UK might seem rather desperate, which wasn’t the impression one wanted to give at all.

  *

  At a pub in Pimlico, Rozie was on her third glass of Chardonnay. This had not been her favourite day. Her head still pounded with a dull ache from the crack it had got last night. If she closed her eyes for too long, all she could see was Mick Clements in the storeroom with the crowbar. Not a pretty sight.

  At times like this, it was useful to know an equerry with benefits. She thought of him now: six foot three, military bearing, neck like a tree trunk, strawberry-blond hair and eyes the colour of the shallows near his parents’ place in St Barts. She’d called him at lunch and he’d suggested a drink after work at this pub on Pimlico Green, walking distance from the Palace but far enough away that you weren’t likely to bump into half the Household at the bar – although that turned out to be a miscalculation. A drink wasn’t exactly what she had in mind, but that, too, seemed like a good idea.

  After three glasses, she wasn’t sure if the wine was making the pounding in her head better or worse. Either way, the blue-eyed strawberry blond still hadn’t showed. She couldn’t blame him. Anything might have cropped up at work: she’d let down more friends in cocktail bars than she cared to remember. She’d give him one more glass, then wend her way sadly home.

  She’d just ordered it when she spotted a balding head above a broad-shouldered jacket among a group of men at the far end of the bar. She might not have recognised him, if not for the fact that as soon as he happened to catch her eye, he went white as a sheet. She concentrated for a moment, thinking back to the staff records she had recently been examining.

  This was Spike Milligan. The Boss had tasked her with challenging the Palace footman about being involved in the poison pen campaign, along with Lorna Lobb. Rozie had tried to track him down, but so far he had evaded her. Now she held his eye and saw his Adam’s apple bob. The slight nod she gave him said, ‘We can do this quietly, or I can come right over and we can do it in front of your mates. You choose.’ He seemed to crumple slightly. After a couple of muttered words, he headed for the door at the back of the room.

  Rozie followed him.

  The door led to a narrow corridor with the toilets to one side and the kitchen at the far end. There was also a staircase to a function room above. She motioned to it and they stood awkwardly halfway up. Though Rozie was on the lower step, it was clear she was in charge. Milligan’s eyes darted around, looking anywhere but at her. His face was ashen. One of his fingers beat an unconscious tattoo on the bannister. But he jutted out his jaw and said, ‘I dunno why you’re interested in me, Captain Oshodi.’

  ‘How could you?’ Rozie said crisply. ‘You haven’t answered my messages.’

  ‘Look, I’m not stupid. I assume it’s something to do with the letters business. I already told the police everything I know. Which is nothing.’

  ‘You were overheard talking about them.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Never mind. But,’ Rozie lowered her voice to a menacing hiss, ‘HM herself is aware of your involvement. You’d better explain yourself now or it’ll go badly.’

  The footman pursed his lips for a moment and finally looked her in the eye. ‘I’m sorry, right? About what happened to you. But it’s got nothing to do with me.’

  Rozie’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean, “what happened to me”?’

  He swallowed again and panic flickered across his face. But someone came out of the function room at the top of the stairs and walked down past them. It gav
e him time to think.

  ‘That Lobb woman – that’s her name, isn’t it? She was seen trying to drop something in your bag. People talk, you know.’

  Rozie cocked her head to one side. ‘So you mean what didn’t happen to me.’

  She was convinced that he was lying – or rather, that he knew about the letters she had already received, which were a tightly contained secret shared only with the Queen and the police. This meant he had been involved in delivering them, as the Boss suspected.

  Rozie had been sure, when given this task, that she could manage it dispassionately: ‘find, strike, destroy, suppress’. But her heart hammered. They faced each other in silence for a short while, Milligan scared but obstinate, and Rozie fighting to manage the roiling fury and disgust that boiled inside her.

  She hadn’t expected the encounter to go like this. Normally the Boss’s magic dust did its trick instantly: you asked, they answered. And yet here she was, accusing Milligan of something she was sure he was guilty of, and he was prepared to brazen it out.

  Whatever he was scared of, it was more than the displeasure of Her Majesty.

  He swallowed again. ‘Like I say, I’m sorry if . . . whatever. There are some bad people out there. But I can’t help you.’

  He enunciated the last four words clearly and slowly, and she knew he wouldn’t change his mind. She wondered, briefly, how many broken bones it would take before he did. But she wasn’t that kind of girl, and it wasn’t that kind of job. Breathe and let go. She couldn’t even tell him to fuck off – he wasn’t obviously threatening her, as Mick Clements had.

  ‘This isn’t over.’

  She stood aside, so he could squeeze past her down the stairs. He did so fast, without another word, and by the time she entered the bar area again, he’d gone.

  Breathe and let go. She rolled her shoulders, tilted her head and decided she needed a massage, a run . . . something to relax.