My name's Lucas North. The other Senior Case Officer in Section D. That was the last entry Ros ever made. She was killed a few hours later as she tried to save the Home Secretary from a bomb explosion at the hotel where the Indo-Pakistani conference was being held. No. No, not tried. She did save him. He's still in hospital being treated for his injuries, but they say that with time he'll make a full recovery. When Harry and I went to see him he told us what he remembered, but I'll get on to that in a minute.

Other than the Home Secretary, I must have been the last person to see Ros alive. That's why Harry said I should be the one to provide this epilogue to her diary as an epitaph to her life. Nothing pompous or formal, he said, just tell the end of her story. Just talk about Ros as she was - as you knew her.

The trouble is, of course, that I'm not sure I really knew Ros as she was. I'm not sure anyone did. The Ros I knew was brilliant, witty, incredibly brave, and absolutely infuriating – sometimes all at once. She was also ruthless, cold, and in most ways unknowable. So I think it's best that I just tell you how she died, and what happened in those last few hours of her life.

When we reached the hotel we found it in uproar because of an unspecified 'security incident' and the mobile network was down. Ros and I had radios, but we couldn't contact the Grid. Ros didn't hesitate; she led me straight in, barely stopping to hear the report from the Met's Gold Commander. He literally had to brief her on the run. When we reached the room of the sole Indian not to have returned to the Embassy with the rest of the delegation and found the bomb, she immediately ordered him to bring in the disposal experts.

'Too late. We can't defuse it now.' Those words would have caused any other woman to panic and run screaming as fast as she could. Ros merely said, "We'll go for evacuation", told the experts to get clear and ordered me to go and ready the helicopter on the pad.

When I found it was sabotaged and told her, we both knew that Price had to be responsible. Ros had ordered the Special Branch team to bring President Madrassah and Andrew Lawrence up to the roof, but the disabling of the helicopter changed all that. We had only one way to get them out – through the reception and straight out of the front doors.

We were on our way down the stairs when we found the body of one of the Special Branch officers sprawled on the steps.

"Price must have got them." That was all Ros said, but the hatred in her voice was more eloquent than a torrent of words could have been. When we confronted Price and his colleague seconds later she never said a word – at least not until we had Price trussed to a chair feet from where he himself had placed the bomb. The countdown was visible on the laptop screen inches from her hand, but she never even glanced at it, just stood looking at Price. Her face was completely expressionless. I don't know what effect it had on him, but it chilled me. It was like watching a machine. I remember seeing a full thirty seconds tick past on the screen and still she didn't move. I was starting to think she'd lost her grip altogether when she finally spoke. I should have known better.

"Lucas, go and find the President and the Home Secretary. Get them out. Mr Price and I will be staying here." Her voice was so quiet it was barely above a whisper, but the venom in it turned my stomach. Every officer on the Grid knew that Harry shouting was bad news, but that you were really in trouble when Ros Myers lowered her voice.

Her tone brooked no argument, and I went. It was a hopeless task, and I knew it as I raced down the corridors flinging open door after door. Time was running out and there were over five hundred rooms in the hotel. I radioed Ros, but when I told her we had to get out if Price wouldn't reveal the location of the President and the Home Secretary she told me to go and said she'd follow me.

Like hell you will. That time I disobeyed, and thank God I was still searching when the radio crackled again and she gave me the room number. God alone knows how she got it out of Price – and He's the only one who ever will know now. Ros could be pitiless when she felt the occasion called for it, and we know she didn't show any mercy to Russell Price. What remains of him were found – and there weren't many – were found in the room.

For a moment, when we found the two politicians, it seemed as if the miracle we needed had occurred and we would be able to get them out – or at least far enough from the bomb to save their lives. Until we saw that Price had given them a paralysing agent and that neither was capable of walking. For a second the realization paralysed me too. It was Ros who made the decision and ordered me to get the Pakistani president out. She was right – it was the correct operational decision. Ros never got those wrong. Only by getting him in front of the TV cameras and making it clear he was alive and well could we stop Price's little scheme from coming to fruition. I could carry him down, but it meant leaving Lawrence behind. And if Ros wouldn't do that, then it also meant sacrificing her.

"I'm not leaving without you," I said. It sounds theatrical now, doesn't it? Meaningless, since I'm still here, safe and well, and Ros is dead, but I meant it then.

