The Lords' Day (retail) (5 page)

A short walk away, the doors to the House of Lords we swung open to allow peers to begin taking their seats. Archie Wakefield and Celia Blessing were both relieved not to have to continue their
sulk of silence outside the doors, but unlike most days, when they would have sat on opposite sides, they were forced by the restrictions of the day to take seats close to each other. They both
wanted the best view; the baroness sat in the third row of the benches to the left of the throne, while he took the seat immediately behind her, muttering to himself that he was getting her best
profile.

It was at this time that the final security meeting of the day took place. In a small office near the chamber, an inspector from the Metropolitan Police who was responsible for security outside
of the palace sat down with members of Black Rod’s office who were responsible for matters inside – an overlapping web of security that was supposed to provide multiple layers of
protection, although some thought it top heavy and unfocused. Why wasn’t just one man in charge, one man whose neck was on the line? But this was the way it had been handled for many years
and it had worked pretty well since . . . well, since Guy Fawkes.

While the men talked, police sniffer dogs ran one final check through the chamber and in the surrounding rooms and corridors, but the cleaners’ room in the basement always retained a
powerful smell of cleaning fluids and polish, which made it difficult territory for the dogs. They failed to detect the body of the young policeman which had been bent double and locked inside a
cupboard alongside several open bottles of bleach. More bleach had been used to wipe away any trace of his blood, and no one had yet noticed he was missing.

Neither did the dogs detect what was hidden in Coca-Cola cans which had been placed carefully inside the vacuum cleaner, and which Mukhtar had hauled to a corridor close by the chamber. One dog
did approach, but Mukhtar switched on the apparatus and the noise and odour of stale dust that it threw out were enough to distract the animal. Even as the security forces carried out their
carefully laid plans to secure the building and a large chunk of Westminster around it, no one realised that the killers had already beaten their trap.

9.11 a.m.

Harry came out of the shower and dripped over the carpet of the bedroom. He had stayed a long time beneath the cascade of water, hoping it might wash the pain away, but it
hadn’t. Through the open door of the bedroom he could see into the rest of the service apartment he had taken on Curzon Street, a few hundred yards from his home. The accommodation was
antiseptic and utterly anonymous. He had been able to ignore it when he assumed this was merely a temporary lodging, somewhere to squat before he moved back home, but now he realised that
wasn’t going to happen. He had no home any more. This squalid little place was his life, until he changed it, a life of shirts wrapped in impersonal cellophane, a fridge full of
afterthoughts, and a few boxes of books and papers piled in a corner.

He towelled himself roughly until his back felt raw and sat on the bed, his laptop beside him. Beyond the grimy, metal-framed windows the street was cast in coppered sunlight yet it did nothing
for his humour. He logged into the Marie Stopes website, and his mind grew still darker.
Before 12 weeks pregnancy . . .
That would be about it. Melanie wouldn’t have left it any
longer, she wasn’t one for harbouring doubts.
At this stage gentle suction is used to remove the pregnancy from the uterus
. ‘The pregnancy’? Didn’t they mean the
baby,
his
baby?
This is a very quick and simple procedure, taking less than five minutes to perform
. It made it seem like an ingrown toenail or treatment for a head cold; the moral
equivalent of sweeping out a blocked gutter. The clinic offered lavish promises about the physical treatment and mental welfare of the mother, yet there wasn’t a word about the father.
It
is completely your
decision who you tell about your treatment
. . . Didn’t the father have rights? Couldn’t he feel pain, too? He had obligations aplenty, the law laid them
down in meticulous detail and all costed to the last penny, but there wasn’t a sniff of what those obligations bought.

Friday afternoon, she had told him. Little more than fifty hours, and then . . . He had to change her mind. Harry felt sick, as if an animal was tearing at him inside. It shocked him, how
passionately he felt about it. He couldn’t remember if he had ever been as distressed in his life, or as powerless. He threw his towel into a corner and lay back on his pillow, his wet hair
sending trickles of dampness down his cheeks. His cheeks were still damp, long after the hair had dried.

9.30 a.m.

