The Vault (12 page)

Joe launched into his account of the trail that led to Mary Shelley's writing box.

"How do you know it's hers?" Donna said, as yet feeling no urge to throw her arms around Joe.

"It's got to be. I've got a feeling about this."

"I've got a feeling this woman saw you coming. She's running rings around you, Joe Dougan. You show her the book and she sees a chance to unload an old box on you. If it was Mary Shelley's, where's the sense in using it as a stand for a heavy vase?"

He opened his palms to emphasise the simple logic. "She didn't know it was Mary Shelley's. This is the whole point, Donna. And there's a very good chance that I'll get the proof when the box is opened. There could be other things inside."

"Like Mary Shelley's credit cards?"

"Oh, come on."

"You said she claims to have found the book inside the box."

"That's right. And a sketchbook that she sold. That's more evidence."

"It's not if she doesn't have it any more."

"No, listen. While Mary Shelley was staying in five, Abbey Churchyard, she was having drawing lessons from a a teacher called West. That's on record. She wrote in a letter to Leigh Hunt about finishing a picture she regarded as tedious and ugly. Oh, boy, I'd love to find that sketchbook."

"Joe."

"Honey?"

"I've had it up to here with Mary Shelley."

"Sure," he soothed her. "I can understand why. Listen, tomorrow let's do something totally unconnected with Frankenstein."

"Such as?"

Conveniently for Joe, someone had pinned some tourist leaflets to the wall behind Donna, and over her shoulder Joe could just read the large print. "I thought we might take a bus-trip somewhere. They do excursions to all kinds of places. How would you like to see Wilton House, where the Earl of Pembroke lives?"

"Is it open to the public?"

"Sure. I wouldn't mention it if not."

Donna melted a little. "I'll think it over."

"After tonight," said Joe rashly, "we'll draw a line under Mary Shelley."

"Thank God."

He looked at his watch. "There's only one more thing I need to do this evening, and that's go back to Noble and Nude and see if she found the key to the box."

Donna was lost for words.

* * *

IT WAS after eight when Diamond got back from the TV studios at Bristol. He'd phoned Stephanie, knowing she was sure to be uneasy about turning up late to the 'At Home'. She hated being late for things.

"You can afford to make an entrance in that terrific dress," he said with conviction. He'd had time to prepare a rallying speech on the drive back from Bristol. And it
was
a classy dress, a floral print in some silky material, worn with a shiny black belt. "In fact, it demands to be noticed. I like it. By God, I don't know where you found it, but it's a smashing little number."

Without a trace of acrimony in her voice Steph informed him that she'd found it in her wardrobe. If it demanded to be noticed, he should have noticed it last Christmas Day, when her sister came, and last April at the charity do at the Theatre Royal. Then she returned to her main concern. "Your boss could be waiting to serve the food."

"I don't think it's that kind of do," he told her airily. "It'll be cheap Bulgarian wine and peanuts in little silver dishes." He said he would freshen up and change into some party gear.

"Snap it up, then, Peter. It's going to be close to nine by the time we arrive."

"Georgina will have to make allowances. I was on police business."

They managed to get to the house in Bennett Street within the half-hour.

"Good. You're here," said their hostess. Out of uniform and in a blue cashmere dress she looked more approachable, but hadn't discarded the parade ground manner. "I was just about to serve the supper." She shook Stephanie's hand and said she was fascinated to meet the wife of Peter Diamond.

The wife of Peter Diamond was made to feel more like an exhibit than a person, though probably no slight was intended. Steph managed a sociable smile while Diamond explained the reason for their delay. He wasn't sure how to address the ACC in this setting, so he started with "Ma'am".

"Newsnightl
Who interviewed you?" Unexpectedly the ACC's voice piped in excitement, "Don't tell me you met Jeremy himself, my all-time favourite television presenter? You did. I can see it in your eyes. I can't possibly miss that! What time do they show it—ten-thirty? We'll switch on and let everyone have a goggle."

"Ma'am—"

She flapped her hand. "You don't have to be formal... Peter. It's Georgina tonight."

"Understood," said Diamond. "About
Newsnight,
Georgina. I don't know if that's such a good idea."

The advice wasn't heard. Georgina had rushed away to serve the supper.

