Dying Inside (DI Nick Dixon Crime)

by Damien Boyd

  Not much of a tree, as it turned out; long dead, the ivy had been holding it up, most likely, until that storm blew in. Hugo, or whatever it had been called.

  The chainsaw made short work of the rotten wood; a cut just above the path, another below and the trunk dropped to the ground. Then he rolled it clear with his foot, watching it tumble down into the bushes, coming to rest on the edge of the stream at the bottom of the combe. Well off the beaten track.

  Job done.

  Take the shortcut back to the car park and he’d be on his way to Cheddar in twenty minutes or so. Mike would just have to lump it.

  He followed a deer run, weaving his way up the hillside and through the undergrowth, arms above his head again to keep his elbows clear of the brambles and stinging nettles. Twigs and ivy crunched under his feet as he picked his way carefully up the slope, always at risk of sliding back down.

  The barking started before he emerged from the bushes on to the top path.

  ‘What the—?’ An elderly lady looked startled by the sight of the chainsaw held aloft, but his Mendip Tree Services T-shirt seemed to calm her nerves.

  ‘Shortcut,’ he said, smiling, although he wasn’t sure she heard it over the yapping of her terrier. And he certainly didn’t hear any reply.

  Then he was off, scrambling up the steep slope, his boots sliding on the dry earth; the dog still barking, but far below him now and out of sight as he headed for a gap in the hedge at the top of the wood. The chainsaw would soon clear a path through the nettles and his van was on the other side of the field. He checked his watch again: Cheddar by eleven-thirty; plenty of time.

  He glanced along a deer run that followed the brow of the hill off to his right, a flash of fluorescent orange at the base of a tree stopping him in his tracks.

  Orange?

  He left the chainsaw on a tree stump and picked his way along the narrow track, stepping over roots and ducking under holly branches. Footprints in the mud were out of place too.

  Nobody comes up here, surely?

  At last able to stand up straight, he sighed at the unmistakeable outline of fletching, the arrow shaft black.

  Bow hunting. Here?

  Bastards.

  He ducked under the last of the holly branches and looked down at the base of the tree.

  ‘Too short to be arrows,’ he whispered, oddly matter of fact. ‘Must be crossbow bolts.’ There were four, three in the man’s chest and one sticking out of his eye socket – that was the orange one; the others were fluorescent green.

  A trickle of blood from the corner of the eye had congealed in the man’s beard, the mouth and eyes wide open; taken by surprise, killed mid-sentence maybe. He leaned over and examined the exit wound; the bolt was buried in the eye almost up to the fletching and had gone clean through, pinning the man’s skull to the tree.

  He took out his phone and dialled 999, then thought better of it. A quick check all around, then he squatted down next to the body and grinned at the camera in his outstretched hand, careful to angle it just right for a couple of selfies.

  The lads on WhatsApp will love this.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Lamb hotpot?’

  ‘You’ve got coffee all down your front,’ said Dixon, smirking.

  ‘Go and grab that table over there. I’ll get you a bacon roll.’

  ‘And a KitKat, please.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great news.’ Jane pecked him on the cheek, her delight loaded with sarcasm. ‘When were you going to tell me?’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘That your diabetes had gone.’

  Dixon knew resistance was futile, so he left her queuing and sat down at a vacant table in the corner of the canteen. There was a distinct smell of ripe mutton, but lamb hotpot wasn’t on the specials board. He sniffed the sleeve of his jacket; the stench of death always lingers.

  Jane placed a can of Diet Coke on the table in front of him and sat down. ‘What’s the story with the sheep then?’

  ‘Someone’s been killing them with a crossbow. Eighteen of them over the last couple of months.’ Dixon was turning the Coke can, wiping away the condensation with the tips of his fingers. ‘Poor bug—’ The rest of his expletive was lost in the snap of the ring pull.

  ‘There’s not a lot you can do about it. The Rural Crimes team’ll be looking into it, surely?’

  ‘He’s retired and Bateman’s not got around to replacing him yet.’

  ‘Please tell me you didn’t say you’d look into it.’

