by Damien Boyd
‘He owes me one.’
‘He does, but you can’t keep calling in the same favour over and over again. And besides, he sorted you out the night of the fire.’
‘Roger won’t mind.’
‘Won’t mind what?’ Poland was standing behind the glass door listening to their conversation, his translucent green apron smeared with blood. At least he’d taken his latex gloves off.
‘Can you see a PM report from Bristol on your system?’ asked Dixon.
Poland pulled his face mask down below his chin. ‘When from?’
‘Today, or maybe late yesterday.’
‘If it’s been typed up, then yes.’
‘What about the photos?’
‘If they’ve been uploaded.’ Hands on hips now. ‘What’s this all about? I thought you were supposed to be putting your feet up?’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Jane, tipping her head.
‘Can we come in?’
‘Course you can.’ Poland unlocked the door. ‘I’m in the middle of a bit of a nasty one, I’m afraid. The bloody Ilminster bypass again; that’s three this year. This one had a blood alcohol level off the charts, mind you.’
They followed him along the corridor to an open plan office area with four vacant desks. Poland leaned over and flicked on a computer. ‘Name?’
‘Godfrey Collins,’ replied Dixon. ‘He was found yesterday in woods on the north side of the Mendips; Leo Petersen was there when I got there. D’you know him?’
‘I do. And what is it that’s got your feathers all ruffled?’
‘Collins was killed with a crossbow and one of the bolts had an unusual broadhead on it, one that Petersen said he’d never seen before. It’s got three curved blades, so the entry wound looks like a clover leaf or three of the Olympic rings.’ Dixon was drawing the pattern in the air with his index finger, watching Poland scroll through a series of photographs on the computer screen.
‘Like this.’ Poland gestured to the screen and an image of a man’s bare chest, the flesh greying. ‘These are just the usual type, that one’s got two blades and that’s a three-blader.’ He jabbed his finger at the screen. ‘There’s your circular pattern; designed to bring down a deer I should imagine, although hunting with a bow is illegal in this country.’
‘Forty pence each online.’ Dixon shook his head. ‘And it was used to bring down an accountant.’
‘Well, I’ve never seen a broadhead like that before either.’ Poland was sucking his teeth. ‘You need to get whoever’s using it off the bloody streets sooner rather than later.’
‘Zephyr have taken over on the assumption it’s gang related. Collins was up to his neck in drug running and his yacht sank with a consignment of cocaine on board apparently, so—’
Poland frowned. ‘What’s the problem then?’
‘We’ve got someone on our patch killing sheep with a crossbow.’
‘Sheep?’
‘It’s not as daft as it sounds, Roger,’ said Jane, diving in.
‘All right, all right.’ Poland raised his hands in mock surrender, revealing blood on the sleeves of his blue smock. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Three lots of six each time, over a period of a couple of months.’ Dixon sat down on the edge of Poland’s workstation. ‘The power of the bow increasing and then broadheads start to make an appearance.’
‘With curved blades?’
‘That’s your department, as you like to say to me often enough.’
Poland didn’t take the bait. ‘You’ve got photos of the sheep?’
Dixon slid across an envelope from under his arm. ‘These are the vet’s reports from the first two lots and then I’ve got some photos on my phone of the most recent, a week ago they were now.’
Poland flicked straight to the photos at the back of the first report.
‘The vet reckoned those were inflicted by a pistol crossbow with six and a half inch bolts. Not very powerful either, as the bolts bounced off the skull.’
Poland pointed to a scuff mark on the forehead of one of the sheep. ‘You can see that there.’
‘The next lot have got deeper injuries from longer bolts and a more powerful bow. There are simple two-bladed broadheads, but they’re not easy to see because they’ve been cut out.’
‘You can see a fine incision there,’ said Poland, ‘where the vet has clipped away the fleece.’
‘The last lot are on my phone.’
‘Email them to me and we can look at them on the bigger screen.’ Poland stood up and opened the door. ‘I’d better go and let them know in the lab what’s going on.’
