Down Among the Dead Men

by Peter Lovesey

  The focus shifted to the South Downs village of Slindon after Joe Rigden was reported missing and duly confirmed as the victim. The reports showed that Rigden’s isolated cottage had been searched and photographed, but no signs of violence or a break-in were found there and none of his property seemed to be missing.

  A thick sheaf of statements showed how extensive the interviewing had been in Slindon. The murdered man had been well-known locally and seemed to have led a blameless life earning an honest living. His skills as a self-employed gardener were appreciated and he wasn’t short of work. Statements had been collected from the people he worked for and they read like testimonials. “Reliable and knowledgeable . . . often worked long past the time he was paid for . . . came in all weathers . . . brought his own tools . . . got rid of the moles that were ruining my lawn . . . advised me on my roses and came with me to pick the best specimens at the garden centre . . . I trusted him absolutely.”

  Three weeks in, the detectives working on the murder had held a case review. Reading between the lines, they were frustrated by the lack of information. The investigation was hampered by the absence of any obvious motive. The early suspicions that Danny had killed for the two thousand pounds had been scaled down when it became clear that the money couldn’t have been Rigden’s. The gardener banked his earnings regularly on Saturdays and his bank statements confirmed he hadn’t made any large withdrawals in the last three years. You might have expected a self-employed man paid in cash to have salted some of it away and avoided paying tax. Not so Joe Rigden. He kept accounts and was almost unbelievably straight with the inland revenue. Even his tips were declared. There was little chance that he had a large amount of cash in his house or on his person waiting to be stolen.

  A month into the investigation, Chichester CID were forced to conclude that Danny had not acted alone and was not the prime mover in the murder, but an accessory. The money appeared to have been his payment for disposing of the dead body in a way that wouldn’t connect the killer to the crime. As a professional car thief, he had been hired to steal a vehicle and either dump the body in some remote place or leave it to be discovered in the abandoned car. Unluckily for him, he had been caught.

  The case against Danny as a paid accessory was always more likely to succeed than charging him as the killer. Substantial efforts were made to pinpoint the main perpetrator. Danny was repeatedly questioned and continued to deny all knowledge of the murder. He couldn’t deny being in possession of the money and being caught with the body in the stolen car. And he was a self-confessed liar.

  The Crown Prosecution Service took on the case and eventually it came to trial. Reading the summary, Diamond concluded that Danny had done himself no service by pleading not guilty and denying almost everything. The judge had come to the view that this habitual criminal knew the identity of the killer and was shielding him from justice. After a summing up stressing that the killing bore all the hallmarks of professional involvement and that Danny’s part in it was for financial gain, a unanimous verdict of guilty was returned by the jury. The life sentence came with a minimum term of ten years before he could be considered for release.

  If Danny’s conviction drew a line under the case, it was only a dotted line. The team were conscious that the main man was still at liberty and reviews were held periodically, but each time they came back to the unanswerable question: why would anyone want to kill a popular working man who had never been involved in anything underhand? Without a motive they were hamstrung.

  “How far have you got?”

  Diamond was so immersed that he took a moment to register that Georgina had spoken. “Ah. I’m up to the trial.”

  “We’ve been here almost two hours. I’m starting to skip things and I shouldn’t. I say we need a break.”

  “Can’t disagree.”

  “I’ll phone Pat Gomez and ask her for some tea.”

  “Mine didn’t taste too good. I don’t know what they put in it. Fresh air would suit me better.”

  “I can see the canal basin from here,” Georgina said. “People are walking there and there’s a café of some sort with tables outside.”

  They found that the Canal Trust had its own shop and the tea was drinkable. Apart from a family of swans, there wasn’t much activity on the water, but the path around it was ideal for a stroll and the locals were taking advantage of a fine afternoon. A group of schoolchildren had taken over a bench. There were cyclists and anglers.

  “I’m not too impressed by these CID people,” Georgina said. “Barely civil, don’t you think?”

