Beyond the Point

by Damien Boyd

  Bateman had wanted to nick the lot for assisting an offender, until Dixon had reminded him that news of Steiner’s presence in the area had been released only yesterday, so it was not unreasonable for them to have had no idea who he was. And even then, there was no TV in the camp, so unless they had mobile phones they still may not have known. No, they would be helping with enquiries, unless and until they refused to cooperate, of course.

  Unusual that – Dixon giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. Expect the worst at all times, then you are never disappointed and, sometimes, pleasantly surprised. It had served him well up to now.

  ‘It’s a lot of trouble to go to for a broadband password,’ mumbled Louise, spraying crisps across his dashboard. She was staring at Groom’s Cottage, a Jaguar parked outside with the boot up.

  ‘What sort of data allowance do you get on a pay-as-you-go SIM card?’ asked Dixon, still chewing on the last of his sandwich.

  ‘Some can be quite generous, I think.’

  ‘He’ll have been checking the webcam from time to time, I suppose, but that’s hardly likely to account for it, is it?’

  ‘Whatever he was doing, it must have been using a lot of data then.’ Louise scrunched up the bag of crisps and dropped it into the passenger footwell. ‘I’ll chase up Eurosat.’

  Lunch in the Hood Arms at Kilve would have been nice, but it had been full of journalists, the car park outside crammed with vans, their satellite dishes extended skywards on long poles. Still, at least Withypool would be back to normal, the media circus moved on.

  Dixon winced. Bateman had the look of someone about to break bad news – rubbing his hands together and shifting from one foot to the other in front of the Land Rover, careful to avoid eye contact.

  ‘I think he wants a word,’ said Louise, frowning.

  ‘Either that or a leak.’

  The seconds ticked by until Bateman could wait no longer. He tapped on the driver’s window.

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ said Dixon, winding down the window.

  ‘The search of the camp is off. Charlesworth’s orders. And you’re wanted back at Express Park.’

  Expect the worst – it applied to senior officers too, and usually bore a direct relation to the level of seniority. The more senior the officer, the deeper the shit. ‘Did he give a reason?’

  ‘I’m sure you can guess. He’s got the press officer with him, and she’s—’

  ‘Frightened of a bit of bad publicity.’

  Bateman shrugged his shoulders. ‘Can we find him without?’

  ‘It’s just a question of how many more people are going to die along the way,’ Dixon said, starting the engine. ‘And I’d ask Charlesworth to confirm his order in writing, if I were you. Unless you want to be the last man standing when the music stops.’

  ‘Charlesworth’s not like that.’

  ‘It’s only the depth that varies.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Are you really going to ask the Assistant Chief Constable to confirm his order in writing?’ asked Louise, when Dixon screeched to a halt outside Express Park.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’d love to be a fly on the wall.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ replied Dixon. ‘The more people who witness the conversation, the better.’

  ‘Looks like meeting room two,’ said Louise, when they stepped out of the lift on the first floor.

  Charlesworth would know they were in the building by now, but Dixon didn’t blame Reg. He was only following orders, after all.

  ‘There’s Lewis.’ Dixon nodded towards the CID Area on the opposite side of the atrium. ‘Get him and catch me up.’

  ‘Ah, Dixon, there you are.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Have you got a minute?’ Charlesworth was wearing a short sleeved white shirt, his top button undone; no tie either, which was a first. Sweaty armpits too. ‘I’m in here with Vicky Thomas.’

  Charlesworth’s cap was upside down on the table, being used as a paper weight, the fan in the corner blowing the corners of the pages. It wasn’t that hot, surely?

  ‘You know DC Willmott, I think, Sir?’ asked Dixon, waiting by the door for Louise to run along the landing.

  ‘He’s right behind me,’ whispered Louise, slowing to a walk as she reached the door.

  ‘And I’ve asked DCI Lewis to join us as well.’

  Charlesworth watched them file in and sit down around the glass table.

  Vicky Thomas shifted in her seat.

