The hawk is dead, p.9
The Hawk Is Dead, page 9
MOORDAANSLAG OP DE KONINGIN VAN ENGELAND
ATTENTATO ALLA REGINA D’INGHILTERRA!
INTENTARON ASESINAR A LA REINA DE INGLATERRA
POKUS O ATENTA’T NA ANGLICKOU KRA’LOVNU
محاولة اغتيال ملكة إنجلتر
ملکہ برطانیہ پر قاتلانہ حملہ
ПОКУШЕНИЕ НА КОРОЛЕВУ АНГЛИИ.
SALAMURHAYRITYS KUNINGATAR CAMILLAA VASTAAN!
He continued for some moments scrolling through the local, national and international newspaper headlines. Making sure everyone in this room got the message. That they fully understood what they were dealing with. The biggest crime on their territory since the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He had his regular, trusted team of DI Branson, DSs Norman Potting, Nick Nicholl and Jack Alexander, with Jack acting as Office Manager, as well as Reena Chacko, the Intelligence Manager. Along with Investigators Emma-Jane Boutwood, Velvet Wilde, Polly Sweeney and Will Glover, researcher Luke Stanstead, and a HOLMES2 – Home Office Large Major Enquiry – supervisor. He was also joined this morning by a Detective Inspector from the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, a Chief Inspector from the Royal Protection team and a Chief Inspector from British Transport Police. They weren’t just there as a peace offering to the Commissioner of the Met, but as officers Grace believed would be able to help in areas beyond his own scope of knowledge and geographical reach.
Checking around the room that everyone he’d wanted was in place, he glanced down at his notes and then back up. ‘OK, good morning, team, this is the second briefing meeting of Operation Asset, the investigation into the shooting of Sir Peregrine Greaves, Private Secretary to King Charles and Queen Camilla. This shooting occurred at approximately 10.30 a.m. yesterday, November the twentieth, a short distance outside the southern portal to Clayton railway tunnel.’
He pointed to one of the large screens behind him, on which appeared a series of photographs of the south entrance to Clayton Tunnel and the immediate environs. Then he continued by saying, ‘You’ve seen the headlines, there is a lot of shock around this country and the world that someone has tried to assassinate our Queen. We are not for now going to be making any assumptions. We are going to concentrate our energies on the following. Firstly, what caused the derailment of the train? This is something we will be assisted with by Chief Inspector Roy Hodder from British Transport Police, who very helpfully was formerly a Chief Inspector with Sussex Police and so has valuable knowledge of our county. He has some preliminary information which he will be sharing with us shortly.’ He nodded at the uniformed officer, a genial man in his early fifties with a balding forehead and almost Victorian side whiskers, who raised a hand in acknowledgement.
‘One key line of enquiry,’ Grace said, ‘is to establish whether there is a link between the derailment and the shooting, or whether what we have are two wholly separate incidents. Another line of enquiry will be, who knew the timetable for the train?’ He pointed to another of the screens, which showed a small photograph of Greaves, in a chalk-striped suit with neatly coiffed hair, and a large and very gruesome photograph of the remains of the Private Secretary’s head, on the grass, amid blood and other matter. He had chosen to have this image very large for maximum impact on his team.
‘I would say that’s a no-brainer, chief!’ quipped Potting, who, as he often did, began chortling at his own joke.
‘That is truly terrible, Norman,’ Velvet Wilde chided in her rich Belfast accent.
Several of the team shook their heads, unable to suppress their grins. Grace himself struggled, too. ‘Thanks, Norman,’ he said. ‘Very helpful.’ Then he looked back down at his notes. ‘We have one hypothesis that the derailment was intentional, with the purpose being to have the royal party leave the train on foot and emerge from the tunnel where any of them would be an easy target for a sniper. A second hypothesis is that, as I just posited, the two events are disconnected and the shooting of Sir Peregrine was accidental – but with what we’ve seen and know, I am discounting that; it’s hardly going to be someone shooting rabbits, is it?’
