by Damien Boyd
‘Murder? I haven’t murdered anyone!’
‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
She was sobbing uncontrollably now. ‘What about my baby?’
‘What’s her name?’ asked Dixon, the sound of a baby crying carrying from the office.
‘Abby.’
‘She can go with you.’
Fighting for composure now. ‘Look, there’s been a mistake,’ she said. ‘I never killed anyone. Yes, we were trying to claim on the life insurance, but . . . it was all a fucking mess.’
Dixon waited. She’d been cautioned and if she wanted to talk, let her.
‘I never knew it was a drug run. As far as I was concerned I was just crewing a yacht for a few weeks; hardly ideal being four months pregnant but we needed the money. Then I find out we’re picking up some cocaine from a cruiser off the Azores and bringing it in via Burnham. I should have guessed, I suppose, but that was it for me, I was having none of that, so I got them to drop me off on the Scilly Isles on the way down. I said I wouldn’t say anything and I haven’t. Till now.’
Louise gently placed Abby in Laura’s arms.
‘Then the boat sank while I was still on Tresco and Craig said we should claim on the life insurance. Mine was the first policy he sold when he started doing financial services and he said it was time to cash in. Then we could go to France and do up the barn.’
‘Not a spice debt then?’
‘There is a spice debt, all of it from prison. He was clean when he went in that bloody place.’ Laura was watching the baby sucking the tip of her little finger. ‘There was a prison officer giving him the bloody stuff; he’d beat him up one minute, then give him spice the next.’
‘D’you know his name?’
‘Sims.’
They turned as one when there was a thump at the Perspex, Mark pinning a Brittany Ferries ticket to the inside of the screen. ‘Today at five o’clock, Sir.’
‘I guess we know where Craig will be,’ said Dixon.
‘It would’ve worked, too, if Godfrey Collins hadn’t found out I wasn’t on board his yacht when it sank. He’d had a satellite call with the skipper when Sunset started taking on water and he’d found out then. He was blackmailing us – half the payout, he wanted, or he’d tell the police. Craig said he’d deal with it and that I should leave it to him. So I did.’ Laura frowned. ‘Please tell me he didn’t kill him.’
‘He got someone else to.’
‘Oh God.’ The tears were flowing freely now, falling off the end of her nose on to Abby’s pink onesie. ‘We agreed that we’d pay him off. He wasn’t supposed to have him killed. Oh, Craig, what the hell have you done?’
Chapter Forty
Dixon had spent much of the run down to Plymouth on the telephone to Brittany Ferries. Time was tight, and the last of the cars were queuing to get on when they finally arrived fifteen minutes before the scheduled departure.
Two cars: Dixon and Cole in an unmarked police pursuit vehicle; Louise and Mark behind in Mark’s black BMW.
Security were expecting them and waved them straight on to the ramp, past the holidaymakers waiting in line.
‘They think we’re queue jumping,’ said Cole. ‘You don’t have to be a lip reader to work that out.’
‘They’re not going anywhere for a while.’ Dixon threw his cushion on to the back seat. ‘Only they don’t know it yet.’
Craig was travelling as a foot passenger, according to Laura, and would be waiting for her on the rear deck at the stern rail. Dixon resisted the temptation to look up as Cole drove up the ramp and on to the vehicle deck, in case Craig saw him; although he would probably be watching the foot passengers boarding, looking out for Laura in the crowd and no doubt getting more and more agitated as the scheduled departure time approached.
‘Are you the two cars who’ll be getting back off in a minute?’ asked a security guard holding a clipboard.
‘That’s us,’ replied Cole.
‘Park behind that minibus. Up them steps takes you to the passenger area and the deck.’
‘Thanks.’
‘We’ve stopped loading until you’re done, so the ramp will be clear when you’re ready to go.’
Dixon leaned across from the passenger seat. ‘Keep people off the vehicle deck.’
‘We do that anyway.’
Laughter echoed down the metal stairwell, children shouting and crying; families starting their holidays.
People were milling about on the passenger deck too, some already sitting in the restaurant and the bar, others carrying holdalls and looking lost; a few playing the fruit machines in the small arcade.
‘The cabins are that way, Madam,’ said someone in a white shirt and black tie, insignia Dixon didn’t recognise on her shoulders.
Loose children raced past them with adults in pursuit.
