The Vault

twenty-three

JOE DOUG AN APPEARED MORE calm than he had at any point up to now. "Nice timing, superintendent," he said, rising from a chair in the garden of the Royal Crescent Hotel. "Why don't you gentlemen join me? I just ordered afternoon tea."

Tea in the Royal Crescent was something special and a waiter was approaching the table, but Diamond waved him away. This was not a twenty-year-old murder he was investigating now. The time of leisurely tea-breaks was well past. He sat opposite Dougan and sent Sergeant Leaman for another chair. "I'd better say at once we have no news of your wife," he told the professor.

"No problem," said Joe with a serene smile.

Diamond widened his eyes.

Joe said, "Donna is fine."

Fine? Diamond had to play the statement over in his mind before fully taking it in.

Joe added, "She called me at lunchtime. She's in Paris, France."

"Paris?"

"It surprised me, too. She just needed time out, she said. Things got a little heavy for her, my fling with Mary Shelley, as she calls it. Yeah, that's the way Donna saw it. She felt neglected. When I went back to the antiques store on Thursday evening, Donna went looking for sympathy. She knocked on the door of some people we met here, a Swiss couple, the Hack-steiners. They had the best suite in the hotel and they took pity. They let Donna spend the night in a spare bed in their suite. The next day she picked her moment to leave the place without being seen and travelled to France with them."

"Without luggage?"

"It's only a train ride."

"Passport?"

"She has it with her. And credit cards." He gave the long suffering smile one man shares with another when talking about the ways of women. "She wants one more day in Paris. Not many shops are open Sundays over there."

"Why didn't she get in touch before this?"

Joe shrugged. "To pay me out, I guess. I'm so happy to know she's alive and well that I didn't ask her."

"You're positive it was your wife?"

"Are you kidding? I know that voice. In twenty-four years I've heard plenty of it."

Heart-warming news, apparently. Diamond was not convinced. He would not believe until he had seen Donna himself. It was all so convenient just when the heat was on Joe. He couldn't produce her because she was in another country.

"So when is she coming back to Bath?"

"She won't. I'll travel out there tomorrow."

Like hell you will, Diamond thought. Suspicion of Joe was driving him now, just as it had driven Wigfull. "Let's talk about yesterday. How did you spend the afternoon and evening?"

Joe's manner changed abruptly. He drew back in the chair, gripping the arms. "Hey, what is this? More dumb questions? I've taken more than my share from you guys in the past two days. I'm going to get onto my embassy if you don't let up. Police intimidation. We don't take that stuff."

"It's not intimidation, professor."

"And what if I refuse to answer?"

"Why should you?"

"Because I'm sick of your questions, that's why. You had co-operation from me all the way, you and that other cop with the mustache. You tell me something: who identified the woman who was found in the river? I did. I'm supposed to be on vacation, not looking at dead bodies. The other evening your people searched my room, treating me like a goddam criminal. I'm standing in my boxer shorts, the Dodge Professor of English, watching two cops go through my possessions."

"Who was that-Chief Inspector Wigfull?"

"With the mustache."

"This was when-Friday?"

Joe nodded. "They didn't find a thing."

"Do you know what they were looking for?"

"You'd better ask the mustache."

"I can't," said Diamond. "John Wigfull is lying unconscious in hospital. Somebody caved his head in."

Joe was silent for a time. "And you're thinking I'm the somebody?"

"It will help us to know your movements yesterday, sir."

Joe flushed. "I'm not a violent man. I'm an academic, for God's sake." His outraged innocence was worth an Oscar nomination if he was acting.

"Yesterday afternoon?" Diamond pressed him, while Leaman waited with notebook open.

With a sigh, Joe capitulated. "What was yesterday… Saturday? I went around the hotels, asking about Donna. It was a long shot, but I wanted to satisfy myself that she wasn't still in Bath. I carry a picture of her and I showed it to the reception people, concierges, bellmen, anyone I could."

"Which hotels?"

"You name it. The Hilton, the Francis, the Bath Spa. You can check. They'll remember me."

"That was in the afternoon?"

"All day, from eleven on."

"Until…?"

"Until my feet cried out for mercy. Do you have any idea how many hotels there are? I got back around five, I guess. Sat in the bath tub for a long time. Had a meal on room service. Watched television until I was falling asleep in the chair."

"Make any phone calls?"

He shook his head.

"Did you see Chief Inspector Wigfull at any stage yesterday?"

