The Vault

thirty

MONDAY MORNING, AND WHATEVER happened to the weekend? Feeling blue, Diamond drove into his space at Manvers Street nick, switched off the ignition, sighed, felt for the door handle, heaved himself out and slammed the door. Then he heard a shout of, "Hi," from the far side of the car park. He stared across the car tops. She was blonde, a blonde to make Monday morning feel like Friday afternoon. What was even better, she waved and started running towards him.

He no longer felt blue. There was a definite tinge of rose.

"Mr D," she called out, and he recognized the voice as Ingeborg Smith's. The rose turned purple. It was time he had his eyes tested.

She stopped in front of him, breathless. "I won't keep you a moment."

"That's for sure."

"I just wanted to ask how John Sturr took it last night."

"You mean your dramatic exit? He didn't say much at all. Stunned, I expect."

"He didn't mention anything about my chances?"

"Your chances?"

"Of joining the police."

"Forget it, Ingeborg. He's a big wheel. He's not bothered with recruiting. You're pushing at an open door. You've done enough to get noticed."

Her face relaxed into a confident smile. "You've heard then."

"Heard what? Don't ask me, I only work here."

"Didn't they tell you? My recruitment interview." She let that sink in, and then said, "I got my application in just in time. They phoned me specially. They're seeing some applicants today and could I come in at short notice? Could I, man, oh man!"

"I'll cross my fingers."

"For me?"

"For Bath Police-if you get taken on."

She laughed and said, "Fat chance really. All bets are off after last night. John Sturr can pull the plug on me even if they like me."

"Did you tell him about the interview?"

"Yes. I thought it would help me. Didn't know I was going to blow a fuse and foul up everything."

"You spoke for all of us. But I thought you two were friends."

"Just because he took me to Georgina's party?"

"I saw you leave with him. You did stay the night?"

She said, level-eyed, "I did."

"You don't mind me asking? Did you go straight from the party to his house?"

"Yes."

"And then…?"

She laughed. "Oh, come on."

He wanted to know. "You spent the entire night with him?"

"You know I did."

"You'd had a few drinks by that time. Maybe your memory-"

She said with scorn, "I may have looked pie-eyed, but I know exactly what happened… or didn't."

"Didn't?"

Now she clicked her tongue and looked away across the car park. "Forget it. This is too personal."

"Yesterday you made some remark about business calls to America."

She nodded. "You don't miss much, do you? When we got in, there were messages on his answerphone. He said he needed to phone New York. Over there it was still business hours. He opened a bottle of bubbly, poured me one and took me into another room and put on some rock and roll video while he went off to make his call. I was too loaded to the gills to make an issue of it. When he finally got off the phone, a good forty minutes later, he was all apologies." She looked away again. "The story of the night."

"Yet you made another date for Sunday."

"Right. I met him by chance at the Forum Saturday night."

"The Elgar concert?" he said with interest. This could be crucial.

"Yes. I was sitting two rows behind him. He suggested this meal on Sunday. By then I knew about this interview. I'm not stupid."

John Sturr's movements on the afternoon and evening Wigfull was beaten unconscious had become central to the investigation. "Tell me, was he there from the beginning of the concert?"

"That's when we spoke-before it started, I mean."

He nodded, but wistfully. This piece of information clinched Sturr's alibi for that afternoon. He was at Castle Cary until six. It was impossible for him to have attacked Wigfull and made the start of the concert.

"What time are the interviews?"

"Seven o'clock?"

"You're about ten hours too early."

She laughed again. "Right now I'm wearing my other hat. Inspector Halliwell's press conference."

"Busy day for both of us, then." He took a step away, but Ingeborg still wanted to say something.

"I wasn't going to stay another night at John Sturr's. You don't think I'm that desperate?"

"Ingeborg, at the moment I just want to get to work."

"Why were you there?" she asked, becoming the journalist again. "What was it about? Is he up to naughties?"

"I reckon he thought he was," said Diamond, "even if you didn't."

"That isn't what I meant."

Buoyed up just a little, Diamond ambled into work.