  “I can understand how they feel, their regular boss suspended and a jerk like Montacute in charge. There were some grins when you turfed him out of the office.”

  “I missed that.”

  “And one of them must be the whistleblower. There are going to be tensions in the team.”

  “So you think the anonymous letter came from an insider?”

  “Don’t you? It was sent from here. It had to be someone in the know.”

  “I expect you’re right,” Georgina said. “Yes, it would put everyone under strain.”

  “Were you shown the letter?”

  She flushed a shade deeper. “I was told what it had to say. Brief and to the point, I gather.”

  “You haven’t seen it yourself, then?”

  “I don’t think anyone disputes the accuracy of it.”

  “The SIO’s career is at stake and we’ve been asked to investigate. I would say we have a duty to look at it.”

  “Peter, we’re not investigating the whistleblower.”

  “That isn’t my point. This is evidence. We’d be negligent if we didn’t ask to see it.”

  She sighed. “You’re right. I’ll speak to Archie.” She took out her phone.

  When she got through, she got up from her chair and moved away from Diamond, along the towpath. A private call.

  She soon returned and said, “It’s being sent by messenger. We’ll get it before we leave.”

  After that small victory, Diamond waited a few moments before saying, “Up to now I haven’t asked the name of this unfortunate SIO.”

  “That’s true.”

  He waited and got nothing more and finally said, “Who is he, then?”

  “It’s a woman, a DCI Henrietta Mallin.”

  11

  His thoughts were spinning like electrons, but he stayed silent and appeared uanmoved.

  He wasn’t giving Georgina the satisfaction of seeing the shock she’d just delivered.

  Ten years and more had gone by since he had worked with Hen Mallin on a case involving a Bath woman murdered on Wightview Sands, a south coast beach. The short, cigarillo-smoking DI from Bognor had been lively company on a complex, demanding investigation. Any woman heading a CID team had to be tough and vocal, and Hen was. Given a hard time when she was a rookie—more than her share of dangerous dogs, delinquent teenagers, abusive men and over-ripe corpses—she’d come through and risen in the ranks. With Diamond she’d formed an unlikely bond. He’d learned early on that she lived alone, a status that had been recently and painfully forced on him, and her strength of character had been an inspiration.

  He couldn’t believe Hen was the corrupt SIO.

  Gulls were swooping over the canal, screaming a soundtrack to the mayhem in his brain.

  “Yes, a woman,” Georgina added. “Believe it or not, my half of the human race is as capable as yours of going wrong.”

  She had misread his silence.

  “Of course,” she went on, “it pains me to investigate one of my own sex who has reached high rank and misbehaved, but that won’t put me off. Whoever she is, she needn’t expect any favours from me.”

  Whoever she is?

  She was talking as if Hen was a stranger. What’s going on here? Diamond asked himself. Surely she remembers.


  He made a huge effort to get his brain functioning as it should, to recall that summer of 2003. Georgina had been in the job for sure. She was well established as the ACC by then. She liked to keep tabs on every investigation. She must have known about Hen. No one could forget a character like that. Hen had come to Bath at least once. He remembered questioning a suspect with her.

  But had the two actually met?

  Any conceivable reason why they hadn’t?

  A memory popped up, something to do with a cat.

  A cat?

  A cat called Sultan.

  Georgina on the point of taking time off to go on a Nile cruise, all her thoughts focused on Egypt—except for the problem of what to do with her long-haired cat, Sultan. Diamond had come to her aid by finding her a house sitter and—sod’s law—Anna, the house sitter, had been allergic to cats. He’d ended up taking Sultan home.

  By the time Georgina had returned from her cruise, the case was closed and Hen had gone back to Sussex.

  So this wasn’t loss of memory. She and Hen had never met.

  Now she was filling the silence again. “I didn’t think you’d have a problem dealing with a woman under suspension.”

  “I don’t.”

  “That’s all right, then.” She smiled in a superior way.

  But it wasn’t all right. It was all wrong. He should declare an interest and extract himself from this mess.