"You don't give up, do you? No, I did not."

"And now you're proposing to leave Bath and join your wife in Paris?"

"Tomorrow. You don't have to sound so grudging. I'm a free agent."

"Where is she staying?"

"The Ritz. Donna doesn't do things by halves."

"Have you made your travel arrangements?"

"Sure. I'm catching the 10.28 to London tomorrow morning. I booked a seat on the Eurostar train."

"Without Mary Shelley's writing box?"

He rolled his eyes upwards. "Don't break my heart. I wish I knew what happened to that."

Before leaving the hotel, Diamond checked on room service to the John Wood suite. An evening meal of asparagus soup, sole meuniere and fresh strawberries and cream had been logged at 6.20 p.m. Saturday. "It still leaves him out of the hotel for long enough to attack John Wigfull and get back," he commented to Leaman.

"He'd need transport, sir."

"There and back. Don't say it-the logistics are difficult. If we knew for sure when the attack took place, it would help. My feeling is that it happened in daylight. Wigfull would know there isn't much point in chasing a wanted man across fields after dark."

"Maybe the house-to-house will turn something up," Leaman said.

"Maybe." Diamond hadn't much confidence.

Wiltshire Police were at present knocking on doors to find a witness who had seen someone on the footpath over the fields, or noticed the cars outside the Manor House. There was also a large search-party combing the fields for the weapon used on Wigfull. They had to try.

They returned to Manvers Street, where the police station was like a prison before an execution. The only news of John Wigfull was that he was still unconscious, his condition critical.

AT THE time Avon and Somerset Police acquired their helicopter, Diamond was heard to say it was an expensive toy that he would never use. Like many of his stands against technology, this one was fated to be undermined. Strapped into the seat, staring fixedly ahead, he was being flown over the great expanse of Salisbury Plain towards the South Coast. Privileged views of the ancient sites of Stonehenge and Avebury passed unnoticed. He did not enjoy the sensation of flying.

They touched down on the lawn in front of Montpelier Crescent, Brighton, the address of Ralph Pennycook, the young man who had sold antiques to Peg Redbird on the day of her murder. The journey was done in under an hour. When Diamond looked about him, after stepping down and battling with the draught created by the rotor blades, he had the strange sensation that he had never left Bath. The neo-classical facade of the crescent was, if anything, grander in scale. Each large house with its own pillars and pediment might have been the front of a theatre.

Helicopter travel is convenient, certainly, but not discreet. People had opened their doors to watch and children were running across the grass towards the chopper. "After this puppet-show, let's hope he's at home," Diamond muttered to Sergeant Leaman.

He was-already at the front door-and their mode of travel had impressed him markedly. His hand was at his throat, pinching at a fold of loose skin, and his eyes behind the plastic lenses had the staring roundness of a nocturnal creature.

There was no need to explain who they were. The chopper had Avon and Somerset Police in large letters on the outside. Pennycook ushered them in fast-as if the entire Crescent had not noticed the police making a call on him. Diamond's quick assessment was that he had the look of a young man out of step with his generation. His casuals on a warm Sunday afternoon amounted to a thick yellow cardigan over a black T-shirt, with blue corduroy trousers and brown leather slippers. The cardigan had the label showing; it was inside out.

The room they were shown into was nicely-proportioned, and that was all that could be said for it. Beer stains disfigured the wallpaper. The furniture amounted to a chipped and rusting fridge and some wood and canvas folding chairs that belonged to Brighton Corporation. He must have nicked them from around the bandstand in one of the public parks. And this was the heir to Si Minchendon's fortune. He could certainly use some money.

Diamond lowered himself cautiously onto one of the chairs; he had a history of bursting through canvas. It creaked, groaned and just held his weight. He considered how to begin. With a helicopter standing on the lawn outside, he was in no position to say what he would normally have said, that this was just a routine enquiry. "You were in Bath a couple of days ago, sir?"

"Yup."

"Would you mind telling us what brought you there?"

"My uncle's funeral." The voice was toneless and barely audible.

"That would be the late Mr Minchendon?"

Pennycook nodded. His fingers were twitchy. He plucked at the sleeves of the cardigan, tugging the cuffs over the backs of his hands.

"Of Camden Crescent?" Diamond said, more to encourage a response than glean information.

Another nod.

"Nice address."

"If you say so." He ran the tip of his tongue around the edge of his mouth.

"When was the funeral-one day last week?"

"Yeah."

This was like chiselling marble. "Which day was the funeral, Mr Pennycook?"

