Down Among the Dead Men (27 page)

29

B
ack on solid ground—the beach at Selsey—they dragged the inflatable clear of the water and removed their waterproofs, still barely exchanging a word. A staggering sense of shock gripped them all. These officers were used to dealing close-up with death, but none had experienced anything on this scale. The young diver had counted eleven body bags and thought more might be concealed in the mud that partially filled the hold. Little else was said after he surfaced. Everyone needed some silent reflection to come to terms with the gruesome discovery.

Diamond respected the dead as sincerely as anyone else, but things needed to be said, so he gave a briefing of sorts, there on the pebble bank. “Listen up, all of you. This is going to be huge, obviously, but there's work to be done before the media get hold of it. For one thing, we need to nick the toe-rag who put them down there before he knows we're onto him. And as soon as the story breaks, the ordeal for the victims' families will be horrendous. They must be told in advance. It's essential we leak nothing to anyone and that includes your wives, girlfriends, close mates, even other officers. Silence rules—is that understood?”

Dave Albison looked down and shifted some stones with his shoe. “Two days' work, I reckon, recovering that lot. They'll fill the mortuary—and some.”

“So?”

The big team leader raised his eyes. “We can keep it to ourselves, no problem, but that's no guarantee it won't go public. You can bet your life as soon as we start bringing them ashore, someone from round here is going to see us. There's sure to be some gawper. People get suspicious, take pictures, and then we'll have the TV, press and sightseers camped here watching every trip we make.”

The defeatist tone infuriated Diamond. “For Christ's sake, you're the locals, not me. You don't have to bring them ashore here. You must know which beaches aren't much visited. If you can't stage a secure recovery operation you don't deserve to be called a specialist unit, or whatever is on the side of your van. When you get the go-ahead from Chichester CID—which I expect to be this afternoon—you need to have your plan in place.”

“This afternoon?”

“What are you about to tell me—that it's a day of rest?”

“It's a complicated operation, sir. We'll need a bigger boat and more divers.”

“So get them.”

“Ah, but you just said we don't want to alert the scumbag responsible for this.”

“Is that a threat? Are you saying you can't organise yourselves without leaking information?”

“That's not what I meant. Isn't it a question of priorities? Nicking this guy comes first, right?”

“I'm confident of an arrest in the next two hours.”

After a stunned silence, Albison said, “Christ. Do you know who he is?”

“We do.”

A stifled sound of surprise came from Georgina.

Diamond brought the briefing to a close. “So call up your reinforcements, make your plan and stand by for further orders.”

As he and Georgina toiled up the shingle bank, he expected a blasting, but she surprised him. “I endorse everything you said, Peter. It would be calamitous if this got out prematurely. You and I must decide who needs to know.”

“Montacute,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. Clearly she had someone more senior in mind. “Can we trust him with it?”

“We have to. He's the senior investigating officer.”

“He'll hate being told, particularly by you and me. He was pretty dismissive about the missing persons, wasn't he?”

“He told me the enquiry was on the back burner now Hen is suspended. But this is Montacute's patch. He's running the CID, so he must deal with it.”

“I'm not impressed by the man.”

They had reached the narrow walkway above the beach. The car was a short walk away, in the parking area beside the fishermen's huts.

“I've had a few dealings with Montacute,” Diamond said. “I wouldn't want him in my CID, but he's doing his best in a stressful situation. I sensed hostility when we first met him. I actually suspected him of sending the anonymous letter that got Hen into trouble at headquarters. I don't think so anymore. He was resentful of us because his cushy existence had come to a sudden stop. He's a natural second-in-command. It suited him to have Hen as the boss. So I don't believe he undermined her.”

“But is he capable of dealing with this new emergency?”

“Not in the long term. If Hen was right, and it involves other police forces like Hampshire and Dorset, they'll need someone of higher rank.”

“Exactly. I'm thinking we should go straight to headquarters with this.”

Not if I have anything to do with it, Diamond thought. “They'd just about shut down for the weekend when I tried calling them. We need immediate action, a swift arrest. I'd sooner work with Montacute. I can pull his strings. Headquarters will get to hear soon enough.”

A small sigh escaped from Georgina's lips. “I suppose you're right. The arrest is more of an operational matter than an executive one. I was thinking Commander Hahn ought to be informed.”

Give me strength, Georgina, he almost said aloud.

But she wasn't quite such a lost cause. A smile tiptoed over her lips. “It will come as a massive shock to him. He wasn't at all keen on DI Mallin's enquiry.”

“You're right,” Diamond said, grinning back. “He won't be pleased. So let's spare him today.”

He called Chichester CID and arranged to meet DI Montacute at the police station in twenty minutes.

