The Vault

by Peter Lovesey

  "This is the way I'm working. If I can't proceed-"

  She blurted out, "I've vouched for him personally. Isn't that enough for you?"

  "You vouched for his presence at your dinner party. You don't know what went on before and after it."

  "God, you don't give up."

  He waited.

  She got up and walked to the window, twisting a handkerchief into a thin cord and wrapping it tightly around her fingers. "When do you propose to see him?"

  "Now."

  She winced, but she had given up the struggle. "The questions relate to the possible sale of the pictures from Camden Crescent?"

  "Yes, ma'am, and his movements."

  She reached for the phone. "Then I'll call him and soften the blow-if I can."

  twenty-five

  THE WORRY LINES FADED from Georgina's face. Her friend the Councillor was not at home, or not answering his phone. Diamond quit her office, promising nothing.

  Mindful of his blood pressure, he left the building and took a steady walk along Manvers Street towards the Abbey. The street lights were on and not many people were about.

  The great West window of the Abbey was illuminated from inside, and the sound of Evensong drifted across the paved yard. With difficulty in the fading light, Diamond looked for the carved figures of angels ascending the twin ladders on either side of the window. He was not a church-goer and was not sure about God's existence, let alone the angels', but these were less than perfect angels anyway, old friends he returned to in times of stress. Weatherbeaten after five hundred years, some with stumps for limbs, they still had a restorative effect on a less than perfect policeman. They always made him smile. They were not, as many supposed, climbing Jacob's ladder, but the ladder seen in a dream by the builder of the Abbey, Bishop Oliver King. A nice triumph of human vanity over piety, Diamond always thought, for the Bishop to insist that his own dream was on the front of the Abbey, and sucks to Jacob.

  Across the yard by the railings in front of the Roman Baths was a human shape Diamond took for one of the dossers. He went over to see who it was. He knew most of them. Unusually, the man wished him good evening and called him "sir". The voice was Keith Halliwell's.

  "What are you doing here, leaning on the railings?"

  "It's all right, sir. I'm sober. Just taking stock, that's all."

  "Me, too."

  "To be truthful, I came up here hoping for some inspiration."

  "From the Abbey?"

  "The vault. It's below us."

  "Right. So it is. The bloody vault."

  "Locked up now. This is the closest I can get."

  "You think the answer is down there?"

  "I don't know, sir. I don't know if we'll ever get an answer."

  "We will, Keith. It's coming together. It's the key to everything, what happened down there."

  "But I'm getting nowhere with it."

  "Don't say that." Diamond put a hand on Halliwell's shoulder. "I looked at your press release. Fine."

  "Thanks."

  They started walking back towards the police station. The experience between them, two old colleagues united at the end of the day, encouraged confidences. Halliwell asked what would happen about Joe Dougan.

  Diamond said simply, "He'll leave for Paris in the morning."

  "Is he in the clear?"

  "That's another question. I'd pull him in if I knew we had something that would stick. You know the rules as well as I do."

  "Do you believe his wife is alive and well in Paris? Can't we get the French police to check?"

  "I checked already. There's a Mrs Donna Dougan registered at the Ritz."

  "She's OK, then? He was speaking the truth."

  "It doesn't mean we have to believe every damned thing he said."

  They walked on, and although no more was said about the investigation, it got through to Halliwell-he was seized with the conviction-that Diamond knew everything now. He had worked out precisely what had happened. It was only a matter of nailing his man.

  The old tyrant could be a pain to work with, but no detective on the Force had such clarity of mind.

  As if he was a mind-reader too, Diamond said with compassion, "You should go home now. You've done enough today."

  Halliwell agreed.

  OF THE Murder Squad, only Sergeant Leaman remained. Diamond asked him to bring in copies of Joe Dougan's statements.

  Predictably, John Wigfull's paperwork was immaculate. He had painstakingly recorded things from the interviews at the Royal Crescent that Diamond would have disregarded. There was the whole chain of contacts that had led the dogged American professor to Noble and Nude.