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Excuse me a moment, Sir,’ interrupted Dixon, sliding his phone out of his pocket. He clicked on Voice Memos, then pressed ‘Record’, setting his phone down in the middle of the table. ‘I’m sure you won’t mind me recording this meeting, Sir.’

  ‘Er—’

  ‘I think it’s in everyone’s interests that there’s an accurate record, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes, Dixon. Of course.’ Charlesworth’s face was flushed now, matching the press officer’s crimson trouser suit. ‘You don’t trust me, is that it?’

  ‘I can count the number of people I trust on one finger, Sir,’ replied Dixon. ‘And I’m guessing you didn’t rise to the dizzy heights of Assistant Chief Constable by trusting people, let alone senior colleagues.’

  Charlesworth grunted. ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘My understanding is that you’ve cancelled the search of the camp in the Great Plantation. Is that right, Sir?’

  ‘Yes. We . . . er . . . I was concerned that it might do more harm than good.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Well, us obviously.’

  Dixon scowled. ‘It’s not obvious to me. And it won’t be obvious to the general public when they find out we had a lead and failed to follow it up because we were worried about a bit of bad press.’

  A sharp intake of breath from Vicky Thomas. Her eyes narrowed. ‘It’s—’

  ‘Leave this to me, Vicky,’ snapped Charlesworth. ‘It’s my decision, Dixon, and that’s an end to it. Do you understand?’

  ‘I’d like it in writing, if it’s all the same to you, Sir. An email will suffice.’

  Lewis’s eyes widened, a smile stifled.

  ‘I see,’ said Charlesworth, an impatient edge to his voice.

  ‘Experience tells me this is very unlikely to be the end of it, Sir,’ continued Dixon. ‘And it may help investigators from the Independent Office for Police Conduct if the decision-making is clearly documented.’

  ‘An email it is then.’

  ‘And when can I expect to receive it?’

  ‘I’ll try to get to it tomorrow.’

  ‘The search is set for five o’clock today, Sir, so I’ll need it before then, please.’

  Charlesworth’s glare was something to behold. He sighed, then leaned over and picked up a laptop off the floor. ‘I’ll do it now.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’

  Dixon sat down on the corner of Jane’s desk in the Safeguarding Unit – an office with walls and a door, even if she did have to share it with three other people – and closed his eyes.

  Ten paces behind with one arm tied behind his back and a quarry making it personal. Things could only get better, although the likelihood was they would get worse first. That was the usual way of it.

  ‘Did you get your email?’ asked Jane, putting the phone down.

  ‘My get out of jail free card.’ Dixon smiled, tapping the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘I’ve printed off a copy.’

  ‘You made an enemy of the Assistant Chief Constable just for that?’

  ‘People have been hung out to dry for a lot less.’ Dixon took a swig of her coffee. ‘And besides, I think he respected my directness.’

  ‘I doubt that.’ Jane leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. ‘Lewis told me about the cottage at Kilve and the guest book. And Steiner didn’t take a thing?’

  ‘Just the broadband password.’

  ‘Needs access to the dark net, then,’ said Jane.

  ‘Eh?’<
br />
  ‘Most mobile data providers block it, so if he’s on pay-as-you-go SIM cards he’s buggered. Which broadband company is it?’

  ‘Eurosat.’

  ‘I’d check and see if they block the dark net. They might do if it’s satellite broadband. If not, there’s your reason.’

  ‘We’re waiting for a list of the websites he visited.’

  ‘That won’t help much if he’s using the TOR app for iOS and Android – The Onion Router. The traffic is routed through umpteen different servers in the network, all of them random. The layers of an onion, remember? It’s encrypted and re-encrypted loads of times.’

  ‘What will we get then?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘Dark net website addresses are just random strings of letters and numbers. A list of IP addresses, possibly. Internet Protocol, each one’s a computer somewhere in the world connected to the web. Let me have a look at it when you get it though. You never know.’ Her smile accompanied a shrug of the shoulders, intended to sweeten the pill.