As the peal of bells alongside Big Ben struck the half-hour, the security net tightened. Not all the preparations went smoothly. A peer came bowling along Parliament Street on
his bicycle, anxious that he was a little late, only to run into a roadblock. Although he had his red-and-white Lords’ pass he was denied access. ‘Can’t take the bike in,
m’lud,’ a policeman told him. ‘You don’t have the right pass for it. And you can’t leave it here, neither. Otherwise we’ll have to take it away and blow it
up.’ The peer retired hurt.

Two of the earliest arrivals, clutching proper passes, were in wheelchairs. Their passes were little more than a piece of printed pale green card with a number and a name written on it, and the
two men were required to provide some additional form of photographic identity to match the names on the cards. They both produced well-worn British passports. With the courtesy and smooth
efficiency that characterised the occasion, they were then conducted to a spot reserved for them in the Royal Gallery, a special place for wheelchairs where they would be directly beside the
processional route and only a few feet away from Her Majesty as she passed. The two men expressed their thanks and, somewhat to the relief of the over stretched attendants, declined the use of the
disabled toilet facilities.

On another part of the processional route, the Norman Porch, where the Queen would mount its steps, a BBC technician was reprimanded for failing to display his pass clearly. ‘If you
don’t mind, sir,’ a doorkeeper remarked, ‘we need our medals on parade.’ They couldn’t take anything for granted, least of all the BBC. Some standards had to be
maintained. Sadly, there were many other miscreants. Peers frequently forgot to wear their passes, and many Members of the House of Commons simply refused; they liked to assume everyone knew who
they were, even if they hadn’t made it all the way to the front page of the
News of
the World
.

In the nearby Moses Room, Ede and Ravenscroft were dispensing the robes of scarlet wool trimmed in ermine that their Lordships were required to wear, yet even here, standards were slipping. In
some cases, at the insistence of the peer, the ermine was in fact rabbit, and, in one or two cases, artificial fur. The robes covered many sins. Beneath their robes the peers were instructed to
wear full dress uniform, morning dress or lounge suit, but Archie Wakefield had no right to wear uniform and refused the class-ridden pretensions of morning dress, so he made do with a suit, one of
only two he owned. It may have taken pride of place in his wardrobe but it had clearly travelled many a mile. The trousers seemed to be fashioned from material reclaimed from a worn-out concertina
while the jacket succeeded in both stretching and sagging at the same time.

This was also the moment for one of the most celebrated traditions of the day. Ten members of the Yeoman of the Guard, the oldest military corps in the country, were given the order to start
their ceremonial search in a colourful re-enactment of the moment that their predecessors had discovered Guy Fawkes’s stash of gunpowder. Four centuries later, no chances were being taken.
With lamps in one hand and ceremonial four-inch axes in the other, dressed in uniforms of brilliant scarlet with knee-breeches and ruffs that stretched back to Tudor times, they marched in step to
their duty, through the chamber and down a staircase into the cellars. Once they had finished they would be taken to the Terrace overlooking the river for a glass of port. It was, of course, merely
ritual. After all, the cellars had already been searched by sniffer dogs and police with metal detectors. No surprises, that was the order of the day. Everything had to move like clockwork, to the
minute.

It was a day that, in the words of the police inspector, had been planned to death. But others had their plans, too. By this time, there were already seven assassins inside the building. One
more to go and they would have a full set.

9.37 a.m.

A blue armoured BMW with two-inch thick windows and a suspension that seemed to sag just a little lower than most pulled slowly into Downing Street. It was Robert Paine’s
car and was followed by a British Special Branch unit, but the Stars and Stripes weren’t flying from the bonnet. This wasn’t an official call.

The door of Number Ten opened for him as he approached and he walked straight through into the black-and-white-tiled hallway. He was a regular visitor, felt comfortable here, was on first-name
terms with the doorman, but even he was surprised when a football suddenly bounced his way.

‘Sorry, Mr Paine,’ an American voice called out, laughing.

‘Can we have our ball back, mister?’ another voice added in a plaintive mock-Cockney accent.

‘You turning Downing Street into a soccer pitch?’

