Murder Most Royal

Philip had said it about Ned, and Mrs Maddox had said something similar about Mrs Raspberry. They shared a certain bloody-mindedness, which she rather admired, an antipathy to drugs and a willingness to get stuck in. They knew each other through Ned’s festival. She wondered idly if they were friends.

Then she remembered. Gradually, her curiosity turned to a prickling sense of dread. It wasn’t a suspicion, exactly. Just a twitch. A worry. A series of connections.

She reached for the telephone on her desk, which sat beside a picture of a small man in a white coat, standing in front of a table of silver cups he had won for her with champion birds.

The operator asked where to direct the call.

‘I’d like to talk to my loft manager,’ she said.

The job of royal loft manager came with a house near the abandoned railway station at Wolferton and a pigeon loft in the garden for two hundred birds. The loft itself had recently been refurbished with ventilated roofing, nesting boxes and perches, and awnings under which they could sunbathe in the summer.

In pigeon terms, it was as lavish as Sandringham. The man who got to manage such lavishness was a friendly Lancastrian called Stephen Day, whose cheerfulness belied a cut-throat competitive spirit that made him an excellent choice for the job.

After a minute or two, his warm, Christmas pudding of a voice came reassuringly down the line.

‘Happy New Year, Your Majesty. And what can I do for you?’

‘I wondered if you might know anything about money laundering, Mr Day.

’

‘Ha! You’re talking to the wrong person, ma’am. I can just about manage online banking. Is that any help?’

‘Money laundering through pigeon clubs. Someone was talking to me about it at New Year. From what I can remember, there are gangs that buy into the clubs so they can sell prize birds at below their value and record a higher price in the accounts. I think that’s it, anyway.’

‘Why would they do that, ma’am?’

‘So that any illicit money could disappear in the difference between the two.

I assumed at first that you wouldn’t be able to hide much money that way, but then I realised how much auction prices have rocketed recently. I found it rather alarming. So you aren’t aware of anything like that happening round here?’

‘I had no idea you were such an expert on crime, ma’am. It’s news to me. I can’t see that happening in East Anglia.’

‘That’s what I thought, too, to start with.’

‘I can ask around, though, if you’d like.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind.