Read Chameleon - A City of London Thriller Online

Authors: J Jackson Bentley

Tags: #thriller, #london, #bodyguard, #vastrick

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BOOK: Chameleon - A City of London Thriller
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The rabbit
darted across the opening, zigzagging to throw off any potential
predator, and Gillian fired. The rabbit heard the shot and leapt
into the air using all four legs for propulsion, another natural
and instinctive manoeuvre to avoiding being caught. Unfortunately
for the rabbit, Gillian had anticipated a leap and had aimed high.
The rabbit caught the round in mid jump, and the velocity of the
bullet carried it even higher and into the bushes.

Gillian did
not bother collecting the rabbit. There wouldn’t be much of it left
anyway after falling prey to a .308 calibre shell.

***

Having
deposited the rifle back in the hunting lodge where Uncle Nick made
his home, Gillian wandered through the woods in direction of the
manor house, where she lived with her parents. Gillian didn’t know
how many acres the manor house, grounds, hunting lodge, woods and
fields covered but she knew it must be over three hundred, given
the time it took to drive around it in the Land Rover.

Gillian was a
rather solitary child, her strict parents believing that her
prospective friends were beneath her and lacked the necessary
status to be real friends. Instead she was obliged to attend a
private school with equally privileged kids, most of who were
intellectually stunted. Gillian put it down to
in-breeding.

At school
Gillian was considered to be brilliant in maths and the sciences.
She was competent in the humanities and average at sport, except of
course anything that involved hand to eye coordination.

Gillian was on
the county teams for Target Archery, Field Archery and shooting.
She had medals in all three events, two of them at national junior
champion level. She even had an outside chance of competing in the
upcoming Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.

Despite all of
her success she was mostly miserable, and her times riding,
shooting and fishing with her gamekeeper uncle provided her
happiest memories.

Gillian heard
a noise behind her, but before she could turn around a strong arm
was around her throat. The man holding her lifted her off her feet
and she began to black out from a lack of oxygen reaching her
brain. The man dragged her into the bushes, took his right arm from
around her throat and pushed his right hand inside her clothing,
grabbing at her developing breasts. She tried to scream but now his
left hand was over her mouth. Once her blouse and bra were pulled
aside revealing her post pubescent torso, the man came around in
front of her and stared at her exposed flesh before pushing her to
her knees.

A few minutes
later the assailant uttered a guttural groan and looked down at
Gillian one more time before slapping her, replacing his genitalia
and running off. Gillian was left sobbing and trying to rearrange
her clothes to restore her dignity. Whilst the man had not raped
her, he had forced her to commit an act that was equally
disgusting. Gillian wiped her mouth on her sleeve, trying to erase
the taste of him. During the whole episode the man had merely
grunted. He had never uttered a word. His face had been concealed
the whole time by his balaclava. Even so, she knew exactly who he
was. It was Les Vaughan from the village; unemployed, part time
poacher and renowned wife beater.

Gillian knew
she should report the incident to her parents, but they were not
the type of people with whom she felt able to discuss this sort of
thing. She needed Uncle Nick, but he wouldn’t be back from the
races until tonight. So she headed wearily back to the lodge to
clean herself up and so avoid being questioned by her
parents.

***

Once she had
cleaned herself, Gillian took her fleece from the hook in the hall
of the lodge and left, locking the door behind her. She had walked
only a few yards when she heard a squealing sound. When she
investigated she found a large hare trapped in a poacher’s wire
snare. The harder the hare pulled, the tighter the wire noose
around its leg became.

Gillian was
scared. She knew that when the poacher heard the noise he would
come running to collect his prize. She needed to get away as
quickly as possible and so she ran back to the Lodge, locking
herself in.

She was in the
lodge for only a minute or two when she had an epiphany. She knew
what she must do. She decided that she would never again allow
herself to be a victim. She knew if she did nothing about the
assault she would regret it for the rest of her life. If freedom
from vermin like Les Vaughan meant facing her fears, then so be
it.

***

Les Vaughan
heard the sound of a hare screaming. It had obviously been caught
in one of his snares. He headed in the direction of the noise. His
shotgun was broken, the barrel hanging over his arm to avoid any
accidents. He clubbed the hare with a lead filled sap and set about
cutting it free. Hare wasn’t the best of game meat, but it would be
fine in a casserole.


Hey, Les, I
knew it was you,” Gillian shouted from twenty yards away, looking
over the branch of a tree.


Oh. I see
you enjoyed it so much you came back for more!” Les laughed and
gestured with his groin.


You aren’t
going to get away with it,” Gillian shouted, with some
bravado.


Oh yes I am,
you little bitch! You say anything and I’ll kill you and then your
whole family. Understand?” Anger underpinned the threat, making it
sound real.


I wasn’t
going to tell anyone, Les, I was just going to stop you getting
away with it.” There was a hint of triumph in her voice that Les
failed to pick up until he saw the rifle resting on the tree branch
and pointing in his direction.

In one swift
move he flicked the shotgun closed and cocked both barrels, raising
it in Gillian’s direction, but he was too late and he knew it. A
look of horror crossed his face in the fleeting seconds before what
had been his face was destroyed by a .308 calibre round as it hit
him above the bridge of his nose before exiting at the back of his
head, with a goodly proportion of Les’s brain following
it.

Gillian walked
over to the lifeless body of her attacker and stamped on his
genitals.


So that’s
what it’s like killing another human being,” she thought to
herself.

***

Nick Davis was
almost forty. His only marriage had failed years ago and the only
worthwhile thing in his life was his niece. He loved her with all
of his heart; she was more like a daughter than a niece. She was
beautiful and clever. She would do well for herself, he thought,
better than any Davis had before her, and he intended to make sure
of it. To see her so distressed as she described the earlier attack
she had endured made him feel simultaneously angry and
helpless.