  ‘I had to tell the old boy something to get rid of him. Cole’s getting me copies of everything, just to have a look at, you know; and he’s checking for anything else involving a crossbow in the last three months.’ He hesitated. ‘And besides, there’s something bugging me about it.’

  ‘Charlesworth’ll do his bloody nut. A DCI investigating a few dead sheep?’ Jane sighed. ‘Is there no one you can give it to? You can delegate now, you know.’

  ‘All four teams are flat out as it is. And you said so yourself, it’s just a few dead sheep.’

  ‘So, what’s bugging you?’

  ‘Bacon roll?’

  Jane spun round in her seat and raised her hand. ‘Over here.’

  ‘Any sauce?’ asked the kitchen assistant, placing the plate on the table.

  Jane’s ‘no, thank you’ beat Dixon’s ‘yes, please’ by a split second. ‘Ketchup is rammed full of sugar,’ she said, frowning at him.

  ‘No, thank you,’ he mumbled, ignoring her sheep reference; he wasn’t sure the pun was deliberate anyway.

  ‘So, are you really going to look into it?’ asked Jane, when the coast was clear. ‘Or did you just say that?’

  ‘I gave him my word.’ Dixon bit into the roll. ‘And I’ll tell you what’s bugging me: ask yourself why someone would be killing sheep with a crossbow,’ he said, spraying crumbs across the table.

  ‘Well, they’re obviously a sick f—’

  ‘Either that or they’re rehearsing for something.’ Dixon spotted Cole hovering in the doorway and gestured to a vacant chair at the table. ‘And it’s not going to be the Christmas panto.’ He took another mouthful of bacon roll.

  Cole looked at his watch. ‘I’m going off duty in a minute, Sir, thank you.’

  ‘Have you got the files?’

  ‘I was in the middle of printing them off when I saw the log pop up on the system; I thought you’d like to know straight away.’

  Dixon raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Harptree Combe, Sir; it’s on the far side of the Mendips, East Harptree way. Adult male, mid-fifties; no ident so far; pinned to a tree with four crossbow bolts in him.’

  Three emails sent cancelling the performance reviews, another to the training officer apologising profusely for missing the webinar, and Dixon was speeding north on the M5, wondering whether his sheep killer’s rehearsals were over or whether organised crime might really be involved.

  That had come as an unpleasant surprise. Cole had handed him the files on the sheep killings just as he was leaving Express Park, at the same time breaking the news that Zephyr had taken over the murder investigation. Dixon had crossed paths with the organised crime squad twice before; the first time Detective Chief Superintendent Collyer had offered him a job, the second he had threatened to nick him for obstruction.

  Happy days.

  He would have driven straight past it were it not for the patrol car parked across the entrance to the lane.

  ‘I’m under orders not to let anyone up there, Sir,’ the uniformed officer said, almost apologetically. It was worth a try, perhaps, but in the end, he had to agree it was unlikely that instruction extended to a detective chief inspector. That said, Dixon felt sure there would be a welcoming committee waiting for him in the car park.

  He parked next to the Mendip Tree Services van and watched in his rear view mirror as the suit leaning up against a BMW stubbed out his cigarette on a fence post and walked towards him, dialling a number on his mobile phone. T
he dark sunglasses and red braces were the giveaway: Zephyr.

  Dixon wound down the window and held out his warrant card.

  ‘He’s here, guv,’ said the suit into his phone, leaning over and peering at the card. ‘It’s a DCI from Bridgwater.’ Straightening up. ‘Dixon, yes.’

  Dixon waited, listening to the voice on the other end of the line, not that he could make out what was being said.

  The suit took a step back. ‘Yeah, it’s a Land Rover Defender. Sort of vomit green, with a white bonnet.’

  Jane had called it mushy pea green, but ‘vomit green’? Cheeky sod.

  Then the suit looked in the back window. ‘A Staffie, guv, a big white one curled up in a dog bed.’ The tap on the window had been a mistake, the suit stepping back sharply when Monty jumped up on the bench seat and started barking at him.

  Dixon had been passing his cottage and it had only taken a minute to swing by and pick up his dog. There might even be time for a walk in the woods on the way home.

