Oxford Deception

Oxford Deception

Smashwords Edition

Published By Jonny Wilson at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Jonny Wilson

ISBN: 978-1-4660-8369-1

Prologue

OXFORD MAIL

January 27th

Former President to Unveil New Plaque

It was announced today by the Oxford University that former US President. Wallace Baldwin, will unveil a new commemorative plaque which is to be erected in Bonn Square. The plaque is to commemorate the US and British servicemen who have given their lives in recent years, whilst serving as part of the United Nations peacekeeping forces. On the same day a similar plaque will be unveiled by former Prime Minister Sir John Caldwell at Harvard, Oxford’s sister university and town in the USA. The idea for the plaque came about during a conversation between the University’s respective vice chancellors at an Oxford-Harvard dinner in February last year and received full UN approval yesterday. The date for the unveiling will not be set until the exact nature and form of the plaque is agreed, but it is hoped that it will take place sometime next summer.

Students sent down for Plagiarism.

In one of the latest innovations to be used by Oxford University, Vice Chancellor Herbert Drake today announced that two Oxford students were being sent down for plagiarism. What is noteworthy in tis case is that both students were found out through the new, Oxford pioneered, anti-plagiarism software. Since both Oxford and Cambridge have ‘copyright libraries’ where everything published in the UK has to be sent, they have access to extensive texts of published materials and the latest software innovation has allowed both Oxford and Cambridge to use their respective libraries’ position to check current submissions with past and previous students work submitted at either university. Using this software the university discovered that student’s Andrew Manners and Judith Pickford, had consistently used former Cambridge students’ work and passed it off as their own. Seemingly both students had managed to find a past student from Cambridge whose writing style bore close similarities to their own, but because they’d chosen able, but not outstanding, former student’s work, neither had been under suspicion until the new software brought about their downfall. At present neither student is available for comment as it is believed that they are out of the country.

The software will be produced by Softink, a major sponsor of the university’s computing faculty, and is fan-fared as an excellent example of how universities and sponsors can work together to produce quality practical products through technological advances.

Chapter 1.

Some things seem to happen in slow motion; trivial things as well as important things. Trivial things like my dream hat trick: a right foot shot, left foot shot and a header combination. I can still remember scoring it and when I do, I see it all in slow motion. It happened on a wet afternoon in South Devon. I recall collecting Charlie’s flick header just inside our opponents half and then outstripping their defenders to place the first, a long right footed lob, over the advancing keeper. Later in the first half I remember hitting a curving left foot shot from the edge of the eighteen yard box that screamed into the top corner of the net. A second half downpour put paid to any further thoughts of finesse but fortunately a late, near post, header found the top left hand corner and made my day. I remember it all so clearly, in slow motion. Even my scoring partner Charlie’s congratulatory ‘greedy bugger’ comment seems to have been heard slowly.

Some important events are also remembered in slow motion, such as the events of July 26th. My trip into town that Saturday morning had been dogged by the security measures taken by the police as the city centre was sealed off from all traffic for hours as barriers were erected. Police, some even more conspicuous for wearing plain clothes, with their sharp eyes were looking everywhere and at everyone, and all because of the arrival of an ex-US president of questionable fame who, later that day, was expected to unveil a plaque in Bonn Square near the Westgate.

I came around the corner of Pennyfarthing Place at the rear of the Westgate shopping centre into St Ebbes and saw the two figures skulking, yet strangely alert, in the doorway of the City Council offices. It seemed as if they were frozen in time. They peered out so cautiously from that doorway, that their very temerity caught my eye. They watched the entourage arrive at the site and then ducked back into the doorway, just before all hell was unleashed. Though almost 100 yards away from the epicentre of the blast, it still blew me right off my feet and slammed me into the wall of St Ebbes church.

I think I remained at least semi-conscious for quite some time. What I do recall is lying there, my back against the wall, feeling the blood running down my face. On regaining some control of my senses I ran my hands over my body to check for injuries. Without even thinking I pulled out something that seemed to be stuck on my face only to discover that it was a wedge of glass that had become embedded in my forehead. I also remember seeing the two figures coming out from the cover of the entranceway and running off, jumping over prostrate bodies and fleeing along Pembroke Street towards St Aldates.

