But at the same time he was mindful of the fact that he needed to find evidence that would speak for itself. Thanks to Polly having worked her charm on Sir Peregrine’s widow and obtaining the diary, he was hopeful he would find at least some pieces of that jigsaw puzzle before the end of the weekend. It wasn’t just his immediate boss, ACC Downing, who was waiting for answers. Nor the Chief Constable of Sussex or the Police and Crime Commissioner. It wasn’t even The King of England or The Queen.

  From the newsfeed that poured in relentlessly, it was much of the entire world.

  Waiting for answers from him.

  52

  Saturday 25 November 2023

  Grace eased himself up in bed gently, trying not to disturb Cleo. Feeling barely refreshed at all, but well aware that any further sleep was not going to happen, he reached for his phone. Still nothing from Denton Scroope. Then, out of dutiful habit, he checked the daily Chief Officer’s Briefing Sheet. There was nothing to trouble him on it, and he said a silent prayer to the god of Senior Investigating Officers’ Downtime that there were no major incidents or developments overnight to distract him, or call on his already stretched resources.

  Outside, Billy Big Balls crowed. There were mornings when he loved the sound of that rooster, and there were mornings when he could have cheerfully strangled him. Today was one of the latter.

  He slipped out of bed, and five minutes later, dressed in his running kit, holding Kyla on her lead and with Humphrey alongside, went out into the garden and opened the rear gate. As Humphrey bounded off ahead a short distance up the hill, then stopped to do a dump, Grace, keeping Kyla on her lead, did his leg swings and a short programme of stretches.

  Then, with an excited Kyla running beside him, he headed off up the steadily increasing gradient, chasing after Humphrey. As he ran he was thinking again. What was he missing, overlooking, not getting in the mix? The name Geoffrey Bailey popped up again. The footman who Jack was concerned about, and the only Person of Interest they had from their interviews of the Buckingham Palace staff so far, was due to be formally interviewed on Monday morning by two of his team – Sir Tommy had made the arrangements.

  Jack, still very young, was rapidly proving himself to be a smart detective with good instincts. Maybe Geoffrey Bailey would turn out to be a significant witness. Or more? But right now Grace was pinning most of his hopes of a breakthrough on the contents of the diary.

  As he ran on up the hill, feeling increasingly exhilarated, he smiled. For the first time since the start of this investigation, he felt really positive. And he’d really hit the jackpot with the weather this morning. It was going to be a glorious autumn day and he was damn well going to take Glenn’s advice and enjoy a few hours of it at least.

  He and Cleo had planned to take Noah and Molly for a walk along Noah’s favourite beach, behind Hove Lagoon. Although he suspected the only reason it was Noah’s favourite was because of the range of ice creams served even out of season in the Big Beach Cafe, owned by superstar DJ and Brighton legend Fatboy Slim.

  Still smiling, he ran on up to the top of the hill and along the ridge, through a huge field of sheep, with Humphrey trained to ignore them and obediently doing so, staying close to his heels. Kyla, kept on a tight leash, tugged away, as if wondering why she couldn’t meet all these new playmates. They were running along part of the South Downs National Park, which stretched 100 miles from Eastbourne to Winchester. Just a few miles from the village of Plumpton, where Camilla’s family home had been and where she had spent much of her childhood. And as a bonus, the village had always boasted a particularly good pub, he thought.

  The sun was tracking its way into a cloudless sky and he was starting to sweat. God, he needed this, he thought. For the past few days, his brains had felt as though they were being steamed inside a pressure cooker, or rather – what were those new things called? – a Thermomix? No . . . Then he remembered. Air fryers!

  Arriving back home, with Kyla off the lead now that they were out of the field of sheep, he collected five eggs from the hen coop, warding off Billy, with his exotic plumage and razor-sharp spurs, who was particularly aggressive to anyone who came near his girls, and carried his booty triumphantly into the kitchen, placing them in the rack along with the other nine eggs that Cleo had collected in the past few days.