  He couldn’t. He had a mental picture of Hen, her career in ruins, forced out of the job she loved and now about to be put on the rack by Georgina. Two formidable women. If each had the effect on the other he expected, Hen could only suffer more.

  She needed support.

  But was he the right person to supply it? How would she react to having him around at this low point in her career? She might take it as more humiliation than she could bear. He knew how he would feel. In time of trouble, he’d rather go to strangers than friends.

  He could back off and be home tonight.

  Except that he’d seen what Archie Hahn had written about Georgina. “If—heaven forbid—anything more damaging should emerge, we can rely on her to miss it altogether, or, at worst, bury it.”

  Cruel, but true. Left to manage alone, Georgina would rubber-stamp everything headquarters had decided.

  “Where does she live?”

  “Chichester, I was told.”

  “When do you want to see her?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “At home?”

  “It has to be. She’s banned from the police station.”

  “Better get someone to phone and let her know.”

  They returned to their task of going through the files.

  The anonymous letter was delivered by a despatch rider under instructions to hand it to ACC Dallymore in person and then return with it to headquarters.

  Georgina opened the envelope and read what was inside before handing it to Diamond.

  The message had been produced on standard A4 paper on a printer. It had been rubber-stamped Sussex Police Headquarters. Someone had added a note and initials: Received by post 3/8/14. Chichester postmark dated 2/8/14. The initials were familiar: AH.

  WITH REFERENCE TO THE MURDER OF JOSEPH RIGDEN IN 2007, A DNA SAMPLE TAKEN IN 2011 FROM A DRUNK AND DISORDERLY WOMAN, MRS. JOCELYN GREEN, WAS CHECKED WITH THE NATIONAL DATABASE AND FOUND TO MATCH TRACES OF FEMALE DNA RECOVERED FROM THE CAR USED TO TRANSPORT RIGDEN’s BODY. THE MATCH WAS NOTIFIED TO THE SENIOR INVESTIGATING OFFICER, DCI MALLIN, CHICHESTER POLICE, AND NO ACTION WAS TAKEN. A MAN IS CURRENTLY SERVING A LIFE SENTENCE AS AN ACCESSORY TO THE MURDER. HE CLAIMS TO BE INNOCENT. JOCELYN GREEN IS THE NIECE OF DCI MALLIN.

  “Pretty damning, wouldn’t you say?” Georgina said.

  “This is accurate?”

  “That’s why DCI Mallin is suspended and we’re here.”

  “Quite a professional job,” he said, trying to sound unmoved. “Lays out the facts without any emotion, unlike other anonymous letters I’ve come across. I’m glad we’ve seen it. I’ll photocopy it.”

  Georgina took a sharp breath. “I don’t think we’re entitled to do that.”

  “No one said we can’t. We may need to refer to it.”

  “The rider is waiting to return it to headquarters.”

  “He can carry on waiting.”

  “That isn’t what I’m saying, Peter. We saw this on the understanding that it was for our eyes only. Archie won’t want us making a spare copy.”

  Archie could go to hell, but he didn’t say so. “I’m not going to show it to anyone. We’ve been asked to do a job, ma’am. They must trust us. Sorry about the ‘ma’am’. It slipped out.” He crossed the room to the machine that served as printer, copier and scanner. “Any idea how this thing works?”

  If you want to be a Mr. Fixit in the twenty-first century, it helps to be computer-literate.

  Georgina sighed heavily, joined him and showed him how. Even so, it was a significant moment in their partnership. They made the photocopy and he folded it and put it in his pocket with Archie’s damning note about Georgina. Then he sealed the original in an envelope addressed to Commander A. Hahn and handed it to the despatch rider.

  Soon after, they finished reading the files and walked back to their hotel.

  “Shall we meet for a meal in an hour or so?” Diamond said when they got there.

  “I think not,” Georgina said. “I’ve developed a headache. I’ll have room service.”

