The Vault

by Peter Lovesey

"He had the motive. He had the opportunity."

  "Going by the tone of your voice, you don't think he did."

  At this point, the Assistant Chief Constable steamed in like the royal yacht, straight towards Julie. "Inspector Hargreaves?"

  "Ma'am."

  They shook hands and Georgina-who didn't go in for small talk-started explaining how the interviews were arranged. Diamond, sidelined by all this, left them to it. He'd missed his chance to put in a good word for Ingeborg. He just hoped Julie would remember her from press conferences as a bright young prospect ready to take on the world. With Sturr on the panel, Ingeborg's chances had taken a nosedive.

  Annoyed with himself, he went over to talk to Halliwell. The hapless inspector had been beavering away on the bones in the vault case for days. Now he had a new stack of paper on his desk, the first telephoned responses to the appeal for help in identifying Banger and Mash.

  "What's the story, Keith?"

  "What you'd expect, really. Any number of people thinking they must have known the dead man. Parents whose sons left home and haven't been heard of since. Women who got ditched by blokes and would like to think it wasn't their fault. All a bit sad really. The only thing I can say for sure is that Motorhead must have had a big following in the nineteen-eighties."

  "Most of these are on about the victim?"

  "That's right."

  "What have we got on the other one, Mash?"

  "Bugger all, sir. We couldn't give them much of a description. What do we know-that he kept himself clean and fancied his looks a bit? You can't put that in a press release."

  Diamond picked up the sheaf of papers, jottings taken by the civilian women who answered the phones. The handwriting reflected the speed at which the notes had been taken.

  "There's one possible girlfriend of Banger who might be worth following up," said Halliwell. "Near the top, marked with the highlighter. A Mrs Warmerdam, living in Byron Road."

  Diamond found it and started to read: "11.20 a.m. Mrs Celia Warmerdam, Holt House, Byron Road. "Going steady" 1982 with rock fan Jock Tarrant-casual labourer Roman Baths extension. Description fits. Remembers Motorhead ring. Still has her diary. JT failed to turn up for date on 10/9/82. Never heard from again."

  Halliwell said, "I thought I'd go and see her in the morning."

  Diamond was still charged up from collaring Uncle Evan. He wasn't in tune with the slower tempo of the Banger and Mash case. "Byron Road isn't far. It's one of those streets on Beechen Cliff named after poets."

  "I know," said Halliwell impassively. "I live there."

  "What-Byron Road?"

  "Longfellow, actually."

  "We can go now. You've had a day of it. I'll drive you home after."

  CELIA WARMER DAM would have been worth visiting whatever she had to say, as unlikely an ex-rocker as you could hope to meet, a plump sugar-plum fairy in her late thirties. Her silver-highlighted hair stood out like a seeded dandelion. She brought them tea in bone-china cups in a pink front room with a baby grand piano and lace curtains gathered in great, dramatic scallops. "It's all so laughable now," she said, making the "so" last as long as the rest of the words together. "My Heavy Metal phase. I knew nothing whatsoever about the bands or the things they performed, but I dressed the part, in my thigh-length boots and faded denims and motorbike jacket. I just had this enormous pash for Jock Tarrant, my bit of rough. And was he rough! Kissing him was worse than rubbing your face against a pineapple. He had the most revolting, smelly hair down to his shoulders, incredibly evil clothes, all studs and leather and engine-oil, and of course I adored the brute." She giggled. "I've had two husbands and a partner since, and they were all nicely groomed. They shaved and showered every day, and didn't dream I once slept with an apeman-well, more than once." She smiled wistfully. "More times and more ways than I'd care to describe. It was hearing you on Radio Bristol this morning that got me thinking about Jock, because he had one of those rings with the animal's skull or whatever it was and he was easily the size you said, six foot two or three. I only came up to his elbows."

  "And he went missing?" Halliwell prompted her.

  "Yes. When did I say? I looked it up in my diary and told the young lady on the phone."

  "September 10th, 1982."

