Chameleon - A City of London Thriller

by J Jackson Bentley

  “Evening, Mr Mitchinson.” The formal greeting came from a well built man of indeterminate age who lacked a single hair anywhere on his head or face. His shiny bald pate shone under the streetlight.

  “Right, then. Let’s get this gate open and get out of this wind.”

  Trevor fiddled with the lock for a minute before declaring, “Someone has changed the padlock. I can’t get in. We’ll have to go down the side entrance if you don’t mind, sir.”

  Barry shivered as he pushed his hands deep into his old Crombie overcoat. The woollen scarf around his neck was offering some protection from the cold, but his face was almost numb. They reached the side entrance.

  “Bloody hell! The lock’s been changed here as well. You know, I bet those idiots in maintenance have put the wrong padlocks on the station doors. I wouldn’t mind betting that if we went to Temple we’d find the Strand padlocks on the wrong gates.” The man paused as he placed the keys back in his pockets. “I hope you don’t mind tight spaces,” he said, leading him back the way they had come.

  Barry huddled into his coat and followed Trevor to the Aldwych and the old fire exit door.

  “Hoo-bloody-ray!” the Transport for London operative hooted loudly as the door opened. The two men entered and began to descend the narrow stairway to the platform level. A faint but rather unpleasant aroma met them on the breeze.

  “What’s that smell?” Barry asked, turning his nose up.

  “Buggered if I know,” the old underground worker responded. “It smells like yesterday’s barbeque.”

  Trevor Deacon took a long hard look at the door leading to the rail line. Signs of recent burning were all too obvious. Kids, he thought to himself.

  ***

  Barry didn’t like fieldwork at the best of times, and if his career had not been at risk he would never have entered this pit of a staircase. He was panicking in a way he had never done before, and only his pride prevented him from screaming out, demanding to be freed from this claustrophobic hell.

  Trevor took his time opening the door and the pungent, rancid smell reached their noses even more strongly, but not before the charred remains of Tim came into sight.

  “My God, is that Tim? Is he dead?” Barry spluttered uselessly.

  “Hang on, I’ll check for a pulse.” The older man leaned closer to the body that looked more like a charcoal sculpture than a human body.

  “You’re joking surely?” Barry exclaimed.

  “Of course I am, you prat!” All respect had disappeared from his voice. Norman leaned forward, being careful not to touch anything. “Did your man wear a Rolex?”

  “Yes, an Oyster, I believe. Why?”

  “Well, good news there, then.” There was a pause. “It’s still working.”

  ***

  Twenty minutes later the tunnel was filled with bodies, all alive except for Tim, whose metal service tags had survived the incineration. There were representatives from the Transport Police, Transport for London, the Health and Safety Executive and an MI5 duty officer.

  Barry had tried fruitlessly to rein things in, to keep the lid on this, but Trevor Deacon was having none of it. This was his problem, even if the dead man was some fried spook who had evidently been wandering around where he shouldn’t have been.

  The HSE man was clearly in charge, and the police were following his instructions. He wandered over to Barry, who was sitting on the edge of the platform, his legs dangling over the rail.

  “Here’s the thing, Mr Mitchinson. Your boy has undoubtedly been cooked by several hundred volts, but the line is not presently live.” The tall thin HSE inspector took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Using his spectacles to point in the direction of the rails at the entrance of the tunnel, he continued.

  “The bar - the one you see there - well, that bar prevents anyone from making the line live inadvertently. So, given that it’s in place now, the only possibility is that someone replaced it after your man died. No current can have passed though the line with that bar in place.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Barry asked, fearful of the answer.

  “It means that this may no longer be an HSE matter. It may be a police matter. I think your friend there was murdered.”

  Chapter 32

  MI5 Headquarters, Thames House, London. Wednesday, 11am.

