‘Not a lot. It was a full week before the post mortem confirmed it was murder, and his flat looks like a show home now. Poor bloke’s hardly cold and the daughter’s getting his place ready to go on the market.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me, having spoken to her on the phone.’
Once at the top of the stairs, Dixon made a beeline for Sarah’s workstation. ‘I gather you have some news for me,’ he said.
‘Yes, Sir,’ she replied, nervously. ‘I was doing a trawl for other similar cases and there is one, I’m afraid.’
‘Go on.’ He pulled a chair out from under the adjacent desk and sat down.
Sarah picked up her notebook. ‘Thomas Fowler. He was eighty-nine, found dead on the fourth of December last year. The doctor certified the cause of death as old age. He hadn’t seen him within the last twenty-eight days though, so there was a referral to the coroner – that’s how I was able to find out about it. There were no suspicious circumstances, no further investigations, no post mortem, and he was buried in the family plot at Bradford Abbas church just before Christmas.’
‘What do we know about him?’
‘Nothing yet, Sir.’
‘Is there any family?’
‘A son who lives locally – I’ve got an address in Yeovil, but I haven’t spoken to him yet.’
‘Is it consecrated ground?’
‘Is what consecrated ground?’
‘The churchyard,’ replied Dixon. ‘Not all of them are.’
Sarah looked puzzled. ‘How would I find that out?’
‘Ring the churchwarden or the vicar. There should be a webpage somewhere with their contact details. Otherwise, Bradford Abbas is in Dorset, so you could contact the Bishop of Sherborne’s office.’
‘Then what?’
‘We dig him up. Better set up a meeting with the son for tomorrow.’
A vacant workstation in a quiet corner of the incident room. It sounded better than it was; most of the workstations were vacant and you could hear a pin drop.
Dixon had spent a couple of hours going through the Devon and Cornwall file into Michael Allam’s death. Witness statements from the carers, neighbours and his doctor; the post mortem report, which recorded identical fractures of the cricoid bone, although the pathologist referred to it as ‘ossified cricoid cartilage’.
Several supplemental statements had been added to the system that day. The doctor confirmed there had been no referral to an OT or to Sidmouth or Exeter hospital. The carers confirmed they had not seen or been expecting an OT visit, and the immediate neighbour had heard and seen nothing.
The report from Devon Scientific Services made grim reading too. Several sets of fingerprints had been eliminated, as had the DNA samples. Apart from that, there was nothing.
The only really interesting photographs were those attached to the post mortem, taken by the paramedics of his body slumped in the armchair. If nothing else, they showed that the daughter must be suffering from some form of obsessive compulsive disorder. Jane made sure the shower gel was facing the right way and Dixon pulled her leg about OCD, but this was something else entirely.
The pile of newspapers by the old man’s chair must have been a foot high; more of them on the small table. Dixon had found some in the bin liner at Michael Allam’s flat, but not this many, surely?
Dirty mugs, sweet wrappers, the TV remote, plates stacked on the floor.
A retired teacher.
There would be a connection with Deirdre Baxter. It was just a matter of finding it.
And now a connection with Thomas Fowler as well, possibly.
Dixon looked up to find Jane and Sarah standing over him. Sarah was the one looking anxious, Jane there for moral support more than anything.
‘It is consecrated ground, Sir,’ said Sarah. ‘St Mary’s at Bradford Abbas.’
‘Ecclesiastical law.’ He sighed. ‘You’ll need to write this down.’
‘Is it bad?’ asked Jane.
‘As bad as it gets. I made the mistake of doing the module in the second year of my degree.’ Dixon rolled his eyes. ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time. Ready?’
Sarah nodded.
‘We’re going to need to petition the consistory court of the diocese of Salisbury for a faculty for exhumation. It can be done on paper, without an oral hearing. I’ll need to swear an affidavit, but that’s about all I can remember, to be honest. You’ll need to get the legal department at Portishead to help you. We’ll need the Dorset coroner’s say-so too, and the next of kin’s permission. Did you ring the son?’
‘Tomorrow at two,’ replied Sarah. ‘We’re meeting him at his father’s house in Bradford Abbas.’
Dixon spotted Charlesworth weaving his way between the workstations towards him. ‘Oh, shit, the press conference.’
‘It’s all right, Nick, we went ahead without you,’ said Charlesworth, when Dixon checked his phone. Three missed calls, but no messages. ‘I was ringing to tell you not to bother racing back for it. Deborah and I dealt with it.’
‘Thank you, Sir.’
‘We went for a generic reminder to be on the alert for doorstep fraudsters, as there’d been reports of them masquerading as NHS employees. Check identification carefully before allowing anyone into your home, that sort of thing. We didn’t think we should be worrying people any more than that at this stage, although I gather there’s been a third?’