‘We’ll be ten minutes, Roger, that’s all.’
Poland reappeared in the doorway a few seconds later. ‘That’s fine, they’re going to have a cup of tea,’ he said.
Dixon clicked ‘send’ on the email, then opened a web browser. ‘A crossbow is a common enough weapon, but these broadheads are a different kettle of fish. I looked up the listing online. Listen to this,’ he said, holding up his phone. ‘Curved blades for a larger cutting surface; massive wound channel for highly visible blood trail; bone crushing chisel tip for increased penetration.’
‘Forty pence each?’ Poland sneered. ‘Have you sent the email?’
‘Yes.’
A couple of clicks and Poland was scrolling through Dixon’s photographs of the rotting sheep. ‘It’s a bit difficult because the fleeces are matted with blood and you can’t really see . . . there.’ He stood up, sending his chair sliding into the desk behind him. ‘There are your Olympic rings. Plain as day. One’s been cut away but the others are still there if you look at that flap of skin and marry it up with that bit. Where are the sheep now?’
‘The farmer’s got them,’ replied Dixon. ‘And the vet was going over there last night.’
‘It should be in his post mortem report then, and hopefully he’ll have cut away the fleece for the photos.’
‘Nice work if you can get it,’ mumbled Jane.
‘It doesn’t really prove anything though, does it?’ asked Poland. ‘I mean, if Zephyr are right, the executioner could just have been practising on the sheep, surely?’
‘The broadhead’s a signature, Roger,’ replied Dixon, sliding the reports back into the envelope. ‘And professionals don’t leave signatures.’
‘Fancy a walk with Monty and a bag of fish and chips?’ Dixon had said when they got back to their cottage in Brent Knoll.
‘Lovely,’ Jane had replied. ‘Where d’you fancy going?’
‘How about down by the sailing club for a change?’
Now they had finished their food and were watching the yachts gradually being lifted off the mud by the incoming tide, the pontoons lying flat on the sloping sludge; the occasional gust of wind rattling the rigging. A couple of people were moving about near the waterline, weaving in and out of piles of seaweed, picking up litter and placing it in large sacks.
The sailing club was open, the double doors hooked back to the walls on either side, a few people visible propping up the bar. The gates to the yard were open too, although it seemed empty compared to the last time Dixon had seen it, but then that had been January when most of the yachts were out of the water for the winter. He recognised two Cornish pilot gigs on the far side of the yard sitting on their trailers, rowers taking the covers off ready for launch when the tide was far enough in.
By now he had edged several paces into the yard, hoping to be challenged by the woman he had seen watching him from the window.
‘They might get an hour’s rowing in before it gets too dark,’ she said, coming down the steps. ‘Can I help you?’
‘It’s Mrs Sumner, isn’t it?’ asked Dixon.
‘Do I know you?’ she asked, with the same frown, short dark hair and orange Musto jacket Dixon had seen last winter.
‘We met during the by-election in January. Mr Perry’s wife was murdered.’
‘Of course, the police.’
Time for the warrant card. ‘Of
f duty at the moment, I’m pleased to say.’
Mrs Sumner looked at Jane, who was waiting at the gate with Monty. ‘Didn’t I see you at Laura’s memorial service this afternoon?’
‘Jane was at Weston College too.’ Dixon got the white lie in before Jane had to. ‘I was interested in the yacht Laura was on.’
‘The bloody thing should never have been at sea and certainly not for an ocean passage. If Godfrey hadn’t been killed I’m sure he’d have been prosecuted; manslaughter by gross negligence, they said.’
‘They?’
‘The Marine Accident Investigation Branch. Sunset Boulevard was a wreck when he bought it. He had it in the water a couple of years, then after that it was craned out and never went back in, it just sat over there,’ she said, gesturing to the far corner of the yard. ‘Rotting away.’
‘Did you know Mr Collins well?’