"Dunno."

"Speak up."

Leaman said, "It was Tuesday."

"Tuesday," said Diamond. "And you were there, and you don't remember?"

"I've had a lot going on."

"So you stayed longer."

"Things to see to."

"What things?"

"Papers to sign, and stuff."

"Your legacy?"

"Yeah."

"I understand your uncle left you everything."

"Right."

"Does that make you the owner of the house in Camden Crescent?"

"More or less."

"What does that mean?"

"I have to wait for probate, don't I?"

"So you're not the legal owner yet?"

The pallid face registered pain, as if Diamond had struck him. He blurted out a few inarticulate words that sounded very like a confession. "I don't want no aggro. Needed cash in hand, right? Cash in hand. The stuff was coming to me anyway. Ask them, if you like. If you lay off, I'll square it with the bank."

"You did a deal with Peg Redbird, the owner of Noble and Nude?"

"Is that her name?"

Diamond reacted angrily. "Don't play the innocent. You don't do dodgy deals with people without finding out who they are. You went to some trouble to pick a dealer likely to connive at this fraud. Had you met Peg Redbird before?"

"No, and that's the truth."

The phrase slipped easily from his tongue and added to Diamond's impatience. He leaned forward menacingly. "Young man, every word you say to me had better be the truth. Understand?"

Pennycook understood, and showed it. Beads of sweat were rolling down the side of his face.

"So who put you onto her?"

Now he gathered himself and launched into a stumbling explanation. "I had some time after the funeral, didn't I? Sniffed around like. Antiques markets and stuff. Got talking to the stall-holders."

Hard to imagine you talking to anyone, Diamond thought.

"They gave me the buzz on the trade in Bath. Not the la-de-dahs up Bartlett Street. The other end of it. No questions asked."

"Nod and a wink?"

"Right. Her name kept coming up. Peg Redbird does the business, I was told. She had this shop in Walcot Street full of junk."

This was rich, coming from a man who furnished his room with chairs from the local park. "Didn't you want to use the furniture yourself?"

"Don't go in for fancy gear."

"I can see that."

Pennycook saw fit to add, "In case you're wondering, this here was my gran's place."

Diamond nodded. "Another inheritance? You're a lucky man."

"I took it over at a peppercorn rent, didn't I? I pay peanuts for this."

"But you still have a cash-flow problem."

He glared resentment. "Had to update my computer system, didn't I? Mega expenses."

Diamond rolled his eyes. This was obviously bullshit. Some of Pennycook's initial nervousness had gone. He was beginning to behave as if he felt he had sidestepped the crisis.

Time to turn the screw.

"What are you on?" Diamond asked.

The face drained of what little colour had been there. He drew his arms defensively across his chest. "What do you mean?"

"Come on. Look at the sweat on you. People don't wear cardigans in a heat wave. Show us your arms."

"No way."

"It's back to front, that cardigan. You only put it on when you saw us coming."

"That's no crime."

"Tell you what," said Diamond. "If you're shy about your arms, you can show us something else. Where do you keep this super new computer?"

Pennycook was starting to shake. He remained seated, staring.

"It doesn't exist, does it? We know a smackhead when we see one, Sergeant Leaman and I. Keep your needle marks covered, if you want, but the other signs are pretty obvious. Pinhead pupils, the sweats, your body wasting away. I mean, we've only got to look at the state you live in. I guess this place was furnished when you took it over. Are you a registered addict?"

Pennycook nodded. He looked wretched now.

"How much are you paying to kill yourself? A hundred a day? Two hundred? Listen, my friend, we're not here to dump on you because you're on the needle. We're not even after the bloodsuckers who supply you, though someone had better be. We want the truth about your trip to Bath. How did you travel?"

He said in a low voice, "Bummed a lift from a mate of mine, didn't I?"

"You don't have wheels of your own?"

"Does it look like I would?

"This mate. Was he staying with you in Bath?"

"No chance. He was on his way to Bristol."

Diamond locked eyes briefly with Leaman. Here was another suspect without his own transport.

"How long were you there?"

"Went for the funeral and stayed till the weekend."

"Stayed where?"

"My uncle's gaff."

"The will hasn't been proved yet and they let you stay in his house?" Diamond said in surprise.

Pennycook looked away, out of the window, towards the helicopter on the lawn. "It weren't a case of letting me."

"Meaning what?"

