‘Of course we can’t. I wasn’t speaking literally. Get a couple of your team to shift the furniture. If you’ve got a problem with it, speak to Commander Hahn at headquarters. He’ll want us treated right. We’re doing you people a favour, coming here and taking on your little local difficulty. We’d like tea and biscuits as well.’
Georgina at her unstoppable best. Diamond almost felt proud.
They didn’t take long to get installed. DI Montacute cleared his desk without another word and migrated somewhere else. Tactfully they avoided asking if it was the stationery store.
The desk beside the window with the view of the canal basin was claimed by Georgina. Diamond would be facing a wall on the far side of the room, but he didn’t mind.
the case file and its duplicate were wheeled in on a trolley by Pat Gomez while they were finishing their tea. CID work had still been largely supported by paper records back in 2007. Diamond was given the bulkier of the two — three box-files of material — and it turned out to be the original. Enough reading to take care of the rest of this day and the next. Fortunately, whoever had dealt with all the documents had done an excellent job of arranging them by date and indexing them. Occurrence reports, witness statements, diagrams, photos, everything was so methodically sorted that you could be forgiven for thinking the case was solved and the killer sent down.
He supposed he should have started with the earliest stuff and worked through, but he couldn’t resist looking at the most recent. Right on top was a handwritten note that caught his attention because it was headed ACC Dallymore, Avon & Somerset. It was on Sussex police headquarters notepaper.
A note for Georgina?
No, it was about Georgina.
Unlike everything else, it wasn’t referenced or indexed. Someone must have received this private note and carelessly left it in the box. The paper looked and felt fresh, as if it had been written recently.
He glanced over his shoulder at Georgina. She had her glasses on and was already reading.
If the note had been written at headquarters in the last few days, it wouldn’t be among the papers in front of her — which was just as well.
My recommendation is Dallymore. Many moons ago I went through Bramshill with her and she ended up in Bath as ACC crime management. Did all the right things, learned the drill, kept her buttons and shoes clean and never rocked the boat. Politically sound. Doesn’t have a subversive thought in her head. If — heaven forbid — anything more damaging should emerge, we can rely on her to miss it altogether, or, at worst, bury it. What’s more we can argue that being a woman she’s the ideal choice for this one.
It was initialled in ink, AH. With friends like Archie Hahn, who needs enemies?
Diamond folded the note and put it in his pocket. He hadn’t often felt sympathy for Georgina, but he did over this. She must never see it.
He couldn’t fault the character sketch, but, as written down by her supposed old chum, it was a betrayal. If anything more damaging did emerge, he would make damn sure it wasn’t missed or buried. The one point that intrigued him was the last. Why was a woman the ideal choice? Pure prejudice? The idea that women were put on this earth to rock the cradle and never to rock the boat?
Grinding his teeth, he turned to the earliest material, the statements by the officers who had stopped the stolen BMW that September evening in 2007 and found the body in the boot. Their accounts chimed with what he had learned from Georgina and Danny Stapleton himself.
At 9.43 pm, along the A259 approaching the Bognor Road roundabout, we spotted a car reported as stolen in Arundel the previous day. It was being driven by a male who identified himself as Daniel Stapleton. We searched him and found a large amount of money in banknotes stuffed into his pockets and socks. His explanation was that he’d sold a boat in Littlehampton and was on his way to Chichester for a night out. We then lifted the lid of the boot and discovered a dead body contained in a garden sack.
One of the statements added:
The suspect appeared to panic and insisted he had not looked inside the boot and had no knowledge of the contents and was unable to explain how the body got in there. He was cautioned and arrested and after we had radioed for assistance he was taken to Chichester police station.
A signed statement from Danny the next day struck a different note, starting with the admission that he had lied to the arresting officers. He now claimed that half an hour before his arrest he had stolen the car from River Road in Littlehampton using an electronic jammer and a key programmer.
The BMW was parked opposite the Steam Packet by a youth wearing a hooded garment, who then proceeded across the footbridge. I was unable get a close look at him. He was slight in build and appeared to have the movement of a young person.
The wording was unmistakable police-speak, but there was nothing sinister in that if the facts were essentially true and Danny had checked them and signed the thing. Faced with a statement form, many witnesses suffer from writer’s block and need prompting.
Usefully, the next page was a transcript of the taped interview and Danny’s authentic voice came through:
Q. Why did you lie about the money?
A. I was bricking it, wasn’t I?
Q. Scared? Scared of what would happen when the boot was opened?
A. No, mate. I didn’t know about that.
Q. You’re lying again, aren’t you? You knew the body was in there because you put it there. You were in deep trouble. That’s what scared you.
A. Honest, I was as shocked as they was.
Q. You were shocked at being caught red-handed. You’d already shot the man through the head and robbed him. Then you had to get rid of the body, so you stole the BMW in Arundel—
A. Arundel? Did you say Arundel? No, you’re wrong there. It was LA.
Q. Danny, this isn’t funny. A man has been murdered.
A. LA — Littlehampton.
Q. The murder took place in Littlehampton? Is that what you’re telling us?
A. No, that’s where I nicked the car.
Q. Untrue. You’ve got to do better than this. It was definitely taken from the Mill Road car park in Arundel, opposite the castle.
A. Wrong. I know where I was.
Q. The car was reported stolen from Arundel. It’s a fact. It’s on record. That’s why you were stopped.
A. Now you’re confusing me.
Q. If you tell lies, you’re going to get caught out. Let’s have the truth of it.
A. I’m giving it to you. I don’t understand what you’re on about.
Q. Murder, that’s what we’re on about. When you were stopped you were on your way to dump the body somewhere. Where were you taking it — the reservoir at Westhampnett? You were heading that way.
A. I wouldn’t do that.
Q. You had other plans? Were you just going to leave it somewhere in the stolen car and hope it wouldn’t be traced to you?
A. Jesus Christ, I’m saying I never killed this geezer. You got to believe me. I never touched him.
Q. You touched his money. Your prints are all over it. And you might as well know your prints are on the sack the body was wrapped in.
A. Oh shit. (Long pause.) That’s because the cops in the car told me to drag the sack to the front of the boot so they could see who it was.
Q. They didn’t say anything about that in their statements. You’re at it again, aren’t you — making it up as you go along? It’s not clever, Danny. You keep tripping yourself up. Much better to front up and tell us what really happened.
A. I already told you.
Q. All that Littlehampton crap? You cooked a story up overnight to try and confuse us, but it hasn’t worked. The car was stolen from Arundel. That’s where the owner left it. All our patrols were notified the day before yesterday. You should have changed the plates.