A Genuine Mistake

by Ted Tayler

  “The fog is clearing, Freeman,” said the ACC. “Slowly.”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Gus. “I struggled from the outset with the background information on Alan Duncan and Maddy Mills. Everything pointed to them being in the wrong jobs based on their education and history, yet they seemed content. Phil Banks could never get a fix on the motive behind the murder. After the initial suggestion of suicide, he switched the hunt to find someone who wanted Alan Duncan dead. He got nowhere. If Lady Davinia had described Kovalev to the officer who received the emergency call, the killer would have been behind bars in no time.”

  “What first put you on the track of this Russian chap’s involvement?” asked Kenneth.

  “Oh, that came late in the day, sir,” said Gus. “We spent ages talking with people in Biddestone, Corsham, and Chippenham before Blessing Umeh stumbled on a photo of Alan Duncan taken in Moscow. The victim’s mother had several photos in a drawer, including one of Yuri Kovalev, but Phil Banks never got to see them. It’s not common to search the home of a murder victim’s parents, where the said victim lived five miles away with a partner.”

  “I assume uniformed officers visited the parents to notify them of their son’s death, confirmed they had an alibi, then left them to grieve?”

  “Exactly, sir,” said Gus. “At that point, it could still have been suicide. The next day, when the coroner reported strangulation as the cause of death, they had no reason to return to Corsham.”

  “It was heartening to hear that the Hub helped to solve the case,” said the ACC.

  “We couldn’t have done it without their help, sir,” said Gus. “The answer lay in the photographs that Alan Duncan sent his parents. We had seen those early in the piece but didn’t appreciate their significance. Maddy Mills was hiding a secret, and my attempts to uncover it delayed the deeper analysis of those photographs. The pictures from Moscow sped up the process because, at last, I could see a plausible reason for Duncan’s murder. I suspected a submariner or a colleague not in those photos. Somebody that the men had in common.”

  “You got little right until the very end, did you, Gus?” said Geoff Mercer.

  “Possibly not,” said Gus, “but it wouldn’t be the first time that a lightbulb moment saved the day in a case you handled, would it?”

  “Fair comment,” said Geoff.

  “I can think of several,” admitted the ACC.

  “Duncan and Lambert enjoyed a bet on the horses,” said Gus. “Nothing wrong with that in moderation, but they let things get out of hand. Rather than ask their colleagues to get them out of trouble, they hatched a plan to pretend to sell secrets to the Russians. I thought Duncan working as a draughtsman in a small company was odd, but although people mentioned he was a stickler for getting things right, nobody said he was a master at his craft. I can’t imagine how tough it must have been to produce something that fooled Russian engineers for two decades. In the end, they realised their mistake and sent Kovalev to find Duncan and kill him.”

  “Lambert was Duncan’s partner-in-crime, I take it?” said Geoff Mercer, “and the bar owner you referred to earlier.”

  “He was the group’s so-called racing expert,” said Gus. “Bob Duncan noticed a missing photograph taken at the Happy Valley racecourse in Hong Kong. Lambert appeared in just one of the group pictures. More often than not, he was behind the camera. I should have kept digging into why it went missing. Duncan took it with him from his parent’s home on Sunday before he died. It was a desperate ploy. Kovalev wasn’t interested in the cash that Duncan withdrew from the bank, nor in a photograph of Lambert. His mission was to kill Duncan.”

  “If Mrs Campbell-Drake had told the police everything, you would never have discovered this Lambert character,” said the ACC.

  “True,” said Gus, “nor would we have learned that Lambert tried to hide his connection to Duncan and the misleading drawings by assuming the identity of his dead colleague, Freddie Watts. That’s another spin-off offence that resulted from this case. Add that to the eventual exposure of the secret that Maddy Mills, or Jennifer Forsyth, had buried for twenty-odd years; then it has to be one of the most complex and distressing cases I’ve handled.”

  “Distressing?” asked the ACC. “In what way?”

