‘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.