Down Among the Dead Men

35

On the short drive back to Chichester, nothing was said for some time. Both detectives needed to reflect on all they had learned. As the glow from a streetlamp passed across Hen’s face, the tears were trailing down her cheek. She reached for a tissue, and Diamond had the sense not to comment. His gritty companion would have hated that.

He left a reasonable gap before saying, ‘That was a day and a half.’

‘I’ll go for that.’

‘But you got through.’

‘With difficulty.’

‘I can understand.’

‘I’m not new to murder, as you know,’ Hen said. ‘I’ve been a copper long enough to know there are no happy endings in our line of work. There’s always a loser. But this was family. Poor kid, she had a wretched life. I’ll visit my brother and Cherry in the morning.’

‘They’ll have been informed.’

‘Yes, but...’ Unable to go on, she swallowed before starting up again. ‘Sad, isn’t it, that it takes a tragedy like this for us to come together and forget old feuds?’

‘If something positive comes out of it...’

She hadn’t taken that in. ‘I can’t begin to imagine their feelings. And as for Mel’s parents... Little more than a child.’

He murmured his assent. He, too, was feeling a profound sense of loss. He grieved for Hen and her family and he also grieved for Mel. Meeting her that afternoon at the police station had made it harder. He would forever ask himself whether Mel would have survived if he’d handled the meeting differently. She’d been sent away without much reassurance that the police really cared about Miss Gibbon’s disappearance. At the time, a missing teacher mattered less than a valued colleague in danger of losing her job. An unsolved murder, corpses being disposed of... Miss Gibbon was never going to be high priority. Yet Mel had persisted and got herself killed. And the irony was that Miss Gibbon had survived.

‘What makes it worse,’ Hen went on, ‘is the piffling reason why these killings were done — to allow that despicable man to go on selling his illegal mushrooms.’

‘He was living in fear, Hen. He had a monopoly in growing the things. Made him a small fortune, but it also tied him into every drugs syndicate worthy of the name. He was dealing with hard men who think nothing of murder. One false move, one name leaked, and he signed his own death warrant.’ Before Diamond had got the words out, he realised they were a mistake. He’d meant to ease Hen’s pain by stressing that the motive wasn’t trivial, but it came out sounding like an apology for Ferdie.

‘I refuse to waste any sympathy on him.’ She put her foot down and the engine roared. ‘You asked how I feel, matey, and I told you.’

Half a mile on, she relented a little. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘At this speed? Uncomfortable.’

She slowed to just above the speed limit. ‘What’s next?’

‘If I survive this car ride? A night’s sleep and some unfinished business tomorrow.’

‘The business that brought you here?’

She meant her own suspension. He needed to take the heat out of the topic. ‘I had mixed feelings when this caper was dumped on me.’

‘Which caper?’

‘Investigating a bad egg like you.’

‘Get away, you enjoyed it.’

‘The only thing I enjoy — apart from seeing you again — is this bit: riding away and leaving someone else to clear up the mess. Poor old Montacute will be doing overtime with Davy and Ferdie and their crimes and a major drugs operation to unravel.’

‘Don’t fret about Montacute, Pete. It’s his chance to shine. He’ll take any credit that’s going.’

‘And get promoted?’

‘He won’t want that. As you said the other day, he’s a natural second-in-command. He isn’t after my job.’

‘Who do you think is?’

‘You’re still on about the whistle-blower, aren’t you? Forget it, like I did. It’s not as if that anonymous letter was a lie. Hahn read it out to me before I was suspended and every word was true.’

‘I’ve seen that letter, too,’ Diamond said. ‘In fact, I made a copy.’

‘There you go, then. I did know about the DNA result and I made my choice not to investigate Joss. I can’t argue. I must face the music for what I did — or, rather, what I didn’t do.’

‘How many of your present team were working for you when it happened?’

‘At the time the DNA result came in? Five I can think of, all trusted friends.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know why you keep on about this, cocky. It’s a blind alley.’

‘Perhaps you’re right. I’m coming from the wrong direction. I’ll try a different way in. The team knew you well. Could it have been someone who didn’t know you well?’

‘You’ve lost me now.’

‘A newcomer.’

‘That’s daft. It had to be someone who knew about the DNA result.’

‘And you said you spoke to no one?’

‘Not a word. The DNA report came to me via headquarters from the lab. Put yourself in my position. You don’t blab about it when you bury bad news.’

‘Who were the latest to join your team?’

‘In CID? Nobody in the last year. You know how it is with all the cuts. They’re not recruiting these days.’

‘Civilian staff?’

‘Only Pat Gomez — but she knows nothing. She arrived from headquarters a couple of weeks before I was suspended.’ They had reached the first roundabout for Chichester town centre. ‘Where to, Grand Inquisitor? Your hotel?’

He looked at his watch. It was close to midnight. ‘I suppose.’

‘Will Dallymore be waiting up for you?’

‘Sure to be.’

‘You’ve got plenty to tell her. What’s she been up to? Has she written her report on me?’

‘Not when I last saw her. If she has, she’s wasted her time.’

