The Hawk Is Dead

41

Thursday 23 November 2023

Even though they’d crammed extra chairs into the Major Crime Suite conference room, there weren’t enough for all the rapidly expanding team, some of whom had to stand.

Roy Grace normally held his morning briefing meetings much earlier, but today he’d delayed proceedings, waiting for two detectives from the Scotland Yard Counter Terrorism Command, who had been stuck in a jam on their way down from London. Also, unusually, because of the high profile of this investigation, he was joined by ACC Downing, and a PIP4 Strategic Adviser who would be with him to answer questions at the next press conference, straight after this briefing.

Behind Grace was a large screen, headed OP ASSET. A photograph of the dead man in situ at the scene, as well as photographs of the area where the shooter had lain were shown. On another screen, an association chart of Sir Peregrine’s family, friends and work colleagues — so many it needed multiple images — was shown. Finally, there were photographs of the derailed train, the inside of the tunnel, and the topography around the south exit.

‘Good morning, everyone,’ Grace said. ‘For the record, the time is 11 a.m., this is the sixth briefing meeting of Operation Asset, the investigation into the shooting of Sir Peregrine Greaves, Private Secretary to Their Majesties, and the investigation into the derailment of the Royal Train in Clayton Tunnel, which we believe to be linked. We welcome to the investigation DCI Jacqueline Crawley from Counter Terrorism Command, Sergeant Sam Frost and Security Coordinator DS Russ Lewis from the Royalty and Special Protection unit — RaSP.’

He updated the team on his meetings yesterday with both The King and The Queen, the murder victim’s widow and the Master of the Royal Household, along with the information provided by, to date, the only witness who saw anything, whose full name was Sarah Stratten.

Then he continued, ‘The team conducted interviews yesterday at Buckingham Palace with members of the Royal Household who had had any association with the deceased during the past ten years. You were joined part-way through by DI Branson. Have you anything significant to report from this?’

‘Jack has something of interest, chief,’ Potting said. ‘To get through everyone we divided the workload initially between us and then with DI Branson when he joined us. Jack had the only real odd note of the day.’

Grace looked at the tall young DS. ‘Tell me, Jack.’

‘It was one of the footmen, sir,’ Jack Alexander informed him. ‘Wearing his full livery. Name of Geoffrey Bailey. His body language seemed wrong. It was like he used the opportunity of the interview to air a personal grievance. He said nothing about the deceased, he was just bitter that he’d been ignored — left out of — Sir Peregrine’s recent recommendations for awards of medals by The King to Royal Household staff. Bailey also told me he was gay, and I got the sense he was implying some kind of discrimination was at play, but he didn’t explicitly make any allegation of that sort.’

‘Was he any more specific about the medal he’d hoped for?’ Grace asked.

‘Apparently there’s a whole hierarchy of medals within the Royal Household, sir — they are handed out for long service or for special work — he didn’t state which particular medal he felt he should have received, but I’ll find out.’

‘Is there anything in his past record to indicate any familiarity with firearms?’ Grace asked.

Sam Frost, the Royal Protection Officer, raised a hand and Grace signalled to her to go ahead.

‘We have had concerns about this person, Geoffrey Bailey, for some time and have been keeping a watch on him. The late Queen was advised by us that he was a bit of a loose cannon, but she said she liked him and so he was kept on. After her death, we did advise Their Majesties to let him go and they agreed — initially. But when he was served a termination notice, he went running to them. One issue we have with both Their Majesties is that they can be very supportive of their staff. It’s a nice trait, but it does mean our hands are a little bit tied when we feel someone is a potential problem.’

‘Are you suggesting this Geoffrey Bailey might have been the offender, Jack?’ Grace quizzed.

‘No, boss, he has a cast-iron alibi — he was working in Buckingham Palace all day on Monday, from 7 a.m. until after 5 p.m.’

Grace nodded, thinking. ‘OK, let me understand your concerns about this footman a little better. When you interviewed him, he aired a grievance about being passed over for a medal. But does that have a relevance to our murder enquiry?’

‘I can’t say it does, sir, but there’s something about him that made me very uneasy. I think he was hiding something.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘I intend to find out more.’

Grace smiled.

‘Everyone else I interviewed — and I think every single person the whole team interviewed — expressed some emotion about Sir Peregrine’s death, except Geoffrey Bailey. It was all about him — and I just had the feeling that he might know something more than he was telling us, and was using his exasperation over the medals to mask it.’

‘OK, I think you’re quite right to raise a flag with this man, Jack,’ Grace said. ‘He definitely needs to be interviewed in more depth. I agreed with Sir Tommy Magellan-Lacey that we would give him a list of anyone we were dubious about and wanted a second interview with. Polly is going to be up in London quite a bit over the coming weeks, in her FLO role with Sir Peregrine’s widow — I’ll ask Sir Tommy when would be a good time and then you could go up and interview him with Polly.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Grace turned to the BTP officer. ‘Steve, welcome to your first briefing. Do you have your initial findings on the derailment to share with us?’