  The suit rang off and dropped his phone back into his jacket pocket. ‘DCS Collyer says that you can go down. Follow that path.’ He pointed to a gap in the post and rail fence. ‘Cross the field and there’s a gap in the hedge. They’re just inside there. If you stay on the path it’s miles round.’

  ‘Keep an eye on my dog, will you?’ asked Dixon, as he set off across the car park.

  The stubble crunched under his feet as he weaved his way between the large round bales of hay in the field. He was heading towards the trees at the top of the wood, the gap in the hedge on the far side obvious only because of the Scientific Services team in hazmat suits milling about. He recognised Donald Watson, the senior scenes of crime officer, and Leo Petersen, the Bristol pathologist.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be sitting behind a comfy desk somewhere, shuffling paper clips?’ Watson pulled his face mask down below his chin, revealing a goatee beard; that was new, but then Dixon hadn’t seen him since the funeral.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about Peter Lewis.’ Petersen forced a smile. ‘Big shoes to fill.’

  ‘That they are.’ Dixon had met Petersen once before, but couldn’t have picked him out of an ID parade. Still, they’d been bobbing about on Chew Valley Reservoir in a small boat at the time, which might explain it.

  ‘Does Collyer know you’re here?’ asked Watson. ‘He doesn’t usually like people sticking their noses in.’

  ‘He’ll get used to it.’

  Petersen handed a set of overalls to Dixon in a sealed plastic bag. ‘Bung these on and I’ll show you what we’ve got.’

  ‘Not so fast.’ Collyer emerged from the undergrowth, brambles clawing at the sleeves of his overalls. ‘I need to know what you’re doing here first.’ He hadn’t changed a bit: short dark hair, sharp moustache and horn-rimmed glasses. Dixon thought he could make out a pair of red braces under his translucent hazmat suit too.

  ‘I’m just interested in the crossbow,’ replied Dixon. ‘We’ve got someone killing sheep wi—’

  ‘Look, I appreciate you’re bored. I get that. But this is a gangland execution, a professional hit, not some kid out hunting Shaun the Sheep.’

  Dixon decided to rise above it. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘The victim is Godfrey Collins. He’s an accountant – was an accountant – from Congresbury.’

  ‘And what’s his connection to organised crime?’

  Collyer sighed. Loudly. ‘He was in it up to his neck. He owned a yacht that was being used in a drug run. It capsized mid-Atlantic; the keel fell off and our intel says two hundred and sixty kilos of cocaine went to the bottom, so that’s a street value of twenty million, give or take.’

  ‘The name of the yacht?’

  ‘What the f—?’ Collyer turned away, remembering just in time that was no way to speak to a DCI in public, perhaps. Dixon had been about to remind him and was relieved to have been saved the trouble.

  ‘Sunset Boulevard II,’ continued Collyer. ‘Google it; it was all over the bloody news. Still is, now the memorial services are coming round. We’ve managed to keep the drugs out of it, so far anyway, but this’ll probably put paid to that.’

  ‘May I?’ Dixon gestured to the gap in the hedge with the overalls in his hand.

  Collyer leaned back against a bale of hay and folded his arms. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘We haven’t moved him yet,’ said Petersen, watching Dixon wriggle into the hazmat suit. ‘We’re going to bring the tree down so we can cut out the section behind his head. The bolt’s deep into the wood and the tree might well come down anyway if we try to cut it out.’

  ‘Make sure you stick to the stepping plates,’ said Watson. ‘We’ve got two sets of shoe prints, although one belongs to the lad who found him.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Gone with one of my lot to trace his route into the wood,’ replied Collyer. ‘He’d been in to clear a fallen tree off the bottom path and was taking a shortcut back to his van.’

  ‘When his boss gets here they’re going to take the tree down for us,’ said Watson.

  Dixon nodded, then turned and followed Petersen into the trees, the stepping plates adjacent to a line of yellow flags on the narrow track leading out into the field. The conversation behind him just carried over the wind and the birdsong.

  ‘He’s wasting his bloody time,’ Collyer grumbled.