People move and run in different ways, depending upon whether they are happy of sad, rejoicing or fleeing. It’s something to do with the flow of their movements; the relative languidness or rigidity of their posture. The body language of the fleeing couple was in striking contrast to the movements of the other people I could see. Theirs was the language of celebration rather than panic, and it made a striking contrast to that of the others fleeing the scene. For the few members of the crowd who’d been sheltered in some way from the blast, theirs was the body language of terror, the blind, panicked running in any direction, as long as it was away, the careless way they fought for sanctuary. The young couple however ran deliberately, with purpose, sticking together, seeking exit; a planned exit which propelled them into the encompassing anonymity of the fleeing mob.

I tried to rise but fell back down again, flat on my back, my legs having turned to jelly underneath me. I lay there for a moment before rolling over and, in a rather ignominious fashion for one so used to the mastery of my physical faculties, rose to my hands and knees so that I could crawl towards and grasp a shredded metal bollard, and gradually pulled my body upright. I wobbled rather precariously for a moment and then began to take in, in real time now, the scene before my eyes. The distant corner of St Ebbes and Queen St was shrouded in the dense smoke of debris, somewhat reminiscent of the scenes I viewed on TV after the World Trade Centre bombing in New York.

I was under the impression that I’d been deafened by the blast but in glancing around I began to realise the enormity of the blast which had literally destroyed people where they stood. My deafness was ‘the sound of silence’; the silence of a graveyard, for that was what the scene had become, some kind of open grave, like a WW1 battlefield where the dead lay dismembered. It seemed as if that silence lasted forever yet it could only have been a minute or so before people began to moan, to scream, to cry out, and then came the distant sound of sirens approaching. As I looked around again, the sight was appalling. There were pieces of buildings strewn along what remained of the northern end of St Ebbes. Large chunks of other nearby buildings had embedded themselves into the centuries old stone of St Ebbes’ Anglican church. The now vacant church windows had been blasted into smithereens and I remember thinking ‘thank God this wasn’t a Sunday’. No doubt the crowds would have been just as thick with Sunday shoppers and sightseeers but the church would also have been packed as usual with additional Sunday morning celebrants whose bodies would probably have been shredded by the stained glass as it was vaporised by the blast.

There were people lying on the ground all around me, some with and some without limbs. Coward that I am, I also recall wishing that I hadn’t just renewed my First Aid and CPR qualifications, so that I wouldn’t have felt some compelled to walk towards those I’d much rather have walked away from. Yet some shred of humanity, some inward force, compelled me to sublimate the sickening sights before me and I started checking for people that I just might be able to give some help or comfort to. The first was a little boy, probably no more than 9 years old, whose arm lay beside him. I checked him over as best I could and discovered that although he was in shock, he was at least breathing. I stripped off what was left of my jacket, ripped it into strips and made a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. To this day I still don’t know how I managed to pick up his severed arm and lay it beside him, but I remember reading some days later that he’d had it stitched back on and he was making some kind of recovery. I then seemed to move into some kind of automatic gear, and some autonomic reaction took over, that enabled me to remember much of what I’d been taught when I’d updated my First Aid Certificate.

Having started out seeing things in slow motion I now can recollect little of the hour that followed. I do remember checking those nearest to me, trying some CPR on those not breathing before moving on to help those more obviously alive yet in great distress. When the emergency services eventually managed to get through the carnage and reach where I was, I gratefully let them take over and went and sat down exhausted on the pavement resuming my former position, with my back against St Ebbes church wall.

I don’t know how long it was before I half collapsed on to the pavement again but when I did I knew that I’d reached the limit of my strength. I was exhausted. With only emergency vehicles now being allowed into the city centre, and all public transport having been redirected out of it, I had to stagger on uncertain feet through the back streets and lanes in the direction of the High St. Unaware of the mess I looked, with blood encrusted on my head and my forehead cut open to the bone, and my clothes covered in a variety of blood types, I staggered past gawking crowds and reached St Clements where, by some minor miracle, I found a bus to take me up the hill. Once home I collapsed onto the sofa and passed out. How I made my way up to bed that evening I don’t recollect, but was only the next day after I’d slept fitfully throughout the night, that I switched on the TV to discover the full extent of what had happened.

