The Last Queen of England (4 page)

One photograph showed a man in a white, bloodstained dressing gown, slouched back on a leather armchair.
 
The blood was concentrated in the middle of his chest where two bullets had ended his life.
 
The other image was of the dead man’s wife, lying in a pool of designer shopping bags in the entrance hallway.
 
She’d been shot once in the head - 9mm, point blank - and it was some small grace that she probably hadn’t felt a thing.
 
He put her death down to bad timing, plain and simple.
 
If she’d tried on one more pair of Christian Louboutins they probably would have saved her life.

Fable laughed sourly to himself.
 
“The evil that men do,” he said with a rasping, barrow-boy accent: the product of a tough East London childhood and too many cigarettes.

He studied the woman’s image for a long time.
 
She made him think about his own marriage, which was something he’d tried once a long time ago.
 
He’d always known it wouldn’t work for him.
 
He gave the phrase ‘married to the job’ a whole new definition.
 
He shook his head, thinking it a mercy that the kids weren’t home as he turned back to the photograph of the man who had once been Julian Davenport.
 
He’d been the target - no doubt about it.

The Scenes of Crime Officers had lifted plenty of prints from the apartment, but they hadn’t found a single one that led anywhere.
 
It seemed like a cold-blooded assassination and as things stood there was still so little to go on.
 
With no prior offences, Davenport was as clean as his apartment and as far as Fable knew, the man had no enemies.
 
There was no sign of a struggle, which was telling, and no known motive.
 
The only thing that kept Fable going on this case was that he supposed the killer had to be known to his victim.
 
They often were.
 
He just had to find the connection.

“Jack?
 
You got a minute?”

It was the chief and he was gone again before Fable had a chance to look up.
 
He always kept his door open when he was at his desk; he didn’t like to be shut in.
 
He sighed and reluctantly slipped the photographs back into his desk drawer.
 
He’d never known a murder case he didn’t take personally.
 
He just couldn’t stomach the idea that some low-life out there thought they were smarter than he was - thought they could do whatever they damn well pleased and get away with it.
 
He’d made it his business to prove such people wrong and sooner or later he usually did.
 
He supposed that was why the Bermondsey case was getting to him.

The chief, or Graham Tanner as he was called in the regular world, was someone with whom Fable had had too many run-ins over the two years since he’d made the rank.
 
So many that they largely left each other alone these days because neither wanted the grief any more.
 
That suited Fable just fine.
 
He supposed Tanner saw him as some kind of threat, but that was his issue.
 
He wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.
 
In the greater scheme of things people like DCI Graham Tanner came and went like seasonal flu.

Chapter Three

T
he witness interviews took place in the upstairs function rooms at
Rules
restaurant.
 
The place had been closed and Maiden Lane was shut off while the SOCO team went about their work.
 
Talking to DI Fable and going over everything that had happened had been as useful to Tayte as he hoped it had been to the police.
 
The
golden hour
worked both ways.
 
It had forced him to focus.
 
Now, as he left the restaurant for the second time that afternoon, he had a number of questions neatly ordered in his mind, all of which boiled down to who wanted Marcus Brown dead and why?
 
Finding the answers wasn’t going to be easy, he knew that, but he wasn’t going home until he had.

The crime scene was still busy outside as he walked the street under escort.
 
It had stopped raining, although the air was still damp and cool.
 
He passed several spotlights on stands and people in blue, paper-like over-suits.
 
He wasn’t really taking much in, unable to look anywhere near the spot where his friend had been gunned down two hours earlier.
 
He saw Jean waiting for him beyond the galvanised barrier on the busy corner of Maiden Lane and Bedford Street and thought she couldn’t have been there long.
 
They had been told that someone would take them home, or to the hotel in Tayte’s case, after the interviews were finished.
 
Tayte thanked the uniformed constable who let him through the barrier and he gave Jean a pensive smile.

“The car won’t be long,” Jean said over the din of city traffic that was in constant flow to and from a nearby junction with The Strand.

Tayte nodded.
 
“Great,” he said.
 
“I’d like to get out of these clothes.”

The blood on his shirt and trousers had dried to a dark crust.
 
He’d lost track of his jacket and didn’t care to have it back.
 
He checked the time on his 1980s retro digital watch and the glowing red LED digits told him it was almost five p.m.

“You okay?” he asked.

There had been little time to talk about what had happened before now and when they did have the chance early on the inclination hadn’t been there.

“I keep hearing his voice,” Jean said.

“Marcus?”

“The gunman.”

“He spoke to you?”

Jean nodded.
 
“He pointed that gun in my face and told me I’d brought it all on myself.
 
That I shouldn’t have got involved.
 
I don’t know what he thought I knew, but I was sure he was going to kill me, too.”

That worried Tayte.
 
Whoever had killed Marcus clearly thought the two of them were working together.

“Did you tell the police?”

“Of course.”

“Did they offer you any kind of protection?”

Jean shook her head.
 
“They gave me a card with a number to call if I was concerned about anything.”

That worried Tayte even more.
 
“Same here,” he said.
 
