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    A Hanging Job
    A Hanging Job
    A Hanging Job
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    A Hanging Job

    By W H Oxley

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    About this ebook

    Don’t kill a copper cos it’s a hanging job.

    The tale is set in London on the eve of WW2 at a time when hanging was the penalty for murder and the cut-throat razor, the weapon of choice for settling differences within the criminal fraternity.

    It’s 1939 and Hitler is about to invade Poland and kick off the Second World War, but Foxy has more important things on his mind: as the getaway driver on bungled bank robbery he is at risk of a formal introduction to the hangman if caught. For Foxy, comedy and tragedy have always gone hand in hand, and this day is no exception as he plays hide and seek with the forces of law and order in the streets of London and the leafy lanes of Hertfordshire, doggedly keeping one step ahead thanks to his driving skills.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW H Oxley
    Release dateJul 2, 2013
    ISBN9781301951079
    A Hanging Job
    Author

    W H Oxley

    Having spent years hustling a living as a photographer in England and Germany. I took up writing when i found myself in the middle of a German nowhere with not much to do. At present chilling out in the sun and hanging out with the lowlife on the French Riviera..

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      Book preview

      A Hanging Job - W H Oxley

      Smashwords Edition

      Published by Smudgeworks

      who41@gmx.com

      A Hanging Job

      W H Oxley

      Copyright 2013 W H Oxley

      By the same author

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      Table of Contents

      The Long Drop

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Epilogue

      By the same author

      The Long Drop

      Whereas the American fondness for democracy decrees that executions should be semi-public events complete with an audience seated in a theatre, the British would conduct theirs in a cramped little room with a couple of official witnesses. There would have been no stroll along death row as the other inmates called out their farewells: all British condemned cells came equipped with an en suite gallows.

      There are many ways to hang a man, and the method favoured in Britain, the long drop, relied very much upon the skill of the hangman. How far a man needed to fall in order to have his neck snapped by the jerk of the rope would vary according to his weight and other factors, and it was the hangman’s job to control the extent of the drop by adjusting the length of rope in relation to bodyweight etc. If he got it right, the neck would be broken and death instantaneous, but if he miscalculated the weight/drop ratio the result would vary from decapitation to strangulation. However, the one thing that all British hangmen prided themselves on was speed: the object being to have the prisoner out of the cell and dangling at the end of a rope before the prison clock had finished striking eight.

      The prisoner awaiting execution would be held in the condemned cell, a cell adjoining the execution chamber. It always contained two doors, one of which led directly to the gallows. On the day of execution, the prison governor, the padre and the official witnesses would assemble in the corridor outside the condemned cell at seven-thirty in the morning. Just before eight they would enter the cell, and the governor would read the notice of execution to the prisoner. A moment later, the prison clock will begin to strike the hour…

      At the first stroke, the door to the execution chamber flies open and the hangman marches in with his two assistants. A leather belt is fastened around the prisoner, pinning his arms to his body, while another secures his legs. Then it’s out of the cell, into the execution chamber and onto the trapdoor. A hood is placed over his head and a noose around his neck. Having expertly adjusted the angle of the noose to ensure that the neck is snapped by the drop, the hangman pulls a lever, the prisoner disappears through the trapdoor – and the prison clock is still striking the hour…

      Chapter 1

      The afternoon of the 18th of August 1939 was warm and sunny. Police Constable George Robinson plodded along the sleepy suburban High Street at regulation pace. He barely glanced at the placard propped up outside the newsagents. Scrawled across it in capital letters was the headline: HITLER WANTS PEACE.

      Robinson had been pounding this beat for twelve years. On leaving the army in 1919 he’d been one of the lucky ones. Jobs were scarce at the end of the war, but the medal he’d won for attacking a German machinegun post had smoothed his way into the ranks of the Metropolitan Police. Steady, reliable, unimaginative and always respectful to his betters, his bovine qualities matched his physique: he was built like an ox. When it became obvious to his superiors that he was not destined for promotion, he’d been posted to one of the new suburbs that had sprung up around London after the war. He’d taken to it like a duck to water, becoming a well respected pillar of the community.

      Freddy Fox, known to one and all as Foxy, kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. Once reputed to be the best in the business, he hadn’t been on a job in four years and had been reluctant to go on this one – but when Big Sid asks a favour... Ten years ago he’d enjoyed the thrill of the chase but now, past thirty, he considered himself to be a businessman not a tearaway. Admittedly, he did cut corners and most of the stuff he handled was a bit iffy, but the risks were low, unlike this little outing.

      Seated next to him, chewing gum and wearing a trilby hat, was Jack Parsons. A taciturn man, he rarely spoke, and when he did, it was in a slow, monosyllabic manner, as if he had to rummage around in his brain to locate the words. He fingered the sawn-off shotgun and frowned, wrinkling the crisscross pattern of razor scars etched on his face. A hard man he came from a hard place – the Elephant and Castle may not have been London’s answer to Hell’s Kitchen, but in his street if you didn’t own a cut-throat razor by the age of fourteen you were a sissy.

      In jail he’d befriended Alfie Peck. There are a lot of unpleasant things that can happen to you in jail, and that nothing happened to Alfie was largely thanks to Jack. A prison is the ultimate capitalist jungle – what are you worth; what have you got to trade – and Alfie’s market value had been his family connections: he was a nephew of Sid Weston who controlled a large slice of the East End of London. To Jack, who’d always been a small-timer, Alfie represented an opportunity of promotion to the first division.

      Alfie sat hunched up on the back seat nursing a revolver. This was his job; he’d planned it; he’d show them. Small and weedy, with a sallow complexion and permanent shaving rash, he was the runt of the litter. While he was growing up the family called him little Alfie, and when he’d grown up it changed to Little Alfie. His standing in the family firm had fallen even further after the fiasco that earned him a twelve month stretch. Sid had refused to arrange protection for him in jail, leaving him to his own devices in the hope it would make a man of him – though it was only thanks to Jack that someone hadn’t made a woman of him.

      As the Wolseley 8 cruised along Holloway Road in the direction of Archway, Foxy effortlessly

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