Swansong (The DI Nick Dixon Crime Series Book 4) Page 7

  Once inside the door she wiped the raindrops from her nose and looked in the mirror on the wall. She was grateful that her mascara was waterproof. Then she spotted Dixon at the bar, tiptoed over and stood next to him. He was sitting on a bar stool, staring into his beer and did not notice her arrive. She nudged his arm and he looked up. There were tears in his eyes.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Miles away,’ said Dixon, shaking his head.

  He put his arm around Jane’s waist, pulled her towards him and kissed her.

  ‘We do rooms,’ said the barman. The look on Dixon’s face stopped him in his tracks. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Gin and tonic, please,’ said Dixon.

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘How’s it been?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Teaching is definitely out.’

  Dixon paid for Jane’s drink and they sat down in the far corner of an otherwise deserted lounge bar.

  ‘Apart from two law lessons that I sat in on, God help me, I’ve spent the day with Phillips, the school gamekeeper. Please tell me he’s not on your list.’

  Jane shook her head.

  ‘He’s got an oddly relaxed attitude to drug taking at the school but, apart from that, he’s . . .’

  ‘Drug taking?’

  ‘I found the drug den but my guess is he knew it was there all along and just never wanted to look.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘School’s reputation, I expect.’

  ‘Well, that’s buggered now anyway, isn’t it?’

  Dixon nodded. ‘How many on your list?’ he asked.

  ‘Four.’

  ‘I’ve spotted one. Derek somebody. A kitchen porter.’

  ‘Derek Phelps. Left St Dunstan’s ten years ago and then popped up at Brunel a year or so later.’

  ‘He said he knew me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s nothing to worry about. He’d have no idea from where.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Yes. Does he live in?’

  Jane took a plastic wallet out of her handbag and passed it to Dixon.

  ‘Copies?’

  Jane nodded.

  Dixon slid the papers out of the wallet and then flicked through them until he found the ones he was looking for. Jane watched his eyes scanning the pages.

  ‘He does,’ said Dixon, nodding. He looked up. ‘At St Dunstan’s he used to work with a man called Clive . . .’

  ‘Derek and Clive?’

  ‘I know. Find out what became of him, will you?’

  ‘What was his surname?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Jane took her notebook out of her handbag and began making notes.

  ‘Who else’ve we got?’ asked Dixon, turning back to the bundle of papers. ‘Marcus Haskill. I don’t remember him.’ Dixon shook his head.

  ‘Isn’t he the one on sabbatical?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Yes, I’m using his bloody rooms, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘He only taught at St Dunstan’s for your last year.’

  ‘I see that. And ancient history wasn’t exactly on my radar.’

  ‘Do you want me to check him out?’

  ‘Yes. See if he’s really gone to the Far East,’ replied Dixon. He was speed reading Haskill’s employment history. ‘Ex-army. Did the old SSLC, saw active service in the Falklands and then went into teaching.’

  ‘What’s an SSLC?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Short Service Limited Commission. Three to five years then you’re out. Don’t think it exists any more. That’s odd . . .’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You’d expect him to be involved in the Cadets, wouldn’t you? With his background . . .’

  ‘I’ll find out if there’s a reason why not.’

  Dixon was reading the next set of papers.

  ‘Rowena Weatherly?’

  ‘She was a contemporary of yours,’ said Jane.

  ‘But I don’t . . .’ Dixon closed his eyes. ‘Rowena Abbot, of course. She was in the year below us. Played hockey with Fran. Must’ve got married, I suppose. I was only introduced to her this afternoon, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Did she recognise you?’

  ‘“A change is as good as a rest”, my . . .’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Yes, she recognised me. But I sure as hell didn’t recognise her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s dyed her hair, for a start. And we only overlapped for a year, I suppose.’ Dixon shook his head. ‘I wonder why she didn’t say anything?’

  He turned to the last set of copy documents. Jane waited for the inevitable expletives to follow.

  ‘What the f . . . ?’ Dixon looked at Jane and then back to the papers in front of him. ‘The headmaster?’

  ‘Seems so.’

  ‘I don’t remember him being there . . .’

  ‘It was just the one term. He was doing the Oxbridge entrance exams. It would’ve been your first term too. And he’d been gone for over a year by the time Fran disappeared.’

  ‘He never let on he’d been to St Dunstan’s.’

  ‘It means he must know about Fran, surely?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Not necessarily, if he’d left by then.’

  ‘I suppose so. Wouldn’t he have been there at the same time as her, though?’

  ‘She’d have been a couple of years below him,’ replied Dixon.

  ‘If you assume he knows, then there can be only two reasons why he’s said nothing. One, he doesn’t want the added scandal or, two, he’s in it up to his neck,’ said Jane.

  ‘Get his school records, will you. I want to know what sort of pupil he was.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There are two types. Those who leave and never look back and those who wear the old school tie every chance they get. If he was one of the never look back lot then it’s possible he doesn’t know about Fran.’