“In case I recall anything else that might be important.”

A black Range Rover caught Tayte’s eye as it drew level with them and slowly mounted the kerb.
 
It had blacked out windows and brand new plates and Tayte instinctively stood in front of Jean as the nearside rear door opened.
 
A man he’d seen recently got out and stepped towards them.

“Michel Levant,” the man announced.

He grabbed Tayte’s hand before he had time to react and pumped it lightly but exuberantly.
 
Tayte did little to return the gesture.
 
It was the man Marcus had been talking to at the cocktail bar before they left the restaurant.
 
Over the man’s shoulder Tayte caught the smooth sheen of a tanned thigh in the back seat of the car just before the door closed and the driver pulled away.

“And you must be Jean Summer,” Levant said with a soft French accent, his voice thin and melodious.
 
“Marcus has mentioned you.”
 
He held out his hand and Jean ignored it.
 
Then laughing it off he turned back to Tayte.
 
“But he has never mentioned you.
 
American?”

Tayte nodded.
 
That much must have been clear from the restaurant.
 
He didn’t elaborate.
 
He was a firm believer in trusting your instincts and everything about this man told him he was bad news.

Levant’s smile faded.
 
“I wanted to offer my condolences,” he said.
 
“Marcus Brown was a great man.
 
The best in his field.
 
He will be greatly missed.”

Tayte wasn’t in the mood for this.
 
“Look, who are you and what do you want?”

“I am Michel Levant,” the man said again, as if his name alone explained everything.
 
He produced a silver calling card with all the flair of a close-up magician.
 
“International probate genealogist,” he added, punctuating the words.

Tayte read it.
 
“So you're an heir hunter?
 
Same question.
 
What do you want?”

“I want to offer you my services,” Levant said, sounding wounded.
 
“I believe that Marcus was on to something important and that he was killed for what he knew.
 
He was, I am sure, as much a friend to me as he was to you.”

Tayte doubted that.

Jean stepped in.
 
“What makes you think we’re interested in pursuing Marcus’s work?”

Levant laughed to himself again: a small laugh through pursed lips that made his expression somewhat effeminate.

He was beginning to annoy Tayte.
 
“And what makes you think we’d need your help if we were?”

Levant eyed him seriously.
 
“It is simple.
 
Intrigue and friendship will demand that you pursue his work - human nature will not let you rest without answers.
 
And you need my help because I am the best at what I do.”

Tayte met Levant’s eyes.
 
“Not where I come from you’re not.”

Levant might have hit two out of three right, but Tayte had mixed feelings when it came to dedicated probate investigators: people like Levant who made their money connecting heirs with their fortunes, sometimes taking as much as forty percent for themselves.
 
The business was entirely unregulated.
 
It had become a magnet for the unscrupulous and while Tayte knew many good people in the field, he had the feeling that this particular heir hunter was only talking to them now because he could smell a finder’s fee.

 
The police car they had been waiting for arrived, temporarily slowing the southbound traffic.

“Look, excuse us,” Tayte said.
 
He took Jean’s hand and pushed past Levant.
 
“We’re not interested.”

“But wait, I don’t know your name.”

Chapter Four

T
ayte had arranged to meet Jean for a drink later that evening.
 
They needed to talk about what had happened and Tayte needed to work out what he was going to do about it.
 
Somewhere neutral was the idea, but Tayte received a call from Jean not long after the police had dropped him back at his hotel, inviting him to her place for dinner, which he accepted.
 
He thought Marcus would have liked that.

It was just after seven p.m. when he arrived and it was almost dark outside.
 
He brought along a bottle of wine that he’d picked up near the hotel and a bag of Hershey’s chocolate miniatures from the supply he’d brought with him from home.
 
Giving them to Jean made it all feel like a proper date, although that wasn’t his intention.
 
They had Chinese take-away delivered and Tayte, scrubbed up in a fresh tan linen suit, sat in an old leather chair by the window with his briefcase beside him.
 
He had no idea why he’d brought it along; it was just out of habit.
 
Neither he nor Jean had much of an appetite so they decided to drink the wine first and save the meal for later.
 

Jean’s flat was on the eleventh floor of a recently developed high-rise in the Docklands area, facing east along the River Thames.
 
It was cosy, Tayte thought as he waited for Jean to return from the kitchen with the drinks.
 
The kitchen doorway led off the sitting room and another went back out into a narrow hallway where he’d passed three further doors that he figured led to bedrooms and a bathroom.

He sighed for the hundredth time in as many minutes and gazed around at all the books that were lined on shelves against the walls.
 
Larger tomes were piled like occasional tables beside the seating, which was covered with colourful throws.
 
He was thinking about Marcus’s wife, Emmy.
 
He’d called her when he got back to the hotel but predictably she wasn’t home.
 
The police had answered on his second call and he imagined her house had been overrun all afternoon.
 
He supposed she would be at the hospital or maybe with family by now and he hoped someone was taking care of her.
 
As close as he and Marcus had been, he couldn’t begin to imagine how Emmy was feeling right now.
 
He’d go and see her before he flew home, although he had no idea now when that would be.