  ‘He’s the best we’ve got,’ replied Watson. ‘And if he thinks there’s something—’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  Petersen was standing over the body. ‘Looks like he was in the middle of saying something. I’d love to know what.’

  ‘Please don’t shoot,’ muttered Dixon, teetering on the edge of the stepping plate nearest to the body. ‘Have you got a time of death?’

  ‘Last night between eight and midnight. Sunset was quarter to eight and it was light until about twenty past. There’s very little blood from the chest wounds so it looks like the shot to the head came first; that would have killed him instantly, although I won’t know for sure until I open him up, of course. The shot to the eye is just an ordinary bolt, but the others have got broadheads on them. You can see the patterns on the entry wounds: a double, a treble and one with three curved blades. Never seen one of those before – seriously nasty stuff.’

  ‘What about the bow?’ Dixon squatted down and looked at the exit wound at the back of the skull. ‘Will we be able to tell anything about that?’

  ‘Not really. There’s no ballistics, no gunshot residue, and without knowing how far away the shooter was we’ll be hard pressed to get any idea of the power, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘We might get something from the bolts, though,’ said Watson, appearing along the line of stepping plates. ‘When we get them out, that is.’

  Dixon stared into the trees beyond the body.

  ‘No footprints over there either,’ continued Watson. ‘Just ivy and dead leaves. He picked his spot carefully; we’ve been over it with a fine-toothed comb and there’s nothing. The only prints we’ve got are next to the body there’ – gesturing to small red flags at the base of the tree – ‘and over there. The red ones are the lad who found him; we haven’t been able to identify the yellow ones.’ A line of red flags followed a narrow track along the top of the wood, inside the hedge line. ‘The lad said he came along the deer run, heading for the gap in the hedge, and saw the orange fletch on the bolt.’

  ‘Looks like he squatted down here.’ Dixon turned back to the body and pointed into the trees. ‘Facing that way.’

  ‘That was when he dialled 999,’ said Petersen.

  ‘Of course it was.’

  ‘Seen enough?’ shouted Collyer from the other side of the hedge.

  ‘I’d better not outstay my welcome.’ Dixon straightened up. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  ‘Leo, please.’

  ‘Satisfied?’ snapped Collyer, when Dixon emerged from the trees.

  ‘I’m satisfied he was killed with a crossbow.’

&nb
sp; ‘Good, now piss off back to Bridgwater and keep your nose out of it.’

  Dixon rolled up his hazmat suit and dropped it into a plastic crate. ‘The lad who found the body.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I’d check his phone if I were you,’ he replied, with a wave of his hand as he set off back to his car. ‘I’m guessing you’ll find a couple of selfies with your victim in the background; it’ll be a trifle embarrassing for you when they go viral.’

  ‘The little scrote—’

  Chapter Three

  Charlesworth’s on the prowl wondering where you are. He asked me if you understood the importance of management training. I said you did! Jx

  Jane’s text arrived when Dixon was sitting in the car park outside Beaumont Agricultural, flicking through the post mortem reports on the sheep. He could have done without the photographs, and wasn’t entirely sure the insurance company would have needed them either. The cause of death in each case had been a foregone conclusion too, the injuries inflicted by crossbow bolts.

  He was about to reply to Jane’s text when the door at the side of the unit opened and an elderly man in a waxed jacket shuffled towards a mud spattered car. Well into his eighties would have been a reasonable guess; far too old to be sticking his hand up a cow’s backside for a living. Still, if he ever retired, the shock’d probably kill him.

  ‘Mr Docherty?’ Dixon was striding across the car park with his warrant card at the ready.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Bragg was going to ring you and give you his permission to speak to me.’

  ‘You’ll be the police then?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  Docherty dumped his bag on the bonnet of his car and began adjusting his hearing aid. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘The first incident a couple of months ago, the injuries were far less severe, and I’m wondering how you arrived at the conclusion it was a crossbow?’

  ‘It was a penetrating injury, so I suppose it could have been a metal rod or a screwdriver or something similar, but there were marks either side of the entry wound – you can just see them in the photographs – caused by the flights.’