Chameleon - A City of London Thriller

by J Jackson Bentley

  “That’s for trying to kill me at the Strand Tube Station, you bastard. I did everything you ever asked of me, you malicious creep.” She steadied herself, ready to deliver another kick, but he cowered away.

  “Please, I need medical assistance. I’m dying! You’re better than this, Gilly. You were my wondergirl. Don’t let me die! Please!”

  Gillian Davis looked down at what was left of his wrist. The hunting ammunition had exploded the joint, amputated his hand and destroyed the artery, pretty much as she had expected when she loaded 150gram, 7mm hunting ammunition.

  “Sorry, Barry,” she said with genuine remorse, “You are already dead. I suggest you make peace with your maker while you still have the chance.”

  Barry began weeping openly.

  Dee was now concerned for her own safety.

  “What about us?” she asked tentatively. “Despite everything, Katie doesn’t deserve to die.”

  Gillian looked at her with a puzzled expression, and then she grinned.

  “Nor do you, Dee. Do I deserve to die? Well, that’s debatable, and these two are beyond deserving, but you’ve done nothing wrong. All you ever wanted was to find justice for those two sweet people who died at the hands of the Chameleon. Anyway, we don’t have time for this. We need to get you to hospital, and a damn sight quicker than an ambulance would.”

  Gillian cut Katie’s bonds and carefully removed her gag. Gillian looked at Katie Norman and saw herself as she might once have been; the innocence, the optimism, the normality.

  “Come on, sweetheart. We have to get Dee to the minivan.”

  Gillian cut Dee free and took off her own jacket and shirt. Standing there, incongruously, in a lacy blue Victoria’s Secret bra, she tore her Armani shirt into strips and, balling two strips into fist sized pads, she placed one on the bullet entry wound and the other on the exit wound. Dee squirmed. Katie held the pads in place as Gil wrapped the remaining strips of the shirt around Dee’s body to form a bandage. She then removed her belt and tightened it around the makeshift bandage. Gillian then replaced her jacket to preserve a modicum of modesty.

  “Katie, it will be your job to keep this tight. She can squeal all she wants, but don’t let up. The pain is too bad, but she can survive that. Blood loss she can’t. Understand?” She smiled reassuringly at the young woman. Katie Norman nodded, her jaw set in determination.

  ***

  Gil Davis gunned the engine of the minibus. It was not the vehicle she would have chosen for a race to the hospital seven miles away, but it was all she had. She slammed the shift into drive and rammed her foot onto the accelerator. The minivan smashed though the chain link gates and onto Dinwiddle, before turning immediately left up Seventh Street. By the time she reached Hull Street she was doing over seventy miles an hour. Luckily there was little traffic south of the river. The minivan held onto the road as it careened around the corner and headed to the bridge.

  By the time Gil saw the sign for the hospital, her driving had attracted two Richmond PD cruisers who were in hot pursuit, lights flashing, sirens blazing. Gil smiled as the road ahead cleared. After one final crazy turn onto Nine Miles Road, the van fishtailing madly, the Hospital was in sight. Gil ignored the Ambulances Only sign and slammed the van to a stop outside the emergency room entrance.

  Immediately behind her the two cruisers screeched to a halt. The drivers were out in a second, perched behind their doors, guns out of holsters.

  “Stop! Police!” they shouted in unison.

  Gil carried on helping a bloodstained and barely conscious Dee out of the back seat of the van.

  “Either shoot me, or come and help. This woman is dying!” Gil yelled.

  The two policemen looked at the woman who was wearing a leather jacket over a blue bra, holstered their guns and ran to assist. Gil could be arrested and handcuffed when the sick woman was safely on a gurney.

  Chapter 72

  Darvell Salvage Yard, East 7th Street, Richmond, Virginia. USA, Monday 3pm.

  By the time Steve Post arrived at the co-ordinates he had been given, along with significant back up, there was no need for the requested silent approach. Already there were curious office and factory workers gathering outside the entrance, alerted by gunfire and a speeding minivan crashing through the gates. Steve manoeuvred his SUV over the wrecked gates and into the yard, jumping from the car when he saw human activity.

