Dead Level (The DI Nick Dixon Crime Series Book 5) (2 page)

‘That explains the wellies in the kitchen.’

‘It does.’

‘See anything interesting?’

‘Not really. There were flowers on her grave and no one knows who puts them there. Not even the vicar.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘No idea,’ said Dixon. ‘What about you?’

‘Shoplifting,’ replied Jane.

‘You go steady.’

‘I’ve had enough excitement lately, thank you. And I’m looking forward to a quiet Christmas.’ Jane looked at the television. ‘What’s this?’

‘
The Deer Hunter
.’

‘How many times have you seen that before?’

‘
Master and Commander
has just started on Film 4.’

‘You could try switching it off,’ said Jane.

‘Nope, you’ve lost me there,’ replied Dixon, shaking his head.

‘What else have you been up to?’ asked Jane, through a mouthful of chicken curry.

‘Not a lot. Monty got a walk on the beach. Then no sooner had we got home than the Tory candidate was knocking on the door asking for my vote.’

‘What’d you tell him?’

‘That I’d only just moved in. Not on the electoral roll yet.’

‘Is that true?’

‘No,’ replied Dixon, smiling.

‘He’d know that was bollocks, though, wouldn’t he?’

‘If he bothers to check.’

‘What constituency are we here?’

‘Bridgwater and North Somerset.’

‘This by-election’s going to be a pain. When is it?’

‘End of January.’

‘Weeks of it,’ said Jane, shaking her head. ‘Well, he’s wasting his time with me. I’m still registered at my parents’ in Worle, so that’ll be Weston, won’t it?’

‘Good excuse. Shall we hire that van and move your furniture over this weekend?’

‘Why not?’

‘What are you up to next week?’ asked Dixon.

‘I’ve got Christmas off,’ replied Jane.

‘Me too. There’s no overtime on the Cold Case Unit. Shall we get a tree?’

‘A real one?’

‘Of course.’

‘You got any decorations?’ asked Jane.

Chapter Two

J
ust before 10 a.m. the following morning Dixon parked in the visitors’ car park at Sandy Padgett House, the new Bridgwater Police Centre on Express Park. He had spent the previous week or so based there, until he had been shunted off to Portishead, and had a staff pass, but he still felt like a visitor. Even more so today, the day of his interview with Professional Standards.

‘What are you going to tell them?’ Jane had asked, over breakfast.

‘The truth.’

‘Really?’

‘You’re confusing me with someone who gives a shit.’

Dixon smiled. Jane had not been impressed with that line.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. D’you want to spend the rest of your life watching CCTV at Tesco?’

And she was right, of course. He did care. The prospect of a career in supermarket security would no doubt keep him awake at night until the disciplinary hearing. That, and the only thing he feared more. Being returned to uniform.

He was sitting in the reception area watching the strip lights suspended from the ceiling in the atrium. There were three of them and they were swinging from side to side on long cables like pendulums, the arc becoming longer each time the front doors opened.

The designer needs his arse kicking
.

The lights reminded Dixon of a Newton’s cradle and he wondered how strong the wind would need to be before they crashed into each other. He hoped he was not sitting underneath them when they did.

‘They make quite a feature, don’t they?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said Dixon, standing up to face Detective Chief Inspector Lewis.

‘Your big day, I gather?’

Dixon nodded.

‘Don’t say anything stupid, and leave the rest to me. All right?’

‘Er, yes, Sir.’

DCI Lewis winked at Dixon, turned and disappeared through a security door adjacent to the reception desk.

Dixon smiled. Maybe he would live to fight another day, after all.

Two hours later Dixon was sitting in the staff canteen on the first floor, staring into the bottom of an empty coffee cup, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He stood up when he recognised Chief
Inspector
Bateman.

‘DCI Lewis tells me you’ve got a bit of time on your hands, Dixon?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Good. Make yourself useful and show the Conservative candidate around the station, will you?’

‘Me?’

‘He’s here for a guided tour and I bloody well forgot, didn’t I! He’s down in reception.’

‘But, I’ve only been here a week and hardly . . .’

‘Well, you’ll just have to wing it then, won’t you,’ said Bateman, turning to leave. ‘His name’s Perry.’

I know that. I met him yesterday.

Dixon shrugged his shoulders and trudged over to the stairs. Once on the ground floor he looked in the open plan offices on either side of the lobby and counted at least twenty officers sitting at workstations, all of whom could have been picked on by Bateman. Having said that, they all looked as though they had better things to do.

Dixon opened the security door and peered into the reception area. He spotted Tom Perry sitting at the far end. He was wearing a jacket and tie and appeared to be mesmerised by the swinging strip lights above him. This was going to be embarrassing.

‘Mr Perry?’

‘That’s me,’ said Perry, jumping up and greeting Dixon with a smile and an outstretched hand. He was in his late thirties and well over six feet tall, with short blonde hair and rugby
player’s ears
.

‘Detective Inspector Nick Dixon.’ They shook hands.

‘We met yesterday,’ said Perry.

‘I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that.’

‘You were very polite.’

‘Thank you,’ replied Dixon.

‘I get a lot worse. You’d be surprised how many words the great British public can get to rhyme with Tory when they really put their backs into it.’

Dixon laughed. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be too bad, after all.

‘You enjoy parachuting, I gather?’

‘That’s my opponents,’ replied Perry, smiling. ‘Their candidate is local, so they like to portray me as the London architect, parachuted into the constituency. But then you knew that?’

‘I did.’

‘I am local. Well, localish. My family is from Taunton.’

‘That’s near enough,’ said Dixon.

‘You’d have thought so. We’ve rented a cottage in the constituency, over at Northmoor Green.’

‘We?’

