by Damien Boyd
‘Don’t remind me, Inspector.’
Dixon left Louise to complete the meeting, having thanked Alvaro and Garcia profusely for their help and cooperation. Then he caught up with Mark, perching on the corner of his workstation.
‘One of your prison officers had been fishing for a couple of days at Longleat,’ said Mark, handing back the piece of paper. ‘He’s home now.’
‘What about the other missing pension victims?’
‘All accounted for bar one: the other prison officer.’ Mark looked at his notebook. ‘Two of the soldiers are in Thailand and the SAS lads are doing security work in Iraq; all verified. Everyone else checks out and is being spoken to as well.’
‘John Sims and Francis Allan first then.’ Dixon was sipping the coffee handed to him by Cole. ‘Still no connection between Collins and the pensions thing, I suppose.’
‘No, Sir. Just Craig and the boat.’
Chapter Twenty
‘Were you listening to the video call from Spain?’ asked Dixon, as he drove out of Portishead towards Bristol twenty minutes later.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘What did you make of it?’
‘Not a lot we didn’t know already.’ Cole was staring out of the passenger window and spoke without looking away. ‘Except for the fact his aim’s improving.’
‘Thirty yards to Finch and he hits him in the cheekbone, so he has to close in to twenty for the eye shot. Now he’s hitting Miranda Mather in the eye first time at twenty-five metres.’
‘Practice makes perfect.’
‘Or a lucky shot.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Cole.
‘A new development off Staunton Lane, Whitchurch.’
‘Bet you never thought a few dead sheep would lead to all this, eh, Sir?’
Cole’s question brought an abrupt end to the conversation. The answer was obvious – maybe not four murders, but murder, certainly – Dixon choosing to leave it unsaid as he waited at the traffic lights at the bottom of Whitchurch Lane.
EASTFIELD HOMES – BUY FOR AS LITTLE AS £490 PER MONTH – DEPOSIT PAID!
The sign and the muddy tyre tracks on the road told Dixon he was getting close to the housing development along Staunton Lane.
He turned left into Eastfield Park, a line of flags fluttering in the breeze along the road frontage, and left his Land Rover in the perfectly manicured bays outside the immaculate show home. Beyond that, the houses either side of the dirt track were in various stages of construction, apart from the first six, which appeared to be occupied, large ‘SOLD!’ signs still stuck in the recently laid turf outside. The windows were just going in on the next six, and further along the track a digger was excavating the foundations of six more.
‘Four hundred and ninety a month is a sod of a lot to live on a building site,’ muttered Cole.
Dixon was watching the sales assistant in the show home, taking a keen interest in their movements through the front window. She was already holding a handful of leaflets and looked ready to pounce.
‘It must be that one.’ He was looking at the first house on the right, an old Ford Mondeo parked in the drive with a fishing rod bag on the roof rack.
The house number, 2, had been printed off on a computer and taped to the inside of the sitting room window.
‘You’d have thought they’d have screwed a bloody house number on to it for them, wouldn’t you?’
Dixon decided Cole’s question was rhetorical.
The lawn resembled a patchwork quilt, some of the rolls of turf doing better than others, the lines between them still visible and widening, if anything. A bloody good water might help. Dixon looked up at the house: a small bay window, open plan inside; he could see the rear garden through the patio doors at the back.
‘This must be one of the two bedroom ones. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand.’
‘You’ve been watching daytime TV again, haven’t you, Nige?’
‘Escape to the Country.’
The front door opened before Dixon had a chance to knock, which spared his knuckles, there being no doorbell or knocker either.
‘Inspector Dixon?’
He answered with his warrant card.
‘They told us you were coming.’ A round face and short dyed hair; she had her coat on too. ‘John’s in the bath, I’m afraid; I’ll let him know you’re here.’
She disappeared up the stairs, pushing open the door at the top abruptly. ‘They’re here. And you’ve left all your crap in the car. How can I go shopping with that in there?’
‘Just give me a minute.’
She took off her coat and threw it over the banister when she reached the bottom. ‘Useless bugger would spend his whole life at that bloody lake if I’d let him. Tea?’
‘Yes, please.’ Dixon followed her into the kitchen.
Someone had made an effort with the back garden, the lawn lush green and tightly mowed, a stone path weaving its way to a shed at the far end; geraniums in pots, a small bed of roses along the fence to one side, threadbare conifers at the far end – eventually they’d be tall enough to offer some privacy from the houses behind.
Cole sat down at the glazed dining table. ‘How long have you been here?’ Dutifully making polite conversation.
‘Three weeks. We were the first ones.’
‘Noisy, is it?’
‘It’s going to be like this for a while, but at least we’re in. The mud’s the worst part; it gets everywhere. That’s why I went for the hard floor.’
A figure appeared at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Just let me get my fishing stuff out of the car,’ he said, leaving the front door standing open.
Dixon watched him unload the Mondeo. A large trolley first – a bit like the ones you get at B&Q; a tackle box, several bags, a tent, a cool box, then lastly he lifted the rod bag off the roof.
‘He takes more care of that stuff than he does of me.’ Mrs Sims was watching her husband carefully loading it all on to the trolley before wheeling it into the garage.
‘No room in there for the car, I suppose,’ said Cole, smiling.
‘It’s too bloody small anyway. They always seem to build them like that these days; cars are getting bigger and the garages smaller. But, no, there’d be no room anyway.’ She was putting her coat back on, any hint of a smile lost in the act.
‘I’ve left the keys in it.’ John Sims slipped his Crocs off on the doorstep. ‘Don’t forget my beer. I’m gagging for a pint.’
‘I won’t. I was making them tea.’
‘Now then, what’s this all about?’ He turned to Dixon and Cole. ‘They wouldn’t say on the phone, but it must be serious if there’s a detective chief inspector knocking on my door.’
What little hair he had was still wet and he was fiddling with his glasses, moving them up and down his nose.
‘Are you all right, Sir?’ asked Dixon.
‘I’ve been wearing my contact lenses for a couple of days while I’ve been fishing, and my eyes always take a bit of time to adjust to my glasses.’
‘Did you catch anything?’
‘Only a couple of tiddlers this time, but I had a new PB last time out.’ Sims was grinning from ear to ear. ‘Personal best.’ He slid his phone out of his back pocket and opened it at a photograph of him holding a large carp in the dark, the beam of his head torch and the camera flash lighting up the scene. ‘Thirty-five pound twelve.’
Dixon glanced at the photo and the date and time at the top of the screen: a week ago, at 21:16.
‘Where were you?’
‘Longleat. I had a three-nighter last week and I’m just back from a four-nighter.’ Sims was dropping a teabag into each of three mugs lined up by the kettle. ‘Making the most of the weather before the winter sets in. The bailiff will vouch for me. Why?’
‘Does the name Godfrey Collins mean anything to you?’
Sims left the carton of milk on the side and turned to face Dixon, standing in the patio window. ‘No, I’m afraid not.’
&n
bsp; ‘How about Keith Finch?’
‘Nope.’
‘James Bowen?’
‘I know Bowen. The tosser ripped off my pension. Why?’
‘He’s dead, Sir,’ replied Dixon.
‘Something suitably gruesome, I hope?’
‘He was killed with a crossbow at a villa on the Costa del Sol three days ago.’
‘What about that bitch Miranda Mather?’
‘Her too.’
‘Can’t say I’m surprised. Or sorry.’ Sims was filling the mugs with boiling water. ‘It couldn’t happen to two nicer people. Fucking parasites.’
‘And you say you were at Longleat the whole time?’
‘I don’t say I was at Longleat, I was at Longleat.’ Indignant now. ‘As I said, the bailiff there will vouch for me. I got there on Friday. Four days and four nights. Peg six, Woods Bank, Shearwater Lake.’
‘What about your previous trip, when you had the PB?’
‘I got there on the Sunday and fished for three nights: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.’
