“Don't blame her, Archie,” Georgina said. “Through no fault of hers we worked out that she acted as the so-called whistleblower, 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 enquiry.”
“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.
“Ifâheaven forbidâanything 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 enquiry 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 the 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.