  ‘Eggs for breakfast!’ he announced. ‘I am the Eggman!’

  ‘Yayyy, Eggman!’ Noah responded.

  Molly raised her hands and squealed in solidarity with her brother, even if she didn’t quite get it.

  He showered and then changed ready for a few hours on the beach this morning before returning to work. As he went back down into the kitchen, Cleo was sitting at the breakfast bar, leafing through the pages of the Argus, with Molly on her chair beside her, eating scrambled egg from a bowl. Noah lay on the floor, with Kyla beside him, his arms wrapped around her neck. Radio 4 news was on in the background.

  ‘Who else is still hungry?’ Roy Grace asked.

  Noah and Cleo announced they both were.

  Grace felt a sudden, almost overwhelming burst of happiness. Everyone he loved in the world, really and truly loved, including the two dogs, was here in this room right now with him – this beautiful kitchen with its view across to the rolling hills of the South Downs and the tiny white pieces of cotton-ball fluff that populated them.

  ‘OK!’ he said, removing a tub of butter from the fridge. He placed a frying pan on the hob, turned the heat up and shook in several drops of avocado oil. Next he took a plastic container of maple syrup from one of the cupboards, and a loaf of sliced sourdough bread. ‘Who’d like French toast and who’d like an omelette, or—’

  His work phone rang, interrupting him.

  He hesitated for a moment, so very tempted to ignore it. But that wasn’t an option.

  ‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.

  Instantly, he recognized the intensely serious, earnest voice of Denton Scroope. ‘Roy, I believe I’m making progress deciphering the code. It’s a slow process – whoever wrote this knew what they were doing.’

  Feeling a beat of excitement, Grace said, ‘Tell me? What have you learned so far?’

  ‘This document is real, and not just an exercise, Roy?’

  ‘It’s real,’ Grace assured him.

  ‘And the author of it is dead?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Then I do not think it would be wise to tell you over the phone what I have deciphered so far, Roy. I really do not. I need to do it in person. If you want to make the best use of time and allow me to keep working on the pages, perhaps you could come over here?’

  Yet again, Roy Grace was faced with a horribly familiar choice. Work or family? In his former life with his wife Sandy, he’d destroyed his marriage by choosing work too many times – not that he had any option. And he had no option now. A morning on a beach in Hove with his wife and kids, or protecting the lives of his King and Queen?

  At least in this marriage, second time around, he had a wife who understood.

  53

  Saturday 25 November 2023

  It seemed to Rose Cadoret that it was a rite of passage for every tourist in London to pose for a selfie somewhere in front of Buckingham Palace. They descended in their masses, individuals or in groups with guides holding up coloured sticks, sometimes in cagoules and rain hats, sometimes in baseball caps and T-shirts. Why did some tourists think it was OK to stand in The Mall, one of the world’s most beautiful avenues, wearing the most ludicrously shapeless and gaudy outfits?

  The magnificent edifice of the East Wing, three storeys high and topped with a tall flagpole from which the Royal Standard flies whenever the monarch is in residence, is iconic. To many its presence is a serene constant and a reassurance of order that rises above whatever troubles currently ail the world.

  But what Joe Public never saw, Rose Cadoret thought, was the dingy labyrinth of corridors and rooms one floor below. It could have been the basement of any institution in the world – a grand hotel, a hospital, a residential skyscraper. Down here was a never-ending, artificially lit warren of low ceilings filled with pipework, some wrapped in insulation, hazard warning signs, green baize notice boards screwed to the cream-painted walls, with the usual institutional posters pinned on them: CATCH IT! BIN IT! KILL IT! or, GERMY PLACES IN YOUR OFFICE YOU SHOULD CLEAN! along with diagrams showing hand-cleaning techniques.

  With all the Palace renovations going on, the basement smelled variously of recently sawn wood or fresh paint. There were hoardings everywhere, plastic gates and building materials, as well as huge gaps in the walls and floors where exploratory drilling had taken place. As a result, there were so many places where an object – even quite a large object – could be concealed.

