Peter Lovesey - The Vault

Georgina was making a huge effort to sound rational, in control. "I don't attach any blame to you, Peter. It was my decision to put him in the front line, though I didn't expect this." She sighed and looked away. Then she turned and prepared to speak to him, folding her arms decisively.

Diamond had a fair idea what was coming.

"I'm going to ask you-instruct you-to drop whatever you were doing and take this on."

"Find the scum who clobbered him?"

:r "Yes. For God's sake, don't take any risks. There's real dangei out there. Don't do anything without back-up. John Wigfull must have been alone when he was attacked."

"Where was he found exactly?"

"In a cornfield near Stowford. Do you know it?"

He knew Stowford, but he did not understand. So far as he could remember, the place was out in the country, a picture postcard setting beside the River Frome, a few ancient farm buildings converted to holiday houses and craft workshops. One Sunday afternoon a couple of summers ago he had driven there with Steph and sat in a rickety chair in the farmhouse garden and put away an unforgettable cream tea. But what could have taken Wigfull out there? Cream teas were not his scene at all. "It's on the A366, near Farleigh Hungerford."

"I couldn't even find it on the map," Georgina admitted.

"There isn't much there. He was in a field, you said?"

"A woman walking her dog across a footpath found him, or the dog did. This was early this morning, 6.30. His warrant card was in his pocket. Trowbridge Police notified us."

"So the scene is secured?"

"Yes, and being searched."

Diamond skimmed through the possibilities. "He had Joe Dougan in the frame for Peg Redbird's murder."

"The American?" This ACC was right up with events.

"You've met this man, haven't you? Did he strike you as dangerous?"

"You can't tell. He's under stress. His wife is missing."

"No reason to attack a police officer."

"Unless John Wigfull is right and he really has something to hide."

"You'd better check his movements yesterday."

He cast his thoughts back. "And there was someone else Wigfull planned to see, someone he didn't rate as a suspect because he was supposedly friendly with Peg. He told me the name. Peg Redbird's assistant. Ellison? No, Ellis. Ellis was the first name. Ellis Somerset. He meant to talk to Ellis Somerset."

"You'll check him, too?"

"Of course."

"The other business, the bones in the vault, had better be given to someone else."

"Keith Halliwell is on it already."

"Can he handle all the hassle from the media?"

"He handles me, ma'am."

He left the room to go down and talk to Wigfull's team, his emotions still churned up. Years of despising the man could not be shrugged off because of the attack. Everyone in Manvers Street knew of the bitterness between them. Yet when a colleague is seriously injured, the entire police force stands together, outraged, committed to finding the attacker. He cared about Wigfull as a brother officer, and there was something more that he would not have admitted until now. For all the feuding, there had evolved a recognition of each other's way of working amounting-on the better days-to something like respect, though sugared by amusement. The image of his old antagonist, bleeding and unconscious, being wheeled past in the hospital, was not amusing. It would stay in his mind.

He found Sergeant Leaman at Wigfull's desk, going through the diary. They wasted no words on the sense of shock they both felt. Diamond said simply that he had been asked to inquire into the incident. "What I need from you is Mr Wigfull's itinerary."

"That's what I was trying to find, sir. There's no entry for yesterday afternoon or evening."

"That's unlike him."

"Yes, he took a lot of care about procedures. I mean he takes a lot of…" The sergeant's words trailed away in embarrassment.

"Didn't he tell you his plans? I saw him drive out of here some time pretty close to two o'clock. He wasn't going home."

"How do you know, sir?"

Diamond backed off a little. He wasn't going to talk about a gut feeling. "We both know he's a workaholic, don't we?"

Leaman gave a faint smile. No one in Wigfull's team ever spent much time in the canteen.

Diamond thought of another angle. "His car. Have the Trow-bridge Police found his car?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir. I don't suppose they know what he drives."

His measured calm hit an obstruction. "It's our bloody business to tell them. What is it? I ought to know. I was in it the other day."

"A red Toyota Corolla, sir."

"Send out an alert, then. Have them check the farm at Stow-ford. That won't take five minutes. The damned car can't be far from the field unless he was driven there by his attacker. Get someone onto it."

While Leaman organized that, Diamond picked up the diary and leafed through it, sifting possibilities at near computer speed.

He said to Leaman when he returned, "This murder case was the biggest thing to come his way this year. He'd have cancelled his weekend. Yours, too, I reckon. How was he using you?"

Leaman said he had been collating witness statements, to get a picture of Peg Redbird's final hours. It had been an absorbing task. Not much had passed between Wigfull and him all morning.

"Didn't he say anything at all before he left?"

"About where he was going? No, sir."

"About anything?"

Leaman frowned, trying to remember. "He looked over my shoulder at the screen and asked if any new names had come up."

"People Peg Redbird met?"

"Yes. I said there was nothing he didn't know already. He asked me to leave a print-out on his desk."

"So he was coming back later in the day?"

"I thought so at the time."

"And you did as instructed?"

"Yes, sir. The print-out is still here."

"So we have this almighty gap between two p.m. Saturday and six thirty this morning when he was found in the cornfield. Let's assume he went to interview a witness, someone who visited Peg the day she died. The names are here, are they?" He picked the print-out off the desk.

"It's chronological," Leaman explained. "Starting Thursday morning. She was seen leaving the shop at ten a.m. by Miss Barclay, a neighbour. At ten oh five, she buys a pint of milk from a shop in Walcot Street."

"Cut to the chase," Diamond said. "Who came into Noble and Nude?"

"The first caller we know about is Ellis Somerset, who helps in the shop."

Diamond was all attentiveness. "Go on."

"He turned up about one thirty, after lunch."

"That's still lunch in my book."

Leaman looked for a hint of a smile and wasn't treated to one. Diamond's humour was difficult to read under any circumstances.

"Do you have a statement from Mr Somerset?"

"Yes, sir. He looked after the shop while Peg went up to Camden Crescent for a valuation. He was there for much of the afternoon. He's our main source."

"Who took the statement?"

"DC Paul."

"Did anyone follow it up?"

"Not yet, unless…"

Diamond gave an approving nod. Leaman didn't need to say it. Wigfull may well have decided on a personal meeting with Ellis Somerset. Perhaps he wanted it off the record, which would explain why it wasn't in the diary. "I'll catch up with Somerset shortly. And what about this valuation? Who was that for?"

"A Mr Pennycook, the nephew of Simon Minchendon, who died recently. It was in the local paper."

"Has anyone spoken to Pennycook?"

"He lives in Brighton."

"Yes, but has anyone-"

"The Brighton police took a statement, sir. It's on the computer if you want to read it."

"Have you?" Sitting in front of the screen was not Diamond's idea of police work.

"Yes, sir."

"Anything startling in it?"

Sergeant Leaman shook his head. "Except that Brighton have him down as a druggie."