The Vault (4 page)

seven

DIAMOND WAS IRRITATED BY Halliwell's talk of brickies, chippies and sparks, as if one morning on the phone had turned him into a master mason. "Let's see these names."

"The brickies?"

"All of them." He ran a glance over the top sheet. "What use is 'Taff to anybody?"

"Welshman, sir."

"That narrows it down to about a million."

"These are only my rough notes. I jotted everything down. Any scrap of information might jog someone else's memory."

" 'QPR supporter.'?"

"Football."

"I didn't think it was underwear. There's no need to grind your teeth, matey. I'm just as brassed off as you are. We're going to have to do the rounds of the builders' yards asking questions."

"When you say 'we'..."

"I know, Keith. You're going to ask me where the manpower is coming from. I'll pull a few strings. It's a job for Uniforms."

"It isn't easy tracing workmen, sir. There's so much sub-contracting. A brickie and a sparks may work side by side and belong to different firms."

"I don't care who employed them. These herberts all know each other."

"Yes, but after twenty years—"

"Don't exaggerate, Keith. It's more like fifteen." He grinned and softened enough to explain his theory about the victim. If she had been a student volunteer helping with the dig, her name might be on some list kept by the people in charge.

Halliwell threw in casually, "The Bath Archaeological Trust."

"Come again."

"The people in charge."

"Go to it, then."

AT TWO, he phoned the Roman Baths and asked if the pathologist, Jim Middleton, had arrived yet. He had not.

"So is all work in the vault suspended?"

The senior SOCO confirmed that it was.

"The skull still waiting to be lifted?"

"Yes, sir."

"Leave it with me," he said with menace. "Just because this skull has been buried since 1983, that idle bastard thinks he can take all day over his lunch."

He called the Royal United Hospital. It turned out that Middleton was having trouble with his car and had taken it into the garage for repairs.

He slammed down the phone. Immediately it rang. He snatched it up. "Jim?"

"No." A woman's voice. "No. This is Ingeborg Smith."

He emitted a sound combining a groan and a growl. "Look, I'm waiting for a call."

"Would that be from the pathologist?"

He was caught off guard. "What do you know about that?"

She said in a calm tone that only added to his stress, "I'm at the Roman Baths. I know Dr Middleton is supposed to be here, and isn't. This skull they uncovered last night is female. Do you have any idea who she might be, Mr Diamond?"

He had to draw in a long breath to control himself. "Did somebody let you into that bloody vault?"

Ingeborg said coolly, "I told you I was interested in this case, and I have an idea on the subject."

"If you know anything at all pertaining to this investigation, Miss Smith," he said with heavy formality, "you'd better tell me now."

"An idea, I said."

"Just a theory, then?"

"You don't have to sound so disparaging. It could save you a lot of time. Can we meet? Are you coming over here?"

"I'm far too busy—"

She butted in with, "I could give you the name of a postgraduate in ancient history who got a job as a guide at the Roman Baths in 1982 and disappeared the following year."

"A woman?"

"Of course."

"How do you know this?"

"Like your people in the vault, I've been digging."

"What's the name?"

"I'd rather not say down the phone."

"Don't piss me about, Ingeborg."

"I mean it. This is sensitive information."

She was going to get her interview now. Tamely, he offered to see her at the Baths in half an hour.

JOE DOUGAN and his long-suffering wife Donna stood just inside the swing doors at the Pump Room entrance having a difference of opinion.

"But I don't need the rest room," Donna repeated.

"We established that a moment ago," Joe ground on in his professorial style. "All I'm asking is that you step inside there and look around. It's not a place I can go myself."

"You can go to the men's room."

"Donna, I don't need the men's room."

A moment's silence underlined the lack of contact between their imaginations.

Donna knew she would cave in. She always did. "It's easy for you to say 'look around'. I'm going to get some strange looks."

"Yes, but would you do this for me?"

She said with deliberate obtuseness, "What am I supposed to look at? I've seen a ladies' rest room before now. There isn't anything to interest me in places like that."

