The Hawk Is Dead, page 5
He threw himself at his boss, knocking her to the ground, murmuring, ‘I’m sorry, Ma’am,’ while at the same time pulling out his Glock and looking all around through the gun sights. He yelled at the top of his voice to the driver. ‘Keep everyone down, don’t bring them up here.’ He was immediately joined by two more Protection Officers, who formed a barrier around The Principal.
The Queen tried to move.
‘Please, Ma’am,’ he said. ‘Please stay still.’
He squinted desperately, trying to keep calm. He pointed the gun up. Around. Down. Where was the shooter? A long way off? His Glock would be useless against a rifle, but he pointed it anyway.
Where was the shooter?
When would the next shot come?
Frantically he shouted into his radio for more backup and for an ambulance.
The distant cacophony of sirens was still too far away. Moments later he heard the thwock-thwock-thwock sound of an approaching helicopter.
‘Jon, what the hell is happening?’
For once, he ignored his boss and looked up at the sky, listening to the sound of the rotor blades. At this moment it felt like the sweetest sound he had ever heard.
15
Monday 20 November 2023
A train derailment wasn’t Roy Grace’s jurisdiction – it was on railway property and he knew British Transport Police had primacy on that. But a senior royal in Sussex, regardless of what damned property they were on, very definitely was his jurisdiction. His absolute responsibility.
With the full support of the ACC, they were organizing a ring of steel around both entrances to the tunnel as fast as possible. The north entrance was easy, as it was close to the main road, but the southern portal was a lot less accessible, and from the Protection Officer’s report, it sounded as if that was the direction in which the royal party were headed. And by his calculation, The Queen and her entourage could be emerging at any moment, if they weren’t already out.
And highly vulnerable.
For the past fifteen minutes, since the Control Room operator had informed him of the derailment, Roy Grace had been on the phone. In addition to the cordons around both ends of Clayton Tunnel, he had directed Glenn Branson to request the Air Traffic Control centre at Swanwick and have them implement an immediate no-fly zone for civilian aircraft within a two-mile radius of the tunnel entrances.
Grace had liaised with his team, in turn, key personnel at British Transport Police, the Ambulance and Fire and Rescue services, the Armed Response Unit, the Royalty and Specialist Protection team, the Scotland Yard Counter Terrorism Unit, the NPAS helicopter, the police drone team and the Duty Inspector at Haywards Heath – the closest police station to Clayton Tunnel. And, finally, he had alerted the Media and Communications Department to prepare for a press and media shit storm.
No phone or radio contact had yet been established with anyone inside the tunnel – it was seemingly a complete dead zone for signals. The only positive so far was that all trains to and from the tunnel had been halted, preventing an even bigger catastrophe.
Was this just a freak accident? The current Royal Train had been in service for almost fifty years. Mechanical failure? Metal fatigue in one of the wheels? Or was it connected to what appeared to have been left on the track? Sabotage, terrorism?
The idea that someone could have deliberately derailed the Royal Train was unthinkable. Except, thinking the unthinkable was what he’d had to do throughout his career.
If it was deliberate, who was behind it? Protestors? Or a group a lot more sinister? A terrorist cell? The anti-monarchists had not, so far, demonstrated with any violence. Derailing the Royal Train was very unlikely to be their work. Which in his view left two options: a genuine accident, or The Queen and the royal party were in very serious danger.
His fists were clenched tight, he realized. As tight as his chest.
He could not recall a moment in his twenty-five-year career more serious on a national scale than this. If it was more than just a freak accident, then one half of the monarchy would likely depend on the actions he had put in place.
When he had joined the force he had sworn his allegiance to the now late Queen Elizabeth, and this applied just as much to King Charles and Queen Camilla. He could still remember the words.
I . . . do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve Our Sovereign Lady . . . without favour or affection, malice or ill will . . . and prevent all offences against the persons and properties of Her Majesty’s subjects . . .
