Dying Inside (DI Nick Dixon Crime) Read online

‘The entry wounds tell you a lot.’ Petersen pointed to the lower bolt. ‘It’s a clean hole so an ordinary steel head, I suspect. Certainly not a broadhead of any shape or description, which explains why it’s gone clean through the cheekbone and the back of the skull. It was probably shot from a greater range too. Then the killer moved in for the second. Closer range and the eye is soft, of course, which explains the penetration.’

  ‘Is the second one a broadhead?’

  ‘See for yourself.’ Petersen was holding the ophthalmoscope in his outstretched hand.

  Dixon would have told Roger Poland to get knotted if he’d suggested it, but wasn’t entirely convinced Petersen would take kindly to that. And he needed to be sure it was the same pattern. He took a deep breath and flicked on the light, moving in close to the base of the bolt buried in Finch’s eyeball. He was usually on the other end of this sort of examination at the diabetic centre, and the urge to blink was almost irresistible.

  Petersen was standing on the plate directly behind him, peering over his shoulder. ‘Can you see the incisions on the eyeball?’

  ‘Yes.’ The circles around the bolt where the broadhead had gone in. No blood, just clean cuts.

  ‘You can see the same pattern on the exit wound, although it’s obscured by hair and congealed blood. I’ll get a better look when I’ve shaved his head.’

  Dixon had skipped lunch, instead keeping his blood sugar levels from dropping with the occasional fruit pastille; far from ideal when it came to diabetes control, but a bloody good thing, as it turned out.

  Petersen snatched the ophthalmoscope from Dixon’s hand. ‘You look as if you’re about to throw up.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’

  ‘What are you thinking then?’

  ‘He’s deadheading the roses, looks up and sees someone in the field pointing a crossbow at him. He drops the secateurs and starts stumbling back, maybe intending to hide behind the tree, we’ll never know, then the first shot’s fired, hitting him in the cheek and pinning him to the tree.’ Dixon sighed. ‘He’s still alive at this point, so he gets to watch his killer advance and reload.’

  ‘We should get an idea of the range.’ Petersen gestured to a series of flags in the field. ‘Scientific have identified footprints in the grass by the looks of things.’ A cluster of red flags maybe thirty yards away, then a line forwards to another cluster nearer the hedge, at most twenty yards away. ‘That’s pretty much point blank for some of the more powerful bows; you can get some that’ll put a bolt clean through you at two hundred yards, let alone twenty.’

  ‘With the extra weight of the broadhead?’

  ‘Maybe not, which might explain why he fired the ordinary bolt first from further away, before moving in to fire the broadhead.’ Petersen frowned. ‘Actually, I think it’s “shot” rather than “fired”, to be technically correct.’

  Donald Watson, the senior Scientific Services officer, stood up twenty yards away in the field, camera in hand. ‘He reloaded here,’ he shouted, pointing at the ground. ‘You can see the imprint of the metal bar. No boot prints, I’m afraid.’

  ‘The more powerful bows have a stirrup on the front,’ said Petersen. ‘You put your foot in it and then pull the string with cocking ropes to give you greater leverage. Anything with a draw weight of over a hundred and seventy-five pounds requires a good deal of strength to cock; I did a bit of research after the last one and there are plenty of videos on YouTube.’

  ‘I’d better go and see his widow.’ Dixon turned away. ‘When’s the PM?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning now,’ replied Petersen, turning the sleeve of his overalls back to see his watch. ‘It’s going to be another couple of hours before we get him out of here, at least.’

  Next door was pretty much a carbon copy of the Finch’s bungalow, but without the conservatory or the cedar of Lebanon. The neighbour meant well too and, more often than not, it was intended as a compliment, but it wasn’t the first time someone had pointed out that Dixon was very young for a chief inspector; the youngest in the history of Avon and Somerset Police, by a few weeks, although he didn’t feel the need to mention it and just smiled.

  ‘She’s through in the back bedroom, having a lie down,’ the neighbour said, closing the door behind Dixon.

  ‘Does Mrs Finch need a doctor?’ He was following her along the corridor.