He was
disgusted by what she had been subjected to, and reflected that if
she hadn’t killed Les he would most certainly have done so himself,
but Nick would have taken his time over it. Les would have
suffered; he would have made quite sure of that. There was,
however, one more thing he could do to protect his
niece.

Nick had taken
Gillian home, and on the journey he explained what he was going to
do. She just smiled at him and hugged him.


I love you,
Uncle Nick,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. Nick blushed,
knowing that anything he had to do to protect his niece would be
worth it.

***

The next
morning Nick stood by as the scene of crimes officer declared that
it looked like a suicide, and that it had probably happened
yesterday afternoon when Nick was at the races.

The man in
charge seemed to be Sergeant Grahame, who was everyone’s idea of
the avuncular country policeman. In Nick’s favour, Les Vaughan had
been responsible for about half of the Sergeant’s workload since he
was a kid.


It looks
like he had a few drinks. He stinks of whisky, and this empty
bottle has his prints all over it. Then he evidently sat against
this tree, placed the both barrels under his chin and blew his
brains out with his shotgun. There is GSR all over his hands -
sorry, gun shot residue. Using both barrels means he has pretty
much ruled out the need for a post mortem, because there isn’t much
left of him to examine.”

Nick had no
regrets about using Les’s own shotgun to obscure the real cause of
Vaughan’s death, but he did wonder what impact the shooting of
another human being would have on his sweet natured
niece.

Two weeks
later, after a cursory and largely unsympathetic investigation, the
eventual official conclusion was that Les had committed suicide. To
the despair of his parents, his wife refused to attend the
funeral.

Chapter
1
3

Tallgarth
Manor, Stratfield Turgis, Hampshire. 2003

Gil, as she
was now known to her colleagues had returned to the family home,
not to see her parents but to see Uncle Nick. He was still only
middle aged, almost fifty, but cancer had eaten away at his insides
for years and, being a tough countryman, he had never considered
seeing a doctor, until it was too late.

Incurable and
inoperable was the prognosis that had brought Gil running to the
only man she had ever really cared for in her short life. Two years
ago Nick had written his will, stating his desire to pass all of
his worldly belongings to his niece on his demise, and a family row
had ensued.

Gillian had
been told in no uncertain terms that whilst she was their daughter
the family estate must pass to a male heir, her cousin Raymond
Madison. She asked whether this was because she was adopted. Her
parents answered yes with their eyes while saying no with their
words. Nick had been disgusted when he was told that his share of
the Davis estate was held in a trust that could only be divested if
all trustees agreed. Gillian’s father, Harold, was the other
trustee.

Nick had hit
back by using his trust funds to send Gillian to the best
university possible to study combined sciences, when her parents
wanted her to attend Reading University and study land management.
Since then, relations between all concerned had been cordial but
strained.

Gil wandered
through the woods towards the lodge and entered into the clearing
that the locals called ‘the pasture’, largely because deer could
often be found grazing here. As she broke through the ash, elm and
oak trees into the clearing she saw Nick kneeling beside a
distressed roe deer fawn, which was lying on the ground.

Gil walked
slowly and quietly towards the scene so as not to alarm the fawn,
and saw that Nick was massaging its belly and pushing occasionally.
The poor fawn was sweating and trembling, its eyes wide in fear and
pain. Nick continued his work patiently and unerringly, not even
acknowledging his niece’s presence, and then miraculously the fawn
bleated, shuddered and tried to get to its feet. Uncle Nick
steadied the fawn as it first stood and then began to walk
uncertainly, but before long the little deer regained full mobility
and darted off.


What was
that all about, Nick?” Gil asked as she hugged her ailing uncle and
kissed him gently on each cheek. Nick pointed at a brightly
coloured plant that had leaves the shape of dock leaves and a
stunning red clover like flower. It was probably a weed but it was
pretty.


Redweed,”
Nick answered knowledgably. “It was probably named after the plant
of the same name in HG Wells’ book War of the Worlds, except that
this redweed is very real and very toxic.”

Nick pulled
the weed and handed it to Gil.


It’s OK to
touch, but if it’s ingested it can be fatal. Years ago my dad
catalogued the redweed and sent a sample to Kew Gardens, who hadn’t
seen it before. They concluded it was probably a hybrid, local to
the area. It seems it has medicinal qualities similar to the poppy,
which can produce morphine, opium and cocaine. Kew Gardens gave it
a Latin name; Stylophorum Belgae, which is a combination of
Stylophorum, the genus of the tree poppy, and Belgae, the Roman
name for this area of Roman Britain.”


So how did
you save the fawn, if the weed is so deadly?”


Come on,
Gillian, you’re the chemist. You tell me.”


OK, my guess
would be that the active ingredients are deadly when distilled or
taken in large enough doses, but the symptoms are transitory if
taken in small doses.”

Nick smiled.
He loved this girl. He was glad that she wouldn’t be tied to this
dying estate; she had a greater calling, in his opinion.

Nick explained
that the symptoms of redweed included partial or total paralysis.
First the local area is paralysed, usually the mouth and nose due
to the high concentration of exposed pores in both, then the
paralysis moves down the body as the poison passes into the gut.
Fortunately it is usually ingested in small quantities because of
the bitter taste, and so the paralysis is usually temporary.
Unfortunately, one of the first areas hit is respiration and so the
victim has to force air into their body by using the diaphragm,
because the automatic breathing mechanisms are frozen or
numbed.


By forcing
the fawn to inhale and exhale air by pressing on its diaphragm, I
was able to keep it alive until the paralysis wore off,” he
concluded.

BOOK: Chameleon - A City of London Thriller
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