  "I know I was devastated at the time. Heartbroken. Jock was going to take me to one of the best hotels in Edinburgh for the weekend. God knows what they would have thought of us. He'd had a bit of luck, he said. Some money was coming his way. Bread, he called it."

  Diamond latched onto that at once. "Did he say where from?"

  "Something to do with work, I think. He was a casual at the Roman Baths, on the extension. I thought it sounded an interesting job, but he said it was boring. My best guess is that he dug up something Roman, a piece of jewellery or some coins, and smuggled it out to sell somewhere. He didn't say and I didn't ask."

  This was more useful than they had dared to hope. A possible motive for violence in the vault.

  "So you arranged to go away for the weekend?"

  She laughed at her youthful folly. "I stood on Bath Station with my overnight bag for hours. It was a Friday, and really cold for September. Jock didn't turn up. I caught a chill and spent the rest of the weekend in bed shivering and crying. I never saw him again."

  "Did you ask around at the places where you met? Clubs? Pubs?"

  The hair quivered. "I had my pride. Friends asked me about him. Nobody seemed to have seen him anywhere. I just assumed he'd gone off with his money to start up in some other town. I cried buckets, but you get over it eventually, don't you?"

  Diamond caught a significant glance from Halliwell. The crucial question still had to be asked.

  He prolonged the moment, sipping his tea. Then: "Did he ever talk about the people he worked with?"

  "Only that they were brain dead, or words to that effect."

  "Yes, but did he speak of them by name?"

  "If he did, I don't remember. Between ourselves, Jock wasn't much of a communicator."

  "I'm thinking of one man in particular," Diamond tried again, "one he was teamed with, mixing cement for the bricklayers."

  Briefly, it seemed she hadn't taken in the suggestion, for she said, "Shall I take that cup and saucer now? You look as if you aren't used to it." And after rescuing her china, she surprised them both with, "Would he have been a college boy called John?"

  "I'm asking you, ma'am."

  "Jock called him a college boy anyway. I suppose he was a student on vacation work. They skived off for a smoke sometimes. That's about all I remember."

  It was all they were destined to find out from Celia Warmer-dam. They tried, and she tried too, for a surname, or the name of the college, or some physical description. If she had ever known such details, they had sunk into oblivion with her thigh-length boots and faded denims.

  Outside in the car, Diamond asked Halliwell which year it was that sexual intercourse began.

  Halliwell stared at him.

  "Some time early in the nineteen-sixties. Dates are not my strong point. I thought you might know it," Diamond tried to explain. " It's something I heard a few days ago, in a poem by Philip Larkin. Hold on, the words are coming back to me:

  'Sexual intercourse began

  In Nineteen Sixty'Three

  (which was rather late for me)-

  Between the end of the Chatterley Ban

  And the Beatles' first LP.'

  That's all I wanted to know. Sixty-three."

  "Right," said Halliwell, still mystified.

  "A man born in sixty-three would have been-what, nineteen?- in 1982, when Banger disappeared? That's about right for a college boy called John."

  The Diamond system of mental arithmetic was too occult for Halliwell to follow.

  "Check the graduation lists for 1983,84 and 85. Start at Bath. Then try Bristol. Then the polytechnics. It's a chemistry degree."

  "You want me to do this now, sir?"

  Diamond had forgotten that H
alliwell was supposed to be on his way home. "Soon as we get back to the nick. Get on the phone to the universities."

  "John who, sir?"

  "Sturr."

  "Councillor Sturr?"

  "Of the Bath and North East Somerset Police Authority. And may the Lord have mercy on our souls."

  JOHN STURR had been awarded a B.Sc. in chemistry at the University of Bath in 1984, the registrar's office confirmed. Triumphant at finding gold at his first strike, Halliwell informed Diamond.

  "Right," came the response, so low key that it sounded to Halliwell like a putdown. "Now we need to know if they keep records on their students. Well, of course they must. Try the chemistry department. See if there's anything in Sturr's file about vacation work."

  Unfortunately there was not.

  "Let's think a bit," said Diamond. "There's another way to find out if he worked on the Roman Baths. There must be."