She managed a hollow laugh. ‘How can that be?’

‘You’ll find out, Hen.’

Next morning, Diamond and Georgina checked out of the hotel and loaded their luggage into the official car. With difficulty Diamond squeezed himself into the back seat among the golf clubs and pink suitcases.

‘We need to call at Chichester police station first,’ Georgina told their driver. ‘And then county headquarters in Lewes. After that, you can return us to Bath and your duties will be over.’

‘They do themselves proud down here,’ Diamond said as they eventually approached Mailing House, the executive home of Sussex police, an elegant seventeenth-century building in red, grey and orange brick. ‘Makes ours look like a bus station.’

‘Old doesn’t mean better,’ Georgina said. ‘We’re not going to be intimidated.’

‘No way.’

‘You haven’t met Archie. He’s no lightweight.’

They were shown up a superbly carved oak staircase to Archie’s suite on the second floor.

‘Commander Hahn is aware that you’re here,’ his personal assistant told them. ‘Please take a seat and he’ll see you presently.’

‘The age-old trick,’ Diamond said to Georgina. ‘Part of the process of making us feel servile. Don’t forget to curtsey when we go in.’

She gave him a look. She was getting nervous of how he would behave in there.

They didn’t have long to wait.

‘Georgina!’ Hahn, all silver buttons and badges, got up from behind his desk as if meeting a long-lost sister. But instead of a hug, her one-time heart-throb gave her the social double kiss with the minimum of contact. Georgina’s remark in the car had been true: he was no lightweight. He was a featherweight. In fact, he was not much more than a cotton bud.

Georgina introduced Diamond by name and rank. Hahn barely gave him a look. Evidently he didn’t shake hands with mere superintendents. He showed them to a black leather sofa and offered coffee, which they declined.

Diamond was distracted by a movement beside his leg. A little dog with a sandy, long-haired coat had appeared from nowhere and was sniffing his shoes.

‘That’s Nipper,’ Hahn said in a voice suitable for reading from a charge-sheet. ‘He’s being friendly, but keep your hands out of range. He seems to be interested in the splashes of mud on your trouser leg.’

The remark was surely meant to undermine. The attempted clean-up of the suit before breakfast hadn’t been entirely successful. There is only so much you can do in a hotel room with a toothbrush.

Georgina said, ‘I asked to see you, Archie, because we’ve concluded our work here.’

Hahn gave a confident nod. ‘And very grateful I am. Perhaps you can give me the gist of it before you write the report.’

‘That’s why we’re here.’ She turned to Diamond. ‘Peter?’

Hahn couldn’t avoid looking at his second visitor now.

Diamond folded his legs, wanting to discourage Nipper, who was getting to be a nuisance. ‘We’ve spoken to DCI Mallin more than once and she’s entirely frank about what happened. She admits she was in error for failing to investigate her niece when the DNA evidence came to light. It amounted to misconduct.’

‘That’s the crux of it,’ Hahn said, bringing his hands together. ‘There was no justification. Policing has to be scrupulously impartial. Anything that smacks of corruption can’t be tolerated.’

Diamond added, ‘There’s no question that the niece, Jocelyn Mallin, as she was then, before she married, drove the car containing Joe Rigden’s body to Littlehampton.’

‘It’s good to have this confirmed independently.’

‘And it became clear as we investigated that this was part of an ongoing conspiracy within the criminal community to dispose of murdered corpses.’

This was the first thing Archie Hahn didn’t like. He shifted in his chair. ‘But that’s not part of your brief.’

Diamond had his own opinion. ‘I’m sure news has reached you that the person behind this was found dead yesterday on his yacht, apparently from an overdose.’

‘I saw a report, yes — but until the matter has been investigated, his activities must be a matter of speculation.’

‘There isn’t much room for doubt, Commander. As we speak, corpses in refuse sacks are being brought up from a wreck a mile off Selsey Bill. The man known as Davy, actually Stanley Clitheroe, was photographed recently in diving gear with his boat anchored over the point where the wreck lies.’

‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this. You’d better confine your remarks to DCI Mallin.’

‘Very well. Before she was suspended, DCI Mallin had taken an interest in the conspiracy. She suspected a significant number of missing persons along the south coast were murder victims and had been disposed of—’

Hahn broke in so abruptly that Nipper started yapping. ‘Georgina, will you tell your man to address the matter in hand. This is outside the scope of your inquiry.’

Georgina didn’t get a chance because Diamond had no intention of stopping. ‘She took the initiative of contacting CID colleagues right along the coast. It must have created quite a stir here at headquarters when news of what she was doing reached you. Just when there’s pressure from government for improving crime statistics there’s a real danger of your murder rate rising astronomically. She had to be stopped as a matter of urgency.’

‘That’s outrageous.’

‘How convenient that you had something on her, something you’d been content to ignore three years ago when it first came to light.’

Hahn was on his feet. ‘Get this man out of my office, Georgina.’

‘That wouldn’t be wise, commander,’ Diamond said. ‘I’m sure the chief constable will be willing to listen and, if he isn’t, there’s the police and crime commissioner.’ He glanced down. ‘Nipper, basket.’

