The Hanging Three. Book Two in the Detective Veronica Reason Series

By Jefferson Merrick

It is not often a senior police officer is handed a file that is ready to prosecute, down to the last tiny detail. Veronica Reason is the target of an assassin, sent to silence her from prying into a case about which she knows absolutely nothing. The attempt on her life prompts her to delve into the dormant case, opening a whole can of worms for the perpetrators who live to rue the day they tried to silence her. Follow Veronica Reason and her police team as she draws the culprits into her net and exacts a fitting form of revenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jefferson Merrick
• Release date: Jul 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370774081

Jefferson Merrick

I am a retired airline pilot. I ran an exclusive yacht charter business in my spare time for many years. I am now living and teaching in Thailand. My spare time is busily occupied with writing. Eight books so far, more to follow.

Book preview

Prologue

The plans of Kings and commoners hang by such a slender thread. Anon.

It’s been two weeks since Chalbrook’s arrest. How is that bloody woman still alive? I thought you said you could rely on him to fix it. What can he do from inside prison?

The heavy set, balding man paced behind the solid oak desk in his well-appointed office. Leather chairs and sofas with bookshelves around the walls gave the room the look of a club in the heart of the city. The office occupied the top floor of the western corner of the Department of Education building on Lower Market Street, in London. In one of the overstuffed Chesterfield chairs sat Ian Harmison. He studied the Permanent Secretary as he paced across the Wilton carpet. He considered his response carefully. His boss did not take kindly to failure. Since he, the Finance Director, suggested his friend Chalbrook as being the man to solve their dilemma several weeks ago, he knew he trod on thin ice. It all seemed so simple when they formulated the plan to silence Veronica Reason permanently. But that had been before Chalbrook’s arrest.

Sir, I went to see him a few days ago. He assured me that he has given the job to a reliable man. They shared a cell for a couple of weeks and they released his man few days ago. Chalbrook told me that it will happen in the next few days. I suggest we do nothing for now.  His charges relate to corruption, extortion and bribery and have nothing to do with us. He is sure we are not under investigation although if we were, Chalbrook might know nothing about it. It would be the Met doing that, if anyone. It’s the press that are hounding us, not them. In any event, there is no connection to us. I made certain of that. Reason is still a valid target.

The Minister for Education sat in his own chair and rested his elbows on the heavy oak desk. He stabbed at the air between them with a fat finger, his face contorted with rage.

We agreed to silence this cow months ago. There is no way of telling if she has the computer with Reason’s evidence on it or not but we cannot take the chance. You were the one who told me he made a copy. It could only be Reason. He will have given her the copy, for sure.  She is sitting on it until the time is right, I’m sure of it. We can still carry on since it’s all automatic now but we need to be sure we get that copy. If she opens her mouth before we shut it then you know what will happen to us. I simply cannot allow that to happen.

The Finance Director paused for a moment before saying,

Reason will be out of the picture in a few days and we will have the computer in our possession. Now is not the time to panic or change the plan. Chalbrook is just a small cog in the wheel that is in motion on this, Sir. Try to calm down and within a week all this will be over.

You better be right. There is just too much at stake here if this gets out. I hold you responsible for this if it goes wrong, Harmison.

Harmison considered the veiled threat. It had not been his idea to skim the tiny amount of money from the budget; it had been his boss, the man in front of him. The budget ran to billions of pounds. The skim, so infinitesimally small, would go unnoticed. They began four years ago. Until an accounts clerk noticed the tiny discrepancy, everything went to plan. The clerk disappeared in vaguely suspicious circumstances soon after he reported it. A few months later, a call came from London, warning Harmison. The caller gave them details of the secret police investigation. He warned them that Detective Chief Inspector Cephus Reason planned to arrest them within days. The death of the detective occurred a week later at considerable expense. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death several weeks later so they were off the hook. Off the hook until a mole at The Met recently looked over some closed files. He noticed that someone copied the Reason file before the mole destroyed it himself, almost a year ago.

