Dead Level (The DI Nick Dixon Crime Series Book 5)

by Damien Boyd

  Dixon was squeezing the envelope between his thumb and index finger. ‘It’s definitely a memory stick.’

  ‘It came in the blank envelope,’ said Sampson, ‘which is why they opened it. If it had been in envelope B then it wouldn’t have been opened until the count.’

  ‘So, when they opened the blank envelope they found the postal voting statement and a sealed envelope A with the memory stick in it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But they’ve not opened envelope A?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, let me get this right,’ said Dixon. ‘You put the ballot paper in envelope A, seal it and then put it, with the postal voting statement, in envelope B?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you put it in the post.’

  ‘You have to sign the postal statement and add your date of birth. The codes on both must match too. Otherwise it’s rejected.’

  ‘Why did you call the police, if that’s not a daft question?’

  ‘It was the memory stick in the envelope. That could be anything, couldn’t it?’ replied Sampson. ‘And I recognised the name. Didn’t he hang himself a couple of weeks ago? It was in the paper.’

  ‘When were the postal votes sent out?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘Two weeks ago.’

  ‘When did Harry register for a postal vote?’

  ‘I checked that,’ replied Sampson. ‘He registered four years ago for the Europeans and ticked the “all elections” box. So, now he gets one every time. Got one . . .’

  ‘And it would’ve been sent to his home address?’

  ‘He probably had a redirect on his mail, Sir,’ said Cole. ‘What with Moorland under water.’

  Dixon turned to Louise.

  ‘I’ll find out,’ she said.

  ‘What about the courier then?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘Black leathers and a full face helmet,’ replied Cole, reading from his notebook. ‘Said nothing, just handed them the envelope and left.’

  ‘No markings?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Did you speak to those three sitting outside?’

  ‘Er, not yet, Sir.’

  Dixon raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I’ll go and do that now, Sir.’

  Dixon walked over to the small drawer to the left of the kitchen sink, opened it and took out a knife.

  ‘Let’s open it then, shall we?’ he said, pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

  He opened the plastic evidence bag and took out the small envelope. Then he slit it open with the knife and peered in.

  ‘A memory stick and a ballot paper.’

  Dixon took out the piece of paper and unfolded it.

  ‘Well, that’s one vote Tom Perry will have to do without.’

  ‘The elector is deceased,’ said Sampson. ‘And even if he wasn’t it would still be rejected because the postal voting statement is defective.’

  ‘Well, it’s evidence in a murder investigation, Mr Sampson, so we’ll be hanging on to it.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Dixon was holding the memory stick in the palm of his hand.

  ‘I wonder what’s on it,’ said Louise.

  Cole reappeared in the doorway.

  ‘No markings on the bike, Sir. He didn’t even switch it off, apparently. Just parked up, in, out and away again. They didn’t get the number plate either.’

  ‘Probably false,’ said Dixon.

  ‘What are they doing out there?’ asked Louise. ‘Sitting in the rain.’

  ‘It’s called “telling”,’ replied Sampson. ‘They’re finding out which of their supporters have voted so they can remind any who haven’t.’

  ‘It’s your local polling station, Sir,’ said Cole, grinning.

  ‘Where to next?’ asked Louise.

  ‘The High Tech Unit at Portishead. Ring ahead and let them know we’re on the way. And if they’ve gone home before we get there I’ll arrest them for obstruction.’

  ‘D’you want me to tell them that?’

  ‘No.’ Dixon was standing in his kitchen watching Monty finishing his supper. Then he took him for a quick run in the field behind his cottage. Five minutes would have to do.

  ‘You’d better sit this one out, old son,’ said Dixon. ‘It’s going to be a long night.’ Then he locked the back door of his cottage and jumped in the Land Rover.

  They arrived at Portishead just before 5 p.m. and Dixon parked on the grass verge outside a small single storey office block on the edge of the headquarters complex.