‘Are you the police?’ asked the woman in uniform.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve lined up a couple of people to clear the rear deck of passengers when you make your arrest. The last thing you want is an audience, I expect.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Dixon. ‘All right, let’s get it over with. Nige, you and me one side, Lou and Mark the other. I’ll make the approach. He won’t get past us, but what I don’t want is him going over the rail. There’s a corrugated roof that might break his fall, but if he misses that it’s all the way down to the access ramp.’
They weaved through the few passengers taking in the evening air on the deck, Craig visible at the far end – exactly where Laura said he would be – leaning on the rail and staring across to the foot passenger ramp. He checked his watch, then his phone, then looked back down at the ramp, shaking his head.
Dixon stepped forward and leaned on the rail next to him. ‘She’s not coming, Craig.’
Craig turned his head slowly and swallowed hard. ‘Who isn’t?’ His agitation was ebbing away, replaced by a sadness in his eyes. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘How do you think we knew where to find you?’
Craig looked over his shoulder at Cole to his left, Louise and Mark waiting by the rail to his right. Further along the deck two staff members were holding back the passengers trying to walk around the stern.
Quick as a flash, Craig was up and over the rail, standing with his hands behind him and his heels on the ledge. ‘I’ll jump,’ he said. ‘Don’t think I won’t.’
Dixon turned to Cole. ‘Give us a minute, will you, Nige?’
Cole, Louise and Mark backed away, out of earshot.
‘Laura said you might do something like this, but I said you wouldn’t do that to your daughter.’
‘Have you seen her?’ Fighting back the tears now.
‘She’s lovely.’
‘Have you got children?’ asked Craig.
‘My fiancée’s pregnant,’ replied Dixon. ‘We found out yesterday and it hasn’t really sunk in yet.’
‘I can’t go back to prison.’
‘Yes, you can. And you’ll get to see all her birthdays. This way you’ll see none of them and leave Laura to carry the can for the whole thing. That’s the murder of Godfrey Collins and the insurance fraud. She might be out for Abby’s eighteenth, I suppose, but . . .’ He let that thought hang in the air.
‘She knew nothing about Collins.’ Craig was gripping the rail tighter now as he rocked backwards and forwards.
‘D’you think a jury’s going to believe that? She’s admitted she knew Collins was blackmailing the two of you. And if she was part of your plan to get Sims to kill him, then the law of joint enterprise makes her just as guilty.’
‘She wanted to pay him off.’
‘So she says, but without you there to corroborate that, the CPS will charge her with his murder and let a jury decide.’ Dixon was watching an ambulance driving slowly down the outside of the
queue of traffic waiting to board the ferry. ‘On the other hand, if you’re there telling us she knew nothing about it, then she probably won’t even be charged with it; just the attempted insurance fraud and with a newborn baby she might not even go to prison for that.’
Craig was breathing hard now, staring at the vehicle access ramp far below.
Time to go in for the kill, thought Dixon – figuratively speaking, of course. ‘You’ve got to ask yourself, Craig, what will happen to Abby if you’re dead and Laura’s serving life for Collins’s murder. Her parents are a bit old and they don’t have the money to fight for her through the courts, so my guess is your parents will end up looking after her.’
The blood drained from Craig’s face as the realisation washed over him. ‘My fucking parents, looking after my daughter.’
‘I’m guessing Sims forced you to tell him where Bowen and Mather were?’
‘He used to come to my cell and beat the shit out of me. Every bloody night, no bruises above the collar. When that didn’t work he gave me spice and tried to get me to tell him where they were when I was out of it. I was hooked again then, wasn’t I?’
‘Where was he getting the spice from, d’you know?’
‘An ex-prison officer called Frank. He used to supply it until he got the shit kicked out of him by one of his customers; nice little business they had going.’
‘Did you report Sims?’
‘I tried that, but no one did anything!’ Craig’s voice increased in volume to a scream that carried to the foot passengers at the bottom of the ramp, all of them looking up now. ‘Then he was hanging around when Laura came to visit, and when she’d gone he told me he was going to have her killed. He knew people, he said. This went on for weeks, fucking weeks.’
Craig was holding on with one hand now, wiping the tears and snot from his face on the sleeve of his hoodie.
Dixon waited for him to regain his composure. ‘Is there a record of your complaint?’
‘Probably. In my medical records maybe.’