  Barry Mitchinson had been in the office since seven in the morning and he was flagging already. The beta blockers weren’t helping his panic attacks, and the more of them he took, the edgier he seemed to become. Reaching into the bottom of his movable pedestal drawers, he lifted out a new bottle of No.7 Sour Mash Whiskey all the way from Lynchburg, Tennessee. He splashed a generous serving into a disposable plastic cup from the water cooler, and stashed the bottle again.

  Looking at his monitor, he watched with disgust as rodents crawled over the face of a prostrate body, eating their fill.

  ***

  It had been almost midnight when he had managed to usher out the last of the police, the HSE and other sundry interfering busybodies from the Strand station platform. Left alone, he ascended the spiral staircase to the ground level lobby and lifted the old wooden cover from the abandoned lift shaft. There was nothing to see. It was pitch dark in the shaft, and the expected smell was thankfully absent.

  If Gil Davis really was down there, as Tim had claimed, she would have been dead for no more than a few hours; the odours of decomposition would, no doubt, follow later. There was a rattle as the padlock on the shutters was cut off and the cage shutters rolled aside.

  Two men from Technical Services entered the lobby and closed the shutter behind them. The first nodded to Barry and the second spoke.

  “We have the equipment. Do you mind if we measure up first?” he asked more politely than was necessary, given Barry’s precarious position in the service as of tonight.

  “Do as you wish. Let’s just get on with it.”

  The two technicians measured the opening and marked the dimensions down in a yellow covered flip over pad, much like a policeman’s notebook. They spoke between themselves.

  “It’s a standard diameter, so a cast Iron cover will do. We’ll have a ring around the top, and the manhole cover in the middle will be hinged to allow access. Might as well put some hydraulics on it to make it easy to lift.”

  The older man addressed Barry, who was staring blankly into space. “Does that sound OK, Guv?”

  “Whatever it takes to seal it off, I don’t really care. Can we get the camera down there now?”

  Slightly annoyed at the perceived lack of appreciation for their attending a dusty old tube station in the middle of the night, the older technician produced what looked like an oversized metal attaché case. The body of the case was black but the reinforced edges were brushed aluminium. Setting the case down and unclasping the two metal restraints, the Technician opened the case to reveal what looked like a professional photographer’s camera case but with a five and a half inch colour monitor built into the lid.

  The case was split into two longitudinal compartments; the camera and cable were closest to the lid and the transformers and lens adapters closest to the front of the case.

  “Seth, we need the battery and the extra cable out of the box, please,” the technician noted.

  The younger man, Seth, quickly extracted the cable and what looked like a car battery from the pull along trolley they had brought in with them, and within a few short minutes the camera was sliding down the seventy-feet-deep shaft.

  Once the camera hit the bottom, Victor, the older technician, switched on the camera. After a few seconds of fuzzy lines and then pixilation, the picture steadied.

  “OK, Seth. Up about a foot.”

  The young man lifted the camera cable as requested. “Right, Guv, I’m putting on the active light. This only illuminates the immediate area, especially in the pitch darkness, OK?”

  Barry nodded, too tired and demoralised to speak. He just knew that there would
be no body down there and that Gil Davis was already out of the country.

  “Bugger me!” Victor flinched as he said it, and looked at Barry, who was transfixed at the awful scene.

  ***

  Sitting back in his chair, Barry swigged the last of the whiskey and crumpled the cup before discarding it in a recycling bin. Throwing a stick of Trebor gum into his mouth to mask the smell of the alcohol, he watched the final moments of the DVD the technicians had recorded last night.

  There in extreme wide angle was a body; it was broadly in profile but it was definitely a body. The body had a coat, a scarf and gloves, as one would expect on a cold day. The hair was long and fair, loosely styled as a woman would wear it. The camera zoomed into the face but there was little to see. One at a time rats would crawl up onto the exposed skin, bury their sharp incisors into the flesh, tear off a strip and run away to enjoy their meal.

  Obviously no one could say that this was definitely Gil Davis, but the corpse had her build and was wearing her style of dress. The hair colour was a rough match, given the poor video quality, and who else was going to be down there? It looked very much as if Tim had done his job and then got himself killed on the way out. Never mind. He hadn’t been much use, anyway.

