The ones he didn’t kill were not happy with him.
He heard the office door behind him swing open, but he didn’t turn to see who it was. No point; he knew already.
“You finished yet, Smith?”
“Ha ha, only just started, Mr Jolly.” The fake laugh, perfected years before in the accounts payable department of Croydon (South) Council, came easily to him. It was his defence mechanism, a way of signalling that he wasn’t a threat. If he were a pack dog, he’d be bowing his head, lowering his tail and whining.
Jolly was his supervisor, a whinging Wandsworth solicitor who’d landed himself a cushy little number running the bureaucracy in the main refugee camp for Kent. Supercilious, patronising and grey, he was identical in almost every respect to Arthur’s boss at the Council.
“Be sure you’re done by lunchtime,” said Jolly. “The camp commander wants that list pronto.”
“No problem, sir, be done in a jiffy.”
Arthur’s supervisor gave an oleaginous moan of assent and retreated. Arthur sniggered. Camp commander; that sounded gay.
He reminded himself to be grateful. The collectors could have killed him there and then, as he’d sprawled out of the Lamborghini, tearing at his bindings so he could empty the vomit from his mouth.
Instead, they’d thrown him into their van, with the corpses, and driven him here, to the camp. They’d been a bit rough with him at processing, but he was so terrified that he’d offered no resistance at all. Identified as a low level clerical worker, grade 5F, he’d been set to work in the offices, away from the barracks and the experimental wings, where all sorts of unpleasantness was visited on the survivors.
They were trying to find a cure, and they didn’t care what it took, or who they hurt in the process. Who they thought they were going to cure, he didn’t know and he didn’t ask.
Barrett, the man who brought round the tea urn, reckoned that the government and royal family were all holed up in a bunker underneath Buck House, waiting for a cure so they could emerge and lord it over what was left. Arthur didn’t really believe that.
Then he noticed the name of the next worksheet: Royal lineage.
He clicked it open and saw a list of all the people in line to the throne. It went through the obvious ones — the princes and princesses, the dukes and duchesses, but then it went further, into minor aristocracy and illegitimate offspring. The first column contained their names, the second their dates of birth, the third their last known addresses. And the fourth contained their blood type.
But when he scrolled all the way down to line 346 he gasped in shock. His hand shook and he felt momentarily dizzy.
Because it was his name. According to this, he was 346th in line to the throne of England. The fourth column contained a note: “Illegitimate offspring; unaware; unsuitable”.
In a flash he remembered a snide comment his father had made to his mother over Sunday dinner, years before. Something about dallying with upper class twits. She had blushed.
Gosh.
He scrolled back up and started counting.
There were only eleven O-Neg royals in the list above him.
He sat for a while, jaw hanging open, thinking through the implications of his extraordinary discovery. Then he came to a conclusion, sent the document to the printer, and stood to leave.
Finally, destiny was calling.
THE KING OF England, John Parkinson-Keyes, knew damn well he was in line to the throne, and didn’t care who knew it. It was why the boys at his private school had christened him Kinky — a bastardisation of King Keyes.
Not that he minded. He really was kinky and he didn’t care who knew that either. Hell, it was practically a prerequisite for the job.
“Prince Andrew,” he was fond of confiding to credulous hangers-on, tapping his nose as he did so, “has an entire wardrobe full of gimp suits. And Sophie’s a furry!”
He’d nod in the face of their astonishment and then glance knowingly at his empty glass, which they would invariably scurry off and refill for him.
He didn’t have hangers-on now, of course. Not after The Cull. Now he had the real thing: slaves. And he didn’t need to invent tall tales to get them do what he wanted.
“Where’s my bloody dinner?” he yelled at the top of his voice, which echoed around the vaulted wooden ceiling of the huge dining room. There was no response. He drummed his fingers on the table impatiently, then cursed and reached for his shotgun. He’d teach these bloody proles to keep him waiting. He cracked the gun open, checked that it was loaded, then snapped it shut and took casual aim at the door.
“Oi!” he shouted. “Don’t make me come and find you.”
Again, no reply.
Christ, this was annoying. He was hungry. Resolving to teach that tempting young serving lad a hard, rough lesson in master and servant protocols, he rose from his chair and swaggered in the direction of the kitchens, gun slung over his shoulder.
“Parkin, you little wretch, where are you?” he bellowed as he pushed open the kitchen door.
He never even saw the sword that sliced his head off. Well, not until his head was on the floor, and he blinked up at his toppling, decapitated corpse.
The last thing he saw as his vision went red at the edges was a chubby little man in a grey sweater leaning down and wiggling his fingers in a cheery wave.
“Sorry,” said his assassin. “Nothing personal.”
King Keyes tried to call for his mummy, but he had no breath with which to cry.
The last thing he thought he heard was the portly swordsman saying: “Three down, eight to go.”
THE QUEEN OF England, Barbara Wolfing-Gusset, hungrily scooped cold beans from a can with a silver spoon. The juice dribbled down her chin, but she didn’t bother to wipe it off, so it dripped onto the dried blood and vomit that caked her best satin party dress.
She’d been wearing the garish pink frock for two months now, ever since the night of her 19th birthday party. Her parents had suggested that maybe a large gathering of people during a plague pandemic was not the best idea, but she’d silenced them with a particularly haughty glance, and invited practically everyone she’d ever met.
Turnout had been low, but that just meant more champagne for everyone else. Plus, that hatchet-faced cow Tasmin hadn’t been around, so Barbara had a clear run at Tommy Bond.
It wasn’t fair; it had all been going so well.
Yes, Tommy was looking a little green about the gills, but Barbara had assumed that was the champers, and she’d dragged him away from the ballroom for a quick shagette in the scullery. And quick it was. What a disappointment. Tommy came in about ten seconds flat and, as he did so, his eyes rolled back in his head, he began to spasm, and then he vomited blood all over her, fell to the floor — withdrawing in the process — thrashed about until he cracked his head on the stone step and twitched his last.
Ungrateful bastard.
Barbara finished the beans and tossed the tin into the corner. She swung down from the table she’d been sitting on and headed for the door, aiming a kick at the dog, which was still gnawing on Tommy’s straggly bones; she didn’t want it to have all the meat, she was still planning on making a stew of her beau when she had a mo.
For now, though, her priority was the next chapter of In the Fifth at Mallory Towers and the resolution of the poison pen mystery!
Kicking her way through the remains of her fabulous party — mostly disarticulated bones and dresses stained with bodily fluids now, but still the occasional scrap of discarded wrapping paper and tinsel — Barbara went to the drawing room, humming to herself.
She stopped and stared, her mouth hanging open, when she saw the man silhouetted in the French doors.