The Last Queen of England

by Steve Robinson

  “In here,” Cornell said.

  There were several doorways. The one they took led down several iron steps into a room that was lit by high glassless windows. As Tayte descended, he began to wonder if he would ever make it out again. It was clear that Cornell planned to kill them and he thought he would do it just as soon as they reached wherever they were going with the body and were of no further use to him.

  “Drop him there,” Cornell said. “In the corner.”

  That’s where Tayte thought it would happen. He kept his eyes on Jean’s the whole time, willing her to understand what was in his mind. He wasn’t just going to stand there and let this man shoot them. Now that Marcus Brown was gone he knew there was no one left in his life to mourn his own death, but there were still things he needed to do: important things like finding out who he was. He just kept thinking that there were two of them and one of him. That had to give them a chance.

  They reached the corner in shadow and gently lowered the body to the ground. As Tayte rose again his only thought was to charge Cornell, but at that moment Cornell said something that stopped him.

  “Now pick up your girlfriend.”

  That confused Tayte. “What?”

  Cornell came closer but kept his distance with the gun. “Pick her up. I want you to carry her out.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Tayte said. “Busy hands, right?”

  “You’re catching on.”

  Tayte wasn’t sure he had enough strength left to carry a bag of groceries let alone another person, but after the taxi driver Jean felt light in his arms. As they left the room and headed back outside, Tayte wondered why Cornell had passed up such an easy opportunity to kill them. Clearly he had something else in mind and that worried him.

  They crossed the barren yard outside, passed a grey portacabin and the main gate with the black cab beyond. There was a brick outbuilding with a tall chimney ahead of them and they made straight for it.

  “What do you plan to do with us?” Tayte asked as they reached it.

  Cornell gave no reply. He paced ahead and opened the door, flicked his gun and ushered them inside.

  “You can’t walk away from this, Cornell,” Tayte said as he crossed the threshold and was met by a gust of warm air. Flies buzzed in his face. “The police know who you are now. It’s over.”

  “I never planned to walk away,” Cornell said. “And you’re wrong. It’s not over. It’s only just beginning.”

  At that point Jean screamed in Tayte’s ear. He almost dropped her as he spun her around and lowered her to the ground. In the corner of the room opposite the entrance was a thin, elderly man who seemed to be crouching amongst the pipework and the rubble. He was painted red with what Tayte supposed was his own blood and his face seemed locked in a perpetual scream. It looked like some macabre waxworks diorama and the sight of it made Tayte retch. He turned to Cornell.

  “You sick -” he began, but the butt of Cornell’s gun silenced him instantly as it smashed into his temple. Then he was falling and the world was suddenly black.

  Standing outside Robert Cornell’s front door for the second time that day, DI Jack Fable recalled the time when he didn’t have to stop to consider if what he was doing as a police officer was lawful. PACE had seen to that - the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Passed in 1984, it legislated against the arbitrary searching of property or persons without just cause. It protected a person’s civil rights. Fable understood the need for legislation, but to his old-school mind it was just more bureaucracy to wade through. It had done nothing but slow the pace of an investigation as far as he was concerned.

  Fable had a gut feeling and now it was his turn to run with it. The notion that Robert Cornell was the man he was looking for made perfect sense to him. Killers are often known to their victims if only by association, which in this case was Quo Veritas. And on this occasion, together with seeing Jean’s motorcycle where no right-minded person would leave a vehicle for any length of time, it gave him all the ‘just cause’ he felt he needed to enter and search the property. He gave the word and a firearms officer smashed the lock through with a steel battering ram. Two more officers ran in through the doorway, weapons drawn.

  “Armed police!” one of the men called.

  The other officer dropped the ram and followed them while Fable and two other regular uniforms waited outside for the all clear.

  There was no one home. Fable hadn’t really expected anyone to be but firearms officers were a necessary precaution. They cleared out and the regular officers moved in to begin a search of the property, looking for anything that might incriminate Robert Cornell. If they found any corroborating evidence to support the notion that he was the man they were looking for, Fable would call in SOCO for a top-to-toe search, but he needed the evidence first.

  He went into the lounge looking for photographs. They told him a lot about a person: if they were married, whether they had any children, where they liked to spend their holidays and if they were close to anyone. And it was about the photographs he didn’t see.

  He saw a group of three frames on a low table by the front window. They told him that Robert Cornell was a military man like his late father and his younger brother. One showed a tank of some kind beneath a blue sky, with two young boys sitting up on the barrel. They were saluting while their father stood beside it in full dress uniform. Something about it made Fable think of the Gulf War - the pale camouflage. Another photograph showed the two boys in their own uniforms, twenty-something years old, smart and proud and fresh-faced.

  Fable thought the third image an odd subject for a coffee table. It showed a military funeral in mid procession, Union Jack flag draped across the coffin. The two boys were at the forefront, older still with their heads slightly bowed. What he didn’t see by way of photographs told him that Robert Cornell was single or divorced and that he had no children - or none that he cared about enough to put them alongside his father and brother.