That changed things considerably. Harmison suspected that Cephus Reason or one of his team copied them to a hard drive. Who better to entrust the evidence to than his wife? She was a serving police officer. He needed to activate Plan B, hence the hit on his wife. With her gone, they would be free and clear. At least, that was the theory.

Chapter One

Wednesday

The shooter, dressed in grey and black, walked to his chosen hiding spot. He had visited the site the evening before, scoping out the location and lighting. He was happy that he could do the job and get away without being seen. This would be one of the easier shoots, he decided. He would wait behind the electrical distribution box. His target would approach from the North-East. For a moment he thought he was late. A figure jogged towards him in the darkness, squelching in the mud. He leaned on the distribution box, ready to withdraw his weapon. A tall, young black man, rail thin, jogged past him and disappeared over the footbridge. The shooter relaxed. He sat on a tiny fishing stool. He would fold it closed and tuck it under his arm after he killed the target. He knew his target jogged five or six times a week because Chalbrook had told him as much. She jogged on Tuesday at the same time. He positioned himself at his chosen spot on Wednesday evening, just before seven. The grey evening light had long ago faded to darkness but it did not matter. Fluorescent lights stationed around fifty feet apart illuminated the pathway alongside the railway. The strip light above the first few steps of the footbridge provided a perfect spotlight on his chosen kill zone.

****

Detective Superintendent Veronica Reason had recently celebrated her forty-third birthday. She tied the laces on her running shoes. Time permitting; she stuck to her daily routine of jogging. She ran for almost an hour every day. Most days it was before work but this week she had been forced to arrive early due to the amount of paperwork she had on her desk. She had no idea that it might come close to her last run. How can anyone know the future? Veronica Reason’s reputation as leader of the Bristol and South-West Serious Crime Squad had recently been much elevated. She felt good with herself for recently putting a bad man behind bars. The margin between life and death for Veronica that night would be a hair’s breadth.

She ran because she loved to run, not because she wanted to keep in shape. The police officers assigned to her station in Bristol had remarked on her trim, shapely figure. She wore respectable skirts, just above her knees and a jacket tailored to fit. She did not consider them provocative; she just liked them to fit. She carried her voluminous leather handbag wherever she went. It carried her police paraphernalia so her waistline remained unencumbered with equipment. She never noticed the admiring glances sent her way. Her preoccupation with her work meant she missed a lot of trivia. She missed almost nothing that mattered. She pinned her chestnut, shoulder length hair back and wrapped a blue scrunchie around the tail of hair. She set her Korean made phone to play her jogging music and plugged in her ear buds. She walked out of the front door, and slammed it shut behind her. She repeated a ritual that she followed every time she left home since she moved in over six months ago. It took two seconds and she never missed it. She did it the first day she moved into the house and now it became ingrained in her routine.

Her home sat close up to the bank of the mainline railway from the city of Bristol to the south-west of England. She chose it because she could afford the rent and because of the quiet location. Her house sat at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac and not too close to the neighbours. The mainline railway passed the bottom of the garden but the noise did not disturb her. She spent little time in the garden. The sunlit rear garden provided a private spot where she could lounge and get some privacy and some sun. On sunny afternoons, she lay naked on the sun-lounger to soak up the afternoon sun. Her skin had a faint glow of tan, even now at the end of November.

She set off on her regular route. She jogged out of the cul-de-sac and around the row of large detached houses to her right. Then she ran between two houses onto the muddy footpath next to the railway embankment. She continued along the quiet footpath for almost a mile. A concrete footbridge across the railway line gave her a moment's pause. After the bridge the route took her to a large park with a ten-acre coppice of trees on a slight rise. Twice round the coppice and home again made up her daily circuit. She completed the six and a half mile run in around fifty-five minutes. Today it would be different.

