Peter Lovesey - The Vault

"Because it once belonged to Mary Shelley?" Wigfull was becoming interested. He slung the junk mail onto the back seat and turned towards Diamond. "No one else. Only the professor. He was on to the find of a lifetime, so he wouldn't have shared the secret with anyone else. He must have nicked it."

"He had the opportunity," Diamond continued to think aloud, "and the temptation." He was silent for a moment, testing his own hypothesis. "But if he stole the box, why did he tell us the place was unattended when he went back? We're bound to suspect him. He ought to have insisted Peg was there."

"He did originally," said Wigfull. "At any rate, he gave the impression. That's why I got so stroppy when he denied it."

"Did he say she was there?"

"Not exactly. He let me assume she was. You know why he changed tack, don't you?"

"Go on."

"When I spoke to him first, he didn't know the body was found. He thought he'd disposed of her. Plenty of people-intelligent people-don't know that a dead body thrown into water still has air in the lungs and may not stay under. After she was found he had to think again. He came out with this load of codswallop that the shop was empty."

"You're saying Peg Redbird was actually here when he came back the second time?"

"I am. And I'm saying he wanted that writing box so badly that he killed her for it. It stands out a mile. She refused to sell, or asked some exorbitant price, and got her head beaten in."

"If that's true," said Diamond, "where did the killing take place? Not in the shop."

Wigfull was unstoppable. "Here. Outside. He grabbed the box and walked out with it. She followed, he cracked her over the head with it and killed her."

"In the struggle, you mean?"

"Then he had to dispose of the body. Either he carried her to the river, or he used that invalid chair."

"Without being seen?"

"The place was in darkness. There's damn all going on at that end of Walcot Street after ten at night. When it was done, the body dropped in the river, he came back to the shop, collected the precious writing box and legged it back to the Royal Crescent."

Diamond pondered the theory.

"There's no one else," insisted Wigfull.

"If you're right, how does his wife's disappearance fit into this?"

For a moment it seemed Wigfull was thrown by the question, but then his eyes widened again. "I know. She was in the hotel room when he got back. She saw the state he was in and realised something dreadful had happened. She got the truth out of him. He'd just killed a woman. She was so appalled that she couldn't stay in the same room with him. She left."

"To wander the streets?"

"Booked into somewhere else, I expect. We should check all the hotels and boarding houses."

Diamond thought about it coolly, tapping the end of his chin with the empty kebab stick. "There's a big hole in all this, isn't there, John?"

"What's that?"

"Dougan's behaviour since he got back to the hotel. He calls us at two in the morning to report his wife missing. He gets on the phone and sets in train an inquiry that is sure to put him in the frame for Peg Redbird's death. If he'd kept quiet, you and I wouldn't have heard of Professor Joe Dougan."

Wigfull listened to the objection and dealt with it adroitly. "Someone else saw him at Noble and Nude."

"Who was that?"

"Doesn't matter who. Anyone. Another customer. Dougan expected to be fingered, so he did the smart thing and told us he was there."

"Not many killers behave as artfully as that, John."

"This one is a professor."

"It doesn't explain why he called us when he did. You say he went to the trouble of dumping her in the river. If so, he hoped to get away with it. His best plan was to wait and see if the body was found and identified."

Wigfull would not give up. "All right. Try this for size. His wife didn't walk out. He killed her."

"Two in one evening?" The line of Diamond's mouth arched sceptically.

"She threatened to turn him in, so he did for her as well. He made the emergency call after he'd disposed of her."

"Disposed of her where?"

"I don't know yet. I just thought of this."

"Difficult, getting rid of a corpse in the Royal Crescent Hotel, even in the small hours of the morning."

"Not all the rooms are in use this week."

"How do you know that?"

Wigfull had that special glint in his eye that meant he was ahead of Diamond. "Dougan told us he was upgraded."

"True."

"Her body could be lying in an empty room."

"Waiting for some unfortunate chambermaid to walk in?" Diamond said as if this grim hypothesis had worn him down at last. "If you're right, we should be hearing soon." He left a judicious pause. "But I won't hold my breath."

PEG REDBIRD HAD LIVED over the shop.

"I don't believe this," said Wigfull when they forced open the door to her flat and looked in.

"It's not a bad principle," Diamond commented.

"What's that?"

"Never take your work home."

There was not an antique in sight. The sitting room furniture was modern in style, in light ash, with pale upholstery and scatter cushions in strong colours. She had sunken lighting, roller-blinds, steel-framed Hockney prints of his Californian swimming-pool phase, cork-tiled floors with plain, pastel-coloured rugs, and a total absence of clutter.

Finding this hard to reconcile with the glorified scrapyard that was Noble and Nude, the two detectives opened the doors to the bedroom and kitchen. Those, also, were straight out of a Sunday colour supplement.

"Obviously a split personality," said Wigfull the Open University degree man, in that self-regarding tone that Diamond found so irritating. "Jekyll and Hyde."

"That's putting it strongly considering she was the victim."

"You should have been on the Bramshill course in criminology that I did last year. Victims often provoke their attackers."

"With their choice of interior decoration? Come off it, John."

"People's rooms reveal more than they realise about their inner selves."

"I'll stick with the outer self, thanks. Let's get to work. You do this room. I'll take the bedroom."

"Shouldn't we call in the SOCOs first?"

Diamond eyed him with searing scorn. "Does this look like a scene of crime to you? Do you really believe she was bludgeoned in here and dragged all the way downstairs through the shop and off to the river?"

After a lengthy pause, Wigfull admitted, "It doesn't appear so."

"Well, then."

"What are we looking for?"

"I don't know until we find it, do I? Anything that links her to the rest of humanity. Answerphone messages, letters, address-books, diaries. You've done this before, man."

He stepped into the bedroom. This should not take long. Seeing it, he began to have second thoughts about Wigfull's Jekyll and Hyde theory. Peg, it seemed, had been slavishly tidy at home. The duvet was squared on the bed, the pillow plumped and all the clothes put away. The bedside drawers contained no item more interesting than a bottle of herbal sedative pills.

From the sitting room, Wigfull called out, "No answer phone, but there's an address-book here."

Diamond confirmed that nothing of interest was secreted in the dressing-table drawers and was on his way through when the phone rang.

Wigfull put out a hand for it, then hesitated.

Diamond gave him the go-ahead with a nod.

The right way to deal with an incoming call at a possible crime scene was to listen and say nothing. If you spoke and the caller heard an unfamiliar voice, you could be sure they would slam down the phone if they had anything to hide.

Wigfull knew the procedure. He had the phone to his ear.

After listening briefly, he rolled his eyes and said, "I'll put him on." He handed the phone to Diamond. "Keith Halliwell."