The Hawk Is Dead

42

Thursday 23 November 2023

Roy Grace left Glenn Branson to continue with the briefing meeting and to attend today’s press conference along with ACC Downing and a senior member of the Media and Communications Team. Branson would be making a media appeal, asking people to come forward if they had seen anyone in the surrounding area acting suspiciously or with a firearm on the days prior to or on the day of the shooting. Sometimes, Grace knew, these appeals could result in fresh information.

Twenty minutes later he was driving, with Norman Potting in the passenger seat, past the magnificently bizarre Gothic north portal of Clayton Tunnel, towards the small town of Hurstpierpoint.

Ordinarily, Grace would have left this task to more junior members of his team. But right now nothing was ordinary about this murder investigation. And, secretly, he was loving being a proper detective again himself. Too often in his work these days, the nature of his position kept him deskbound, leaving the outside enquiries to others on his team.

After a short distance, he turned left onto Hautboys Lane, a narrow, winding country road that ran around the bottom of this area of the South Downs, along which were isolated cottages and a few larger houses.

‘Coming up on the left, chief, three hundred yards,’ Potting said, peering hard at the satnav screen.

Grace slowed down and saw a picture-postcard thatched cottage ahead, with a pink Fiat 500 parked on the driveway in front of an adjoining thatched garage.

‘Dunroamin,’ Potting said, reading the cottage’s name board with a faintly cynical tone, as Grace pulled the car to a halt. ‘Would you want to live in a pun, chief?’

‘If it was as pretty as this, I could probably get used to it,’ Grace replied with a grin, and opened the car door. From inside the house they could hear a dog barking. As they walked up the path to the front door, past an American-style cylindrical metal mailbox, with its flag raised, the barking grew even louder. Entering the porch, Grace looked for the bell. He could only see a brass knocker, and gave several sharp raps on it, which sent the dog on the far side into a yappy frenzy.

Moments later the door was opened, just a few inches against a safety chain. He could see wary eyes behind oval tortoiseshell glasses, and little else. The dog carried on barking. ‘Yes?’ It was a question, not a greeting.

Grace, followed by Potting, showed his warrant card and introduced both of them, having to speak loudly above the barking.

All the same, the eyes still studied them suspiciously for some moments and then she asked to see their warrant cards again. Finally she seemed satisfied enough to close the door, unlatch the chain and open it again, kneeling and restraining the livid, small grey schnauzer by its collar. ‘It’s OK, Bonzo! These are police officers, it’s OK!’

The dog did not think they were OK at all. It curled its lips, baring sharp, rusty-looking incisors, glared at them then snarled. As Potting followed Grace over the threshold, he knelt and held out a hand to the dog. He had learned a long time ago that, for some reason, dogs liked him. After a moment of seeming stand-offish, the dog cocked its head. Then, smiling, and saying, ‘Good boy, good boy!’ the detective was stroking its chest with his knuckles.

The dog followed Potting along the narrow hallway, the walls lined with photographs of species of butterflies, and an ancient map of Sussex, into a chintzy sitting room with framed family photographs, many in black and white, on almost every shelf.

‘Please have a seat, officers,’ Sarah Stratten said in quite a plummy voice, directing them to the sofa in front of a very old-fashioned television. She was extremely tall, so much so she had to stoop to avoid bashing her head on the door frame. Her silver hair cropped short, combined with her large oval glasses gave her a rather arty air, enhanced by the massive purple cable-knit jumper that enveloped her, a large pendant on a chain, blue jeans, and trainers that would not have looked out of place on a drug dealer. And she herself looked out of place here, Grace thought. The cottage felt like it belonged to an old lady, with antimacassars on the sofa and armchair, and lace doylies under the ornaments, yet Sarah Stratten could not have been more than sixty, tops, he thought.

‘Can I offer you any tea or coffee?’

‘A coffee would be very welcome,’ Grace said.

‘Tea for me,’ Potting said. ‘Builders’, please — no sugar.’ Then he stroked the dog, now his new best friend, sitting at his feet.

Grace looked around at the photographs, seeing what he could learn about the woman from them. There was a traditional church porch wedding one, her and her husband — late husband, perhaps? A series of a young man, starting as a small boy on a tricycle, and progressing up to a tall thin youth in a mortar board and graduation gown.

He pulled out his notebook from his inside pocket, and a pen, aware that most officers these days took notes on a tablet, but he didn’t care.

‘So I suppose I should be honoured. I get a Detective Superintendent — and a Detective Sergeant, too,’ she added, as she carried in a laden tray.

Grace smiled. ‘How long have you lived here, Mrs Stratten?’