  ‘She’s had one of my Valium and her daughter will be here in half an hour or so anyway.’

  Mrs Finch was in the bed fully clothed when the neighbour pushed open the door.

  ‘This is Chief Inspector Dixon, Mary.’

  Mary Finch’s eyes were glazed over, either by the tears, the Valium, or a combination of the two. ‘He said there’d been somebody watching the house.’ She was trying to sit up, the neighbour lurching forward to prop up the pillows. ‘The last couple of days – a red car in the lane at the back and then someone standing in the middle of the field.’

  ‘Did he call the police?’

  ‘I said to, but he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Had he seen this person before?’

  ‘He didn’t say so. The field was going to be sold a couple of years back, for development, and there were people in it all the time back then. He was worried because he thought it might have gone back on the market.’

  ‘Did he mention a make or model of car?’

  ‘Just that it was red.’

  Dixon sat down on the arm of a chair next to the bed. ‘What about at work?’

  ‘He was the head of enforcement, so there was always bad feeling coming from somewhere, but he’d stopped case work long ago. He was winding down to retirement; only had a couple of months to go.’

  ‘Did he ever mention the loan charge?’

  She nodded her head on the pillow.

  ‘What about the name Godfrey Collins?’

  ‘No.’

  The neighbour pointed to the door and Dixon took the hint. ‘Mary’s struggling to keep her eyes open.’ She closed the door softly behind them. ‘Can you do this another time?’

  ‘Yes, of course. There was supposed to be a family liaison officer here?’

  ‘She left when Mary took the Valium; said she’d be back later.’

  Cardiff city centre was reasonably quiet for late on a Saturday afternoon, although the autumn rugby internationals didn’t start for another couple of weeks, so that was to be expected, perhaps. And why couldn’t architects build out of anything except glass these days, Dixon had thought, standing on the pavement looking up at the new HM Revenue and Customs building.

  DS Bennett had telephoned his colleagues to let them know the SIO was on the way, and one had been waiting outside.

  ‘Detective Constable Walker, Sir,’ she had said, presumably recognising Dixon’s Land Rover. ‘DC Shannon is upstairs with one of the tax inspectors, a Mr Fox; he’s a key holder and emergency contact.’

  A glass lift up to the fifth floor and two people sitting at the far end of a long conference table were visible through the glass partition. ‘There they are, Sir.’

  David Fox looked like a tax inspector, even in jeans and a polo shirt. ‘I’m hoping I might get some sense out of you.’ He stood up and offered Dixon his hand. ‘These two won’t tell me anything.’

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Finch is dead, Sir,’ replied Dixon.

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was murdered in his back garden at Bradley Stoke. Just before ten this morning.’

  ‘Oh, God, no.’ A sharp intake of breath. ‘The poor sod.’

  ‘Does the name Godfrey Collins mean anything to you?’

  ‘No. I should clarify I’m not on the enforcement team though.’

  ‘He was an accountant who’d been running loan charge schemes with several hundred people now facing large tax bills as a result. He was found dead three days ago, also murdered, and we believe the killings are connected.’

  ‘You need to speak to someone in the loan charge team. I’ll see if I’ve got a number.’ Fox was scrolling
through the list of contacts on his phone. ‘There are several sub-teams in enforcement, and loan charge is one of the biggest.’

  Dixon glanced out of the window at his Land Rover parked in the loading bay below, a traffic warden circling it with intent.

  ‘We need a complete list of all the taxpayers owing money to HMRC as a result of schemes run by Godfrey Collins,’ he said to Walker as he stood up, Fox on the telephone in the background. ‘I’d better get back to Portishead.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Area J turned out to be little more than the far end of an open plan office on the second floor of the operations building. Someone had taken the trouble to put in place some partitioning, a laminated ‘J’ pinned to it, but that was about it.

  ‘There’s no coffee machine,’ grumbled Louise, her back to Dixon as he weaved his way through the vacant workstations. She was standing by an empty desk, an overnight bag on the chair.

  Turner – the twat from the car park – was there, leaning back in a chair, his hands behind his head and his feet resting on a box on the floor. Without the sharp suit and red braces this time; perhaps Dixon would reserve judgement until Monday morning to see whether they reappeared.

