Page 3 of Traitors Gate

A taxi drove down the wrong side of the road as it approached the Savoy Hotel. Miles Faulkner had forgotten this was the only street in London where you can drive on the right without fear of being pulled over.

It was nearly five years since Miles had been in London. A man who divided opinion – he considered himself as an international businessman, while the police thought him a crook – he’d ended up serving a few years at Her Majesty’s pleasure. After leaving prison, having served four years for fraud, Miles had left England and purchased a luxury flat in New York, confident he would be far enough away from the prying eyes of Chief Inspector William Warwick to return to his shady import and export business, a tax-free enterprise that yielded vast profits without being registered at Companies House. However, it wasn’t long before he became homesick and wanted to return to England – unnoticed, he hoped. No such luck. A certain Agent James Buchanan of the FBI had been keeping a close eye on Faulkner in case he needed to report his activities back to Superintendent Warwick – someone he not only admired, but wanted to thank for all the good advice he’d given him when they’d first met on holiday while he was still at school. James was now in Washington working for the FBI, but he’d watched with admiration as his mentor had continued to climb through the ranks. He wondered if the superintendent would remember him.

Miles stepped out of the taxi and stood on the pavement for some time before he entered the hotel. During his self-imposed exile, not a day had passed when he hadn’t thought about lunch at the Savoy. He could still recall a prison diet of cold, lumpy porridge, burnt toast and a hard-boiled egg. The prison chef had not been familiar with his favourite Savoy cabbage or Peach Melba.

A liveried doorman saluted and pulled open the front door of the hotel. Miles stepped inside and headed straight for the Grill.

‘Good morning, Mr Faulkner,’ said the maître d’ as if he’d never been away. ‘Your usual table?’

Miles nodded and Mario led him across a crowded dining room to an alcove table where he would not be overheard. He sat down in his usual seat and spent a few moments surveying a room that hadn’t changed since he’d last dined there. He recognized several well-known personalities dotted around the room. The editor of theDaily Mailwas lunching with a cabinet minister, whose name he could never remember, while in the next alcove sat an actor he could never forget. He’d watched every episode ofPoirotwhile he was in prison, some more than once, to help him while away the unrelenting hours.

He began to think about his lunch guest. A man who was never late, but then he was paid by the hour. A man who always selected the sirloin steak and a vintage bottle of wine to be found near the bottom of the list.

During those forced years of emigration, Mr Booth Watson had been Miles’s only contact back home. A weekly consultation with his lawyer to bring him up to date with his numerous business affairs, or to bid for a painting or sculpture he wanted to add to his collection. A judge and jury might have sent him down, but the value of his various properties and shares had continued to go up.

Following a successful appeal at the high court, Booth Watson had managed to get a year taken off Miles’s original five-year sentence. A few weeks later Miles was transferred to Ford Open Prison, which felt like a holiday camp compared with Wormwood Scrubs.

After a few days at Ford, he had been moved to a single room – there are no cells in an open prison – and a month later he was taken off cleaning duties and appointed prison librarian, a position that had cost him three hundred pounds. One hundred for the old librarian to switch jobs and another two hundred for the prison officer in charge of job allocation. He would have paid three thousand but the PO made the wrong opening bid. Both payments were made in cash, which, although a punishable offence, is still the only acceptable currency in prison.

Not many inmates made their way to the library, and almost all those who did headed straight for the crime section in search of a well-thumbed paperback.War and Peacehad gathered dust on the shelf for the past twenty years, serving its own life sentence.

Miles had taken advantage of being alone during those endless sixty-minute hours. He began his day by reading theFinancial Times, which was delivered by an officer along with his morning coffee. After lunch in the canteen, he returned to the library to turn the pages of the latest novel he was reading. During those years of incarceration he’d read everything from Daphne du Maurier to Thomas Hardy, and by the time he was released, he could have taken an English degree at Oxford, which had turned him down thirty years before.

The governor dropped in for a chat from time to time, when they exchanged confidences over coffee and a plate of shortbread biscuits – his coffee and the governor’s shortbread biscuits. It quickly became clear that Miles knew more about what was going on in the prison than the governor did. Inside information he traded, ensuring further supplies of biscuits during his coffee breaks.

But during all those exiled years in New York only one thing remained constantly on his mind.When will it be safe for me to return to London and exact revenge on first Warwick, then Hogan, and finally the commander?

CHAPTER 2

WILLIAM ANDROSS SAT ONthe edge of their seats in the back of the Land Rover. They peered out of a side window as familiar landmarks shot by and, although the journey back to the palace wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes, they were both aware it was the one time something could go wrong. And if it did, then fifteen minutes of infamy would be the only thing they were remembered for.

Five police outriders from the Special Escort Group accompanied them across the middle drawbridge at a courtly pace, but once they’d passed under East Gate and were back on St Katharine’s Way, any speed limit was ignored. At every red light, the traffic was held up by two of the outriders, while two more sped through to the next light, and carried out the same procedure, thus ensuring the convoy was never held up.

William looked out of the front window to admire the polished drill of his colleagues. While one motorcycle shot ahead to the next crossing where he would hold up the trafficwith a sharp blast on his whistle, the second drove straight past him and continued until he’d reached the next intersection, where he would carry out the same drill. While that was happening, the two motorcycles hovering behind the convoy would take their place in front of the Lord Chamberlain’s car, and once the lead pair had ensured a smooth passage for their VIP, the first bike would once again shoot ahead and repeat the exercise, while the pair who had been holding up the traffic would slip in behind the Land Rover in a seamless relay that made it possible for the convoy to maintain a speed of around forty mph, while the rest of London’s traffic was averaging about eight, or if they were lucky, maybe nine miles an hour.

William and Ross continued to check in every direction as they sped through Blackfriars and onto the Embankment, touching speeds of sixty, occasionally seventy mph. They shot past the back of the Savoy Hotel, blissfully unaware that Miles Faulkner and Mr Booth Watson QC were about to order lunch in the Grill and humble pie wasn’t on the menu.

• • •

Miles put down the menu when he spotted his lawyer waddling towards him. The lines on his forehead seemed more pronounced, and the pace was definitely slower. Booth Watson was dressed in a well-tailored double-breasted suit that attempted to hide his ample frame, a pale blue shirt and a creased Middle Temple tie. He was carrying a Gladstone bag that looked as if it was permanently attached to his hand.

‘Welcome back, Miles,’ he said as he leant over and shook hands with his most remunerative client, before slumping down into the chair opposite him. He placed the Gladstone bag on the floor by his side.

A few platitudes were exchanged, which neither of them believed, before a waiter appeared. Miles took his time perusing the contents of the large leather-bound menu, not sure where to start. Booth Watson, on the other hand, had selected both his courses and a wine he considered would complement them even before Miles had turned to the second page.

‘I’ll have the sirloin steak, rare,’ said Booth Watson, handing the menu back to the waiter.

‘And for you, sir?’ asked the waiter, turning his attention to Miles.

‘The smoked salmon.’ Another dish that hadn’t found its way to the Scrubs. ‘Bring me up to date on what Hawksby, Warwick and Hogan have been up to in my absence,’ he said once the waiter had departed.

‘Commander Hawksby is still in overall charge of the Royalty Protection squad, while Superintendent Warwick remains his second-in-command.’

‘And Hogan?’ demanded Miles, not hiding the disdain in his voice.

‘Inspector Hogan is no longer Princess Diana’s personal protection officer as the authorities thought they were getting a little too close for comfort, so he’s been transferred back to the Yard.’

‘So what are they all up to?’

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