Veronica got used to living alone. Her previous boss, once a staunch supporter, prompted her move from London over six months ago. Six months before her move to Bristol, her husband and two daughters died in a horrific car crash. She took time off to recover. She sought redemption in wine bottles. She had been a hard-working, conscientious officer, rooting out corruption in the Met. After four months off work, she found some redemption in the encompassing arms of her doctor. It proved temporary. He moved to Australia only weeks later.

Her earlier investigations rooted out several corrupt officers and put her in the spotlight as the least liked officer on the force. She pursued the bent coppers. She overlooked nothing and no one, ignoring their rank. Every name that crossed her desk came under suspicion, until she proved otherwise to her own satisfaction. Officers went without fuss or found themselves summoned to a tribunal. She issued Red notices from her office on an almost weekly basis but still fought a losing battle.  New suspects arrived on her desk with monotonous regularity.

A major problem arose when she targeted the wrong man, the Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police Force. Veronica found enough evidence to dismiss him but he had powerful friends in high places in the force. In spite of her testimony to the tribunal, they ruled that he should continue in his post. Veronica would not accept the decision. It caused endless disagreement with her superiors. They told her to drop it but she continued. Like a terrier with a rag, she pulled and ripped at the case to uncover yet more evidence of the police officer’s misdeeds. A week later, the deadly accident occurred on a bright autumn morning that changed her life forever. She spiralled into a trough of drunken despair.

Six months after the crash, Veronica was ready to return to her job. Her Chief told her the job was no longer hers. The vacancy had been filled. He suggested she was not cut out for the Met. He suggested she move on. Veronica took the hint and looked around for a new beginning, away from London. She found a vacancy in Bristol. The Chief readily approved her application, glad to be rid of her. Before she left, she was summoned to the Home Office. They had a job for an officer with her talents. For six months, she worked on the direct instruction of the Home Secretary. Her second job was to investigate the Chief Constable in Bristol and South-West. She arrested him, Chalbrook, a week ago in spectacular and public fashion.

The Chief Constable had scheduled a press conference. He wanted to congratulate Reason and her team on the arrest of a double murderer. The press wanted details of the spectacular chase across the Somerset Levels. Veronica took the opportunity to expose the man in the full glare of the TV lights. The Points West TV studio overlooked the steps of the Police Headquarters in Portishead. Veronica did not enjoy being in the spotlight. She accepted that if she did the unpleasant job then she would have to accept the public exposure.

The trains travelled at reduced speed along this stretch of track. It was close to the city centre station. Trains were limited to thirty miles an hour. She assumed there must be a speed limit, hence the trains made little noise as they passed her house. Her phone played rhythmic jogging music on shuffle as she set off just after seven on the cold November evening. She did not mind the mud and drizzle, she just needed the exercise to get her blood pumping. She did not really listen to the music. Her mind churned the facts and the evidence she and Sergeant Mitchell Meadows discussed earlier. The investigation into The Chief Constable unearthed more than she first expected. Chalbrook now languished in jail awaiting trial. The CPS had charged him with corruption, extortion, bribery and misuse of police property. He also faced eleven counts of sexual misconduct. Veronica felt certain more WPCs would come forward since the Chief’s name became common knowledge. What she did not know was that there were other senior officers involved. Veronica’s investigation uncovered the fact that Chalbrook was not alone. Two other senior officers in his division had abused female officers. Veronica and Meadows needed to tread with delicate steps before they made their findings known to the man in the Home Office.

Tomorrow two more interviewees were to visit her office. She wanted to make sure she had all the evidence lined up. She was ready to arrest the Assistant Chief Constable, Simon Schuster. Nicknamed, rather unflatteringly as, Bookworm. She was certain these two female officers provided sexual favours in return for rapid promotion. She just needed to get the facts straight before she went any further with it. The senior officer in her sights, Schuster, she once counted as a trusted colleague. She visited his home one evening, not long after she arrived in Bristol, for dinner. She quite liked his wife and kept in infrequent contact with her. She hated this kind of thing but it had to be rooted out, for everyone’s sake. She rehearsed her line of questioning once again, determined not to frighten the young women more than they already were. Constables never relished a call to a Detective Superintendent’s office. It usually meant trouble. She would do her best to handle them with care and consideration.

