shot her, right between her blue eyes, on the steps of the throne.
Four
12.23 p.m.
T ricia Willcocks came back from a dark pool of oblivion to discover that her head was still throbbing like a drum. Only slowly did she realise that
it wasn’t as simple as a migraine; at the very limits of her consciousness, out beyond the pain, someone was pounding on her front door. She tried to ignore it, to burrow into her pillows and
slip back into comforting oblivion, but the noise was insistent. Whoever it was had no intention of being denied. With curses tumbling from her lips, she pulled aside her bedclothes and slipped
into her robe. Shouts came from the front door, calling her by name, demanding her presence. She didn’t recognise the voice, male, aggressive, and very strident. She decided it would be
prudent not to open the door but to speak to them from behind it and give them a piece of her bloody mind, and she was standing by the panic button and about to let forth when the door seemed to
dissolve into splinters and come crashing from its hinges. Standing in the blinding sunlight on her doorstep were shadows that, through her pain, she slowly realised were men in visored helmets,
boots and body armour with the most extra ordinary array of weapons, every one of which was pointed at her.
‘Oh, fuck,’ she said. Then she fainted.
12.25 p.m.
Scotland Yard is a monument to the Sixties. The architectural fashion of the time had been for drab concrete mausoleums, and unsurprisingly the Operations Room within it was
low-ceilinged and dreary, crammed with old-fashioned communications consoles on the desks and portable fans to push around the stale air. The Ops Room was supposed to be replaced by new hi-tech
premises in Lambeth – it had been promised for several years – but still they were stuck here amidst dinginess that reminded Harry of the control room on one of those Soviet-era
submarines that had been left rusting in Sebastopol harbour. He arrived from the Lords still a little breathless; he’d run all the way. He accepted a mug of the institutional coffee as he and
Mike Tibbetts gazed at the large video wall, watching events relayed by a dozen cameras from vital points around Westminster.
‘Now we see if your theories stand up,’ the policeman muttered.
‘You have any doubts – after that?’ Harry pointed to one of the screens where the body of Marjie Antrobus lay draped across the steps in front of the throne.
Slowly, sorrowfully, the policeman shook his head.
There is a special quality to the silence that follows an outrage, when no breath is drawn and the world misses a beat. It’s like a tear in the curtain of time, where incredulity smothers
the first sparks of understanding. But it doesn’t last long, particularly in the City of London. The market traders who sat at their desks couldn’t hear the echo of the gunshot that
killed the Education Secretary, but no sooner had it died away than a strange fever began to spread across the trading floors. These floors were often the size of football pitches on to which were
packed hundreds of young, edgy men and women. A sound began somewhere – no one could tell from precisely what point – and suddenly heads were up, like meerkats sniffing for danger. The
noise level began to grow and spread, suddenly the screens that dominated every desk began to flash with red alarms, the open lines that linked them directly to brokers began to scream in unison,
and in a single breath it seemed as if everyone was on their feet shouting into several telephones at once, selling equities, derivatives, money market instruments, and sterling, trying to find
shelter from the storm. This wasn’t yet 9/11, but it might develop into that; indeed, there was already the suspicion that it might be something worse. Soon the markets were tumbling downhill
like an avalanche, sweeping everyone before it.
In newsrooms, too, they weren’t waiting. The press began a
Four
12.23 p.m.
T ricia Willcocks came back from a dark pool of oblivion to discover that her head was still throbbing like a drum. Only slowly did she realise that
it wasn’t as simple as a migraine; at the very limits of her consciousness, out beyond the pain, someone was pounding on her front door. She tried to ignore it, to burrow into her pillows and
slip back into comforting oblivion, but the noise was insistent. Whoever it was had no intention of being denied. With curses tumbling from her lips, she pulled aside her bedclothes and slipped
into her robe. Shouts came from the front door, calling her by name, demanding her presence. She didn’t recognise the voice, male, aggressive, and very strident. She decided it would be
prudent not to open the door but to speak to them from behind it and give them a piece of her bloody mind, and she was standing by the panic button and about to let forth when the door seemed to
dissolve into splinters and come crashing from its hinges. Standing in the blinding sunlight on her doorstep were shadows that, through her pain, she slowly realised were men in visored helmets,
boots and body armour with the most extra ordinary array of weapons, every one of which was pointed at her.
‘Oh, fuck,’ she said. Then she fainted.
12.25 p.m.
Scotland Yard is a monument to the Sixties. The architectural fashion of the time had been for drab concrete mausoleums, and unsurprisingly the Operations Room within it was
low-ceilinged and dreary, crammed with old-fashioned communications consoles on the desks and portable fans to push around the stale air. The Ops Room was supposed to be replaced by new hi-tech
premises in Lambeth – it had been promised for several years – but still they were stuck here amidst dinginess that reminded Harry of the control room on one of those Soviet-era
submarines that had been left rusting in Sebastopol harbour. He arrived from the Lords still a little breathless; he’d run all the way. He accepted a mug of the institutional coffee as he and
Mike Tibbetts gazed at the large video wall, watching events relayed by a dozen cameras from vital points around Westminster.
‘Now we see if your theories stand up,’ the policeman muttered.
‘You have any doubts – after that?’ Harry pointed to one of the screens where the body of Marjie Antrobus lay draped across the steps in front of the throne.
Slowly, sorrowfully, the policeman shook his head.
There is a special quality to the silence that follows an outrage, when no breath is drawn and the world misses a beat. It’s like a tear in the curtain of time, where incredulity smothers
the first sparks of understanding. But it doesn’t last long, particularly in the City of London. The market traders who sat at their desks couldn’t hear the echo of the gunshot that
killed the Education Secretary, but no sooner had it died away than a strange fever began to spread across the trading floors. These floors were often the size of football pitches on to which were
packed hundreds of young, edgy men and women. A sound began somewhere – no one could tell from precisely what point – and suddenly heads were up, like meerkats sniffing for danger. The
noise level began to grow and spread, suddenly the screens that dominated every desk began to flash with red alarms, the open lines that linked them directly to brokers began to scream in unison,
and in a single breath it seemed as if everyone was on their feet shouting into several telephones at once, selling equities, derivatives, money market instruments, and sterling, trying to find
shelter from the storm. This wasn’t yet 9/11, but it might develop into that; indeed, there was already the suspicion that it might be something worse. Soon the markets were tumbling downhill
like an avalanche, sweeping everyone before it.
In newsrooms, too, they weren’t waiting. The press began a
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