Dixon waited for Cole to finish scribbling the details in his notebook. ‘How long were you with the prison service?’
‘Thirty years.’ Sims placed the three mugs and a sugar bowl on the table, then the milk, before sitting down opposite Cole. ‘I started at Belmarsh, then did a few years at Exeter and finished my career at Bristol as supervising officer. Eight years there until I retired in July.’
‘Tell me about your pension.’ Dixon was looking along the photographs on the bookshelves against the far wall of the open plan dining room; cookbooks obscured by pictures of family holidays, dogs and fish.
‘I only really looked at it for the first time a couple of years ago, when I was coming up for retirement, I suppose.’ Sims sipped his tea. ‘I was planning to work part-time somewhere and wasn’t going to start drawing it, but I thought I’d have a look at transferring it to see if it might do a bit better. That’s when I met James Bowen.’
‘When was this?’
‘A couple of years ago.’
‘Why Bowen?’
‘He was recommended to me by a colleague. He seemed very knowledgeable – had a posh office, filter coffee – was absolutely convincing, and he came up with this plan to transfer the fund to Clearwater Pensions. It was an offshore fund, investing in property, he said. It was registered with HMRC so I thought it would be fine.’ Sims wiped the bottom of his mug on his trouser leg. ‘And he was telling me it’d get an eleven per cent return per annum instead of the one point something per cent it’s been getting.’
‘And what happened?’
‘There was forty-seven grand left that my accountant was able to recover. That would’ve got me about fifty quid a month when I hit sixty-five, but I took some of it out to help buy this place.’ He sighed. ‘Not much to show for thirty years in the prison service.’
‘How big was your pension fund originally?’
‘Four hundred and twelve thousand.’
‘Were you landed with a big income tax bill?’
‘Bowen didn’t bloody well tell me about that either, did he?’ Sims was turning his mug on the table, watching it leave a ring on the glass. ‘We had to sell our house to pay it off. Thank God there was just enough left to buy this place or we’d be at her bloody mother’s now.’
‘Mrs Sims’s mother is still alive?’
‘I know what you’re thinking, but there won’t be much of an inheritance; she’s one of six children.’
‘What did you do when you found out about the scam?’
‘Went to your lot, obviously. There was a group of six of us and we instructed a pensions specialist at a law firm in the city and he did what he could, which was basically fuck all. He got the funds frozen, I suppose, so we eventually got back the pittance that was left.’
‘Did you sue?’
‘We were going to, but in the end there was no point. Yes, we would have won, but there was no money to be had. The companies had been wound up and all the money had just disappeared.’
‘They were living in a villa on the Costa worth three point seven million euros,’ said Cole, looking puzzled.
‘Owned by an offshore trust, according to the solicitor.’ Sims bared his teeth. ‘You try proving where the money for that came from.’
‘You mentioned a colleague who put you in touch with James Bowen,’ said Dixon. ‘Who was that?’
‘Frank Allan. He introduced several of us to him, the silly sod. Lost the lot as well, mind you.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘No idea, I’m afraid.’ Sims tipped his glasses on the bridge of his nose, peering at Dixon over the top of them. ‘Last I heard he was living in a campervan; one of the little ones that looks like an ordinary van. He was in a terrible fix. His wife took him to the cleaners when they got divorced, took the house and even took half his pension – they split his fund – so he only had half after that. That’s why he was trying to increase the return, I suppose. Pleased as punch he was, telling everyone how well James Bowen had done for him, and I was one of the stupid buggers who got roped in as well.’
‘And he was at Bristol at the same time as you?’
‘He was, until he got the shit kicked out of him and went on sick leave; forced into early retirement only to find his pension’s gone. And I thought I had it bad. At least I can still afford to go fishing.’
‘Does the name Craig Pengelly mean anything to you?’
‘He was a listener on the third floor, from memory. Why?’
‘He was an employee of Clearwater Wealthcare and was serving time for offences arising out of the pension scam.’