With Diamond blanching at the prospect of people being ordered to watch that mortifying interview, he and Stephanie started the process of meeting other guests. Rarely had so many local bigwigs been gathered in one small space. Directly ahead, the Chief Crown Prosecutor was in serious conversation with the two other ACCs. "Not that way," Diamond murmured to Steph. "Go right."

"Straight for the blonde in the corner?" said Stephanie. "The story of your life."

"At least it's someone I don't have to say 'sir' to."

"Don't be so sure. Wait till Blondie turns round."

But it
was
a woman. Ingeborg Smith gave a wide smile of recognition and said, "Hi, you're late." She was in a black sparkly outfit that left one shoulder and a good deal of leg exposed.

Diamond had the feeling this was one of those nights that would sear his soul for ever. He stumbled through the introductions, stressing—without actually nudging Steph—that Ingeborg was a freelance reporter. Ingeborg laughed and said she wasn't on duty now.

"I'm forgetting," he said. "You know our hostess through the choir." To Stephanie he explained that Ingeborg sang with the Bath Camerata. "I'll get you ladies a drink," he offered.

"I'm being looked after," Ingeborg said at once. "A gorgeous man called John Sturr is fetching me a refill from the other room. I think I've struck gold. He's on the Police Authority."

Diamond winced. "Councillor Sturr?"

"Councillor? I don't think anyone stands on ceremony here."

He turned to Stephanie, "Ingeborg won't want us around when her friend comes back. Let's head towards the drinks ourselves."

"Go for it, guys," Ingeborg cheerfully urged them. "You've got some catching up to do. It's bubbly—the real thing. I don't know how many I've put away."

The food was served soon after from a huge table in the dining room.

Georgina had lashed out on an amazing array of exotic dishes and was helpfully explaining to the more wary guests how to tell a spicy Chicken Tikka from a milder Kashmiri concoction. Steph, knowing Diamond's tendency to panic in the presence of foreign food, took his arm and steered him firmly past the multicoloured sauces to a tray of dishes topped with mashed potato, with steamed vegetables nearby.

"So much for my forecast," Diamond murmured.

"I did wonder where the peanuts were," Steph murmured back.

Besides helping people to food, Georgina was waving them outside to the patio, where they could sit at garden tables. The warmth of the day was lingering nicely. The Diamonds found places with a couple they didn't know who introduced themselves as Danny and Karen. "Better than a barbecue, this," Diamond said, to start a conversation. "Burnt things on skewers taste all the same to me."

"I know just what you mean about barbecues," said Danny. "This is recognisable food."

"Marks and Spencer."

"Peter, you've got to be a detective," said Karen. "How do you know that?"

"Can you prove it?" said Danny.

"We could check the kitchen for empty packets."

"Oh, Pete!" said Steph. She explained, "If he doesn't get his M & S shepherd's pie at least once a week, he isn't safe to be with."

"I'm still impressed," said Karen.

"Don't take my word for it," said Diamond. "You ought to check."

"No need," said Karen. "I believe you absolutely. Nothing gets past our lads in CID."

Diamond was beginning to like Karen. "I'll let you into a secret," he said, with exaggerated glances right and left before leaning confidentially forward and dropping his voice. "Outside the nick in Manvers Street we've got some tubs of flowers. Have you ever noticed them?"

Karen nodded.

Diamond nodded, too. "We lads in CID pass them hundreds of times a week. Not one of us spotted some extra foliage among the pansies. It took a member of the public to tell us we had a fine crop of cannabis growing in front of the central police station. Some joker had scattered cannabis seeds in there. That's how smart our lads in CID are."

"Is that true?" said Danny.

"Gospel truth." Diamond tapped the side of his nose. "Keep it to yourselves. We don't want our new boss to find out."

They talked on for a while before he asked Danny how long he had known Georgina.

"Only since I took over as Chair of the Police Authority," said Danny.

The food didn't taste so good after that. The Diamonds made

fifteen

AS USUAL, FROM EARLY on Friday, people were staring over the parapet on Grand Parade, watching the water flow over the weir—a flight of broad, shallow steps in an elegant inverted horseshoe tapered at the ends. Even when the current is slow, as it was this day in August after a week without much rain, the patterns created in the foam are worth a few minutes of anyone's time.