‘Chief,’ Potting said. ‘I was raised on a farm and used to go shooting rabbits regularly when I was a nipper. We shot them because they were vermin, but they were also good food, and the best weapon for a rabbit is a rifle firing a .22 bullet, which will kill the animal, but leave it intact. A shotgun is another alternative, but you’ve got the problem of multiple lead pellets inside it.’
‘And your point is, Norman?’ Grace asked, feeling a tad fractious and with less patience for the old warhorse today than he might normally have had.
Potting turned and pointed at the photograph of Greaves’ head. ‘Whatever bullet that was, chief – a hollow-nose, dum-dum, ballistic tip – you wouldn’t use that for shooting rabbits. You wouldn’t use it for any kind of rough shooting, unless you were after moose or buffalo – and there aren’t too many of those running wild on the South Downs.’
Grace nodded. ‘That’s helpful, thank you, Norman. As I said, it’s unlikely to be that.’
The Met Counter Terrorism Command DI, Brent Dean, a tall, lean man in his early forties, with a sharp, dark suit and a permanently cynical expression, as if he was bored stiff by all these tedious minions, said in a bland north London accent, ‘I think we can do away with all the time-wasting speculations, Detective Superintendent. We all know what has happened. The Not-My-King brigade derailed the train with a steel bar wedged across the rail, in order to get Her Majesty out of the train and make it an easy shot for an accomplice. Fortunately for all of us this accomplice missed – probably because the intended target made him a bag of nerves.’
‘Thank you, DI Dean,’ Grace replied. ‘For the benefit of all us, would you like to expand on your theory – sorry, hypothesis?’
‘I would say it’s obvious, with respect, sir. The shooter missed, hitting the wrong target, took a panicky second shot – then ran to his motorbike and took off. All the hallmarks of an amateur operation.’
Grace nodded. ‘To counter that, I would say that for an amateur, the shooter was pretty professional. I went with our ballistics expert to what we believe was the shooter’s location, and he – or she – left behind no trace at all. One of our search team spoke to a man out jogging near the suspect location and he said he heard a motorbike close by. He thought it strange for someone to be out there at that time – he has never, in thirty years of jogging there, encountered anyone in that location before. So, between him and the person who clocked the motorbike passing at speed a few minutes after the shots were fired, we have a gap of several hours. Further, if the biker was our shooter, he spent some hours in his location without leaving a trace. No cigarette butts, no urine, no crumbs, no spent shells, nothing other than some flattened grass. We also had PC Andy Crabb and his dog Merlin search the entire area from the shooting location in all directions, but again no potential evidence was found. It could have been a rank amateur, of course. But an amateur waiting that long to take a shot at The Queen? Isn’t he going to be nervous? And don’t nerves make you want to pee? To me, it smacks of someone being very forensically aware. Not a rank amateur.’
The Met DI wasn’t done. ‘So, if you are hypothesizing that it was a professional sniper, and their two shots went wide, one hitting the wrong target, and the other missing completely, why didn’t this person shoot again?’
‘My point exactly,’ Grace said. ‘The best hypothesis I can give you is that this person did not shoot a third time, because he had done what he came to do.’
DI Dean frowned. ‘With respect, you are making a very dangerous assumption – apologies – hypothesis. If you are wrong, it means someone is still out there looking for another opportunity to shoot our Queen.’
‘And if I’m right,’ Roy Grace said, ‘Sussex Police, the Met and the Royal Protection team are all running round like blue-arsed flies, looking up their own backsides, and missing what is really going on.’
‘Which is?’ Brent Dean challenged.
‘I have no idea,’ Grace said. ‘But I intend to find out, ASAP.’
25
Tuesday 21 November 2023
In contrast to yesterday’s glorious sunshine, overnight the weather had turned back to late autumnal, with an overcast sky and a chill wind. Roy Grace and the ballistics scientist, Baz Dyson, followed by Nick Nicholl and EJ Boutwood, approached the inner cordon. All were in forensic oversuits, and today Grace was grateful for the meagre warmth it was giving him.