  Gun drawn, he followed the voices and found himself in a clearing in the midst of scrap metal. He holstered his gun when he saw the carnage. A paramedic from a neighbouring factory had fastened a tourniquet around a balding man’s handless wrist and bent his arm double, fastening a second tourniquet around the forearm and upper arm. The man screamed in pain as the paramedic pulled the second tourniquet tight, forcing the folded arms together in a tight embrace. The bleeding slowed dramatically but Mitchinson lost consciousness.

  The paramedic looked at the approaching FBI man, who was wearing a blue windbreaker with the FBI logo in gold, and spoke urgently.

  “These tourniquets will lose him his arm but they may save his life.”

  An ambulance siren approached. Steve looked around; there was no sign of Dee anywhere. What was going on here? Dan Peterson, who had travelled with Steve, secured the crime scene and issued orders to uniformed cops, who were now arriving by the dozen.

  Another office worker was attending to Donkin, who was showing signs of life, his eye lids flickering. She correctly identified a neck injury and tried to prevent the police from searching him, knowing that any movement could make it worse. She was unsuccessful, and Donkin was carefully frisked.

  “My God, Dee, what happened here? Where are you?” Steve inadvertently said out loud.

  ***

  The two ambulances had left the junk yard, sirens blazing, and the crime scene technicians were now bagging evidence, including the remnants of a man’s right hand.

  Steve’s phone rang. It was Richmond PD.

  “Special Agent Post?” The policeman wanted confirmation.

  “That’s me,” Steve acknowledged.

  “Sir, we have three women here at the Da Vita Community Hospital. One is being prepped for surgery, two are OK but one of them has committed a string of driving offences. The mouthy one - they are all English, by the way - said she refused to leave the hospital until you arrived. She said she is the daughter of Senator Miles, so we thought we should call before we arrested her.”

  “Hold those women there. I’ll be there in ten minutes to take charge of the situation, Officer.....”

  “Sergeant Trelawney, sir.”

  “OK Trelawney, secure the hospital until I can figure out what’s going on.”

  Steve concluded the call, grabbed Dan Peterson and they headed off to the hospital, leaving the bloodbath behind.

  Chapter 73

  DaVita Richmond Community Hospital, Virginia. USA. Monday 3:30pm.

  Barry was drowsy from blood loss and morphine. His wound had been sealed temporarily, and he was connected to several monitors, a saline bag and a plasma bag. He had overheard the doctor talking to the policeman guarding the door.

  He was going to lose his right arm below the elbow, but that would not be done at this hospital and nor could it be attempted until his blood count stabilised. However, the doctor was concerned less about the loss of the limb than he was about serious irregularities in heart pattern, which suggested that Barry may have suffered damage to his heart muscle.

  The policeman listened with interest, but insisted that the patient be secured as he was likely to be charged with kidnap, serious assault and, potentially, murder. One armed or not, Barry realised that he was destined to spend his remaining days in a hellhole of a US prison.

  The doctor agreed to keep him secured but comfortable until such times as it was safe to transfer him to a unit with more coronary support. The room fell silent and Barry drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

  ***

  Mere yards away from Barry’s c
ubicle, the hard pressed medical staff were even more downbeat. Rob Donkin had suffered a cervical spinal injury that had paralysed him from the neck down. His first and second vertebrae were badly damaged. The doctors had stabilised him, but he was in an induced coma and he would remain unconscious until they could get him to a specialist spinal unit. This would be harder than it sounded because of the shortage of spinal surgery beds on the eastern seaboard, due to the high number of spinal injuries arriving back from the war zones. It would also be difficult because Donkin had no visible signs of insurance.

  The most likely outcome would be extradition, by an air ambulance transfer, to the UK. The US police would have liked to prosecute him, but they recognised that he was already imprisoned in a body that would never work again.

  ***

  Dee Hammond had fared better than her two attackers. She was still in surgery but no-one was harbouring negative thoughts about the outcome. Test after test had been carried out and eventually, after much discussion, the surgeon had agreed to continue with the procedure. No-one would tell Gillian or Katie why they had delayed surgery. All they were told was that she would be fine and that she would be expected to make a full recovery.

