‘Here, let me, Sir,’ said the sergeant, taking the plant pot from Dixon. ‘This bit of wood should come out easily enough.’
It was an old door, a wooden frame with a pane of frosted glass making up the top half and a wooden panel the bottom half, a cat flap cut into it. The sergeant swung the pot like a battering ram at the top corner of the wooden panel, pushing it inwards easily enough. Another hit in the top left corner and he was able to push it back on to the kitchen floor. Then he felt for a key in the lock. ‘I’ll have to climb in. Give me a sec.’
Dixon handed him a pair of latex gloves.
‘Oh, right, yes, of course. We don’t get a lot of that sort of thing down this way. Easy to get out of the habit.’ Down on all fours now, the sergeant crawled through the hole in the door and stood up. ‘There’s a key on a hook.’
The door swung open.
‘Just me,’ said Dixon. He’d put on a pair of latex overshoes and was snapping on a pair of gloves. ‘If it’s a crime scene, the fewer the better.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ replied the sergeant, stepping out into the rain again.
‘And if the daughter arrives, for God’s sake don’t let her in unless and until I say so.’
‘Shall I let the other two lads go?’
‘Not yet. We may need them for house to house.’ Dixon flicked on the torch on his phone; touching a light switch might smudge a fingerprint, even in latex gloves.
No food bowl for a cat, so the flap was probably redundant. The kitchen was clean and tidy, the small dishwasher open a crack.
He opened the door into the hall; a flight of stairs on the left, new handrails either side, so Pannell might well be mobile. There had been no key safe by the front door, so he must have let his killer in. Best not to jump the gun, the old boy might just be asleep, although the banging at his back door should have woken him up, possibly. It didn’t bode well.
Left into the dining room, living room on the right, door ajar.
The top of a head was visible over the back of an armchair, a faint glow coming from a Calor gas fire, the bottle running empty, a blue flame flickering at the base of the ceramic firebricks.
The television was off, curtains closed. Dixon could hear voices outside in the lane.
He shone his torch down at the figure slumped in the chair.
No finesse this time. No attempt to cover their tracks.
The knife was buried in the man’s chest up to the handle, clean through the breast pocket of his shirt. Eyes closed, he looked relaxed, hands down by his sides, palms open.
Two mugs were sitting on a coffee table, the tea in one untouched, the other empty.
The armchair opposite Pannell had been pulled forward a few inches.
If he was a betting man, Dixon would have gone for drugged then stabbed, the killer far too smart to drink from their own mug and leave a DNA trace. Her own mug, if house to house turned up sightings of that OT again.
I’ll make us a cup of tea, Geoffrey.
Dixon could hear it now.
Dead a while too, which made it the night before, probably. The OT struck after dark and Pannell had been dead longer than an hour, Dixon knew that much.
A quick glance around the room by the light of his torch. Several trophies in a corner cabinet, the usual photographs: wife and family, cats and dogs, holidays. A photograph of Pannell and a woman being presented with the Somerset County Bridge Union Pairs Cup, a label underneath dated 2002, the year before Michael Allam and Deirdre Baxter had won it. The woman was probably Judith Bolam, only spared a violent death by a heart attack.
He stepped back out into the drizzle. ‘Stabbed,’ he said, quietly. ‘We’ll need the road closed both ends. Let’s get Mark and Sarah over here too; it’s early enough to do a full house to house tonight. Doorbell camera or dashcam footage, usual stuff. We’ll need Scientific and the pathologist from Yeovil, whoever that is.’
‘I’ll ring Hari Patel.’ Louise was fishing her phone out of her coat pocket. ‘We were too late then?’
‘Twenty-four hours too late would be my guess.’
‘Stabbed, though?’
‘We’ve got the press conference to thank for that.’ Dixon was watching uniformed officers clearing the lane of passers-by. ‘No need to try and hide it any more, once they knew we were on to them.’
‘Colonel Mustard, in the sitting room, with a knife.’
Dixon sighed. The pathologist from Yeovil Hospital had got there first and seemed to think he was a bit of a comedian. Either that or he was trying to lighten the mood.
‘Do we wait for the crime scene manager?’
‘We do,’ replied Dixon.
‘I’ll be in my car, in that case.’
Uniformed officers had ushered the neighbours back inside their houses and cottages; the dog walkers had been moved on too. The lane was blocked at both ends by patrol cars, one of them reversing to allow a Scientific Services van through.
Another car appeared at the top end, and Dixon watched the animated conversation before a uniformed officer came jogging towards him. ‘The daughter’s here, Sir,’ she said.
‘A detective superintendent?’ was the only response to his warrant card. ‘What the bloody hell’s a superintendent doing here? What’s happened to my father?’
‘Let’s sit in the back of this patrol car, shall we?’ said Dixon. ‘Constable, see if one of these neighbours of Mr Pannell’s would be kind enough to make Mrs West a cup of tea.’
