Dying Inside (DI Nick Dixon Crime)

by Damien Boyd

  ‘We think you might be next, Craig,’ said Dixon.

  ‘Whatever. Hardly matters now, does it?’

  ‘You’re safe while you’re in here and I’ve asked the governor to cancel your temporary licence, so no day passes for the time being.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  ‘Have you got a release date?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope we can catch whoever it is before you do.’

  Dixon arrived back at Area J to find all of the workstations occupied and the phones buzzing. Cole was still working his way through the crossbow sales lists from the archery retailers; the rest of the major investigation team now following up the pension clients – victims – of Clearwater Wealthcare.

  Wealthcare.

  The word jarred every time, reminding Dixon of hours wasted at networking events when he’d been a trainee solicitor, listening to financial advisers drone on about wealth management and holistic approaches as if they had something different to offer.

  ‘There’s no one on both lists,’ said Louise. ‘Loan charge and pension.’

  ‘No one’s bought a bow either.’ Cole spoke without looking up.

  ‘We’re checking their cars now, and passenger manifests in and out of Malaga for the last seventy-two hours.’

  Dixon knew they were wasting their time, but it had to be done, or seen to be done. Unless and until he had something better to go on, it would be old fashioned police work: cross-referencing, checking, following up.

  The killer could have flown via pretty much anywhere to cover his tracks. Or taken the train to Paris and flown from there. Or even driven all the way – he frowned – not that there would have been time for that. Plymouth to Santander on the ferry was definitely out; that would have taken far too long. Finch had been killed at nine in the morning in Bristol, and Bowen and Mather, say, twelve or fifteen hours later on the Costa del Sol; easily doable, but the killer must have flown. It would help if they had a name, though; checking two hundred would take far too long.

  ‘Where are Dave and Kevin?’

  ‘Somewhere over the Channel by now, I expect,’ replied Louise. ‘They took off about half an hour ago.’

  Another waste of bloody time, but it was something else that had to be seen to be done. He had learned all he needed to know from the crime scene photographs and the Economic Crime Unit file, and the killer was too clever to leave any trace. Still, boxes to tick and all that.

  ‘How did you get on with Craig?’ asked Louise.

  ‘He’d been at the spice again,’ replied Dixon. ‘He did say there’d been a couple of ex-SAS soldiers who’d kicked up, and a planning officer at Sedgemoor District Council.’

  ‘I just spoke to one of them.’ A voice he didn’t recognise behind him. ‘Seemed quite pleased they’d been killed, but then just about everyone’s said that so far. “Got what they deserved” is a common response.’

  Dixon turned round, but whoever it was had already ducked down behind her computer screen.

  ‘What about the soldiers?’ he asked, turning back to Louise.

  ‘The list we’ve got doesn’t specify an occupation, but we’re filling it in as we speak to them, so we’ll be able to search the database as soon as everyone’s been spoken to.’

  ‘Interviews being set up?’

  ‘And Jez is sending over ten more bods too, so we should get through them quite quickly.’

  Mark leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. ‘We still can’t find any connection between Collins and Finch, or Collins and the pensions thing. He seems like the odd man out.’

  ‘Craig is the connection,’ said Dixon. ‘He’s up to his neck in the pensions scam and his pregnant fiancée drowned on Collins’s boat.’

  Mark and Louise frowned at each other.

  ‘Yeah, but how does that fit in with what we know?’ she asked.

  ‘It doesn’t, which means it must fit in with something we don’t know.’

  12 unaccounted for so far plus one murder/suicide

  Louise’s text had arrived when Dixon was in the shower the following morning.

  A couple of hours spent going through the Economic Crime Unit file; witness statements complaining of retirements lost and dreams shattered – it had been a familiar refrain – and he had finally got home just before midnight. A turn around the field at the back of the cottage with Monty while a curry was in the microwave, and he had been sound asleep by a quarter past.

  The shower had woken him up, although he could probably have done without Jane getting in with him, not that he would tell her.