His parents had been proud, ardent Royalists, and respect for the monarchy was part of his DNA, as it was for so much of the nation back then. His late father, Jack, had told him how he and his family had watched Queen Elizabeth’s coronation on a black and white television screen not much bigger than an iPad, and his late mother had told him how she had camped out with her two sisters in The Mall, in the pouring rain, to catch a glimpse.
One entire shelf of the Welsh dresser in their family kitchen had been full of 1953 Coronation souvenirs. Plates, coins, coasters, Wedgwood mugs and a gilded Coronation coach and horses. Roy Grace still had them all, boxed away among a ton of other memorabilia that he’d divided with his sister after their parents had died, which for sentimental reasons he’d never wanted to part with. They were up in the loft of their cottage. Clutter that Cleo had long urged him to sort out and get rid of what he didn’t want.
One day.
That rainy day so many people had in their mind, when they would get around to doing all that stuff they’d been planning to do. That rainy day, which was always, somehow, at least one day or more away. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Mañana.
He was about to call the Control Room for an update, when his phone rang. It was the operator Carol Walker again, her voice tight.
‘Sir,’ she said. ‘We’ve just had a report of a shooter by the south exit to the tunnel. One person is down.’
For an instant her words echoed like a ricochet in his brain.
One person is down.
‘Who?’ he asked, weakly, his voice constricted, as if for a moment he didn’t want to know the answer he feared. ‘Her Majesty?’
Please don’t tell me it is.
‘It is not The Principal, sir. It’s one of her entourage. Her Protection Officer has put out an urgent call for—’
Grace barely heard the rest of what she said. He ended the call, stabbing the speed dial for Glenn Branson as he grabbed his jacket and sprinted to the door.
16
Monday 20 November 2023
Jon Gilhall was being blasted by the downdraught from the rotor blades of the black and yellow police helicopter hovering overhead, flattening the grass and weeds all around them. Apologizing yet again to The Queen, three Protection Officers kept their arms folded around her head and body, ready to absorb another bullet from the shooter, should it come.
Happily married, with two children he adored, Gilhall had long reconciled himself to the fact that, in the job he did, the day might come when he would have to put his own life on the line to protect his boss. But, although he had trained rigorously for that day, he’d never seriously imagined it would actually happen.
Now it had. And all his training had kicked in, as if it were muscle memory. The pilot had already overflown the area and the information that they had was that the sniper was likely to have left quickly. Bringing in the helicopter was of course a risk, but to safeguard The Queen it was felt a risk worth taking.
He watched the Eurocopter set down a short distance from them, pleased to see it was between them and where he estimated was the most likely direction of the shooter. NPAS-15, the helicopter shared by Sussex, Kent and Surrey Police, was manned by a crew of three, the pilot, a paramedic and a police officer. The door opened and the police officer jumped down. Head ducked to avoid any risk of contact with the still swirling blades, he sprinted towards them. The paramedic followed and raced over to the body of Sir Peregrine Greaves.
‘Is Her Majesty OK?’ the officer asked.
‘We need to get her to safety, immediately,’ Gilhall responded. ‘There’s a shooter out there somewhere. I’m informed a room’s being prepared for her at HQ.’
‘What about all the rest of my team?’ The Queen asked suddenly.
‘They’ll follow by road, Ma’am,’ Gilhall replied. ‘There’s a fleet of minibuses on the way. My immediate priority is to get you out of here.’ He turned to the officer. ‘Did you see anyone up on the hill as you came in? Anyone with a gun?’
‘Just a lady dog walker, no one else. We will be flying off in a different direction when we leave to reduce any risk.’
The Protection Officers stood, shielding The Queen from the only other direction the shooter could have fired from. Gilhall then knelt and said, ‘Ma’am, let me help you up.’
‘I may be old, Jon, but I’m not decrepit. Thank you.’ She clambered, agilely, to her feet, as he moved quickly around her, to continue shielding her, for her own safety and to save her from what she might see. But she had already frozen in shock as she looked down at the motionless figure of the Private Secretary.