As with the aftermath of 9-11 the news was on continuously. The BBC reported that the security forces had so far determined that there had been two massive Semtex bombs which had detonated simultaneously. The current theory was that they’d been concealed in shops on both east and west side of the corner of St Ebbes and Queen St. The bombs had literally demolished the shops, killing scores of people inside, and hundreds in the street outside. The police also reckoned that it had probably been the sheer numbers of people crowding the area that ‘saved’ the ex president from being killed outright. It appeared that his car had been partially shielded from the blast by the crowds but even still, he was still only being given poor odds at making it through the next few days due to the loss of several limbs and extensive cranial damage too. Even the shielding of the crowds bodies hadn’t prevented his limousine from being thrown almost 50’ through the air and embedded into the pillars at the front of New St Baptist church. He and his whole entourage had been flown by air ambulance, to the nearby John Radcliffe hospital, but even almost 24 hours later his condition was still reported to be ‘extremely serious’. Two of his bodyguards who’d been in the front of the car had escaped without serious injury but those dignitaries who’d been ‘lucky’ enough to have travelled in the cars and other limousines beside him were dead. So far no person or organisation had claimed responsibility. Rather predictably, the IRA were put in the frame for it, but they had vociferously denied any involvement in the affair and were keen to be seen co-operating publicly in the already massive investigation. Second in line of suspicion in the UK, though topping the polls in the USA, was any kind of Arab leader or armed group from Al Quaieda to Hezbollah. Again, there had been denials all round and, although accusations abounded, evidence was in short supply.

What I didn’t know at the time was that, whilst I was helping the wounded, some cub cameraman from the Oxford Mail offices nearby had had been on the scene taking pictures, and some of those featured me helping the wounded. One such picture of me helping the wounded made the front page of the Daily Express two days later, a Monday ‘human interest’ story. Though I don’t take a daily newspaper, a friend phoned to warn me before my troubles began. Until the press photograph had been published, I’d been anonymous, just a face in the crowd, one of many folks who’d helped out that day. But once my face was in the paper I was an instant yet unknown,’ celebrity’.

It was in the Doctor’s surgery that Monday morning as I sat in the waiting room that I saw the Daily Express story with the picture of me on the front page and I couldn’t help but notice that the Oxford Mail, carried a similar picture. The doctor had noticed it too and took the step of advising me to rest up for the rest of the week. Being the first week of the school summer holidays, I didn’t have to worry about going to work and I wandered home from the surgery wondering how I’d managed to make the front page and whom I had to ‘thank’ for the publicity. With my picture all over the paper it didn’t take the press long to find out where I lived, and by the middle of Monday afternoon, my home came under siege and my phone began to ring constantly. Maybe one of my pupils had recognised me and told them, or maybe it was a near neighbour or friend thinking that they were doing me a favour but with the press now looking for some quote, comment or exclusive interview, I felt besieged and badly wanted to escape.

Their vans and cars clogged up the road outside and their cameras were arrayed along the front wall of my house, all pointing into my front lounge and, for reasons known only to them, also into my bedroom. To escape their prying I had drawn the curtains front and back and turned what had begun as a sunny July day into the nether gloom of November. The phone continued to ring all hours and although I hooked in the answering machine I could hear the messages being left with ever increasingly lucrative offers for my ‘inside story’

My neighbours even found some ‘gentlemen of the press’ in my back garden peering through my French windows later on that Monday afternoon (28th), and turned their garden hose on them. Later on that day some other gentlemen arrived on my doorstep. One was a senior policeman who identified himself and his companion respectively as AC Holmes and Commander Grant. Accompanying the uniformed branch were two gentlemen in sharp suits with English and American Accents, carrying the kinds of ID I’d never seen before. They didn’t identify themselves formally but gave off the aura of authority and respectability, saying that they’d called on me to ‘ask a few questions sir’. Why I didn’t tell them at the time my suspicions about the couple I’d seen, I’m not sure. Maybe I thought that they’d dismiss such suspicions as pure fantasy and I didn’t want to appear a total idiot. Maybe I didn’t want, possibly innocent, people hounded for something they might have had nothing to do with but, whatever the reason, I kept my suspicions to myself and simply reported what I’d experienced. If only I’d have said something then, I may have saved myself a lot of trouble in the months that lay ahead.

