Death Sentence (The DI Nick Dixon Crime Series Book 6)

by Damien Boyd

  ‘That’ll be my step-son.’

  ‘We’ll go, Mr Absolon,’ said Dixon, standing up. ‘You’ve been very helpful, thank you.’

  ‘Have I?’

  Dixon dropped Louise back to her car, which was parked outside his cottage, picked up Monty and then went down to Express Park. The place was deserted, apart from several uniformed officers on the ground floor, sheltering from the cold when they should have been out on patrol.

  He kept thinking about Louise’s question when they had come out of Absolon’s house.

  ‘He wasn’t much help, was he?’

  ‘Not really, but I wasn’t going tell him that,’ had been his answer, but the more he thought about it, the more he realised that Absolon had let slip one crumb of information that might prove useful. It really was just about the money.

  Apart from that he was getting nowhere. Still, they wouldn’t have to wait long. The hearing was just five days away now.

  Dixon sat down at a workstation and switched on a computer. He opened his email and then deleted all of the new ones, including the one from DCI Lewis asking whether he had informed the Met of the caving line of enquiry. They were busying themselves interviewing witnesses it had been agreed would be left to Avon and Somerset. And would they tell him if it was the other way round?

  Then he opened the police database enquiry screen. He typed in the name of Jane’s mother as it appeared in the adoption file, Sonia Beckett, and his finger hovered over the ‘Submit’ button.

  Could he really risk another disciplinary after his recent close shave, this time for abuse of the police national database? Perhaps not.

  But he knew a man who could.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’

  ‘On the beach. Why?’

  ‘Louise is here,’ said Jane, yawning. ‘Something about another body. Fripp. Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Birmingham.’

  ‘Tell her to pick me up at Berrow church.’

  An accomplished lip reader would have been able to tell what Dixon was saying as he dropped his phone into his coat pocket, but the words themselves were lost on the cold north wind. Caught midway between the beach road and the church, heading for the church would at least mean he would be running downwind. He might even get there before Louise.

  Running with his tennis ball in his mouth wasn’t doing Monty any good, so Dixon stopped and put it in his pocket. Both of them were puffing, although Dixon put it down to the freezing dawn air.

  ‘We were supposed to be on a diet,’ he muttered as they scrambled over the soft sand of the dunes.

  Fripp lived in Bangor and died in Birmingham. Staying away from home as instructed no doubt. He’d been giving evidence at a trial, hadn’t he? So how the hell did his killer find him?

  Dixon spotted Louise turning into the car park at Berrow church just as he ran down through the churchyard. He opened the back door of her car and let Monty jump in on the back seat. Then he jumped in the front.

  ‘We’re not taking Monty, are we?’

  ‘We’ll drop him off at home. It’s on the way,’ said Dixon. ‘Why didn’t you ring?’

  ‘I thought I’d let you have a lie in.’

  ‘Fat chance,’ muttered Dixon.

  They were heading north on the M5 ten minutes later, Dixon having dropped Monty off at home and picked up his insulin pen. Jane had been in the shower, but he had insisted on kissing her goodbye, and he was still flicking the water off his coat as they sped past Junction 21.

  ‘What’s the story then?’

  ‘He was found last night, but we didn’t get the call till this morning,’ replied Louise. ‘Single gunshot wound to the head. Right between the eyes apparently.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘The mortuary at Birmingham City Hospital.’

  ‘And where was he?’

  ‘The Buckerell Lodge Hotel.’

  ‘Do we know what he was still doing there?’

  ‘The trial had gone into the Monday. And he’d been told not to go home, so probably just stayed the weekend to keep a low profile.’

  ‘Not low enough.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do they know we’re on our way?’

  ‘I spoke to the SIO, DI Annie Kumari. She’s notified the mortuary that we’re on our way and said she’d meet us at the scene. I’ll ring her when we get off the motorway.’