‘There you are then. Look, I can’t make any promises, but if there’s independent evidence that supports your claim that Sims forced you to reveal Bowen and Mather’s whereabouts, the chances are you may not even be charged with their murders. That just leaves Collins and he was blackmailing you, right?’
‘I told Sims that Collins was the brains behind the pension thing. I had to do something.’
‘That’s a murder charge, Craig, but we’ll let the lawyers argue the toss. Get yourself a good solicitor and you may get away with a single count of manslaughter. Conspiracy even. Who knows, that might see you out for Abby’s twelfth birthday, maybe her tenth?’
‘What about the insurance fraud?’
‘I’ve stopped the hearing at the High Court to declare her dead, so that makes it attempted fraud. Any sentence for that would run concurrently so it shouldn’t cost you an extra day.’
‘And Sims’s death?’
‘What was he doing on the ledge?’ countered Dixon.
‘He said to contact him when I got out, that he’d have some money for me, so I told him where I was. Then he turns up with the crossbow and says I have to pay for tricking him into killing Collins. He was going to kill me. Loads of people saw it; he tried to grab me and take me over the cliff with him.’
‘He did, and it’ll go down as self defence, Craig. But you and I both know you made damned sure he went over the edge.’ Dixon was watching for any reaction. ‘I’d never be able to prove it, though, and he said himself there was no way he was dying inside, so maybe you did him a favour?’
‘You know just what to say, don’t you?’
‘I know Abby will never forgive you if you jump. She’ll lose her father and her mother. Still, she’s got lovely grandparents, eh?’
‘I was expecting you to try and grab me.’
‘I couldn’t hold on to you even if I did. Broken bones,’ replied Dixon, with a wince.
‘That was quite something, what you did the other night.’
‘Thanks.’
‘This conversation’s inadmissible, isn’t it, because you haven’t cautioned me?’
‘You haven’t said anything I didn’t know already, but it’ll give the lawyers something else to argue about.’
‘You’ll say you were trying to save my life, I suppose?’
‘For Abby’s sake.’ Dixon watched Craig mulling it over. ‘C’mon, we need to let these good people get on with their holidays. The ferry’s already twenty minutes late.’
Craig gave a sad smile, then started climbing back over the rail. Mark and Cole lunged forward and took hold of him by the wrists as Dixon sat down on a bench.
‘Do the honours, Nigel,’ he said, closing his eyes as Cole arrested Craig for the murder of Godfrey Collins.
‘You talked him down. Well done, Sir.’ Louise sat down next to him. ‘What did you tell him?’
Dixon took a deep breath. ‘A pack of lies, Lou. A pack of bloody lies.’
Author’s Note
I very much hope you enjoyed reading Dying Inside. It was written during the coronavirus pandemic and provided me with something of an escape from the daily diet of bad news. I can only hope that life is starting to get back to normal by the time you are reading this, or better still that the nightmare is behind us.
I am grateful to Burnham-on-Sea Gig Rowing Club for holding their open evening at the sailing club in early February, just before the pandemic hit, and I am disappointed that I haven’t been able to take them up on their kind offer of a rowing trip yet. I hope the offer still stands!
Otherwise, the various lockdowns and restrictions curtailed the research that I was able to do, the end result being that I stuck to locations familiar to me, such as the Avon Gorge and the fruit machine arcades of Somerset; signs of a misspent youth perhaps. The Bristol Hippodrome and surrounding area too.
Shillingford Wood, which is within walking distance of my house and became my lockdown dog walk, doubles for Harptree Combe. I hope the residents of East and West Harptree will forgive me!
There are several people to thank, as always. Not least my wife, Shelley, who reads the manuscript on a daily basis. I would also like to thank my unpaid editor-in-chief, Rod Glanville. And David Hall and Clare Paul who, once again, have been extraordinarily generous with their time – over Zoom rather than a long lunch, sadly!
And lastly, I would like to thank my editorial team at Thomas & Mercer – in particular, Jack Butler, Victoria Haslam and Ian Pindar.
Damien Boyd
Devon, UK
January 2021
About the Author
Photo © 2013 Damien Boyd
Damien Boyd is a solicitor by training and draws on his extensive experience of criminal law, along with a spell in the Crown Prosecution Service, to write fast-paced crime thrillers featuring Detective Inspector Nick Dixon.
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