  It didn’t.

  ‘What time are you going home?’ she asked.

  ‘God knows,’ muttered Dixon. ‘Here, you’d better have these.’ He dropped his car keys into her outstretched hand. ‘Remember, no walking on the beach. Not until Steiner’s—’

  ‘I know.’

  An hour spent reading call logs, witness statements, updating the Investigation Plan and Policy Log, and Dixon’s eyes were closing when a piece of paper fluttered down on to his keyboard. He was sitting at a workstation facing the floor to ceiling windows in the CID Area. It had become his preferred spot, the reflection normally offering some sort of early warning system, although Lewis had wised up to it of late, creeping up on him from the side.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘A press release. Vicky Thomas wants it out for the early evening news.’

  Dixon glanced through it, phrases such as ‘closing in’ and ‘search radius narrowing’ leaping out at him. As did ‘an arrest is expected shortly’.

  ‘Great comedy.’ He screwed up the piece of paper and launched it in the direction of the bin.

  ‘Basketball not your thing?’ said Lewis, watching the press release bouncing along the floor.

  ‘They’ll say what they want anyway, so I don’t know why she’s bothering.’

  ‘It’s her job.’

  ‘Ask her who she’s trying to convince.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Lewis, turning away. ‘Oh, and one other thing. Charlesworth has asked Deborah Potter to come down tomorrow and review progress. I’m assuming you’ll be out?’

  Dixon stared at Lewis in the reflection in the window, letting his silence hang.

  ‘I thought you’d appreciate the warning.’

  He watched Lewis sidestep Louise, who was running towards him. She took hold of the office chair at the vacant workstation behind Dixon, spun it around and slumped down on to it. ‘We’ve got the Eurosat stuff, Sir,’ she said. ‘I’ve emailed it to you.’

  He turned back to his computer and opened the only new email, then the attachment.

  ‘This is the list from Groom’s Cottage, Sir. It’s mostly just a list of numbers and IP addresses,’ said Louise. She leaned forward, pointing at the third one from the top. ‘That’s the webcam at Mrs Boswell’s cottage he’s looking at. He’s using a normal web browser for that. Always after dark too, if you look at the times.’

  Dixon checked the date – yesterday.

  ‘Any proper websites?’

  ‘Scroll down,’ replied Louise. ‘There are a few news sites and that one, Sir,’ her finger jabbed at the screen. ‘Bitfly.com. It’s an online bitcoin wallet.’

  ‘What about the satellite broadband at Mrs Boswell’s cottage?’

  ‘He didn’t access the internet at all there, Sir. There’s just the webcam on it. We’ve got the server logs and there’s the daily Eurosat visit, of course, plus a Vodafone IP address was accessing it regularly until yesterday. It must be him as well. We’ve got the number but it’s dead. No trace.’

  Dixon took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through his nose. Forty-three days it had taken.

  ‘His first mistake, Lou,’ he said, solemnly. ‘We know he’s accessed the broadband at Groom’s Cottage as recently as last night and he’s on foot, which narrows down the search radius.’ Dixon frowned. Maybe Vicky Thomas had been right?

  ‘Shall I tell Bateman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And let’s get on to the mobile providers too. When did the Vodafone number go offline?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Then we need to know if and when Bitfly.com is accessed from another mobile device using the base stations nearest to the area. If they can tell us that then they should be able to give us his new mobile phone number too, then we’ve got him. And let’s get on to Bitfly, whoever the hell they are.’

  Louise grimaced. ‘They’re based in the Cayman Islands, Sir, so we might struggle there.’

  ‘I’ll be up in the Safeguarding Unit,’ said Dixon, getting up and walking over to the printer.

  ‘It’s just as I thought,’ said Jane. ‘This one’s in the Ukraine.’ She had selected an IP address at random and googled it, ending up on an IP lookup website. ‘Although the reality is it could be anywhere.’

  ‘Tell me about bitcoin,’ said Dixon, sitting down at the vacant office chair next to her.