  ‘Which were you?’

  ‘Never looked back. Not once.’

  Dixon glanced around the bar. It was filling up, so they ordered some food before the kitchen became too busy.

  ‘Did you get a pay as you go SIM card?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Jane.

  They exchanged numbers and agreed a code. Any reference to Monty in a text message would trigger a switch to the new numbers.

  ‘What about alibis?’

  ‘They’ve all been checked. The headmaster was with his wife, Derek Phelps was in the Dolphin. The barman remembers him, or rather the barman would remember if he hadn’t been there because he always is. Haskill’s abroad, but I’ll check that, and Rowena Weatherly was home alone. Well, in her rooms in Gardenhurst.’

  ‘And the driving instructor?’

  ‘Arnold Davies. He was at Bible study earlier in the evening then at home with his wife.’

  ‘Have you come across anything on a supply teacher called Griffiths?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Chard is a useless tosser. Well, there is one. Filling in for Haskill. Better get his records.’

  ‘Will do,’ replied Jane, scribbling in her notebook.

  ‘It’s quite possible he’s been to St Dunstan’s in the past and he’s certainly old enough to have been teaching seventeen years ago.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What about Isobel’s father? Has he been checked?’

  ‘Not by me.’

  ‘Do so. See if he’s ever had anything to do with St Dunstan’s.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And the groundsman who found Isobel. I’ve not seen his statement. Better check it for anything unusual.’

  ‘Listen, I was thinking. Isobel had her ring finger cut off,’ said Jane.

  ‘She did.’

  �
��So, perhaps the killer has an issue with marriage?’

  Dixon nodded.

  ‘Why else cut off that particular finger?’

  ‘And keep it,’ added Dixon.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Good thinking. Look for anyone who’s been divorced. Let’s have a look at the school governors too. Full background checks on the current lot. Look for any who were at St Dunstan’s seventeen years ago.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘It’ll keep you out of trouble,’ said Dixon, smiling.

  ‘And what’s gonna keep you out of trouble?’

  The answer to that one was ‘nothing’. Dixon fully expected to get into trouble but he thought it best not to worry Jane with that now.

  They left the Greyhound just before 8 p.m. A lone figure was standing under the smokers’ gazebo, sheltering from the rain. Neither Dixon nor Jane noticed him step back into the shadows. Nor did they notice that he wasn’t smoking.

  Dixon followed Jane back towards Taunton and flashed his lights at her when she turned off towards the M5. Then he pulled into the front entrance of the convent and parked behind a line of garages.

  He tried the door of the old chapel. It was still on the latch, just as he had left it. He opened the door a crack and listened. Nothing, so he crept inside, dropped the latch, holding it with both hands to ensure there was no sound, and then closed the door behind him. He stopped to put on his shoes, which he had carried along the cloisters, and then looked around. Just enough light was coming in through the stained glass windows that he could make out the gallery at the far end and the outline of the junk that had to be negotiated to get there. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He fumbled for the light switches on the wall just inside the door but did not turn them on. He just needed to know where they were. Then he looked for a suitable place to hide.

  Three large piles of mattresses where the altar had once been offered the perfect spot, not far from the lights and ensuring that Dixon would be between the gallery and the door. He moved two of them to form a screen of sorts, switched his phone to ‘silent’ mode and then lay back with his hands behind his head. He did not expect to have to wait long.

  He allowed his mind to wander back to days at St Dunstan’s, some of them sad, others not so. When he tried to picture Fran’s face he couldn’t see her. Just her outline and a blank face. It had been that way for a long time but it was not unusual, or so people said. ‘Think about doing something together and it’ll come to you.’ He thought about their first kiss and could see her right in front of him, just as she had been all those years ago. He could see her now, giggling. He had thought it had been nerves until months later when she told him he’d overdone the Extra Strong Mints.

  Then there was the time they bunked off to see U2 at Wembley Stadium. They had spent the night at her sister’s flat in Teddington. ‘Are you supposed to be here?’ ‘We’ve got permission, it’s fine.’ They hadn’t, of course, but they got away with it. The first train out of Paddington on the Sunday morning got them back to Taunton in time for Fran’s tennis match. They missed chapel but Dixon could live with that.

  His mind jumped from memory to memory, scene to scene. Smiles, laughter, tears, he saw them all. Again. He remembered his housemaster, in the corridor at St Dunstan’s that Sunday morning. He could see his lips moving but even now he could only hear two words, ‘She’s gone.’

  Back to the business in hand. He thought about Jane’s marriage theory and liked it more and more. It would explain the missing ring finger. Then there was the prospect of finding Fran’s body with her ring finger missing. Or of finding her ring finger and not her body.

  Dixon grimaced. He took his phone out of his pocket and checked the time. It was just after 9 p.m. and he had received one text message from Jane.