  "We've been through this before, sir," Halliwell reminded him. "We tried the Trust, the building firms. No joy at all."

  Diamond stared ahead.

  Halliwell waited, consoled only by the knowledge that in this sort of impasse, his obstinate, boorish boss was capable of brilliance.

  "Okay," the big man said after some time. "Get on to the chemistry department again. Ask about references."

  "I already did," said Halliwell, disappointed. "The professor did write a couple for him when he applied for jobs, but there's no mention of holiday work."

  "That isn't the point, Keith. Who were the references for?"

  Halliwell frowned.

  "If we find out who he worked for," Diamond went on, "they may have his job application on file. A student applying for his first job had damn all to put down except exam results. Work experience would help pad out the form."

  Halliwell grinned, liking it. "I'll try them again."

  And Diamond's persistence paid off. In August, 1984, the chemistry department had supplied a reference on John Sturr for a stone-cleaning firm called Transform. The records showed that he had got the job and stayed with them for three years. Better still, Transform were still in business. They had kept Sturr's records, and his original application listed various vacation jobs, among them construction work at the Roman Baths in July and August, 1982.

  "Got him!" said Halliwell, flinging up his arms like a golfer at the eighteenth.

  Diamond shook his head. "Not yet, Keith."

  thirty-six

  PROMPTLY AT FIVE TO seven John Sturr arrived at Manvers Street spry and smiling for the recruitment interviews. He was welcomed by the Assistant Chief Constable and introduced to Julie Hargreaves. "This should be straightforward, shouldn't it?" he said. "How many are there?"

  Julie said she thought there were eight candidates. It was agreed that about ten minutes would be sufficient for each interview. Before going in, Sturr asked Georgina if what he had heard was true: that a man had just been brought in for questioning about recent serious crimes.

  "I'm happy to confirm it," Georgina said, "and we've charged him."

  "So soon?"

  "He confessed."

  "To everything?"

  "To assaulting DCI Wigfull. It's enough for us to hold him. There's a lot more to come out."

  "Did you discover why…?"

  "He's an art forger. It all stems from that."

  "Forgery," said Sturr, flushing at the word and then recovering his composure with several nods of the head, as if to confirm a melancholy truth. "Now I understand. I was able to provide some crucial evidence from my own collection."

  "We appreciate your help, John."

  "Little enough. Be sure to pass on my congratulations to your man Diamond."

  "Diamond? I don't know where he is at this minute," said Georgina. "Probably down in the cells with the suspect."

  But he was not. Unknown to Georgina or anyone else except Keith Halliwell, who was with him, Peter Diamond was on his way to Sturr's house in Lansdown Road.

  THE CANDIDATES were assembled in a waiting area at the end of a corridor, five men and three women, among them Ingeborg Smith. A uniformed sergeant was with the group, doing his best to allay last-minute jitters. This was just a preliminary interview, he explained. The selection would be based on a series of assessments including practical exercises overseen by serving constables. No single element in the process was a "pass" or "fail". This evening's interview was meant to be a two-way process, a chance for them to have their questions about the police answered. They should feel relaxed about it.

  Nobody believed him.

  "Who are they-the interviewers?" one twitchy young man asked.

  "A detective inspector-female-DI Hargeaves, from Headquarters, and a lay person, Mr Sturr, who serves on the Police Authority."

  Nothing else was said about Sturr, but as soon as the sergeant had gone, Ingeborg hurried away to the ladies' room.

  DIAMOND TRIED the side gate and found it bolted. "Over you go, Keith."

  Halliwell was halfway over when Diamond added, "Watch out for the Rottweiler."

  Halliwell froze.

  "Joke. Just jump down, open up and let me in."

  Sturr's garden was large, with mature fruit trees and a well-tended lawn, too well-tended to be of any interest to Diamond. "The vegetable patch at the end looks promising," he said, striding across the lawn.

  "Promising what, sir?"

  "Evidence, Keith. Everything up to now is circumstantial." He started up a paved path between rows of runner beans and onions, heading for the garden shed at the end. "Right. Spades and a sieve."

