The Vault

twenty-one

"How CLOSE TO STOW FORD?" Diamond asked over the intercom.

"Less than a mile across the fields, sir."

"The field where he was found?"

"Yes."

John Wigfull's car had been located in the Wiltshire village of Westwood.

On the drive out there, the big man treated Sergeant Leaman to his thoughts on the case. "Two people struck on the head."

After that, as if no more needed saying, he stared out at the thickly wooded slopes of the Limpley Stoke Valley.

Leaman didn't know Diamond well enough to pass a comment. As a statement it was not in the Sherlock Holmes class.

Eventually Diamond added, "One of them dead."

It was beginning to sound like verse. Leaman couldn't believe that the head of the murder squad was composing rhymes about a vicious assault on a colleague. He knew of the rivalry between his boss and Diamond, and he knew Diamond had a reputation for speaking out, but to hear the tragic events rendered into verse was too awful to contemplate. Something needed to be said.

"Are they connected, sir, Peg Redbird's death and the attack on Mr Wigfull?"

"Let's assume it," said Diamond at once, and Leaman was willing to believe the rhyming had been coincidence. "John Wigfull got too close to Peg Redbird's killer and provoked an attack. So who is it? Professor Dougan was his prime suspect and he has to be ours as well. But there are others in the frame. You saw what Somerset is like. He was devoted to Peg Redbird, and she was taunting him that night, talking of a secret meeting with someone else."

"The picture collector?"

"Right. Somerset has no alibi. The question is whether he was made jealous enough to kill."

"And then thrown into a panic when Mr Wigfull got onto him?"

Diamond gave a nod. "Then there's Pennycook, the guy on the fiddle with the antiques. He could have got panicky, too. It's easy to assume he was in Brighton yesterday, but was he?"

"We can check," said Leaman.

"We will. We've got to see him. And we have another dark horse, Councillor Sturr, who happens to collect early English watercolours."

"Why would he take a swipe at Mr Wigfull?"

"That isn't the question," said Diamond, making it sound as if taking a swipe at Wigfull was standard behaviour. "The question is: why would John Sturr have killed Peg Redbird? And how could he have killed her, considering he was at the ACC's party that night and spent the rest of it with Ingeborg Smith?"

"That's what I call a good alibi."

"But if he did kill her, and CID in the shape of John Wigfull got on his tail, then it's no surprise he went for him with a blunt instrument."

"In a field out in the country?"

"That's a mystery we face with each of them. How does an American Professor find his way to a remote spot like Stowford? What's Ellis Somerset doing in a cornfield when he said he was at home with a good book? How does a junkie like Pennycook happen to be there? Let's see if we can find a clue."

Wigfull's car, now festooned in crime scene tape, stood among twenty or thirty others in the shadow of a tall stone wall that marked the boundary of Westwood Manor, a National Trust property. The iron gate to the church was on the same side of the lane.

"Plenty of cars," Leaman commented.

"Visiting the Manor House," Diamond aired his knowledge, having just caught sight of the board that welcomed people inside. "They open Sundays. I'm more interested to know if there were cars here yesterday."

The constable from the Wiltshire Police guarding Wigfull's car had the answer. "Scarcely anyone was about, sir. The house wasn't open."

Diamond thanked him and asked if he was just as well informed about the interior of the car.

"Personally, I haven't looked inside, sir, but I understand nothing of any use was found."

"I'll decide that for myself. What was in there?"

"Just what you see, sir. The local paper on the back seat, Friday's edition. There's also a leaflet advertising the Antiques Fair. And a parking ticket on the dash, dated Saturday."

"That'll be when he called at the Assembly Rooms." Diamond looked at the ticket though the windscreen. It was the kind you buy from a machine, the standard ticket issued by Bath Council, whichever car park you used. Wigfull had paid £1.40 for two hours, and the time would have elapsed at 4.2I p.m. But there was no way of telling the actual time he had left. "I'll look inside."

"It's sealed, sir."

"Unseal it, then."

The constable eyed him in amazement. "Forensic haven't finished yet."

