The Hawk Is Dead

24

Tuesday 21 November 2023

It wasn’t just all over the news, it pretty much was the news, both in the UK and around the world, eclipsing all other stories.

The pressure on Roy Grace as he sat with his assembled team around the oval conference room table in the Major Crime Suite was immense. It was a few minutes past nine. He had not gone home last night, instead grabbing a couple of hours’ kip at around 4 a.m. on the makeshift camp bed he kept in his office cupboard for such purposes, then showering in the gym and changing into the fresh shirt and underwear he also kept in his office.

The only respite he had was the knowledge that Queen Camilla had returned safely to London last night, and today would be visiting, as scheduled, the two hospices in Hampshire — another county, which was not his responsibility.

Despite his lack of sleep, he was energized, thanks partly to a painfully icy shower he had deliberately inflicted on himself, partly to the cocktail of adrenaline and espresso surging through his body, and partly to the fury burning inside him. The fury that some bastard had, in the view of the world’s media, attempted to assassinate The Queen.

He felt fully alert and ready to take on everything the day was going to throw at him. And it was going to throw a lot, including showing his presence at the Private Secretary’s postmortem, and holding a press conference — scheduled for midday. As he sat, he guided on his screen the very long roll of newspaper headlines, scrolling down the flat video monitor behind him.

He continued for some moments scrolling through the local, national and international newspaper headlines. Making sure everyone in this room got the message. That they fully understood what they were dealing with. The biggest crime on their territory since the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.

He had his regular, trusted team of DI Branson, DSs Norman Potting, Nick Nicholl and Jack Alexander, with Jack acting as Office Manager, as well as Reena Chacko, the Intelligence Manager. Along with Investigators Emma-Jane Boutwood, Velvet Wilde, Polly Sweeney and Will Glover, researcher Luke Stanstead, and a HOLMES2 — Home Office Large Major Enquiry — supervisor. He was also joined this morning by a Detective Inspector from the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, a Chief Inspector from the Royal Protection team and a Chief Inspector from British Transport Police. They weren’t just there as a peace offering to the Commissioner of the Met, but as officers Grace believed would be able to help in areas beyond his own scope of knowledge and geographical reach.

Checking around the room that everyone he’d wanted was in place, he glanced down at his notes and then back up. ‘OK, good morning, team, this is the second briefing meeting of Operation Asset, the investigation into the shooting of Sir Peregrine Greaves, Private Secretary to King Charles and Queen Camilla. This shooting occurred at approximately 10.30 a.m. yesterday, November the twentieth, a short distance outside the southern portal to Clayton railway tunnel.’

He pointed to one of the large screens behind him, on which appeared a series of photographs of the south entrance to Clayton Tunnel and the immediate environs. Then he continued by saying, ‘You’ve seen the headlines, there is a lot of shock around this country and the world that someone has tried to assassinate our Queen. We are not for now going to be making any assumptions. We are going to concentrate our energies on the following. Firstly, what caused the derailment of the train? This is something we will be assisted with by Chief Inspector Roy Hodder from British Transport Police, who very helpfully was formerly a Chief Inspector with Sussex Police and so has valuable knowledge of our county. He has some preliminary information which he will be sharing with us shortly.’ He nodded at the uniformed officer, a genial man in his early fifties with a balding forehead and almost Victorian side whiskers, who raised a hand in acknowledgement.

‘One key line of enquiry,’ Grace said, ‘is to establish whether there is a link between the derailment and the shooting, or whether what we have are two wholly separate incidents. Another line of enquiry will be, who knew the timetable for the train?’ He pointed to another of the screens, which showed a small photograph of Greaves, in a chalk-striped suit with neatly coiffed hair, and a large and very gruesome photograph of the remains of the Private Secretary’s head, on the grass, amid blood and other matter. He had chosen to have this image very large for maximum impact on his team.

‘I would say that’s a no-brainer, chief!’ quipped Potting, who, as he often did, began chortling at his own joke.

‘That is truly terrible, Norman,’ Velvet Wilde chided in her rich Belfast accent.

