Peter Lovesey: The Vault

"How exciting!" said Anne-Lise, genuinely enthralled.

"I found a picture of the house. It was right next to the Pump Room, actually attached. A narrow, three-storey house, one of a group built around 1800. I guess their rooms were upstairs. It functioned as a kind of shop, a lending library, to be precise."

"Do you know, we were there yesterday and I never even noticed it?" said Anne-Lise.

Joe nodded. "Unfortunately-"

"It's gone?"

"Knocked down when the Pump Room was extended."

"Too bad," said Marcus.

"When?" said Anne-Lise.

"In 1893-a time when all kinds of excavations were taking place behind the house. The City fathers decided to promote Bath in a big way as a spa city. So a row of not very distinguished buildings next door was expendable."

"Where exactly was the house? That yard in front of the Abbey?"

"Correct. Numbers two through five originally stood where you now find the entrance to the Roman Baths. You can see where the Shelley house was sited. It's a lower elevation than the rest, a linking block that houses a corridor leading to the extension."

"Didn't anyone try to save it?"

"The Roman Baths were bigger news than Frankenstein."

"Isn't there a plaque on the wall?"

"Stating that this is the site of the house where Frankenstein was written?" Joe shook his head.

"Plenty of people would be interested."

"It would increase the tourism significantly," said Anne-Lise.

"Quite possibly."

"So will you be visiting the Mayor of Bath to suggest it?" asked Anne-Lise.

Donna said, "Anne-Lise, my dear, don't put ideas in his head. I don't want my entire trip taken over by Frankenstein."

"Let's go in to dinner, shall we?" said Joe.

"The only good suggestion I heard from you all day," said Donna.

TWO DAYS ON, AND there were compensations for Peter Diamond. The Pump Room had definite advantages over the police canteen as an eating place. This room with its tall windows and Corinthian columns, its chandelier and musicians' gallery, was surely one of the finest in Europe. Kate, the winsome, long-legged, black-stockinged waitress Diamond had cultivated as an ally from the beginning, saw that he got the pick of the menu. The trio played I'm a Stranger in Paradise and Keith Halliwell was too over-awed to step inside and interrupt the idyll.

Down in the vault, the working party was under instructions from Diamond not to rush the job. "We're in no hurry, lads. This poor sod has been lying under the floor for up to twenty years. A week or two more will make no difference."

The complexity of the case was underlined when the list of building contracts was presented to Diamond.

"As many as this?"

"You asked for them all, and that's what you've got," said boss-man with a smirk.

"Half of these must have gone out of business by now."His finger moved up the page. "Why so many here?"

"That would have been prior to the opening of the extension. Much of the temple precinct was uncovered then."

"In nineteen-eighty-two to three?"

"And for quite a bit before. What you're looking at now is a record of the construction work, not the excavation. We opened to the public at Easter, 1983. Substantial electrical and building work had to be carried out in the weeks before."

"Making it accessible?"

"Yes. And safe. Proper walkways and so forth."

"You can see the way my mind is working. The vault where the bones were found is on the same side."

He took the lists back to Manvers Street and gave Halliwell the task of calling contractors to extract lists of their workforces.

"Just as long as you don't expect a miracle, sir," Halliwell said. "At this distance in time…"

"I know, Keith, it's a pain and I'm a slave-driver."

"You're assuming that whoever buried the hand in the vault was a builder?"

"I can't think of anyone else with a reason for doing cement work down there."

"So do you think the victim was working on the site as well?"

"We'll see what we uncover."

"Have they found anything else?"

"Not yet."

Halliwell screwed up his face. "Wasn't the hand attached to the rest of the body?"

"Apparently not."

A CALL from the front desk. "Sir, someone wants to speak to you about the Roman Bath inquiry."

"To me personally?"

"Yes."

"Who is he?"

"She. She, em, says you may remember her. A Miss Smith."

Amusement in the voice is easy to detect on the phone. "Are you having me on?"

"Ingeborg Smith."

"Ah." An image snapped into place. A crowded room. Microphones heaped in front of him like horse-droppings. The press conference he'd called last autumn at a difficult stage in the Bloodhounds inquiry. And this pale-faced young woman with a stud in her nose-or was it a ring?-hitting him with a volley of penetrating questions.

"I do remember now," he told them downstairs. "She's press. A freelance." His first instinct was to duck this. Then he remembered the tenacious way Ingeborg Smith had questioned him in front of the press corps, just this side of civility. It might not be wise to give her the elbow.

He- saw her in an interview room downstairs. "I hope you have something amazing to impart, Miss Smith," he remarked as he walked in. "It's a busy old week."

"I'm glad to hear it," she said. The nose decoration was a silver ring through the right nostril. Since the last time another had been added on the same side and there was also a gleam from under the fine, blond hair over the left ear. "What was the motto of the Pinkerton detectives? We Never Sleep."

Her features are up to fashion model standard, he found himself thinking. Maybe she thinks some minor mutilation makes her more approachable. "We Never Sleep. Try telling that to the Police Federation."

"What's their motto, then?"

"I wouldn't know."

She laughed.

"No," he started to explain. "That's not their motto, it's…" Then he gave up. "What exactly are you doing here?"

"Getting a story, I hope. Is this true about the hand in the cellar?"

"Where did you hear that?" he parried.

"I was tipped off by one of the guides at the Roman Baths. You kicked them out of their staffroom, I was told, and large policemen are in there sieving loads of earth and mortar for human remains."

"So what's your angle on this? Staff in Revolt over Police Dig?'

"Come off it, Mr Diamond. That's no story."

"Police in Revolt over Police Dig?"

A wide smile. She felt in her handbag and handed across a business card. "I work with the nationals when a story of potential interest comes up."

He was wary. "It's at a very early stage. I can't give you anything you don't already know."

"No information on the victim?"

"What victim?"

"Oh, come on, Superintendent, the owner of the hand. It was buried less than twenty years ago, they're saying."

"That's yet to be established."

"I am the first to approach you, aren't I?"

"The first of the press, yes."

"Don't you think I deserve an exclusive?"

He said, "My dear Miss Smith-•"

"Ingeborg will do."

"I doubt if there's much in this for you."

"There's the rest of the body, presumably. Do you think it's in the cellar?"

"I'm keeping an open mind. And it's a vault."

"Your mind is a vault?"

He smiled. "At this stage, yes. Just a large, empty vault."

"No theories, then?"

He lifted a palm to indicate that the point had been made already.

She moved on. "Let's try something else. Where's that female detective inspector you work with?"

"Julie Hargreaves? Transferred to Headquarters."

"Oh? At whose request?"

He felt the blood rise. "That's off limits, Ingeborg. We don't discuss personnel with the press."