Book Three of Five

Book Three of Five

David Hughes

ARTHUR H. STOCKWELL LTD

Torrs Park, Ilfracombe, Devon, EX34 8BA

Established 1898

www.ahstockwell.co.uk

2018 digital version converted and published by

Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

© David Hughes, 2017

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is purely coincidental.

By the same author:

Purple Jade

Cloned Identity

Million Plus One

Hellfire Landing

Different Women, Same Love

Man Talk: The Manual, Born to Be Different

Book One of Five

Book Two of Five

Deadly Chocolates

When I was just a small child I was told many things by my parents, especially my grandma, to help protect my life - probably the original early attempt at health and safety - and to teach me what was right and what was wrong. Often these lessons would be enforced with a smack on the back of my legs to ensure I remembered and didn’t make the same mistake again. One that I always remembered from the long list was to never accept sweets from a stranger. Yet in this story you have a young person who lost their life by clearly going against this very old code of protection. Perhaps common sense is not considered a protection against the evil which is all around you these days. Every day in the media are so many typical examples of persons suffering serious accidents, even death, and they could quite easily have been avoided by simple common sense!

Introduction

This story is based on the evil that can be sitting right next to you whenever you travel about using buses, trains and planes and you should be totally aware that you could lose your life just as easily by any means that could simply occur without any valid reason. As you could by an accident caused by the collision of your method of transport or by other means which you probably could never imagine

I feel it is important for the reader that they have all the relative information and all the relative details so they can understand the how accurate the information and the details actually are. I can assure the reader that the contents of many of my stories are based on real live happenings from my very own situations and are actually based on happenings and real-life personal encounters, often of the extraordinary kind. To the normal person they are probably well beyond actual belief!

So at the start hopefully you can imagine the collating department at New Scotland Yard in London (I was actually in the building in 1960). The collating department is made up of many persons, not all actually police officers but many being public support staff under the watchful eye of some retired former police officers - usually of sergeant or inspector ranking. Their job is to examine all the data and information which arrives by the minute from police stations in the London area as well as from other police forces through the UK and Ireland. Let’s not forget information from the world outside the UK.

So we have information from all of the emergency services and not just the police forces. Even from all of the events going on, such as music festivals. Typical information would list persons arrested and the offences, persons who have received medical treatment on site and at hospitals. Hopefully you can imagine the vast quantity of information entering the collating department, not just in a single day but every single hour. This information will take a considerable amount of time as it is sifted and placed in the correct section so it can be assessed by police stations and police officers no matter where they are, as long as they have access to a computer no matter where they are located.

So you could have two pieces of information from two entirely different locations which could be and should be connected together and logged in the same folder, but the time it actually takes to combine the two and collate could be weeks or months and might only happen by being spotted by a person who can remember a similar situation. Sometimes an investigation can be caused by somebody’s own initiative and may be started by an event which is not actually related to the core event.

Chapter One

Our story actually begins and was caused by a situation that really depended on a family day out using the London Underground to and from their destination.

A nine-year-old girl was admitted to the A & E department of the Northwick Park Hospital at Harrow, North London! She had been collected by emergency ambulance from the home she lived in with her eleven-year-old brother and parents. Because the girl died the local police force were alerted and they attended, and support was offered to the family. It was some days later after the post-mortem that the local police force became involved at a higher level because it was stated the girl had died from a poison being administered in some form! The major concern was that the type of poison was unknown and not readily able to identify, so the origin was actually unknown. Because the rest of the family were tested and found to be OK, the house was searched by the forensic team but no source was found.

So it was an amazing breakthrough when a WPC was having a casual chat with the family and the mother was tearful as she spoke about the last time she was enjoying time with the daughter. It was the afternoon and early evening when she started to convulse in agony and was rushed to hospital. The happy time was when they went by Underground Tube to the West End in London to visit the cinema to see BFG on the big screen, a special treat which could help the daughter with her school project work. The WPC asked the mum if anything happened which was out of ordinary on the trip?

