by Damien Boyd
‘How?’
‘They don’t know yet. There’s got to be a post mortem, but it looks like an overdose.’
Dixon sighed.
‘Her probation officer said Sonia didn’t turn up for a meeting, so she called round on her way home and saw her on the floor.’
‘What about Tony?’
‘No sign of him.’
Dixon reached over and flicked the switch on the kettle, his right arm still holding Jane tight.
‘What happens now?’
‘Social Services will organise a funeral and she’s promised to let me know when it is. I stopped being her next of kin when I was adopted.’
‘Will you go?’
‘I dunno yet.’
Dixon tore off a piece of kitchen roll and handed it to Jane. ‘Are there any other relatives?’
‘Didn’t say.’ She pulled away from him and dabbed her eyes. ‘And you. Taking all these bloody risks all the time. I can’t lose you as well.’
‘You won’t.’
Jane looked up at him, her eyes full of tears.
‘Tea?’ he asked.
She smiled. ‘That’s your answer for everything, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sorry about Sonia.’ Dixon tore off another piece of kitchen roll.
‘Don’t be. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have met her.’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that too.’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘And I’m sorry I shouted,’ said Jane, snatching the second piece of kitchen roll from Dixon’s hand. ‘Did the Shannons give you anything useful?’
‘Food for thought,’ he replied. ‘And a nice glass of Irish whisky.’
‘What about the woman up at Dunkery Beacon?’
‘Nothing yet. The ticket office clerk at Manchester didn’t remember her, nor did the guard on the train. Janice got the Transport lot to track him down.’
Jane reached up for two mugs from the cupboard. ‘I’ll make it,’ she said. ‘You go and sit down. Have you eaten?’
‘Some crap on the train.’
‘D’you want anything?’
‘No, thanks.’
Dixon sat down on the floor next to Monty and leaned back against the sofa. Then he pressed ‘play’ on the remote control.
‘What’s in that bag?’ asked Jane, pointing to Mrs Butler’s holdall by the bottom of the stairs.
‘Papers and photos from a retired police officer who couldn’t let go.’
‘That’ll be you, when your time comes.’
‘I hope so.’
They were in bed before the Germans found ‘Tom’, the first tunnel, Dixon lying awake thinking about Dunkery Beacon and the flames spreading across the hillside. Why that hillside? And why that particular spot on that hillside? If she’d wanted open moorland, there was plenty of that around Manchester.
He picked up his phone and set the alarm for 5.30 a.m. Then he put his arm around Jane, closed his eyes and was asleep before Monty had jumped on the bed.
‘What time is it?’ asked Jane, yawning as Dixon silenced the alarm.
‘Five thirty.’ He was trying to slide his legs out from underneath Monty without waking him up.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Fancy a nice walk on Exmoor?’
‘Are you taking the pi—?’
Dixon leaned over and kissed Jane, silencing her mid-sentence. ‘What’ve you got to lose?’
‘Two hours’ sleep.’
‘Apart from two hours’ sleep.’
She sighed.
‘There you are then,’ he said, grinning. ‘And it’s a lovely morning.’ He opened the curtains and then snapped them shut.
‘It’s pissing down,’ protested Jane.
‘It’s only water.’
‘And it’s still dark!’
Thirty minutes later they were speeding south on the M5 with the headlights on full beam. Dixon had needed a torch to find a spade in the outhouse behind his Land Rover, and he’d brought a trowel too, just in case.
‘In case of what?’ had been Jane’s question, which he chose to ignore.
‘I don’t know why you keep all that crap. We haven’t even got a garden,’ said Jane, rolling her eyes.
‘I don’t go climbing any more but you have to admit my ice axe came in handy that time.’
‘Yes, well . . . what are we looking for?’
‘A wild goose.’
‘Just what I need at the crack of bloody dawn. Another wild goose chase.’
‘She travelled all the way from Manchester to die on that particular hillside. Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Neither do I,’ replied Dixon, dipping the headlights as he turned off the M5. ‘I don’t know who she is, where she came from, anything about her, but I do know that she chose to die on that particular spot.’
