The Vault

thirty-five

AFTER SO MANY YEARS in the police, Peter Diamond was not surprised by much, but he was rendered speechless when he walked into the Manvers Street control room and recognized an elegant young woman in a dove grey suit chatting to one of the sergeants.

She turned and smiled.

He eventually said, "Well, who would have thought it?"

DI Julie Hargeaves, his much-missed deputy, said, "It hasn't been all that long."

She was supposed to be on attachment to Headquarters.

"What brings…?"

"Interviewing duty," she explained. "They're taking on new recruits, some women among them. I had an evening off, or so I thought. I haven't now."

He was disappointed. "I thought for a moment…"

"No," said Julie firmly.

"Are you doing the interviews alone?"

She shook her head. "Someone has to represent Joe Public. Regulations. I'm teamed up with Councillor Sturr. Have you met him?"

"Him? God help us if the rest of the public is anything like him."

"He's on the Police Authority," said Julie. "A sledge-hammer to crack a nut, if you ask me, but I gather he insisted."

"Typical," said Diamond, thinking of the shock Ingeborg was going to get.

Julie shrugged and said, "How's it going here? I heard about John Wigfull, poor old lad."

"He's getting over it."

Her lips shaped into the beginning of a smile. "Shouldn't I waste my sympathy?" She well knew of Diamond's feud with the injured chief inspector.

He made an effort to sound upbeat. "I just got the latest from the hospital. They're saying there's been a big improvement in the last hour. He's fully conscious. All the signs are that he'll make a full recovery."

"That's wonderful. And you phoned up to ask how he was doing?"

He gave the honest explanation. "I needed to know in case he was dead. We just nicked someone for the assault."

"Reliable?"

"Cast iron. He confessed. Runs a puppet show. Calls himself Uncle Evan."

"Did he also murder the antiques lady?" Julie, as he would have expected, was well up on the case.

"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 Halliwell 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."