  The bullet wounds themselves would offer little challenge, even to a small community hospital surgical team, but there were complications. The bullet had nicked a kidney and other organs on its way through to shattering her twelfth rib, sometimes referred to as a floating rib because it is not attached to the sternum.

  Steve Post listened carefully to Katie Norman’s story of the day so far, and was surprised at the maternal protection offered to her by Gillian Davis. Gillian filled in the gaps as she held Katie’s hand. What she had to say shocked Steve Post and forced him to reconsider his preconceptions about the former Chameleon.

  She spoke as if she was being officially debriefed, and Steve realised that she must have been through this process many times before, so he sat and listened without interruption as Dan Peterson recorded the session on a handheld dictation machine.

  “I knew that Dee Hammond was unhappy with me, and although I have always accepted my culpability, that is often not enough for some people. Wary of her intentions, I decided to keep track of her whilst in the USA. Purely for my self preservation, you understand.”

  She smiled, and continued. “I cloned her phone using my adapted IPhone and IPad and some security software used in law enforcement circles, called TriposDub. I also fed her Sim card details and GPS details into my iPad tracking application. I thought that I’d been very clever doing all this while she was asleep, but when she awoke and found her phone battery was flat I think she suspected. She didn’t say anything, however, so I may have been a little paranoid.

  When I overheard the first call from Donkin I knew that she might be in trouble and so I had a choice - leave her to it or keep an eye on her. At that point I had no idea what Donkin wanted, nor that he was working with Mitchinson, and so I gave it some considered thought and decided I couldn’t sit by and watch her or Katie be hurt.

  I live in the lodge behind the Senator’s house, and the lodge contains the locked gun cabinet. I opened the lock - it took all of twenty seconds - and had a look inside. As expected there were no handguns, but there were two hunting rifles and plenty of ammunition.

  I selected the Browning X Bolt rifle because it was better weighted for a woman of my stature and the sights seemed to be in good order. I loaded some 7mm 08 Remington cartridges that had a 150 gram load and went into the woods. It took me ten minutes, but I got it sighted in and took the limbs off two trees. You Americans certainly make sure that if you hit it, it doesn’t walk away.”

  She paused thoughtfully before continuing.

  “I drove up to Richmond from Lynchburg. It took just over an hour, and I parked in the hotel car park and kept my eye on Dee’s Chrysler 300. When the phone rang again I recognised Mitchinson’s voice and knew immediately that Dee was in trouble. Taking a risk, and knowing that she couldn’t, I forwarded the text with coordinates to you. Your number was in her contact list.”

  “That was you?” Steve asked.

  “Yes. I was hoping that you would turn up, to save the damsel in distress, so I could concentrate on meeting up with Barry. He tried to have me killed, you know.” She was grinning.

  “I wondered what was going on,” Steve admitted. “When the hotel manager eventually deigned to call me I had already set things in motion. I guess I need to thank you,” he added.

  “Go on, then,” Gillian teased.

  “Don’t push your luck; you’re still in very deep water,” Steve threatened, and so Gil continued.

  “I followed Dee to the scrap yard, and when she disappeared with Barry I carried out a quick surveillance of the area. I came to the conclusion that he had placed no look outs. I collected the rifle from my Tahoe and slipped into the yard as quietly as I could.

  Unfortunately, Mitchinson, more by good luck than by any tradecraft, had picked a great spot to keep his hostages. To get a clear shot I had to climb up an unstable scrap mountain without making any noise and find a stable shooting position. Luckily for me the scrap was well compacted, and I found a hidey hole on top of an old Chevy Chevette, from where I could see the whole area.

  I was just setting up when I heard the first shot. Some idiot boy raised a pistol and fired, and the blow back nearly knocked him off his feet. If he hadn’t been so close he wouldn’t have hit Dee at all. In fact, he would have been lucky to hit the scrap yard and he was right in the middle of it. It was the sloppiest shot I’ve ever witnessed. By the way, the gun he used was bagged by one of your uniformed policemen. I picked it up carefully by the barrel so that I didn’t smudge any prints.

