Beyond the Point

by Damien Boyd

  ‘Is the turntable enclosed?’ asked Watts.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Either way, he’s going to have to leave the cab and then we’ve got him.’ Dixon was rubbing his chin. ‘Now, can we get on with it before I change my mind?’

  ‘Tell me about the crane,’ said Dixon. He was sitting in the back of a minibus, pulling on the leg loops of a harness.

  ‘It’s the biggest on site,’ replied Crew. ‘It’s been lifting the cooling water pipes into position. You’ll be directly above the nuclear island and it’s well over two hundred feet down to the bottom of the stressing gallery. Are you all right with heights?’

  ‘What’s a stressing gallery?’

  ‘It’s just a deep trench. The concrete of the reactor is placed under stress to strengthen it and that’s where the steel cables are fixed. It’s designed to withstand an impact from a 747.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to remember that the next time I get on a plane,’ muttered Dixon.

  ‘You climb up inside the mast. It’s just a series of aluminium stepladders. It’ll be wet, so be careful.’

  Just like climbing in the slate quarries with Jake, thought Dixon, only back then they’d have bailed out when it rained and gone to the pub.

  ‘There are landings every twenty feet,’ continued Crew. ‘Stay below the top one and it should give you some extra protection if he—’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And be bloody careful,’ said Bateman. ‘I’ll ring him and let him know you’re on the way up.’

  ‘Get the helicopter to back off as well, will you, Sir? I’ll need to be able to shout to him.’

  ‘Good thinking.’

  ‘And tell Armed Response to be bloody sure they know who it is they’re shooting at.’

  Bateman grinned. ‘I will.’

  ‘I’ll be the one wearing the helmet.’ Dixon jumped out of the back of the minibus and ducked low into the rain as he ran across to the base of the crane, a man wearing orange overalls and a hi-vis jacket waiting for him by a steel gate.

  ‘Are you the one going up?’ the man asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  The man clipped a karabiner into the loop on Dixon’s harness, then handed him the other end. ‘This is your safety line. Clip into the safety rail if you go out on to the jib. It’ll be windy up there, as well as wet. What are you like with heights?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Up you go then.’

  Dixon looked up at the first ladder, fixed inside the yellow frame of the mast and leading up to a steel landing, then another ladder above. He counted six in total, each of them twenty feet or so high. The helicopter had moved away, the noise of the engine just carrying over the wind whistling through the steel lattice frame of the crane. The searchlight was still trying to fix on the cabin above him, lighting it up and then plunging it into darkness as the helicopter swayed from side to side in the gusts of wind.

  First ladder done; Dixon took a deep breath.

  Laser eye surgery will be an effing doddle after this.

  He glanced across at the nearest crane, the cab dark, the jib turning in the wind; no sign of the operator or the firearms officer, but he or she was there somewhere, keeping out of sight. Steiner would know, surely? He must have seen them climbing the mast, rifle slung over their shoulder.

  Anyone with a half a brain would expect nothing less.

  It may have been a golden rule, but Dixon had always ignored it. He looked down. When he had been sea cliff climbing, it had been waves crashing in at the base of the cliffs; now it was a circle of blue lights around the base of the crane. An ambulance was visible too, now that he’d climbed higher, waiting on the earthworks access road.

  Rain was dripping off his Kevlar helmet and running down the back of his neck. He had been given it by Watts, the firearms officer, the radio activated, voices in an earpiece in his right ear.

  ‘AR14, I have him in sight. Halfway up.’

  Dixon froze to the ladder when a gust of wind ripped through the steel frame, the whole crane swaying from side to side. The jib was turning above him now too, the screech of the steel turntable adding to the whistle of the wind.

  That was the sort of gust that would loosen roof tiles, he thought, remembering long dark nights listening to the old sash windows at home rattling and creaking in the wind. At least sea cliffs didn’t move.

  ‘Dixon?’

  The shout came from above, while he was still below the last of the steel landings. He dialled Potter’s number on his mobile phone and then dropped it back into his jacket pocket, a loud cough from him covering her voice when she answered the call.