  He put the photographs back and began to pace the room, taking everything in as he wondered how much longer the background checks on Cornell would take. It had been twenty minutes so far and he figured it wouldn’t be much longer. Then he would have a better picture of the man. His military record might provide some telling information and he would find out where he worked now. He already knew from the waitress at the café that he was wearing a security guard uniform. There would be a useful lead somewhere in the data: something or someone to tell him where Cornell was or where he would eventually go.

  One of the uniformed officers came into the room. “Better take a look at this, sir.”

  Fable followed him upstairs. In what was the only room in the house that was made up as a bedroom they had found a box of ammunition. 9mm. A common bullet, Fable knew, but he also knew that it was extremely uncommon for any law-abiding citizen to keep a gun in their bedside drawer. It was the same calibre bullet that had killed Julian Davenport and Marcus Brown - the same calibre bullet that had been stopped by Jefferson Tayte’s briefcase.

  Fable ended the search there. He’d seen enough to warrant calling forensics in before too much else was disturbed. What he really wanted was the gun to go with the bullets so they could match the casings to the murder weapon, but maybe they would find something else that tied Robert Cornell to one of the victims - a fibre perhaps or a trace of blood on an item of clothing.

  As he went to make the call, Fable was even more convinced that Cornell was the man he was looking for and he hoped he was right. He needed progress. But if Cornell was his man, the absence of a gun in the drawer with the bullets only served to nurture his concern for the safety of the genealogist who had found him and for the historian who was now with them.

  With them...

  It occurred to Fable then that although Tayte no longer had a mobile phone there was a good chance Jean Summer did. It hadn’t been long since he’d seen Jean’s motorcycle outside the café but he shook his head at himself just the same for not thinking to ca
ll her sooner. He had her number. Even if she didn’t answer, triangulating a mobile phone’s location via the cellular network was common practice. If Jean’s phone was switched on it wouldn’t take long to identify her general location. Fable made the call knowing it was the best hope he could give them for now.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Jefferson Tayte opened his eyes again following the blow Robert Cornell had dealt him, he saw the man by a high recess in the wall to his right. He was standing in front of a tall, open fireplace. There was ash on the ground and bright embers were glowing in the makeshift fire-basket that seemed to Tayte like old iron railings that had been thrown down over the rubble to suspend the coal. He watched Cornell take a bag from a pile to his right and throw it in.

  A dull and repetitive throb on the side of Tayte’s head reminded him why he’d blacked out. As he regained his senses and smelled the dust and the metallic tang of blood in the air, he saw that he was sitting against a wall with his legs out in front of him. His arms were secured behind his back and his ankles were bound with something he couldn’t see. His initial instinct was to get up but a small voice stopped him.

  “It’s no use.” It was Jean, speaking in a whisper. “He made me put nylon cable ties around your wrists and ankles. There’s another one looped around the pipe.”

  She was sitting next to him, bound in the same fashion with her hands behind her, secured to a length of four-inch steel pipe that was bolted at intervals to the concrete floor.

  “You okay?” Tayte asked, immediately seeing that for the dumb question it was. Of course she wasn’t okay.

  Jean gave no reply.

  Several feet beyond her, Tayte saw that the door was still open, pouring light onto the man crouching in the corner opposite: a man whom Tayte now realised had to be the recently abducted Peter Harper. He seemed to stare at them, but Tayte figured him for a dead man now that he could see him more clearly. His body was slumped rather than crouched, supported by the walls, and Tayte supposed he must have lost more blood than it was possible to survive.

  Despite Jean having told him it was no use trying to struggle free, Tayte pulled and twisted at the cable-ties anyway. His movement drew Cornell’s attention and the man turned slowly away from the fire, which had already begun to spit and flame through the column of smoke that was rising into the chimney.

  “Mr Tayte,” Cornell said. “I’m glad you’re back.” He came over and squatted beside him. “I was beginning to think you were dead already.” He leant closer. “Can’t have that, can we? Not yet.”

  Tayte stared the man down and got straight to the point. He wanted answers. “How did you find Harper and the rest? Anything to do with Quo Veritas? Did they have a members’ list or something?”

  Cornell laughed at the suggestion. “You found them easily enough, didn’t you? You found me.”

  Yeah, Tayte thought. And look where that got me. He looked over at Peter Harper again, unable to stop himself out of morbid curiosity. “You like inflicting pain on people, don’t you? I guess a man like you must get a kick out of it. Is that it?”

  “Oh, it’s much more than that,” Cornell said. “Although, it’s not really my fault.” He sat back and crossed his arms. “I’m a product,” he added. “You can’t ask a man to do the things I’ve done without expecting it to change him. That’s not right. It’s not fair. Results were all they cared about and I got them. The people who wanted those results made me who I am.”

  Tayte doubted that. “Let me guess. The military?”

  Cornell didn’t answer directly. Instead, he gritted his teeth so hard that the muscles at his temples bulged. “Then they criticise your methods and before you know it you’re a fucking bus driver!”

  He grabbed a chunk of rubble from the debris and hurled it against the wall beside Tayte’s head. Fragments of brick shattered around Tayte and he flinched away. He knew the best thing to do now was to shut up but he had the man talking. That was good. Keep him busy. Buy some time.