  He asked Leaman, "Did John Wigfull follow up any of this stuff Joe Dougan told him-the bookshop at Hay-on-Wye and so on?"

  Leaman shook his head. "Have you ever been to Hay, sir?"

  "Never."

  "I was there once. I do a bit of cooking and I wanted a book by Fanny Craddock that had been out of print for thirty years. It's incredible, the number of bookshops in a small country town. A whole cinema stuffed with old books. A castle. There's no way you could trace a particular sale."

  Diamond studied the notes. "How about these Bath people, Oliver Heath and Uncle Evan?"

  "They certainly exist. They're known locally, sir. Mr Heath owned a bookshop in Union Passage for many years and Uncle Evan has a puppet theatre."

  "Did anybody go to see them?"

  "To check on Dougan's story? It wasn't thought necessary, sir, seeing that he didn't invent the names."

  "You didn't bother."

  Harsh words that pained Leaman. "Those people were stepping-stones, so to speak. Things only began to happen after he found his way to the antiques shop."

  "We need to see them."

  "Tomorrow morning?"

  "Too late."

  Leaman had rashly hoped there was still time for a quiet Sunday evening drink with his girlfriend.

  THE RETIRED bookseller Oliver Heath greeted them at the door of his Queen Square apartment, dapper for an elderly man in shirt and cravat, grey slacks and tan-coloured brogues. "I was only listening to the radio," he said, making clear that he didn't at all object to having his Sunday evening disturbed. "Sometimes you get some interesting talks on Long Wave with the Open University, but tonight is not my cup of tea exactly: Feminism in the Third World."

  Diamond explained their visit.

  "Oh, yes," the old man confirmed. "The professor was here, just as he said, and showed me a copy of Milton that once passed through my hands. I say passed through them; actually it was on my shelves for years. I never regarded it as anything special. It wasn't a first edition or anything. Some of the fly-leaves were missing, I recall."

  "The blank sheets at the front?"

  "And the back. You often find this with old books. Paper was far more expensive in former times than now. People used the sheets as notepaper. Can't blame them, but it does ruin a nicely bound book. What I failed to notice-or appreciate the significance of-was the inscription on the cover."

  "Mary Shelley's initials?"

  "And of course the Abbey Churchyard address." Oliver Heath managed an ungrudging smile. "Good spotting on Professor Dougan's part-and good luck to him."

  "Was it genuine?"

  "The writing on the cover? I've no reason to think it wasn't. But you see I was ignorant of Mary Shelley's connection with Bath. Well, I knew the Shelleys had stayed here at some point, but I didn't know Frankenstein was written here. I've checked since, and he was right. Five, Abbey Churchyard. It's a salutary thought that the world's most famous horror story was penned within a few yards of our great Abbey Church."

  "A first edition of Frankenstein would be worth a bit, I imagine?" said Diamond, seeing that Heath was so generous with his information.

  "My word, yes. A set in good condition would fetch a huge sum. I think the 1818 edition amounted to only five hundred copies. It was in three volumes, to appeal to the circulating libraries. They li
ked books published that way because one book could be loaned to three different readers at the same time. But library copies are not of much interest to collectors."

  "It wasn't an immediate bestseller, then?"

  "Far from it. Out of print for years. They produced a new edition in 183I with some changes to the text, but it didn't really take off until the 1880s, long after the author was dead."

  "You're well up on all this."

  The old man smiled. "I took the trouble to gen up after having my ignorance shown up the other day. The story is more popular now than it has ever been. I must say, I can't fathom how it has become a set text in university English courses, but apparently it has, here and in America. An article in The Times stated that Mary Shelley is more studied than Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelley."

  "Is that surprising? If I was given a choice of Frankenstein or poetry, I know which would get my vote," said Diamond.

  "You might be disappointed. It isn't exactly Stephen King."

  Diamond put the conversation back on track. "Did Professor Dougan tell you what he was up to?"