‘In this cottage? Just six months. It belonged to my late mother. My husband and I had been renting it out on Airbnb since she died, four years ago. I was born in Hurstpierpoint, but my husband was a barrister with chambers in Birmingham, where we lived. We’d always planned to move down here when he retired. But I’m afraid he died suddenly a year ago. So I decided to move down anyway and do a renovation job, which I haven’t yet started, as you can probably tell.’

‘It’s very charming,’ Potting said.

Sarah Stratten grimaced. ‘That’s how we marketed it — country cottage with “ye olde worlde charm”. All that’s going to change.’ She touched her very modern-looking and stylish beaten-silver pendant, as if signalling where she was going.

‘So, Mrs Stratten, we understand you had a very unpleasant and threatening phone call — late last night?’ Grace said.

‘It was jolly late — about one in the morning.’

‘What can you tell us about it?’

‘Well, I answered because I thought it might be my son, Hugo — he lives in Auckland, New Zealand. He split up with his wife and has rather hit the sauce.’ She tipped an imaginary glass towards her mouth. ‘If you see what I’m getting at? Often when he’s had too much he forgets the time difference and calls me at all hours. But it wasn’t Hugo, it was a man with a very blunt voice. He said he understood I was a witness who had come forward saying I had seen a motorcyclist on the Downs, shortly after the terrible assassination attempt on Camilla.’ Her confidence suddenly evaporated and she stared at both of them with those worried eyes again.

‘It was very good of you to come forward,’ Grace said, encouraging her.

She looked dubious. ‘He then said — and God, this sounds corny — he said that if I knew what was good for me — and my dog — I should keep my trap shut and not agree to a cognitive witness interview — I think he called it.’ She shrugged, giving an involuntary smile. ‘Those were his words. He told me my phone was bugged and he would know if I called you.’

Grace frowned. How the hell did whoever had called her know she was going to be put through a cognitive witness interview? That wasn’t something the public generally knew about.

‘But you did call us,’ Potting said.

‘We are very grateful to you,’ Grace said.

‘Do you think I could be at any risk for contacting you?’

‘To be honest, Mrs Stratten, we don’t yet know what we are dealing with. I think it’s unlikely your house or phone are bugged, but I’ll get a bug sweep of the house done as soon as possible today, and if you can be without your mobile phone for a short while, I’ll get it checked by Digital Forensics. We’ll inform the local police to keep an extra eye on your property and put an alert for them should you call 999. If you are very concerned we could arrange for you to move into protective custody in a safe house — but I don’t get the impression you’d want that.’

‘No one is going to frighten me out of my home!’

‘Good. Normally threats like this are just bluff, so let’s hope this is the case. Can I ask you: this man who called, what do you remember about his voice? For instance, did he have an accent?’

‘To be honest, I was in a deep sleep when he rang. I did even wonder when he hung up if I had imagined it.’

‘British Telecom have confirmed you received a call at 1.07 a.m.,’ Potting said. ‘The duration was two minutes and eleven seconds. It was from a mobile phone with the number withheld — almost certainly a burner, which means untraceable.’

Sarah Stratten nodded. ‘I’m familiar with that term. The man was definitely British. A northerner. A trace of Geordie, perhaps — Newcastle?’

‘Is there anything else you can remember about the call?’ Grace asked, and sipped his coffee. It was strong and hit the spot.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I wish I could tell you more.’

‘And the motorcyclist you saw when you were walking Bonzo — I know you went to the exact location with one of my detectives on Tuesday. Is there anything more you can remember about this motorcyclist?’

‘To be quite honest, no. I was startled out of my wits. I’d been walking Bonzo every morning since I moved into the cottage, on more or less the same route, and never saw a soul. Then this bloody thing came blattering out of nowhere, scaring poor Bonzo and passing literally inches from my face. I think I actually startled him, too. But I really couldn’t see much of him — he wore one of those helmets with a dark visor and was in full motorcycling leathers.’

‘It was definitely a him?’

‘Well, I can’t be one hundred per cent certain of that.’

‘Can you remember any details about the motorbike?’ Potting asked. ‘What kind was it — I mean the style of machine rather than make, and the colour?’

Sarah Stratten smiled. ‘Actually, yes, I can. Both my husband and Hugo were into motocross and used to do it together from the time Hugo was in his early teens. They had those cross-country motorbikes with raised mudguards. It was one of those that this person was riding. I think it was black, but there may have been a splash of red.’

Grace made some notes. ‘Despite the threat you’ve had, are you still up for doing an in-depth interview — to see if we can jog your mind any further?’

‘My husband defended — and prosecuted — criminals,’ she said. ‘He regularly had death threats when he prosecuted. None of them came to anything. No one is going to silence me.’