‘Then the spot must be significant,’ said Jane, nodding.
‘Right. So, we dig.’
The sun was just creeping above the horizon as they turned south on the A396 towards Wheddon Cross, a faint plume of smoke climbing into the sky in the distance.
‘They must’ve been out burning again yesterday,’ said Dixon.
‘Let’s hope they don’t do it again while we’re up there.’
‘Quite.’
The police roadblock was long gone and Dixon drove straight across the cattle grid at Dunkery Gate. He followed the road across the side of the Beacon and then turned down the track towards Hanny Combe.
‘How will you find the exact spot?’
‘We’ll know it when we see it,’ said Dixon.
He stopped on the track and wrenched on the handbrake. ‘This looks like it.’
‘Shall I let Monty out?’ asked Jane, climbing out on the passenger side.
‘Yeah, you can do, the adders’ll still be hibernating.’
‘Snakes?’
‘Let’s just get on with it, shall we?’
‘Which way?’
‘That way,’ replied Dixon, pointing across the bonnet of the Land Rover.
They trudged across the charred ground, the wet branches of the burnt gorse and heather leaving black stripes where it brushed their trousers. The scorched earth was black, brown in places, but rarely green, except for a few patches that had survived. Jane stopped in her tracks.
‘Is this it?’
Dixon ran over and looked down at the ground in front of Jane. An area of green grass marked where the body had been, just as if it been spray painted, the head, torso, legs and arms taking shape in the dried grass.
‘The body protected the grass from the fire,’ said Dixon.
‘Seems a shame to dig it up now.’ Jane was stamping her feet. ‘Why don’t you use the ground penetrating radar?’
‘D’you know how much that costs? They’d never let me have it.’
‘So, what do we do?’
‘Dig, carefully, and stop the second we find anything.’
‘Off you go then,’ said Jane.
Dixon slid the leading edge of the spade under the turf and lifted clear a patch right in the middle of where the torso had been, revealing the soil underneath: dark brown and compacted. Then he knelt down and began scraping with the trowel.
‘We’ll be here all day if you do it like that,’ muttered Jane, pulling up her collar and turning away from the rain that had started again.
Dixon picked up the spade and began clearing the earth away, going no more than an inch deeper each time. Then he stopped.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing into the hole, now nearly a foot deep.
Jane peered over his shoulder.
‘A rib,’ she said.
Chapter Twenty
It had taken Dixon what seemed like a lifetime to find a signal, and he was almost at the summit cairn before his phone connected to the network, and then it was ‘999 calls only’. Still, that had been enough.
Jonny Sexton was the first to arrive. Jane had left half an hour earlier, taking Monty with her
in the Land Rover and leaving Dixon with her umbrella: small, navy blue and covered in penguins.
Sexton bounced down the track towards Hanny Combe in his shiny new BMW, swerving violently from side to side trying to avoid the worst of the ruts, and stopped opposite Dixon. He wound down the window on the passenger side and leaned across the seat. ‘Janice Courtenay’s on her way, Sir. And Roger Poland.’
‘SOCO?’
‘They were at a burglary in Bridgwater, but they’re coming.’
‘Good.’
‘I’ve got uniform blocking the Beacon at either end too.’ Sexton grinned. ‘Nice brolly.’
‘Piss off.’
The rain had washed the worst of the mud off the one exposed rib in the bottom of the small hole Dixon had dug. One thin grey bone poking out of the mud and marking a shallow grave on an exposed and bleak hillside, or so he hoped. He would know soon enough.
‘Is that it?’
Dixon rolled his eyes. ‘We’ll let SOCO do the rest.’
‘It could be a sheep carcass.’
‘Behave yourself, Constable.’ Dixon smiled. ‘Or you can hold the brolly.’
‘You should’ve got the radar up here, Sir.’
‘I knew where to look.’
‘How?’
‘Ask yourself why she chose this spot to lie down and die?’
‘And you decided to dig just because of that?’
