by Andy Maslen
Becca did him a favour and smiled at the joke, weak as it was.
‘So what happened then?’
‘Well, they asked me a lot of questions, pretty much the same questions you’ve been doing,’ he said, flashing her the full-wattage Tammerlane grin this time and registering the widening of her pupils. ‘They took my fingerprints and a DNA swab from my cheek, again, which I was happy to provide. That was it, basically.’
‘Well,’ she said, turning slightly so she was facing the studio audience. ‘Whatever you think of his politics, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Joe Tammerlane deserves our nation’s respect, and thanks. Joe Tammerlane, ladies and gentlemen.’
The applause this time was rapturous. Tammerlane bowed his head in acceptance and then the miracle happened: Becca stood, also applauding. Then she crouched, took his hand and dragged him to his feet so he was standing beside her.
Her eyes were sparkling with tears. In a seemingly coordinated move, the studio audience rose to its feet. He looked out at them and smiled shyly, noting that the camera operators and sound recordists were also clapping.
You’re mine. You just don’t know it yet.
In the days following the assassination of the princess, social media was alight with competing theories. Gabriel avoided all the platforms on principle as well as for operational reasons, but, back home in Aldeburgh he opened a laptop and loaded Twitter.
@Trexxy333
Its got 2 b the islamics, hasnt it? We shd kick them all out to those shitholes what they come from #WeepForPrincessSasha
@BrutusOfFairfield
For fucksake @Trexxy333 UR such a racist!!! Why immediately jump to that conclusion? Cd just as easily be IRA or Knights of Fucking Albion fuckwits. #WeepForPrincessSasha
@GrannyDeakins
You’re wrong @BrutusOfFairfield I think @Trexxy333 is right. They want to kill us Christians. It’s in their holy book. Poor Alexandra was killed for her faith. #WeepForPrincessSasha
@GreenKingJackson
@Are you always this dumb or just for special ocassions GrammyDeakins @BrutusOfFairfield @Trexxy333 ? “Poor Alexandra” was a Parasite living off working people who should kick out the “royal” family and stop idolising them. #WeepForPrincessSasha
@KOAofficial
The race traitor was put down for blood-mixing. This is the start of the race war. Whites unite for the right to fight! #WeepForPrincessSasha
Gabriel clicked on the final tweet. The profile came up on screen. Knights of Albion. Fighting to restore fairness in England for its true inheritors.
‘Clever,’ Gabriel said.
‘Clever?’ Eli repeated, coming into the kitchen and sitting beside him to read over his shoulder. ‘You do see through that, right?’
‘Of course I do. They’re sailing close to the wind but on the right side.’
‘Yeah,’ she snorted. ‘The far-right side.’
7
The examination room inside Westminster Public Mortuary’s Iain West Forensic Suite smelled of disinfectant and the sludgy, rot-stink of death. Gathered around the green-draped figure were the forensic pathologist Dr Bill ‘Mitch’ Mitchell, Chief Superintendent Andrea Robinson, the Senior Investigating Officer, a photographer, three detective inspectors and a MI5 deputy commander who had introduced himself merely as ‘Jim’.
‘Let’s begin, shall we?’ Mitch said, drawing the green sheet away from the body and handing it to a mortician, who folded it into squares as if it were a freshly laundered bedsheet and laid it on a stainless-steel counter.
The detectives had, between them, worked on over two hundred murder investigations and were hardened to the sight of dead bodies. Not so the MI5 man, who rushed to a corner and vomited into a bucket, placed there especially for the purpose by the mortician.
Robinson caught the eye of her closest colleague and rolled her eyes.
‘Amateur,’ he mouthed back at her.
Mitch looked down at the corpse. Cause of death was obvious: massive gunshot trauma to the forehead, though he would still investigate fully before committing himself to print.
‘As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, our killer was shot through the frontal bone of the skull. The black stippling is gunshot residue, indicating a close-range shot.’