  ‘Is that you, Dixon?’ A man’s voice, shouting down from above.

  ‘I’m on my own, Tony. All right?’

  Potter got the message. Listen, don’t speak.

  Dixon stopped on the ladder just beneath the landing, the turntable directly above. The hatch in the floor was open, Steiner silhouetted in the beam of the helicopter’s searchlight, the unmistakable outline of a twelve bore shotgun in hand.

  ‘Keep coming,’ said Steiner. ‘And you can get rid of that helmet. I’m not stupid. It’s got a microphone in it.’

  ‘Where’s Al?’

  ‘You heard what I said?’ Steiner scowled. ‘Keep coming.’

  Dixon stepped out on to the top landing.

  ‘Now the helmet.’ Steiner was lying flat on the turntable, his head screened from the crane opposite by the open steel hatch. ‘Over the side,’ he snarled, when Dixon placed the helmet at his feet.

  He dropped it over the side and watched it fall away into the darkness.

  ‘Now, keep coming.’

  ‘Where’s Al?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Dixon climbed the ladder slowly, the crane swaying in a violent gust of wind as another squall tore across the site. The adjacent cranes were moving too; some turning, all of them swaying. He flinched. A shot from a moving platform? He wondered if he knew the officer with his or her finger on the trigger.

  He stopped with his head just above the level of the turntable, Steiner having crawled backwards into the cab, keeping his head below the level of the steel kickplate. That explained that.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the flickering light. The door of the cab was open, the searchlight streaming in from the helicopter hovering behind, the lights visible through the windscreen of the crane. The operator’s chair was empty, a figure sitting hunched on the floor in the corner, his knees pulled up under his chin. He was staring at Dixon, his eyes wide.

  ‘Al?’

  ‘Yes, it’s Al.’ Steiner laughed. ‘Who else is it going to be?’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Get up here,’ snapped Steiner, both barrels pointed at Dixon’s head.

  He did as he was told. Slowly. Hoping that the firearms officer had seen him drop the helmet. Otherwise it was a clear shot at a head without a helmet on it . . .

  ‘Where did you get the gun?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know.’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘It was thrown over the fence out near the bat house. All right?’

  The photofit hadn’t been far off. Six weeks’ growth of beard, greyer than the artist’s impression. The ponytail must be a hair extension. Horn-rimmed glasses were a nice touch. Steiner had clearly thought it through; there was even a new scar on his left cheek – self-inflicted, no doubt.

  ‘You got me here,’ said Dixon. ‘So, what d’you want?’

  ‘To explain.’ Steiner lowered the gun, his back pressed to the steel side wall of the cab.

  ‘Let Al go first.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you climb down, Al?’

  ‘Yes, I—’ He tried to stand up.

  ‘I said no.’ Steiner lashed out at Al with his foot, kicking him in the side of the thigh.

  ‘How d’you think this is going to end if you harm Al, Tony? Or me for that matter.’

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sp; ‘I know exactly how it’s going to end.’ Steiner stepped into the window of the cab, standing in front of the operator’s chair, the shotgun down at his side. ‘I bring the gun up and your boys on the crane over there earn their money.’

  ‘Well, you don’t need Al for that.’ Dixon helped Al to his feet and pushed him towards the hatch in the floor of the turntable, shielding him from Steiner with his own body. ‘Down you go,’ he said. ‘And keep going down. Someone will meet you.’

  Steiner sighed as he watched Al disappear down the ladder. ‘Just my fucking luck to run into you,’ he said, kicking the chair in front of him. ‘I’ve been running rings around plod for years and then you turn up.’

  ‘Shit happens, Tony. But I’ll take it as a compliment.’

  ‘It was meant as one.’

  ‘Tell me about your brother,’ said Dixon, glancing across at the nearest crane.

  ‘I haven’t got a brother.’

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘Monique told you?’

  Dixon nodded.

  ‘I suffocated him. I never fitted in after he came along. I wasn’t really their kid, was I?’