‘Not really. He paid his subs, crane fees and rented the yard space, but that was about it. He wasn’t what you’d call a social member, at least not for the last ten years. God knows how much money he wasted on the damned thing.’
‘When did he put it back in the water?’
‘Last season, I think. And he left it on a mooring for the winter. He actually started living on it for a time, but then we had to ask him to stop and he moved out. No idea where to, I’m afraid.’
Dixon stepped back to allow four rowers to pull one of the gigs past on its trailer. ‘What’s the thinking on the cause of the accident; why the keel fell off?’
‘You’d better have a word with my husband,’ replied Mrs Sumner, turning and waving to the man sitting in the window above.
His and hers Musto jackets. Nice.
‘Bob, this is the police and he wants to know about the accident – you know, Sunset Boulevard.’
‘Design flaw.’ Sumner was sucking on a pipe, tamping the tobacco down with the tip of his thumb. ‘Big yacht, big keel, ten bolts. It was asking for trouble. Not the first time it’s happened either.’
‘Really?’
‘It was a Geronde Six, at least twenty years old. The keel fell off another after it had grounded. Mercifully that was at a regatta and everyone on board was picked up. Imagine the stresses on those bolts grounding a yacht of that size, and he left Sunset Boulevard in the water on a pontoon where it effectively grounded twice a day on the tide.’
‘Did you tell all this to the Marine Accident Investigation Branch?’
‘We had a couple of people here for a couple of days – May time, maybe. They spoke to several of us and took copies of the relevant documents: craning records, yard rentals, that sort of thing.’
‘Did you ever see any maintenance work being done on the boat?’ asked Dixon.
Sumner winced. ‘Yacht. Sunset Boulevard was not a boat.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Maintenance, no. Never.’
‘Taking the keel off, perhaps?’
‘You’d have to have drilled the bolts out, I expect; rusted to buggery they must have been. It’s no wonder they sheared off in a heavy swell.’ Sumner shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t have stood a chance. The French coastguard got a diver on board apparently, the day before it sank, and they said the life raft was still stowed away aft.’
‘How often did Mr Collins go out in it after he’d put it back in the water?’
‘A couple of times, maybe. He had a captain who took it out a few times as well, but they were never out for very long – a few days, maybe a week, at most.’
‘Who is this captain?’
‘Richard Page. He’d take a couple of youngsters from the club with him as crew.’
‘Laura was one of them.’ Mrs Sumner was zipping up her coat. ‘We tried to warn them about the condition of the boat.’
Dixon watched Sumner scowling at his wife – calling a yacht a boat was clearly a cardinal sin. ‘And where can I find him?’
‘You can’t. He went down with the rest of them,’ replied Sumner.
‘So, there’s no one left who went out with him.’
Sumner shook his head solemnly. ‘All dead.’
‘One last thing. Mrs Sumner, you said that Mr Collins would have been prosecuted if he hadn’t been killed and I was wondering how you knew he was dead?’
‘It was on the local evening news.’
‘You were doing so well until that last question.’ Jane laughed to herself as they walked across the road to the Land Rover.
‘I wonder if Zephyr have spoken to the Marine Accident Investigation Branch.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Probably not.’ Dixon was rummaging in his pockets for his car keys. ‘Collyer wouldn’t give a toss why the boat sank, just that it did, with somebody else’s cocaine on board.’
‘So, what’s this all about then?’ Jane was frowning at Dixon through the passenger window when she opened the door.
‘I keep thinking about the sheep.’ He shrugged. ‘And that crossbow bolt.’
‘Thank you for putting that image back in my head.’
‘My pleasure.’ Dixon smiled. ‘Fancy a beer?’
Chapter Seven
It had been a simple enough plan. A two hour meeting with the Citizens in Policing scheme volunteer coordinators starting at 9 a.m. was bad enough, but it left no time to ring the Marine Accident Investigation Branch before his second meeting at 11 a.m. with the Forensics Liaison team. And after lunch it was straight into a Family Liaison meeting.