  “I went to Chippenham with DI Ferris the other evening, sir,” said Geoff Mercer. “We arrested Madeleine Telfer in her kitchen and then had to escort her through the hallway in front of her husband and two children. All three were innocents in this case.”

  “A tangled web, gentlemen,” said the ACC. “What are the odds that Kovalev will stand trial here?”

  “Slim,” said Gus. “I haven’t spoken with our colleagues in Douglas today. They still had Yuri Kovalev under lock and key on Friday. The Russians have no embassy on the island, and as a Crown Dependency, the Manx government can set some of its laws. They defer to the UK Government to handle their foreign affairs. So, as long as Kovalev remains on the island, it could be ages before the Russians can apply diplomatic pressure to get him released.”

  “I remember a Polish criminal hiding on the island last year,” said Geoff. “He had found out that European arrest warrants weren’t valid there. With these smaller dependencies, the paperwork here on the mainland doesn’t always account for every eventuality. The Ministry’s pen-pushers cover the most likely things that might need a proper procedure.”

  “As my name appears to carry weight in Douglas, I might suggest they liaise with you, Mercer,” said the ACC. “A member of your team should take this case forward now that Freeman has done the groundwork.”

  “Good idea, sir,” said Gus. “When you speak to the locals, Geoff, make sure that the second they hear from the Russians, they must spread the word. ‘Russia bullies a tiny island in the Irish Sea.’ The negative publicity could encourage them to cut comrade Kovalev adrift.”

  “Leave it with me,” said Geoff.

  “Is there another cold case in your in-tray waiting to pounce, sir?” asked Gus. “My team wondered whether there was any chance of the next one being a piece of cake.”

  “I have a stack of case reviews on my desk, Freeman,” said the ACC. “I grab the first one off the top every time. Your team will have to get used to taking pot luck.”

  Kenneth Truelove lifted the weighty file from the pile and perused it.

  “This case is more recent,” he said. “Only six years ago. Someone shot the poor devil on his doorstep on the outskirts of Trowbridge. Gerald Hogan was a fifty-four-year-old financial services professional who worked as a financial advisor, providing investment management and evaluating tax strategies for a range of clients. Gerry, as his friends and family called him, was playing snooker with his two sons, Sean and Byron at their home on Trowle Common. Sean was eighteen and Byron sixteen. Gerry’s partner, Rachel Cummins, a thirty-year-old personal trainer, was in the home gym.”

  “That could make for an interesting family dynamic,” said Gus.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, Freeman,” said the ACC.

  “Sorry, sir. I’m sure that whoever handled this case the first time around asked the right questions. The murder file will highlight any shenanigans.”

  “The financial services game must pay well if Hogan had a large enough property to accommodate a snooker room,” said Geoff Mercer.

  “If I might finish the outline of the case, gentlemen,” said Kenneth. “The attack took place on Sunday, the sixth of May at half-past six in the evening. Gerry and the boys were having a few frames before watching the World Championship final from The Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. The doorbell rang once, but nobody reacted in the games room. The boys hadn’t heard it because they had the TV on for the build-up to the evening session. Rachel had to towel herself down and dash from the gym to the front door. On the doorstep, she found a man, half-turned away from her, who asked for Gerry Hogan. Rachel was annoyed at getting dragged away from her fitness routines. She left the man outside while she dashed towards the games room
at the back of the house and shouted for her partner.”

  “Could she supply an accurate description of this man?” asked Gus.

  “Rachel carried her towel with her to the front door,” said the ACC. “She told the detectives that she was more interested in covering her sweat-covered top half and not giving this guy or the neighbours a cheap thrill.”

  “The gunman didn’t register then,” said Gus.

  “Ms Cummins said he was tall, white, and casually dressed. As she didn’t get a look at his face, she couldn’t give the police an accurate assessment of his age. As she said to DI Kirkpatrick in 2012, it was unusual for someone to turn up uninvited, but she never queried why this man wanted to speak to Gerry.”

  “What happened next?” asked Gus.

