Error of Judgement

Error of Judgement M K Turner 127 Publishing Paperback ISBN 978-1-7398165-6-8 Hardback ISBN 978-1-7398165-7-5 Copyright © M K Turner This edition published 2023 by 127 Publishing The rights of M K Turner to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the permission of the publisher. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed are entirely the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental Contents Dedication 1. Chapter One 2. Chapter Two 3. Chapter Three 4. Chapter Four 5. Chapter Five 6. Chapter Six 7. Chapter Seven 8. Chapter Eight 9. Chapter Nine 10. Chapter Ten 11. Chapter Eleven 12. Chapter Twelve 13. Chapter Thirteen 14. Chapter Fourteen 15. Chapter Fifteen 16. Chapter Sixteen 17. Chapter Seventeen 18. Chapter Eighteen 19. Chapter Nineteen 20. Chapter Twenty 21. Chapter Twenty-One 22. Chapter Twenty-Two 23. Chapter Twenty-Three 24. Chapter Twenty-Four 25. Chapter Twenty-Five 26. Chapter Twenty-Six 27. Chapter Twenty-Seven 28. Chapter Twenty-Eight 29. About Author This book is dedicated to YOU the reader. I love making stuff up, thank you for encouraging me to do so. Acknowledgements Edited by Sharon Kelly & Jill Buss Cover by: https://www.behance.net/lwpmarshala1e9 And, of course, my wonderful beta readers. By M K Turner Meredith & Hodge Series The Making of Meredith Misplaced Loyalty Ill Conceived The Wrong Shoes Tin Soldiers One Secret Too Many Mistaken Beliefs Quite by Chance Family Matters Not If You Paid Me A Measure of Guilt Meredith & Hodge Bear Witness Web of Deceit Error of Judgement Bearing Witness Series Witness for Wendy An Unexpected Gift Terms of Affection Meredith & Hodge Bear Witness Little Compton Mysteries The Murder Others Who Killed Charlie Birch? The Cuban Conundrum Murderous Mishaps The Recruitment of Lucy James Chapter one The television flickered and the face of a young girl appeared. Her curly brown hair had been pulled into a ponytail on top of her head and secured with a bright red ribbon. She was happy. Her wide smile revealing that her two front teeth were missing. She wore a navy-blue school uniform. On her cardigan was a badge which declared that she was six years old today. Meredith stopped the recording and looked around the table at his newly formed team. The CCRT – Cold Case Review Team – had been put together in a remarkably short time. It had been a little over a month ago that Superintendent David Ashworth had asked Meredith to set it up. With the public becoming more and more disenchanted with the police and their success rate, a review of all unsolved serious cases had been promised within three years of the crime. That promise had been broken, over and over again. There were simply not enough officers to do the job. It had then been decided that specialist teams would be formed to carry out the reviews. The plans on how, who, and where, were still ongoing when an unexpected shake-up in Meredith’s constabulary brought the matter forward. Meredith had been offered the job and had hand-picked his team. The budget was tight, and the team was to consist of four serving police officers, including himself, and two talented civilians. The civilians he had selected were his wife, Patsy Hodge, a former police officer and now also a former private investigator, and Linda Trump, an expert in all things IT, (and the new wife of DS Louie Trump). Meredith had been allowed only a week to decide if he wanted the job, and three weeks to select and secure his team. During that time he was given six cold cases he was to review in the first year. He’d chosen Trixie Cole as their first. “We all know each other, I’ve spoken to all of you in the last week, so we’ll ditch the need for a fanfare. But for what it’s worth, I think we have a cracking team, but we’re here to work and haven’t got time to mess around. We hit the ground running with this one first thing on Monday morning. We can do the unpacking and organising as and when we need to. The office we’ve been allocated hasn’t been used for several years, I’ve only seen photographs, but it will do. And so to business. This is six-year-old Trixie Cole. She was six years and two days old when she was abducted from a supermarket and murdered. Her body was found dumped in… I won’t say more. This is the footage from a Crimebusters feature that ran a week after her death. I reckon it’s as accurate as these things can be. Watch it, jot down any questions and save them for Monday.” Pointing the remote at the screen, the voice-over began although the image remained. “We are appealing for witnesses to the abduction and subsequent murder of six-year-old Trixie Cole. Pictured here during her sixth birthday celebration at school with her friends. Two days later, on the seventh of March, Trixie was abducted from the Buy Smart supermarket in Avonmouth at around five thirty p.m. Her body was found two days later in Avonmouth, by the side of the River Avon, close to where it meets the River Severn. Trixie had died from asphyxiation. Post-mortem results indicate that she died within hours of being abducted. The footage we are about to show you has been obtained from the supermarket and pieced together to show the minutes before Trixie’s disappearance in the hope that it will jog someone’s memory. Unfortunately, the camera monitoring the area where Trixie is believed to have gone missing was not recording that location at the time of her disappearance, and no footage was found of Trixie