Lester and Jerry

I’m not one for publicity. I’ve never courted it and frankly, it embarrasses me but the media savvy police had advised me that the best way to get rid of unwanted press was to give an exclusive interview to one national and one local paper that I thought I could trust. This, they said, would at least diminish the crowds on my doorstep. Taking their advice I granted interviews to reporters from ‘The Independent’ and ‘The Oxford Mail’ and this appeared to work in reducing the number of those camped outside my door. It also helped my neighbours by reducing the number of press hounding them for background material on me, but even so it was about a week before I could come and go unmolested. As with my police interview, I restricted my exclusive press reports and once again omitted any mention of the young couple.

Having read of my involvement in the affair, and being concerned with any possible physical reaction to it, my best friends Roger and Linda came down from Yorkshire that Wednesday to see if they could help me in any way. Seeing the siege I was under, my wonderful neighbours had been bringing me a never-ending supply of home cooked food for me but when Roger and Linda arrived and went shopping for me, life began to take on some semblance of normality again. I remember wishing that my upcoming package holiday was due sooner, for that might have helped me escape, but all I could do for the present was to keep my head down and let Roger and Linda field my calls and answer the door for me. Having them there was an emotional life saver, for not only did they keep the press away, but their company kept me sane.

It was to them that I confided my suspicions about the young fleeing couple. It all sounded so flimsy and circumstantial to me when I tried to tell them about it, but their reaction was quite different. They took my suspicions far more seriously than I had. They quizzed me for most of that evening as we sat in the lounge room drinking endless cups of tea and consuming an entire chocolate cake which my next door neighbour Alison had made for me. It felt a bit like a friendly Spanish Inquisition with Roger and Linda asking all the questions and me trying, sometimes in vain, to remember the details of the event. Though on my side, they both felt that I’d made a big mistake in not confiding in the authorities when they’d some round to visit, and they very strongly encouraged me to both correct that mistake a.s.a.p. and to write down everything I’d omitted so that it would remain fresh.

In my defence I pointed out that my regular reading material consisted almost entirely of spy or adventure novels, and aware of that, I felt that I probably had been letting my imagination run away with me. Roger and Linda however believed that this judgment was not up to me but up to the professionals who would easily be able to decide whether what I saw was relevant evidence or mere fantasy material. They also pointed out the fact that despite having had almost a week to come up with some sort of explanation for the bombing, so far no real leads had been forthcoming, at least none that the police were telling anyone about. So, in the nicest possible way, they decided to take matters into their own hands.

Linda is a portrait artist by profession and so she got the ball rolling by sitting me down that night and, from my description, drawing a kind of impression of the two young people. It wasn’t a perfect match but considering how badly I’d managed to describe them, and the fact that I knew nothing about how their faces looked, it came pretty close. All through the evening I suggested small changes to her drawing and then we called the number I’d been given by those men in suits. Though I didn’t manage to get through to them personally, I was told to expect a return phone call. It seemed as if I’d just put the phone down when it rang. I picked it up and to hear the clipped tones of one of the men who’d interviewed me earlier that week. They said that, given the lateness of the hour, they’d not come that night but would send a car for me the next morning. That night I slept even more fitfully than previously. The evening news had carried the news that ex president Baldwin had succumbed to his injuries and died that evening, and it may have been that which triggered a recurring dream I had that night that involved the two young people becoming my assailants and chasing me. As is the nature of dreams I could remember little that was tangible about it, save the feeling of being hounded by people I didn’t know. Finally I gave up trying to sleep and went downstairs with my current, and now overdue, library book to sit on the sofa and read, only to be interrupted later by the arrival of Roger who’d also had a sleepless and interrupted night. To shorten the night watches we sat discussing all that had happened but although by sunrise we had lots of theories, none made any real sense.