Steve Butcher, a jovial, balding and lightly bearded man in his late thirties, nodded vigorously and held up a laser pen. ‘I do, sir. I can now confirm the cause of the derailment. I also have something I think will be of interest to you and the team, boss. It would be helpful first to take a look at the inside of Clayton railway tunnel.’

He pointed his cursor at the large photograph of the tunnel entrance, on the screen, and it danced around, just inside the south portal. ‘The tunnel is pretty narrow — just wide enough for two sets of tracks, the up and down lines, but not allowing much space at all for anyone working inside the tunnel. That’s why these recesses were created, approximately every twenty yards, along the entire length of the tunnel on both sides, so that workers could slip into these for safety whenever a train was entering the tunnel.’ The cursor circled around what looked like the entrance to a cave, and then along further ones into the distance.

‘Now, something of real significance is that ten of these recesses go further back and connect to the air shafts built into the tunnel roof — their purpose was to enable the steam from the old locomotives to escape. There is a room in each of these ten recesses for the railway workers to have a break and rest, where in the old days they could light a fire to keep warm.’ He gave a knowing smile. ‘I’m sure some of you are wondering what this has to do with the derailment of the Royal Train, and I can tell you — it appears to have quite a lot to do with it.’

He moved the cursor onto another photograph, which showed a rope ladder hanging down a dimly lit circular brick structure. ‘We conducted a search of the tunnel while the rescue operation to remove the wrecked train was under way, and found this ladder, which when examined turned out to be brand new, clamped to the top of one of the air vents. We think this particular vent was chosen very carefully — it comes out through the roof of the tunnel on the hillside above, in dense scrubland, and is pretty much concealed from view to anyone walking on the nearby fields.’ He paused to check a note, then continued.

‘I can confirm the cause of the derailment was a six-foot length of rail that had fallen onto — or more likely been toppled onto — the down-line section of track, across both rails and the third, live rail. This sent an alert to the signalling centre at Three Bridges that there was an obstruction on the line, and the Ops Manager there, Christopher New, immediately contacted the driver of the Royal Train, which was at that time approaching the entrance to the tunnel, warning him and telling him to halt the train.’

‘So why didn’t he, Steve?’ Glenn Branson jumped in.

‘The driver was pulling seven carriages as well as an additional locomotive at the rear, travelling at 70 miles an hour. It takes the best part of a mile to bring a train safely to a halt at that speed. He was already approaching the entrance to the tunnel when he got the obstruction ahead alert. He’d managed to reduce the speed to forty at the time of impact with the rail — if he hadn’t, there would have very likely been serious casualties, if not fatalities.’

‘Which gives us a number of unanswered questions,’ Grace said. ‘The first being what injuries the offender — or offenders — had intended for everyone on the train? Or would whoever had put that rail across the track have timed it deliberately and exactly, knowing the train wouldn’t be able to slow down enough to prevent it being derailed, but that it would slow down sufficiently to avoid any serious injuries?’

‘Good question, sir,’ the BTP officer said.

‘Chief,’ Norman Potting said. ‘We had a railway line that went across our land where I grew up, dividing our two main fields. It became disused back in the 1960s when Lord Beeching axed a lot of rural railways. I had to help my dad shift the rails — and they are bloody heavy, I can tell you.’

‘They are,’ Branson agreed. ‘A six-foot length of track weighs about sixteen stone. That would take a strong person to lift.’

‘But if balanced against a wall of the tunnel,’ Grace asked, ‘we know that just one person could push it and topple it over onto the track.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Butcher replied.

Grace considered this for some moments. ‘The signaller at Three Bridges notified the driver of the Royal Train of an obstruction on the line, just before the train entered the north portal of Clayton Tunnel. And Sir Peregrine was shot as he exited the tunnel — perhaps twenty minutes later. There’s no way the shooter and the person who caused the obstruction on the line could be the same person, if those timings are correct. Pretty much impossible for that person to have climbed the rope ladder and run to the shooter’s location all within roughly twenty minutes.’

‘I’d have to agree with you, sir,’ Butcher said.

‘Which confirms we are looking for two people. At least.’

They were interrupted by a phone ringing. The James Bond theme. A flustered Norman Potting, the delegated point person for any urgent calls that came into the Incident Room during the briefing, answered it, raising an apologetic hand.

The room was silent as Potting listened, then said, ‘Thank you, I’ll inform him right away.’ Then he turned to Grace.

‘Chief, you need to hear this. You really need to hear this.’