The Hawk Is Dead

90

Wednesday 29 November 2023

At 9 a.m., Roy Grace stood in front of his Operation Asset team of fifty officers and civilian support staff, in the sectioned-off part of the room that had become his enquiry team’s temporary domain. It was also where he would hold his next press conference in two hours’ time, flanked by ACC Downing and one of the Comms team.

The only people in the room who knew about Shannon Kendall’s findings were Glenn Branson, Emily Denyer and Luke Stanstead. All three were sworn to silence. At Grace’s instigation, Emily had already spoken to Shannon this morning and would be taking a quiet, deep and secret dive into Sir Jason Finch’s assets immediately.

Grace was well aware that among the faces in front of him were DCI Jacqueline Crawley from the Scotland Yard Counter Terrorism Unit, and Security Coordinator DS Russ Lewis from the RaSP unit. They would relay everything they heard that was of any significance directly back to Detective Superintendent Greg Mosse. If he announced Shannon’s findings to the team, Mosse would be informed and would immediately want to take over questioning Rose Cadoret.

Grace knew what Mosse’s argument would be. That Rose Cadoret was on his manor and there was no evidence to link her to the Op Asset enquiry. Grace felt otherwise, and had no confidence the Met Detective Superintendent would do anything other than make a total fist of handling someone who could be a crucial lead. It needed both a subtle approach and a highly tactical one.

Not only that, this was the first real lead they had. He wasn’t going to squander it on that lightweight and let him take any glory that came from it. And Grace’s gut instincts told him that a great deal of glory might come from it. Instead he made the briefing a short one. He gave a quick recap of where they were and asked if anyone had anything significant to report.

Only the British Transport Police detective had something. The CCTV cameras covering both Hassocks Station, to the north of Clayton Tunnel, and Preston Park Station, to the south, had only recorded up to 8 p.m. on Sunday 19 November, the night before the derailment. Their software had been tampered with — the system having been hacked was their best guess at this stage. This information didn’t take the enquiry any further forward, but it was added confirmation to Grace of a conspiracy rather than a lone offender.

Grace hinted to the team that there were some promising developments through work being done by the Digital Investigation Support Unit and also at Digital Forensics, which was why neither Aiden Gilbert nor Jason Quigley were present, but beyond that he had nothing to report. He answered a number of questions about the murder of the footman, and an update on this was provided by DS Lewis from the RaSP unit, who said his team were looking closely for links between Geoffrey Bailey and Sir Peregrine.

As soon as the briefing ended, Grace hurried back to his office, closed the door and sat at his desk. He thought through his plan carefully again for a couple of minutes, and hoped to hell he wasn’t making a bad tactical error. Then he raised his phone and hit a number that was now becoming very familiar.