Head of State: The Bestselling Brexit Thriller. Andrew Marr
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development land, and developers had had their eyes on the site for years. As one local estate agent put it, ‘Leaving a bit of juicy riverfront like that to cadavers rather than living punters is pure insanity. It isn’t English.’
On the other side of the wall, once a call had opened the gate, there was generous space for parking and then a small office – velour chairs, a dusty rubber plant, two ancient computers, a calendar with pictures of fat naked women – staffed by an unshaven, exhausted-looking man and a tired secretary. Behind it, corridors with photographs of English seaside towns led to heavy doors and thick plastic curtains. Beyond these, the atmosphere under the strip lights was both chilly and stuffy, with the vinegar smell of formaldehyde not quite hiding something sweeter. Porters moved the bodies from cold storage to the cement-floored rooms where the autopsies took place, and then sluiced down the fluids after the coroners, the police and the pathologists had done their jobs and left.
What kind of people sought such work? Not bad people, necessarily. Rather, those who combined a yearning for quiet financial security with flickers of a gothic sensibility. Graveyard humour didn’t stop with Shakespeare. Famous corpses sometimes found themselves decorated with lipstick or stick-on noses before the mortuary closed for the night. At Christmas, a certain amount of inappropriate tinsel was not unknown. There had been one near-scandal, when relatives from the Indian subcontinent turned up unexpectedly to find a steel tycoon dressed in women’s stockings. Lucien McBryde’s slender and remarkably long penis had been the source of much comment today; but he had not been tampered with.
Had the Thames body and the investigative journalist been able to, they would surely have turned and gaped at one another, surprised by their clammy propinquity – wondering who would show up next, disturbed by the thought of what the white-trousered menials might leave as a goodnight gift. But as one of them had a broken neck and the other was missing his head, they could exchange no such look.
The chief whip, Ronnie Ashe, was experiencing something he hadn’t felt since he had been a small boy at his first preparatory school. He felt inadequate. This was not surprising. He had been summoned to Buckingham Palace by the new king’s private secretary half an hour earlier, to explain why the king’s first minister was apparently too busy to attend his regular audience with His Majesty – moved to Monday mornings at the beginning of the new reign. And the king was not amused.
Ronnie had decided to walk across St James’s Park in order to prepare himself – it would be almost as quick as clambering into the official Jaguar and being driven, he’d thought – but he had underestimated the time it would take, and arrived late. His Majesty was not amused about that either.
Ronnie was taken by an equerry through the courtyard and up a surprisingly small staircase to the king’s private study. There a portrait of the late queen dominated the wall behind the desk, while the rest of the room was filled with the king’s own watercolours of Scotland, India and Windsor. A pair of green-silk-covered armchairs had been set out in preparation for the meeting, a couple of yards apart. Ronnie bowed, beamed, but remained standing until the king waved an irritated hand towards one of them. Had the prime minister been there, a footman would have been waiting with a glass of his favourite Talisker malt whisky. For Ronnie, there was not even the offer of a cup of tea.
Yet Ronnie Ashe and His Majesty were acquainted. Early in his parliamentary career, Ashe, who’d made some real money by almost doubling the size of his father’s agricultural-equipment business, had been approached to become a trustee of one of the then prince’s pet charities. Ronnie was enough of a man of the world to understand that ‘trustee’ was a short way of saying ‘Pay up, or find people who can.’ He did a bit of both, was invited to a couple of what he told his wife were ‘snob lunches’, and eventually they both spent a weekend at the prince’s country house. With his engineering background, Ronnie often had some useful tips to pass on for royal speeches, and he’d spent a few days over a few months explaining how Parliament really worked to the young princes. A regular at Cheltenham, Lingfield, Epsom and Ascot, as well as a genial, attentive listener, he was the kind of man the Windsors found easy to have in attendance.
But, like many who had found themselves in this position, Ronnie Ashe had once made the mistake of ‘presuming’ – of being just a little too friendly – and had immediately experienced the famous Windsor chill. He had felt knocked off-balance, like a schoolboy caught doing something obscurely shameful, and surprisingly upset.
The prime minister, who was twenty years his senior, had put him right. ‘The secret of monarchy? Fast exits, Ronnie. Out goes the hand. On comes the smile. You feel like a million dollars. Then you suddenly realise they’ve skedaddled, moved down the line. Or you’re having a conversation and HM goes, “Really? How fascinating? Now why has nobody ever told me that?” You make the mistake of jabbering away some more, and then you notice a glaze behind the eyes. A fog has descended. I’ve seen it a million times – ambassadors and actors, cabinet ministers and editors, suddenly going “How did that happen? Where did they go?” It’s how it has to be, old man. No idling. No getting too close. And of course it’s worse for those who are a little closer. So if you want to keep being invited, if you want to sit on those boards, maybe get a Victorian Order one of these days, you have to play the game, and understand their rules. Don’t presume. Don’t dream of being a friend. Remember, always and forever: quick exits.’
Ronnie Ashe had remembered, and learned, and so in time he had been asked back. He’d had an eat-and-sleep at Windsor. He’d accompanied the king to see children’s clubs, and he’d managed to get a royal opening for the new business college in his constituency. He’d made jokes and heard kingly laughter and laughed at kingly jokes – which actually weren’t bad, though they often made you feel sorry for the man.
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