  ‘Is this it?’ asked Louise.

  ‘It is.’

  Dixon walked into the open plan office area. The tops of several heads were visible behind computer screens in amongst the vacant workstations, but none looked up. He tried coughing.

  ‘Who did you speak to?’

  ‘Kevin Hardy,’ said Louise.

  Dixon shouted the name and a head popped up from behind a screen at the far end of the office. The figure waved and then disappeared again behind his computer.

  ‘Sociable lot,’ said Louise.

  ‘Are you Kevin Hardy?’ asked Dixon, when he reached the desk at the far end.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We rang. We’ve got a memory stick and need to know what’s on it.’

  ‘I’ll need to scan it for viruses first.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Hardy held out his hand.

  ‘Gloves, if you don’t mind. There may be fingerprints on it.’

  Dixon and Louise watched while Hardy put on a pair of latex gloves and then inserted the memory stick in one of the USB ports on his computer.

  ‘What d’you think is on it, Sir?’ asked Louise.

  ‘I can tell you exactly what’s on it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘An insurance policy.’

  ‘No viruses,’ said Hardy. ‘Just a wmv file. Windows Media Video. It’s short too.’

  ‘Odd file name,’ said Loiuse.

  ‘Sigurim. It’ll be Albanian,’ replied Dixon. ‘Can we see it?’

  ‘Yes. Stand behind me.’

  Hardy clicked on the wmv icon launching Windows Media Player.

  ‘It’s a short clip, look,’ said Hardy, pointing to the timer on the right, which was counting down from 1 minute 27 seconds. ‘And there’s a time stamp.’

  ‘October 9, 0721,’ muttered Dixon.

  The camera was moving forward, as if mounted on a person, and he or she was walking through dense undergrowth. The sound was muffled; branches hitting a coat, a broken twig underfoot. Then the vegetation cleared, revealing the foot of a cliff.

  Suddenly, the camera turned as a figure appeared from the undergrowth behind it.

  Dixon was gritting his teeth and breathing through his nose. Hard. He clenched his fists, the keys and coins in his pockets digging into the palms of his hands.

  ‘D’you recognise him, Sir?’ asked Louise.

  Dixon leaned forward and listened.

  ‘Do you have the money?’ An Eastern European accent.

  ‘Yes.’

  The figure held out a large padded envelope and a hand reached out from behind the camera to take it.

  ‘It needs to be clean. An accident or a burglary gone wrong.’

  ‘It will.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘What do you want? A receipt?’

  ‘No, I . . .’

  ‘Go. Now. You will not hear from us again.’

  The figure turned and disappeared into the undergrowth. Then a hand reached up in front of the camera and the clip ended.

  ‘Can you email that to me?’

  ‘What’s your email address?’

  ‘I’m on the Bridgwater list. Send it to DCI Lewis too. Mark it urgent and ask him to ring me when he gets it.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘There’s nothing else on the memory stick?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘No,’ said Hardy, dropping it back into the evidence bag. ‘I’ll catalogue it and let you have a witness statement on the
email too.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’d better drive,’ said Dixon. ‘I’m expecting a call.’

  They were just turning onto the M5 when his phone rang.

  ‘What d’you need?’

  ‘Dave and Mark, Sir.’

  ‘Fine,’ replied Lewis.

  ‘And a mobile positioning check. I know the where and the when.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Meeting room two, Sir. Half an hour. We’re on our way now.’

  ‘I’ll get everyone together.’

  Dixon rang off and opened a web browser. He entered ‘translate’ in the search field, then ‘sigurim’ in the ‘Enter text’ field.

  ‘Gits,’ he muttered.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Louise.

  ‘Sigurim. It’s Albanian for insurance.’

  Jane, Dave and Mark were waiting for them in meeting room two when Dixon and Louise arrived back at Express Park just after 6 p.m. DCI Lewis was loitering in the CID area.

  ‘I circulated the film so they’ve all seen it.’