Beside the car park was a children's playground. Children off school today were enjoying the slides and swings while their parents drank coffee at the tables in front of the refreshment stall, untouched by the horror out at sea.

As soon as they were back in the car, he could sense Georgina preparing to broach the question they had not touched on. “Were you bluffing when you said you know who put the bodies down there?”

“No, ma'am.”

After a pause, she said, “I thought we were a team.”

“We are. You said so.”

“You haven't shared your reasoning with me.”

“There isn't any reasoning. It was handed to me. Jim Bentley's friend Norman took a photo.” He dug into his jacket pocket and took out the print he'd been given.

She said, “Him? Oh, my word.”

The man pictured in the diving suit was Davy the model.

30

“D
o we know his surname?” Georgina asked.

“Clitheroe. I asked Tom Standforth.”

“How long have you had this photograph?”

“I met Jim Bentley late yesterday afternoon and he gave it to me along with the GPS reading.”

Her mouth tightened. “You didn't show it to me.”

Tricky. The news would have gone straight to Archie Hahn.

“It could so easily have been a red herring,” he said.

“What on earth do you mean by that?”

“There was no certainty the police diver would find anything. Davy could have been diving for his own amusement. I made sure you came along this morning and I had my fingers crossed that it wasn't all for nothing.”

“You should have told me. We're in this together.” She wasn't exactly sulking, but she was making her annoyance clear.

Some guile was wanted here. This was mainly about massaging Georgina's ego. “Knowing you as I do, ma'am, I strongly suspect you had more than an inkling of what was going on.”

A flush of comfort came to her cheeks, and she indulged in some guile of her own. “I won't deny I had my private theory.”

“I wouldn't mind betting your thoughts were ahead of mine.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Along the lines of people disappearing all along the south coast and the common factor being the closeness of the sea?”

After a moment's consideration her lips curved a little. “That did rather stand out.”

“There being so many wrecks in these coastal waters and if bodies were being buried at sea without any risk of coming to the surface, they'd have to be stowed away in a hold, or some such?”

“It takes a woman to think of practical things like that,” Georgina said.

“And I daresay the name of Davy didn't pass you by. Davy Jones's locker, eh? That's the name he goes by, but his real name is Stanley.”

“Deep inside, I knew something was wrong about the man.”

“Intuition—another feminine talent.”

She raised a warning finger. “Peter, don't overstep the mark.”

“Far from it. You'll have asked yourself how an artists' model could possibly afford the Lamborghini.”

“Now that
is
the sort of thing a lady notices.” She let a few more bends in the road go by before saying, “I'll be interested to see what kind of house he has. I expect he lives in style.”

“Very likely.”

“Do you think he's our murderer?”

“No. My assessment is that he disposes of bodies and that's all. He'll be known in the underworld as the man they go to. And he makes them pay—handsomely.”

“So—going back to the start of our investigation—was Joe Rigden's corpse intended to be buried at sea with the others?”

“Without a doubt. It was loaded into a stolen car and driven to an agreed spot in Littlehampton and left there beside the river for Davy to collect.”

“Elaborate.”

“Davy's cover arrangement. The driver, Joss, wasn't to see him. It's likely she didn't know what she was carrying either. She did her job. Then things went wrong. Danny Stapleton, the man we saw in prison, happened to steal the car before Davy made the pickup.”

“Stapleton is innocent, then?”

“Guilty of car theft, that's all.”

“And he went down for life.”

“He'll get the sentence quashed, but he'll sue, no doubt. Right now, let's focus on Davy. He has enough information to put several murderers behind bars.”

“He'll want to do a deal.”

“I don't think so.”

“A safe house, a new identity. Of course he will.”

“Davy won't risk it. Our best hope is that there are names on his computer, or his phone, or his bank statements.”

“He's smart,” Georgina said. “I doubt if it's so simple.”

Diamond couldn't disagree with that.

At the police station, DI Montacute was grudging in his admiration. “I don't know how you fingered Davy. He wasn't on our radar at all.”

“But you found his address, I hope?”

“He doesn't have one.”

“No fixed abode?” Diamond said in disbelief.

Georgina chimed in with, “This man owns a Lamborghini. He must have an address.”

“He lives on his yacht in the marina.”

“‘On his yacht'?” Georgina's rising voice suggested she was ready to revise her opinion of Davy.

“On his ill-gotten gains,” Diamond said. “The marina—where's that?”

“South of the city. Want to come? We're about to pick him up.”

It sounded so straightforward that Diamond found himself wondering what could go wrong. Had Davy and his yacht already left the marina? Could he have escaped in his inflatable? Or his Lamborghini? Was he sipping champagne on the French Riviera?

Two patrol cars and a minibus full of uniformed officers sped out of the police station and across the A27 by-pass. In the holiday season it's a crawl to the coast along the A286, but today the road was almost clear. The leading driver still used his siren and flashing light when necessary.

