He moved the cursor onto another photograph, which showed a rope ladder hanging down a dimly lit circular brick structure. ‘We conducted a search of the tunnel while the rescue operation to remove the wrecked train was under way, and found this ladder, which when examined turned out to be brand new, clamped to the top of one of the air vents. We think this particular vent was chosen very carefully – it comes out through the roof of the tunnel on the hillside above, in dense scrubland, and is pretty much concealed from view to anyone walking on the nearby fields.’ He paused to check a note, then continued.

  ‘I can confirm the cause of the derailment was a six-foot length of rail that had fallen onto – or more likely been toppled onto – the down-line section of track, across both rails and the third, live rail. This sent an alert to the signalling centre at Three Bridges that there was an obstruction on the line, and the Ops Manager there, Christopher New, immediately contacted the driver of the Royal Train, which was at that time approaching the entrance to the tunnel, warning him and telling him to halt the train.’

  ‘So why didn’t he, Steve?’ Glenn Branson jumped in.

  ‘The driver was pulling seven carriages as well as an additional locomotive at the rear, travelling at 70 miles an hour. It takes the best part of a mile to bring a train safely to a halt at that speed. He was already approaching the entrance to the tunnel when he got the obstruction ahead alert. He’d managed to reduce the speed to forty at the time of impact with the rail – if he hadn’t, there would have very likely been serious casualties, if not fatalities.’

  ‘Which gives us a number of unanswered questions,’ Grace said. ‘The first being what injuries the offender – or offenders – had intended for everyone on the train? Or would whoever had put that rail across the track have timed it deliberately and exactly, knowing the train wouldn’t be able to slow down enough to prevent it being derailed, but that it would slow down sufficiently to avoid any serious injuries?’

  ‘Good question, sir,’ the BTP officer said.

  ‘Chief,’ Norman Potting said. ‘We had a railway line that went across our land where I grew up, dividing our two main fields. It became disused back in the 1960s when Lord Beeching axed a lot of rural railways. I had to help my dad shift the rails – and they are bloody heavy, I can tell you.’

  ‘They are,’ Branson agreed. ‘A six-foot length of track weighs about sixteen stone. That would take a strong person to lift.’

  ‘But if balanced against a wall of the tunnel,’ Grace asked, ‘we know that just one person could push it and topple it over onto the track.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Butcher replied.

  Grace considered this for some moments. ‘The signaller at Three Bridges notified the driver of the Royal Train of an obstruction on the line, just before the train entered the north portal of Clayton Tunnel. And Sir Peregrine was shot as he exited the tunnel – perhaps twenty minutes later. There’s no way the shooter and the person who caused the obstruction on the line could be the same person, if those timings are correct. Pretty much impossible for that person to have climbed the rope ladder and run to the shooter’s location all within roughly twenty minutes.’

  ‘I’d have to agree with you, sir,’ Butcher said.

  ‘Which confirms we are looking for two people. At least.’

  They were interrupted by a phone ringing. The James Bond theme. A flustered Norman Potting, the delegated point person for any urgent calls that came into the Incident Room during the briefing, answered it, raising an apologetic hand.

  The room was silent as Potting listened, then said, ‘Thank you, I’ll inform him right away.’ Then he turned to Grace.

  ‘Chief, you need to hear this. You really need to hear this.’

  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.’

  43

  Thursday 23 November 2023

  As they left the cottage, Grace asked Potting to drive, so he could focus on making a series of urgent phone calls. As the DS started the car, he said, ‘Chief, whoever this was who rang Mrs Stratten, has police knowledge. Cognitive witness interview?’

  ‘My thoughts exactly, Norman.’

  For a good two minutes Grace had a frustratingly poor signal, then finally he got his phone to connect. As soon as one of the Incident Room team answered, Grace asked to be put through to Luke Stanstead.

  He instructed the researcher to speak to the two London detectives on the Op Asset team and see if they could establish from the profiles that they had on the individual Not-My-King protestors, a number of key facts. The first was the names of any Geordies or people from the Newcastle region. Second, to check with the DVLA – the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency – for any who had a motorcycle licence. And, third, to check if any were former – or even serving – police officers. He wanted as much information as he could gather about this protest group to rule them in or out of his investigation. This was an important line of enquiry.

  Next, Grace checked his watch. It was 12.15 p.m. He knew from what Sir Tommy Magellan-Lacey had told him that his daily audience with The King was normally between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. He dialled Sir Tommy’s mobile number. After a few rings he heard his familiar, upbeat voice.

  ‘Roy, good morning – sorry – good afternoon! Are you calling with good news? You’ve arrested the killer?’

  ‘I wish I could tell you that, Sir Tommy.’

  ‘Well you certainly worked your charm on Their Majesties yesterday!’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘You impressed The Queen. She thought you were very different from the stereotypical detectives in crime fiction novels – and on the screen.’

  Grace was fleetingly lost for words. ‘I’m very happy to hear that, sir.’

  ‘And The King, too, was very taken with you.’

  ‘Really? I wasn’t sure how that went.’

  ‘It went well. He called me in later yesterday and told me he has complete confidence in you. So, no pressure, eh?’ He gave one of his characteristic bursts of laughter.

  ‘No pressure,’ Grace echoed.

  ‘HMTK is a very astute man, Roy. If you have his approval, I can tell you that is very significant.’

  ‘So now I have to live up to it,’ Grace said.

  ‘What I learned in the military, which may give you something to think about: We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. My opinion, in the short time I’ve known you, is that you have damned good training. I don’t think you are going to let us down.’

  ‘I appreciate your confidence, Sir Tommy. And I appreciate what you’ve told me about Their Majesties. Perhaps you could relay to them that being the SIO on this case is a great honour. And I will do whatever it takes to find the man who shot Sir Peregrine and any accomplices he may have had.’

  ‘Absolutely will do!’

  ‘Something I need your help on,’ Grace said, ‘is one of my lines of enquiry. Do you know how many officers there are on the Royal Protection team?’

  ‘Yes, about six hundred.’

  ‘All of them carry firearms. Quite a number come from Armed Response backgrounds in the police and many have military service?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely, Roy.’

  ‘There are two things I need to know, Sir Tommy. Firstly, the names of every Royal Protection Officer who has a motorcycle licence, and secondly if any of those have a northern accent – especially a Geordie one.’

  ‘Are you saying you think this might be an inside job, so to speak, Roy? This is very deeply alarming if that’s the case.’