  ‘Let’s go to the mortuary first then.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  The pathology lab at Birmingham City Hospital was hidden away around the back and not well signposted, much like at Musgrove Park. Parking was equally tedious, and Dixon could not rely on Roger Poland bailing him out if he got a ticket.

  ‘Leave one of your cards on the dashboard,’ said Dixon. ‘It’s a Sunday, and we won’t be long.’

  The front door was closed, so Dixon rang the bell and waited. It took three more rings before he heard footsteps, then a white-coated lab assistant appeared behind the glazed door.

  Dixon waved his warrant card in front of the glass.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking up and sighing at the same time.

  ‘You have the body of Dr Anthony Fripp here. I’d like to see it.’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Now, please.’

  ‘You’re not local?’

  ‘Avon and Somerset.’

  ‘There are prop—’

  ‘Look, I don’t have time for proper channels. Ring DI Kumari if you need to. She should have told you we were coming.’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  Dixon felt sure he was being advised to ‘keep his hair on’ but couldn’t be sure over the noise of the keys jangling and the door being unlocked.

  ‘What’s your interest in him?’

  ‘I’m a police officer, and he has a bullet hole in his forehead.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry,’ replied the lab assistant. ‘Follow me.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  A long corridor led to large double doors and then to a smaller steel door that reminded Dixon of the fridges in the school kitchens at Brunel, although this time he was unlikely to come away with a piece of fruitcake and a banana.

  ‘When’s the PM?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘Tomorrow, I expect.’

  The lab assistant walked along a line of small doors, peering at the labels.

  ‘Here he is,’ she said, opening the door and pulling out a stretcher.

  Fripp was still in a black body bag.

  ‘Are you ready for this?’

  Dixon rolled his eyes, so the lab assistant unzipped the body bag and stepped back.

  Fripp’s eyes were open. Wide open. But there were no black marks on his forehead around the entry hole.

  ‘Not point blank at least,’ muttered Dixon. ‘Unless he had a silencer.’

  ‘Dr Kent reckoned the shot was fired from about two feet away, maybe a bit more,’ said the lab assistant.

  ‘What about his hands?’

  ‘Cable ties. We cut them off and bagged them up.’

  Dixon nodded. Then he leaned over and squinted at Fripp’s nose and mouth.

  ‘What do you see, Louise?’ he asked, stepping back.

  She leaned over the side of the open body bag.

  ‘It’s not easy with his white beard, but there’s a powder. White. You can see it in his nasal hairs.’

  ‘Faint traces,’ said Dixon. ‘No bruises though.’

  ‘I can’t see any,’ replied Louise.

  ‘Still, if there’s a gun to your head you’re hardly going to need to be forced to inhale the powder.’

  ‘Tested positive for cocaine,’ said the lab assistant.

  ‘Did it,’ replied Dixon, nodding.

  ‘Very clever,’ muttered Dixon, watching the lab assistant locking the doors behind them.

  ‘Using cocaine?’

  ‘What better way to throw the local polic
e off the scent?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘They’ll treat it as a drug related killing. A drug buy gone wrong possibly. And even if it delays the investigation for a few days, that takes us up to the hearing on Thursday, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Why though?’ asked Louise, opening her car door.

  ‘Less chance of the hearing being adjourned.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘If the defence find out he’s dead, they’ll apply for an adjournment, won’t they?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘We can’t prove that any of these killings are connected,’ continued Dixon. ‘Fryer was pushed under a train in a random attack. And we’ve got no real evidence Alison Crowther-Smith was murdered. And then there’s Fletcher, and the claimants have already agreed his evidence. But if the defence can show that these killings are part of a sinister plot to sabotage their case, a judge will almost certainly grant them an adjournment.’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘But if it looks like Fripp’s death is random, a drug related murder, then it’s just possible a judge may order the hearing to go ahead anyway.’

  ‘How can it?’