Diamond, squeezed into the back seat of the second car between Georgina and Montacute, said, “Is it far?”

“A mile or so.”

“Tell them to cut the blues and twos. It's supposed to be an ambush. He doesn't know we're onto him—or shouldn't.”

The order was given over the radio.

“Will he be armed?” Montacute asked.

“No idea. Have you issued weapons?”

“You bet I have.”

“We want him alive. He's no good to us dead.”

“Relax. We're professionals here in Sussex.”

They swung right onto the narrow road to the marina running alongside the canal. Montacute told the driver to pull over and stop.

“It's still half a mile off,” he explained, “but we don't want to be obvious so we'll let the leading car go ahead and find where the yacht is berthed.”

“Do we know the name?”

“The
Michelangelo David
.”

“That's a work of art, isn't it?”

“Just about the most famous statue in the world,” Georgina said. “A perfectly proportioned nude male figure. Davy the model must have delusions of grandeur.”

“Or a sense of humour.”

“Men don't joke about their own bodies,” she said. “I've never met one who did.”

No one argued with her.

Parked at the roadside, they were close enough to see some masts rising weirdly above the hedge in the flat landscape.

Static was heard from the intercom, followed by: “We've located the yacht, sir. It's at pontoon H, on the right as you drive in. Over.”

“Can you see the suspect?”

“Not at present. It's a big ship, about the biggest here. Over.”

“We'll join you.”

“A ship?” Diamond said. “Do they mean that?”

Georgina treated them to more of her worldly wisdom. “A ship can carry a boat, but a boat can't carry a ship.”

They covered the short distance to the marina entrance. The facility was on a scale Diamond had not anticipated, at least the size of the lake at Fortiman House, with berths for several hundred craft of all sizes. Support buildings, restaurants, boatsheds and a chandlery were ahead.

“We may have got lucky,” Diamond said and pointed to the Lamborghini, parked opposite one of the berths for the largest vessels.

All attention switched to the
Michelangelo David,
moored at the end of pontoon H, a tri-deck monster that dwarfed all the others. No one was visible on deck or in the wheelhouse.

“I thought only Russian oligarchs owned things like that,” Diamond said.

Georgina nodded. “He didn't buy it from his modelling fees.”

Montacute was with a uniformed sergeant deciding on a strategy. The problem was that the boarding ramp midway along seemed to be the only means of access. The gleaming white hull rose at least fifteen feet above water level.

Georgina then surpassed herself by saying, “You're looking at the wrong end. As I remarked, a ship can carry a boat. Any decent hundred and fifty footer has a tender garage. Go aft and you'll find it. That's your way in to all the decks.”

Where had that piece of expertise come from? Diamond had no idea how his boss had become familiar with the design of luxury yachts. There were areas of her life she'd never spoken about.

Deliberately, no doubt, the yacht was moored with its aft end overhanging the open water, but Georgina was right. A boarding party could reach it by using some kind of dinghy, and there is no shortage of them in a marina. It didn't take long to commandeer one from a neighbouring boat owner.

They sealed off pontoon H and the approaches to it.

Montacute took two officers up the boarding ramp while another half-dozen approached by water. A short interval followed to allow them to get aboard and find positions. Diamond and Georgina remained in radio contact in the car. Waiting passively didn't come naturally to Diamond, but this was Montacute's operation. The locals had to be trusted to get on with it.

One of the three on the ramp yelled, “Armed police. We're coming in.”

No reaction.

They stepped over the gunwale. It wasn't like battering a door down.

Watching from the patrol car, Georgina said, “Let's hope he's home.”

“And hospitable,” Diamond added. “Something's got to happen shortly.”

The heads and shoulders of armed men could be seen moving on the open areas of each of the decks.

Shouting carried to them from the ship, but it wasn't combative shouting, more like a repeat of the first announcement.

At least another minute went by—and felt like ten.

Then the radio crackled.

“Mr. Diamond, you'd better come up.”

“Have you got him?”

“Yes and no.”

What sort of answer was that? He turned to Georgina, eyebrows raised. She spread her hands.

They left the car and ran along the pontoon and boarded the yacht. Officers with drawn guns waved them along a stretch of deck to the main salon, a carpeted space with a marble inlay bar, L-shaped leather sofa and chairs and a fold-down plasma TV. Forward was the dining area, with a walnut wood table capable of seating twelve. Another police officer directed them down the steps of a companionway and into a spacious cabin where Montacute and two others were standing beside a king-size bed with a black duvet.

Georgina said, “Tarnation.”

Face down and naked on the duvet was a male body all too familiar to the two novice artists. Davy would not be posing for them again. Nor would he be answering questions.

Diamond said, “This wasn't in the script.”