  ‘The canteen’s closed, but I found this lying around.’ Mark Pearce was holding a kettle in his outstretched hand. ‘It said “Transport Services” on the door, so we’ve got until Monday to put it back.’

  ‘Where’s Dave?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘He was stopping to get some beer; something about there not being a bloody pub for miles around.’

  Dave Harding and Mark Pearce had been on his team since his first outing with Avon and Somerset Police nearly a year ago. Dave Harding in his crumpled grey suit and brown suede shoes, closing in on his thirty years’ time served, all of them as a detective constable; happy with his lot. Mark Pearce was younger – thirty perhaps – but seemed content with his lot too; enjoyed his beer a bit too much, turning up unshaven and with a hangover more times than Dixon cared to remember, his blond hair unkempt more often than not – he wouldn’t have looked out of place on a surfboard or on Bondi Beach maybe. Still, both could be relied on to do their jobs, and that was all that mattered.

  Had Nigel Cole been in uniform, Dixon would have recognised him straight away, but the jeans and open necked shirt threw him fleetingly; not that Cole noticed, mercifully. ‘Ah, the Rural Crimes Unit is here.’

  ‘I suppose I’ve got you to thank for that, Sir?’ Cole was sitting on the windowsill, his back to the grandstand view of the sports hall.

  ‘I may have suggested your name to Inspector Bateman. Why, don’t you want it?’

  ‘No, I do,’ replied Cole. ‘Thank you. And my wife’s chuffed to bits. No more Saturday nights and missing teeth. I had to have a bloody implant for this one.’ He pointed to his front tooth. ‘Hurt like hell.’

  Jez appeared behind him, Louise alerting Dixon to her presence with a nod.

  ‘I’ve got you twelve more for Monday, and there may be four more by the middle of the week; there’s something big wrapping up tomorrow so that should free them up.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘For the time being.’ Jez was hiding behind her clipboard. ‘But I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Dixon didn’t bother to hide the tinge of resignation in his voice. ‘Looks like it’s just us, until Monday anyway.’

  ‘Let’s get this party started,’ said Pearce, gleefully rubbing his hands together.

  ‘Shut up, Mark.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  The rattle of beer cans announced Dave Harding’s arrival, a carrier bag dumped on the floor next to his overnight bag. ‘There’s an off licence in that petrol station back towards Clevedon,’ he said, smiling. ‘All you can get in the restaurant here is those poxy little bottles of wine and ginger beer; indigestion in a bottle.’ He curled his lip. ‘I’ve fallen for that one before.’

  Jez was still loitering. ‘Not on duty, I hope.’

  ‘He never does,’ replied Dixon, without looking over his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll email you your room numbers in the accommodation block.’ Jez was backing away. ‘Will you be staying over, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘I’m just a couple of junctions down the M5 so probably not, thank you.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Turner. ‘I’m only just up the road.’

  ‘Four then. Give me half an hour.’ Jez’s voice increased in volume as she backed further away.

  ‘Right then.’ Dixon waited while they all sat down. ‘Let’s start at the beginning.’

  ‘Godfrey Collins?’ asked Turner, sitting up.

  ‘Sheep. Over to you, Nigel.’

  ‘Me?’ Cole looked nervous. ‘The statements and post mortem reports from the vet are all on the system.’ He was fumbling with his notebook. ‘The first lot were killed on the eighteenth of July. They were fine when Mr Bragg left them on the evening of the seventeenth and he found them dead the following morning, so the early hours is most likely. It wasn’t a powerful bow, possibly a pistol crossbow, and the wounds were four inches deep, so six point five inch bolts, allowing for them stopping at the fletch. No broadheads. Then we’ve got another six a month later on seventeenth August, again overnight; the bow more powerful this time and it’s the first use of broadheads, two and three-bladed in the classic arrowhead pattern. The last lot was nine days ago now, and that’s when we first get the curved blade pattern you see on Godfrey Collins.’

  ‘And on Keith Finch.’ Dixon looked at Turner. ‘How far did Zephyr get with Collins?’