Veronica increased her pace as she approached the footbridge over the railway. The bridge marked the one-mile point on her run. The park lay just beyond the bridge. She hated running over the railway track when a train passed underneath. A childish phobia made her adjust her timing to avoid such an event. She would jog in place at the bottom of the steps if a train happened to be anywhere close to the bridge. She did not like the bridge since she already tripped on the narrow concrete steps more than once. The first occasion she scraped her shin and stopped running for a week. She approached it with a lot more caution now. She would take the steps one at a time instead of two as she did in the past. She glanced over her shoulder, saw nothing on the track to bother her. She decided to take the bridge on the fly. She could see an approaching train from the south-west but it looked to be well over half a mile away. She decided she had plenty of time to cross the bridge. She accelerated a little.

Chapter Two

Wednesday night.

The shooter saw her approaching. He ducked further behind the concealment, invisible in the sharp shadow thrown by the nearby overhead light. He heard the tinny music from her earphones as she approached. She squelched the muddy path underfoot as she passed close by him. Her footfalls kept time with the music. He stepped out of his cover after she passed by, oblivious to her surroundings with the music in her ears. She had fifteen feet to run to the bottom of the steps. He waited until she had two paces to run to the first step. He raised his nine-millimetre automatic, centred the sight on the back of her neck, and fired. As he squeezed the trigger, his cell phone trilled in his jacket pocket, distracting him for a split second. His right hand went to his pocket and felt the gentle vibration. He had a message. He would look later. He looked up again and prepared to fire a second shot when he saw the woman smash into the concrete steps. The woman made almost no noise on impact apart from a rush of air exhaling. Her head cracked into the third step, blood splashed on the pebbled concrete. She lay still, sprawled in an unnatural pose. Blood seeped from her head onto the step, black in the pale light. The shooter stepped towards her and waited. She would not need another shot. One bullet to the head always proved fatal. The second shot he put in them as insurance. But why waste a shell? She was dead.

The shooter moved to his right and pulled out a pencil thin torch. He walked in a tight circle while looking down at the ground. He stopped, bent down, and retrieved the ejected shell casing from the path. He put the casing in the right hand pocket of his jacket. He glanced once more at his victim, noted the expanding pool of blood around her head, and walked away. He had only yards to go to get to Milton Lane, off to his left. He made his way along the short, puddled lane back to his car parked on the road some thirty yards away. He had parked mid-way between two street lamps, to avoid the light. He glanced across the road at the well-lit late night mini supermarket. He decided the light would not reach him across the width of the street. A well-laden customer exited the shop as the door slid aside. He heard Indian or Asian music drift across the street through the open door. He sat in the car and sent a text message to a stored number, ‘job done’. He drove away without haste, arousing no suspicion.

He drove back along the M4 at seventy miles an hour. He looked forward to getting back in the arms of Sonia, his wife of six years and mother to his two children. He stopped at Chieveley Services, filled the tank to the top, and parked in a quiet corner of the car park. He transferred the wrapped gun to the well under the spare wheel. He went inside the brightly lit services for a toilet break and a cup of tea. He took the tea with him, sat in his car with the windows open, and smoked two cigarettes. He never saw the woman’s face but she had a good figure. He had admired her backside in her jogging pants. He thought of a bowling ball as she moved away from him. He guessed she might be about thirty by the way she moved. He dismissed any further thoughts and turned his attention to what he would do with the five grand he would get tomorrow. Maybe a holiday in the sun for the family would be in order; perhaps the Costa Brava. He tossed the spent cigarette out of the window and resumed his journey. He had some phone calls to make. He needed a regular job. He was done with crime; he wanted to go straight now. He missed his wife and kids too much to risk going back inside. Sonia had promised him delights he could only dream of when inside. She had waxed her pubic hair, stunning him with her new collection of sexy underwear. He hardened at the thought of what he would do with her when he got home. On Sunday she had ridden him to exhaustion. She drained him more times than he could count, such was her lust after so long an abstention. His speed crept up just a fraction. Anyway, he was sick of killing people, people who had probably done nothing more than piss off the wrong person. He made it to his London home in Woodford by ten o'clock.