‘Oh God,’ she said. Her hand went to her mouth and Gilhall took her arm, afraid she would stumble. ‘Oh my God.’
Peregrine Greaves lay on his back, his arms and legs spread out awkwardly. He no longer had a face, it was gone. In its place was a hideous, unrecognizable, misshapen ball of different hues of crimson, blood running from all around it. A couple of teeth were up where his right eye socket should have been. His skull was split open, bone sticking up through his bloodstained white hair, and some of his brain was visible. The paramedic, in green scrubs and orange high-vis jacket, knelt beside him feeling, futilely, for a pulse.
‘Oh my God,’ The Queen said again. She stumbled and Gilhall caught her. Shielding her all the way, walking backwards, then sideways, the officers escorted her to the helicopter and, thankfully, into the interior, taking the seat next to her and helping her with her harness.
‘Go!’ he yelled at the pilot. ‘Go!’
The Queen’s face was pale with shock. ‘Perry. Poor Perry. What – why . . .?’
‘What happened, Ma’am?’ Gilhall said, supplying the word she was too shaken to say, then offering her a headset, which she declined. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and, apologetically, dabbed several tiny bloody spots on her jacket. ‘I’m afraid someone’s taken a shot at you, Ma’am.’
‘And hit Peregrine?’
The police officer who had jumped out of the helicopter and come over to them, now joined them inside and shut the door. Moments later the pilot turned his head and raised his headset off his ears. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘Are you OK?’
She nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said politely and clearly in a state of shock.
He opened the throttle and they rose a few feet off the ground, Gilhall desperately, silently, willing the pilot to get them clear. The pilot went into a vertical climb to clear any obstacles, then dipped the nose of the helicopter and they accelerated away.
Jon Gilhall watched the ground drop rapidly away beneath them, anxiously scouring the hilly, grassy landscape below them for any sign of a moving figure, someone furtive. A killer. A hired assassin. Hit man?
Hired to kill The Queen?
And had botched it?
Which meant he might try again.
17
Monday 20 November 2023
As Branson drove, heading north out of Brighton on the A23 on blue lights, Roy Grace in the passenger seat was wrapped in his thoughts, going through the checklist of everything he needed to put in place. And all the time he was trying to work out what exactly they were dealing with.
As ever his starting point was three questions:
Why him?
Why here?
Why now?
Had Sir Peregrine Greaves actually been the target? To go to all the lengths of derailing the Royal Train in order to shoot one of The Queen’s entourage, however senior Greaves had been, made no sense at all. Unless he was overlooking something. But if so, what?
Equally, how realistic was it that The Queen had been the intended target and the shooter had simply missed? Why only two shots?
A third hypothesis was a couple of loose shots from a hunter somewhere out in the fields – aimed at a rabbit? So unlikely as to be barely worth considering. The only hunter with a telescopic sight who was likely to be out there would be someone rough shooting – going for rabbits or birds – with a small-bore rifle. From the brief description he’d had of Sir Peregrine’s injury, it had been inflicted by a much more substantial weapon.
The facts he had to work with at this moment were: firstly, there was known hostile activity anticipated for the royal visit from protestors; secondly, the Royal Train was derailed – accident or deliberate sabotage? Then, twenty or so minutes later, two shots were fired, one of them hitting Greaves.
In Grace’s opinion, given these facts, the chances that the derailment and the shooting of the Private Secretary were isolated incidents were very low. So low as to be virtually dismissible. In a nutshell, the simplest explanation was usually the likeliest one. In this case the theory that the derailment of the train and the shooting were linked fitted that exactly.
So, he hypothesized, had one of the protestors derailed the train in the hope of creating a disaster that killed perhaps The Queen and many of her entourage? And as backup they had a sniper waiting, having calculated the party would exit from the south entrance of the tunnel?
That did not sit well with him. The intel on the protestors was that they were harmless, not fanatics prepared – and organized – to kill. His colleagues had got to know some of them in the past few years around the country, and that just did not seem like their work. Added to that, the shooter had only fired two shots. If the intended target had been The Queen, why not fire more?