  Barry was contemplating one more drink to calm his agitation when the phone rang. It was the Director himself; no PA this time.

  “My office. Now!” he demanded, his voice betraying barely concealed anger.

  Barry took the DVD and his written report, and hurried towards the elevator.

  ***

  The holiday flight had left on time from a very quiet Newcastle Airport. The charter flight, operated by a well known holiday company, was code-sharing the route with another household name from the travel industry. Holidaymakers from two of Europe’s largest tour operators mingled in the concourse, dressed in a variety of tee shirts, denims and football shirts. They were all dressed for sunnier climes, as the temperature outside the glass atrium was only fractionally above zero.

  Gil had no problems checking in using the Gold Class desk. There was no-one ahead of her and she was ushered through quickly. Her seat was on the aisle and was the equivalent of a business class seat on a scheduled airline. The seat was pale tan leather with ample legroom and a good one hundred and thirty five degree recline. Her TV screen was around ten inches across and boasted an enviable range of movies, games and TV on demand. The one fly in the ointment was her immediate neighbour, John from Sunderland.

  “You aren’t from Sunderland, are you, bonnie lass? I can tell. I can always spot a Mackem girl.”

  Gil smiled in pretended comprehension. She had barely understood a word of the man’s statement, concealed as it was behind an unfathomable accent. John was well into his life story when the plane took off. He was just getting to the ‘exciting part’ where he joined the National Coal Board as a welder, whilst playing trumpet in a dance band, when the plane left the ground and John was silenced. He went several shades of grey before his sallow complexion settled on white. His knuckles were bloodless as he gripped the seat with an intensity that suggested he would never let it go.

  The man was in his sixties and seemed gentle enough. Gil placed her left hand on his right hand and gave it a gentle squeeze in an effort to comfort him. He looked at her, his lips set in a straight line. She smiled back and told him that he could relax; there was nothing to worry about.

  Taking advantage of the sudden silence, she clamped her Bose noise reduction headphones around her head and over her ears, where she would keep them for the duration of the flight.

  Whilst the sunshine beckoned and the beaches on offer on this package holiday appeared clean and white, Gil knew that she would not be sampling them. Their island destination was simply a staging point for the remainder of her journey, but she did have forty eight hours to play with before her next flight, and so she thought she might just top up her tan.

  She smiled to herself, wondering what the reaction of the holiday rep would be when one of their guests missed the welcome brunch, disappeared from the hotel and failed to make the return flight next week.

  ***

  The door to the director’s outer office was closed, but the slider confirmed that the director was ‘available’. Barry tapped on the door and opened it. Immediately in front of him to the left sat Maureen Lassiter. Directly ahead of him was the open door which led to the Director’s inner sanctum, overlooking the river.

  Barry looked at Maureen, tight lipped. She flicked her eyes to the left, indicating that the director was waiting and there was no time for small talk, or even so much as a cursory greeting. The bespectacled underling stepped forward and into the boss’s office with all of the trepidation of Daniel entering the lion’s den, except that Daniel had known that God would save him. Barry had no such high hopes for deity stepping in on his behalf.

  “Ah, Mitchinson. I was just wondering how things were going on your stated objective of eliminating the Chameleon, AKA Gill Davis.” The Director had a curious look on his face, and Barry was immediately wary.

  “Good news, sir. She is dead and permanently entombed on the old Strand Tube Station platform. We are sealing the lift shaft tomorrow with a permanent cover and a manhole access.” Barry lifted up the DVD and offered to slide it into the Director’s laptop. The director waved his arm in what Barry took to be permission to proceed.

  Inside a minute, the DVD whirred into action and the line camera pictures were showing on the screen. Barry had hoped to shock the Director, but instead he witnessed a morbid fascination on his boss’s face. The Director pressed the mouse button to halt the DVD, which he ejected and dropped into the waste bin beside him with a cruel smile playing across his lips.