He took a slender transparent plastic wand and inserted the tip into the crater on the top part of the head.
‘The head is, what? Shall we say fifty percent decerebrated?’
‘Sorry, doc, what?’ one of the DIs asked.
‘Tammerlane blew the bloke’s brains out,’ a second detective said.
‘Or half of them, at any rate,’ Mitch said.
The mortician passed him a pair of trauma shears, which he used to cut off the man’s clothing, one garment at a time. He kept up a running commentary for his digital recorder and stepped back periodically to allow the photographer to take pictures. The socks and shoes went last.
When the corpse was naked, Mitch pointed to the thin gold chain and Star of David around the throat. He then indicated the dead man’s circumcised penis.
‘It would appear our assassin was Jewish.’
‘Princess Alexandra made that speech at the pro-Palestinian event last month, didn’t she?’ one of the DIs said. ‘Think it’s connected?’
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions, gentlemen,’ Robinson said. ‘Carry on please, Mitch.’
Mitch nodded and went back to work. After opening the thorax using the traditional Y-incision, he began removing the internal organs one by one. He handed the stomach, a soft, squashy pink bag, to the mortician, who took it to a side-bench and slit it open with a broad-bladed scalpel.
Squeezing it gently, he ejected the contents into a white plastic washing-up bowl.
‘You might want to take a look, Mitch,’ he said.
Mitch peered into the bowl.
‘Interesting. Our man had a meal quite soon before he was killed.’
He moved the tip of a second plastic rod through the remains of the dead man’s last meal. Scattered throughout the sharp-smelling liquid were small fragments of a greenish, brown, grainy substance. Deep fried, to judge from the golden brown coating on the outer edges.
He picked a piece up with a pair of plastic tweezers and brought it up to his nose. He inhaled sharply, in a short, huffing series of breaths.
‘Do you know,’ he said, turning to the detectives, who were wincing and wrinkling their noses, ‘I believe our killer ate falafel for his last meal.’
‘Can you pack up a sample please, doc?’ one of the DIs said. ‘We’ll get Forensics on it, see if it can tell us anything.’
Back at West End Central police station, Robinson re-read the initial report on the killer, which had arrived on her desk while she’d been attending the autopsy. She shook her head. It made no sense.
He’d been carrying an Israeli ID card identifying him as Dov Lieberman. The intel team had worked fast and had come up with CCTV from Heathrow airport showing Lieberman arriving at Terminal 4 the morning of the royal wedding.
Checks with airport security had confirmed that he had arrived on an El Al flight from Tel Aviv.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she picked up the phone. As she waited for the MI5 man to answer, she shook her head.
‘Way above my pay grade,’ she muttered.
‘Andrea, what news?’ Jim said.
‘The shooter arrived in the UK from Tel Aviv the morning he killed her. He is – was – an Israeli citizen. A Jew. Name, Dov Lieberman. ID number, 22-9-3-20-9-13.’
‘Shit.’
‘Do you want to contact MI6 or shall I do it?’
‘I think it had better be you. There’s always been a certain,’ he paused, ‘friction between our respective services.’
Robinson next dialled a number in her contacts she had only ever used once before. Her heart was thrumming in her chest. It wasn’t so much she was nervous of speaking to spooks, she’d just rather have been doing somethin
g else. Like enduring a root canal. Without anaesthetic.
‘Liaison.’
‘This is Detective Superintendent Andrea Robinson of the Metropolitan Police. Collar number 7609.’
‘Hold, please.’
She could hear a keyboard clicking. A DI put her head around the office door, mouthing ‘coffee’.
‘Please,’ she mouthed back.
The MI6 liaison came back on the line.
‘Yes, Detective Superintendent, how may I help you?’
‘I’m the SIO on the princess’s assassination. The shooter appears to have been an Israeli citizen. We have his ID card.’
‘Name and number, please.’
‘Dov Lieberman. ID number, 22-9-3-20-9-13.’