"I fixed it, didn't I?" Now he gave Diamond his full attention, taking obvious pride in the guile he had used. "The bank are the executors, right? They got the front door key. They know he left the whole bloody lot to me. I told them it was Uncle's wish for some of his old mates to go back to the house for a jar or two after the funeral." He chuckled. "They couldn't argue with that. About eight guys came back, said they were his mates. I don't know who they were. He had no family apart from me. Anyway, I found some wine downstairs and handed out cheese biscuits. At the end I was supposed to lock up and return the key to the bank. They sent a geezer in a suit to make sure I did. I give them back their key and kept the key of the basement. So I could let myself in later and save some money putting up in Bath."

It rang true. The ingenuity of the heroin addict is well known. "Then what?"

"I already told you."

"You scouted around for an antiques dealer, and Peg was the obvious choice."

"Went to look at her place first. Took a walk around and give it the once-over. Then I give her a bell from Camden Terrace asking for a valuation. I knew she'd come."

"You let her pick out some plums."

"She got what she wanted. She could have had more, but she was playing it cool."

"How much cash changed hands?"

"Grand and a half."

"She carried that much?"

"No. She told me to call for it later."

"Later the same day?"

"Yeah."

Diamond's eyes widened. "Thursday evening? Did she now?" This was a detail neither he nor Leaman had included in their picture of events the evening Peg Redbird was murdered. "You went, of course?"

He shrugged. "What do you think?"

"What time was that?"

"Don't know. Don't keep track of time."

"After dark?"

"Yeah."

"That would have been later than eight-thirty, then. Was she alone?"

Pennycook seemed to sense that he was walking into quicksand. "She was bumped, wasn't she?"

"Let's talk about your actions that evening."

"I didn't touch her. I collected my dosh and cleared off back to Camden Crescent."

"Fifteen hundred pounds?"

"Like I said. That was the deal." His thin body was starting to shake. "Look, if you think I'm the one who stiffed her, you're bloody mistaken. She was all right when I left."

"Did you see anyone else?"

"In the shop? No."

"Outside? Anywhere near the place?"

The temptation to steer suspicion to someone else must have been strong. "Don't remember."

Diamond was as energised as if he had taken a jab from one of Pennycook's syringes. This was crucial evidence: someone who had visited Peg shortly before she was murdered. "You came to the shop some time after dark, but before ten, correct?"

Pennycook gave a perfunctory nod.

"Shape up. I'm trying to help you." Encouragement, followed immediately by warning words. "You're under strong suspicion of murder. What you're about to say could convince us you're not the killer."

There was some doubt whether Pennycook was about to say anything.

"Tell us all you can remember about that meeting you had with Peg Redbird."

"There's sod all to tell."

Not in Diamond's estimation. "You arrive at Noble and Nude to collect your money. You walked, I suppose?"

"Yeah."

"Try and remember Walcot Street. Was it quiet?"

"I told you I didn't see no one. Just cars."

"Cars going by, or parked outside?"

"Going by. Nothing was parked there."

"A van? You didn't notice a van?"

"You're not listening."

"So you got to the shop. Was it open?"

"Course it was, or how would I have got in?"

"She could have let you in. What was happening when you entered?"

"She was in there, facing me, behind a big desk with boxes on it. I said-"

"Hold on," Diamond stopped him. "The boxes. Tell us about them."

"There's nothing to tell. Boxes, I said."

"What were they made of?"

"One was wood, I think, polished wood, dark. She closed it when I come through the door. Locked it up."

Mary Shelley's writing box. "You're sure of that?"

"Sure of what?"

"That the box had been open?"

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't remember, would I?"

Diamond nodded mechanically, thinking that this squared with Ellis Somerset's statement. It meant that Pennycook visited Peg after Somerset had left. The hired van was no longer outside and the box was still open. "What size was it? The size of a box file? You know what a box file is?"

"Yeah. Thicker than that. Like two of them, one on top of the other."

"And you mentioned other boxes."

"Rusty old tins without lids. Two or three, up at one end of the desk."

"You don't recall seeing anything else on the desk?"

"Nothing on the desk."

There was just the suggestion of more to come. Diamond coaxed it out. "But some other thing caught your interest?"

"Yeah?"

"Something else you happened to notice."

"Oh, yeah. On top of the safe I saw some of the stuff I sold her. Two old pictures off the wall. Scenes."

This clinched it. He had come after Ellis Somerset had delivered the goods to Noble and Nude.

"Scenes?" repeated Diamond, testing him. "What kind of scenes?"