INSIDE, HE asked Keith Halliwell how the press briefing had gone.

Some of the crime reporters, it seemed, had been touchy about Ingeborg's exclusive on the bones found in the River Wylye until they heard it confirmed by Halliwell that it really had been her digging in back numbers of the Wiltshire Times that had made the breakthrough. But there was real satisfaction over the appeal for information about the two men known as Banger and Mash. Papers can make something of names like that.

"We're back in the news," Halliwell claimed, not without pride. He'd handled a large press conference smoothly.

"Were we ever out of it?" Diamond commented.

"I've done a load of interviews for TV and radio."

"You'll have your own chat show next."

He strolled into the incident room where the information on Peg Redbird's murder was being co-ordinated. The man he wished to speak to was busy on the phone, so he stood by the board where photos of the crime scene were displayed, a custom that had never, in all his years as a murder man, been of any practical use. There were shots of Peg's office in Noble and Nude, of her body lodged against Pulteney Weir and of the stretch of river bank closest to the shop where, presumably, the body had been tipped into the Avon.

Leaman, still with the phone to his ear, snatched up a sheet of paper and waved it. Diamond went over.

The paper had the BT heading familiar from countless phone bills. They had supplied a longish list of numbers, the calls Peg Redbird had made on the day she was killed. Someone had scribbled notes in pencil beside some of them. British Museum, Tate, Courtauld, Fitzwilliam. It seemed Peg had devoted the first part of that afternoon to calling art galleries and museums. Later she had spoken to someone at Sotheby's, the auctioneers. Then there were two local calls, as yet unidentified.

"Helpful, sir?" Leaman said, now off the phone.

"Could be. Are these your notes?"

"Sally Myers, sir."

One of the younger members of the squad looked up fleetingly from her keyboard.

Leaman said, "It's clear Peg was pretty active that afternoon, trying to check on something. It has to be the Blakes, doesn't it?"

Diamond had worked that out and moved on. "What about these Bath numbers? Why haven't we got names beside them?"

"Sally's working on it. I thought we'd trace the long distance calls first."

Diamond made a sound deep in his throat that registered disagreement. The local calls were of more interest. "What's the news of John Wigfull?"

"Slightly better. He's semi-conscious some of the time, but in no condition to talk."

"Wigfull can't help us. Even if he sits up and asks for meat and two veg, he won't remember a damned thing. People don't after serious concussion."

"We checked Councillor Sum's statement, sir-the people in Castle Cary he went to see Saturday afternoon. It stands up well. He was with them until ten to six."

"And by seven-thirty he was at the Elgar concert in Bath," said Diamond. "He met Ingeborg there. She just told me."

Barely disguising his disappointment, Leaman said, "He's squeaky-clean, then. Shall I rub his name off the board?"

"Christ-who put it up there? If Georgina sees it she'll go ape. Give me the damned duster." He grabbed it and erased the name himself. "Don't you have anything new to report?"

Leaman shrugged. There was no pleasing some people.

"I'm off to Stowford for a bit," Diamond announced.

Nobody applauded, but they must have cheered inwardly, and he knew it. He was no fun to have around this Monday morning.

STOWFORD SCARCELY merits a name at all. You wouldn't call it a village; a hamlet would be an exaggeration. It is a farm and a cluster of buildings presenting their backs to the A366 between Radstock and Trowbridge. Only the cream teas board at the side of the the road would persuade a passing driver that there was anything to stop for. The place is a relic of the wool trade that flourished for four centuries, now just an ancient, crumbling farmhouse, some farm buildings and a mill.

"Why Stowford?” Steph had asked.

Diamond left the road and took the track that curved left towards the farmyard. He parked against a barn. Nobody seemed to be about, just a black cat sunning itself against the barn wall. On seeing the visitor it rolled on its back and looked at him upside down, suggesting it would not object to some admiration, but no cat stood a chance with Diamond so soon after last night's incident in the kitchen.

He walked around the side of the barn and looked through a window. The interior was fitted out as a furniture-maker's workshop. Nice pieces, too. A table and chairs he would have been happy to own. These buildings, he remembered from his previous visit, barns, cowsheds or whatever, had been put to use as craft workshops. Next door was a stonemason's studio and beyond that a metalwork shop.