‘Thank you. I’ll call you back. Please do not investigate him any further until you hear from me.’
She placed her phone on her desk and ran her fingers through her hair.
The DI reappeared bearing a cup of steaming coffee.
‘Thanks, Marie,’ she said, and took a careful sip.
‘Everything all right, guv? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Just been talking to a spook. That close enough?’
‘About Lieberman?’
‘Yup.’
‘Think they’ll take it off us?’
Robinson blew out her cheeks.
‘I bloody well hope so.’
Her next visitor was the Met’s Director of Forensics.
‘Mark, what have you got for me?’
‘I’m not sure, to be honest. We just got the results back on the G3. We recovered four sets of prints.’
‘Go on,’ she said, sitting forwards and motioning him to sit.
‘Set one: Sarah Furey, the AFO. Set two: the shooter. Set three: Ty Stafford, the SCO19 armourer.’
‘And set four?’
‘That’s the weird thing. A partial, off the underside of the telescopic sight. Not on IDENT1. I’ve sent it to Europol and Interpol and told them it was urgent. But what I can tell you is a fourth person handled that rifle.’
Lieberman’s wasn’t the only autopsy that Mitch handled in the crucial hours after the assassination. He’d also examined Sarah Furey’s body. Cause of death was a massive cut into her throat by a bladed weapon. The blade, he estimated, was four to six inches long, not serrated but extremely sharp. It had severed not only her carotid arteries and jugular veins on both sides but damn-near gone through her spine as well.
8
TEN DAYS LATER
[Official BBC News transcript: 5.57 a.m.]
Dawn Bradley, Political Editor: Mr Tammerlane! Mr Tammerlane! Do you have a few minutes for the BBC?
Joe Tammerlane: Of course, Dawn. What do you want to know?
DB: The obvious question. How does it feel to have come from nowhere to the office of prime minister in three years? And with such a large majority?
JT: Well, I’d hardly call working in my father’s business nowhere [laughs] but I see what you mean. The answer, Dawn, is I feel incredibly humbled that the British people have given me the chance to lead them into a bright new future.
DB: Your critics have labelled you a wolf in sheep’s clothing. An ultra-left ideologue merely echoing the sentiments of the woke generation that swept you to power. How do you respond to them?
JT: I think I know who you mean. But the politicians who broke this country by clinging onto outdated notions of class war and privilege – from the right and the left – have had their chance and, quite frankly, they blew it.
I fought the election promising a revolutionary way of governing and they tried everything to smear me. They tried to paint Freedom and Fairness as some sort of Trojan horse. But I have to say to you, Dawn, and if they’re watching [turns to camera and waves] – Hi, Guys! – them, too, they put their policies to the people and the people said no.
Freedom and Fairness put ours and the people said yes. Now, I’m a democrat. I believe in implementing the will of the people. I think it’s clear what the people’s will is.
Forgive, me but there is much work to do and I start tonight. [Checks watch and smiles] That is to say, this morning. Thank you.
DB: Thank you, Prime Minister.
9
WHITEHALL
In London, two weeks after his depressing discovery, Nick Acheson waited in an anteroom at the Ministry of Defence. He glanced up at the wall clock.
The meeting with the brand-new secretary of state had been scheduled for 10.00 a.m. It was now five past. He frowned and picked up the Times, which lay neatly folded on the glass-topped coffee table in front of him. He read the main headline and sighed.
PM Signals Radical Shift In Defence Priorities
The talk in the mess had been of little else since a leak from inside No. 10 had warned the chief of the defence staff about ‘something big coming down the line’.
The previous morning, the prime minister had made a televised address to the nation in which he’d unveiled the first in what he called ‘planks in a bridge leading to a different sort of future for this great country’.
The plank in question was ominous in its implications. Tammerlane had announced that the impending Defence Spending Review would be postponed while, ‘we explore new strategic options and opportunities for global partnerships’.