Mum answered, Not that I can recall!

How about you, Adam, did you observe anything? the WPC spoke to the son who was also on the same trip.

Well just as Mum said, but a difference was that old lady, Mum!

What was that about Mum? asked the WPC.

Well nothing really, I mean just some elderly person who was sitting opposite. She took a package out of her bag and opened a card stuck to the top and then she laughed and made a comment that it was her birthday. She then opened the box, which was chocolates, and she scoffed a couple, and then I think she must have noticed we were watching her so she passed the box of chocolates over and asked us to join in on her celebrations!

So did you all take a chocolate? asked the WPC.

No not all, Susan and Adam did, but I didn’t as I have type 2 diabetes and chocolate is not good for me, but the chocolates must have been OK because Susan and Adam both had them and Adam is OK!

Mum! Adam spoke with tears! Mum I never ate mine! I was full up from lunch! I never ate mine!

Adam was heartbroken and was comforted by his mum.

Adam what did you do with your chocolate? Did you throw it away? asked the WPC.

Drying his tears Adam spoke, I didn’t eat it I just put it in my pocket for later, but because of all the trauma with Susan I forgot all about it!

So you still have it?

Yes, it’s still in my jacket pocket - probably all melted by now!

Adam can we go and see please? the WPC and Adam went to his room and the WPC turned the pocket inside out.

Is that it Adam? You didn’t unwrap the paper?

Yes, that’s the only one; I just put it straight in my pocket! I remember Susan unwrapping hers! She always liked chocolate and probably would have eaten mine if she knew it was in my pocket!

The WPC scooped the chocolate inside an evidence bag and sealed it, and they went back to the front room and confronted an emotional mum.

Do you think that could be the source? the mum asked.

I cannot be sure, it will be sent off to the laboratory and analysed so won’t know till we have the results!

* * *

Some days later when the results were received it was revealed that the chocolate had probably been laced with the poison by the use of a hypodermic needle as the wrapping was intact and it was difficult to locate the tiny hole in the wrapping paper.

The family, Mum and Adam, were questioned about any details they could remember about the elderly lady, but the information was very spasmodic the details sketchy. The police concern was that the elderly lady could be lying dead somewhere as she had eaten at least two of the chocolates, so a major search of London was ongoing. From the details regarding the Underground train system, the police could narrow the search area and asked railway police to search their CCTV to see if anything would show up. The police were concerned that the lady may have thrown the box of chocolates away or given them to somebody else, so at all the hospitals with A & E departments, the ambulance services were contacted but nothing showed up on the radar. The idea was the lady could have been a cleaner at a business and they had given her a present as it was her birthday, so small businesses were asked whether anybody was missing. But nothing was happening despite the search - it seemed like just a one-off, so the investigation went cold turkey.

Chapter Two

It would be some nine months later when the chocolate killer would surface again and the event would develop into a broader and more concise enquiry!

This time the information was collated within the collating department at the yard! The department had been recently expanded and was connected with another department at the yard, as it was thought that the two departments could be involved with totally different topics which could be related in many ways of underground information and knowledge. The new department was related to computer cybercrime because it had been found that cyber, or use of computers, was being used by various criminal activities to corroborate information and knowledge! So although some criminal activity was now off the street and into rooms, the cells were all connected by wiring and now there was persons who could connect to anywhere in the country or the world! It became important to have the information regarding computer crime and the information from pre-computer synchronised, so a person who had been on the ground radar and had transferred to computer crime could be identified and not disappear from sight. Likewise, a new computer criminal may be connected with a previous crime or criminal listed in the older database. But all this updating and changing took time, and above all, more money was required for staff training and equipment, and with the present government having many cutbacks of the supply of money to the police service despite being an essential programme of modernisation, it would not happen overnight!

Anyway, the new information that had surfaced was from several hospitals in the London area which had admitted various persons to their A & E department who had subsequently died from a poisoning, and this had shown up in the collating department and identified as the same strain of poison as the one that had killed the young girl Susan, some nine months previous!