"So you will go in?"

"What makes this ladies' room so special? What do you want to know about the place?"

"Just tell me if everything is on this level, or if you have to go downstairs. If it
is
in the basement, examine the walls."

"Go figure," murmured Donna. "He only wants me to read the walls in a rest room."

"Don't you follow me? It could be part of the original Frankenstein house."

Shaking her head, Donna walked to the door of the Ladies' Room and disappeared from view.

Joe waited, tapping his foot.

Donna came out again after only a couple of seconds. "No basement. It's all on this level and totally modern. Now can we go?"

Frustrated, Joe looked around, orientating himself again. Without answering Donna, he stepped along the corridor.

Her patience snapped. "Stay here if you want. I'm going shopping."

Joe was preoccupied. A short way ahead, he had spotted some stairs down to a door marked "Staff Only".

Without giving him another look, Donna walked out of the building.

Joe was not deterred by the sign on the door. He went down the curved stone stairs. Inside the staff room, two men in black overalls were sieving earth into a wheelbarrow.

"You don't mind if I go through?" he said, pointing across the room. He was already on his way.

"Who are you?" one of them asked.

"Professor Joe Dougan."

The title made enough of an impression to allay suspicion. "Mind how you go, professor," said the workman. "It's muddy."

Joe pushed open the second door and was astonished. Below, at the foot of some steps, arc-lamps on stands gave a brilliant view of what was clearly a vast ancient cellar, with arched vaulting above solid pillars of stone. His mouth went dry and a pulse beat in his head. He had surely found what he had hardly dared hope would still exist—the basement to number five. The Pump Room extension must have been built over this. They had not demolished the original vault when they cleared the rest of the old house at the end of the last century.

The presence of the lights was odd, and so were the flagstones stacked against the walls, but he was so excited that he thought little of it until someone dressed entirely in a white overall appeared at his side and asked, "Do we know you, sir?"

"I don't believe you do," Joe answered, still euphoric at this discovery. "I'm Joe Dougan. Professor Joe Dougan." He shook the man's hand.

"Andy Mills. You see, we were expecting Dr Middleton at two."

"I don't know about that," said Joe.

"We were told he had some trouble with his car."

"That would explain it, then," said Joe affably.

"You're here in Dr Middleton's place?"

"Suits me," said Joe. "I'm just delighted to see all this."

"I have a spare oversuit if you'd care to use one, Professor."

Joe thanked Andy Mills. His own linen suit was liable to get dirty down here. They had taken up the flagstones and the floor appeared to be under excavation.

He pulled on the oversuit. They even had gloves and overshoes for him.

"It's there, against the wall," Andy Mills told him. "The access is not marked as well as it should be, so would you follow me?"

Joe followed, not entirely sure what this was about, but happy as a cat in a creamery. His one regret was that Donna had not shared this moment. She would take some convincing when he told her about it.

Mills asked, "Didn't you bring your kit?"

"Just what I'm dressed in," said Joe. "What are you going to show me?"

"Didn't they tell you?" The man stopped and crouched. "It's right here."

Joe did likewise and found himself looking at a human skull at the bottom of a shallow excavation trench. "Well, isn't that something?" he said. "Is it real?"

Andy Mills gave an uneasy laugh.

Joe stood upright again. It was uncomfortable squatting. "Got anything else?"

"That's it," said Mills, increasingly perplexed.

"I'll just take a look around, if you don't mind. This chance is too good to miss." He stepped across the lumpy floor to the opposite wall.

"Don't you want to lift the skull?" said Mills.

"No thanks."

There was an uneasy pause.

Mills eventually said, "You think it should remain here?"

"To give it to you straight," said Joe, "the skull doesn't interest me. The cellar doesn't need dressing up. For me, it has great atmosphere without the extras."

After another interval Mills said, "Excuse me asking, professor. You
are
from the Royal United?"

"No, from the Royal Crescent, if you want to know. Is this important?"

