Down Among the Dead Men

by Peter Lovesey

  Diamond gestured to Georgina and they both edged closer for a view.

  For some seconds there was nothing on the screen you could call an image. Then the interference stopped and they could see things moving, definitely the contour of the seabed. A crop of the weed known as dead men’s fingers sharpened into focus. Something like a sheet of newspaper rippled and rose from the mud.

  “Skate,” Albison said.

  The diver’s movement disturbed more flat fish. This was all quite involving for those above, sharing in the search, in spite of their discomfort.

  Diamond wasn’t comfortable with the underwater images. They reminded him of a dream he’d been getting lately, of being trapped in deep water.

  “For some reason, his intercom isn’t functioning,” Albison said. “I may have to bring him up to fix it.”

  Georgina exchanged a glance with Diamond—and not with the diver’s welfare in mind. This could be a long morning.

  More swaying weed and no sign yet of anything you wouldn’t expect to see down there. The quality of the picture was good. They had a glimpse of the line the diver was using and some bubbles from his regulator.

  “Making a turn,” someone explained.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He appears to be.”

  “Has he spotted something?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Albison said to Diamond. “Horizontal visibility isn’t great today. He’s surveying the area. Doesn’t look like there’s much of interest to you, but he’ll be thorough.”

  “The GPS marked the place where the suspect surfaced, not necessarily where he was below water,” Diamond said.

  “We’re aware of that, sir,” was spoken in a tone that might as well have said the team weren’t total novices.

  “Perhaps this man you’re calling the suspect was innocently filming the life below, just as our diver is,” Georgina said.

  This wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear.

  Doubts had been introduced and Georgina started to act and look like the player with the winning hand as the methodical process continued. Weed, mud and the occasional fish. The first thrill of seeing submarine life on the screen was wearing off. There is only so much seaweed you can find interesting.

  The diver glided to a new section and his left hand loomed large on the screen and then reduced in size as he stretched towards the seabed. He was agitating the mud, creating clouds that fogged everything for some seconds.

  They waited for the cloudy mud to clear.

  With agonizing slowness, some of the silt dispersed and they saw the diver’s hand again, this time with a raised thumb.

  “He’s found something,” Diamond said.

  “You wish,” Georgina said.

  More seconds passed before the image sharpened enough to be apparent. Where there had been mud there was now a cleared patch that was level, so level that it could only be man-made.

  “Looks like a floor.”

  “The surface of something or other.”

  “A ship’s deck—assuming the rest of it is buried?”

  Diamond’s stomach clenched. He wasn’t down there with the diver, and he had to keep telling himself he wasn’t.

  The diver moved on a couple of yards and repeated the process, clouding the screen again. When it cleared, another level section was revealed.

  “All right, I’m willing to believe there’s a wreck down there,” Georgina said. “I expect that’s what the mysterious diver found and why he was annoyed at being seen. They like to keep these finds a secret in case there are valuables to be salvaged.”

  If that was truly the case, Diamond thought, the man must have been disappointed. “It looks metal rather than wood. It can’t be all that old. A lot of shipping went down here or hereabouts in the war.”

  “Quite a discovery, even so,” Georgina said. “I believe divers are very competitive. Are you satisfied? Mystery over?”

  While they were talking, the diver had progressed several more yards.

  “He’s found something else,” Albison said.

  “Not another strip of deck?” Georgina said. “He’s made his point, hasn’t he? Can’t you call him up?”

  But the “something else” was being revealed, fast filling the screen: an area of blackness that was actually a void.

  Diamond stared at the screen. This was so involving that he clasped his hand to his mouth.

  They were looking at an opening in the deck, a square hatch.

  Albison said, “He’ll get some light on it.”

  A right angle defining one corner of the hatch entrance slid across the screen. This wasn’t edited television, it was disconcerting and jerky, but compelling. The diver was preparing to go inside. His free hand grasped the crosspiece. He’d switched on a lamp attached to his helmet.

  “A hold of some sort,” Albison said.

  Diamond didn’t need the commentary. Everyone could see what was being revealed.

  The diver had dipped inside and now visibility was restricted to what appeared in the light beam.

  First there was more mud. The interior was silted to a level of several feet, but above that some large objects were coming into shot, stowed between the mud and the underside of the deck.

  “What’s he found?” one of the team said.

  “Looks like a plastic sack with something inside,” Albison said.

  The ray of light moved slowly along a row of such sacks, some partially immersed in mud, as if they had been in position longer than others.

  Diamond said, “If this is what I think it is, we’ve found what we came for.”

  The diver reached towards one of the sacks and poked the thing several times. It remained securely tied. He worked at it without result. Every action underwater is subject to resistance. He pulled back briefly and his arms disappeared from the screen. When they came into view again, he was holding his knife.

  No one spoke.

  The knife was seen to penetrate the plastic. The diver made a slit and widened it with a sawing motion. Abruptly, he withdrew the knife. The opening in the sack gaped as if something was straining to get out. After a couple of seconds, it slipped out and hung below the bag.

  “God help us,” Georgina whispered.

  They were looking at a human hand.

  29

  Back 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 s
ure 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

  “Do 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 w
ith 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?