Acheson had a growing sense of unease. Discussions with colleagues in the three armed services that stretched late into the night had only served to amplify them as they compared notes, swapped theories and forecast difficult times ahead.
A young woman in a smart black suit and a severe haircut that accentuated her large dark eyes and oddly pixie-like ears crossed the sparkling granite floor to him, her heels clicking on its polished surface.
‘Colonel Acheson? The secretary of state will see you now.’
Acheson got to his feet, refolding the Times and placing it on the tabletop, squared up to the corner and precisely five centimetres from each of the bevelled edges.
The office of the Secretary of State for Defence reeked of power and a defiant military outlook that stretched back through history to the Peninsular Wars and beyond. Dark mahogany panelling stretched from floor to ceiling, and gilt-framed oil paintings depicted the men who had fought Britain’s enemies down the centuries, from Nelson and Wellington to Field Marshall Montgomery and Winston Churchill. An old fashioned globe sat in a polished brass-and-mahogany stand.
The woman sitting behind the desk looked barely older than Acheson’s daughter, Sophie, who had recently graduated from Cambridge with a First in Ancient and Modern History. In an olive-green silk jacket with a Nehru collar encircling a slender neck, she might have been twenty-five, twenty-six at a pinch.
Though he didn’t know her age, he knew her name. Tracy Barnett-Short. A Freedom and Fairness ‘diversity champion’ who had campaigned vigorously and skilfully in the election, painting the incumbent cabinet as ‘over-privileged, under-qualified and unfit to lead’.
She looked up from a paper she was reading and offered the briefest of smiles. With her coffee-coloured skin, glossy dark hair swept up into a style he believed his wife would call a chignon and almond eyes, she was rather attractive he had to admit. He frowned, imagining Sophie’s eye-rolling entreaty for her dad to ‘stop perving over girls young enough to be your daughter’.
‘Thank you for seeing me, Madam Secretary,’ he said.
‘Least I could do, Colonel. And let’s dispense with the formalities, shall we? You call me Tracy and I’ll call you Nick, how about that?’
‘As you wish, M— Tracy.’
‘You’re here about your missing men,’ she said.
‘Yes. As I said in my email, we lost three paratroopers in Botswana a few weeks ago. A massacre. Poachers according to the Botswanans. I want their deaths investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice.’
She frowned.
‘What did the Botswanans have to say about it?’
‘They did their best but, to be fr
ank, they’re not up to it. They simply don’t have the resources we do. Nor the motivation. And they were our men, not theirs.’
‘The anti-poaching soldiers killed were their men, I believe,’ she said, softly.
Realising he’d been caught in a trap, Acheson tried to backtrack.
‘Yes, of course. But I am the colonel of the Paratroop regiment. These were my men. Brothers in arms.’
She sighed. A gesture Acheson clocked as mere theatrics.
‘It seems to me that you need to check your privilege. A white man flying halfway round the world in a plane full of Special Forces soldiers dropping in unannounced to a sovereign country – a sovereign black African country – and then claiming they’re not skilled or resourced enough to investigate some killings on their own doorstep. You can see how that might look, surely?’
‘Minister, please—’
‘Tracy.’
‘Tracy,’ he said, trying to keep his temper under control, ‘with the greatest of respect, we can’t let their murders go unpunished. Surely you can see that?’
‘I’ll tell you what I see.’ A beat. ‘Nick, I see a middle-aged white man displaying a rather unattractive, neo-colonialist attitude. Treating me, a woman of colour, like a servant, demanding action to redress his own failings as a commander.’
‘No! That’s completely misrepresenting what I said. The point is—’
‘I’ll tell you what the point is, Colonel,’ she said, her voice as hard as a gun barrel. ‘This ministry, this corrupt, imperialist, war-mongering machine is under scrutiny, finally, for its misdeeds. We intend to re-engineer it until it’s fit for purpose. And I can tell you that military adventurism is not on our list of priorities.’