And he was grateful to be out in fresh air. Grateful that he’d not had to spend too much time in the mortuary – he’d delegated most of that treat to Glenn Branson. And while the Home Office pathologist, Nadiuska de Sancha, was no doubt feeling the pressure, conducting the most high-profile postmortem of her career, much of it was overkill – on someone who had very definitely been overkilled.
Cause of death wasn’t exactly hard to establish. Digging out microscopic fragment after microscopic fragment of the exploded bullet that had caused the catastrophic damage to the victim’s head was the laborious task, in the hope that, between the fragments of the two bullets found by the pathologist and the CSIs from their ongoing fingertip search around the crime scene, there would be enough to construct at least part of one whole bullet. Or at least enough to help identify the make and bore of rifle it was fired from, and to start narrowing down the very wide field.
But the postmortem wasn’t just about finding microfragments of a bullet. The general health of a murder victim was also a potential factor in any ensuing trial. Grace had once seen a slam-dunk of a murder charge downgraded to manslaughter purely because the victim’s health was so poor, it was argued by a QC at the time that it could not be proven it was actually the stab wound that had killed her; it could have been her already badly diseased heart failing from shock.
Although in this case, he thought grimly, as and when this shooter was brought to trial, it would take a somewhat smarter than average brief to convince a jury that cause of death might be down to something other than the victim being short of most of the essential components of his head.
A chill suddenly gusted through him. It wasn’t the wind, it was a chill of fear. It blew through his soul every time he let the thought in. What if the sniper was still out there, planning their next attempt on The Queen’s life?
He’d been informed that she’d arrived safely at the first of the two hospices she was visiting in Hampshire today. The Royal Protection team had greatly increased both the number of their officers guarding her and the thoroughness of their search of the hospices and all surrounding areas. Grace had been told The King had personally intervened and he fully understood.
Regardless of whether he was right or wrong about the intended target, it made no difference to the intensity of the hunt for the identity of the killer. But where it could make a crucial difference was where he put the focus of the investigation. Were they looking for a lone wolf terrorist or someone who was part of a terrorist conspiracy? Someone with a grudge against the Monarchy or The Queen in particular? Or with an axe to grind with the Private Secretary? As with almost all murder enquiries, the answer lay in the motive.
He glanced at his watch: 11.45 a.m. They had an hour and a half before he needed to get back to HQ and spruce up for the 2 p.m. press conference, which he was leading accompanied by the Chief Constable, an ACC from British Transport Police, the Commander of the Royal Protection team and the Director of Royal Communications from Buckingham Palace – as well as a member of the Media and Communications department. A press conference at which whatever he said would likely become headlines around the world. He needed a clear head and at least this walk up the hill was helping – probably more than the copious amount of caffeine he’d been downing all morning.
All four of them reached the inner cordon scene guard, where they were met by the Crime Scene Manager, Chris Gee. Nick Nicholl and EJ Boutwood signed the log, then ducked under the tape. Grace produced a sketch created by The Queen’s Protection Officer, Jon Gilhall, the only witness to the shooting, marking the approximate positions of The Queen and the Private Secretary when the shots were fired. Grace directed the two officers, here to role-play, to remain in these positions.
Then Grace, Gee and Dyson walked up to the second inner-cordon area, the suspected location where the killer had waited and fired from. Two protectively suited and masked CSIs were on their knees, some distance from the yellow-pegged, flattened area where the shooter had most likely lain.
Gee pointed at it. ‘They’ve cleared that now, sir, you are free to walk or lie on it.’
‘And so far you’ve found nothing at all here?’
Gee shook his head. ‘As you know, no cigarette butts – that’s a downside of far fewer people smoking these days,’ he said almost ruefully. ‘So far, no forensic or firearms evidence. There’s no trace of anything discarded either and no footprints as yet, but we are still searching.’
‘And you are pretty sure this is where he shot from?’
Gee pointed down at the flattened area. ‘Someone lay there, for some considerable while, on a mat of some kind.’
‘A mat that doesn’t shed any fibres?’