  ‘How long have you got?’

  Dixon raised his eyebrows.

  ‘It’s a digital currency. “Cryptocurrency” is the fashionable term. There are several, but bitcoin is the biggest.’ She sighed. ‘Central banks issue coins, right?’

  ‘I get that bit.’

  ‘So, bitcoin is a currency issued by a decentralised computer system, meaning it’s not controlled by any one bank or country even. You can earn bitcoin online, running a complex computer program, and then use it to pay for goods and services.’

  ‘What computer program?’

  ‘Does it matter? Steiner’s not going to be doing that, is he? He’d need a warehouse full of computers.’

  ‘And this is all on the dark net?’

  ‘That’s where it started out, but you can use it in a lot more places these days.’

  ‘And you can buy and sell it?’

  ‘Just like you can with any currency.’ Jane leaned forward, her head in her hands. ‘If I knew then what I know now . . . One bitcoin’s worth about five grand now.’

  ‘So, if he’s got an online bitcoin wallet, then it’s reasonable to assume he has some bitcoin?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And he’s going to have to sell them?’

  ‘No reputable bitcoin exchange would touch him,’ said Jane. ‘You need to provide identification and all sorts. It’s like opening a bank account now.’

  ‘What about on the dark net?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘That could be it. He’d have to use a peer-to-peer exchange on the dark net. No questions asked.’

  ‘Peer-to-peer?’

  ‘Person to person. It could be a forum, or an exchange where buyers and sellers bid. Wouldn’t do you much good without his username and password, though.’

  ‘And what does the buyer get?’ Dixon’s brow furrowed. ‘What does a bitcoin look like?’

  ‘It’s just a string of random numbers and letters, upper and lower case. It’s a code, really. Encrypted too.’

  ‘So, the buyer will need to send the money somewhere before he gets his line of code. We just have to find where.’

  Chapter Ten

  Waiting. He hated it.

  He lobbed a chip on to the beach below and watched the seagulls swoop down. Others landed on the seawall in front of him, squawking, their beady eyes fixed on his supper. A wave of the hand failed to get rid of them, so he tried another chip, which just made it worse.

  He had never been very good at waiting, preferring to make things happen when he could. But it was out of his hands now. Everything that could be
done was being done, either by his team or by Chief Inspector Bateman.

  Roadblocks, house to house, searches of fields and barns. Even the helicopter was up with its thermal imaging camera. And the Great Plantation was under surveillance. Charlesworth had agreed to that at Bateman’s insistence.

  Anywhere and everywhere that Steiner might be holed up within ten miles of Groom’s Cottage was being checked.

  Or was it? Dixon’s eyes narrowed.

  Several kites were dancing about in the evening breeze on Burnham beach: a shark, a dragon with a long tail, even one that looked like Paddington Bear, all of them being flown by children down on the beach, the occasional shriek of delight rising above the noise of the seagulls.

  And beyond them, across the Parrett Estuary, the instantly recognisable square blocks that were Hinkley Point A and B nuclear power stations, both of them dwarfed by the construction site that would become Hinkley Point C.

  He picked up a chip and scraped it around the inside of the bag, sweeping up the last of the salt and vinegar as he stared through the haze; the tide out now, a fisherman digging lugworm on the flats below the lighthouse.

  The backdrop to his daily walks with Monty, Hinkley Point C had become a familiar landmark, the odd article in the local paper heralding some milestone or other reached in the construction.

  The temporary jetty was complete now, all five hundred metres of it. He could see that much from Burnham, ships arriving on the high tides. You could even see it from space, apparently. And what were those things that looked like the NASA space shuttle on the launch pad? Something to do with concrete, possibly?

  A workforce of 5,800 people working in shifts day and night. He remembered that from the briefing note he had glanced through before despatching it to the Trash folder in his email a few weeks ago. Maybe he’d move it back to his Inbox later?

  There was even a dedicated Hinkley Point police beat team. Four officers, in addition to EDF Energy’s own on site security, which was tight to say the least.