Peter Lovesey - The Vault

"That is the rule."

"It isn't as if I want them all. I'm only interested in this arm bone and it's broken already."

"That's immaterial, sir. It's all about continuity of evidence."

A fact well known to Diamond.

The sergeant coughed politely. "One could make a sketch."

"If you saw my sketching…"

"A photo?"

Diamond shook his head and introduced a hint of conspiracy. "Be easier if you turned your back."

"I'm not permitted to do that, sir."

"One pesky bone that nobody has looked at in years?"

"Much as I would like to assist, sir, turning my back is not an option."

"You'd get the thing back."

The sergeant sensed the heavy pressure he was under. "If I may tender a suggestion, I could make you a cast."

"A cast?"

"A plaster cast."

"How long will that take?"

"With quick-drying plaster of Paris? Less time than it would take to subvert me, sir."

Clearly the sergeant also resembled Jeeves in resourcefulness. He went to a shelf and took down the wax for the mould and the packet of plaster.

CHEPSTOW IS an easy run from Chippenham, up the M4 motorway and across the old Severn Road Bridge. Diamond could have sent someone of lower rank, but after handling the bones himself, he had a boyish curiosity to see if the jigsaw fitted.

He was never going to be the flavour of the month at the Forensic Science Unit, having blasted the men in white coats for years, but by good fortune he was seen by a young officer called Amelia who had never heard of him. He had to brandish his ID to get in. Once admitted, he refrained from mentioning that the place was not exactly a hive of industry. They all stayed in bed on Saturday mornings, he supposed. And how many times had they told him they were working round the clock to get results?

Amelia had some difficulty in finding Hands, but eventually they tracked the bones to a lab bench upstairs. They had been cleaned of most of the cement.

"They must be working on them now," said Amelia.

"Oh, yes?" Diamond said evenly. It was obvious that nobody had been in the lab all morning.

Humming "Dry Bones" as he worked, he took the cast from his pocket and tried fitting it to the stump of bone, watched by the young woman.

It didn't match.

"Too bad," he said, resisting the impulse to swear, and chucking the cast into the nearest bin. "Thanks for your help, love. It was worth a try."

Amelia gave a sympathetic murmur.

He asked if it was coffee time.

Amelia said tentatively, "Do you mind if I have a go? You were a bit quick making up your mind."

"It's a lost cause."

She retrieved the cast and began trying it with more sensitivity than Diamond, rotating it minutely each time. He watched with a bored expression, thinking of that coffee. His clumsiness was renowned, but he was not expecting to be shown up.

She said as she worked, "The thickness is about the same. Looking at the jagged end, I'd say it's quite likely that there was some splintering, in which case you're not going to get a perfect join." She held the cast steady. "Ah. Now look at the points where it's touching. They're coming together. Clearly there's a biggish piece missing, but if the bone shattered, that's to be expected."

Diamond screwed up his eyes in the attempt to see.

Amelia said, "I think it's worth looking at under a magnifier."

In another ten minutes she had convinced him that the bones at Chippenham belonged to Hands.

HE FORGOT to wind up the window as he approached the nick, so half a dozen microphones were thrust in his face when he turned off Manvers Street. If anything, there were more hacks about than yesterday. They wanted something juicy for the Sunday papers.

No, he told them blandly, he had nothing new to say and he did not expect to make any kind of statement that day.

Inside the building, he was more forthcoming, treating Keith Halliwell to an overcoloured account of the morning's discovery. In this version, he took all the credit for the plaster cast and he surprised the scientists at Chepstow with his deft work matching the cast to the bone.

Halliwell, who knew Diamond's limitations with technology as well as anyone at Manvers Street, listened to this with patience and then summed it up. "So Ingeborg was right."

"What?"

"She said the bones were worth comparing. She came up trumps."

"This time, yes," Diamond grudgingly conceded.

"Are you going to tell her?"

The thought had not occurred to him. "Why should I?"

"Give her the exclusive. She's earned it."

"If I do, the jackals out there will tear me to bits tomorrow." He gave a rueful smile as he thought it through. "And if I don't, she'll talk to her friend the ACC and I'll be serving on that cruddy committee for the rest of my days."

He rummaged among the papers on his desk for Ingeborg Smith's business card.

Halliwell tactfully found something else to do.

ALL THE ballyhoo about the vault meant that hardly any media attention was being given to Peg Redbird's death. Out at Walcot Street, house-to-house enquiries were being conducted without any interference from reporters.

Before lunch, Diamond decided to take what the ACC termed as an overview. He went looking for Wigfull and found him downstairs in what had swiftly been set up as an incident room, with phones, computers and a board covered in maps and photographs.

"How goes it?"

"As well as I can expect at this stage," Wigfull answered guardedly.

"Is the professor still in the frame?"

"Naturally."

"You had another go at him, I heard."

"I searched his hotel suite yesterday evening, yes."

"For Mary Shelley's writing box? No joy?"

"It was a long shot anyway, but it had to be tried."

"If he nicked it from the shop, he'd be a fool to keep it in the hotel. He isn't that."

Wigfull shrugged.

"No news of the wife, I suppose?" Diamond continued to press for information. "Do you take her disappearance seriously?"

"Is that meant to be sarcastic?" said Wigfull. "Of course I take it seriously."

"I mean when do you step up the search?"

"I'll run this in my own way, if you don't object."

"Just enquiring, John. That's my job. Has anything come out of the house-to-house?"

Wigfull gave a nod so slight he might have been watching a money spider crawl down Diamond's shirt front.

Diamond pricked up his eyebrows. "A witness?"

"Good Lord, no. Nothing so helpful as that. Just a name."

"Who's this, then?"

"Oh, a fellow by the name of Somerset helps out in the shop. He was seen there on the day of the murder."

"Acting suspiciously?"

"No, no. We've got nothing on him. By all accounts he was a big support to Peg. They got on well. I'll be talking to him later. He may give me something on the professor."

"So Joe Dougan is still your main suspect?"

"Definitely. Motive, opportunity."

"Means?"

"She was cracked over the head with something. It could have been that precious writing box he was so desperate to own."

"Which has disappeared."

"For the time being, yes."

"The box has disappeared. The wife has disappeared. How will you stop Joe from disappearing with them?"

"I've covered that. The hotel people will call me the minute he tries to check out. But I don't think he will. He's too smart."

"You could ask for his passport."

Wigfull sighed.

"All right," said Diamond. "Do it your way."

"This is a battle of wits," said Wigfull. "I know he killed her, and he knows I know. He'll put a foot wrong some time, and I'm going to keep going back to him until he does."

"Like Columbo."

"Who?"

"Detective Columbo on the telly."

"I don't follow you."

"That's his style," said Diamond. "The battle of wits. He knows who did it before the first commercial break. He always gets his man in the end." But he couldn't help thinking that Columbo was light years ahead of Wigfull in wheedling out the truth.