  ‘House to house in the vicinity of the woods and his bedsit; plenty of statements on the file but nothing of much use. We looked at hours of CCTV too, but we would’ve been focusing on certain vehicles, don’t forget; known associates and gang members. Scientific Services have finished and their reports are due by Monday. The post mortem’s done too, of course.’

  ‘What about his phone?’

  ‘Never found one.’

  ‘And a computer?’

  ‘Never found one of those either.’

  Dixon turned to Louise. ‘His laptop’s at the Marine Accident Investigation Branch in Southampton. Get it, will you?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘And I’m guessing his office computers are at HM Revenue and Customs. I want the lot with High Tech by the end of tomorrow.’

  ‘So, that’s what this is about,’ said Mark. ‘Tax?’

  ‘Zephyr seems to think Collins’s yacht had been used for drug runs,’ replied Dixon, ‘and there was a suspicion it was carrying cocaine when it sank, which explains their interest in his murder, but that’s got nothing to do with it. Before the drugs he was an accountant running several loan charge schemes. Basically people were paid with loans, which are tax free, instead of the salary you and I receive which is not tax free. We’re taxed on Pay As You Earn, aren’t we? Then, having been given the loans, they were told that they didn’t have to pay them back, so everybody’s happy except the taxman.’

  ‘And who gives a toss about him?’ Mark ducked down behind a computer. ‘I’ll shut up, Sir.’

  ‘The problem is that these schemes have since been clamped down on and HMRC is pursuing the back tax, treating the loans as income and landing, in Collins’s case, a couple of hundred people with large bills for tax going back to 2010. Finch was the enforcement officer at the tax office responsible for recovering the back tax.’

  ‘A couple of hundred people?’

  ‘Yes, Dave.’

  ‘And one of them’s got the hump about it.’ Mark again.

  ‘Where do we start?’ asked Louise.

  ‘There are a couple of officers from Patchway over at the tax office in Cardiff now, so can you get over there and stay there until you get a complete list of all of the debtors owing tax from one of Collins’s schemes? You can try to track down his old office computers while you’re there too.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  Turner was sitting up now.<
br />
  ‘I can’t keep calling you DS Turner’ – or the twat from the car park – ‘so what’s your name?’

  ‘Kevin, Sir.’

  ‘Dave’s our car and CCTV bod, so can you team up with him, Kevin, and go back through the footage looking for a red car? We also need to trace Collins’s movements the night before he was killed.’

  ‘We never got very far with that, Sir.’ Kevin shrugged. ‘You’ll see why when you see where he lived. And there’ll be hundreds of red cars.’

  ‘In Congresbury?’

  ‘That was repossessed.’

  ‘Mark, get over to Finch’s bungalow and see what you can find there. Scientific will have finished at the scene, but they should still be in the house. You know what to look for, and see if you can get anything more out of his widow about the person in the field the husband said he saw; and the red car. Get his phone too – if Scientific haven’t already – he may have taken a picture of it. Landline phone records too, while I think of it.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Make sure the local lot have got the house to house going, and see if anyone else saw anything at the back of the bungalows.’

  ‘What about me, Sir?’ asked Cole.

  ‘Focus on the broadheads, Nigel. Archery shops, bricks and mortar and online. Find out who they’ve been selling the bloody things to.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Eighteenth of July,’ replied Dixon. ‘We know he didn’t have them when he killed the first lot of sheep so he must have bought them after that. And the more powerful bow. Find out how many have been sold and who to.’

  ‘Which type?’

  ‘All of them. Start with buyers in Avon and Somerset. Archery clubs too; get membership lists.’

  ‘Where will you be, Sir?’ asked Louise.

  ‘I’m going to see where Mr Collins used to live.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ muttered Kevin.

  ‘An accountant from Congresbury,’ Collyer had said when Dixon popped up at Harptree Combe. Maybe once upon a time, but Collins had fallen far, judging by the bedsit Dixon found in St Paul’s.

  The landlord was standing in the doorway, his eyes following Dixon around the room. ‘Shall I leave you to it?’