The watchers will notice anything floating towards the weir. After heavy rain, there can be quite an accumulation of broken foliage and driftwood caught on the rim, waiting to tip over. In these conditions, however, all was sublimely clear until twenty to eleven, when an object more like a bundle of fabric than driftwood glided slowly down the Avon from the Walcot stretch. For a time it lodged unnoticed against one of the piers under the bridge. Then a small fluctuation in the current allowed it to ease free and float sedately towards the first of the descending steps.

Of all the people watching—and there must have been thirty or more ranged along Grand Parade—none noticed that the bundle was human in origin until it reached the lip of the weir. There, its form appeared to divide. A narrow portion flopped over the edge and hung, still attached, causing foam to fan out on the level below. The overhanging part was a sleeve and it was not an empty sleeve. At the end was a white hand.

The sightseers were more horrified than alarmed. It was obvious that the body was lifeless. Somebody went to look for a

fourteen

THE MORNING PAPERS HAD gone bananas about human remains found in a cellar they called Frankenstein's vault. Here, in Bath.

He read every word with grim fascination. The press cynically mixed fact and fiction, severed hands, decapitation and Frankenstein. There was stuff about the miles of vaults under the city. No one with a cellar would sleep easy until the killer was arrested, his paper said—as if Mary Shelley's monster was alive and out for blood, living the life of a rat and coming up to kill at nights.

They had no conception.

"I need your help. I'm a guest at the Royal Crescent Hotel. My wife is missing."

"Your name, sir?" Flynn asked.

"Dougan. Professor Joseph Dougan. I'm on vacation here with my wife Donna. I've been waiting for her since before midnight. She ought to be here. I've been right through the hotel, all the public rooms, I mean. I've had the staff make a search. She isn't here."

"When did you last see her, sir?"

"Middle of the evening. Eight-thirty, nine, something like that. We had dinner out. I walked her back to the hotel, saw her right up to our suite, then I had to go out. I was back by eleven-thirty. No sign of Donna. I went downstairs and across to the Dower House to see if she was in the bar, or something. No one remembered seeing her. So I went back to our room to wait. Nothing. This isn't like her. This is the middle of the night and my wife is missing. I want you to find her, please."

"Right, sir, two of our officers will be with you shortly. Are you speaking from your hotel room?"

"The John Wood suite."

"Stay where you are and they'll meet you there."

"Listen, I want you to get on the job, find Donna. There's no sense in wasting time talking to me."

"Professor, we need a description."

"Okay, okay. Just be quick. I have a bad feeling about this."

After the line went dead, Flynn spoke to the switchboard operator. "Did we get that on tape?"

"Yes, sir."

"Keep it. And send a car up to the Royal Crescent to get the full story. Professor Joseph Dougan. He said he has a bad feeling about this. So do I." Maiden. God, I was going about in a black bomber jacket when I was past thirty."

"I should have spotted a case of retarded development."

He let that pass. "Motorhead. It's easy to talk about fifteen or twenty years ago, but it takes a find like this to give you a sense of how long ago it was."

"So was your victim a Heavy Metal freak?"

"It's got to be considered. The victim or the perpetrator, or both."

"A gang killing?"

"I doubt it. Rockers had a tough reputation, but it didn't often run to murder."

"Especially not in Bath."

He gave a tired smile. "I picture this as a dust-up between two labourers on the site. We're trying to trace people who worked there at the time."

"You made that very clear on television."

"Well, I hope it jogs someone's memory. We don't have many names so far."

"It's all very bizarre," said Steph.

"What is?"

"The link with Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. How did the press get onto it?"

"The first I heard was some reporter from the
News of the
World."

"But who tipped them off"?"

"Does it matter?" He was uninterested, or appeared so. Then he shifted his head abruptly, like a thrush detecting a movement under the ground. "Maybe it does."

AT TEN past two in the morning, long after the calls from the
Nationwide
audience had dwindled to nothing, a 999 call was routed to Bath Central Police Station. It was put through to the senior officer on duty that night, Inspector George Flynn. The caller had an American accent, and was clearly agitated. borg, but not before the councillor asked Diamond sarcastically if it was safe on the streets of Bath tonight.

"Why—do you want a police escort?" Diamond asked.

Ingeborg giggled, clinging to Sturr's arm. "Thanks for the offer, darling, but I'm a simple lass. Two's company."

