The Hawk Is Dead

102

Thursday 30 November 2023

An icy gust swirled deep inside him. His brain swirled with it. He silently cursed his stupidity. Jesus. How—

‘Raise your hands in the air. If you do not, or if you try anything silly, I will kill you, unpleasantly and with very great pleasure.’

He raised his hands slowly, thinking hard. And wary he was precariously close to the balustrading.

‘Turn around, do it very slowly.’

He began turning; she yelled out, ‘Stop there!’

He stopped. And realized he was now backed up against the hard stone of the balustrade.

She brandished the dagger and the sword, feinting stabs at him with each in turn. Each time the dagger repeating the clack-clack... clack-clack sound.

Rose Cadoret had a completely crazed look on her face. Was it the same look she’d had when she’d killed the Taliban patrol? ‘Rose,’ he said calmly. ‘This is not going to help you.’

‘Is that the best you can come up with, Detective Superintendent Grace? What would actually help me would be a first-class air ticket to a country with no extradition treaty with the UK.’

A pigeon flew close overhead. He heard the faint wail of a siren but it wasn’t coming here, it was moving away into the further distance.

‘Is that what you want, Rose?’

‘Of course. But I’m not going to get that, am I? Instead I want to talk.’

‘So, talk.’

‘Move around,’ she commanded. ‘Move away from the balustrade.’ She still held both weapons out towards him at arm’s length and threateningly.

They executed a kind of clumsy dancers’ shuffle, Grace not taking his eyes from her face, until she was now the one with her back to the balustrade.

At that instant, Grace heard a shout, a really loud bellow.

‘DROP YOUR WEAPONS. THIS IS THE POLICE. DROP YOUR WEAPONS.’

She didn’t flinch.

Grace glanced fleetingly back and saw to his relief Glenn Branson and three Royal Protection Officers — two of them with their automatic rifles braced. Then he focused hard on Rose, waiting to see what she did and to seize his moment. To his relief, she let her weapons fall to the ground. He heard the clatter.

His relief was short-lived.

Before he had any time to react, she jumped upwards and back, landing on the narrow, flat, balustrade rail. She wobbled, flailing her arms, and for a horrified instant he thought she was going over backwards. But as he lunged forward to try to grab her, she shot a leg out into his chest and shoved him backwards so hard he almost lost his balance.

Then she stood, calmly, like an acrobat or a gymnast, on top of the balustrade, in her black trousers, woven waistcoat and white trainers, wavy hair blowing in the wind. She was hardly swaying at all now and had her balance, but it looked to Grace a very precarious balance. He was scared that at any second she would topple backwards.

Suddenly looking past him, she yelled out at the top of her voice, ‘Stay back, don’t come any nearer or I’ll jump.’

Grace shot a glance over his shoulder. Branson and the three RaSPs stood still. Both rifles were still trained on Rose. He turned back to the woman. ‘Rose, come down, please.’

‘Why?’

‘So we can talk.’

‘I can talk here. But do we have anything to talk about?’

Roy Grace had once been trained as a suicide negotiator and had been called out on four occasions to try to talk people out of taking their lives. One had doused herself in petrol. One was standing on a parapet at the top of a multi-storey car park — much like Rose was standing now. One had a gun to his head. And one was threatening to drive his car over a cliff. Somehow, he had managed to talk each one of them out of it. But it had been a long time ago. He was trying very hard to remember all the key points from his training now.

‘Tell me about yourself, Rose.’

‘What?’

‘Tell me about yourself. I want to try to help you.’

‘Seriously?’ she said with a derisory tone. ‘You don’t want to help me, you’ve just nicked me. That’s why you’re here. Well,’ she said, with a sudden big smile and an expression on her face as if all her cares in the world had gone. ‘I’m not going to let you do that, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. Nice knowing you. Bye!’ She raised a hand, waved and toppled backwards.