  “Rachel returned to the gym. The sons told the police that they carried on the game they were playing. All three were too far from the front door to hear anything that happened on the doorstep.”

  “What about the neighbours?” asked Gus. “Did nobody hear raised voices, sounds of a scuffle or an argument? The attack occurred early on a Sunday evening. You can guarantee there would be a dog walker somewhere in the vicinity. Couldn’t the police find someone on their way to or from a church?”

  “We know it was a sizeable property, Gus,” said Geoff. “The name of the area where they lived suggests wide and open spaces surrounded it. My first question would be, how did the killer get there? Was he on foot? Did Rachel Cummins see a car outside on the roadway?”

  “A neighbour heard a motorcycle accelerating past his house that evening,” said Kenneth. “He couldn’t be sure of the time, but he heard it backfire, and then it buzzed past sounding like an angry wasp. Ms Cummins said there was no car in their driveway. She was only at the door for a few seconds. The last thing she wanted to do was stand there in a sports bra and lycra bottoms talking to a stranger.”

  “I doubt the motorcycle connected to the murder as it wasn’t a high-powered machine,” said Gus. “Perhaps the sort of moped a teenager might ride? What about the backfire the neighbour mentioned?”

  “Let me run through the sequence of events that we can verify,” said the ACC. “The front doorbell rang at around six-thirty. Rachel Cummins answered the door, and only ten seconds later, she was hurrying to the back of the house to call her partner. Gerry left the games room to talk to the man on the doorstep. Rachel returned to the gym. Sean and Byron finished the frame of snooker they were playing when their father left. Sean opened the games room door at six-forty-five. The front door was half-open. Sean called out to his Dad that Ronnie O’Sullivan and Ali Carter would soon get introduced to the crowd. The boys were keen not to miss a ball getting potted. Rachel heard Sean shout and decided the interruptions to her exercising had destroyed the mood. She donned a t-shirt and came through to the hallway to see what was keeping her partner. Rachel peered around the door to find Gerry lying on the gravel outside. He’d been shot in the head at close range. A single shot to the temple.”

  “Well, that changes everything,” said Gus.

  “Why?” asked Geoff Mercer. “The neighbour said he heard a backfire, and then a motorcycle went past his house.”

  “The man Rachel saw might not be our gunman,” said Gus. “Would Gerry Hogan step outside to talk to a stranger who might have posed a threat? It’s more likely he would stand inside his home with one hand on the door for security. He would want to get rid of the bloke quickly. Remember what Gerry and his sons had planned for the evening. If Gerry knew the man well, he might have invited him indoors. Then there’s the conversation itself. Gerry was a financial professional. Did this casually dressed stranger want advice on which ISA to use or which stocks and shares were worth a look? Was everything Gerry Hogan dabbled in strictly legal? Few professionals conduct business on a Sunday evening. Did Gerry step outside away from the house to chat with the man? Maybe he didn’t want Rachel to hear what they said.”

  “You’re right, of course, Freeman,” said the ACC. “The time lag between the doorbell ringing and the discovery of the body left things open for conjecture. DI Kirkpatrick treated the entire episode as being an extended argument between Hogan and the killer. That may have been remiss of him.”

  “Kirkpatrick could have got it right,” said Gus. “We’ll need to explore both avenues. The two men could have had a brief conversation, and then the man left. Sean didn’t shout for his father to remind him of the time until six forty-five. There was plenty of time for someone else to approach the property in the twelve or thirteen minutes that elapsed between Gerry arriving at the open door and the discovery of his body. We can’t know how long that gap was without finding the man who rang the bell at six-thirty.”

  “If there was another man,” said the ACC.

  “Nothing is ever straightforward, is it,” said Geoff.

  “I’ll take the folder back to the office,” said Gus. “Somewhere in the volumes of material that they gathered, there has to be a clue as to motive. Who wanted Gerry Hogan dead, and why?

  CHAPTER 2

  Gus drove left the London Road car park without further ado. There was no chance of a brief conversation with Vera and Kassie today. Geraldine Packenham was standing on the far side of the room outside Rhys Evans’s office, keeping watch.

