A Genuine Mistake

by Ted Tayler

  Gerry Hogan flew out to Sydney and met Evelyn’s parents for the first time since he and his wife got engaged. The couple hadn’t been able to afford to visit the UK for the wedding. Evelyn kept in touch by phone and letter in the intervening years, and Gerry kept promising that one day they would fly out so that Sean and Byron could meet their grandparents.

  Gerry knew that his in-laws didn’t want their daughter to lie in a grave in England. He agreed they should scatter Evelyn’s ashes in the Macquarie Pass National Park. When he flew home towards the end of March, he faced up to life looking after Sean and Byron alone.

  His sister, Belinda, was always ready to offer a helping hand. When the police talked to her after Gerry’s death, Belinda said he had been a brilliant father. He never complained about the cards life had dealt him. He threw himself wholeheartedly into being the best father possible to those two boys.

  Gerry met Rachel Cummins five years later, in 2007. Belinda worried it was too soon. She was concerned that the boys would find it difficult to adjust. Sean was thirteen, and Byron, eleven by that time. They both attended St Laurence School in Bradford-on-Avon. Gerry and Rachel dated for several months before Gerry introduced her to the boys. They went on holiday together to Portugal in the Algarve in the Spring of 2008. Rachel moved into the house on Trowle Common when they returned home.

  Gus flicked through the folder to find anything on Rachel Cummins. Who was she? What first attracted her to the wealthy and successful business owner, Gerry Hogan? That might be simple enough to fathom, but although Gerry Hogan was old enough to be her father, two teenage boys were in the mix to consider. Rachel might not be a gold-digger after all. Gus knew all too well that two people from a different generation could fall in love.

  The Rachel Cummins file was far slimmer, not unlike the lady herself, based on the photograph at the top of the first page.

  Rachel was born in the first week of January 1982 in Haslemere, Surrey. Her parents were Jeffrey and Katherine Cummins, who lived and worked in the small town twelve miles from Guildford. Rachel’s parents separated eighteen months after Rachel was born, and Katherine raised Rachel alone.

  After leaving the Woolmer Hill Technology College, Rachel continued her studies to gather a bundle of diplomas in health, exercise, and fitness. Aged twenty, she started a business as a personal trainer. Rachel continued to live with her mother in Haslemere, driving to various sites across the county for group fitness sessions. She also secured one-to-one appointments with clients in their own home to boost her earnings.

  In 2005, Katherine Cummins reconnected with an old school friend through Facebook, and Rachel arrived home from a fitness session to learn that her mother was eager for Lawrence Wallace to move in.

  Rachel thought Lawrence was a creep, but it was her mother’s life. Perhaps it was time to plough her own furrow? Three months after Lawrence moved in and several rows with her mother, Rachel moved out. She did her best to find other trainers to accommodate her regulars, and after she was satisfied with her efforts, she moved to Bath. Rachel didn’t know the city, except by reputation, but her training and experience were transferable anywhere in the country.

  After a rocky few weeks where she wondered whether she had made the right decision, Rachel’s business soon grew. Eighteen months after moving to Bath, Rachel was running one of her regular fitness classes in Bradford-on-Avon when Gerry Hogan arrived.

  Gerry was forty-nine, a widower, and although he ran a successful business, he knew that two decades without regular exercise was playing havoc with his waistline. After the first occasion that he attended her class, they spoke briefly about what he wanted from the sessions. Gerry had told her he’d concentrated on caring for his two sons after losing his wife in a car accident. He needed to get fit for their sakes, and the hour at the gym with her would be the only social interaction he’d get without the boys tagging along.

  Rachel had found herself thinking of Gerry during the following week and looked forward to seeing him again. She asked if he wanted to go for a drink after the following Thursday evening session. That was something she had never done before with any of her clients.

  Rachel had had to fend off the odd amorous bloke who thought an appointment in his home promised something that was not on the published price list, but Gerry was different. She felt an instant attraction, and later that night, after the drink in the pub, Rachel discovered Gerry felt the same way.