  He tapped out a reply with one hand, a piece of toast in the other: Briefing at 8. On way

  ‘I’m not sure I like it with you at Portishead after all.’ Jane was holding her mug in both hands. ‘We hardly get to see each other.’

  ‘It’s only while there’s a flap on,’ replied Dixon, watching through the windows behind Jane as her sister walked along the pavement outside the front of the cottage, the sound of a car speeding off in the distance. ‘And it’d be the same at Express Park.’

  ‘I’ve sort of got used to you hiding in my office, that’s all.’

  ‘Where’s Lucy?’

  ‘Still in bed. She had a study day yesterday and stayed over. I’m dropping her at the station on my way to work.’

  ‘I’d better go.’ He turned for the back door, stopping to scratch Monty behind the ears. ‘You’ll have to referee again, old son, sorry.’

  Jane frowned. ‘Referee what?’

  The shouting still hadn’t started by the time he was sitting in his Land Rover, so he wound down the window and listened, Jane’s shriek carrying easily over the rumble of the diesel engine. ‘What bloody party?’

  Someone had moved the partitioning overnight, expanding Area J by two more blocks of four workstations. Maybe they would have enough people to check the various travel permutations to and from Malaga after all, although that remained very much a last resort.

  Dixon stared at the list of twelve missing pension scam victims: four soldiers, a locum doctor, a midwife, a police officer, three firefighters and two prison officers.

  ‘We need the service history for the soldiers. Prioritise any special forces first. All right?’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ replied Louise.

  ‘Tell me about the murder/suicide.’

  ‘A retired police officer. Here’s the file.’ She handed him a thin plastic document wallet. ‘It looks like it might have been a suicide pact, but then she couldn’t go through with it, so he killed her, then himself.’ She shrugged. ‘Sad.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘A superintendent from Wiltshire, retired to Weston. He wasn’t drawing his pension yet because he was still working part-time as a security consultant. It would’ve been a big fund, though.’

  ‘Better speak to the family.’

  The briefing lasted twenty minutes: a recap for the newcomers to the team followed by a summary of the change of direction forced on them by the Costa del Sol murders. Dixon thought it was probably another waste of time, because most of them had seemed up to speed anyway and he felt almost as though he was interrupting them. But at least it was one more box that could be ticked; no one could complain the SIO hadn’t kept them informed.

  ‘Stay on Collins,’ Dixon said to Louise and Mark when the briefing finished and most had drifted off in the direction of the kettle or the canteen. ‘And find those soldiers.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’ Louise’s computer pinged. ‘Hang on, there’s an email.’ She sat down and reached for the mouse. ‘The locum doctor’s in Belfast and we’ve got the midwife as well; she had her phone switched off.’

  Dixon turned to Cole. ‘How are you getting on with the bows, Nige?’

  ‘Er, all right, I think. I’ve almost contacted everybody.’

  ‘Pass the list on to someone else for the interviews and come with me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

 
‘HMP Bristol.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Both of these missing prison officers worked at Bristol.’

  ‘The autistic lad, Gavin Curtis, started his sentence at Bristol.’

  ‘He did, and so did Craig Pengelly.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  HMP Bristol: four storeys, red brick, behind the obligatory high wall, and no bloody visitors’ car park; his warrant card hadn’t worked with the jobsworth on the entrance to the staff car park either.

  Dixon drove round and round the adjacent streets, all of them residents’ parking permits only. Mercifully, the gate was open to the allotments behind the prison.

  ‘We’ll be buggered if someone locks us in,’ Cole had said.

  ‘It’s a thin chain and this is a Land Rover.’

  The admin block looked more like the temporary prefabricated office space he’d seen on the construction site at Hinkley Point, although the security checks to get in there had been more strict than for a prison visit.

  ‘Wait here,’ had been the instruction, and they were obliging; Cole reading the newspaper, Dixon pacing up and down.

  ‘Come through to my office, I’ve got a computer in here.’ Regulation black trousers, white shirt and clip-on tie; she was waving at them from halfway along the corridor.