* * *

INGEBORG SMITH was hovering near the Pump Room entrance when Diamond approached, looking as usual as if he had escaped from an old black and white film in his trilby and striped suit. He asked her graciously if she would mind waiting a few minutes while he checked with his people inside.

The men sifting the rubble in the staff room were not the pair he had met in the morning. They told him someone had come in earlier and gone into the vault through some misunderstanding. Dr Middleton had still not arrived. And nothing new had been discovered in the sieving.

He returned upstairs.

He and Ingeborg sat in the open at one of the tables outside Monks Coffee House, opposite the Pump Room entrance. From there, Jim Middleton would be seen arriving, if he appeared at all.

The Abbey Churchyard was quite a sun-trap this August afternoon, and they ordered ice-cream rather than tea. Diamond loosened his tie and kept his jacket on. Too many police officers were coming and going. Out here he felt conspicuous looking relaxed with the blonde journalist.

"I may get up at any time," he cautioned her.

"Leaving me to pay?" she said.

He took a five-pound note from his back pocket and pushed it under an ashtray. "This student you mentioned over the phone—who is she?"

Ingeborg was reluctant to come to the point—
that
point, anyway. "What are the chances of someone like me joining the police?"

He almost needed the question repeated. "You mean this seriously? You have a career already."

"People switch jobs. Could I work in CID?"

"Not right off. You'd go through training school first, Probation. Two years on the beat." He was unsure if this was a serious enquiry, or some debating point she was leading up to.

She asked, "Isn't there a fast track?"

"Accelerated promotion? That doesn't apply until you're qualified, and then it's mainly for graduates."

"Two years in that gruesome uniform?"

"We've all been through it."

She smiled. "Skirts and black tights?"

"You know what I mean. After that, you might get transferred to CID if you're promising—and lucky."

"How soon?"

"Depends."

"On who you know, I suppose."

He was careful not to return her faint smile. "That can be a factor. You're not serious about this, Ingeborg? It's not a bit like journalism."

"Do you think I could do it—detective work?"

"You have some of the qualities."

"But... ?"

"But could you put up with the discipline? Can you handle routine as well as stress? Stupid colleagues? Coarse remarks? Idiot people doing idiot things? I have problems myself."

"With coarse remarks?"

"I'm trying to see it from your point of view."

"Don't try. If you're on about women being given a hard time, that's not unique to the police. You're not selling it very well, Mr Diamond."

"That isn't my mission, Ingeborg. If you choose to join, don't ever say I talked you into it."

Her eyes glittered amusedly. "No fear of that."

"Now can we talk about this student who disappeared?"

She nodded. "When I heard about the skull being female, I asked around. My ex-landlady is a whiz with anything like that. She's convinced we're all going to be raped and murdered one of these days, and she memorises every case of violence and abuse that supports her thesis. Unsolved cases, missing girls. Her recall is amazing. She reels them off like the football results. I'd back her against your computers."

"She remembered this case?"

"I didn't tell her what it was about. I simply asked her about women who went missing during the nineteen-eighties. She gave me upwards of a dozen names. This one fitted the best."

"So who is she?"

"Violet Turner, known unofficially as Tricks."

"Any reason?"

She turned her large shrewd eyes on him. "Tricks Turner. If you can't work
that
out..."

"She was on the game?"

She shook her head.

"Generous with it?"

"After three years reading Ancient History at Durham, wouldn't you be?"

"I thought Ancient History was full of that sort of thing. So when did she come down here?"

"She was a postgrad at Bristol. Topped up her grant by working one day a week as a guide at the Roman Baths. I checked all this in the local press, and my landlady had the details right. In February, 1983, Violet Turner went missing. Never completed her course. Hasn't been heard of since."

"Was it given much space in the papers?"

"Very little. There was never a time when they were certain she was dead. People assumed at first that she'd taken off on a trip with some bloke. When she didn't come back after two or three months, the alarm was raised. Her parents, up in Newcastle, knew nothing and heard nothing from her."