  ‘Good,’ replied Dixon. ‘Just give me five minutes and I’ll be over.’

  He sat down at a workstation and switched on a computer.

  ‘Get me those divorce papers, will you, Louise?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘You know who it is, don’t you?’ asked Lewis, as Dixon closed the door of the meeting room.

  ‘I do, but without the cameraman we’re going to have a fight to use the film, so we need more.’

  Lewis nodded.

  ‘It was on a memory stick that was hand delivered to my local polling station. The postal voting statement had my name on it and the ballot paper is Harry Unwin’s.’

  ‘Harry’s?’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ replied Dixon. ‘The postal votes were sent out two weeks ago, after Harry was murdered. So, someone must’ve broken into his temporary accommodation and stolen it. Louise checked with the post office and his mail was being redirected to . . . ?’

  ‘His mother’s flat in Bridgwater.’

  ‘Let’s get uniform over there to speak to his mother and the neighbours. Someone must’ve noticed.’

  ‘Unless it was intercepted before it was delivered,’ said Mark.

  ‘Or delivered to a communal entrance. Some flats have easily accessible letter boxes,’ said Dave.

  ‘Well, let’s check,’ said Dixon.

  ‘You said you knew where and when the film was taken?’ asked Lewis.

  ‘There’s a time stamp which gives us the when: 0720 on 9 October. The where is the Avon Gorge at the bottom of the Main Wall.’

  ‘How d’you know that?’ asked Jane.

  ‘It’s at the foot of “Conan the Librarian”. Don’t ask,’ said Dixon, rolling his eyes. ‘It’s a rock climb. Short, very difficult and I spent three days one summer falling off it. There used to be a bolt twenty feet up. That’s gone now, but it’s definitely it.’

  ‘Mobile positioning it is then,’ said Lewis. ‘D’you have the number?’

  Dixon slid a piece of paper across the table to Lewis. He looked at it and handed it to Jane.

  ‘Expedite it, Jane,’ said Lewis. ‘I’ll authorise it.’

  ‘Dave and Mark, traffic and number plate cameras,’ said Dixon, sliding another piece of paper across the table. ‘Either will do, both would be better.’

  Dave picked up the piece of paper and looked at it.

  ‘Should be easy,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘What else?’ asked Lewis.

  ‘The divorce papers refer to weekends away with her unnamed co-respondent in Blackpool in October 2001 and Bournemouth in October 2002. I want to check the hotels to see if she stayed with someone and, if so, who. We can start with the main ones and work down.’

  ‘Will they still have records going that far back?’ asked Louise.

  ‘We’ll soon find out.’

  ‘What’s the significance of Blackpool and Bournemouth in October?’ asked Lewis.

  ‘Party conference,’ replied Dixon. ‘Conservative Party conference.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  What time is it?’ asked Jane, leaning back in her chair and yawning.

  ‘Twoish,’ replied Dixon.

  ‘You did leave a light on for Monty?’

  ‘I left the telly on. Thought it would keep him company.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jane, smiling.

  Dixon looked up when he heard footsteps coming along the landing.

  ‘Well?’ asked Lewis, appearing round the corner of the canteen.

  ‘You still here, Sir?’

  ‘I’ve been home and come back again.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got him on an ANPR camera in Clifton. It was a bit earlier than we were expecting so Dave’s going back to look at the traffic cameras again.’

  ‘What about the hotels?’

  ‘Nothing from either Blackpool or Bournemouth, but that was a long shot after all this time anyway.’

  ‘And the mobile positioning?’

  ‘There’s an Orange base station on the opposite side of the gorge at Oak Wood,’ replied Dixon. ‘We were promised an email around about now.’

  ‘There you are, you bastard.’ The voice came from a workstation behind Dixon.

  ‘You got him, Dave?’

  ‘Traffic camera on the A4176 where it joins the Portway, 0634.’

  ‘That’s enough, surely?’ asked Lewis, ‘even without a mobile fix?’