She looked down at Lawrence and shook her head. "And I'm not leaving without him." She spoke firmly; not the slightest trace of fear in her voice. "I gave Harry my word, Lucas. Whatever it takes." Then she looked at me and smiled. "You're stronger than me. Go."

I've played that scene over and over in my mind in the last week. Now – when it's too late for me to tell her – I finally understand perhaps a tiny fraction of what Ros went through after the death of Jo Portman. The death I callously accused her of not caring about. I can't forget that smile. It was a mixture of so many things: determination, resignation – and undeserved absolution for me. Ros didn't smile easily or often, but on the rare occasions when I earned one from her it was all the more precious for that. I always used to think of Ros's smile as being like sunlight sparkling on snow. God, she'd snort in derision if she heard that.

I heaved Madrassah over my shoulder and carried him to the door. And that's my last image of Ros, the one I had as I glanced back on my way into the corridor - kneeling there next to Lawrence, the smile still on her face. I've thought since that in those last few seconds there was something tremulous about it, and I think I glimpsed tears in her eyes. I'm not sure, and in a way it doesn't matter. Harry said to talk about Ros Myers as I knew her, and the Ros I knew wasn't a frigid automaton. When she ordered me to go, she would have known that she wasn't going to leave the hotel alive, and I can't bear the thought of how afraid she must have been. For all her courage, Ros had the feelings and emotions of any normal woman, but she kept them under such tight control that many people believed – completely erroneously - that she had none at all.

'You're stronger than me.' How ironic that those should have been the last words she spoke to me. I'm not stronger than Ros Myers. Well, physically, perhaps, but not in the way that matters. Not mentally or spiritually. In those respects Ros was stronger than anyone I've ever met, male or female. It's odd, but it was only when I saw her on the stretcher afterwards that I realized how slight and petite she really was. Ros always carried herself well, but it was the sheer strength of her personality that made her seem taller and bigger than she was. Her strength wasn't in muscles or speed, although God knows she had it in those too. It was in her courage and her resilience. In that fierce independence. And in the determination that saved Andrew Lawrence's life even though it meant sacrificing her own. In death she looked diminished, vulnerable … and so alone.

It was almost a week before the Home Secretary was allowed visitors, and Harry ordered me to go to the hospital with him. Lawrence hadn't been told about Ros, both because he hadn't been judged well enough and for security reasons. However, the minute we entered the room his eyes went straight to Harry. He didn't bother with preliminaries.

"She didn't come through, did she? Rosalind."

"No, Home Secretary. No, I'm afraid she didn't." I had to admire Harry. He gave the impression of a man who was completely emotionally detached. I knew he wasn't. I'd seen his face when the emergency services brought Ros out of the hotel. He was her executor, and once she began to believe that she would never be reconciled with her family, Ros had asked him to act as her next-of-kin too. So all the awful paperwork and red tape in which we tie up a death had fallen to him. And this was worse than losing Jo. Harry had been fond of Jo, as we all were; she was charming, vivacious and friendly. It was hard not to be fond of her. Ros was abrasive, caustic, and often difficult to like, but she was much more than a fellow-officer to him. Jo and Ruth had told me something of Ros's difficult early days in Section D – her fury with Harry about her father's conviction, and the vicious way she tried to hit back at him through Ruth. But by the time I arrived he was more like a father to her than her real one, and now he was grieving like one.

There was a long silence after he spoke. At last Lawrence glanced at me and then back at Harry.

"I tried to make her leave, Sir Harry." Harry raised his eyebrows. "She did try to get me out of there, you know. She dragged me down the corridor. God knows how. I was a dead weight, and I couldn't help her. She kept stumbling and falling, but she wouldn't stop. I told her. Said it was no use both of us dying and that she should save herself."

Harry cleared his throat. "What did she say?"

Lawrence toyed with the edge of the sheet. "She could hardly speak, she was gasping for breath. I didn't get some of it, but I did hear that. She said 'Not in the job description, I'm afraid'."

I saw a painful smile flicker over Harry's face. "That's Ros, Home Secretary. If she thought something was her duty nothing else mattered to her but doing it."

Lawrence nodded. "She told me to look down the corridor. There was a light at the end. The stairwell, I suppose – maybe a fire exit. I don't know. She said, "Do you see the light? That's our way out of here. Just keep moving. Keep moving towards the light." All the time she was heaving and tugging at me." He shook his head. He wasn't looking at us, he was gazing across the room, but I think he was seeing Ros dragging his inert body down that hotel corridor. "She was so tiny." That was more to himself than to us. "Where did she get the strength from?"