  Conveniently.

  Rose Cadoret passed a door due for updating, on which a sign read, QUEEN’S LUGGAGE LIFT STAIRS. It was next to another that read, BASEMENT FLOOR RED ROUTE – with a large red arrow pointing to a sign. YOU ARE HERE.

  I am indeed! Rose thought, seating herself at the Formica table in the Cleaning Staff Office. I am very much here.

  And she was, happily, very much alone.

  Few members of the Household staff worked weekends, other than those guarding the Palace, and she knew she wasn’t going to be bothered down here late on a Saturday morning.

  Opening her Waitrose carrier bag, she took out the five exquisite miniature jade figurines she had removed from a cabinet up on the first floor – part of a collection that had been one of Queen Mary’s passions – and for which there was already a keen buyer waiting. Then she began encasing them in bubble wrap, for their protection. When she had done that, she would take them home. In her plastic Waitrose bag of course. None of the Palace guards would raise an eyebrow at a senior member of the Royal Collection walking around with a painting under their arm, let alone carrying a bag of groceries. Which was how she had smuggled out many dozens of objects over the past months.

  With these jade figurines, as with most objets d’art and paintings catalogued in the Royal Collection, it was impossible to know their true value, but some jade was worth more than diamonds, and the recent world record price for a piece of jade was a staggering $27.4 million.

  Their buyer, who was paying just £100,000 each, was getting an absolute bargain. But the three of them weren’t greedy and at this price they had a very happy, discreet and reliable middleman, with whom they dealt through the dark web. These jade figurines would be despatched to private museums in the Middle East, or Eastern Europe or the Russian bloc – and sometimes even the US – to collectors who would have no scruples about obtaining a piece of another nation’s heritage at a knock-down price, and might well take extra pleasure in that knowledge. And it would likely be many decades before any of them came back on the market, their provenance long vanished in the mists of time.

  Just like the three of them, she thought with a wry smile. The gravy train was coming to a halt. About to hit the buffers. Although – she hesitated – maybe train wasn’t such a great analogy, bearing in mind what had happened. Could anything they’d done have backfired on them more than the Royal Train derailment?

  But, hey, always look on the bright side, as the Pythons’ song went. And go with the positives. They’d had a good run over this past year, since they’d come up with their plan. And they all knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime for the three of them. They’d all served their country, risked their lives, and for what?

  To be dumped on from a great height.

  Potentially court-martialled, for what exactly? For doing what they signed up for. To fight the enemy and protect their nation. So, OK, they’d lost their rag out in Afghanistan, after Jon had witnessed the torture and killing of his mate, and she’d seen what atrocities had been done to the corpse. And a very decent senior officer had nearly been stripped of his rank for standing up for them.

  She didn’t believe in God. Certainly not a god who had let that happen to her friend, Scottie. But maybe there was another rival god. One who said, Life sucks. So fill your boots whenever you get the opportunity!

  It was either fate, or that other, rival god, who had fixed for the three of them to all end up in varying roles within the Royal Household. Jon on the Royal Protection team and herself, Deputy Director of the Royal Collection. Initially, with her art school background, she had decided what she really wanted was excitement – and got far more than she had bargained for in joining the Army. But she had loved her time as a soldier. At first, anyway.

  And that officer who had stood up for them – how could fate have arranged, years later, for him to have ended up in such a powerful position within the staff of Buckingham Palace?

  The plan had been a simple one. The knowledge that there would never be an opportunity like this again, after the renovations had finished. The Palace in disarray. Priceless valuables all over the place.

  It had always been an inventory nightmare for the trustees of the Royal Collection. But never more so during the ten-year renovation programme of the Palace. Paintings and statues and ornaments were constantly being moved around at the request of the builders, making it impossible for the Royal Collection team to know precisely where everything was at any given moment.

  Creating a wonderful window of opportunity.