  "Has he buried it?"

  "If he has, it will take more than you and me to find it. No, I picture this as more of a cremation than a burial. We're looking for ashes."

  They found a heap reduced to whitish powder under a wire mesh incinerator behind the rhubarb in a corner of the vegetable garden. Halliwell stooped and felt the texture of some of the ash between finger and thumb. "This won't tell us much."

  "Get some on your spade and put it through the sieve."

  He obeyed.

  Diamond gently shook the sieve and picked at the few fragments remaining. They disintegrated in his hand and fine ash wafted up and settled on his suit.

  Halliwell was resigned to a wasted trip. "Do you want me to go on?"

  "That's why we're here."

  "Isn't this a job for forensic?"

  "In the first place, I can't ask forensic to climb over Councillor Sturr's gate. In the second, there isn't time. I want a result now."

  "I meant we don't have the facilities."

  "You don't need facilities to find bits of metal in a heap of ash."

  There was no response from Halliwell. The mental leap was more than he could make.

  "The lock, the hinges."

  "Ah. Wouldn't he have destroyed them?"

  "Like as not, but he must have missed something. Maybe as small as a screw. Try another spadeful, Keith."

  THE ORDER was alphabetical and Ingeborg was the last candidate to go in. The wait had been stressful. She seriously considered not going in at all, in spite of reassurances from the others, who came out saying it had been a doddle. She was no coward, but she felt certain John Sturr had got himself onto the panel to give her a hard time. The sadistic bastard had put himself up for this at the last minute as an act of revenge for the things she had said on Sunday night.

  Hers was no pushover.

  The two interviewers were in chairs over by the window, clipboards in hand. Julie Hargreaves had the kindness to smile- and she represented the police, Ingeborg reminded herself as she sat down.

  It was Sturr who began, staring at her as if she were a stranger. "Miss, em, Smith." He made her name sound like a cheap joke. "You're a freelance journalist according to your application, successful, earning a good living. What on earth are you doing here, sitting in front of us?"

  She resisted a sharp answer. She was not going to let him goad her into a verbal fencing match that she would win, but a
t the cost of appearing too bolshie for the job. "I think I'm suited to police work," she answered evenly. "I've seen it at close hand as a reporter, and it's a worthy occupation and a challenging one, more worthy and more of a challenge than my present job."

  "In other words you're fed up to the back teeth with journalism:? "

  "I'm looking for something closer to the action, if that's what you mean, rather than reporting it."

  Julie Hargreaves said, "That's good, but I have to say that there's a lot of report-writing in police work and some of it is extremely dull."

  "I understand," said Ingeborg. "I can handle that."

  Below them, in the car park at the back of the police station, some large vehicle was manoeuvring, sending a heavy throbbing noise through the open windows.

  Sturr said something that was drowned by the sound.

  "I'm sorry," said Ingeborg. "I didn't catch the question."

  He spoke it again, practically shouting. "How do you feel about taking orders?"

  A joke about waitressing popped into her head, and she popped it out again. "There's discipline involved in every job, certainly in freelance journalism. I'm very willing to learn."

  Julie jotted something on her pad, something positive, Ingeborg hoped. Sturr, obviously unimpressed, was increasingly distracted by the engine sound from below. He leaned back in his chair and tried to look out.

  Raising her voice, Julie suggested, "Why don't we shut the windows?"

  Sturr didn't reply. He continued to stare out.

  Julie gave Ingeborg a sympathetic look. "Sorry about this."

  In a move so sudden that it startled both women, Sturr stood up and said stridently, "What's going on? God, that's my Mercedes they're moving. There's a towaway truck being hitched to my car." He pulled the window open wide and shouted, "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing? That's my car."

  Julie Hargreaves got up to look out.

  Ingeborg remained seated, conducting herself as well as she could in the strangest interview she had experienced.

  "I'm going to sort this out," Sturr said. White-faced, he turned with such force that he knocked over his chair and sent it sliding across the floor.

  Ingeborg was aware of another movement on the far side of the room. She had not heard the door open and Peter Diamond come in.