The tone of voice must have done it. The little dog gave a whimper and ran to the corner of the room and into its basket. And Archie stopped protesting, too.

‘The DNA match that implicated Jocelyn in 2011 was sent here first from the lab and then to DCI Mallin. She showed it to no one and took no action, as we know. Here in headquarters nobody was unduly perturbed. The possibility that a man was in jug for a crime he didn’t commit didn’t trouble you. Danny Stapleton was a career criminal anyway. But someone here was sharp enough to note that Jocelyn Green had been Jocelyn Mallin before she married. The information was noted. Why don’t you sit down? You’re making the dog nervous.’

Hahn had turned as pale as moonlight. He had started pacing, arms folded, fury personified.

Diamond continued. ‘Three years on, when Hen Mallin became interested in missing persons, the alarm bells started ringing here and, I dare say, in the neighbouring police services. She had to be stopped. The difficulty is that she’s stubborn, unlikely to listen to a warning from high. She knew she was on to something.’

Georgina said, ‘Please sit down, Archie. We can deal with this in a civilised way.’

Hahn said to her, ‘Are you associating yourself with this unfounded rubbish?’

‘I happen to know it isn’t rubbish and it isn’t unfounded either.’

Diamond picked up his thread. ‘A plot was devised to stop her. You had the dirt on her, but you had to use it cleverly. You didn’t want anyone knowing you’d been sitting on it for three years. So the whistleblowing couldn’t appear to come from headquarters. Instead, you thought up the dirty trick of having an anonymous letter sent from Chichester, apparently written by one of her team.’

‘Outrageous.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Diamond continued smoothly, ‘so it had to be done with all the skill of a spy operation. Communications between divisional police stations and headquarters are mostly electronic, as we know, but there’s still a regular pick-up of paperwork collected physically by despatch rider. The idea was for someone at Chichester to make sure the letter was included with the other material — and for that you needed a plant. We’ve just been speaking to her: Pat Gomez. It emerged that she was transferred from headquarters to Chichester two weeks before Hen Mallin was suspended. A tried and trusted civilian clerk with family in Chichester, who was pleased to be assigned there.’

‘Don’t blame her, Archie,’ Georgina said. ‘Through no fault of hers we worked out that she acted as the so-called whistle-blower, but she was just the messenger. She did all that you asked.’

The ‘we worked out’ was bending the truth somewhat. Diamond had got there by questioning Hen the evening before.

He let it pass. ‘Pat Gomez had been given a sealed letter to slip in with the other documents for delivery to headquarters. We questioned her closely and that’s as much as she knew. It all went to plan and on receipt the letter was officially stamped and dated and you had the pretext to suspend Hen Mallin and put a stop to her missing persons inquiry.’

‘Which is where we came in,’ Georgina said. ‘You didn’t want it going to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, but you needed an inquiry of some sort to get her sacked, so you approached me as a high-ranking officer from another force. The case was watertight. Even I, with my reputation for leaving no stone unturned, would be sure to endorse the dismissal.’

Georgina’s reputation wasn’t quite as she imagined. Diamond recalled the note Archie Hahn had carelessly left in the file. If — heaven forbid — anything more damaging should emerge, we can rely on her to miss it altogether, or, at worst, bury it. But he’d long ago decided she should never be told.

‘I must inform you now that I’m not going to endorse it,’ Georgina went on, at her barnstorming best. ‘Yes, DCI Mallin was guilty of misconduct, but that was overtaken by far more deplorable misconduct at a higher level.’

‘What?’ Hahn gaped at his college buddy as if she was a ten-tonne truck advancing on him.

‘And there isn’t much doubt who I’m talking about. This may be a matter for your chief constable, or your PCC, or the Home Office. That rather depends on you. We’re going to insist that DCI Mallin is reinstated as head of CID at Chichester with immediate effect. You need her there as a matter of urgency. She’s a fine detective and she was right to start the inquiry into missing persons. She must follow it through to its conclusion, regardless of your damned statistics.’

A cloud of misery had descended on Archie Hahn. He’d stopped pacing. He sank into the chair, defeated. ‘Whatever you say, Georgina, whatever you say.’

Some way into the journey home, Georgina took out her phone and called Bath police station to find out what had been happening in her absence. ‘That’s good,’ she said a number of times. And when asked a question, she said, ‘Oh, highly satisfactory. It was of a sensitive nature and it must remain confidential. It’s safe to say that we solved their little local difficulties.’

She ended the call and turned in her seat. ‘I was speaking to your deputy, Keith Halliwell.’

‘Really? How’s he coping?’

‘Admirably, by the sound of it. They rounded up the jewel thieves you were so concerned about. Caught them red-handed. Purple-handed, in fact. The old trick with the anti-theft detection powder.’

‘They’ll be crowing about that.’

‘Didn’t I say they’d manage perfectly well without you?’

‘I believe I remember something of the sort.’

‘It’s no bad thing, Peter. It could free you up to work more closely with me from time to time. Dallymore and Diamond, detectives.’

He gritted his teeth and said nothing.