  ‘The defence have got four days to find another expert who supports Fripp’s findings,’ replied Dixon. ‘These are living mesothelioma claims don’t forget, and time is of the essence.’

  ‘Seems a bit harsh.’

  ‘If you think about it, it also undermines his evidence if it looks like he was on drugs, and that might force them to do a deal.’

  ‘Settle it you mean?’

  ‘Let’s get over to the hotel.’

  DI Anuja Kumari was waiting for them outside Buckerell Lodge, on the edge of Sutton Coldfield just north of Birmingham. It was a large country house hotel, covered in ivy, and with a new spa and swimming pool tagged on the side. How they got planning permission for that was a mystery.

  It was part of the Best Southern chain and certainly looked upmarket if the cars in the car park were anything to go by.

  ‘DI Kumari?’

  ‘Call me Annie, please. This is Danny Maxwell. You’ve come a long way on a Sunday.’

  ‘DC Willmott here needs the overtime,’ said Dixon.

  ‘Is Dr Fripp known to you?’

  ‘He was due to give evidence in a mesothelioma claim at Bristol County Court next week. Now he’s dead, to add to one of the witnesses, the defence solicitor and their barrister.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Kumari, shaking her head. ‘We thought it was drug related.’

  ‘It was made to look like that,’ said Dixon. ‘Where was he?’

  ‘In the annex. This way.’

  They followed Kumari into a small courtyard at the side of the hotel, all of the rooms single storey. A uniformed officer was standing in front of an open door.

  ‘SOCO are still in there,’ said Kumari.

  ‘Did anyone see or hear anything?’ asked Dixon, pulling a set of white overalls over his trousers.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No gunshot?’

  Kumari shook her head.

  ‘Is there any CCTV?’ asked Louise.

  ‘Up there,’ replied Kumari, pointing to a camera mounted on the wall just beneath the guttering in the corner of the courtyard. ‘Black leathers and a motorbike helmet. Only there’s no motorbike showing up on any of the traffic cameras.’

  ‘What time was it?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘Just after midnight.’

  ‘So who found him?’

  ‘A prostitute arrived at one. The door was open, and you can guess the rest.’

  Dixon followed the line of metal plates, laid out like stepping stones, into the hotel room. The wall behind the cream sofa was spattered with blood, brain and skull fragments, and a large pool of congealed blood had soaked into the cushions and the carpet underneath.

  A small area of wallpaper had been peeled back, and a hole in the plaster opened out to reveal the brickwork behind it.

  ‘We recovered the bullet,’ said Kumari.

  Dixon nodded.

  ‘Have you found his phone?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he ring the prostitute?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. If he did, he didn’t use the landline – we know that much.’

  ‘The call will have been made on his phone,’ said Dixon. ‘But he didn’t ring her.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘His killer. To discredit him. His body would’ve been found by the housekeeper in the morning, so why not have him found by a prostitute to add to the drama? Plant a bit of cocaine . . .’ Dixon’s voice tailed off.

  ‘The cocaine was planted?’

  ‘I’m guessing he was forced to inhale it at gunpoint.’

  Kumari shook her head.

  ‘Like I said, that’s what you were supposed to think,’ said Dixon. He was looking around the room. The bed hadn’t been slept in, but the killer had taken the trouble to make it look like a burglary. Fripp’s wallet was open on the table, his money and bank cards gone. All of the drawers were open and their contents dragged out on to the floor. Standard stuff, and it would have taken no more than sixty seconds.

  ‘D’you wanna see the CCTV?’ asked Kumari.

  ‘Better had.’

  They followed Kumari back to the hotel reception and stood behind the manager while he loaded the clip. They were crowded into a small room behind the reception desk, where there were three screens, each split into four.

  ‘Would there have been anyone in here at that time of night?’

  ‘No,’ replied the manager. ‘Reception closes when the bar closes, which is usually eleven, unless we’ve got something on.’

  ‘Here we go,’ said Kumari.