As Branson continued up the A23, Grace, despite being distracted by his speculations, was fully occupied on his phone, and feeling a deep sense of dread. What should have been a wonderful and proud day for the county of Sussex had turned to tragedy.
Thank God, he thought, The Queen was OK.
For now. The area had been deemed safe by the Strategic Firearms Commander.
The helicopter had passed overhead a few minutes ago. In Grace’s comms with the Royal Protection Officer, Jon Gilhall had informed him The Queen was very shaken but unharmed. NPAS-15 was heading towards the Sussex Police HQ at Lewes, where the secure room Grace had arranged for her was being prepared. She would land in three minutes’ time on the adjoining school playing fields, and be greeted by the Chief Constable, Lesley Manning, and a contingent of armed response officers.
Glenn Branson, following the satnav signal, braked and turned off the main road, made a series of manoeuvres, then turned onto a rough, narrow lane that was little more than a rutted, potholed farm track. After several minutes they approached a long, chaotic line of police cars and vans, two fire engines and two ambulances, and beyond them the blue and white police tape of an outer cordon, manned by a young uniformed police constable scene guard who, with his near photographic memory for faces Grace recognized. ‘PC Andrew Strong?’ he quizzed.
The PC looked proud as punch. ‘You remember me, sir?’
‘Weren’t you the scene guard at that Brighton hotel fire about six months back?’
‘I was, sir. Just to let you know a Coroner’s Officer will be here soon.’
Grace was pleased to see how quickly the crime scene had been protected and the scene guard put in place. A few minutes later, in their onesie oversuits and signed in on the log, as more and more emergency service vehicles and minibuses were arriving at the RV point, he and Branson walked the quarter of a mile across fields to the inner cordon, signed the second scene guard’s log and ducked under the tape.
They strode on up the steep slope of a grassy hillock, where they were greeted at the top by a BTP Inspector, a wiry man in his late forties, also in a protective onesie, looking pale and nervous.
In the far distance behind them were the rolling hills of the South Downs, and the ridge of the Devil’s Dyke shimmering beneath the bright sunlight. Much closer behind them were the legs of a pinstripe-suited figure lying on the ground. Grace couldn’t see the rest of the man, but he could see a lot of blood on the grass all around.
The Inspector’s name was Iain College – Grace and Branson had already been informed by radio. He spoke with a soft Scottish accent.
‘Good morning, gentlemen – sir,’ he said, deferring to Grace. ‘This is one hell of a situation.’
‘You could say that,’ Grace said, drily. He well knew that British Transport Police were no greenhorns when it came to major crime. They regularly dealt with homicides and other serious offences on railway property, as well as terrorist threats and atrocities. ‘What do we have?’ he asked.
‘We have a body, sir, male, confirmed deceased by a paramedic ten minutes ago.’
‘Gunshot wound?’
‘I would say it appears so, sir.’
‘Do you have a confirmed ID on the deceased?’
‘We believe he is the Private Secretary to The King and The Queen.’
Grace shook his head in near disbelief. ‘Sir Peregrine Greaves, that’s what I’ve been told.’
As he and Branson moved to step towards the body, College said, ‘Just to warn you, it’s not pretty.’
‘Yep, well when you’ve been shot dead, no one expects you to look your best,’ Branson retorted. He was feeling the same beat of excitement he always got at the start of a major investigation. And this was truly big, the biggest yet of his and Roy’s career.
Grace stopped in his tracks as he saw the remains of Greaves’ once handsome face.
‘Looks like one of my mum’s summer puddings,’ Branson murmured to him, staring down wide-eyed.
Despite the horror of what he was seeing, Grace found himself suppressing a smile. Good old gallows humour; people sometimes forgot that officers, just like all other human beings, needed their coping mechanisms. Humour had always been his safety net, helping keep him sane in the most horrific of crime scenes. And as those went, this was pretty bad. It looked like the Private Secretary had put on a cheap Halloween mask. Apart from the blood pooled on the ground all around his head.