"Why Stowford?”

Why not?

He continued the slow inspection of the buildings and the cat came with him, intermittently pressing its side against his legs. Not one of the workshops was in use. Well, it was only Monday morning. How nice to be self-employed, he thought.

Through the farmyard he went, across to the gabled farmhouse where he and Steph had gone for the cream tea. Fifteenth century, this building was said to be, and, candidly, looked its age. Moss was growing in profusion on the tiled roof.

He rang the handbell provided on a table by the door. The sound seemed excessive.

No one came. Although the small front lawns at either side of the path were filled with tables and chairs, the people didn't do morning coffee, it seemed. Just the cream teas.

He tried the front door and found it open. He recalled coming in here to pay for the tea. If you didn't notice the low lintel you paid with a bruised head as well.

Ahead was a narrow hallway with a kitchen off to the left. The cat trotted confidently in there.

"Anyone about?"

He was beginning to get that Marie Celeste feeling. The large room to the right was obviously the living room, with a generous fireplace, a piano and a box of children's toys. A table big enough to seat ten stood at the centre and other tables filled the window spaces, with pews instead of chairs. When the weather was unkind, the cream tea clients came in here.

He called out again.

The silence was not helping his Monday gloom.

Rather than venturing into the private rooms beyond, he returned outside and explored around the back, thinking possibly he had heard some sounds from that direction.

The source was revealed. He looked over a low wall at a large sow. It eyed him and seemed almost to smile.

Then a voice behind him said, "Lift me up, please."

A small girl had come from nowhere, perhaps six years old, with fair hair in a fringe and dressed in a pink T-shirt and black Lycra shorts. As small girls go, she was not the most prepossessing. Pale, snub-nosed and gap-toothed. And barefoot.

He asked, "Who are you?"

"Winnie."

"Do you live here, Winnie?"

She shook her head.

"Just visiting?"

A nod. "I want to see the pig."

"It's here."

"I can't see over the wall."

He knew better than to lift up a child he didn't know, natural as it may have seemed. "I can fix that," he said, spotting a blue plastic milk crate. "You can stand on that."

"I'll fetch it."

She was back with the crate very quickly and placed it in position herself and stepped up. "I can see now."

"Good."

"I call her Mrs Piggy."

"That's not a bad name," he said. Talking seriously to a child was a rare treat.

"She can't be Miss Piggy," Winnie said in a way that begged a question, and he wondered if he was about to be told something intimate, with the candour you must expect from small children.

"Why is that?"

"Get real. Miss Piggy is a Muppet."

"So she is. And where's your Mummy this morning?"

"Shopping, I 'spect. Look at all her titties. Why's she got so many?"

He should have been expecting something like this. "Those are for all the piglets. When she has a litter-that's baby pigs- they come in big numbers. Each one needs a place to suck."

"Miss Piggy doesn't have all those titties."

"Get real," he said. "Miss Piggy is a Muppet."

She almost fell off the crate laughing.

If she were ours, he thought, mine and Steph's, we wouldn't leave her and go shopping. Some people didn't deserve children. "Are you staying in the farmhouse?"

She shook her head, still watching the sow.

"Where, then?"

"Van."

He'd seen a tractor and some farm machinery where he'd parked the car. No van.

"Over there," said Winnie, gesturing in the general direction of the fields, but without taking her eyes off the sow.

He remembered seeing a caravan with a tent attachment on the far side of the field as he drove in.

She turned and jumped off the crate. She'd seen enough of the sow. "What shall we do next?"

Such confidence. He said, "I was about to leave. Aren't there any grown-ups about?"

"Don't know. Do you want to see the Muppets?"

"Watch TV, you mean? I'd really like to, but I don't have time today."

"Not telly Muppets, stupid. Real ones," said Winnie. She gave him one of those challenging looks children have for adults, daring him to disbelieve.

"Some of your toys?" This was not a good idea.

"No, silly. I'll show you." She walked a few steps and looked round to see if he was following.

