‘I happen to know it isn’t rubbish and it isn’t unfounded either.’
Diamond picked up his thread. ‘A plot was devised to stop her. You had the dirt on her, but you had to use it cleverly. You didn’t want anyone knowing you’d been sitting on it for three years. So the whistleblowing couldn’t appear to come from headquarters. Instead, you thought up the dirty trick of having an anonymous letter sent from Chichester, apparently written by one of her team.’
‘Outrageous.’
‘Yes, it was,’ Diamond continued smoothly, ‘so it had to be done with all the skill of a spy operation. Communications between divisional police stations and headquarters are mostly electronic, as we know, but there’s still a regular pick-up of paperwork collected physically by despatch rider. The idea was for someone at Chichester to make sure the letter was included with the other material — and for that you needed a plant. We’ve just been speaking to her: Pat Gomez. It emerged that she was transferred from headquarters to Chichester two weeks before Hen Mallin was suspended. A tried and trusted civilian clerk with family in Chichester, who was pleased to be assigned there.’
‘Don’t blame her, Archie,’ Georgina said. ‘Through no fault of hers we worked out that she acted as the so-called whistle-blower, but she was just the messenger. She did all that you asked.’
The ‘we worked out’ was bending the truth somewhat. Diamond had got there by questioning Hen the evening before.
He let it pass. ‘Pat Gomez had been given a sealed letter to slip in with the other documents for delivery to headquarters. We questioned her closely and that’s as much as she knew. It all went to plan and on receipt the letter was officially stamped and dated and you had the pretext to suspend Hen Mallin and put a stop to her missing persons inquiry.’
‘Which is where we came in,’ Georgina said. ‘You didn’t want it going to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, but you needed an inquiry of some sort to get her sacked, so you approached me as a high-ranking officer from another force. The case was watertight. Even I, with my reputation for leaving no stone unturned, would be sure to endorse the dismissal.’
Georgina’s reputation wasn’t quite as she imagined. Diamond recalled the note Archie Hahn had carelessly left in the file. If — heaven forbid — anything more damaging should emerge, we can rely on her to miss it altogether, or, at worst, bury it. But he’d long ago decided she should never be told.
‘I must inform you now that I’m not going to endorse it,’ Georgina went on, at her barnstorming best. ‘Yes, DCI Mallin was guilty of misconduct, but that was overtaken by far more deplorable misconduct at a higher level.’
‘What?’ Hahn gaped at his college buddy as if she was a ten-tonne truck advancing on him.
‘And there isn’t much doubt who I’m talking about. This may be a matter for your chief constable, or your PCC, or the Home Office. That rather depends on you. We’re going to insist that DCI Mallin is reinstated as head of CID at Chichester with immediate effect. You need her there as a matter of urgency. She’s a fine detective and she was right to start the inquiry into missing persons. She must follow it through to its conclusion, regardless of your damned statistics.’
A cloud of misery had descended on Archie Hahn. He’d stopped pacing. He sank into the chair, defeated. ‘Whatever you say, Georgina, whatever you say.’
Some way into the journey home, Georgina took out her phone and called Bath police station to find out what had been happening in her absence. ‘That’s good,’ she said a number of times. And when asked a question, she said, ‘Oh, highly satisfactory. It was of a sensitive nature and it must remain confidential. It’s safe to say that we solved their little local difficulties.’
She ended the call and turned in her seat. ‘I was speaking to your deputy, Keith Halliwell.’
‘Really? How’s he coping?’
‘Admirably, by the sound of it. They rounded up the jewel thieves you were so concerned about. Caught them red-handed. Purple-handed, in fact. The old trick with the anti-theft detection powder.’
‘They’ll be crowing about that.’
‘Didn’t I say they’d manage perfectly well without you?’
‘I believe I remember something of the sort.’
‘It’s no bad thing, Peter. It could free you up to work more closely with me from time to time. Dallymore and Diamond, detectives.’
He gritted his teeth and said nothing.