Because of the number of persons involved and the common source, not just the type of poison used but also being persons who had travelled on the London Underground, all these common factors caused the crime to be flagged on the collation department’s database and was given a priority. The information was transferred to the serious crime department and would be given a code name and investigated properly.

The detailed folder was dumped on the desk of Detective Inspector Tim Justin. He was the first person to read the title ‘Deadly Chocolates’, and after he had read the report he organised a team of investigative police officers to investigate the suspected crime and bring any perpetrators to justice.

The reason for Tim Justin being selected as the best person to lead the investigation was because of his success rate of dealing with crimes involving serial criminalisation, and the number of identical cases involving the same poison with the same serial number had popped up.

The team were now given the job of looking through all the details to establish any pattern, and when the DI was happy with the information he would then start an incident whiteboard so they could identify any pattern that had emerged.

It would take many days before the preliminary information could be pencilled in and a briefing could be arranged.

First briefing of the ‘Deadly Chocolates’ team was underway.

OK gentlemen; let me go through what we have so far on the board.

Ken, can you light the board up please.

Right, we have one plus eight victims, so nine in all, all at different dates and at different locations. The only common known information denominator is that it is the same type of poison!

John!

Sir, we should add that the poison has identical make up and was administered in the same way, even though the chocolates were of different manufacture, as were the possible locations!

Yes John, good point, but at present we have not been able to actually identify the poison as a brand or identify a manufactured source, so it’s still a maybe!

Chris!

Guv, I feel there is another common factor regarding the Underground, it would seem to me that if we only have one perpetrator then that person is using the Underground as a means of access!

Yes Chris, the Underground a good place to hide and travel unnoticed among the millions of persons each day, so our possible perpetrator could join and leave anywhere in the London inner and outer areas - a real needle in haystack!

Right Paul, you have dug up some interesting data for us!

Yes Guv, if we go back nine months to the first of our victims and we read that report and compare it with some of the recent reports, you can see the similarities and the surprising common information! Now, in each case we have some witnesses who all give the same details and these all relate to elderly women taking a box of chocolates from a shopping bag, announcing it was her birthday, eating some chocolates and then handing them round to other persons within reach. Now, because the persons who accept and eat the chocolate are not related, apart from our very first victim, they all go to different locations. All have different lifestyles so we don’t have a mass of persons ending up at the same A & E department, and that’s why it’s taken some time to collate the information - also there could be more persons who may not yet have died! We only have the London area covered so far! Could be some persons were down in London from another part of the UK, so we don’t have them listed yet!

Carry on Paul.

Yes Guv. Now, at present we have connected this elderly person with being the same as the one from nine months ago, but we don’t have any proof that they are the same or even if the elderly person observed recently is the same person as nine months ago with our first victim! I mean, do we have just one person or do we have more than one? And is this elderly lady a man in disguise? So we don’t actually know who we are looking for. At a guess I would say we need to catch the perpetrator in the act with the goods on their person!

Thanks Paul, my thoughts as well.

OK, you can see this is not a Monday to Friday job as some of our victims have been attacked at weekends. So far we have one victim nine months ago and in the last month we have had eight more, so let’s guess that next month we might have another eight if the pattern continues. We need to cover this next month with the same information from last month - same dates, locations, etc., and put some bodies on the ground! I have spoken to the transport police and they will put as many in plain clothes as possible and concentrate their resources on the Circle line. They will be looking for an elderly looking lady with a shopping bag and they will stop and search where possible, but we don’t know how knowledgeable this perpetrator is regarding the policing on the Underground and they could be well versed in avoidance tactics!

Chapter Three

Ten days into the month.

Guv?