  It was the first time he’d been with a woman since his wife died. Despite Belinda’s reservations, Gerry and Rachel grew closer, and after that foreign holiday in 2008, Rachel moved in and for four years, everything was fine.

  After Gerry’s murder, some issues need sorting out. Gerry and Rachel had never married. Belinda received a sum of money in the will, but the home on Trowle Common and the financial services business passed to Rachel. Gerry had altered his will after Evelyn’s death so that if anything happened to him before the boys reached the age of majority, his sister, Belinda, would act as their guardian.

  Gerry altered his will again in 2011. He and Rachel had lived together for three years by then, and there were no clouds on the horizon as far as he could see to stop them from staying together for many years to come. Sean was already almost seventeen, and the need for a guardian seemed superfluous. Although Byron was two years Sean’s junior, what could go wrong?

  “Eighteen is the age when minors cease to be considered such,” he’d told Rachel. “They can assume control over their actions and decisions at that stage. I’m hoping we can see them married and with children of their own before we worry over the provisions of my will again.”

  From the sixth of May 2012, that worry transferred to Rachel Cummins when her partner got killed. It soon became apparent that Belinda Hogan wished to challenge the will. She told friends she believed Rachel hired a hitman to kill Gerry. Belinda thought that was her plan all along; to live with him for a short period and then cash in.

  Gus closed the file for now. This case had more angles to it than he’d imagined when the ACC walked through it earlier. He vaguely remembered a bloke in a suit coming to their home in Downton one evening to help him and Tess fill out a form. In the event of, and so on, but like Gerry Hogan, they’d thought nothing untoward would happen to them.

  They expected to grow old gracefully, and when one of them died, the surviving spouse would inherit the lot. In practical terms, that meant they carried on pretty much as before, like millions of other couples whose wills were simple and straightforward.

  After Tess died and the usual rush of urgent official paperwork, Gus couldn’t recall what he’d done with their will. He certainly hadn’t thought it necessary to amend it. He was only fifty-eight. What was the rush?

  As Gus sat in the Focus, staring at the back wall of the Old Police Station, he realised that he’d better find that brown envelope and start thinking about how the wording needed to change. Suzie might not be in a rush to become the second Mrs Freeman, but there was someone else to consider.

  Gus grabbed the folder and travelled up in the lift.

  “Welcome back, guv,” said Lydia. “My word, that’s a big one.”

  “Don’t even think about saying anything, Neil,” said Gus.

  “Me, guv?” said Neil. “I’m pure in thought and mind. That was what the actress is supposed to have said to the bishop, too.”

  “We have the murder file here for a financial advisor, Gerald, or Gerry Hogan,” said Gus. “Hogan died on his doorstep at the beginning of May in 2012.”

  “That we’re looking at it now implies the original investigation got nowhere, I assume?” said Blessing Umeh.

  “You’ve got it in one, Blessing,” said Gus. “Right, the usual procedure, please. Get the crime scene photos up on the walls and whiteboards. We need photos of the key players and their backgrounds—a Trowbridge and Bradford-on-Avon map that allows us to focus on the murder site on Trowle Common. Luke, you can set up meetings with any witnesses and th
e surviving family members. Alex, I want you to put Gerry Hogan’s business life under the microscope. I’ll run through the sequence of events in a moment, but if someone wanted Hogan dead badly enough to shoot him in the head in broad daylight, then money probably figures in the affair somewhere.”

  Gus opened the large folder on Blessing’s desk, and Lydia joined her colleague to sort through the items they needed.

  “I was right. This file carries a lot more detail than we’re used to,” she said.

  “At least someone had the decency to prepare an index,” said Blessing. “We’ll find the major items so much easier.”

  Gus returned to his desk and rang Geoff Mercer at London Road.

  “Geoff, what happened to John Kirkpatrick?”

  “He transferred to Portishead,” said Geoff. “John Kirkpatrick’s a Detective Chief Inspector with Avon & Somerset.”

  “I can see a pattern developing here,” said Gus. “Every officer I need to contact has got promoted since handling a murder case that the ACC gives me. Is that the reward for failure these days?”

  “Cheeky,” said Geoff. “They could have had a decent clear-up rate for all you know. Not as stellar as yours, of course, Gus. You get to tackle the occasional blip in their careers.”

