She blinked. ‘That can’t be true.’
‘They’re unsolved cases. With all the emphasis on crime figures the murder rate down here would rocket if bodies started being discovered.’
She sat back in her chair with a faraway look as if straining to hear some distant voice.
Diamond said, ‘When Hen Mallin started to do something about the missing people, she was suspended.’
She reacted as if he’d nudged her in the ribs. ‘No, no, no. That wasn’t why she was suspended.’
‘Officially no. Officially she was suspended because an anonymous letter was sent to headquarters. It was received within two weeks of her starting to rock the boat. Isn’t that convenient timing? The offence she’s charged with — favouring her niece — happened three years before, in 2011.’
There was a pause for thought. ‘Now that you put it like that...’ As Georgina’s voice trailed away, her look sharpened.
Diamond went on in the same reasonable tone, ‘With Hen suspended, all the impetus has gone out of the missing persons inquiry. You and I were brought in to deal with the problem over Joss, which is sorted, basically, because Hen admits to it. We’re not supposed to make waves about missing persons.’
She gave a nervous, angry sigh. ‘This is appalling if true. Who would have sent the anonymous letter?’
He spoke as if each word was a pain. ‘To be really cynical about the whole exercise, it may have been concocted at headquarters.’
‘Oh, Peter! That’s impossible.’
‘I’m thinking they may have known about the misconduct ever since 2011, only because Hen is a good detective they took no action. But when she started agitating about missing persons, she became expendable. She couldn’t be gagged, so she had to go.’
Georgina wasn’t having it. ‘I can’t accept that. It would show Sussex headquarters in a terrible light.’
‘It may not be the whole of headquarters.’
She said as if she was miles away, ‘I see.’
She didn’t see, yet. He left the thought to take root. At some stage she would make the connection with Archie Hahn.
‘Meanwhile,’ he said, ‘I’ve met Miss Gibbon’s replacement, a young man called Tom Standforth.’
‘A man?’
‘A more popular choice with the art students. Their word for him is cool. T-shirt and jeans, hair to his shoulders and his own website.’
‘How can that be? I can’t imagine Miss Du Barry approving.’
‘He seems to have worked his charms on her. He’s local, lives with his father at a place called Fortiman House, near Boxgrove.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘About four miles from Slindon.’ He snapped his fingers and for a moment his brain was in overdrive. ‘How do I know that? Yes. One of the gardens Joe Rigden looked after is out there.’
‘Not Fortiman House?’
‘No, a place belonging to an old lady who was over a hundred. A Mrs Shah. She’s dead now.’ He smiled. ‘It’s likely she would be, seven years on.’
‘I don’t remember hearing anything about this,’ Georgina said.
He’d almost given the game away. He remembered he’d learned about Mrs Shah while visiting Hen in hospital. ‘Must have been among the statements I was reading.’ And it could have been, so it wasn’t an out-and-out lie. ‘Anyway, young Standforth has a studio of his own and invites other artists there, including some of the Priory Park students.’
‘And Miss Du Barry knows about this arrangement?’
‘Apparently, yes, but she doesn’t know they sometimes have a nude male model.’
‘Hm.’ She had a gleam in her eye. ‘That would test her liberal principles.’
‘I gather it brings on the drawing by leaps and bounds.’
‘I’ll take your word for that.’ She drank the last of her coffee. ‘While you were in the art room I was speaking on the phone to DI Montacute. They’ve gone public with the missing girl. He’s holding a press conference about now. It will make the national news and her picture will be all over the local television and newspapers.’
‘High time. Is he linking this to Miss Gibbon?’
‘Apparently not. There’s too long an interval since her disappearance. And the media would be sure to turn it into an abduction story. They like nothing better than teachers going off with their students. Other lines of enquiry might get overlooked.’
‘Is he handling it right, do you think?’
She held up a warning finger. ‘We’re not going to interfere.’
‘I’ve met the girl,’ he said. ‘It becomes personal.’
‘Don’t even think about it. Our brief is to pin down the facts about DCI Mallin and her misconduct.’
‘And that involves her niece Joss,’ he said, ‘who has also gone missing.’
‘But it isn’t our job to find these young women, Peter. We’re on a fact-finding mission.’
‘We won’t get the full facts until Joss is found, and Montacute hasn’t given me much confidence so far. He’ll be even more distracted now.’
‘You’re like a dog with a bone.’
‘I didn’t come here to sit around and do nothing.’ He looked at the clock above the door. ‘Break’s over. I must get back to my fact-finding. There’s another girl to see — Ella the goth, who knows more than anyone.’
‘Ella the what?’
‘The goth. It’s a cult.’
‘You be careful.’
‘Oh, I will. They say she takes no prisoners.’
22
When Diamond returned to the art room and asked to speak to Ella, he was told apologetically by Tom Standforth that she wasn’t there.
‘I was told she was in today.’
‘That was earlier.’
‘Is she allowed to leave midway through the morning?’
‘Uh-oh,’ one of the class said. ‘Someone else goes missing.’
‘It’s not funny,’ Jem said, swinging around in her chair. ‘Mel could be dead for all we know.’
‘He’s talking about Ella.’
Standforth said to the class in general, ‘Cool it, people. Did Ella tell anyone where she was going?’
Silence.
‘You could try the yard,’ he said to Diamond. ‘That’s where her project is. It was too large to assemble in here.’
‘And too smelly,’ Jem added, to general amusement.
Asked for directions, Standforth gave some and added, ‘Look for the big black construction. You can’t miss it.’
Diamond’s law decreed that whenever those last four words were used he was doomed to lose his way. Downstairs at the back of the main building he found a yard where the bins were kept and surplus desks and chairs had been left to take their chance with the elements. It wasn’t promising until, against expectation, he saw that for once he’d picked the right route. Rising above the school furniture was a strange creation in the form of a scaled-down mansion with gables and turrets mostly covered in foliage. The onion-shaped cupola at the top of the main tower must have been more than fifteen feet above ground. In outline the whole thing was so dark that it was like a silhouette, undeniably creepy.
On getting closer, he saw that the entire structure was a rickety collection of lobster pots and creels piled on top of each other and lashed together with nylon rope. The cupola was formed from two beehive-shaped pots joined at the base. A creative imagination beyond his own had envisioned this. True, it smelt strongly of bad fish and was better appreciated out of doors, but as a concept based on limited materials it spoke eloquently for its designer. Pity she wasn’t around to be congratulated.
He circled this amazing artefact and examined it from several angles. If this was the result of Tom Standforth’s teaching, the young man deserved the head’s high opinion of him. Yet here it stood in a scrapyard among rubbish bins and unwanted furniture.