Paul, we’ve just had word in that there have been another four fatalities - four persons, three male and one female, all admitted to the same A & E at Charing Cross Hospital - Chris and John are on the way there now! This is even worse - all four are tourists and the possible attack was on an open-top sightseeing bus. Again an elderly lady, again her birthday card and chocolates handed out - this time the poison must have been a higher strength because all the victims collapsed within minutes of getting off the bus! The emergency medical services were alerted by the tour guide on the bus, and the police were called by the conductor as the bus was stationary for a while. And no, the bus had no CCTV, and the information was given by the bus conductor who actually witnessed the lady giving the chocolates out. He was a bit upset he never got one!

Oh Guv, the conductor remembered the lady getting on and off and said she seemed very sprightly for her age, but he could not remember what she looked like!

Right Chris, so this elderly looking person could be a younger person or man dressed up!

My thoughts exactly Guv! And if that’s the case, she could board the train looking elderly but enter and leave the station a different-looking person! Same with the bus - they could change in a loo anywhere!

Chris, I was expecting another train attack, so why the change? I want you to check out the train staff including their police force, is she or he one of them? She or he could have got information regarding our surveillance on the Underground and changed tactics! Now our problem has doubled - we can’t monitor above ground and underground, it’s just not possible!

* * *

A briefing is held a couple of days later.

OK listen up, we now have updated information, and because the latest victims are tourists the Home Office have been asking questions and demanding answers, because if word gets to the media that we have a serial killer loose in London and tourist are the targets, then the effect could be devastating to our tourist industry, which would have a knock-on effect right through the tourist holiday system!

Chris, can you give us something to be pleased about?

Sorry Guv, we have the four tourists on the list but no actual reason why! And at the moment, because we have no leads to any person or the reason, we have no motive and the way things have been happening I am expecting the body count to go up and up before we have an actual lead!

Paul?

The same Guv, until we have a motive we are chasing ghosts! I have made enquires to see if any of the snouts have heard anything! My gut feeling is we have somebody with a possible grudge, but even that is not obvious because the victims are just random and have no hidden reason for being a target. And the chocolates are handed out to just anybody in the area who could help themselves! I can remember when at football matches the team’s mascot would walk round the pitch at half-time and throw sweets to the kids, so perhaps we should feel lucky the perpetrator hasn’t come up with that idea yet or we could have a lot more victims!

Thanks Paul, that doesn’t bear thinking about!

John, I know you have been working with the media department!

Yes Guv, as you know we have had words from above that the media blackout is important to eliminate the panic situation! The media department has been under pressure from Fleet Street regarding the deaths, and there is increased pressure because of the tourist deaths, and that is something we cannot keep the lid on very long. Because of the overseas interest we have had ambassador visits from the victims’ countries and the prime minister has become involved!

Thanks John. What’s going through my mind is does this person have some sort of agenda? Are they waiting for the news to be published regarding the crime? Are they looking for headlines? Are they some sad person who has been overlooked and put down by society? Have they finished now or will they continue until they become famous - become a martyr? What is the motive? Find that and then we have a better chance of catching her or him!

Guv!

Chris!

Guv, we need a different approach! The only known thing in common with each perpetrator is the poison. I think we need to concentrate on finding out just how this substance could be produced! I mean, I would not have any idea how to make it, so it must be a person with very special knowledge on drugs or even chemicals! So I would like to take the detail sample to the top university and top pharmaceutical company and get them to have a look and tell us how it could be done, by what method and what knowledge would be required! If the person is a gifted person there is more chance he will be recorded somewhere!

You are so right Chris, but it needs more than just you. John, Paul, Chris, put your heads together then split up and target as many different universities and pharmaceutical companies as you can. Rattle as many cages as you can and let’s hope our perpetrator’s having a holiday and we can have some answers before we have another victim!

* * *

Over the next few weeks the team concentrate on the making of the poison. Fortunately, there were no more victims during that time and none had shown up anywhere else in UK, so the press were being kept at a distance for the time being.

Briefing...

Update Chris?

"Guv, I have collated the information the three of us have collected! It would appear that the poison was a formula of a cocktail of drugs, the possible type has been identified