‘My father would call it the maximum utilisation of public resources,’ the Englishman replied.

‘And Mom’d say we were only getting our own back on the British for burning down the White House,’ the other chimed in.

The two young men smiled as they strode forward to take the ambassador’s hand. ‘Thanks for offering the lift today, Mr Paine,’ the American said. ‘We could have walked,
you know, wouldn’t take above ten minutes.’

‘Your mother asked me to take care of you,’ Paine replied. ‘I think she meant I should make sure you got there on time and didn’t upstage the Queen.’

‘Aw, mothers.’

‘Not to mention fathers!’ added the other.

They both laughed. They were in their early twenties and clearly good companions. By any stretch theirs was a remarkable friendship, forged at Oxford, where they were both studying. It
wasn’t often that the sons of a British Prime Minister and an American President had the opportunity to make mischief together and grow close.

Magnus Eaton, the Englishman, was a slight, wiry, copper-haired individual with an irreverent smile who was making his own way in the world, despite his parentage. He had insisted on being sent
to state school rather than some fee-paying establishment, much to the private relief and public credit of his father, and had rarely had his photograph published except for the family Christmas
card. Despite the inevitable accusations of nepotism when he had gained his place at Oxford he had proved himself to be a highly talented young man, adept not only at his mathematical studies but
also an excellent musician and a tenacious cross-country runner. He had kept a clean slate, apart from the time he had got himself arrested in The Broad for being drunk in charge of a bicycle. The
charge was later dropped when it was shown that even in the hands of the entirely sober and upright station sergeant, it simply wasn’t possible to persuade the rusted bike to travel in a
straight line.

Magnus’s life had been led largely in the shadows at the edge of the public arena. By contrast, William-Henry Harrison Edwards was never going to get away so lightly, not when his mother
was the first female President in US history and the third in the family to make it to the White House. Great things were expected of William-Henry, and he had delivered. A Harvard history
undergraduate,
summa cum laude
, currently a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford and predicted to become a rowing blue. Life had been a chest crammed with many treasures, most of which he had deserved,
yet it had caused his mother much soul searching before she’d agreed to let him continue his education abroad. After all, the sons of America weren’t exactly welcome in many parts of
the modern world, but Britain, she had eventually been persuaded, was different. ‘Mom, it’s the Special Relationship. Harry Potter, Prince William, motherhood and organic apple pie, all
that sort of gentle stuff,’ her son had declared. ‘And you cannot – you simply
can not
– send tens of thousands of other American sons halfway round the world to
fight our wars while you keep me wrapped up at home. Heaven’s sakes, Mom, Oxford’s not like Afghanistan.’ So, reluctantly, she had let him go.

‘By the way, Mr Paine, Dad sends regards. And his thanks and apologies,’ Magnus was saying, ticking off his fingers. ‘I’m quoting here. Regards, because you’re the
best ambassador he’s ever had dealings with. Thanks, for taking me off his hands this morning. And apologies, because he’s tied up in some stuffy meeting and can’t give you all
this guff himself. Something about Daud Gul, I think. Trying to decide if they can stuff and mount him in order to put him on public display.’

‘I understand his difficulties. Hooking the fish is one thing, landing him is another, I guess. But I fear we have no time for high politics. We must leave. It wouldn’t do to keep
Her Majesty waiting.’

‘We haven’t even had breakfast,’ the younger American complained, searching for his jacket. ‘Hell, I wonder what Daud Gul will get for his last breakfast. You know, as
and when—’

‘Revenge, perhaps,’ the ambassdor offered. ‘These matters have a history of producing the most unexpected results.’

‘I hope when he drops he falls all the way to hell. Don’t you agree, Mr Paine?’

‘As a diplomat I’m supposed neither to agree nor disagree. And I think you’ll find that the British no longer hold with retribution and all those Old Testament edicts. Such
beliefs are becoming a uniquely American preserve.’

‘Pity. We should Saddam the bastard.’

‘And as for the long road to hell, I’ve often found that it doesn’t lie as far away as most of us think,’ the ambassador continued, leading them out of the door towards
his car.