‘Was he, the little shit? I certainly didn’t know that. I always dealt with James Bowen anyway.’ Sims frowned. ‘Pengelly shouldn’t have been at Bristol at all, in that case. There’s a clear conflict.’
‘Last question, then we’ll leave you to it,’ said Dixon.
‘Catching up on sleep.’ Sims yawned. ‘It’s the one problem with carp fishing.’
‘You said your accountant was able to recover some of your fund.’
‘He did his best, but the damage had been done by then. It was a bloke called Staveley over at Weston.’
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Frank Allan’s wife has just walked into the Patchway Police Centre.’ Cole slid his phone back into his jacket pocket. ‘She got Lou’s messages, apparently, and is happy to help. She works part-time at Cribbs Causeway and is on her way home from work.’
‘Tell them to keep her there, whatever they do.’
‘It’s all right, she’s waiting for us. She only lives over the road anyway.’
Dixon parked in the visitors’ car park twenty minutes later and walked into reception, his warrant card at the ready.
Patchway resembled a smaller version of Express Park, the same concrete and floor to ceiling windows dominating the front of the building. Hardly inspiring; Dixon had been surprised the architect had got away with it once, but twice?
‘She’s in there,’ said the receptionist, pointing to an interview room without looking up. ‘I gave her another cup of tea.’
Mrs Allan looked startled when Dixon opened the door. ‘They told me I’m not under arrest,’ she said, her voice tremulous, her hand shaking as she reached for the plastic cup on the table in front of her.
‘You’re not, Mrs Allan, we just wanted to talk to you about your ex-husband.’ Dixon sat down opposite her, Cole next to him.
‘What’s he done?’ she asked.
‘We’re not sure he’s done anything. We just need to speak to him about his prison service pension.’
‘I wouldn’t get him started on that if I were you.’
‘Not happy about it, is he?’
‘Blames me for it; he said the divorce was my fault and if it hadn’t been for that he wouldn’t have been looking at his pension at all, let alone trying to transfer it out of the prison service scheme.’
‘You split the pension wh
en you divorced?’
‘That’s right. I got the house and half his pension. After that it was a clean break.’
‘What did you do with your half?’
‘Left it in the prison service scheme.’
‘When was this?’
‘About three years ago. I can’t remember the figures, but it was something like one hundred and fifty thousand each. It doesn’t kick in until I’m sixty-five.’ She shrugged. ‘Not as long to go as I’d like.’
‘Was the divorce amicable?’
‘Hardly.’ She winked at Cole. ‘He obviously hasn’t met Frank yet.’
‘My first one wasn’t amicable,’ replied Cole. ‘I’m hoping the second one will be.’
‘When did you last see him?’ asked Dixon.
‘My grandson’s christening two years ago. We nearly had a fight at the meal afterwards. That’s when he told me he’d lost his pension.’
‘D’you know where he is?’
‘No, sorry. Our son doesn’t speak to him either, which is sad; hasn’t seen him since the christening either.’
‘Why did you divorce?’
‘Like I say, you obviously haven’t met him yet.’ She stifled a sigh. ‘Look, I met someone else if you must know. It just happened, but we’d have divorced sooner or later anyway, even if it hadn’t. He changed after the assault. Became temperamental – took all his bitterness and anger out on me.’
‘This is the assault at work you’re talking about?’
‘He was doing the late shift and got dragged into a cell by a prisoner high on drugs. Spice, or whatever it is they take these days. Three broken ribs, a punctured lung, fractured cheekbone, concussion. I suppose we should’ve been grateful the bloke didn’t have a blade, but Frank was in a bad way after that. He tried to sue and got a medical report that said he had a brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, which probably explained the change in him.’
‘He tried to sue?’
‘They defended it and said he disobeyed the protocol and shouldn’t have gone in the cell.’
‘You said he was dragged in?’
‘He said he was dragged in; they said he went in of his own accord.’
‘And the claim failed?’
‘He was forced to withdraw it. The No Win No Fee solicitor pulled out and that was that.’