  ‘What about Monique?’

  ‘She was different.’ Steiner glanced over his shoulder at the helicopter. ‘And, besides, they never left me alone with her.’

  ‘You got expelled from school too. What was that all about?’

  ‘I used a bent coat hanger to burn some kid. Can’t even remember why now.’

  ‘Monique told me about your ears.’

  ‘You got tinnitus?’ he asked.

  ‘Just diabetes,’ replied Dixon. ‘What was it you wanted to explain?’

  ‘I was hiding with the hippies when a man came looking for me and said he wanted someone to go into Hinkley Point and cause a bit of trouble.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘He double-crossed me.’

  ‘Like Mrs Boswell?’

  Steiner sneered. ‘Daft old sod said I could stay in the barn, then a couple of days later I found her going off to call you lot. What else could I do? I was dragging her back and she just dropped dead on me.’

  ‘Did you really have to leave her like that? Hanging.’

  ‘No, not really.’ Steiner grinned. ‘I bet she was in a bit of a state when you found her.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have double-crossed me then, should she? That gets you killed. Plenty of people have found that out the hard way.’

  ‘What sort of trouble did this man want you to cause?’

  ‘He wanted me to sabotage the tarmac, for the roads like. There are piles of it in a compound. Something and nothing. He said he could get me in on a false ID and paid me five grand in bitcoin. Said he could get me out on a boat too. Then once I was in here he said he knew who I was and he’d turn me in unless I killed that girl, Amy. The dumper truck driver. Then he double-crossed me, didn’t he?’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Steiner. He wiped his nose on the back of his left sleeve, the shotgun in his right, still down by his side. ‘He told me to dump her body in the silo; said it’d be filled the next morning and she’d never be found. Only it didn’t quite work out like that, did it. They wouldn’t let me on the boat at the jetty either. Said they knew nothing about it.’

  ‘What did he look like, this man?’

  ‘It was dark. Late fifties, maybe. He was wearing a suit and a coat with the hood up. When you’re in my position, you don’t ask too many questions. He was offering me a way out, for fuck’s sake. And you were closing in.’ He thrust his left hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled photograph. ‘Here,’ he said, throwing it to Dixon. ‘He gave me this picture of her.’

  The crane swayed again, the wind whistling through the rails on the jib. Steiner leaned forward and grabbed the arm of the operator’s chair with his free hand, careful to keep the gun out of sight.

  ‘You were just doing your job,’ he said. ‘But that bastard double-crossed me.’

  ‘Well, you’ll never get him if it ends here and now.’

  ‘I won’t,’ replied Steiner, grinning. He slid his free hand into his inside pocket and took out his phone. Then he lobbed it to Dixon. ‘You will. It’s all on there.’

  ‘Why don’t you help me?’

  ‘It was always going to end this way after the canal. And there’s no way I’m going back to prison. Sitting in a cell listening to my ears?’ Steiner cringed. ‘No way. Not if I’m never getting out. And what would the chances of that be?’

  ‘You never kn—’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  Another gust of wind, the crane swayed and Steiner stumbled on to the operator’s chair. Dixon lurched forward to grab the gun – too slow. Steiner threw himself back against the windscreen of the cab and brought the shotgun up in his right hand, grinning at Dixon as he did so.

  A muffled crack and the side window shattered, the glass flying across the cab in slow motion. Then the bullet hit Steiner.

  Dixon turned away as blood and brain sprayed across his face. Steiner crumpled to the floor, oddly calm, a gaping hole where his forehead and left eye had been.

  No longer troubled by the ringing in his ears.

  A pool of blood began to seep across the steel floor of the cab, the crumpled photograph of Amy floating towards Dixon’s feet. He stepped back out on to the turntable and slumped down against the railings, blood dripping on to his screen as he disconnected the call to Potter, her voice screaming down the phone: ‘Nick? Are you all right, Nick?’