Sturr told her, "Anyway, Mr Diamond should be back at Manvers Street taking all the phone calls from his television audience."

"That's what lower ranks are for," said Diamond. "I'm off to my bed."

"I'VE SEEN worse things on the box," Stephanie assured him when they got home.

"I get brassed off with all the Frankenstein nonsense."

"That was obvious from your face. Television is very revealing."

"The young woman in Make-Up said I deserved a medal, but she was biased."

"Oh?"

"She thought me rather sexy."

Steph threw an oven glove at him. "Are you getting anywhere at all with this case?"

He held up his hand and showed a tiny space between his thumb and forefinger. "To be honest, I was hoping to put it on the back burner. It happened so long ago. But now it's in the headlines I'm not allowed to ignore it."

"What have you got so far, apart from the hands in the vault?"

"The very latest is that forensic have found an interesting relic in the bits of concrete from the vault: a Motorhead emblem that seems to have been part of a ring."

"You're talking about that rock group?"

"Heavy Metal. Remember?"

"When we married, you still had most of their LPs. You were nuts about them. And Black Sabbath."

"Black Sabbath... Lord help us," he reminisced. "Iron an excuse and went back inside the house. "God, I'd like to escape," he told Steph. "What time is it?"

"Twenty to ten. We can't," she said. "We've got to wait for the TV programme."

"That!"

"Did something go wrong?"

"Only that I called Georgina's pin-up a monster."

"Oh, Pete!"

"It was said in jest."

"Sometimes when you say things in jest they sound horribly serious."

"That's what bothers me."

The next fifty minutes went slowly. It was the kind of party when people said, "Isn't this fun?" whilst glancing furtively at their watches. Georgina flitted from group to group promising a surprise item at ten-thirty.

Across the room, Ingeborg's voice was showing the effects of the champagne. She seemed to be the only one enjoying herself, except John Sturr, her escort, who had his hand draped around her shoulder. They looked like gatecrashers from another party, Sturr with his lounge lizard looks and Ingeborg all legs and glitter.

Eventually Georgina began suggesting people move into the room where the TV was set up. "What are we in for?" one of the Assistant Chief Constables asked Diamond. "A blue movie?"

"Just blokes, I think."

"Really? What a bore."

Diamond drifted out of the room while the interview was transmitted and helped himself to a large scotch. By ten-forty, his bit of the show was over. Immediately after, people started making excuses and leaving. It was not really a response to the interview, more an opportunity made by the change in the pattern of the party.

Among the first through the front door were Sturr and Inge-police officer, and found a traffic warden, who called the police.

The crowd along the parapet increased.

Soon they saw two policemen in waders walk out along the edge of the weir to investigate. One of them stooped and grasped the body. For a second, the head was lifted clear of the water, a lily-white face with gaping mouth.

One of the crowd said, "It's a woman, poor soul."

The face was lowered again.

The police seemed uncertain what to do. Normally they would leave a body in the place where it was found for the scene of crime team and the forensic pathologist to inspect. In this situation there was a clear risk of its tipping over the weir and being carried downstream.

The two officers returned to the side for instructions. More senior policemen had arrived. A consultation followed, dominated by a man in plain clothes with a large moustache. After what seemed an age, a decision was taken, for the two in waders stepped out to the centre again and took a firm hold on the body and lifted it. One was unbalanced by the weight and lost his footing. He sank to his knees. His companion, trying to help, let go of his burden, stretched forward, stumbled over the corpse and fell face down into the water. The spectacle had its black humour that certain of the onlookers found amusing. The majority watched in silence.

In this undignified way, with several more stumbles, the body was dragged and carried around the arc of the weir to dry land, where it was placed on a stretcher, covered with a sheet of black plastic and loaded into a van.

The two officers in wet clothes got into a police car and were driven away. The van containing the corpse remained. Nothing more happened for twenty minutes. The watchers began to lose interest. A number of them left.

Down beside the undertaker's van, the CID officer with the moustache, John Wigfull, was assessing the situation. He hated dealing with anything that departed from routine procedures. Already those two buffoons sent to retrieve the body had made the police into a laughing-stock. His preference was to get away from here as soon as possible, but it took him some time to reach the decision. He had to satisfy himself that this was not the sort of incident requiring a search for evidence at the place where the body was found. The water would have carried any traces well downstream by now. The body had been seen floating towards the weir, so it must have entered the water higher up the river. To call a pathologist to the weir would surely be a waste of time.

