The Last Queen of England by Steve Robinson Read Free Book Online Page B

Jean said.   “Do I get a lift back to the service station when we’re done here?”
    “I get the feeling you won’t be needing it for a while,” Fable said.   “Let me have the key and I’ll get it picked up for you.”
    Jean handed it to him and described the bike.   She still had the brake disc lock in her jacket pocket.   The ignition key was all he needed.
    “Registration?”
    “H15 TRY.”
    Fable smiled.   “I’ll see that it’s taken home for you.”
    “No, not there.” Jean said.   To Tayte, she added, “Where are you staying?”
    “The Hyatt Regency in Marylebone.”
    “Have it taken to the hotel,” Jean said.   “I’ll stay there until this is over.”
    They were escorted to a meeting room.   There was a long oval table in the centre with twenty or so chairs around it - dark windows to Tayte’s right as he entered.   There were three other people in the room: two men in dark suits and a woman in black-and-white dogtooth.   All wore serious expressions.
    “Good to meet you, Mr Tayte,” one of the men said.   He was a slight man with a nasal tone to his voice.   “Ms Summer,” he added, greeting Jean.   The man didn’t give his name and neither did anyone else.
    Tayte put his briefcase on the table and they were invited to sit down.   Fable placed two manila folders in front of him.
    “I was going to call you about this first thing in the morning,” Fable said.   “You told me yesterday you were a genealogist like your friend, Marcus Brown.”
    Tayte nodded.
    Fable slid the folders closer.   “We found these at Mr Brown’s home and wondered if you’d take a look.”
    Tayte opened the folders.   The first contained a three-month-old newspaper cutting of a double murder in Bermondsey: Julian Davenport and his wife.   Fable quickly filled Tayte in on the high-level details of the case.   Beneath the clipping was a sheet of A3 paper folded twice.   It showed Davenport’s ancestry dating to the 1600s with plenty of gaps, particularly further back as Tayte would have expected.
    The second folder contained another ancestry chart much like the first: a left to right expanding pyramid of names also going back to the 1600s.   The subject on this chart was a man called Douglas Jones and according to his entry he died twenty years ago.
    Tayte sat back in his chair.   “They’re ancestry charts.”
    The woman in the dogtooth suit came back at him before he could elaborate.   Her tone was sharp and to the point.   “We know that much, Mr Tayte.”
    Tayte gave her an apologetic smile.   He laid the charts out side by side and studied them more closely.   His only idea at this point was to see if any of the names matched, but there were so many, the handwriting small and written by Marcus Brown, which added another level of difficulty.   He didn’t quite need his degree in palaeography to read his friend’s writing and he knew he could sit there and work through it, but he didn’t think that was what the people around him had in mind.
    He turned one of the charts over, thinking it wouldn’t mean anything even if they did share a common name.   It would prove that the people on the charts were related, but so what?   Then as he leant in and smoothed the paper out he noticed a small three-digit number by the crease where the folds converged.   It was on the chart for Julian Davenport.   He checked the other chart and noted that it had no such marking.
    “Unless Marcus singled a name out,” Tayte said under his breath.   “Then it would mean something.”   He felt the room close in around him.   “Can I get a pencil?   It might be an ahnentafel number.”
    Someone handed Tayte a pencil and he wrote down the number, ‘594’ in large print so everyone could see it.  
    “Ahnentafel?” Jean said, asking the question that must have been on everyone’s lips.
    Tayte looked up. “It’s a German word that literally translates to ancestor table.   The