  When he drew up behind the Old Police Station, Gus took another look at the passenger seat's weighty folder.

  “Who was Gerry Hogan?” he asked.

  Gerry Hogan was born in the Royal United Hospital, Bath, on March the fifth, 1958. His parents were Peter and Jean Hogan, whose daughter, Belinda, had arrived three years earlier. The family lived in Bradford-on-Avon, a small town of around nine thousand people located six miles from the Roman city of Bath. Gerry attended Christchurch Primary and later Fitzmaurice Grammar schools. His headteacher at Fitzmaurice remembered him as well-mannered, good-natured, and intelligent.

  Nick Barratt, a close friend throughout their schooling, remembered Gerry as a focused individual. Gerry had his goals mapped out from an early age. No way was he the sort of lad who’d get caught underage drinking, shoplifting, or getting involved with the wrong crowd. Gerry did his utmost to steer clear of trouble. After school, he went to Bristol University to study for a Business and Finance degree. He graduated in 1980 and, after a gap year in Australia, joined the newly formed Hargreaves Lansdown company.

  Gerry met his first wife, Evelyn, a wildlife photographer, while on his travels. It was a whirlwind romance. The pair got engaged only weeks after meeting on Bondi Beach. When Gerry returned home to Bradford-on-Avon to start work, Evelyn stayed on in New South Wales to complete an assignment at the Macquarie Pass National Park. One month later, she flew into Heathrow Airport and lived with Gerry and his family in Bradford-on-Avon until their registry office wedding in early 1982.

  Evelyn continued her career in the UK, accepting commissions closer to home. She made regular trips to West Wales, Richmond Park in London, the Cairngorms in Scotland, and the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast. The couple bought a place in Clifton, Bristol that suited them, both for its proximity to Gerry’s job and transport links for Evelyn, but also for the nightlife they enjoyed as a young professional couple.

  A decade later, Gerry wanted to branch out on his own and find a family home closer to his parents. They had fallen in love with the Trowle Common property at first sight. It altered somewhat in the next ten years as Gerry’s business prospered and Evelyn stopped travelling long enough to give birth to Sean and Byron. They extended the property to one side and at the rear. The sunroom was Evelyn’s choice on the ground floor. The games room to the side of it was Gerry’s pick for somewhere he could spend what free time he had with his boys.

  Evelyn had transformed the spare bedroom into her studio. She explained to Gerry that the direction of the window made a huge difference in light quality. North-facing windows always have soft light because the sun never directly shines through them, while South-facing windows should exp
ect to have direct sunlight for a good portion of the day. Gerry knew why his wife couldn’t resist that dig. Evelyn missed the Australian sunshine.

  Sean and Byron were aged eight and six and attending Fitzmaurice Primary in Bradford-on-Avon when Evelyn decided she’d exhausted the most lucrative assignments the UK could offer. The wanderlust was tough to get out of her system. Gerry’s business was going from strength to strength, so he let Evelyn fly back to Australia for a month with his full support. She returned to the Macquarie Pass National Park to follow up on the work she’d carried out back in 1981.

  Macquarie Pass is a five-mile-long section of the Illawarra Highway passing through the National Park. The pass links the town of Robertson to the coastal town of Albion Park, where Evelyn rented an apartment.

  The pass descends via a narrow roadway with several single-lane sections. It’s mostly two lanes with double lines showing no overtaking. This roadway section is very steep and contains many hairpin bends, resulting in buses and trucks needing to back up on some curves. The pass was notorious for accidents, and they required drivers and motorcycle riders to be cautious. After heavy rain, the Macquarie Pass could be closed because of flooding on its top half.

  In early March 2002, Evelyn was returning from a day photographing egrets, ibis, and herons. A motorcyclist came around a hairpin bend on the wrong side of the road, and she swerved to avoid it. Evelyn’s rental car rolled over, somersaulted the safety barrier, and she was dead before the emergency services could arrive from Albion Park. Evelyn was just forty years old.