  "He wanted to find out where the Milton came from, who was the previous owner, and so forth. The provenance, we call it."

  "And you helped?"

  "I had to dig very deep in my memory. I recalled buying it quite cheaply from a local man who calls himself Uncle Evan. He must have a more formal name, but that's the one he is known by. Have you heard of him? He runs a puppet theatre and I'm told it's very good entertainment. Does everything himself, makes the puppets, the scenery and writes the scripts. A multitalented young man. He built a stage of some sort that he carts about in the back of a van."

  "You sent the professor to see him?"

  "I told him where Evan might be found, and that was the Brains Surgery."

  "The pub in Larkhall?"

  Oliver Heath smiled at the recollection. "My American visitor was somewhat thrown by the name. I have to confess that I didn't immediately say it was a pub. I'm sure he had visions of something like Dr Frankenstein's laboratory."

  "Is the Brains Surgery Uncle Evan's local?"

  "It's the one you visit if you want to book his puppet show. I couldn't tell you where he lives."

  "MORE USEFUL than I could have hoped for," Diamond commented as Leaman drove them out to Larkhall.

  "Did we learn anything new, sir?"

  "Sergeant, you're beginning to talk as if it's been a long day. Of course we learned something new. We learned that Frankenstein was published in 1818 with only five hundred copies. Did you know that?"

  "No, sir."

  "Well, then. Ponder the significance."

  At the Brains Surgery, they were told by the barman that Uncle Evan had not been in for a couple of days. The bob from deep-set eyes around the bar seeming to regard that as a betrayal left Diamond in no doubt that further questions about the puppeteer would not lead to much. Nobody had an address or phone number. Nobody knew his real name.

  "If he does come in…" said Diamond, but he knew he was wasting his breath.

  THE DRIVE back to Manvers Street was mostly in silence. At one point Diamond muttered something cynical about the great British public, but later he said more philosophically, "Why should everyone be there when we want them? We drew blanks with Councillor Sturr and Uncle Evan, but we saw a lot of others today."

  To Leaman it sounded encouragingly like a line being drawn at the end of a long day. And that was what Diamond intended- until they took the turn into Bridge Street and he spotted a parked van and someone carrying things from the lighted interior of the Victoria Gallery.

  "What's going on there at this time of night? Drive right round and we'll have another look."

  Leaman, to his credit, did not even sigh. He took the car rapidly round the circuit formed by Grand Parade, Orange Grove and the High Street and entered Bridge Street for the second time.

  "Pull up here."

  They went to look.

  It could conceivably have been a heist in progress. Large objects cocooned in bubblewrap were being carried from the gallery and loaded in the van. But nobody took flight.

  "Police," Diamond announced. "What's going on exactly?"

  A figure he recognized as the gallery caretaker stepped out of the shadows. "No problem, officer. Everything's in order. They've just dismantled the exhibition and now they're loading it onto the van."

  "From the main gallery?"

  "The annexe."

  Diamond became more interested. "The watercolours?"

  "Right."

  "Councillor Sturr's collection?"

  "Yes."

  "Now where do they go-back to the owner?"

  "You'd better speak to the driver."

  A young bearded man said from inside the van, where he was loading with a young lad as assistant, "Back to Mr Sturr's house, yes."

  "Is he home, then? We tried to get hold of him earlier and he wasn't there."

  "He went out for a meal. That's why it's a late job. We're unloading at ten at his house."

  "We'll follow you, then," said Diamond cheerfully. "Wouldn't want to miss him, would we, sergeant?"

  "No, sir," said Leaman in a hollow tone.

  They waited while the remaining pictures were put aboard and roped to the floor. The van with its police escort in trail moved off at 9.50 p.m.

  "I'll be interested to find out why this operation had to wait till now."

  Leaman didn't answer. His level of interest was waning by the minute.