  She can’t take any more of me, he thought with satisfaction. I’ll find a pub that serves pie and chips.

  12

  Hen Mallin had a flat in a modern block near the Hornet, only a short walk from where they were staying. She wasn’t the sort to be intimidated by senior officers, but she was likely to be keyed up. Difficult to predict how the session would go. At least she would be on home territory.

  Stepping along a busy road that ran beside the ancient city wall, Diamond asked Georgina, “How’s your head this morning?”

  “Why?”

  “You weren’t feeling so good last night.”

  “I’m perfectly fit, thank you,” she said with a firmness that closed that avenue. “I’ve decided it will be wise if you leave the questioning to me when we meet this woman.”

  “Suits me.” He’d got the message. The skirmish over the photocopying had shaken the boss. She was nervous he would take over. And what a temptation it was to say she could do the whole shebang without him, but that would have been a cop-out. He needed to be there for Hen’s sake.

  “If I invite you to speak for any reason, I won’t mind if you address me as ‘ma’am’ in this situation.”

  “Fine.” But he had to stop his stomach muscles twitching with amusement.

  She added, “I’m still agreeable to relaxing the modes of address when we’re off duty.”

  “Me, too.” Relaxing the modes of address—an expression to savour. The old devilry made him add, “Is it Georgina, Georgie or George?”

  She almost tripped over her own feet. “Is what?”

  “What you’d really like to be called.”

  She turned to look at him, eyes the size of sunflowers. “I wasn’t inviting you to use my first name. I don’t think of us as friends. We’re colleagues being civil with each other.”

  “That’s okay, then.”

  “It works both ways. If you don’t like me using your first name from time to time, I won’t.”

  “You always have. It doesn’t bother me. I’d draw the line at Pete.” And then the game became more serious as he remembered that Hen used to call him a variety of names from sport to sweetie and he’d found them all amusing. What on earth would she call him when he turned up at her front door after ten years? He didn’t want Georgina finding out they were old buddies. A strategy was needed here. “You did let this woman
know we’re coming? Is she expecting two of us?”

  “I forget what I said. It doesn’t matter.”

  “You wouldn’t have mentioned me by name?”

  “Why should I? We’ll introduce ourselves when we get there.”

  They had to go upstairs to the top of the three-storey red brick building and along an open passageway. And now the strategy came into play. Diamond made sure he was well to the rear when the door opened. Unseen by Georgina, he put a finger to his lips.

  Hen must have seen the signal, but she still looked startled. Who wouldn’t? Her reaction could be passed off as nerves, he decided. The main thing was that she didn’t make it clear she knew him.

  Georgina was going through the usual performance of introducing herself. “And this is my colleague, Detective Superintendent Diamond.”

  The finger on the lips seemed to have worked. Hen had always been quick on the uptake. She nodded and asked them to come in.

  Careworn, for sure. Easy to understand why she appeared more solemn than he’d ever seen her. Some silver hairs among the brown, but otherwise she appeared unaltered, small, stocky, with dark intelligent eyes. No obvious make-up. Black top and dark red pants.

  Coffee was offered and declined. They were shown into a small, comfortably furnished living room smelling faintly of air freshener. Diamond chose a low armchair set back a little from Georgina. To his right was a bookcase filled with boxed CDs, all Poirot and Miss Marple, Hen’s means of escape. She’d had them as tapes when he’d last met her. The technology moves on, but old favourites are forever.

  Georgina continued to set out her stall. “You understand why we’re here, I’m sure. We came by invitation because we are sure to have a different perspective on what has happened than your colleagues in Sussex. We’ve studied the file on the Rigden murder, so we know the essential facts and now we’d like to hear from you.”

  Hen answered in a flat, resigned voice Diamond hardly recognised. “I said it all before to Commander Hahn. I can’t think what else you expect me to say. I messed up and got caught out. If you’ve looked at the file you’ll know Joss—Jocelyn Green—is my niece and I should have pulled her in for questioning and didn’t.”