The Hawk Is Dead

38

Wednesday 22 November 2023

‘And this is The King’s current pride and joy!’ Sir Tommy Magellan-Lacey announced, with a flourish.

The Master of the Royal Household was escorting Roy Grace from his meeting with The King to Sir Peregrine Greaves’ widow. Polly Sweeney was due to meet him at the entrance to the St James’s Palace apartment the Greaveses had shared until his untimely death on Monday. But the Master, clearly devoted to his two bosses but also passionate about this royal palace he was in charge of renovating, seemed keen to take the opportunity to give Grace a little bit of a tour en route.

They were in the garden outside the North Wing, directly beneath the royal apartments. In front of them were two majestic plane trees, which Tommy had just told him were called Albert and Victoria. They had been planted soon after Queen Victoria had acceded to the throne and had witnessed so much, Grace thought. He loved ancient trees, and sometimes wondered if they weren’t a lot more intelligent than we gave them credit for.

Magellan-Lacey was pointing at what looked like a very large and enclosed Japanese-style gazebo adjoining the outside wall of the wing. Looking closer, Grace saw it was a very cleverly disguised dark green cylinder, ten feet tall and about the same across. It had a small side window, that was more of a porthole, a door in a rivetted panel that looked like it belonged on a submarine, and pipework running out of the side and in through the Palace wall. Just beyond it was a skip, smartly painted in a matching dark green, which was stuffed full of branches of vegetation, leaves and other plants and dead flowers.

‘This is part of His Majesty’s plan for a sustainable future,’ he said, continuing in his hushed voice and boyish enthusiasm. ‘An anaerobic digester!’ He walked over to it and gestured proudly.

Grace frowned. ‘What is that?’

‘A bit more than it says on the tin, actually.’

Grace followed him over to it. Through the porthole he could see a bubbling mass of glutinous gunk.

‘All the household waste goes into here, some piped and some by hand, where it is compressed. It is highly corrosive and alive with bacteria. This breaks down all organic material and releases methane for burning to heat up the Palace boilers. Very smart.’

‘Extremely,’ Grace said, looking at the gunk inside.

The Master then explained. ‘There are five departments within the Royal Household, all based in this palace. One thousand, two hundred and fifty staff. The King hates any kind of waste, so he designed this, for food, garden, and horse waste.’

‘Excellent,’ Grace said. But all the time, much though he was loving this tour, he kept his focus on the job. On the grim and incredibly responsible reason that he — and many of the key members of his team — were all here.

As Magellan-Lacey steered Grace back indoors, and again led him along the labyrinth of corridors to his office, he asked, ‘Is there anything else you can tell me, Detective Superintendent? I know you chaps always have to keep everything close to your vest, so it’s Chatham House Rules in here — anything you tell me goes no further.’

‘Understood,’ Grace replied. ‘Very confidentially, what we have to work on so far is that a local resident, name of Sarah, who was walking her dog, was startled by a motorbike roaring past her, at a time we’ve calculated was around ten minutes after the shooting.’

‘A reliable witness would you say, Detective Superintendent?’

He smiled thinly. ‘It’s normally bodies that dog walkers discover — this is a rare bonus to get one who is a witness to an actual suspect.’

‘Could she identify him?’ the Master asked.

‘Well, what I know so far is she did manage to remember part of the licence number — just one digit — and she will be interviewed by an Advanced Interviewer to see if she can remember any more — and, in particular, the man’s features. We are also running a check on all the ANPR cameras in the area to see what, if anything, they have picked up.’

‘ANPR — Automatic Number-Plate Recognition?’ Magellan-Lacey asked.

‘Correct.’

‘You have a lot of those cameras?’

‘They cover all main arteries, but not the back lanes. If this was a professional hit targeting Sir Peregrine Greaves, as we suspect, and it was the shooter on the motorbike, he may well have taken a country route. But at some point he may have gone on a main road and been picked up by a camera. We’ve done a plot of all the main roads he might have ended up on, and the estimated times, and are collating information from all the cameras. Another key line of enquiry we’re following at this time is the information from the ballistics expert who is advising us, as you already know. If he is correct in his hypothesis, he believes the shooter was a trained military sniper.’

‘Interesting — what does he base that on?’

‘The bullet type — from the fragments assembled so far — appears to be a .338 Lap Mag with a ballistic tip. That is standard British Army issue for the L115A3 sniper rifle, I think it is, that was in use in Afghanistan. He thinks it is possible the shooter was a veteran of the war in Afghanistan.’

The Master of the Royal Household looked at him levelly. ‘Detective Superintendent, you have quite a reputation for solving homicides. Do you get gut feelings when you are on a case?’

Grace shrugged. ‘Sometimes. Not always.’

He nodded. ‘Do you have one on this case?’

Grace thought carefully before responding. ‘As I’ve already told you, sir, I do not think Her Majesty was the target. My hypothesis is that the offender either had a grudge against Sir Peregrine Greaves, or that he wanted to send a message — some kind of very warped message — to Their Majesties.’

‘Can you elaborate?’

‘I wish I could, but at this stage, I can’t. It’s certainly not a priority.’

Two floors and one corridor away, Jon Smoke was listening to every word.

I wish I could, but at this stage, I can’t.

Since his time in Afghanistan, Smoke rarely smiled. But what he heard now made him smile. For the first time in a long time. This idiot detective was in thrall to the Royal Palace and to the royals themselves. Just like everyone who came here.

He might need eliminating. He’d be one of his team’s easier targets.

Much easier than Sir Peregrine had been.