Read The Lords' Day (retail) for Free Online

to be
rude, but to hide the sudden stab of pain that ran like quicksilver across his face.
    9.00 a.m.
    The first major deadline in the official schedule had been reached, and a cordon was thrown round the Palace of Westminster. The last of the concrete barriers were hauled into
position across the approach roads, and all checkpoints were manned by a small army of police in bullet-proof vests, many of them armed with Heckler & Koch semi-automatic carbines. In
Wellington Barracks the Sovereign’s Escort was tacking up, while at the Palace of Westminster the first party of the Queen’s Bodyguard was assembling to prepare for her arrival.
    A short walk away, the doors to the House of Lords we swung open to allow peers to begin taking their seats. Archie Wakefield and Celia Blessing were both relieved not to have to continue their
sulk of silence outside the doors, but unlike most days, when they would have sat on opposite sides, they were forced by the restrictions of the day to take seats close to each other. They both
wanted the best view; the baroness sat in the third row of the benches to the left of the throne, while he took the seat immediately behind her, muttering to himself that he was getting her best
profile.
    It was at this time that the final security meeting of the day took place. In a small office near the chamber, an inspector from the Metropolitan Police who was responsible for security outside
of the palace sat down with members of Black Rod’s office who were responsible for matters inside – an overlapping web of security that was supposed to provide multiple layers of
protection, although some thought it top heavy and unfocused. Why wasn’t just one man in charge, one man whose neck was on the line? But this was the way it had been handled for many years
and it had worked pretty well since . . . well, since Guy Fawkes.
    While the men talked, police sniffer dogs ran one final check through the chamber and in the surrounding rooms and corridors, but the cleaners’ room in the basement always retained a
powerful smell of cleaning fluids and polish, which made it difficult territory for the dogs. They failed to detect the body of the young policeman which had been bent double and locked inside a
cupboard alongside several open bottles of bleach. More bleach had been used to wipe away any trace of his blood, and no one had yet noticed he was missing.
    Neither did the dogs detect what was hidden in Coca-Cola cans which had been placed carefully inside the vacuum cleaner, and which Mukhtar had hauled to a corridor close by the chamber. One dog
did approach, but Mukhtar switched on the apparatus and the noise and odour of stale dust that it threw out were enough to distract the animal. Even as the security forces carried out their
carefully laid plans to secure the building and a large chunk of Westminster around it, no one realised that the killers had already beaten their trap.
    9.11 a.m.
    Harry came out of the shower and dripped over the carpet of the bedroom. He had stayed a long time beneath the cascade of water, hoping it might wash the pain away, but it
hadn’t. Through the open door of the bedroom he could see into the rest of the service apartment he had taken on Curzon Street, a few hundred yards from his home. The accommodation was
antiseptic and utterly anonymous. He had been able to ignore it when he assumed this was merely a temporary lodging, somewhere to squat before he moved back home, but now he realised that
wasn’t going to happen. He had no home any more. This squalid little place was his life, until he changed it, a life of shirts wrapped in impersonal cellophane, a fridge full of
afterthoughts, and a few boxes of books and papers piled in a corner.
    He towelled himself roughly until his back felt raw and sat on the bed, his laptop beside him. Beyond the grimy, metal-framed windows the street was cast in coppered sunlight yet it did nothing
for his humour. He logged into