  He leaned on his desk, his forearms resting on the walnut veneer, his hands clasped with fingers interlocking. He was mere inches away from Barry Mitchinson’s face when his own contorted into what appeared to be rage.

  “Barry, I am not certain whether you are deliberately misleading me or whether you truly are cretinously stupid. I don’t know who or what that video purports to show, but whatever it is I can assure you that it is not Gillian Davis.”

  Barry was beyond crestfallen; he was paralysed with despair. He was unable to summon the power of speech.

  “Let me explain in terms that a simpleton like you can understand. Gillian Davis obviously killed Tim McKinnon, whose death luckily can be portrayed as an accident, but then I suppose Wondergirl planned it that way. She then foresaw that you would check she was dead, and so placed something, or someone, on that platform for you to find. If only she was working for me instead of the team of incompetents I currently have at my disposal.

  She seems to have completely outfoxed MI5 and the establishment, not least your good self. Worse still for me, and that means for you too, I have to explain what the hell we are doing killing our own people, on our own turf, when they threatened no one except a bunch of bad guys we would rather see dead!” He was yelling by the time the last sentence came to an end.

  “That isn’t strictly true, sir.” Barry tried to restore his credibility, knowing that his boss was beyond listening. “She murdered the Israeli Foreign Minister. They are a friendly country and he wasn’t someone we would like to see dead. He was the minister of culture, for God’s sake.”

  The Director tapped a key on his keyboard and a prepared page flicked up onto the screen. It was headed ‘Yakir Bluwstein: Supplementary Research – Analytical Profile’.

  “Let me read you something that you would know if you weren’t a moron of the first order.

  Yakir Bluwstein was still a teenager when he killed his first British Serviceman. The man was unarmed and lying in his sickbed when the boy sneaked into the hospital and shot the man in the head, leaving the symbol of the Stern Gang on the body. Sergeant William Docherty, or Billy to his friends, had served bravely in the desert for the allies in the Second World War and was awaiting demobilisation just as soon as he recovered enou
gh to travel home. Ironically, Billy had been instrumental in the release of inmates from the death camps and had been welcomed as a hero by Jews in Europe and England.”

  “Shit,” Barry thought as the Director read on, “this is going to get worse.”

  “Minister Bluwstein was a member of the Stern Gang, known as Levi to the Zionists. He planned and helped execute the driving of a truck load of explosives into a British Police Station. Four were killed, and this is where it gets personal.”

  The director looked up to ensure he had Barry’s undivided attention. “My uncle Ben, a Jew himself, incidentally, lost a leg and the sight in one eye in that attack. That raid was both wicked and pointless because only weeks later Israel became independent, and the Stern Gang had known very well what was going to happen. So did the minister repent, or change his odious ways? I think not. Bluwstein was the Minister of Defence when the Israeli Air force bombed unprotected Lebanese civilian targets with phosphorous armaments during the last Labour government. He went on TV and denied the use of phosphorous bombs, and declared that an internal Israeli enquiry had cleared Israel of wrongdoing. We shared our proof that they had indeed used phosphorous bombs, but nothing was done. The Americans vetoed a war crime tribunal. As a sop to international outrage, he was demoted to Minister of Culture.”

  The Director turned away from the screen and looked at the defeated man sitting opposite before continuing.

  “So, Mr Mitchinson, which part of Yakir Bluwstein’s glorious history would make your average Englishman feel sorrowful at his passing? As much as I despise your little Wondergirl, she did the world a favour that day.”

  Barry knew there wasn’t an answer that would keep him in a job, and so he looked down at his scuffed shoes.

  “So, Mitchinson, when you appear in her cross hairs - as you undoubtedly will, as you tried to kill her - tell her my late Uncle Dan sends his regards.”

  A terrible silence engulfed the room and Barry heard Maureen Lassiter quietly close the door between her office and the Directors office. There was obviously only so much blood letting a sensitive woman could take in a day.

  “I’ll seal the ports and airports as soon as I get back to my desk. We will apprehend her, soon enough.” Barry tried to regain some of the momentum.