NEWS OF WHAT WENT DOWN at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital comes too late to catch the morning print editions, but social media, as usual, is all over it and by the time people are listening to the morning news over their sleepy cups of coffee, Commissioner John Rees has gone from zero to hero.
The various interested parties—Celia Barnes, Shonagh O’Brien, the ladies of the Highgate Ladies’ Book Club WhatsApp group—all scroll through their news feeds, and turn up the volume on their radios to suck up the details of the breaking news, breathing a collective sigh of relief that the killer is in custody, order has been restored, and they are safe in their little worlds once more.
The Home Secretary, Charles Nixon, makes a rare appearance on the Today program to confirm that a hospital orderly responsible for the murders of care-home mogul Mark Murphy, his wife, and a tabloid journalist gained access to the private wing of the Chelsea and West-minster but had been stopped from killing Laughton and Gracie Rees, Commissioner Rees’s daughter and granddaughter, by Commissioner Rees himself, who, despite collapsing at a press conference because of a serious heart condition, had realized something was wrong, heroically tackled the killer, but sustained severe injuries and suffered a heart attack in the process and is now in intensive care.
Nixon also deftly performs the unique politician’s trick of throwing Rees under the bus while at the same time naming it in his honor by adding that his earlier collapse at the press conference and passionate and uncharacteristic comments had been down to the strong painkillers he’d been taking as he bravely tried to continue doing his job until a suitable replacement could be found. Further to this, Nixon names Deputy Commissioner Andy Bevan as the new commissioner of the Met, who will be holding a conference later that day to officially accept the position and announce an immediate increase to the existing police budget of 450 million pounds to tackle crime in general and knife crime in particular.
Nixon ends by thanking Commissioner John Rees for his long service, and expresses his sincerest hope that he may quickly recover from his injuries and enjoy a long and peaceful retirement.