Several of the team shook their heads, unable to suppress their grins. Grace himself struggled, too. ‘Thanks, Norman,’ he said. ‘Very helpful.’ Then he looked back down at his notes. ‘We have one hypothesis that the derailment was intentional, with the purpose being to have the royal party leave the train on foot and emerge from the tunnel where any of them would be an easy target for a sniper. A second hypothesis is that, as I just posited, the two events are disconnected and the shooting of Sir Peregrine was accidental — but with what we’ve seen and know, I am discounting that; it’s hardly going to be someone shooting rabbits, is it?’

‘Chief,’ Potting said. ‘I was raised on a farm and used to go shooting rabbits regularly when I was a nipper. We shot them because they were vermin, but they were also good food, and the best weapon for a rabbit is a rifle firing a .22 bullet, which will kill the animal, but leave it intact. A shotgun is another alternative, but you’ve got the problem of multiple lead pellets inside it.’

‘And your point is, Norman?’ Grace asked, feeling a tad fractious and with less patience for the old warhorse today than he might normally have had.

Potting turned and pointed at the photograph of Greaves’ head. ‘Whatever bullet that was, chief — a hollow-nose, dum-dum, ballistic tip — you wouldn’t use that for shooting rabbits. You wouldn’t use it for any kind of rough shooting, unless you were after moose or buffalo — and there aren’t too many of those running wild on the South Downs.’

Grace nodded. ‘That’s helpful, thank you, Norman. As I said, it’s unlikely to be that.’

The Met Counter Terrorism Command DI, Brent Dean, a tall, lean man in his early forties, with a sharp, dark suit and a permanently cynical expression, as if he was bored stiff by all these tedious minions, said in a bland north London accent, ‘I think we can do away with all the time-wasting speculations, Detective Superintendent. We all know what has happened. The Not-My-King brigade derailed the train with a steel bar wedged across the rail, in order to get Her Majesty out of the train and make it an easy shot for an accomplice. Fortunately for all of us this accomplice missed — probably because the intended target made him a bag of nerves.’

‘Thank you, DI Dean,’ Grace replied. ‘For the benefit of all us, would you like to expand on your theory — sorry, hypothesis?’

‘I would say it’s obvious, with respect, sir. The shooter missed, hitting the wrong target, took a panicky second shot — then ran to his motorbike and took off. All the hallmarks of an amateur operation.’

Grace nodded. ‘To counter that, I would say that for an amateur, the shooter was pretty professional. I went with our ballistics expert to what we believe was the shooter’s location, and he — or she — left behind no trace at all. One of our search team spoke to a man out jogging near the suspect location and he said he heard a motorbike close by. He thought it strange for someone to be out there at that time — he has never, in thirty years of jogging there, encountered anyone in that location before. So, between him and the person who clocked the motorbike passing at speed a few minutes after the shots were fired, we have a gap of several hours. Further, if the biker was our shooter, he spent some hours in his location without leaving a trace. No cigarette butts, no urine, no crumbs, no spent shells, nothing other than some flattened grass. We also had PC Andy Crabb and his dog Merlin search the entire area from the shooting location in all directions, but again no potential evidence was found. It could have been a rank amateur, of course. But an amateur waiting that long to take a shot at The Queen? Isn’t he going to be nervous? And don’t nerves make you want to pee? To me, it smacks of someone being very forensically aware. Not a rank amateur.’

The Met DI wasn’t done. ‘So, if you are hypothesizing that it was a professional sniper, and their two shots went wide, one hitting the wrong target, and the other missing completely, why didn’t this person shoot again?’

‘My point exactly,’ Grace said. ‘The best hypothesis I can give you is that this person did not shoot a third time, because he had done what he came to do.’

DI Dean frowned. ‘With respect, you are making a very dangerous assumption — apologies — hypothesis. If you are wrong, it means someone is still out there looking for another opportunity to shoot our Queen.’

‘And if I’m right,’ Roy Grace said, ‘Sussex Police, the Met and the Royal Protection team are all running round like blue-arsed flies, looking up their own backsides, and missing what is really going on.’

‘Which is?’ Brent Dean challenged.

‘I have no idea,’ Grace said. ‘But I intend to find out, ASAP.’