  Chapter Eighteen

  The crane was swaying more violently now, if anything, the wind stronger, and louder as it roared and whistled through the steel frame of the jib. Dixon was watching the lights along Burnham seafront twinkling in the distance across the Parrett Estuary, and the flashing lights on the Pavilion.

  He slid his phone out of his pocket and tapped out a text message:

  Steiner is dead

  Roger Poland’s reply came in seconds.

  Watching live on Sky News. Please tell me that’s not you up the crane

  Who else would it be, Roger? Who the bloody hell else?

  Then he heard footsteps on the aluminium ladders below, and the next thing he knew Armed Response officers were standing in the doorway of the cab, their firearms pointing down at Steiner.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Have you checked, Sir?’ asked one, the other turning away and talking into his radio.

  ‘No, I haven’t checked. His brains are all over the floor.’ Dixon stood up. ‘And me.’

  ‘Are you all right, Sir?’

  ‘The blood’s his.’ He turned for the top of the ladder. ‘Just make sure someone bags up that photo.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘And tell SOCO to keep an eye out for his ID.’

  More Armed Response officers on the way up stepped to one side on the landing to allow Dixon past, two paramedics on the next landing. Another stopped in front of him and shone a torch in his face. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ she said.

  Potter and Bateman were waiting for him when he finally stepped off the bottom rung of the last ladder.

  ‘Are you all right, Nick?’ asked Potter.

  ‘Fine.’ Dixon was undoing the buckle on his harness.

  ‘Steiner’s dead?’ She was peering at the side of his face, lit up by the flickering blue lights.

  ‘He got what he wanted.’

  ‘So, what happens now?’ asked Bateman.

  ‘We find who killed Stella Hayward,’ replied Dixon, sitting down on the bumper of the beat team Land Rover. ‘And who paid Steiner to kill Amy. His phone needs to go to High Tech,’ he said, handing it to Potter.

  ‘What’s the code?’

  ‘He would’ve given that to me if—’

  ‘It was the right call, Nick,’ said Potter. ‘We couldn’t take any chances. For all we knew it was a ploy to get you up there.’
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  ‘You were listening?’

  ‘We were.’

  ‘Then you knew he wasn’t going to kill me.’

  ‘He said he wasn’t. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t.’

  ‘Here,’ said the paramedic who had followed him down the ladders, handing him a bundle of medicated wet wipes. ‘Use these.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Dixon stood up.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ asked Potter.

  ‘Express Park to clean up. Then I’m going home.’

  He had been sitting in the bottom of the shower for fifteen minutes before the pink water finally ran clear, the last of Steiner’s blood washed down the plughole. He’d tried shampoo, but every time he closed his eyes he saw Steiner’s forehead exploding right in front of him. Another memory etched on his mind that would take weeks to shift; another vision to add to the nightmares.

  Not that he’d ever been troubled by many. A severed head in a golf course bunker; absolute darkness, the only sound water dripping; fire. That one had woken him up a few times.

  ‘Level headed’, the psychiatric report had said. Charlesworth had forced him into that after the factory fire. He’d told Jane it was just a meeting at Portishead, which was true. Technically.

  ‘A remarkably relaxed attitude to near death experiences’. He shook his head. There’d been enough of them when he’d been rock climbing with Jake. ‘Having an epic’, they used to call it. An electric storm on the Matterhorn; falling off the crux of Poetry Pink – Jake jumping off the ledge to take up the slack rope – inches to spare that time; a hypo on Quiet Waters down in Huntsman’s Leap; the knife edge ridge of Crib Goch on Snowdon at night in winter dressed in a dinner jacket and tie.

  It was about adrenaline. The rush you get when you’re still standing at the end of the day. Although Crib Goch had been more about beer, possibly.

  A wry smile. Shit happens – no point in dwelling on it, Jake had said, the last time they spoke. The last time before he had been killed.

  Dixon stepped out of the shower at Express Park and sat down on the bench, putting off what came next: get dressed, go home and face Jane. Now that he really was dreading. Louise knew, and had hit the nail on the head when she met him in the staff car park still drenched in Steiner’s blood.