Chapter Three

Wednesday night.

Veronica lay on the cold concrete for six minutes. A tall, lean black African man jogged over the bridge from the park side. He stopped as he reached the top of the steps. Looking down, he saw the recumbent figure in front of him. He skipped down the steps, stopping close to her head. He carefully and expertly examined the inert body, feeling her neck for a pulse. He opened her left eye and saw the pupil contract from the overhead light. He noted the blood oozing from a wound on the back of her head. He also noted the considerable amount of blood on the step that came from her face. He delved in his tracksuit top, withdrew his cell phone and immediately called for an ambulance.

As a qualified nurse, Jengo Kwesi had seen a lot of blood, both real and simulated. He worked at Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital. He had been there for almost seven years. As the senior nurse in the ER he had plenty of experience of this sort of injury. Friday nights provided the ER with lots of practice after the pubs closed. Fights, accidents and plain drunken stupidity presented at their busy department with monotonous regularity. He estimated the loss at about a pint. Gauging blood loss in the open had never proven easy. Some dripped off the steps onto the bare earth below. He decided not to move her. She lay face-down with her left arm trailing behind her. Her right arm crooked under her head, protecting her from the fall. She faced to her left; her hair scraped back from her face. He examined her neck, looking for obvious fractures; he found nothing. He decided he could risk turning her head an inch to one side to allow him access to the gash on her right cheek. It oozed blood onto the step. He would wait for the ambulance crew to arrive before he did anything else. She might well have a serious neck injury. He re-examined the wound on the back of her head, parting her matted hair. He had seen bullet wounds before. He felt certain the passage of a bullet had ground the shallow groove on the top of her head. He recalled the emergency services and told them to send the police as well as an ambulance. He told them the victim had a gunshot wound to her head.

Don’t worry. I’ll stay wiv’er. She’ll be fine, promise. I’m a nurse. It’s my job to stay and look after her. Just hurry along will you, it’s cold out here.

He continued to examine the rest of her; at least, what he could access as she lay on her side. He tore the small hand towel he wore around his neck into thin strips. As he pulled at the thin cotton, he noted a swelling of her left ankle. She had not been jogging on that, he thought. She must have sprained it in the fall. He looked back and saw the slightly raised tree root on the path. He knew it lay there, almost hidden; he avoided it every evening for the past seven years. He found four hairgrips in her hair and used them to pinch the flesh on her cheek together. He bandaged the wound on her cheek, squeezing the open tear together as best he could. He left the wound on her head exposed. It almost stopped bleeding and posed no threat. He used his phone to take a few pictures of his handiwork.

Jengo covered the woman's upper body with his jogging suit top. He wore a sleeveless vest. He decided that would be enough for him in spite of the evening chill. His young body could take it. She needed to stay warm. He heard the distinctive wail of the ambulance siren in the distance in the still air. He looked at his watch. They would be here in a couple of minutes. He sat on the step next to her head and held pressure on the deep gash on her cheek. Her breathing stayed regular and even, her pulse steady. She would live. His eye caught a depression on the front of the step next to his elbow. He touched it, the powdery concrete stuck to his finger. This looked fresh. It struck him in a flash, 'this is where the bullet hit the bridge'. Seconds later, the ambulance jolted along the short lane and stopped in front of him. The headlights illuminated the two figures on the bridge. The two paramedics jumped out and rushed to the stricken victim.

Hey, Jengo. What are you doing here?

Jengo stayed on the step, cradling her head with his hand applying pressure to the wound on her face. He held his hand up to his eyes, shielding them from the glare. He saw the men as they approached him.

"Hello, Charlie, Kevin. Fancy meeting