‘She did,’ Grace confirmed. ‘This is not a conversation His Majesty was likely to have forgotten.’

  ‘So someone hasn’t been telling the truth?’ Branson suggested.

  ‘Either Sir Peregrine lied to his wife. Or Lady Greaves lied to Polly. Or—’

  ‘Or your new bestie, The King, lied to you?’

  Grace smiled. ‘Shall we do a process of elimination? Top of my list to eliminate is The King.’

  ‘Shame,’ Branson said with a broad grin. ‘Imagine the press coverage you’d get! Top Sussex copper arrests King Charles III as prime suspect in murder case! It would go viral. You’d instantly become the most famous detective in the world!’

  ‘I’m not sure it would be the smartest career move.’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘So, Lady Greaves. What reason would she have to lie?’

  ‘Trying to protect her late husband’s reputation? Or were they both in it together?’

  ‘In what, together?’ Grace quizzed.

  ‘In whatever the hell’s going on – the murder of Sir Peregrine, the murder of Geoffrey Bailey?’

  He nodded, reflectively. ‘That is a possibility, although I feel unlikely. Hopefully we’ll get a clearer picture soon.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Branson asked. ‘What’s your gut telling you?’

  ‘I think Lady Greaves was telling the truth. And The King was, too. Which means Sir Peregrine was lying.’

  ‘Why?’

  Grace thought for a moment. ‘John Gotti, former head of the New York Gambino family, and a major player across the New York Mafia families, famously said: I never lie because I don’t fear anyone. You only lie when you’re afraid.’

  ‘You think Sir Peregrine was afraid of something? Such as what, losing his life?’

  ‘Let’s consider the options. If he was one of the conspirators, he was afraid of getting caught. He wasn’t going to risk telling his wife because he knew she wouldn’t approve.’ Grace raised his eyebrows.

  ‘That’s one possibility,’ Branson conceded.

  ‘Option Two. He was suspicious that something was going on with some members of the Royal Household on the dark web. He wanted to have a look for himself, but was nervous of telling his wife for some reason – perhaps that she might be a gossip.’

  Branson nodded.

  ‘Option Three – he’d discovered what was going on and was scared for his own life if he confronted the conspirators. So instead he decided to take a secret deep dive into their activities.’

  Branson nodded again. ‘All plausible. But we’ve heard about his inappropriate relationship. And about the strange torch signalling in Sir Peregrine’s office late at night. We know the dark web is a place where you can get pretty much anything you want that you won’t find on sale in your local high street, or Amazon. Maybe he was just looking for company. Bailey had a crush on him, which was flattering, he didn’t say no. And it’s nothing to do with our enquiry. I mean, he’s sure not going to have told his wife that, and making it up that he was improving his computer coding skills at The King’s request would make it seem totally kosher.’

  Before Branson could respond, Grace’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but answered. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace.’

  ‘It’s Shannon,’ she said. ‘Are you free to talk?’

  ‘Go ahead.’ He put the phone on loudspeaker for Branson to hear.

  ‘Do you have Rose Cadoret on your list of Persons of Interest?’ she asked.

  ‘Rose Cadoret, the Deputy Director of the Royal Collection?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘She is very much on my list, Shannon. I’m hoping to interview her on Thursday.’

  ‘I’m working on getting more information, but from what I have so far, I would say definitely she’s one to watch. I’ll have more information for you by tomorrow.’

  ‘What can you tell me about her now, Shannon?’

  ‘I’ve only just come across her name, but it’s unusual, I wanted to make sure.’

  Grace spelled it out for her.

  ‘Yup,’ she said. ‘That’s her. Rose Cadoret.’

  ‘OK,’ Grace said, ‘I have another name for your list, to check out, too.’

  ‘Sure, who is it?’

  ‘Sir Jason Finch.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  87

  Wednesday 29 November 2023

  Rose Cadoret had come in early. She wanted to be here when there weren’t many people around, and before the workmen had started. Not that there would be any workmen in this part of the Palace, the south-west wing, today, nor for at least another month.