"I don't know. Old-fashioned stuff. Not my taste at all."

"You couldn't tell me the artist?"

"I know sod all about art. I was telling you what happened," Pennycook said in a tone suggesting he finally understood the importance of giving an account. "I tell her I've come for my money and she says yes, it's ready. She opens a drawer in her desk, takes out a key and opens the safe. She has the money ready in a brown envelope. Fifteen hundred, mostly in twenties. She asks me to count it, and I do. I say something about doing more business with her, how I'd give her a second chance when I got the probate. She doesn't say much. I reckon she wanted to get rid of me and close the shop."

"What made you think that?"

"Don't know really. She wasn't so talkative this time. But I got what I came for, so it didn't bother me. I cleared off back to Camden Crescent."

"And the street outside-was that the same? Nothing waiting?"

"If it was, I didn't see it."

Diamond looked towards Leaman. "Anything I missed?"

The sergeant shook his head.

"Right," said Diamond, turning back to Pennycook. "That was Thursday night. What happened to you since?"

"Since?" He frowned. "Is that important?"

A look from Diamond told him that it was.

"I stayed in Bath. Friday I had to visit the bank to sign some papers. I hung about the streets until late to see if I could buy some H for less than they charge here in Brighton. No chance. The bastards fix the price all over, the same as cigarettes, or bloody cornflakes."

"And then half of it is filler, talc or some such," Diamond commented. "So you spent Friday evening there. How about Saturday?"

"I came back here, didn't I?"

"What time?"

"I keep telling you, I got no sense of time."

Well, Diamond thought wryly, railway timetables were supposed to be the detective's salvation. "How did you travel? On the train?"

"You're joking. Thumbed it, didn't I?"

The budget of the drug addict didn't run to train fares.

Pennycook claimed he had hitchhiked to Southampton on a juggernaut lorry bound for the docks and from there along the coast roads to Brighton with a couple of students. He had got back some time in the early hours of Sunday and slept until the afternoon.

No alibi for Peg's murder or the attack on John Wigfull.

"During your time in Bath, did any other police officer question you about Thursday?"

Pennycook shook his head.

"Can you drive?"

"What?"

"You heard me. Have you ever had a licence?"

"Yeah, some time. What are you trying to pin on me now?"

"Filling in the gaps in your statement, that's all. Maybe you went for a drive in the country yesterday afternoon."

"What with, for Christ's sake? I got no wheels."

"I reckon you have, amigo. Somewhere in a garage round the back of Camden Crescent, there's a nice, shiny motor that old Si used to drive about in. I'd put money on it. In fact, we can check on our computer."

"It ain't mine yet, even if there is one," he pointed out.

"The house isn't yours, and that didn't stop you."

"Bog off, will you?"

Which, presently, they did.

Outside on the lawn, interested residents still stood around the helicopter. Diamond looked about him as if for an escape route. "Where's the nearest pub, do you reckon?"

Leaman looked surprised. "Do you need a drink after that, sir?"

"Anything but. I didn't fancy using his toilet."

They headed across the grass to the roundabout at the north end and spotted a pub sign a stone's throw away on Dyke Road. And they did have a quick beer.

"What did you make of him?" Diamond asked, on the way back to the helicopter. Any conversation had to be got through before they boarded.

"Typical junkie," said Leaman. "They'll do anything to get the stuff. Sell their own mothers. Anything. We don't have to dig deep for a motive. He needed cash. She had it stacked away in the safe, didn't she? We don't know how much. All there was when we opened it was a few antiques, letters and things."

"If he did kill her, he didn't help himself much talking to us," Diamond commented. "Admitting he was at the shop that night and going on about how desperate he was for cash in hand."

"He's not very bright, is he?" Leaman said. "His brain's gone soft."

"I don't agree. It's easy to confuse poor speech with low intelligence, but there are plenty of big achievers, artists, musicians, inventors, who prove that wrong. I've known druggies smarter than anyone I've met in the police. Brilliant people. They channel all their intelligence in one direction, that's the tragedy."

"So you don't rate him as a suspect?"

"Didn't say that, did I? I just said he's smarter than you think, and probably smarter than both of us. He's putting one over everyone-the bank, the taxman, his landlord, Brighton Deckchair Services. Why shouldn't he put one over us as well?" As they stooped to enter the wind funnel under the rotor blades, he shouted to Leaman, "You wouldn't catch a bright lad like Pennycook risking his life in one of these."