The Last Queen of England Read Online Free PDF Page B

masterstroke.”
    “I suppose it was.   I try to remain impartial but you can see the Jacobites’ point, can’t you?”
    “And the Jacobite movement died out some two hundred fifty years ago?” Tayte said.   He was trying to understand why Marcus had urged him to hurry.
    “Not exactly.   Many Jacobite societies exist today and there’s still plenty of support for the Stuart bloodline, largely in Scotland and to the north of England and perhaps surprisingly in America.”
    Tayte grinned.   “Actually, that doesn’t surprise me at all.”
    He’d traced many American families back through Scottish immigrants in the 1700s, many of whom were transported for their Jacobite leanings.   He drained his wine back and went for the bottle.
    “Do you mind if I help myself?”
    “Fill your boots,” Jean said.   She checked her own glass.   “I must be talking too much.   I’ve hardly touched mine.”
    Tayte sat back again and got comfortable.   “And what are the odds of a twenty-first century uprising these days?”   It seemed laughable, but he had to ask.   “I’m just wondering how treason fits into the picture.”  
    “I think the odds are very slim,” Jean said.   “Since the current heir to the Stuart bloodline - one Franz Herzog von Bayern of Bavaria - has shown no interest in pursuing a claim, I doubt that any related action against the Crown is on anyone’s agenda today - treasonable or otherwise.”
    Tayte was impressed.   “Marcus was right about you,” he said.   “You really know your stuff.”
    Jean smiled.   “It’s mostly classroom material.   I still keep in touch with a few students from when I taught at university who could really blow your socks off if you got them on to the right subject.   Are you hungry yet?   All this talking’s brought my appetite back.”
    “Sure,” Tayte said.   “Let’s eat.”
      
    Somewhere in Greater London a shirtless man knelt before a raging fire.   The light cast his shadow back across a derelict room, illuminating exposed brickwork, high broken windows and a tangle of iron pipework.   He reached towards the flames with a narrow length of pipe and stirred the white coals again for good measure until the heat on his bare arm was almost unbearable.
    You never leave loose ends, he thought.   You tie them up before you move on.   No time for complacency.   No time to sit around.   Not now.
    As he retreated from the flames he considered the business he had to finish tonight.   He turned his attention to the battered briefcase beside him and eyed the initials ‘MB’ on the clasp.   He grabbed it and opened it upside down, spilling the contents in front of the fire, covering the dusty floor with certificates of births, marriages and deaths: connections to people whose lives he would sooner remain forgotten.
    Kneeling among the records, he fed them slowly and purposefully to the flames, topping off the pyre with the briefcase itself.   He watched it all burn and when he was satisfied he put his shirt and coat back on and headed for the door.   He had already removed from the briefcase the one thing he dared to keep: a black address book.   He took it out from his coat pocket as he walked, smiling to himself now as he flicked through the pages, thinking, S is for Summer .
      
    “We get it in cardboard cartons back home,” Tayte said, digging his fork into a plastic tray of Singapore noodles and letting the tangled food slide onto his plate beside the char siu.   They were eating at the breakfast bar in the kitchen.   The oriental aromas made his mouth water.
    “I know,” Jean said.   “I’ve seen it on telly.”
    “Right.”
    “I think I’d prefer cartons.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Well, I’m sure the food wouldn’t sweat so much and, I don’t know, it always looks so romantic when you see a couple in a film curled up with chopsticks and the carton between them.”
    Tayte loved Chinese food but not like that.