  Her ribs were hurting less today than they had yesterday. Smoke had told her she should go and see the Palace doctor, but she knew there was nothing you could do about bruised ribs, you just had to ride the pain out, avoid coughing, sneezing and laughing. And sleep on your back – easier said than done.

  She was tired and tetchy after a restless night and annoyed Smoke wasn’t here. He was on the night shift, due to finish at 7 a.m., which was five minutes ago, and just perfect timing for her plan. She stood, high on a corner some feet below the former footmen’s floor, on the steep, narrow wooden staircase, which she’d climbed two days ago with Smoke. It had been easier then, it hadn’t been so uncomfortable.

  She decided to go on, and wait for him higher up. She ducked under the strip of red and yellow tape carrying the warning sign EXTREME DANGER – KEEP OUT! Then she continued on to the top and stood, getting her breath back, sustained by the knowledge that in just two days’ time she would be on a plane, that gorgeous Airbus 380, it was called. Smoke had told her that you got your own private cabin, and there was a shower room big enough to swing a substantial animal in.

  Too bad he wouldn’t be joining her.

  She heard footsteps clumping up the stairs. Police boots. Then he came into view, all kitted up, with his weapons and his Kevlar vest and all the rest of his clobber. He was sweating and looked tired. Well, he had been up all night, and he’d told her many times that it wasn’t the late hours that got you, it was the boredom that dulled your brain.

  How dulled was it now? Very, she hoped.

  ‘Hey babe!’ His breath was rancid as he pecked her on the cheek. He smelled like unwashed laundry.

  As they had on Monday, they stood in front of the jagged, unguarded opening that had been bashed through the wall of the light shaft, with the grimy ceiling above them. Rose turned away from him, placed her hands either side of the opening, leaned in, and looked down. Checking.

  In the weak light, she could see at the very bottom the six thin steel spikes rising vertically several feet. The workmen from the lift company would be returning in a month or so when the renovations, under the guidance of Sir Tommy Magellan-Lacey, began in earnest on this wing.

  Until then it was all sealed off. But not forgotten. Certainly not by Rose Cadoret.

  ‘Why’ve you brought me up here again, babe?’ He looked at her expectantly, signalling he remembered they’d had sex here two days previously. ‘Cos you want me again?’

  She stepped back. ‘I read the highest distance onto a hard surface that a human can survive is a forty-foot drop,’ she said.

  ‘OK.’ He gave her a puzzled frown.

  ‘We have a big problem with Lorraine McKnight – as I’ve told you.’

  ‘It’s Exeat in two days. We’ll all be gone. Larging it in the sun. Rum sours for lunch. G&Ts and Negronis at sunset. Lorraine McKnight will be history. It’ll all be history. Their history, our future!’

  ‘You don’t seriously think Lorraine McKnight is simply going to go away, Jon? You were happy enough to off Geoffrey Bailey, who was a minnow, now you’re baulking at offing McKnight who is a Great White in comparison. Just tell me what you think – if I lured her up here and pushed her into the shaft, could we be one hundred per cent sure it would kill her? Like, is it high enough?’ she said.

  ‘Wouldn’t killing her just compound our problems?’

  ‘Like killing Geoffrey Bailey didn’t?’

  ‘Touché!’

  ‘This isn’t a fucking game, Jon, this is our future. All our futures. Which you’ve done your very best to screw.’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘The footings for the lift shaft were done a month ago. It will be at least another month before work starts on the lift itself. If Lorraine were to accidentally plunge down it, there’s a pretty good chance no one’s going to find her for at least a week or two – by which time we’ll be long, long gone.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘So tell me, Mr Crackshot Sniper. Tell me if you think the drop down the shaft is long enough to kill her – for sure?’

  He turned and, just as she had done, placed a hand on each wall, leaned in and looked down. ‘Difficult to see. Hang on.’ He pushed himself upright, removed his phone from his pocket and switched on the torch, then leaned in again, holding on with one hand and shining the torch with the other.