Gee, who, Grace always thought, looked impossibly young and fresh-faced to be doing such a grim job, nodded. ‘I would say we’re dealing with a pro, sir. Someone probably with military training. If we can trust the two witnesses about the timing of the motorbike, the gunman was here for several hours. Only a real pro could be here for that length of time and leave no trace.’
Grace thanked him and then turned and stared across to the knoll, where Nicholl and Boutwood were standing. Dyson was kneeling in the flattened area, attaching a telescopic sight to a small bipod. He looked up at the Detective Superintendent.
‘I really am increasingly confident this was the shooter’s lair. I went out early this morning and walked in a wide arc, keeping with the approximate range of three hundred yards, and there is nowhere else that gives a line of sight to both the exit to the railway tunnel and the area above it.’
Grace nodded, scanning the surrounding countryside himself. ‘We’re not of course taking into account the possibility that the shooter could have been a complete amateur who had a go from a much further distance – say half a mile – are we, Baz?’
Dyson shook his head. ‘If you like, after this I can take you to a point half a mile away, but you’d see immediately, looking through the scope, that the chances of hitting either of them with a single shot are pretty small – and that is for a professional. At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, I go back to my hypothesis. If we had a complete amateur, lone wolf, at say half a mile, he’d never have fired just a couple of shots if he’d missed his target. He’d have fired a volley.’
‘Unless his gun jammed?’ Grace questioned.
‘Guns don’t jam very often – not the kind that snipers use.’
‘Your view remains that the shooter fired only two shots, because they hit their intended target? But if the shooter had hit the intended target with the first shot, why the second shot?’
Ignoring the question, Dyson said, ‘I’ve made a checklist of relevant factors, starting with a meteorological data search of wind conditions at the time of the shooting. The biggest effect on a bullet is a cross-wind. But at 10 a.m. yesterday there was just a light breeze, making the wind factor negligible. Heat haze can also affect the visibility of the target, but at 10 a.m. yesterday there was none. The sun was behind the shooter – which it would be now if we could see it – so he didn’t have to contend with it in his eyes and worry about silhouetting of the target.’
Grace nodded. ‘Sounds like he chose his day and location well.’
‘Or got lucky.’
‘Or unlucky?’ Grace tested.
The ballistics scientist shook his head. ‘Another factor is whether there could possibly have been any confusion between how Camilla and the victim were dressed? That needs to be ruled out.’ He prostrated himself and made some adjustments to the bipod.
Grace smiled. ‘I don’t think so. Her Majesty was wearing a royal blue dress. The Private Secretary was in a dark suit. The shooter would need to have had seriously impaired vision.’
‘Another factor could be the gun not zeroed properly. But if we are considering a professional, that is highly unlikely.’ He paused for a moment and squinted through the scope, adjusting the focus carefully. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Are you confident that the position your two detectives are standing in is exactly where Camilla and Greaves were standing at the time he was shot?’
‘That’s what Her Majesty’s Protection Officer gave me, and he was very sure,’ Grace said.
Dyson nodded. ‘Because that could make a very significant difference. If The Queen had been standing four feet behind the Private Secretary – by that I mean in line – that would make her a much harder target. But if, as we have here, she is four feet to the side, then it’s very different.’
‘I’m confident we have the right position for the two of them,’ Grace said.
Dyson paused for a moment, thinking. ‘OK, we don’t yet know the calibre of the bullet, but as I’ve said, I have a pretty good idea, and the range we have is no issue – strike one. Wind conditions would need to have been in excess of 20mph to make enough drift for a four-foot error from this distance – which we know they weren’t yesterday. Strike two. Come and have a look through the scope.’
Grace lay down on the grass and pressed his right eye up to the rubber surround of the scope lens. Then he lined the crosshairs up on EJ’s head. It was a big target, filling the scope. He moved it across to Nick’s head until that filled the scope. It was a considerable distance, one that would need a deliberate switch of target, not an accidental flinch or a twitch.
‘See what I mean?’ Dyson asked.
Grace turned and looked at him, nodding.