  ‘Probably,’ replied Dixon, ‘but we’ll give them another twenty minutes or so. He’s not going anywhere.’

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘The declaration’s not due till three o’clock.’

  Dixon double parked in the High Street outside the Bridgwater Town Hall, alongside a large van with a satellite dish on the top and BBC News written on the side. Dave and Mark pulled up behind him, blocking in the ITV News van. The Sky News van was parked further down the one way street.

  One of the uniformed officers on the door stepped forward but then recognised Louise sitting in the rear passenger seat of Dixon’s Land Rover and returned to his post under the entrance portico.

  The town hall had recently been painted white and seemed to glow in the street lights. It was a three storey Victorian building with arched windows on the first floor and two stone entrance porches with square columns, access to one of them blocked by newly painted black railings. The doors of the other were open and light was streaming out into the night.

  ‘We’ll need to be discreet,’ said Dixon. ‘I don’t want this plastered all over the news. We’ll get him out of the auditorium first, all right?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  Dixon turned to the uniformed officers on the door.

  ‘You two, with us.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  He stepped over the television cables laid across the pavement and in the front door.

  ‘It’s ticket only, I’m afraid.’

  The man on the desk was in his late sixties, if not older, and would not have made much of a bouncer. But then the crowd at an election count tend to behave themselves, particularly when the television cameras are there. Dixon waved his warrant card at the man and kept walking.

  He paused at the bottom of the short flight of stairs and checked his watch: 2.45 a.m.

  ‘There are two ways out. A small door at the far end by the stage that leads to the back stairs. Dave, you can take that with Mark. Go inside then along the wall. All right?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Just make sure you’re between me and the door.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Jane, you cover the double doors at the back with uniform, but keep them out of sight until you see me move in.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Louise, you’re with me.’

  Dixon turned and walked up the stairs. The double doors at the back of the auditorium were open and people were milling about in the hall, some carrying drinks. He walked along the back wall
and stood in the middle, watching the scene unfold. Dave and Mark crept in and walked along the side wall to the front, taking up position behind the TV crews, just inside the door by the stage. Jane was standing by the double doors at the back.

  All of the folding tables that had been set up along each side of the hall were empty and a group of casually dressed council staff were waiting on the far side, looking up at the stage. Counting had finished and the tables in the middle of the hall were covered in lines of ballot papers, all tied up in elastic bands in bundles of one thousand.

  Tom Perry’s line was the longest. Some small consolation, perhaps, but Dixon thought about what it had cost him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Louise.

  ‘They’re verifying the spoilt ballot papers,’ replied Dixon. ‘They have to check each one.’

  A large crowd was gathered at a table in front of the stage. Dixon spotted the returning officer, Robert Sampson, this time wearing a jacket and tie, holding up one ballot paper at a time to allow the candidates and their agents to scrutinise it. Perry was at the front of the group, with Lawrence Deakin, looking relaxed and not taking much notice. Judging by the bundles of votes, there could be five thousand spoilt ballot papers all allocated to his nearest challenger and he would still win.

  Four other groups of supporters were waiting at the front of the hall, each identifiable by the colour of their rosettes. Blue, yellow, red and purple. Dixon recognised some of those wearing blue rosettes, but not all.

  ‘How d’you spoil a ballot paper then?’ asked Louise.

  ‘Voting for more than one candidate, putting your name on it, or just writing “fuck off” on it, I suppose.’

  ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘There’s always next time,’ said Dixon.

  ‘Can you see him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’ll be here.’

  Dixon looked at Dave Harding, who shrugged his shoulders. Then he looked at Jane. She shook her head.

  ‘Who’s that talking to the TV cameras?’ asked Louise.

  ‘That’s the MP for West Somerset. I forget his name.’

  Dixon watched Tom Perry step back from the crowd still verifying spoilt ballot papers and speak to a young man with short dark hair.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ replied Louise.