‘I’d been watching The Great Escape.’ Dixon shrugged his shoulders.
The sound of vehicles clattering over a cattle grid in the distance just carried on the wind.
‘Sounds like they’re here,’ said Sexton.
‘Either that or Stokes is on his way with more firelighters,’ muttered Dixon. ‘Better walk up to the road and check.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
The smell of the scorched earth and charred vegetation, now saturated by the rain, had long ago begun to catch in Dixon’s throat. At least it masked the smell of the bodily fluids that had seeped into the ground during the fire. Kneeling over, trowel in hand, and at that time in the morning, had left Dixon grateful he’d had no breakfast. Medicinal fruit pastilles would have to keep his blood sugar levels topped up until lunchtime.
The small convoy stopped on the road above Hanny Combe: Roger Poland’s Volvo in front, followed by a Scientific Services van. The car behind must be Janice, thought Dixon.
The moment of truth. Poland squatted down and peered at the bone. ‘It’s a human rib,’ he said, straightening up. He drew a line in the blackened soil parallel to where the body lay with the toe of his boot. ‘It’ll be this way up, so let’s have a trench along here. We can go across bit by bit from there.’
‘Give us twenty minutes to get set up,’ said Donald Watson, the senior scenes of crime officer. ‘Keeping us busy, aren’t you?’ he said, frowning at Dixon.
‘I didn’t kill him.’
‘How d’you know it’s a “him”?’
‘Just a wild guess.’
‘I’ve got a Thermos of coffee and some biscuits in my car,’ said Poland, watching Dixon unwrapping a packet of sweets. ‘A man cannot live on fruit pastilles alone.’
‘Who is it then?’ asked Watson.
‘That depends on who she is,’ replied Dixon.
‘We’ve had a few calls from yesterday’s piece in the Manchester daily rag,’ said Janice. ‘Louise is following them up now.’
‘Let’s leave SOCO to it,’ said Poland.
‘Who is it then?’ asked Poland, handing Dixon a plastic cup of coffee.
‘I haven’t got a bloody clue, but I wasn’t telling him that,’ replied Dixon, through a mouthful of digestive biscuit.
‘Really?’ asked Sexton, sitting in the back of the car next to Janice.
‘It could be Paul Butler, I suppose.’
‘The retired DCS?’
‘He disappeared in 2011. The assumption was it was suicide, but . . .’
‘What about Michael Carter?’ asked Sexton. ‘Maybe Shannon lied to you and they did have him killed? It could be The Vet too. Maybe the Carters got rid of him?’
‘We’ll know the answer to that one when we see the skull,’ replied Dixon.
‘Well, it’s not Horan, that’s for sure,’ said Poland. ‘Whoever it is has been dead for years not days.’
‘We’ve got a partial DNA profile from The Vet and there’s a covert sample from Michael.’
‘Covert?’
‘Don’t ask.’ Dixon glanced over his shoulder at Janice. ‘Will we get DNA off it, Roger?’
‘There may be some hair left. If not, there’s the tooth pulp. That should’ve survived, assuming they left the teeth when they buried him.’
Dixon winced.
Sexton tapped on the inside of the window. ‘Tent’s up. Shouldn’t be long now.’
‘I’d better get down there,’ said Poland.
By the time Dixon had finished his coffee and poked his head inside the tent a trench had been dug to a foot deep along the side of the skeletal remains. Three scientific services officers were on their hands and knees, brushing soil away with a trowel in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.
One foot had been exposed, a right arm lying across more ribs and the right side of the pelvis. Watson was edging ever closer to the skull.
‘Lying on his back,’ said Poland, pointing at the hip joint.
‘His?’
‘Definitely a male.’
‘He had rubber soled shoes on,’ said Watson. ‘The uppers have gone, but the sole is still there. They look like Doc Martens.’
‘Anything else?’
‘A couple of rusty zips.’
Dixon stepped back outside into the wind and rain, the smell overpowering in the confines of the tent, not helped by the arc lamps warming the stagnant air.