Just to be sure he had missed nothing, he climbed into the van for a final look at the body, forced into closer proximity than he really wanted. So far as he could judge when he lifted the plastic covering, the victim had not been in the water for more than a few hours. She was small, even girlish in stature, with dark, bobbed hair. She appeared middle-aged, maybe in her forties, allowing that no one looks in the bloom of youth after drowning. Plain white blouse, black skirt and dark tights. No shoes. No evidence of violence other than superficial marks consistent with being in the river. Remembering that many suicides are drugs-related, he examined her arms for injection scars and found none.

Outside, he told the driver to take the body to the mortuary. Then he mopped his forehead, got into his own car and drove away.

DIAMOND DEVOTED the morning to Hands, as he had now dubbed the owner of the bones found in the vault. The case couldn't be soft-pedalled any longer. Two of the tabloids had splashed the story across their front pages that morning and even the most solemn broadsheet papers had covered it somewhere. He'd been forced to run the gauntlet of mikes when he'd arrived for work.

At least there was something promising to work on: the Motorhead emblem. It was a fair assumption that either the victim or his killer had worn it.

"Talk to every one of the builders you traced, Keith," he told Halliwell. "See if they remember a Heavy Metal freak who worked on the Roman Baths extension. It may be a name they supplied already, or someone they remember now, or just a face they can't put a name to."

His appeal for information on
Newsnight
had brought in over fifty calls, and he had a small team sorting the wheat from the chaff. The ratio of useful information was about one to twenty, if that, but they all had to be taken seriously. After a first sifting, he followed up on anything even faintly promising.

And something did emerge. Towards mid-day, he found himself talking to a retired plasterer in Winchester who had worked on the site for about five weeks in 1982. Retired, yes, but encouragingly all there. He reeled off a string of names, several that tallied with the list Halliwell had compiled.

Diamond wrote them all down, and found himself slipping into precisely the sort of shorthand he had mocked Halliwell for:
Barham, talkative, ex-Korean War; Sims, short, snooker; Page,
fancy rats; Andy. . . . ? nervous dyspepsia; Marshall, white
Anglia ...
More than a dozen altogether.

"Is that the lot?"

"It's all I can think of now. I was only there a few weeks, chum."

"Was there anyone interested in rock music?"

"You want a lot for your money."

"Heavy Metal."

"Most of the young blokes, I reckon."

"So was there anyone who wore a Motorhead ring?"

"Motorhead?"

"Their trademark was the skull of a bull, with two big canine teeth."

After a pause came the statement that would transform the case. "There
was
someone with a ring like that. He didn't last long."

"What do you mean? He left?"

"Didn't turn up for work one day. They was casual labour, a lot of them blokes. They got a better offer and jacked in the job."

"You didn't see him again?"

"That's right."

Diamond's hand tightened on the phone. "Do you remember his name?"

He barely took time to think. "No. That's gone."

"Would you try, please?"

"Give me a break, guvnor. It was getting on for twenty years ago."

"Even so."

"Can't help. Sorry."

"Anything about him? What was his trade?"

"Trade? I told you he wasn't a tradesman. General labourer, most like. An overgrown kid. Scruffy hair. You know, rats' tails. Didn't wash it much, or didn't appear to. Brown leather jacket. The reason I remember the ring is he was real proud of it. Any time we had a tea break, he'd be sitting admiring it, turning it round on his finger, tapping his heel at the same time, like he could hear the music in his head. He didn't talk much. These days he'd have one of them Walkman things, wouldn't he?"

"This is someone young?"

"Twenty. Not much over."

"And he left suddenly?"

"He wasn't the only one. Other kids gave up. There were all sorts, and some of them wasn't suited to the work. Students, school-leavers."

"Was he a student?"

"I doubt it. No, he wasn't no brain."

"A loner?"

"I wouldn't say that. Now wait a bit. He had an oppo." The voice grew more animated. "This is coming back now. We used to call them Banger and Mash."

"Any reason?"

"Banger. Head-banger, I suppose. Kids who go in for that rock music, right?"