  Missing you x

  He was halfway through tapping out a reply when he heard voices outside the chapel. He slipped his phone back into his inside jacket pocket and listened. The door handle moved, more voices, then someone running. Wooden chair legs on the tiled floor. More voices. Seconds later he heard the pane of glass in the ceiling above the door start to slide across the wooden frame. He waited.

  Dixon sat up just enough to see over the mattresses that he had piled in front of him. A head appeared through the opening above the door. Dixon watched him look down and speak to those waiting below him. It reminded him of Steve McQueen opening up the tunnel in The Great Escape. Then the boy hopped up inside the chapel and looked around. Dixon lay back and listened to the boy climbing down inside the door and then opening it. A short pause and then the door was closed again. Dixon lay still and listened. He was unsure whether there were three or four of them. He heard only two voices and so concentrated on the footsteps. No more than four, certainly. More whispering and then light. He thought that they were probably using their smartphones as torches. He had meant to download that app himself.

  Then the scrambling began. Furniture moving under the weight of the boys clambering across it, knocking together, creaking and clunking. They were doing their best to be quiet but it was always going to be difficult. Every now and then Dixon could hear someone ‘ssshhhhh’ the others and the occasional ‘shut the fuck up’ but that was to be expected. They reached the gallery with a final crescendo of clattering, banging and muttering. Quite how nobody had caught these idiots before was beyond Dixon.

  He waited. The group was well out of earshot now up on the gallery but he could make out whispering and glass bottles clinking. Then he saw what he had been waiting for. A flame flickering.

  He slid down off the mattresses and ran the few steps across to the light switches, hitting all four at once with his left hand. Three lines of large strip lights, each running the length of the chapel, came on one by one. Dixon looked up at the gallery. There was no movement and no sound, the occupants clearly hoping that they had not been seen.

  ‘Either you come down or I’m coming up there. It’s up to you,’ shouted Dixon.

  Silence.

  ‘I’m going to count to three.’

  One boy stood up. Dixon recognised him immediately. It was Ben Masterson, Isobel’s boyfriend. He frowned. Ben had not looked the type to do drugs but then he could be forgiven for going off the rails, perhaps. Dixon had very nearly done so.

  ‘And the others.’

  Two more boys stood up. They tried to hide under hoodies, which they pulled down over their faces. Only Ben didn’t bother.

  ‘Don’t just stand there, come down,’ said Dixon.

  He watched them step across from the gallery to the top of the wardrobe and then scramble across the assorted furniture and junk. They lined up side by side in front of Dixon in the small space just inside the door, all of them looking at the floor.

  ‘Names.’

  ‘Ben Masterson, Sir.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Gittens, Sir.’

  ‘Lloyd, Sir.’

  ‘Well, I know you, Ben. You were in the law class this morning. But you two could be anybody. Take those hoods off.’

  Gittens and Lloyd threw back the hoods on their tops, revealing their faces. Dixon took out his iPhone and took photographs of them both.

  ‘Now, empty your pockets.’

  Gittens and Lloyd looked at each other and hesitated.

  ‘Pockets. On the floor. Now.’

  All three boys emptied the contents of their pockets onto the floor in front of them. Dixon watched them to ensure that each pocket was emptied and that none were left out.

  ‘What’ve you left up there?’

  ‘Nothing, Sir,’ replied Gittens.

  Dixon looked at the small piles of belongings on the floor. Ben Masterson’s consisted of a packet of chewing gum, a small amount of change, a pocket diary, a pen and a wallet. Gittens’ and Lloyd’s was much the same, except for the ad
dition of cigarettes, a Zippo lighter each, a small plastic bag containing white powder and an even smaller piece of tin foil. Dixon picked up the powder and the tin foil.

  ‘What about the bottles?’

  No reply.

  ‘Do I look like an idiot?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘That’s the right answer. Now piss off, the pair of you. And if I see you near this place again, you’ll be in deep trouble.’

  Gittens and Lloyd looked at each other and then back to Dixon.

  ‘That’s right, go. Now.’

  All three boys picked up their belongings and turned to go to the door.

  ‘Not you, Ben,’ said Dixon.

  He waited for Gittens and Lloyd to leave the chapel.

  ‘What happens now?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re not going to report us?’

  ‘I’d like to report them. They deserve it. But I can’t do that without dropping you in the shit too, can I?’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Everyone says they know exactly what you’re going through, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, they’re full of shit. Only someone who’s been through it knows.’

  ‘And you’ve been through it?’

  ‘I was your age when my girlfriend disappeared. They never even found a body. I fell apart just like you’re doing now. Failed all my exams. Got in with the wrong crowd. But I got out of it and so will you.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘Yes, you will. But you won’t if you get expelled for taking drugs with those two fuckwits.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘I didn’t either.’

  ‘Did they find out what happened to her?’ asked Ben.

  ‘No. They never did.’

  ‘So, she could still be out there somewhere?’

  ‘That’s crossed my mind. I know she’d have got in touch with me, though. Somehow.’

  ‘If she could,’ said Ben.

  ‘You certainly know how to cheer someone up, don’t you?’