‘Skull, Sir.’ Sexton shouting from inside the tent.
Dixon took a deep breath and stepped back in to see Watson brushing the top of the skull with his paintbrush. It looked like a paintbrush anyway.
‘Any hair?’
‘Yes.’
Dixon smiled.
A delicate scratch at the earth with the tip of the trowel then a brush, the bristles flicking away the now loose soil. Dixon resisted the temptation to yell ‘get on with it’, but only just.
Watson sat back on his heels and reached for a smaller brush. Then he leaned forwards, right over the skull. Several flicks with the smaller brush, a blow, more flicks. Then he sat back. ‘A perfect hole. Right in the middle,’ he said, pointing at the forehead with the brush.
‘Let me have a look,’ said Poland, squatting down and peering at a dark brown circle in the centre of the grey bone. ‘The skull is full of mud, but it’s a clean cut. Almost certainly a trephine.’
‘The work of The Vet?’ asked Dixon.
‘I’d say so, but I’ll confirm it when I get him back to the lab.’
‘Well done, Sir,’ said Sexton.
Watson began scraping with the trowel and flicking with the brush again, gradually revealing more of the skull, first the eye sockets, then the nasal cavity.
‘Let’s get the DNA checked as quick as we can,’ said Dixon. ‘We can get a sample from Paul Butler’s children so we can rule him out too.’
‘Or in.’
‘Do it without worrying his widow. I don’t want to give her false hope.’
Sexton nodded.
‘And I want a news blackout on it. At least until we’ve got Horan.’
‘You go,’ said Poland. ‘We’ll let you know if we find anything else here.’
The rain had been replaced by low cloud by the time Dixon stepped back out on to the moor, flashes from the cameras inside the tent lighting up the surrounding area, despite the arc lamps.
‘What about my team?’ asked Janice as they trudged across to Sexton’s car.
‘I need to know who that woman is, Janice. Let’s worry about it after that.’
‘Leave it to me.’
‘Where t
o now, Sir?’ asked Sexton.
‘Express Park, once you’ve dropped Janice back to her car.’
‘I’ll walk,’ she replied. ‘It’ll be quicker.’
‘You should get a proper car,’ said Dixon, raising his voice over the noise of the exhaust pipe scraping along the top of a rut. He was watching Sexton fighting with the steering wheel as his car bounced along the rough track.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Sexton replied, nervously glancing in his rear view mirror.
‘Where are we with Horan?’ Dixon asked as they sped over the cattle grid at the bottom of Dunkery Beacon.
‘Lots of sightings, and they’re all being followed up, but nothing yet.’
‘We’re still watching his ex-wife?’
‘Twenty-four seven.’
Dixon closed his eyes and leaned back in the passenger seat, sitting up sharply at the sound of skidding tyres. ‘An old Land Rover might slow you down a bit too.’
Sexton grinned.
They arrived back at Express Park a good ten minutes ahead of Janice, Dixon watching from the window as she drove up the ramp into the staff car park. He’d even had time to poke his head around the door of the SCU. Words hadn’t proved necessary. He’d just pointed to the centre of his forehead. Jane had nodded, and then thrown him his car keys.
Twenty minutes reading the call log in the Major Incident Room and his emails, followed by another twenty minutes with those of the team who were not out and about, and he was up to speed with the hunt for Horan. And a major manhunt it was too.
‘DCS Potter would like to see you, Sir.’
‘In Portishead?’
‘No, Sir. She’s in with DCI Lewis downstairs.’
Dixon closed his eyes, took a deep breath and wandered over to the lift, hoping his phone would ring; Poland, perhaps, at the post mortem. That would sound urgent enough to dash off.
‘Ah, there you are.’
A lift with glass sides. There really was no escape.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Deborah Potter’s in here,’ said Lewis, holding open the door of his office.
‘You’ve found another one?’ asked Potter, looking up at Dixon hovering in the doorway.
‘Yes.’
‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know yet, Ma’am. There’s enough hair to get a DNA sample. I left before the teeth had been uncovered, but we should get an ID.’