Chapter Two

Helping with Enquiries

Friday 1st August

The police car arrived just as we were finishing what was a very quiet breakfast; quiet because Roger and I were paying the price for a lack of sleep and Linda was concentrating hard on her finalising sketch before the boys in blue arrived. I’d been expecting a constable but there, once again immaculate in their dark blue pinstripes were the two ‘suits’ in a top of the range Jaguar ! I began to get nervous right then. After assuring Roger and Linda that they’d drop me back later that day, and leaving mobile numbers where they could be reached any time of the day and night, I was whisked away in the silent confines of the Jaguar.

We went nowhere near Oxford or the Thames Valley Police HQ in Kidlington, but instead sped south down the M40 turning off before the M25 junction and into the grounds of a rather imposing looking mansion set in acres of its own grounds. The first thing I noticed was the discreet yet unmistakable security; the doorman in just a little too good shape for the post, the small cameras high on the ceilings, and the feeling of seeing people move around quietly yet with a distinct sense of purpose. I’d only ever seen an interview room on the 21 inches of digital plastic that I called a TV, but these rooms could not have been further removed from the one I was escorted to: plush sofas and wing-backed chairs comfortably were arrayed around a beautiful mahogany coffee table which would probably have fetched thousands at Southebys. But despite the comfortable surroundings, or maybe even because of them, my stomach muscles were now in knots. When fears come in an unexpected fashion it only increases tension and I sat there feeling like a coiled spring, and my nerves, aided and abetted by a disturbed night’s sleep, were fraying more and more as the unexpected events of the morning drew on.

The questions didn’t even get underway until I’d politely refused coffee and biscuits and then the suits began in a quiet, respectful and understated way, by asking me to simply recount again what I thought I’d seen on the day of the blast. An hour later, after I thought that they’d teased every nuance of detail from my story by playing the polite game of asking consecutive questions, lunch magically appeared, and the investigation continued in a more conversational manner. I was still in the frame of mind that I was probably wasting their time, mixing the blurred facts of that afternoon with the vivid imaginary suspicions brought on by the novels I’d read. It was of some comfort to me that, like Roger and Linda, my questioners introduced to me as Lester and Jerry, were not so convinced that I had been imagining things. The one fact that they fed to me was that, because no one had claimed any responsibility and so many of the bystanders who could have given some help had been killed in the attack, any leads, no matter how scant, were worth investigating. I surmised from the quiet yet serious attitude during their continuing and detailed questioning, that to be ale to say to the public that ‘they were following a lead,’ no matter how tenuous, would probably come as a welcome respite to them in their search for clues.

It was probably no secret that both the White House and Downing Street were exerting considerable pressure on the investigating team to find some suspects if not answers. In addition to the political pressures, the press in both the US and UK were also baying for blood and that only increased the investigating team’s desire for some kind of lead to follow. What I had to say might be leading them up a false path but if it was the only real path they had at present it was a path they’d welcome. I suppose I must have relaxed a bit over lunch or maybe their questioning style simply put me off my guard but I eventually told that it had been Roger and Linda who’d persuaded me into calling them, and then, relaxing even more because they didn’t jump down my throat for not calling them sooner, I told them about Linda’s drawing.

Questions was suspended in an instant as they immediately phoned to my home asking Linda to scan the picture into my computer and then e-mail it to their HQ. The scan’s arrival produced a flurry of activity, and the quiet confines of the spacious room soon became increasingly full of other personnel most of whom were never introduced to me, nor did they pay me much attention. It was only later that I began to wonder how they’d known about me having a computer and scanner. Had I been under discreet surveillance since their initial visit? I was too afraid to ask. By 8pm I felt as if I’d been through the wringer. I’d told my story again and again. I’d listened to it played back to me even though I’d naively not realised that it had been recorded in the first place, to see if I’d missed out on some detail, and of course I had. I’d forgotten that when the man had pulled the girl away from staring at me as they’d fled the scene he’d said something to her like ‘Come on, let’s go’ and though I couldn’t recall what kind of accent he’d talked to her in, it had been in an accent.

They ran me back home that evening and even I couldn’t help notice that before we’d even