  “If you say so, Geoff,” said Gus. “I suppose Victoria Bennison has moved on from being a Detective Sergeant?”

  “Vicky Bennison left the police, Gus,” said Geoff. “I can get her contact details to you if you need to speak to her, but I can’t guarantee she’ll cooperate. Vicky transferred to Thames Valley to work in Oxford a couple of years after the Hogan case. In June 2015, she joined officers policing an anti-austerity protest march on a Saturday afternoon in central London.”

  “One of those marches that started with good intentions but got infiltrated by anarchists, I imagine,” said Gus.

  “There were many undesirable elements that attached themselves to the peaceful protestors, and things turned nasty,” said Geoff. “A male colleague went into the crowd to make an arrest. Vicky saw him quickly surrounded by four or five heavies and waded in to help. Someone behind her shoved Vicky hard in the back, and she hit the ground. While other officers struggled to control the situation ahead of where she fell, Vicky took a severe kicking from the thugs who remained. Every time she opened her eyes to identify her attackers, she saw a sea of mobile phones filming the attack. A dozen officers ended up in the hospital that afternoon. Her male colleague didn’t return to duty for fifteen months.”

  “What about Vicky?” asked Gus.

  “Like many other officers, she joined the police to protect the public,” said Geoff. “When Vicky shouted for their help, all they did was laugh and keep filming. After the Chief Constable handed her a medal, she threw it in the nearest waste bin and walked away.”

  “Send me her details, Geoff,” said Gus. “I’ll tread with care if I decide to ask for her opinions on the case. Thanks for the heads up.”

  Gus looked around the room. He hoped that none of the Crime Review Team ever suffered like Vicky Bennison. Whatever happened to respect for authority? If only they could rewind the clock to the days when he joined as a uniformed constable. Things were far from perfect in the mid-Seventies, but his old Sergeant would have kittens if he saw what the world was like today. Ah well, time to move on. The walls and whiteboards carried everything they needed for the next few days, at least.

  “Right,” he said. “A quick summary, and then I want your first impressions. Gerry Hogan lived in Bradford-on-Avon as a child. After university, he joined a well-known financial services firm in Bristol. Hogan married an Australian girl, Evelyn, in 1982 and set up his own business in 1992. They had two sons, Sean and Byron, who were born in 1994 and 1996. In 2002, Evelyn died in a traffic accident in Australia. She was a wildlife photographer who had worked here in the UK throughout their marriage. Before leaving New South Wales, her last commission to live in the UK had been at the same location. The trip back home was to take photographs she could use to compare the wildlife volumes in the Macquarie Pass National Park after a twenty-year gap. The climate change fraternity was eager to see the results. Gerry Hogan didn’t cut back on his business involvement, but he spent every spare minute of free time looking after his sons. His older sister, Belinda, did her best to support her brother in that regard. In 2007, Gerry Hogan met Rachel Cummins, a personal trainer. There was a significant age gap, but the couple stayed together, and the boys liked her. Everything seemed fine in the relationship. There were no problems with the business. Rachel Cummins continued to operate her business, holding fitness and exercise classes in and around Trowbridge and Bradford-on-Avon.”

  “I think I’ve seen her adverts in the local press,” said Neil.

  “You never thought of signing up?” asked Lydia.

  “Can you picture me in lycra?” asked Neil.

  “That’s an image I’ll never get out of my head now. Thanks a bunch,” said Luke.

  “Any sensible comments before I move on?” asked Gus.

  “Sorry, guv,” said Neil.

  “On Sunday the sixth of May, six years ago, Gerry and the boys were in the games room at the right-hand rear of the house. Rachel was exercising in the gym on the left-hand side, also on the ground floor and at the back. The doorbell rang at six-thirty in the evening, and Gerry and the boys stayed put, meaning Rachel had to stop what she was doing to answer the door. A man stood in the driveway, not facing her head on, but half turned away. Rachel was in a rush. She opened the door, and the man asked for her partner by name, nothing more. Rachel pushed the door to and made for the games room. She shouted for Gerry and told him someone wanted to speak to him. Rachel returned to the gym. Gerry went to the doorstep to talk to the visitor. At a quarter to seven, Sean left the games room to look for his father. He called out, thinking he was outside in the driveway as the front door was still ajar. Rachel heard Sean call out and stopped exercising. She walked into the hallway, peered around the front door, and found Gerry dead on the gravel. Someone had shot him in the head.”