  I saw the blood and was amazed when Dee remained standing. The boy was amazed as well, and he raised his gun for the killing shot, but Dee laid him out with one punch. Barry cracked her on the head and she went down.

  Dee was out for four minutes, in which time Barry Mitchinson tied her up. I would probably have blown his head off if I had a decent shot without Katie or Dee in the way. Anyway, I sighted the rifle and waited. When he raised the gun to Katie’s head I knew I had no choice. I fired to disarm, not to kill. The hunting ammo did its duty, and from twenty five yards I don’t miss, even with an unfamiliar rifle.

  You know what happened after that. Katie explained it well, and I have nothing to add.”

  Steve looked at Dan Peterson, who nodded in confirmation that he had everything recorded.

  “OK, you two. Wait here. I’ll bring you news of Dee as soon as I get it.”

  “Mr Post?” Katie attracted Steve’s attention. “Can you check to see if Deanna from Vastrick is OK, too? If those bastards have hurt her I’ll strangle them myself in their hospital beds.”

  “I wish you would,” Steve muttered under his breath. “Tom Vastrick himself is on his way down from Vermont. He’ll probably be better informed than my guys.”

  Chapter 74

  DaVita Richmond Community Hospital, Virginia. USA. Wednesday 2pm.

  Josh Hammond and Christine Post sat chatting across Dee’s bed. Josh had landed just that morning, having been unable to find an earlier flight. Dee was elsewhere in the hospital, undergoing further tests. Christine had been a constant by Dee’s bedside since Steve left to try to sort out the legal quagmire that five Brits had left behind them in a junk yard in Richmond.

  The room was filled with flowers and cards, and a balloon was floating just below the ceiling, secured by a red tape tied to the bed frame. Tom Vastrick had taken a break to eat and would be back soon. He had arrived within hours and had tried to persuade Katie and Gil to go to a hotel and rest, but they were going nowhere.

  Eventually, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, Dee had awoken, albeit briefly, from an anaesthetic induced sleep and had convinced them that she would be fine. Gil and Katie were escorted to Dee’s hotel room, where Katie fell dead asleep on the bed, whilst Gillian Davis slept fitfully on the
sofa. Gil’s and Dee’s cars had been recovered by the police and were parked in the hotel lot by the time they awoke. After a further visit to Dee’s bedside, the two reluctantly departed, leaving her to rest and Tom Vastrick to stand guard. Later that day Gillian went back to Lynchburg, and Katie was driven back to see Deanna, her minder, who was back at home nursing a lump on her head and a pounding headache.

  That was yesterday, and today things were beginning to return to normality. The community hospital had been overwhelmed by three patients with serious and life threatening injuries arriving within minutes of each other. They had also been told very clearly that Dee had priority as the victim. As it turned out, all three needed the care of different specialist doctors.

  A heavily bandaged Dee was wheeled back into her room and lifted into bed. She groaned, and the orderlies apologised for the discomfort. The gurney left the room moments before a lady doctor appeared. Dressed in her green scrubs, with her hair scraped back in a pony tail, she looked like every female doctor on TV.

  “Hello, Josh, and Dee. We have just completed the tests and the results are very positive. It appears you have been shot before, is that right?”

  Dee nodded. The doctor raised her eyebrows in surprise.

  “Well, I don’t need to tell you that so far you have been unbelievably lucky.” Josh took his wife’s hand as she continued. “You have lost your twelfth rib. It was shattered, and so we’ve tidied it up. It will ache for a while, but it will be fine. The kidney seems to have been unaffected by the damage it received, but we need to keep an eye on that. Otherwise the internal damage was limited to some intestinal bleeding, and the bullet holes will take time to heal. But you probably know more about that than I do. You must take a break and rest. That isn’t advice, that’s an instruction.”

  “She will be resting, you can be certain about that,” a voice boomed from the doorway. Tom Vastrick, owner of Vastrick Security, left no room for discussion. The doctor spoke a little more quietly.

  “There is one more test result that I would prefer to share in private.”