Down Among the Dead Men (28 page)

31

T
he cause of death appeared obvious. A cocktail of drugs and champagne had killed him. Two empty Bollinger bottles and some used blister packs that must have contained sleeping tablets stood on the bedside shelf.

Self-inflicted? Almost certainly. If you had resolved to take your own life, this method beat most others.

Georgina said, “Damn you, Davy!”

Diamond's anger was focused elsewhere. “Some idiot tipped him off. I thought I could trust that dive team.” He snatched up one of the blister packs and looked at the label. A sedative, one of the benzodiazepine group.

Montacute was shaking his head. “I can't understand his thinking. If he'd co-operated, he'd have got a short stretch.”

How naïve was that? “Co-operated by naming his clients, you mean?” Diamond said. “A short stretch is right. He'd have been found dead in his cell in days. These are major criminals with as much clout inside jail as out.”

“Well, if he'd stayed silent and served a full term, he'd have survived.”

“He wouldn't. If he'd stayed silent as a bag of feathers the mob would still have killed him. He was too much of a risk. He knew if ever he was caught, his number was up. When his business was thriving, the killers came to him and paid him well. One failure and he was dead meat.”

All the talk was negative. Montacute tried to be upbeat. “We'll check everything he used, phone, iPad, computer.”

“Don't build up your hopes. In a high-risk job like his, you don't leave a trail. It's all too easy to drop things overboard.”

The optimism was all used up. “I thought this was the breakthrough.”

“You're not the only one. We're stuffed.”

But Diamond knew better than to dwell on it. Out at Selsey, the dive team were standing by to begin recovering bodies. He called Albison. Any recriminations about leaked information would have to wait. He told him tersely to launch the boat.

The man couldn't resist saying, “About bloody time.”

“Where are you starting from?”

“Selsey beach—where we were before.”

“I thought you decided Selsey was too public.”

“Doesn't matter where we start from, does it?” Albison said. “Like you said, it's where we land them that counts.”

Fair comment. “So have you chosen somewhere else?”

“Pagham Harbour. It's quiet and should be getting dark by the time we return.”

“Call me the minute you bring the first one up.”

“One good thing about being from another force,” he remarked to Georgina when they were being driven back to their hotel. “The crime scene is someone else's problem.”

“I'm not sure about that, Peter.”

“Why?”

“We can't cut ourselves off from it. As you said on the beach this morning, the press will have a field day when those bodies are brought to the surface. I keep wondering how Commander Hahn will react. It won't play well in terms of public confidence. Rightly or wrongly he's going to suspect we exceeded our brief. I entered on this mission from the best of motives, willing to help another force.”

No you didn't, he thought. You wanted to cosy up to your old flame and get out on the golf course.

She went on: “He's going to wish Davy's grisly trade had never been exposed.”

She was right about that.

And then a smile flashed across her features like a flick knife and Diamond realised that his boss had seen the light at last.

In the hotel entrance, Georgina said, “After the morning we've had, we deserve a late lunch.”

“No offence,” Diamond said, “but I need to make a personal call.”

“How long will that take?”

“Depends. Don't wait for me if you're hungry.”

“I'll find a table for one, then.”

This time, he felt a twinge of guilt. After that smile at Archie Hahn's expense, she didn't deserve to eat alone.

The call he made wasn't on the phone as he'd implied. He left the hotel and walked round to Hen's flat. The morning's discoveries would affect her profoundly and he wanted to break the news to her in person.

In a tracksuit and flipflops, she appeared smaller and more vulnerable than he'd seen her before. “Come in, love of my life,” she said. Whatever you thought of Hen, you couldn't call her standoffish.

He'd been trying to think of a way of telling her about the bodies under the sea. She was certain to fear Joss was down there with the others. Family ties overrode everything. The fact that she had been proved right to agitate about missing persons would not be high in her thoughts.

He set out the facts as calmly as he could, explaining how Jim Bentley's information had led him to the discovery of the wreck containing the bodies and to Davy's suicide, but he could see the increasing alarm in Hen's eyes.

“They're starting to bring them up,” he said. “It's not a job they can hurry. It may be days before the identification can start.”

“So I should prepare for the worst. I can't go on denying it,” she said. “The truth has been staring at me for days. Joss knew too much. She may not have known at the time it was a murdered corpse she was delivering to Littlehampton, but she found out later when the plan went to buggery and started a murder hunt. Poor kid must have been bricking it—and with her own daffy aunt heading the enquiry.”

“Don't knock yourself, Hen.”

“Thanks to my incompetence no arrest was made at the time. The whole thing went on hold. After years went by, she must have hoped she was in the clear. She didn't know about the DNA match. Finally it all got out because of that whistleblower I prefer to call a rat fink. I was suspended and Joss—now known to the police—put in danger of her life.”

“You think she knew Rigden's killer?”

“Must have got her orders from someone, mustn't she?”

“How would she have got into this in the first place?”

“With her history as a druggie? Obvious, isn't it? When you're in deep, you meet bad people and get asked to do bad things. They don't make life easy for you. I must face it. She's going to be one of those bodies.”

“She could have gone into hiding.”

“Pete, I know you mean well, but this won't have a happy ending.”

He tried stressing the positive result of the morning's discoveries. “You've been proved right about the people who went missing. That's something Georgina and I can tell headquarters when we make our report.”

“Do they really want to know? I'm a thorn in their flesh.”

“With your job on the line, as it is, I'm going to make damned sure they know what a good cop you are.”

“You're pissing in the wind, Pete. They want me out.”

“We'll see about that.”

She insisted on making coffee and sharing a pork pie she'd been saving for lunch. He realised that, like Georgina, he'd got hungry. While watching those images from the ocean floor, he'd thought he wouldn't be able to face food for the rest of the day.

With Hen busy in the kitchen, he stepped into the living room and tried calling Dave Albison for the latest news of the recovery operation. Without success. He left a message and used the word urgent twice over. As a non-diver he had no way of estimating how long it would take to retrieve the first body.

Facing Hen across her small kitchen table, he said, “I still haven't worked out a motive for Rigden's murder. Everything stems from that. Find the motive, find his killer and we'd be motoring.”

“And the best of British luck,” she said.

“Did he have any connections to the underworld?”

“Joe Rigden? You're joking. The angels formed a guard of honour when he went through the pearly gates.”

“Was mistaken identity a possibility?”

“Crossed my mind, but I never got anywhere with it.”

“You see what I'm driving at? The planning that went into his disposal suggests it was organised crime, same as the others you were on about, but he wasn't a known criminal.”

“Did you say organised? A large part of his head was blown away with a shotgun. Downright messy for professionals.”

He nodded. He, too, believed the killing had been clumsy.

Hen's thoughts had moved on. “I don't like to think what they did to Joss.”

“Don't go there, Hen.” He changed tack. “Yesterday, in Mrs. Shah's garden, after Georgina and I found you sitting in the shed, I caught your eye at one point and you seemed to be on the point of saying something important.”

“Was I?” Her thoughts were still elsewhere.

“Shortly before you left,” he said. “Georgina was ranting about you wasting police time. Fair enough. She
had
got herself in a mess pursuing you around the lake next door.”

She managed a slight smile. “She wasn't dressed for a hike.”

“She was in a strop and she ordered you to leave. That was when I thought you were ready to share something with us.”

“Got you.” Attention was fully restored. “But I don't know if it's still worth sharing. When I first parked my car and looked inside Holly Blue Cottage, I thought I saw someone.”

“In the cottage?”

“Yes.”

“It looked derelict to me,” Diamond said. “We knocked and got no answer and when I looked through the letterbox there was a heap of mail on the floor.”

“I saw that, too. Like you, I took it that no one was at home, but when I went round the side I saw a large black cat creeping through the long grass for all the world as if it thought it was a panther in the jungle. I must have startled it, because it turned into a moggy and dashed to the back door and straight through a cat flap. Made me think twice because it was obviously used to going in. I went right up to the kitchen window and looked in and I'm sure there was a movement inside.”

“The cat?”

“No. This was a figure framed in the doorway.”

“Male?”

“Couldn't tell you. They darted out of sight immediately. I tapped on the window. After all, I was on someone else's property and you don't march through without so much as a good-day, do you? Whoever they were, they had no wish to meet me.”

“A squatter?”

“That was my thought. Empty place. It's a temptation.”

“You've got me interested, Hen. On Saturday, when the artists were doing their stuff at Fortiman House, I took a walk down to the lake and I definitely saw someone on the far side walking the bank. Beanie hat, long, brown coat and boots. They were in front of the wall, which we now know is shared with Holly Blue Cottage.”

“Are you sure it wasn't one of the artists?”

“They were all in the studio. I thought I was alone out there until this person appeared. Could be your squatter.”

“Don't blame them on me, squire. I'm in trouble enough.”

“Whoever it was could have come through the door in the wall, thinking they wouldn't be seen. I'm going to take another look.”

“Good call.” Her eyes glinted. “There's something else you ought to know. I thought a lot about Holly Blue Cottage and its situation.”

“So close to Fortiman House, you mean?”

“And so neglected. I decided to make some enquiries about the owner. Got on the internet and accessed the Land Registry. It took persistence and a couple of phone calls as well, but finally I got some information. After Miss Shah died it was bought by a company known as Mombasa Holdings Limited.”

“I know. I did a check myself. Makes sense—the Indian connection.”

“So you would assume. So anybody would assume. But did you check the directors' names?”

“No.”

“I did. I got on to Companies House and got the names. There are two directors: Ferdinand and Thomas Standforth.”

“Ferdie and Tom? How odd.”

“That's what I thought at first. I don't know how these deals are done, but it looks as if they took over an existing company that owned the place while Mrs. Shah was alive. Buying the property next door makes sense if they plan to expand.”

“But they've done nothing to it.”

“And now they seem to have a squatter. You want a lift to the cottage? I'm up for it.”

32

G
eorgina wasn't on the trip. If Diamond had learned anything in recent days, it was the wisdom of keeping two strong women apart. Almost certainly she would have vetoed more trespassing at Holly Blue Cottage.

Hen drove while Diamond talked, making sure he kept off the topic of the bodies under the sea. Small talk didn't come naturally to him. He treated her to his opinions on films of the 1940s, notably
Odd Man Out
and
The Wicked Lady
and for some reason she was amused. She was still chuckling when she stopped the car in front of the cottage.

He got out beside the nameboard. “Daft name—Holly Blue. The only holly I've ever seen is green, with red berries.”

“Shows your ignorance, city slicker,” Hen said. “It's a butterfly. Look at the picture underneath.”

“But why give a butterfly a name that makes no sense?”

“It's blue—a gorgeous silver blue, much more delicate than the picture.”

“I get that part.”

“And it feeds on holly leaves. Satisfied?”

“How the heck do you know about the holly leaves?”

“Are you questioning my countryside cred? I'm a Sussex woman. I get about, go for walks, notice things and look them up when I get home. Townies like you spend all your time indoors watching old films. You wouldn't know a holly blue from a silver-spotted skipper.”

“The clouded yellow,” he said, “I know that.”

“Cripes! There's hope yet.”

“Jean Simmons and Trevor Howard. 1951.”

“God help us, not another old film.”

The cottage looked every bit as derelict as when they'd seen it last. They decided to try the back door. Hen stepped out confidently without any pretence of subterfuge. Diamond, a couple of paces behind, could only admire this forthright little woman, the set of her shoulders and the head held high. This was the DCI Mallin he knew, on the case and primed for action.

She stopped. “Did you hear something?”

“My phone?” His hand went to his pocket. It was high time Dave Albison called. But nothing had come through.

“Voices,” Hen said.

He shook his head.

“I'm not making this up.”

“Inside the cottage?”

“No, in the open. From next door, I expect.”

They waited a few seconds. Whatever Hen had heard wasn't repeated, so they pressed on, tangling with spiderwebs, brambles and overgrown shrubs to get to the back door.

“This was the window I looked through,” she said.

He put his face close to the dusty glass. “I don't know how you saw anything.”

“Outlined in the doorway.”

“The door's closed.”

“Get away. It wasn't when I was last here.” She peered in, shading her eyes with her hand. “Well, there's a thing. Someone
was
inside, or I've gone squiffy.”

He approached the back door. “Let's see if we can get in.”

“Notice the cat flap,” Hen said. “I didn't imagine that.”

“I can't squeeze through there. You might manage.” He tried the handle, but the door was locked. It was a simple, old-fashioned mortice lock set into the wood. He bent to look through the keyhole.

“Wouldn't you know it?” He stepped back and felt in his pocket. “There's a way of picking a lock like this.”

“Tell me about it, Houdini. I don't think the credit card trick is going to work. All you'll do is damage your card.”

“Do you have a nail file?”

“Do I look like a woman who carries a nail file?”

“I may have to use brute force.”

“Before you do,” she said, “look under the doormat.”

After giving her the look that said even in rural Sussex keys under doormats were a thing of the past, he stooped to lift a corner of the filthy old coconut mat. Underneath were a few dead earthworms and a large family of woodlice. He lifted the whole mat. More wildlife. No key. He dropped the mat, making his feelings clear.

“Try the ledge above the door.”

Swearing under his breath, he felt with his fingertips and touched something that moved, fell and hit the mat.

A rusty key.

“How did you know?”

“Old cottage, old custom.”

He used the key and it worked. “Hen, I owe you a beer.”

“Make that Sussex Pride.”

They stepped inside the kitchen and saw at once that it had been in use not long ago. A bowl of fresh cat food was on the floor to the right. The sink was damp and there was a mug with the dregs of some coffee. Diamond found the fridge and opened it. The interior light came on.

“They have a power supply.”

They also had eggs, butter, milk, yoghurt, an opened tin of apricots and some grapefruit.

He said, “I'm starting to feel like Goldilocks.”

She eyed his scant hair and said, “No comment.”

He crossed the room and stepped through a door.

It's strange how violence announces itself. For a split second he sensed imminent danger. He ducked, but couldn't stop something heavy and hard impacting with his head. A starburst was followed by oblivion.

Somebody was speaking his name. He tried to respond and couldn't. His voice wasn't working.

He felt the chill of water splash his face. He shook his head and opened his eyes. Focusing was difficult. A shape materialised and sharpened. A face close to his.

“Get a grip for God's sake, Goldilocks.”

Only one person ever spoke to him like that.

He managed to whisper to Hen, “What happened?”

“You got taken out with a frying pan.”

It took an effort to work out that he was lying on the floor. A cushion had been placed under his head. It felt like a cement block. He tried to move.

“Keep still,” Hen said. “Don't force it.”

“Who . . . ?”

“Can't tell you. They're not here any longer. Belted out through the front. I didn't get much of a look. He must have been poised right here with the frying pan. Can't really blame him. We're intruders.”

“You didn't give chase?”

“Seeing to you was more urgent.”

“Am I bleeding?”

“You'll have a bump the size of a plum.”

“How long was I out?”

“More than the official count. It was one hell of a crack. Do you want a drink now? I can prop you up a bit.”

“I'd rather get after him.”

“You're in no shape.”

“Never was.” He propped himself up on one elbow. The head was sore, but clearing. “I'll be all right. I took harder knocks in my rugby-playing days.”

“Not with a three pound frying pan you didn't. Feel the weight of that.” She held out the offensive weapon, black and solid-looking.

“I'll take your word for it.” He sat up fully. “Let's at least take a look outside. He can't be far off.” He braced his legs, grabbed the doorpost and hauled himself up. Briefly he thought his balance was going, and then he stood firm.

“Crazy guy,” Hen said. “You're not ready.”

The fresh air helped his head. In the hayfield that had once been a garden, they looked for signs of disturbance. The beaten paths to the front gate, the garden hut and the door in the wall were the obvious routes his attacker might have taken.

“Stay here while I check the back. Give a yell if you see him,” Hen said. She was in charge and he was in no shape to argue.

The front gate wasn't far off, and he didn't feel quite so bad, so he stepped out on those shaky legs to get a better view. Hen's car stood in the lane. No other vehicle had been in sight when they arrived, making it unlikely anyone had escaped on wheels. He managed a few more steps, looking to both sides. There weren't many places for his attacker to hide.

As he was turning to go back he thought he heard a sound like someone clearing their throat.

He stopped to listen. It may have come from the woods fringing the road. Possibly a deer or a fox. Hen, the countrywoman, would know one animal sound from another. She'd laugh if he'd been taken in.

He started to move on, then felt unsteady, so he stopped by the car and leaned his back against it, thinking Hen had been right. He should have waited longer before trying to move.

He felt in his pocket for the phone. Albison still hadn't called. Had the thing been damaged when he fell? He checked and it seemed to be functioning normally. No calls had been received.

Then a disembodied voice said, “Are you all right?”

He turned.

A woman stood up on the other side of the Fiat. She must have been crouching out of sight behind it. Middle-aged, with owlish round glasses and her dark hair in a coiled plait, she was in a jumper and skirt—unsuitable for outdoors on a cool autumn afternoon—so he had to assume she was the squatter.

“Was it you in there?” he asked.

She clutched both hands to her chest. “I'm
so
sorry. You frightened me, coming into the cottage suddenly like that.”

He returned the phone to his pocket, trying to decide how he should deal with this.

“You're terribly pale,” she said. “You ought to lie down.”

As if he wasn't confused enough, his attacker was troubled about the state of his health. “What were you doing in there?”

“I'm living there. Who are you?”

The question he'd been on the point of asking her. Saying he was from the police would surely panic her. He didn't trust his legs to go in pursuit. “You don't know me. My name's Peter.”

“Did Tom send you?”

So she knew young Standforth. And well enough to call him by his first name.

She expected an answer, so he gave one. “Not exactly, but I know him. Shall we talk in the cottage?”

“I don't wish to talk.”

He took a small step to his left, meaning to move around the car, and she took a step of her own the other way. They were like a pair of kids playing chase—a game he certainly couldn't win.

Keep her talking, he told himself. Hen will be back shortly. “You're living in a cottage that doesn't belong to you.”

“Is that any business of yours?”

She had to be told. “It is—because I'm a police officer.” He turned his head and yelled, “Hen, we're over here, by the car.”

Instead of running off, she put her hands to her face and sobbed, shaking convulsively.

When Hen appeared round the side of the cottage, he was already steering the distressed woman towards the open door.

“Christ, Peter, did you give her a clout?”

“I told her we're police, that's all.”

She took the woman's hand and helped her inside. “It's all right, my love. He's not going to do you for cracking him over the head. He'd be a laughing-stock. I've often felt like clonking him and you've beaten me to it. Let's all have a friendly chat in the front room.”

“Friendly” would have been overstating it and the chat had to wait some minutes, but Hen dusted off three chairs and brewed some tea and the woman dried her eyes.

The homely touch was working.

“He's Peter and I'm Hen and we're not here to evict you or anything. What shall we call you?”

She hesitated before saying, “I'm Constance.”

“Then I know who you are,” Diamond told her. “You're the missing schoolteacher—Miss Constance Gibbon.”

She blinked twice and said nothing.

“So do we call you Connie?” Hen asked as she filled the three mugs.

“No one calls me that,” Miss Gibbon said with disdain.

Connie or Constance, it didn't bother Diamond. He'd worked out her identity. And he felt more comfortable seated. “So this is a sort of grace and favour home for you, is it?”

“I wouldn't call it that,” she said. “It's more of a refuge. I'm not ungrateful, but that's what it is.”

“You didn't want anyone to know you're here?”

“That was the intention. I've been in a dreadful state of mind for weeks, close to a breakdown. I needed privacy, a place to shut everything out and Tom kindly suggested here.”

“So you leave the mail on the mat to make it look as if it's still empty?”

“Nobody except Tom knew until you came along.”

“Something must have gone badly wrong for you.”

“That's an understatement. I was lured into a situation that was dishonest and impossible to cope with. I was so cruelly treated that I almost lost my sanity.”

Almost lost it? Diamond was asking himself if she'd already gone beyond. “What happened?”

She closed her eyes for some seconds as if the memory was too painful to recall. Finally, she spoke in an expressionless voice. “It goes back three years, to a time when I was unemployed. I'm a trained teacher, but there weren't any jobs where I was, in Fulham. I lived alone in a bed-sit. It was so depressing. I was in debt, but I just had to get out sometimes and go for a drink. When I say “a drink” I mean exactly that, a single glass of red wine. I'd visit a gay and lesbian bar in Soho—that's the way I am, in case you hadn't realised.”

Diamond wasn't in realising mode. He had given no more thought to Miss Gibbon's sexuality than to her size in shoes.

“One Saturday evening,” she went on, “I met this woman called Olivia who unexpectedly took an interest in me. She was strong and attractive and I thought she was out of my league. She was dressed in the latest clothes and wearing jewellery that was clearly the real thing. She didn't seem to mind that I couldn't pay for drinks. She took me to a club I'd never heard of and we danced and had more drinks and spent the night together. She paid for everything. In the morning I thanked her, thinking that would be the end of it, but to my astonishment she said she'd like to do the same thing the following weekend. I told her I felt uncomfortable not paying my share, but she brushed that aside.”

“Had you told her your situation?” Hen asked.