  “No known enemies,” said Neil.

  “A happy relationship,” said Blessing.

  “Hogan wasn’t known to the police,” said Luke.

  “Déjà vu,” said Alex, “all over again.”

  “It sounds like we’ve been here before, doesn’t it?” said Gus. “We start our review with a good deal more information available than with some cases we’ve handled. The detective who was Senior Investigating Officer on the case now works at Portishead. DS Mercer has told me that DCI John Kirkpatrick will be available when we need to clarify any of the methodologies they followed. His second-in-command, DS Bennison, has left the service. If we need her input, I’ll track her down and have a quiet chat.”

  “Vicky Bennison, guv?” said Neil Davis. “We joined around the same time. I remember when she got injured in London. Her head was never right after that. The physical wounds healed within a month, but the mental scars never left her.”

  “If you knew Vicky when you were both raw recruits, Neil, it makes sense for you to come along. A friendly face might persuade her to give us a helping hand.”

  “What lines of enquiry did the investigation follow, guv?” asked Alex Hardy.

  “After interviews with family and neighbours on Monday and Tuesday following the murder, they were struggling,” said Gus. “Nobody saw the man who rang the doorbell arrive or leave the house. Rachel couldn’t give the police anything other than a vague description.”

  “That should have made the SIO suspicious, guv,” said Lydia. “Once the sister started spreading the rumour that Rachel had hired a hitman.”

  “Belinda didn’t raise her concerns with her friends until she learned of the provisions in her brother’s will,” said Gus. “After his wife’s death, Gerry had written a new will. If something happened to him, then Belinda would become the boys' guardian until they reached eighteen.”

  “There must have been another
will,” said Neil. “If the will with Belinda in it was still valid, Rachel had nothing to gain by bumping-off her partner.”

  “A year before his death, Gerry told Rachel he wanted to amend his will, so that she inherited the majority of his estate. Gerry left money in trust for the boys to receive when they reached twenty-five. He also made financial provision for his sister, but Belinda would no longer need to look after his boys. All things being equal, they would be grown men with families of their own by the time any will came into effect.”

  “True, Neil,” said Alex. “Nobody could foresee the events of May the sixth. The murder file states that Gerry discussed the new will with Rachel in detail. They both agreed it was the right thing to do. At thirty, Rachel hadn’t got around to making a will herself, and she admitted to Kirkpatrick and Bennison that although she and Gerry had lived together for four years, they were in no rush to get married. Rachel hoped it would happen in the future, but it wouldn’t have damaged their relationship if it didn't. She loved him every bit as much as she had within weeks of their meeting.”

  “Sean and Byron confirmed that their father’s feelings for Rachel hadn’t altered in the months before the murder,” added Lydia. “Byron told DI Kirkpatrick, ‘They were loved-up. We called her Rachel, not Mum. She never tried to take Mum’s place, but she made Dad happy, and we all got on together. There were never any arguments.’ Sean added that when they had the odd teenage tantrum, their Dad dealt with them. Rachel never interfered, but when he was suffering after getting dumped by a girl he’d liked, Rachel had listened to him and offered him advice.”

  “The family situation appears idyllic,” said Blessing. “The sister’s claims don’t seem to hold water, guv.”

  “Belinda Hogan might have been jealous of Rachel Cummins,” said Neil. “After Gerry lost his wife, his sister was the first person he’d asked to look after the boys. She was single, with no children of her own, and for around five years, she assumed a mother's role. Gerry amended his will to accommodate that situation. If he’d dropped dead of a heart attack in 2007, she would have got the lot. A year later, Gerry had a new girlfriend. The boys didn’t need Auntie Belinda to look after them any longer. Belinda did not know that Gerry had amended his will yet again.”