The Hawk Is Dead

27

Wednesday 22 November 2023

She wasn’t supposed to have the key. Only a handful of people in Buckingham Palace did. They included the Master of the Royal Household, Sir Tommy Magellan-Lacey, the Head of Security, Will Treadwell, and the Director of the Royal Collection Trust, Lorraine McKnight. She wasn’t even sure if The King himself had one. Or The Queen.

It was a great big, ancient metal affair that was more like a museum piece, or something out of a dungeon, than a functioning master key that could unlock every single door in the Palace. But then, of course, this place was a museum really, in so many ways, she thought. A living, lived-in museum. There were sixty-four thousand ornaments and objets d’art in the North Wing alone, quite apart from all the paintings hung on the walls.

Every piece was valuable and some were priceless. Many were gifts to Kings and Queens down the ages, others bought or commissioned by the Royal Family. She was walking along a red-carpeted corridor, past a display cabinet crammed full of small jade ornaments; collecting these had been a passion of the late Queen Mary, who died in 1953.

So much stuff in here, she thought. The Director of the Royal Collection did have a full inventory of all four wings in this palace, along with thousands more ornaments and pieces of furniture, as well as everything in Windsor Castle, Sandringham, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Balmoral, Birkhall and all the other royal residences. How could anyone keep track of it all, or place a value on it?

All of it was quality. If you were a monarch or at least heir to the throne, no one would be giving you a humble spice rack as a wedding present. Unlike the three grotty ones she and her now divorced husband had been gifted at their own wedding. Including one that had a tag stuck to the bottom, from someone else gifting it to the ‘friends’ who had given it to them.

How nice to be Royal. Royally rich. How nice to have so much stuff that you didn’t even know how much you had.

She glanced at her watch: 9.20 a.m. She had plenty of time to complete her assigned task this morning. Using the master key, she unlocked a magnificent wood-panelled door and slipped through into a bare, grimy white corridor that smelled of freshly sawn wood. Buckingham Palace was undergoing major renovations, one wing at a time, and this wing was now being started on.

She stepped around a hazard warning triangle, ignoring a notice that read, HARD HAT AREA, and climbed a narrow, steep staircase. The top few stairs were sealed off by a strip of red and yellow tape and a large sign:

She checked behind her. No one, she was alone. She ducked under the tape and continued to the top, then stopped and stood on bare floorboards, getting her breath back for a moment. Ahead of her was a ten-foot high by five-foot wide jagged opening, which had been bashed through the wall that went up to the flat, grimy ceiling above her. A cold draught blew on her face, which became even colder the closer she stepped, increasingly cautiously, towards the opening.

When this wing had been constructed, during George IV’s reign, massive light shafts were put in by the architect, John Nash, to bring light into the interior of all four floors above ground, and the basement. With modern, inexpensive lighting systems, and in addition The King’s own plans for the Palace to produce much of its energy requirements by natural, sustainable means, these light shafts were redundant, and this one was in the process of being converted into a lift to provide access to the other floors in the Palace.

She stepped forward increasingly gingerly, putting out her arms and pressing her hands against the wall either side of the gap as she drew even closer. She’d never been good with unguarded heights.

Finally reaching the very edge, she peered down. Work was progressing well, she could see. At the very bottom of the shaft were six fierce-looking vertical spikes, rising several feet. The lift engineer had explained their purpose a couple of weeks ago, when they’d begun work on them. They were to form a seatingguide for the base of the lift car.

They could of course also serve a very different purpose, she thought. And that was the reason she was here. Conducting a recce of all the sites in the Palace where an accident might occur. A fatal accident.