‘Hen?’ he said with disapproval. ‘What was she doing there?’
‘She heard the art group were under investigation. She’s anxious to find her niece, Joss. Is there any news?’
Montacute shook his head. ‘All the focus is on the schoolgirl. Hen’s off the case. She’ll get into worse trouble if this gets back to headquarters.’
‘It won’t, will it?’ Diamond said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re going to forget I told you. You’re a hard man, but my reading of you is that you wouldn’t shaft your own boss.’
In the privacy of his room back at the hotel, he called Sussex police headquarters and asked to speak to Commander Hahn.
‘It’s Saturday,’ the duty officer said.
‘I know that.’
‘He isn’t here, I’m afraid.’
‘For the whole weekend?’
‘He’ll be in Monday.’
Excellent. If Diamond hadn’t been holding the phone he would have rubbed his hands. ‘Unfortunately I can’t wait for Monday,’ he said, launching into one of those hectoring speeches he could make without trying. No duty officer could withstand them. ‘I’m speaking on behalf of Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore, working on a top-level assignment at Commander Hahn’s personal request. How shall we do this? I don’t suppose you want to call him on his mobile and I guess you won’t let me have the number. Are you empowered to take executive decisions?’
‘Depends what they are.’
‘My chief needs to use the search and rescue unit for a sea search tomorrow morning. A dive about a mile off Selsey Bill.’
‘Not possible, I’m afraid. The SRU aren’t available. There’s an ongoing operation.’
Gotcha. Diamond smiled to himself. ‘Not ongoing any more if it’s the one at Fortiman House. I just spoke to DI Montacute at Chichester. He no longer needs the dive team. So would you ask them to get in touch with me at the Ship Hotel and we’ll arrange a time and place?’
An hour later, Diamond was stretched on the bed waiting for someone from the dive team to call. His neck started itching. He flicked it with his fingertip and felt a faint contact and realised he’d disturbed a living thing, an insect of some sort, now wriggling on the quilt. He sat up fast.
A ladybird, upside down, its little legs going like pistons. Invading ladybirds are easier to forgive than most other bugs.
He righted it, took it to the window and released it.
A second one was crawling up one of the window panes.
‘It’s an invasion,’ he said, letting the little creature move on to his finger. ‘Where are you guys coming from?’
He had the answer the moment he turned back. The old wax jacket from the garden shed at Holly Blue Cottage was draped over the armchair in the corner. He’d given the thing a shake before bringing it indoors, but it must have contained some tiny hostages. It wasn’t impossible that some less attractive wildlife was harboured there, so he decided to check.
The jacket was in a bad state. His intention had been to go through the pockets, but he didn’t fancy putting his hands inside now that insects were on his mind. The answer, he decided, was to turn the pockets inside out. It was just possible that Joe Rigden — if he had been the owner — had pocketed something of interest. So he started methodically pulling out the linings. Most were empty and probably had never been used.
Some green garden twine fell out of one of the large side pockets along with a copper coin turned green and some bits of black organic material, dry and shrunken, that might have been the remains of fungi. The opposite pocket yielded some walnuts, surprisingly well preserved. All in all, nothing likely to explain the unanswered questions aboutjoe Rigden and his violent death.
Then the phone rang.
28
Georgina wasn’t happy missing her Sunday breakfast to be on the road by 6.30 a.m. All the way to Selsey she emitted short, disapproving sighs as if every turn in the road was a pain. And when a sea mist crept over the fields, she said she might as well have stayed in bed. ‘What’s the point of making a search in these conditions?’
‘The mist makes no difference,’ Diamond said. ‘We know the GPS reading and the search is under the water.’
They met the dive team — four of them, led by a giant of a man called Dave Albison — beside the launch ramp for the lifeboat, the main feature of a long narrow stretch of pebble beach. But they weren’t using the ramp. A large rigid inflatable was on the stones ready to go.
Georgina gave it a suspicious look and said she’d been expecting a proper boat — not the most tactful of starts. The senior man said it was their main marine vessel and they were proud of it. He added that she might want to put on waterproofs. They had spares with them.
For Diamond, the spectacle of his boss in bright yellow and with her ample chest augmented by a life jacket was an amusing sideshow.
‘Does it bounce?’ she asked.
‘The sea doesn’t get much calmer than this,’ Dave Albison said — which didn’t exactly answer the question.
Screaming seagulls added their own comment.
The team loaded so much diving equipment into the front of the vessel that Diamond found himself wondering if there would be room for everyone as well. But the professionals didn’t seem to have any doubts. They boarded their two passengers in the shallows and then three of them gave the craft a hefty push to get it afloat. They leapt on board, the motor spluttered and roared, a beacon light flashed and the search mission was under way.
Did it bounce much? It did, but there wasn’t any point in protesting, because you wouldn’t have been heard. The thing fairly raced towards the deeper water. Diamond had a suspicion that this was the SRU’s payback time. There was really no reason to be hurtling across the water at maximum speed unless it was to intimidate the passengers. The same team had spent a fruitless day at Fortiman House and now their Sunday morning was spoken for as well.
In the mist, it was extremely exciting or extremely scary, depending on your state of nerves. Diamond made sure he didn’t lock eyes with Georgina. She was being brave. He’d insisted she came on the trip, pressing her at least as hard as he’d pressed that duty officer. She would regret not being there, he’d said. This was the most promising shout they’d hadt! A sighting at sea was one thing; a sighting with a GPS reading was a gift from the gods. Even the SRU lads had been impressed by that.
What seemed a long ride took under ten minutes in reality before Albison eased the throttle. One of his team took a reading. They were close.
It was weird to be fixing a position in open water with only sea and mist on all sides. The Selsey shore had vanished. With Albison using his iPhone to call the fine points, they used paddles to manoeuvre before taking the decision to lower an anchor. One of the crew, already in a drysuit, was being prepared to dive, making checks to valves and seals. When Diamond saw a tin of powder being used, he tried to lighten the mood a little.
‘Is that talc you’ve got there?’
‘It is.’
‘Does the suit chafe, then?’
‘It’s to help the hands through the wrist seals,’ Albison said. He wasn’t receptive to chafing jokes.
‘Will he take a camera down?’
‘That’s the plan. You won’t see much if he doesn’t.’
‘So can we look at the images up here?’
Albison said in a voice as unfriendly as the sea, ‘Would you mind letting us get on with our job?’
Fair enough, he thought. Diving is risky at the best of times. There were safety procedures to be gone through in a small space and the experts could do without some landlubber demanding a running commentary. Instead, he asked Georgina how she was doing. She had her arms clasped tight below the life jacket.