  “So what about Harper and Walsh?” he said. “You weren’t following orders then, were you? Walsh had a young family, for Christ sakes.”

  Cornell was suddenly right in Tayte’s face. “Don’t expect any sympathy from me. I enjoyed their suffering. I enjoyed it almost as much as I’m going to enjoy watching you suffer.” He stood up. “And you’re wrong. I’m still following orders, only these orders were written three centuries ago.”

  He got up and blew Jean a sickly kiss as he passed her and went to the door. He was almost outside when her BlackBerry rang, shrill and loud from inside her jacket. It brought Cornell back at a sprint and he went through her pockets like a frenzied animal to find it. When he did, he read the display, dropped the phone and crushed it beneath his boot.

  “Who’s Daniel?”

  Jean spat at him and he slapped the back of his hand across her face, sending her glasses flying. The blow knocked her onto her side and when she got up again Tayte saw that there was blood on her lip. Cornell raised his hand again and Tayte figured she didn’t owe her cheating husband enough to go a second round with this madman.

  “He’s her ex-husband,” Tayte said. He looked at Jean apologetically but he couldn’t see that it mattered. What mattered was that they did have a phone and now they didn’t.

  Cornell lowered his hand. “That’s all I wanted to know,” he said, speaking softly to Jean. He retrieved her glasses, straightened one of the arms where it had bent and slid them back onto her face. “I don’t want you to miss anything.”

  He searched them both then and tossed what he found across the room: Jean’s motorbike keys and disc lock, a lipstick and a small hairbrush, Tayte’s wallet, notebook and a few Hershey’s miniatures. When he was satisfied he went outside, closing the door behind him.

  “Sorry,” Tayte said, “but I don’t think we should make this any worse than it already is. If we give him what he wants maybe it’ll give us some time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “For the police to get here. Fable must have worked out what’s happened by now. He’ll realise who Cornell is and find out where he works. And that will lead him here.”

  “You really believe that?”

  Tayte wasn’t sure he did and the doubt Jean had put in his mind made him struggle with his cable-ties all the more now that Cornell was outside. He wrestled with them for a full minute, trying in vain to snap them from the pipework. Then he tried to force the pipe loose until his arms ached and his wrists began to sting.

  Jean stopped him. “Quiet.”

  Tayte heard a diesel engine start up: the taxi that had brought them there. It grew louder, like it was getting closer. It passed around the back of the boiler house until Tayte could clearly hear it through the high windows. Then it stopped. A minute later he heard the main gate clatter shut and he figured Cornell had brought the taxi into the compound to conceal it. Then he’d locked up again. Tayte wondered which side of the gate he was on and it didn’t take long to find out.

  When Cornell came back he passed them without speaking. He crossed the room and returned with a wooden crate and a folding metal chair, which he set down a few feet in front of them. He took off his jacket and put it over the back of the chair, revealing his shoulder holster and gun against the white of his shirt.

  “I have something to show you,” he said, and he walked away again, returning with a black leather holdall. From it he produced a leather roll case, which he placed on top of the crate.

  “This once belonged to a physician I know you’ve heard of - Dr Bartholomew Hutton.” He rolled the case open and the surgical instruments gleamed in the firelight. “More recently it belonged to a woman called Sarah Groves. I expect you’ve heard of her, too.”

  Tayte nodded. “She was murdered in Sherwood Forest twenty years ago. Did you steal it before or after you cut her head off?”

  That seemed to amuse Cornell. He gave a wry half-smile. “Actually, my dad left it to me.”

  “
Your father?” Tayte said, considering the ramifications.

  “He left me this set of mathematical instruments, too.” He produced an oak box from the holdall and opened it for Tayte and Jean to see. “I got a similar set from Julian Davenport a few months ago.” He rummaged inside the holdall again. “Here it is. Both sets once belonged to a man of the cloth called Charles Naismith. He gave one to each of his twin sons.”

  Jean scoffed. “And I suppose your father took that other set when he murdered Douglas Jones?”

  “They were weak. All of them. When it came down to it they lacked the conviction to do what was required of them. My dad was the only one. They gave him no choice.”

  “So now you’re finishing what your father began?” Tayte said.

  “It became mine to finish.”

  “What did?”

  Cornell gave no reply. He opened the holdall again and the sight of that novelty Prince Charles facemask as he took it out and set it to one side, brought the sickening tableau of Marcus Brown’s murder back to vivid life. But Tayte was given little time to dwell on it as Cornell produced what was clearly another heirloom, the polished brass glowing in his hands as he lifted it up.

  “This is an altazimuth theodolite,” Cornell said, offering it up. “It’s used for surveying.”

  Tayte knew what a theodolite was. “Who did you kill for that?”

  Cornell stopped admiring the craftsmanship and stared at Tayte. “No one,” he said. “This one’s all mine. It belonged to my ancestor, Sir Stephen Henley.” He paused. “But I did kill Alexander Walsh for this microscope,” he added as he brought it out.

  “What about Peter Harper?” Tayte asked. “What did you get from him? Why did you bring him here?”