‘My wife, Elizabeth, and me.’

Moving from London, renting a cottage. It was all sounding familiar.

‘Splendid set of lights,’ said Perry, looking up. ‘I was waiting for the trapeze artist to appear.’

‘Follow me,’ said Dixon, gesturing towards the security door. ‘The less time we spend underneath them, the better.’

‘Agreed.’

It took Dixon over an hour to show Tom Perry around the station, although he avoided the Professional Standards Department on the second floor. Perry was particularly impressed with the custody suite and the psychedelic lockers in the mixed changing rooms.

‘What’s with the bright colours?’

‘No idea,’ replied Dixon.

‘And mixed? I bet that took some getting used to?’

‘It’s one advantage of being a detective,’ Dixon replied. ‘No need to get changed.’ It was another reason Dixon was dreading being sent back to uniform, but Perry didn’t need to know that.

The layout of the interview rooms, with the interviewing officer and suspect sitting side by side, also took Perry by surprise. Dixon was unable to explain that either, recalling many occasions when he had been grateful for the table between him and the suspect.

‘Designed by someone who has never conducted a police
interview
.’

Perry had agreed.

‘How are you finding working here?’ was a question Dixon struggled with. He thought Perry deserved better than ‘I’ve only been here a week’, so he rambled on about the challenges of working in an open plan office and ‘hot desking’ at workstations. Dixon was used to his own office, with his own desk and a door that he could shut and a window he could open. Perry appeared to understand the point.

The only difficult moment came when Perry asked how many officers were working at the station. Dixon’s reply, ‘not as many as there were’, appeared to hit home and Perry had quickly changed the subject. No doubt he would be trying to keep police budget cuts off the by-election agenda too.

By 1.30 p.m. they were outside the front entrance for the obligatory photo opportunity when Dixon’s phone bleeped.

‘It’s just a text,’ said Dixon, smiling for the camera.

He reached into his jacket pocket and took out his phone as he watched Perry driving out of Express Park, his car windows plastered with blue ‘Vote Conservative’ posters.

Where are you? Got the afternoon off. Shall we get the Xmas tree? J x

As weekends go, it didn’t get much better than this. Or at least, it hadn’t for a very long time. Dixon watched Jane sipping a gin and tonic. She had kicked off her shoes and her feet were resting on Monty, who was stretched out on the floor in front of the fire in the Red Cow.

They had bought a Christmas tree on Friday afternoon and spent several hours decorating it on Saturday morning, all thoughts of furniture removals postponed until the New Year. That was followed by a walk on the beach and a curry in the Zalshah. Breakfast in bed, twice, had taken Jane by surprise and now, here they were, in the Red Cow, their Sunday afternoon walk on Brean Down having been abandoned due to the torrential rain. Monty had taken one look out of the back door of the cottage and gone back to bed.

Dixon smiled. All he needed now was a pipe and slippers.

‘You still haven’t told me about your interview,’ said Jane, breaking the silence.

‘I did.’

‘You’re gonna have to do a bit better than “yeah, fine”, if you don’t . . .’

‘All right, all right,’ said Dixon, holding up his hands in mock surrender. ‘It was going OK until the last question, really.’

‘Well?’

‘“Faced with the same set of circumstances, would you do the same again?”’

‘And you said yes, I suppose?’

‘I did.’

Jane shook her head.

‘They’d have known I was lying if I’d said no.’

‘Did they ask about me?’

‘I said it was all your idea.’

‘Stop mucking about,’ said Jane, digging Dixon in the ribs.

‘No, I told them you knew nothing about it. That I’d kept you in the dark.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’ll be fine.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Jane.

‘I saw DCI Lewis on the way in. He winked at me.’

‘That’s a good sign, surely?’

‘I thought he had something in his eye.’

They went their separate ways just before 8 a.m. the following morning. Jane left for Express Park and Dixon headed north on the M5 to Portishead. One day to get through and then it was Christmas Eve.

He had felt very conspicuous on his last visit to HQ, particularly having been assigned to the Cold Case Unit. It was rather like driving around in a sign written courtesy car from an accident repair centre. Everybody knew he was in trouble, the only thing they didn’t know was just how deep.

He spent the day sitting at a vacant workstation in the Criminal Investigation Department, going through the box of files on the murder of Wendy Gibson. He started with the post mortem report, which documented catastrophic injuries to her head and neck. She had been all but obliterated, but he had seen that for himself in the photographs.

The weapon had been identified from the size and spread of the shot as a four ten with the barrels over and under rather than side by side, and the killer had been standing no more than six feet away when both barrels had been fired. It seemed an extravagant way to kill a sixty year old widow. Her estimated height was no more than five feet five inches and she weighed a shade under eight stone. Add to that her crippling arthritis and a burglar could have just pushed her over or hit her with the gun butt, perhaps. So, why blow her head of
f
?

Maybe the killer had panicked? That was possible. But why shoot her in the face? Dixon reached for his notepad and wrote down two words.

Obliterated. Why?

Next he turned to the witness statements. The police evidence confirmed that nothing whatsoever had been stolen and her house had not been broken into, which didn’t necessarily rule out a
burglary
gone wrong because the suspect would have no doubt fled the scene empty handed after the shooting. If theft had been the plan, of course.

Two of her nearest neighbours reported hearing a shotgun blast at around 6.30 p.m. One said it was just before and one just after but there was unlikely to be anything sinister in that. Both said it was not unusual to hear gunfire at or around dusk, with people out ‘lamping’ for rabbits. Dixon checked the date. The murder took place on Friday 25 March 1994 and so it would have been just before the clocks went forward for British Summer Time. A quick search of the Internet confirmed that sunset would have been at 6.20 p.m. or so.