He took a last look at the scene. The whole yard was still deserted. Even the cat had gone. He let Winnie lead him away from the farm. Not, he discovered with some relief, in the direction of the caravan, but towards a spinney, following the mill stream.

The child ran ahead, obviously familiar with the path. Diamond had to step out briskly. Butterflies swooped and soared and a startled pheasant scuttled out of the cover and crossed his path.

The water mill came into view, just. It was well camouflaged by creepers, a building long since fallen into disuse. Once it would have been used as a fulling mill, making the local cloth stronger and more compact. Winnie ignored it and ran on.

She stopped finally at another ivy-clad structure that must have been associated once with the production of wool and cloth. The miller's cottage maybe. This building was better hidden than the mill, but Winnie was familiar with it from the way she ran confidently to a window and stood on tiptoe to look in.

"See?"

He caught up with her. Surprisingly, the window was intact. In fact, it must have been cleaned recently. The interior was dark, and he screwed up his eyes to make out anything at all. Then he felt a gathering of tension as he saw what so excited the little girl. The place was fitted out like a coat check, with stands and hangers, except that instead of coats suspended from the hangers, there were weird and mis-shapen figures with heads hanging grotesquely and limp, shrunken bodies.

His first impulse was to drag the child away from the ghoulish spectacle. But she was clearly exhilarated by it, and he saw that she had been right, for these were puppets with the faces of people, animals and fantasy creatures. Some were lifesize, some quite small. Further in, were wood puppets on strings.

Winnie was singing the theme music from the Muppet Show, swaying rhythmically.

"Who does this belong to?" Diamond asked, knowing the answer.

To the same tune, she sang, "Don't know… Don't know. Don't know."

"Have you seen the man who comes here?"

She didn't answer.

He walked around the building, trying to see in, but the other windows were boarded, the door fastened with a padlock. "Well, you've solved a mystery, Winnie," he said when he came back to her. "I didn't need a grown-up after all."

"Do you want to go in?" she asked, looking up at him with her steady brown eyes.

"In here?"

"He keeps the key under that thing."

A boot scraper made of bristles mounted in wood. He looked underneath and found she was right.

The key fitted the padlock.

Winnie pushed past him when he drew the door open. "Hold on," he warned. "We don't know what's in there."

But Winnie knew. She was already inspecting the puppets, skipping up and down the racks, lifting faces and pulling strings, humming her tune again.

It was a kids' treasure-house. Along the walls were tea-chests crammed to overflowing with the materials the puppets were made from, rolls of latex, sponge rubber, bright-coloured, glittery fabrics, gauze, coils of wire, balsawood, spray-cans, marker pens, wigs, beards and moustaches. At the far end was an old metal filing cabinet with a basket of golden eggs on top.

Diamond tried the top drawer, hopeful of finding some correspondence. Surely an enterprise like this had to have some organisation. But the drawer had no files. It was filled with cans of paint. And the lower drawers contained only string, newspapers and pots of glue.

"Careful with that, Winnie." She was swinging on the tentacles of an octopus, stretching them alarmingly. "I think we'd better leave now."

"Don't want to."

"We've had our fun now."

"Haven't."

He started walking towards the door. "I'm going, anyway, and I'll have to shut you in if you're not coming."

"Don't care."

By the door, hanging from a nail in the wall, he found something helpful at last. An office-style appointments calendar. Someone had scribbled in the names of places and organizations, with times. He checked to see if there was an entry for Saturday. Bath Rotarians, 11-5, Victoria Park. The day Wigfull had been attacked.

Thursday, the day of Peg Redbird's murder. Blank.

Today, then. Monday. Little Terrors, 11 a.m. What on earth was he to make of that? From Bath Rotarians to Little Terrors in one weekend. Quite a comedown.

"What does it say?"

Winnie was at his side, not choosing after all to be left alone with the puppets.

"I don't know," he said.

"Can't you read?" she asked.

"I mean I don't know what it is. It says Little Terrors."

"Don't you know?" said Winnie with a superior air. "It's a play place in Frome. I been there hundreds of times."