  But now time was running out. Each of them – dividing the spoils equally – had already amassed considerable fortunes in untraceable Bitcoin accounts. There was an even bigger fortune in items they had stolen and safely stashed in a storage unit in Hounslow, near Heathrow Airport. A treasure trove worth tens of millions of pounds. To be drip-fed out to buyers over the next few years.

  They should cut and run now, Rose knew, while they were still ahead, and not under any suspicion. But there were so many tempting rich pickings to grab while the going was still good – like these jade items. Rose knew there had probably never been an opportunity like this and there never would be again. By the time the discrepancies in the Royal Collection inventory started to be noticed, all three of the trusted Palace employees (well, four, if you included the wife of one of them, who was invaluable) would be long gone. And very rich indeed.

  They were already richer than their wildest dreams. And if Jon Smoke hadn’t fucked up, they would all be even richer still.

  She worried about him, because he was the liability in this trio. She was angry, too. Angry because even though they’d had an on-off relationship, she was starting to feel he did not deserve an equal share. He was a danger to them. More of a danger than an asset?

  54

  Saturday 25 November 2023

  The drive from his home, near Henfield, across to Ringmer took Roy Grace along the foot of the South Downs, past Lewes where the Police HQ was, and through beautiful countryside, with the hills of the Downs to his right. Views he never tired of.

  He had considered swinging by HQ to pick up Branson and bring him along, too, but decided he could do without the chiding his colleague would give him for not heeding his instructions to at least take the morning off.

  Cleo understood, although he could see the disappointment on her face and the even bigger disappointment on Noah’s and Molly’s. He felt terrible. The same guilt that always enveloped him like a cloud whenever he had to let his family down. And to make it even worse, right now, at 10.30 a.m., it was promising to be chilly but perfect sunny weather.

  Following the satnav he turned off the main road that ran through the village of Ringmer and briefly headed back towards the Downs, before then making a right turn into a pleasant, modern close of identical, three-bedroom detached houses, each with a small front garden, a car port and a garage. A minute or so later he pulled his Alfa Romeo saloon to a halt outside No. 31, which had definitely the most immaculate garden in the entire close. The front lawn looked like it had been trimmed with nail scissors and the two vehicles in front of the garage, a Ford Explorer and a Nissan Micra, gleamed as if they were on a showroom forecourt.

  Denton Scroope greeted him at the front door, in a baggy sweater, even baggier jeans and horrible slippers. ‘Good morning, Roy, it is very good to see you again. I trust it is all right to call you Roy, rather than sir, now I’m retired?’

  ‘Of course, Roy is absolutely fine.’

  ‘I just like to establish the protocol.’ Scroope spoke as slowly and pedantically as ever, and looking even more like a bespectacled aardvark than Grace remembered. ‘Please, come in, but if you wouldn’t mind removing your shoes – the boss . . .’ He gave a small shrug.

  Grace, casually dressed, complied, stooping to remove his trainers, then went inside, stepping onto a pristine mustard-coloured carpet, and was immediately hit by the clammy, airless warmth and a rank, sour reek. Pets of some kind, he guessed, wrinkling his nose. Hamsters? Snakes? Guinea pigs?

  The centrepiece of the tiny hallway was a bust of an arrogantlooking man with long, flowing hair and a pointy beard, set into a niche.

  ‘Charles I,’ Scroope said, as Grace stared at it.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Did I ever tell you, Roy, that it was one of my ancestors who signed his death warrant?’

  ‘Yes, yes you did, Denton.’ Politely, he didn’t add, quite a number of times.

  ‘Not really a close relative – more a distant cousin, many times removed – I’m not so much a branch of his family tree, more a twig, haha!’

  ‘I think you told me that, too,’ he said.

  ‘Ah yes. Did I tell you also that very fortunately I was free last night and today, due to the vagaries of the mind of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed?’

  ‘You did, Denton, yes.’ He was beginning to wonder for how long he could stand this sour reek – which was totally at odds with the pristine condition of the hallway with its immaculate carpet and rose-pink paintwork.