  ‘Shirley Adebayo?’ Dixon had never understood the prison service insignia, nor the police insignia, come to think of it.

  ‘You’ll be Inspector Dixon, we spoke on the phone.’

  ‘We did.’

  Her office was at the back of the admin building, offering a view of the main prison block; the shouting just about discernible over the noise of the alarm bells and the traffic on the A38. It didn’t help that her window was open. ‘Always shouting about something,’ she said, slamming it shut.

  Dixon sat down on the chair in front of the desk, Cole leaning against a filing cabinet behind him. ‘You were going to help with information on a couple of former inmates and two of your officers.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Let’s start with Craig Pengelly. He’s at Leyhill at the moment, not far off release.’

  One finger typing. ‘You’ll have to excuse me.’ Adebayo looked up, aware she was being watched. ‘You learn a lot of things being a prison officer, but typing isn’t one of them.’ A few clicks of the mouse. ‘Here we are, Craig Pengelly. Came here on twenty-fourth March and was D-catted June thirtieth – we’re cat B here – then it was off to Leyhill the next day. Good report, no demerits. It says here he was a listener, which is always good for getting early D status.’

  ‘Visitors?’

  ‘Looks like his parents and girlfriend registered. No one else.’

  ‘When I saw him yesterday he was high on spice.’

  ‘We have a bit of a problem in here with spice.’ Adebayo leaned back in her chair. ‘You may have read in the papers, apparently one third of the inmates here are hooked on drugs. I was surprised by that to be honest.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought it was at least fifty per cent.’ She smirked. ‘Look, it’s not as bad as that, but spice is virtually impossible to stop. It’s a liquid, so they soak a letter in it, send it in and then the recipient smokes it. I’ve seen soaked Rizlas, even books. I didn’t know Craig was taking it though.’

  ‘He certainly is now.’

  She shook her head. ‘I remember he saved another inmate’s life. He was a good listener. It was a young lad, mentally ill, been slashing himself with a razor, the cell was covered in blood, and I mean covered. The PO on the landing sent for a listener – they just go in and listen – but no one would, so Craig went in, even though he was off duty. Calmed him down so the doctor could get in there. D’you know, I think that was his last night here.’

  ‘Is there anything else on his record?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me about Gavin Curtis then.’

  More one finger typing. ‘D-catted a month earlier – thirtieth May – and off to Ford Open Prison after that.’ Her eyes were scanning the screen, following her mouse clicks. ‘There’s a diagnosis of level 1 autistic spectrum disorder. Not a single visitor, either; he’s got next of kin listed but they never registered to come and see him.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘No one, according to this.’

  ‘Who were his cellmates?’

  ‘He had one of the single cells. There are a few on the top floor. You can’t risk . . .’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘Would they have known each other?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t be surprised, but the best I can say is they were here at the same time.’

  ‘Prison officers then; there are two. Let’s start with John Sims.’

  ‘I took over from John as supervising officer.’

  ‘We’re not saying he’s done anything wrong, just that we need to speak to him and we can’t get hold of him.’

  ‘He’s probably gone fishing; mad on fishing, he is.’

  ‘Do you have his latest contact details?’

  Control P, an index finger on each. ‘The printer’s on the cabinet behind you,’ she said, to Cole. ‘Who else?’

  ‘Francis Allan.’

  ‘Frank’s off long term sick. Got caught in a cell with a prisoner off his box on spice and was beaten to a pulp, sadly. It left him with neurological problems and a nasty back injury. Last I heard he was going to take early retirement, if he hasn’t done so already.’

  ‘Would either of them have come into contact with Craig Pengelly?’

  ‘Probably, why d’you ask?’

  ‘Because both were victims of the crime for which Craig was sent here.’

  ‘Really?’ Adebayo scowled. ‘That shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Dave, Sir. You’ll have to excuse his shirt,’ replied Louise. ‘He’s video conferencing from Spain. They can hear you.’

