Ivory Nation, Andy Maslen [e manga reader .txt] 📗

to your own safety. I ran for the tower and started climbing.’

‘What was the scene when you reached the floor where the gunman was? We know he’d already killed a police markswoman, Sarah Furey.’

He swallowed before speaking, glancing out at the studio audience and finding the eyes of the crying woman. She nodded at him and he offered a small, sympathetic smile in return.

‘I heard the shot as I was on the final flight of steps. I think I knew, deep down, who the target was. There was all that hate speech from far right terror groups. I knew it would be the princess, or her husband.’

‘Was there a struggle?’

He nodded.

‘He was leaning over the parapet, looking through binoculars. I honestly think he was so wrapped up in what he’d just done he didn’t hear me. I saw a pistol tucked into the back of his waistband and I just grabbed it.’

‘Then what happened? Is that when he hit you?’

Tammerlane fingered the wound on his cheekbone and winced. He’d asked the makeup artist to leave it visible.

‘We both had our hands on the gun, and for a moment he gained the upper hand. He sort of jerked it at my face and the barrel caught me. But I managed to get it off him and somehow, instinct I guess, I pointed it at him and pulled the trigger.’

Throughout his recounting of the story, he’d paid close attention to her body language and facial expression. Behind the professional ‘concerned’ face he detected nothing that suggested even a shred of doubt. Good. That’s as it should be.

‘And you were arrested, is that right?’

‘Not quite. I called the emergency services once I realised he was dead and the police asked me, as was their duty, to go with them to Windsor police station to be interviewed.’

‘Were you offered a lawyer?’

‘I was, again, as was perfectly proper for them to do. I declined.’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ he repeated, smiling. ‘I hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t see the need. If you’ll forgive me for referring to a plank of my party’s policy, unlike the old fashioned socialists in Labour and their innate distrust of the state law enforcement agencies, we are totally behind them. I always say, old-school socialists are anti-police, right up to the moment their house in Islington gets burgled.’

Becca did him a favour and smiled at the joke, weak as it was.

‘So what happened then?’

‘Well, they asked me a lot of questions, pretty much the same questions you’ve been doing,’ he said, flashing her the full-wattage Tammerlane grin this time and registering the widening of her pupils. ‘They took my fingerprints and a DNA swab from my cheek, again, which I was happy to provide. That was it, basically.’

‘Well,’ she said, turning slightly so she was facing the studio audience. ‘Whatever you think of his politics, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Joe Tammerlane deserves our nation’s respect, and thanks. Joe Tammerlane, ladies and gentlemen.’

The applause this time was rapturous. Tammerlane bowed his head in acceptance and then the miracle happened: Becca stood, also applauding. Then she crouched, took his hand and dragged him to his feet so he was standing beside her.

Her eyes were sparkling with tears. In a seemingly coordinated move, the studio audience rose to its feet. He looked out at them and smiled shyly, noting that the camera operators and sound recordists were also clapping.

You’re mine. You just don’t know it yet.

In the days following the assassination of the princess, social media was alight with competing theories. Gabriel avoided all the platforms on principle as well as for operational reasons, but, back home in Aldeburgh he opened a laptop and loaded Twitter.

@Trexxy333

Its got 2 b the islamics, hasnt it? We shd kick them all out to those shitholes what they come from #WeepForPrincessSasha

@BrutusOfFairfield

For fucksake @Trexxy333 UR such a racist!!! Why immediately jump to that conclusion? Cd just as easily be IRA or Knights of Fucking Albion fuckwits. #WeepForPrincessSasha

@GrannyDeakins

You’re wrong @BrutusOfFairfield I think @Trexxy333 is right. They want to kill us Christians. It’s in their holy book. Poor Alexandra was killed for her faith. #WeepForPrincessSasha

@GreenKingJackson

@Are you always this dumb or just for special ocassions GrammyDeakins @BrutusOfFairfield @Trexxy333 ? “Poor Alexandra” was a Parasite living off working people who should kick out the “royal” family and stop idolising them. #WeepForPrincessSasha

@KOAofficial

The race traitor was put down for blood-mixing. This is the start of the race war. Whites unite for the right to fight! #WeepForPrincessSasha

Gabriel clicked on the final tweet. The profile came up on screen. Knights of Albion. Fighting to restore fairness in England for its true inheritors.

‘Clever,’ Gabriel said.

‘Clever?’ Eli repeated, coming into the kitchen and sitting beside him to read over his shoulder. ‘You do see through that, right?’

‘Of course I do. They’re sailing close to the wind but on the right side.’

‘Yeah,’ she snorted. ‘The far-right side.’

7

The examination room inside Westminster Public Mortuary’s Iain West Forensic Suite smelled of disinfectant and the sludgy, rot-stink of death. Gathered around the green-draped figure were the forensic pathologist Dr Bill ‘Mitch’ Mitchell, Chief Superintendent Andrea Robinson, the Senior Investigating Officer, a photographer, three detective inspectors and a MI5 deputy commander who had introduced himself merely as ‘Jim’.

‘Let’s begin, shall we?’ Mitch said, drawing the green sheet away from the body and handing it to a mortician, who folded it into squares as if it were a freshly laundered bedsheet and laid it on a stainless-steel counter.

The detectives had, between them, worked on over two hundred murder investigations and were hardened to the sight of dead bodies. Not so the MI5 man, who rushed to a corner and vomited into a bucket, placed there especially for the purpose by the mortician.

Robinson caught the eye of her closest colleague and rolled her eyes.

‘Amateur,’ he mouthed back at her.

Mitch looked down at the corpse. Cause of death was obvious: massive gunshot trauma to the forehead, though he would still investigate fully before committing himself to print.

‘As you can see, ladies and gentlemen,