Peter Lovesey - The Vault

"By cross-checking. We go back to your contractors and all the others you traced and see if any of them have memories of Banger and Mash. More important, can they put a name to them?" He stood up and pushed his chair under the desk.

"You said 'we'?"

"And I meant you." He put a hand on Halliwell's shoulder. "My oppo."

DOWNSTAIRS IN an interview room, John Wigfull was face to face with the American professor whose wife had disappeared. It was apparent that Joe Dougan had not yet heard that the woman's body had been taken from the Avon. Either that, or he was giving the impression he knew nothing of it. Wigfull was doing his best to keep an open mind, but keeping an open mind didn't alter a fact well known to criminologists: that most murders are committed within the family.

"I don't understand it," said Joe with some conviction. "I reported this at two in the morning. You've been on the case twelve hours. Where is she?" To do him credit, he looked and sounded like a man in anguish. He had bluish bags under his red-lidded eyes and his face had sprouted overnight stubble.

Wigfull handled him calmly. No one was better at taking the heat out of a stressful situation. "I can assure you, professor, we put out a missing person report directly. I checked that. Can I just go over the description with you?"

"We did that in the night."

"Yes, sir, but you were in a state of shock. You may have missed something out." Wigfull picked up a copy of the description that had been circulated. "Looking at this, you did miss something. You didn't say what she was wearing, apart from a cream-coloured Burberry raincoat."

"I can't tell you what else she had on," said Joe.

"You must have seen what she was wearing earlier that evening. You had a meal out with her."

"I honestly don't remember. I don't look at her clothes. I can tell you what she said, how she was looking, what she had to eat."

Wigfull found himself insensitively thinking that what she had to eat might be of some use to the pathologist. "Didn't they go through the wardrobe with you?"

"Sure, but I couldn't help them. Call me an airhead if you like, but I don't know what she brought with her."

Wigfull sighed. It is a sad fact that a majority of men, if caught unprepared, cannot tell you what their wives are wearing. "Does she have any distinguishing marks?"

Joe Dougan frowned. "Birthmarks, you mean?"

"Tattoos."

"Donna?"

"Operation scars, vaccinations?"

"Why do you need this? She's not going to show anyone her appendix scar."

"So she has one?"

"I think so, but I don't see…" He turned paler. Panic threatened. "You mean she could be lying somewhere?"

Wigfull was not ready to tell all. "It's got to be considered when someone is missing this long. Has she ever done anything like this before?"

"No, sir, she has not."

It was wise to move on swiftly. "I'd like to go over your movements last evening, professor. After eating out, you returned to the Royal Crescent Hotel with your wife between eight-thirty and nine, and then you left her. You went out again."

"So I left her at the hotel. She's a grown-up. She's able to be on her own for an hour," Joe pointed out.

"Where did you go?"

"To an antiques store on Walcot Street. Noble and Nude. I was there earlier. I promised to come back."

"The shop was open as late as that?"

"The lady was taking in furniture. She told me she'd be there until midnight."

"You're speaking of the owner?"

"Her name is Miss Redbird."

"She can vouch for you, then?"

"Hey, what is this?" said Joe, his red eyes widening. "Am I under suspicion, or what? Would I call you people in the middle of the night if I'd done something wrong?"

Wigfull skipped that question. "Was your wife in any way upset that you went out so late without her?"

"I wasn't going after girls, for God's sake."

"But was she upset?"

Joe gave a slight, grudging nod. "Donna didn't see why it was important to me to go back to the store. I tried explaining, but she wasn't in a mood to be reasonable."

"You had a row?"

"A difference of opinion."

"Enough for her to walk out?"

"In a strange town in the night? I don't think so. Not Donna."

"She took her raincoat," Wigfull pointed out. "We established that. Do you have any friends she could have gone to?"

"In Bath? No."

"Nearby, then?"

"No, sir. We're tourists. The only people we spent time with here are other tourists."

"Does she have money?"

"A couple of hundred pounds, I guess. Sometimes she goes shopping without me. She also has credit cards. Her bag isn't in the room."

"Did you give details of the credit cards to the officers who saw you in the night?"

"Sure, as much as I knew."

"Was there any place your wife mentioned that she planned to visit while she is here?"

"We're finishing up in London, if that's what you mean. Tomorrow-I mean today-we were going to visit Wilton House. She loves big houses."

"Was that what brought you to Bath?"

Joe gave a nervous, angry sigh. "Look don't get me wrong, but talking about our vacation isn't helping to find my wife. I told you we're tourists."

Wigfull pressed on regardless. "All right. Would you mind telling me what you were doing visiting an antique shop as late as nine-thirty in the evening?"

Joe thought before he spoke, as if deciding how much to say. "There was something I was interested in buying, an antique writing box about two hundred years old. I found it in the afternoon, rummaging around, only it was locked and the key was missing. The lady had hundreds of keys in her office. We looked for one that fitted, but couldn't find one. I had to get back to the hotel to take Donna out to dinner. I promised to go back after and see if the lady had found the right key. That's all."

"You explained this to your wife?"

"Of course I did."

"And…?"

"She thought it was stupid. Couldn't it wait until next day? You know how they go on."

"You argued."

"I promised her the trip to Wilton House."

"But she had a point. Couldn't it have waited?"

"If you know anything about antiques," Joe said as if to a child, "you see something you want, you'd better buy it. If you go back later you can bet your life it won't be there. It might have been sitting in the store collecting dust for ten years, but some wiseguy will have moved in and beaten you to it. That's the first law of antique-buying."

"Did you get it, then?"

Joe shook his head. "No, sir. It's still down at the store. The lady won't part with it until she finds the damned key. So it was a wasted evening, and you can imagine how I feel about the whole fiasco."

Wigfull weighed the explanation, studying the little man's face: creased with the ordeal, vulnerable and nervous.

What else was he hiding?

"You were there until what time?"

"Eleven, or soon after."

"Trying keys?"

"Sure. By then, I figured Donna would be getting anxious about me, or apeshit, to be honest, so I beat it back to the hotel."

"Walked?"

"Yes, sir. No taxis in sight. I carried a map. I was back by eleven-thirty, easy. And Donna wasn't in the room. I told myself there must be some rational explanation and she would soon come back. I got more and more worried and asked the hotel staff to make a search. They couldn't have been more helpful, but we didn't find her. At two in the morning, I called the emergency number."

"We have it logged at two-ten."

"I'm being approximate here."

"Understood," said Wigfull. "I was just confirming your statement." Aware that he could not much longer delay telling Joe about the corpse in the river, he leaned back in his chair and pressed his thumb and forefinger against his big moustache, tracing the shape, as if to make sure it was still there, hiding his own insecurity. He had never been good at breaking bad news to people. "I, em, was down at the river an hour ago. It's probably someone else, but we have to check in a case like this."