Peter Lovesey: The Vault

"No way. She called me a cheat. Said she knew enough to put me away for years. That drawing was part of the deal, she said. If I didn't produce it, she would have me exposed as a forger." He shook his head miserably. "What could I do? She wouldn't leave the car until I drove her out here, to Stowford, and collected it."

"Is that what you did?"

"Yes. I wasn't happy, I can tell you. It was blackmail, wasn't it? But I had no remedy."

At this, Leaman said with heavy sarcasm, "Oh, no?"

The muscles tightened at the side of Evan's face. "I drove her back to Bath and set her down where I met her."

"What time?" demanded Diamond.

He gave it some thought. "It was by eleven, I tell you that. She had to be back by eleven, she said. I didn't do bad, getting her there on time, allowing for all the wrangling, and the drive out here and back."

"Was it much before eleven? Did you look at the clock in the car?"

"I was too bloody angry to look at the time."

"You set her down in Bath and that was the last you saw of her?"

"Correct."

"Was anyone around, anyone who might have seen you?"

"Not that I noticed."

"What did you do after?"

"Drove home and went to bed. I was shocked when I heard what happened to her."

"You didn't come forward as a witness."

"Would you, in the circumstances? I was bloody terrified."

"Can you produce these paintings she exchanged with you?"

He went to a drawer of the plan-chest and took them out, still loosely covered in bubblewrap. At Diamond's suggestion, Evan himself uncovered them and lay them on the desk for inspection. The ham-fisted detective wasn't risking another accident.

They were the scenes from Frankenstein just as they had been described by Ellis Somerset, dramatic images, skilfully drawn and painted. Peg Redbird must have been a shrewd judge to have spotted them as fakes.

Evan was talking aloud, but to himself, quoting Mary Shelley. " '… the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also as he approached, seemed to exceed that of a man.' "

Diamond said, "They're remarkable."

Evan turned to him. "Everything I told you is the truth. I hit out at the copper in a panic, and I'm sorry. I swear to God I didn't touch Peg Redbird. I'm not a killer."

"Don't count on it," said Diamond. "John Wigfull is still on the danger list."

AFTER SO MANY YEARS in the police, Peter Diamond was not surprised by much, but he was rendered speechless when he walked into the Manvers Street control room and recognized an elegant young woman in a dove grey suit chatting to one of the sergeants.

She turned and smiled.

He eventually said, "Well, who would have thought it?"

DI Julie Hargeaves, his much-missed deputy, said, "It hasn't been all that long."

She was supposed to be on attachment to Headquarters.

"What brings…?"

"Interviewing duty," she explained. "They're taking on new recruits, some women among them. I had an evening off, or so I thought. I haven't now."

He was disappointed. "I thought for a moment…"

"No," said Julie firmly.

"Are you doing the interviews alone?"

She shook her head. "Someone has to represent Joe Public. Regulations. I'm teamed up with Councillor Sturr. Have you met him?"

"Him? God help us if the rest of the public is anything like him."

"He's on the Police Authority," said Julie. "A sledge-hammer to crack a nut, if you ask me, but I gather he insisted."

"Typical," said Diamond, thinking of the shock Ingeborg was going to get.

Julie shrugged and said, "How's it going here? I heard about John Wigfull, poor old lad."

"He's getting over it."

Her lips shaped into the beginning of a smile. "Shouldn't I waste my sympathy?" She well knew of Diamond's feud with the injured chief inspector.

He made an effort to sound upbeat. "I just got the latest from the hospital. They're saying there's been a big improvement in the last hour. He's fully conscious. All the signs are that he'll make a full recovery."

"That's wonderful. And you phoned up to ask how he was doing?"

He gave the honest explanation. "I needed to know in case he was dead. We just nicked someone for the assault."

"Reliable?"

"Cast iron. He confessed. Runs a puppet show. Calls himself Uncle Evan."

"Did he also murder the antiques lady?" Julie, as he would have expected, was well up on the case.

"He had the motive. He had the opportunity."

"Going by the tone of your voice, you don't think he did."

At this point, the Assistant Chief Constable steamed in like the royal yacht, straight towards Julie. "Inspector Hargreaves?"

"Ma'am."

They shook hands and Georgina-who didn't go in for small talk-started explaining how the interviews were arranged. Diamond, sidelined by all this, left them to it. He'd missed his chance to put in a good word for Ingeborg. He just hoped Julie would remember her from press conferences as a bright young prospect ready to take on the world. With Sturr on the panel, Ingeborg's chances had taken a nosedive.

Annoyed with himself, he went over to talk to Halliwell. The hapless inspector had been beavering away on the bones in the vault case for days. Now he had a new stack of paper on his desk, the first telephoned responses to the appeal for help in identifying Banger and Mash.

"What's the story, Keith?"

"What you'd expect, really. Any number of people thinking they must have known the dead man. Parents whose sons left home and haven't been heard of since. Women who got ditched by blokes and would like to think it wasn't their fault. All a bit sad really. The only thing I can say for sure is that Motorhead must have had a big following in the nineteen-eighties."

"Most of these are on about the victim?"

"That's right."

"What have we got on the other one, Mash?"

"Bugger all, sir. We couldn't give them much of a description. What do we know-that he kept himself clean and fancied his looks a bit? You can't put that in a press release."

Diamond picked up the sheaf of papers, jottings taken by the civilian women who answered the phones. The handwriting reflected the speed at which the notes had been taken.

"There's one possible girlfriend of Banger who might be worth following up," said Halliwell. "Near the top, marked with the highlighter. A Mrs Warmerdam, living in Byron Road."

Diamond found it and started to read: "11.20 a.m. Mrs Celia Warmerdam, Holt House, Byron Road. "Going steady" 1982 with rock fan Jock Tarrant - casual labourer Roman Baths extension. Description fits. Remembers Motorhead ring. Still has her diary. JT failed to turn up for date on 10/9/82. Never heard from again."

Halliwell said, "I thought I'd go and see her in the morning."

Diamond was still charged up from collaring Uncle Evan. He wasn't in tune with the slower tempo of the Banger and Mash case. "Byron Road isn't far. It's one of those streets on Beechen Cliff named after poets."

"I know," said Halliwell impassively. "I live there."

"What-Byron Road?"

"Longfellow, actually."

"We can go now. You've had a day of it. I'll drive you home after."

CELIA WARMER DAM would have been worth visiting whatever she had to say, as unlikely an ex-rocker as you could hope to meet, a plump sugar-plum fairy in her late thirties. Her silver-highlighted hair stood out like a seeded dandelion. She brought them tea in bone-china cups in a pink front room with a baby grand piano and lace curtains gathered in great, dramatic scallops. "It's all so laughable now," she said, making the "so" last as long as the rest of the words together. "My Heavy Metal phase. I knew nothing whatsoever about the bands or the things they performed, but I dressed the part, in my thigh-length boots and faded denims and motorbike jacket. I just had this enormous pash for Jock Tarrant, my bit of rough. And was he rough! Kissing him was worse than rubbing your face against a pineapple. He had the most revolting, smelly hair down to his shoulders, incredibly evil clothes, all studs and leather and engine-oil, and of course I adored the brute." She giggled. "I've had two husbands and a partner since, and they were all nicely groomed. They shaved and showered every day, and didn't dream I once slept with an apeman-well, more than once." She smiled wistfully. "More times and more ways than I'd care to describe. It was hearing you on Radio Bristol this morning that got me thinking about Jock, because he had one of those rings with the animal's skull or whatever it was and he was easily the size you said, six foot two or three. I only came up to his elbows."