  ‘So you really think that drop would kill her?’

  ‘It would kill anyone.’

  ‘Good!’ she said. Then she slammed the heel of her palm into the underside of his chin with all her strength, snatching his phone from his hand at the same time as he lurched sideways trying to grasp at anything. Her own cry of pain drowned out his feeble yelp of surprise as he tumbled into the void.

  An instant later she heard a faint thud, like a sack of potatoes.

  Then she stood still for a moment, a little dizzy with surprise.

  He was gone.

  Actually gone.

  She leaned in, cautiously, warily, just in case he was hanging on a few inches below the top and might grab her. But he wasn’t.

  She shone the torch down the shaft, and saw him.

  He lay on his back at a strange angle. One of the steel spikes was sticking up through his neck, with blood pooling around. Another was through his right thigh.

  He looked bloated, as if he had put on thirty or forty pounds since falling. Then she realized, one of the spikes must have pierced his midriff before coming up against his Kevlar vest, which it was raising, grotesquely.

  He was still alive, she realized, to her horror. He was blinking, and his mouth was opening and closing, like a fish.

  Then it closed and didn’t open again.

  His eyes stopped blinking. They remained open. And stayed open.

  Silence. Beautiful silence.

  Thanks for the ride, pal. It was fun, really it was.

  She looked at his phone, which she held in her hand. She knew the code because she’d watched him, countless times, tapping it in. But far more importantly, inside the phone was his Bitcoin wallet app. And his thirty-five digit code inside that.

  She smiled. In the past couple of minutes, she’d gotten rid of the group’s liability. And massively increased her net worth.

  What was not to like?

  88

  Wednesday 29 November 2023

  Roy Grace had been at his desk in the Major Crime Team suite of Sussex Police HQ for just twenty minutes, preparing for yet another press briefing on Operation Asset. It was 7.25 a.m. Day ten since the shooting of Sir Peregrine Greaves, and he had nothing new to give to the press and media – well, nothing that he wanted to give out.

  Exhaustive house-to-house calls in the surrounding area had been carried out. Ballistics tests had not yet given them the exact make of weapon the shooter had used, and it was unlikely they would. The motorcycle seen by the eyewitness Sarah Stratten was still not identified, and nor was whoever had subsequently threatened Stratten.

  The murder of the royal footman, Geoffrey Bailey, gave him something fresh to talk about, and in today’s briefing he would explain how they were looking to see what connections they could find between the two dead men.

  After his call late yesterday afternoon with Shannon Kendall, he had googled Rose Cadoret, as well as asking ChatGPT-4 for any information it could come up with. But there wasn’t a lot from either of them. An only child, Rose Cadoret had obtained a BA in Art History at the Courtauld Institute, but then in somewhat of a contrast she enlisted in the Army as a soldier – not even on an officer training course – and did three tours in Afghanistan. After leaving the Army five years ago, she had joined the Royal Collection team at Buckingham Palace, rising – rather quickly, he thought – to become its Deputy Director.

  For much of the night he’d lain awake, fretting about the case, about what clues he might have missed. And just as importantly, who he could trust.

  But for now he had a much more pressing issue. Shannon Kendall’s rather cryptic choice of words about Rose Cadoret, yesterday.

  She’s one to watch.

  What did she mean, precisely? Was this going to give them the answer to why Rose’s name was coded in the diary?

  And what was Shannon going to discover about Sir Jason Finch?

  He didn’t have long to wait to find out. His phone started ringing, and this time a name appeared on the display instead of just the number.

  Shannon Kendall

  89

  Wednesday 29 November 2023

  ‘Good morning, Shannon,’ he answered.

  ‘You ever play Monopoly?’ she retorted, straight in.

  ‘Monopoly? Yes, I did. Every Christmas in the evening with my family, when I was a kid. Why?’

  ‘Good. So you’ll understand what a Get Out of Jail Free card is?’