Again, Harry smiled faintly. "A lot of us have asked ourselves that question about Ros Myers, Home Secretary. And very few of us have ever come up with a satisfactory answer."

The politician blinked and seemed to focus back in again. "No. I'm afraid I can't tell you very much more. When the bomb exploded, I heard her scream." He must have seen Harry flinch, because he added quickly, "It wasn't from fear, Sir Harry. It was more like rage."

Because she believed she'd failed, I thought. If there was one thing Ros hated, it was failing at something.

"She threw herself over me," Lawrence continued. "It wasn't just the force of the explosion. She did it deliberately to protect me." I saw him swallow. "I must have lost consciousness then. I don't remember any more until I woke up here." He picked up a glass of water and took a few sips from it. "I'm sorry, Sir Harry. Very sorry. She was a remarkable woman. Even on so short an acquaintance with her I realized that. I wish I could have known her better. And I truly do wish I had been able to make her leave."

"You have nothing with which to reproach yourself, Home Secretary." Harry made a harrumphing sound which most of us knew meant he was about to say something he was embarrassed about. "And it's Harry. Just Harry."

I saw Lawrence's eyes widen in surprise. He hesitated, and then asked, "Where is Rosalind now?"

"We're burying her tomorrow," Harry answered, glancing at me. "In Wandsworth Cemetery. That's what she asked me to do." I knew he wouldn't tell Lawrence the rest of what he had learned only when he opened Ros's personal papers: that she had bought the plot next to Jo Portman's grave a week after the younger officer's death. He had told me Ros had left him a personal letter with those papers, but he hadn't divulged what was in it and none of us would ask.

Lawrence nodded. "I see. I don't think they'll let me attend, but I'd like to send some flowers. I know it's a pathetic gesture, but I owe her my life and I'd like her to know how very grateful and humbled I am by what she did."

"She'd appreciate that." Harry hesitated. "Your predecessor will be there; I'm sure he'll be glad to represent you."

There was a mixture of weariness and sadness in Andrew Lawrence's eyes, but he managed a smile. "Nick Blake?" He laughed briefly. "Do you know what he said to me about Rosalind when he left office?" We shook our heads. "He said, 'Harry's a man of the old school. A gentleman to the core and a bastard to his bootlaces.'" I tried to hide a smile."When I asked about your deputy, he said, 'Harry has a toe missing on his left foot. Says it happened when he was in Belfast. Personally I think that was the part they used to clone his number two, Ros Myers. You'd think a strong gust of wind would blow her away, and when you first meet her you get the impression butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Don't be fooled; she's Harry to a T - except with twice the looks.' When I asked if she was a lady to the core, he said, 'Only when it suits her.'"

Both Harry and I were smiling now.

"That's the kind of epitaph Ros would appreciate most," Harry said. "That, and to see you back in the office." He shook Lawrence's hand. "Thank you, Home Secretary."

We left him then. The following day we buried Ros next to Jo. The chapel was filled with flowers – an enormous spray of deep crimson roses, Ros's favourites, from Harry, a beautiful bouquet of tropical orchids from Nicholas Blake, and a large vase of white lilies carrying the Home Secretary's card. There were just the six of us there: Harry and Ruth, me, Tariq, Blake and Malcolm Wynne-Jones, whom Harry had phoned to break the news. We listened to extracts from Faure's Requiem, which Ros adored, but there was no eulogy. Harry was the obvious person to give one, but Malcolm told me afterwards that in the letter she had left, Ros had asked him not to. She said she didn't deserve one. Ruth shook her head sadly at that and murmured, 'no emotional incontinence.' I don't know what she meant, but Malcolm smiled. I think he did. Personally,I think Ros knew how painful reading a eulogy would be for Harry, and she didn't want to hurt him any more. In that same letter she did express the hope that Malcolm might read a poem for her. It was the only special request she made. And I think the best way to end this diary is with the verses he chose to read.

'Your dextrous wit will haunt us long,

Wounding our grief with yesterday.

Your laughter is a broken song,

And death has found you, kind and gay.

We may forget those transient things

That made your charm and our delight,

But loyal love has deathless wings

That rise and triumph out of night.

So, in the days to come, your name

Shall be as music that ascends

When honour turns a heart from shame…

O heart of hearts! O friend of friends!'

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