‘Ring me on my mobile at ten and make out there’s been some emergency, will you?’ Dixon had asked, as he and Jane left the canteen just before nine after a breakfast of bacon rolls and coffee.
He checked his phone at ten, five past and then ten past, trying not to make it look too obvious to the other attendees, his phone finally buzzing on the table at quarter past the hour.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, turning away with his phone to his ear.
‘How’s the meeting?’ Jane chuckled.
‘Oh no, really?’ An exaggerated sigh. ‘Is he still there?’
‘Who?’
‘Yes, yes, all right, I’m on my way. Just keep him there.’ Dixon rang off. ‘I really have to go, I’m afraid.’ He stood up, offering an apologetic smile to the other attendees now glaring at him. ‘I’ll try to get back as quickly as I can.’
He was already dialling the number when the door of meeting room 2 closed behind him.
‘Marine Accident Investigation Branch, can I help you?’
Dixon would have preferred to visit, but Southampton and back would take all day; a phone call would have to do, for the time being. ‘I’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge of the Sunset Boulevard investigation, please.’
Name and rank convinced the receptionist to take his call seriously. ‘Please hold.’
He was beginning to wonder whether he’d been cut off when the line finally crackled. ‘John Taylor. Sunset Boulevard is my investigation. How can I help?’
‘It’s been suggested the yacht was carrying drugs when it sank?’ asked Dixon, cutting to the chase.
‘News to me.’
‘About two hundred and sixty kilos of cocaine; twenty million quid’s worth.’
‘Where was it supposed to be taking this cocaine?’ asked Taylor, the legs of a chair being scraped along a hard floor in the background.
‘Here.’
‘Couldn’t have been. Sunset Boulevard was heading away from the UK when it capsized.’
‘Away?’ Dixon perched on the table in the meeting room, watching Charlesworth watching him from the landing on the other side of the atrium.
‘Yes, the crew was exchanging emails with Collins via a satellite phone – we’ve got his laptop – and they were clearly moving south-west towards the Azores. They were a little further east than they might have been initially, perhaps, if they’d been taking a direct route. I’ve got a map with their positions marked on it, if that would help?’
‘It certainly would.’ Charlesworth was still
watching him while he recited his email address.
‘There are some internal photographs too; I’ll ping them over as well, although they’re strictly confidential. The French coastguard found the upturned hull and got a diver on board the day before the container ship tried to take it under tow. There’s not much to see, though. No bags of cocaine floating about.’ Taylor’s attempt to stifle a chuckle failed dismally.
Dixon cleared his throat. ‘What about in the keel?’
‘Well, we’ll never know now, will we?’ replied Taylor. ‘Although it’s highly unlikely, for a whole host of reasons. We spent two days at Burnham Sailing Club, took statements from twelve club members and they all said they never saw any maintenance work being done on the yacht, let alone the keel coming off. And it had been in the water for at least a year anyway. It would’ve had to have come out for that.’
It sounded a daft question, but Dixon thought it worth the risk. ‘There’s no way you can do it with the yacht in the water?’
‘God, no.’ Another chuckle. ‘Look, it set sail from Burnham on the evening of the twelfth of March and capsized on the nineteenth, north-east of the Azores; it would have to have been under sail the whole time to have got to that position, so there’d have been no time to do it, even if it was possible, which it isn’t.’
‘What else?’
‘It was a Geronde Six, the 1998 model.’ It sounded as though Taylor was tapping his desk with a pen. ‘And the keel isn’t hollow, so that’s the end of that theory, isn’t it?’
‘Could it have rendezvoused with another yacht, perhaps, or even something bigger, that had brought the drugs across the Atlantic?’
‘There was nothing else in the area, nothing that was reporting its position via GPS anyway, and I say again, Sunset Boulevard was still heading away from home when the accident happened. If she’d been carrying drugs destined for the UK, I imagine she would have been heading towards the UK, don’t you think?’
Dixon hoped it was a rhetorical question.
‘I’ll send you the emails so you can see for yourself,’ continued Taylor.