  ‘I probably had a few in my time.’ He found himself making a mental note that he and Cleo should get a Monopoly board, and teach Noah and one day Molly, and do the same, play it on Christmas evening, all engaging with each other instead of the usual thing of flopping in front of the television and falling asleep.

  ‘Like, what I mean is, I think you’re going to agree that this – what I’m about to tell you – is your vindication for springing me from prison.’

  ‘It is? Tell me!’

  ‘Rose Cadoret, right?’

  ‘What have you found out about her?’

  ‘She’s a former soldier. Saw action in Kabul where she came under fire. She has a pretty impressive military background, which may or may not be significant, because that’s how she ended up at Buckingham Palace – following a Royal Protection Officer she had an on-off relationship with, who was in the same regiment. Her former commanding officer in that regiment is now a senior member of the Royal Household, Sir Jason Finch. All very cosy, the old-boy network and all that, not that there’s anything necessarily suspicious in that. But here’s where we cut to the chase. Everyone makes mistakes, that’s human. Even the cleverest person. I’m sure you as a cop know that better than most, right?’

  ‘Yep, very true.’ Grace could think of dozens of examples. A pair of discarded surgical gloves found in a bin outside the home of a murder victim. The forensically aware offender thought he was clever, wearing those gloves. He hadn’t realized his DNA was all over the insides of them.

  Ronnie Biggs was identified by fingerprints on a bottle of Heinz ketchup on the kitchen table at Leatherslade Farm, the hideout of the Great Train Robbers. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was stopped for driving without a licence plate. Ted Bundy’s first arrest was because he’d forgotten to put his headlights on. The list was endless.

  ‘I told you at my flat about the auction on the dark web?’

  ‘The Anne of Cleves miniature – by Hans Holbein.’

  ‘Hans Holbein the Younger,’ she corrected.

  He smiled. She said it like a teacher correcting an errant pupil. ‘The Younger,’ he repeated.

  ‘OK, I’ve still not got to the bottom of whoever is actually running the auction, but I have made inroads. Someone very tech savvy is behind the way it’s set up, but they’ve made one small mistake, through an IP – Internet Protocol – address. You’d have to be looking extremely hard to find it. And I mean extremely. It’s buried deep beneath several firewall layers – which I’ve navigated through. That’s part of what I do. Which not many people can.’

  Grace listened intently.

  ‘That IP address is for an internet account with an email address for someone called Gisella Standing. Gisella Standing is a real person, German-born from Dusseldorf, married to an Englishman and they live in Reigate in Surrey. She’s a dentist and her husband is a maxillofacial surgeon. But Gisella Standing, almost certainly unaware of it, is an internet alias for Rose Cadoret, Deputy Director of the Royal Collection. Gisella might get the occasional email that makes no sense and she’d just bin it, assuming it was spam.’

  ‘For what reason would Rose Cadoret use an alias?’ Grace asked.

  ‘There could be a number of reasons. A lot of people use aliases when surfing the net – particularly people looking at porn sites who don’t want to take the risk of being entrapped by blackmailers. Or simply because they are well known and they want to be anonymous. That’s a very plausible scenario for Rose Cadoret and nothing sinister about it. Her position as Deputy Director of the Royal Collection makes her a high-profile individual in the art world. If she wanted to make an acquisition on behalf of the Royal Collection, the moment she gives her name, the dealer’s eyes are going to light up with pound signs. Kerchinggggggg! The price has gone up twenty per cent before she opens negotiations.’

  ‘I get that.’

  ‘So far so good for Rose Cadoret. But then I went a little off-piste, and that’s where it gets more interesting. I thought I’d take a look at her personal finances.’

  ‘You hacked her bank account?’

  ‘I didn’t need to. I found out who she banks with – easy enough. OK, I told a bit of a fib – a white lie, right – to my lovely police Financial Investigator I was assigned to – Emily. I told her that Rose Cadoret was now a suspect in a major internet fraud scam, involving her bank and it was time critical. She spoke to her bank and, what do you know, I got all her account details through late last night.’