  Sturr's residence was a Victorian villa the size of a town hall at the lower end of Lansdown Road. Security lights flashed on as they entered the gravel drive. A white sports car was parked under some tall trees.

  The driver of the van tried the doorbell and got no answer.

  "Where's his Holiness?" said Diamond.

  "It isn't ten yet," said Leaman.

  Three minutes later, Diamond said, "It is now."

  A further seventeen minutes passed before the silver Mercedes swung sedately onto the drive and pulled up next to the van. The tall figure of Councillor Sturr got out and walked around the front of the car as if the removal men and the police did not exist, and opened the door for his passenger. There was a gleam of thighs caught in the glare of the security lamp and out stepped Ingeborg Smith.

  twenty- six

  "REMEMBER, I AM NOT recording the vision of a madman."

  There used to be a phrase applied to certain murderers that they were "guilty, but insane". The gentler version was that they killed "while the balance of their mind was disturbed". A comforting phrase in the days when the alternative was a date with the hangman. If you were temporarily unbalanced, you were not responsible for your actions. Instead you were sent to a prison for the criminally insane.

  He was not mad.

  He was not unbalanced.

  He was responsible for his actions. Proud of most of them.

  twenty- seven

  COUNCILLOR STURR USHERED INGEBORG through his front door and then turned to face Diamond, and his expression was not welcoming. "It's inconvenient."

  "It's necessary, sir."

  "You can see I've got pictures to unload."

  "Isn't that the removers' job?"

  "Don't you tell me how to unload pictures. I must check every one for possible damage, the glass, the frames."

  "How many? That won't take long, sir. We've been waiting hours to see you."

  "You made no appointment."

  "We don't," said Diamond. "We just drop in."

  For a time, Sturr ignored them to supervise the unloading of his pictures. Each had to be unwrapped in the hall and inspected before being taken into a front room. The removal team got on with the job while Diamond and Leaman stood by the front porch like two immovable Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Diamond said confidentially to Leaman, "Did you recognise the woman?"

  "I've seen her hanging about the nick."

  "Ingeborg Smith is a hotshot reporter. Wants to join th
e police."

  "Must be out of her mind. Is that her car, the white Peugeot?"

  "Presumably."

  "Did you know she was a close friend of Mr Sturr's?"

  "She's upwardly mobile, is Ingeborg."

  "I already noticed that."

  The unloading of the pictures was completed with no damage discovered. Sturr took out his wallet and tipped the removal team. They returned to the van, closed the rear doors and drove off.

  Diamond stepped up to Sturr before he could retreat inside the house. "Can we get this over, sir?"

  "I told you it's not convenient."

  "It's not convenient for us, but we're here."

  "Look, it's ten-thirty on Sunday evening, damned near my bed-" He broke off, cleared his throat, and rephrased the statement. "You can see I have a visitor."

  "You have three visitors, and two of them are from the police."

  "Anyway, what is this about?"

  "The death of Miss Redbird and the attack on our fellow-officer, John Wigfull."

  As a member of the Police Authority, Sturr could not avoid making sounds of concern. "That was shocking. How is he?"

  "Still out, I think. I've been too busy to ask." Diamond stepped closer. He'd had enough. "Either we talk here, Councillor, or down the nick. It's up to you."

  Sturr braced, as if for a fight. He thrust his face towards Diamond. Then, quite suddenly, he submitted like an ageing stag faced by the herd leader, turned and walked into his hall, leaving the door open for the two detectives to follow.

  The pictures had been carried into a sitting room and propped against the wall. There, as a centre piece, in competition with the artistry of Cotman, Cox and Blake, Ingeborg was seated in her short summer dress, all leg and cleavage, looking faintly amused. Sturr told her, "This is extremely tiresome, my dear, but would you mind waiting in another room?"

  She said with spirit, "That's all right. Mr Diamond and I are old chums."

  Sturr moved right up to her and muttered something in her ear. The smile vanished. Colour blazed in her cheeks. Here she was, perfectly placed for an exclusive, and they wanted her out.