‘Did you tell anyone?’
‘She’s my own flesh and blood. You don’t, do you? It was fortunate in a way that by the time the DNA thing came up she’d married and no longer shared a surname with me. My team didn’t make the connection. But I still couldn’t win. If I pulled her in, it would seem to my brother I was doing it out of spite.’
‘Wasn’t she already under arrest for being drunk and disorderly?’
‘Portsmouth police kept both women in the cells to sober up and didn’t charge them. First time up, it would have been hard. She got the usual caution. But of course she’d been arrested so she was in the system. I kept telling myself the only explanation for the DNA must be that she’d travelled in the BMW before it was stolen.’
‘Was she a driver at the time?’
‘I didn’t really want to find out, but I made a computer check and she was, under her maiden name. She took the test as soon as she was old enough. A car was vital for her IT business. Yes, it’s not impossible she drove the thing.’
‘So she could have been the hooded driver allegedly seen by Danny Stapleton, the man now serving a prison sentence?’
A long pause. ‘That’s an unlikely scenario.’
‘Is there another?’
‘I just said it. She was in the car previously, for some unrelated reason.’
Georgina didn’t disguise her scorn. ‘A car owned by a man in his eighties? She was how old — eighteen? If you can think of a plausible explanation, I’d like to hear it. Did you interview the old man?’
‘I thought about doing it. Discovered he was dead. He went within a year of the murder.’
‘Did you speak to your niece? That was the obvious thing.’
She shook her head and said, tight-lipped, ‘I took the decision not to pursue the matter.’
The crux of Hen’s professional misconduct.
‘On what grounds?’
‘That there wasn’t enough evidence to justify reopening the case. Nothing to suggest a link between the victim — a jobbing gardener who was a model citizen by all accounts — and my niece, who was a troubled teenager, but with no violence.’
‘What do you mean — no violence? She was arrested for street-fighting.’
‘I’m speaking of when she was eighteen.’
‘But you didn’t know her at eighteen. You hadn’t seen her since she was a child.’ Georgina folded her arms as if she’d made a telling point.
‘I knew a lot about her. I was proud of her achievements. My sisters kept me informed. She’s a stunning redhead, and it’s natural. As I just told you, Joss was a success, with a business of her own, lively, a bit naïve, but not evil.’
‘Into drugs and alcohol.’
‘The alcohol came later. We’re talking about when she was still a teenager, before she married.’
‘Just drugs, then,’ Georgina said. ‘As you well know, drug-dependent people resort to criminality to pay for their habit.’
‘She had no police record at that time.’
‘You know she’s gone missing — just when we need to speak to her?’
‘I do.’ Hen’s mouth tightened.
‘She’s evading arrest,’ Georgina said.
‘That isn’t certain.’ More puffs at the cigarillo. ‘Listen, there’s more than one way of looking at this. If Joss hadn’t been my niece and I’d chosen to do nothing I don’t suppose anyone would have got excited about it. I admit I ought to have followed up on the DNA match, particularly as she was a family member. When there’s a personal link like that, there’s even more reason to investigate properly.’
‘We can agree on that,’ Georgina said. ‘You seem to be saying you disbelieved the new evidence regardless of who the suspect was.’
Hen drew in more smoke, thinking hard, then exhaled. ‘Difficult to say for sure. I took it damn seriously, knowing she was Joss. And yet...’
‘And yet what?’
‘Put it this way: the only testimony we have for the hooded driver came from Danny Stapleton, a proven liar, who was convicted as an accessory, and he didn’t once raise the possibility that this had been a woman. The judge and jury at his trial accepted the prosecution case that he was paid two thousand pounds by the killer to steal the car in Arundel and transport the body somewhere and dispose of it. Unless Danny was wrongly convicted, I can’t see where Joss or any other woman comes into it. So, yes, I chose to ignore the DNA as having no direct bearing on the case.’
‘We spoke to Stapleton in prison yesterday,’ Georgina said. ‘He maintains he’s innocent. He could have been out by now if he’d pleaded guilty and cooperated. If it turns out he was wrongly imprisoned, he may be planning to sue.’
Diamond had watched the to and fro of the interrogation. There was no question that Hen had been hit hard by this suspension. Ten years ago she would have given back as much as she took, and more. He wished he could find some way of letting her know that he still valued her, regardless of the issue.
She was drawing at the small cigar every few seconds and not much of it was left. Seven minutes would be an overestimate. She locked eyes with Georgina again. ‘I suppose it’s no use saying we were under extra pressure when the DNA report reached me?’
‘Why?’
‘All the missing people.’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘Haven’t they told you? It’s an ongoing thing. We’ve had this problem for months, if not years. A series of disappearances that can’t be explained. You’re going to tell me every police service has its list of missing persons. All over the country thousands of cases are reported. Believe me, these are different. We isolated as many as eight cases in the past four years where the victims were almost certainly murdered and their bodies never found. It’s so prevalent in our part of Sussex that I asked my people to investigate and the scale of the problem became even more clear. I believe someone has set up a business disposing of bodies. There are hints in the criminal world that something like this is going on, but no one will say for sure.’
‘A rogue undertaker?’
‘We thought of that, of course, but it’s unlikely. The official process of burial and cremation has too many safeguards written into it. This is organised crime. And the point of telling you is that it preoccupied me at the time the DNA details reached me. We’d had another peculiar case that same week. An obvious crime committed against someone who then disappeared. I was sure he was murdered and the trail was still hot. The last thing I needed was the news that Joss was in serious trouble.’
‘In short, you’re pleading pressure of work?’
Hen’s lips tightened. ‘I’m telling you how it was, not excusing myself.’
Georgina puffed herself up for one of her pious outpourings. ‘We’ve all worked under extreme pressure, DCI Mallin. It’s part of our job as police officers.’
Hen didn’t bother to answer.
‘You took no action. You didn’t even get in touch with Jocelyn.’
‘I said.’
‘A few quiet words to see what it amounted to?’
The relentless censure was getting to Hen. She crushed the cigar butt into an ashtray. ‘For Christ’s sake, I don’t go in for quiet words. It was all or nothing and I did nothing.’
‘You didn’t tip off your brother?’
‘I told you how things are between us. He’s so heavy-handed he would have turned a small coincidence into world war three.’
Georgina was quickly on to that. ‘A small coincidence? How can you dismiss it so lightly — your niece linked to a murder?’