  Dixon glanced down at Louise’s computer monitor, the screen subdivided into four. He recognised Dave and Kevin, but not the other two. ‘Can’t he just use the phone like everyone else?’

  ‘Then we wouldn’t have to look at that bloody shirt,’ said Mark, under his breath.

  ‘That’s Detective Alvaro.’ Louise pointed to the top left pane. ‘And this is their pathologist, Dr Camilla Garcia.’ She pulled up a chair. ‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Dixon.’

  ‘Buenos días, Chief Inspector,’ said Alvaro.

  ‘Buenos días,’ replied Dixon, sitting down; conversational French, at a push, but Spanish was a mystery to him.

  ‘They speak very good English,’ said Louise.

  Dixon leaned over the back of his chair and passed a piece of paper to Mark. ‘These are the latest contact details for one of the missing prison officers. Check them out, will you?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Sorry about that.’ He turned back to the screen. ‘What have you got for us?’

  ‘You know the victims, I think,’ replied Alvaro. ‘Two British citizens. We’ve been fully informed of the situation by Detectives Harding and Turner.’

  ‘There’s not a lot, to be honest, Sir,’ said Dave. ‘We think the bolts were fired from the clifftop about twenty-five to thirty yards away. It’s simply too steep to get up to the balustrade on the terrace, but there’s a bit on the cliff that sticks out further along and you can get to the top of that from the road.’

  ‘We’ve got some boot print which we send over for comparison,’ said Alvaro.

  ‘How far is it exactly?’

  ‘Twenty yards to James Bowen on the sun lounger,’ replied Dave. ‘More to Miranda Mather.’

  ‘The shot was fired through the open window. Closer to twenty-five metres.’ Alvaro shrugged. ‘Someone will be going up there today with a laser to measure.’

  ‘It was fired from further away, of that there is no doubt,’ said Camilla Garcia. ‘Both have hit in the eye socket, but the bolt on the woman has not gone in as far. Death w
ould have been instantly.’

  ‘Anything on CCTV?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘No, Sir,’ replied Kevin.

  ‘It is coast road,’ said Alvaro. ‘Cameras in the town two kilometre away.’

  ‘House to house?’

  ‘They’re all clifftop villas, Sir.’ Kevin again.

  ‘No one see anything,’ said Alvaro. ‘We stopping traffic on the road this afternoon and tomorrow morning to see if they remember see anything.’

  ‘You’d better stay for that,’ said Dixon, to Dave and Kevin.

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ they replied in unison, both trying to look hard done by at the prospect of another night on the Costa del Sol. Maybe he should have gone himself, thought Dixon.

  ‘What about the broadhead?’ he asked.

  ‘It is the same,’ replied Garcia. ‘Your Dr Petersen emailed me some photos and it is a clear match.’

  ‘The bolts are the same too, Sir,’ offered Dave. ‘They’re both the Easton FMJ carbon fibre, twenty inch.’

  ‘OK, let’s assume the killer is British and returned home before the bodies were found—’

  ‘We are checking the airports,’ interrupted Alvaro.

  ‘My guess is he or she wouldn’t want to risk the return journey with the bow,’ continued Dixon. ‘So that will have been dumped somewhere.’

  ‘There are miles of coastline, Sir,’ said Dave. ‘It was night time so he could have pulled up anywhere and chucked it over into the sea.’

  ‘Can you check the sea directly opposite the villa?’

  ‘We can do that, for sure,’ replied Alvaro.

  ‘Then we need to think about how he got the bow into Spain. It’s mainly plastic and the limb is fibreglass; easily dismantled and hidden in a suitcase. Even the bolts come to bits.’

  ‘He’d have struggled to get the broadheads through security,’ said Kevin. ‘Even if he got the rest through.’

  ‘We check.’ Alvaro was making notes.

  ‘He could have posted it; even ordered the broadheads online and had them sent direct to a post office box perhaps.’

  ‘We check that too. Of course, he could have bought the bow here. It is legal, as it is in your country.’