  Dixon watched as a figure appeared around the corner. He or she was wearing black leathers, as Kumari had said, and a full-face motorcycle helmet. The figure approached the door to Fripp’s room, knocked on it and then took a gun out from inside his or her jacket.

  Fripp didn’t stand a chance.

  Dixon spent much of the journey south with his eyes closed. Louise had been warned about it by Jane and knew not to interrupt whatever was going on inside his head, although she could have been forgiven for thinking he had gone to sleep. She felt the same, and the rhythmic clunk of the windscreen wipers wasn’t helping. That and the warm air from the fans.

  She was coming over the Avonmouth Bridge when Dixon sat bolt upright in the passenger seat and opened his eyes.

  ‘What’s the single most important piece of information we learned today, Constable?’

  Louise hesitated.

  ‘He’s got a gun?’ she said, looking at Dixon out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘That’s a good point. All right, what’s the second most important piece of information we learned today?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Dixon took his phone out of his pocket and sent a text message to Mark Pearce, Dave Harding and DCI Lewis, Louise craning her neck to read it.

  meeting room 2 5pm

  ‘We still don’t know who he is though, do we?’ asked Louise.

  ‘No,’ replied Dixon, dropping his phone back into his coat pocket. ‘But we do know where to find him.’

  He closed his eyes and slumped back in the passenger seat before Louise could ask another question.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘This’d better be good.’

  Louise had dropped Dixon at home to pick up his Land Rover, and now he was sitting at a workstation at Express Park, flicking through the litigation file. Mark Pearce, Dave Harding and Louise were waiting in meeting room 2.

  ‘It is,’ replied Dixon without looking up.

  ‘I’ve got the chief super breathing down my neck about putting together a MIT,’ said Lewis. ‘And I’ve had some twat on from the Met bending my ear about your lack of cooperation.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Have you told them about the caving yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

/>   ‘Well, I stalled them as long as I could. They’re sending someone down here tomorrow. DCI Gresham, so you can brief them then.’

  Lewis waited.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ll be along in a minute,’ said Dixon.

  He watched DCI Lewis sit down in meeting room 2 and direct a question at Louise. He couldn’t tell what it was, but her response was clear enough from the shrug of her shoulders. He turned back to the correspondence pin and flicked back to the previous October. There was a letter from Nuttalls in Bristol, who had acted as agent for the Government Legal Department at the case management conference, attending the hearing on their behalf, and their bill, but no attendance note. Next he tried the documents folder. And there it was.

  ‘Right then,’ said Dixon, closing the door of meeting room 2 behind him. ‘What’ve we got?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Harding.

  ‘I’ve not come up with anything either,’ said Pearce.

  ‘What about Fripp?’ asked Lewis.

  ‘Single gunshot wound to the head,’ replied Dixon. ‘He was in a hotel in Birmingham, where he’s been giving evidence in a trial at the local county court. He was due to finish on Monday, so he stayed over the weekend rather than go home. Bangor police had advised him to keep a low profile.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘There were traces of a white powder around his nose, which tested positive for cocaine. It was staged to look like a drug related murder, but it wasn’t.’

  ‘So, where does that leave us?’ asked Lewis.

  ‘The defence will apply for an adjournment tomorrow and maybe get it, maybe not. It’s a living mesothelioma claim, so the court will be reluctant to adjourn the hearing unless it absolutely has to. Assuming it doesn’t, we’ve got until Thursday.’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Our killer disappears.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s about the damages claim. The money. It always has been.’

  Harding looked at DCI Lewis and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘It all starts with the case management conference,’ continued Dixon. ‘That took place last October. There’s a special procedure in living mesothelioma claims, and the burden is on the defence at that hearing to show why judgment shouldn’t be entered for the claimants or, in other words, why they should be allowed to defend the claim. If they can’t do that, then the claimants win at the first hurdle and get an immediate interim payment of fifty thousand pounds.’