"Their look-out, constable, not mine. Don't wet yourself. I'll take responsibility."

He lifted the police tapes enough to open the rear door and remove the newspaper and leaflet. The Bath Chronicle was folded open at a page covering the weekend's entertainments and attractions. The Antiques Fair had both a display advert and an article about some of the items on offer. But Wigfull had gone rooting for information, not bronze cherubs. The fair was an opportunity, and he had kept it to himself. Out for personal glory, Diamond decided.

No clue as to why he had gone from the Assembly Rooms to a field in Stowford.

The paper was tossed back onto the car seat. "Forensic are welcome to this. Let's look at the scene."

The constable pointed across the fields. The two detectives climbed over a stile and started to take the footpath across a chest-high crop of maize. "Keep your eyes peeled," he told Sergeant Leaman. "They must have come this way, John Wigfull and his attacker."

"Together?" said Leaman.

"Not exactly arm in arm. My picture of it is that Wigfull is in pursuit. He follows someone in the car from Bath. That part is simple. Then the suspect drives into Westwood, parks, jumps out and heads across the field. Out here you can't follow a man without being noticed. Just look ahead of you. In this stuff you'd spot another man half a mile away, easy. So he knows Wigfull is on the trail. He ducks down somewhere, ambushes him and clocks him one. Then he legs it back to his car and drives off."

They reached the wall at the far side and climbed over another stile into a small uncultivated area of grass and a few trees. Ahead, under a sycamore's shade, was a lone figure in police uniform having a smoke. Galvanized, the constable dropped the cigarette, slammed his cap on and picked up a clipboard.

"Are we as obvious as that?" Diamond muttered to Leaman. "It must be the way you walk."

A large area around the spot where Wigfull had been found was marked with metal stakes and checkered tape.

"So what did they pick up in the fingertip search this morning?" Diamond asked when the introductions were over.

"Not a lot, sir," the constable answered. "A horse-shoe, some plastic bottles, a few cigarette butts, all of them looking as if they'd been here for years."

No mention was made of the fresh butts around his feet.

They went over to the plastic tent protecting the spot where Wigfull had been found. Soil samples had been taken, but the scene looked unlikely to yield much information. There were no indications of a struggle. The theory of an ambush was the most plausible.

"What size was the horse-shoe?"

"Average." The constable made the shape with forefingers and thumbs.

"Not large enough for a weapon, then?"

"Don't know, sir."

"I mean a weapon heavy enough to brain a man. If he had any sense, this bozo, he'll have got rid of the weapon in that cornfield we walked through." The fact that the crop was maize didn't undermine the point; you could have driven a motorbike into the field and lost it among the tall stocks.

He pursued this question of the weapon. "If, as we were saying, he was running from Wigfull, he's unlikely to have been carrying the thing he used. It's more likely he picked something up, any damned thing that came to hand."

"A piece of timber?" suggested Leaman.

"That's the way my thoughts were heading." He looked around for a convenient pile of chopped firewood. Nothing so obvious was in sight. "What's behind us, over there?"

"A pond, sir."

He went to see for himself. The pond was outside the staked area, supposedly of limited interest to the scene-of-crime team. Large enough to have floated a rowing boat in it, but you wouldn't have needed oars.

Sergeant Leaman, at his side, said unwisely, "Are you thinking he might have chucked the piece of timber in here, sir?"

"Timber would have floated, wouldn't it?"

Leaman reddened.

Diamond was examining the ground at the margin of the water. He scraped at the soil with his foot, then crouched and rubbed some on his finger and sniffed. "Bonfire. There's just the possibility that he found something here that he used as the weapon. It's the sort of spot teenagers pick for whatever they get up to over a few drinks. See the ring-pulls? Fag-ends? The cheapest drink is cider. That's the one most kids start with, and cider comes in bottles, thick, heavy bottles. It's speculation, but I'm wondering if our villain picked up an empty and bashed John Wigfull with it."

"And chucked it in the pond?" said Leaman.

Diamond gave him a look that said don't push me.