We have no witnesses, no motive, no description of the perpetrator or the victim.'
'You're still digging down there?'
'It's almost complete.'
'Can we go down there, get pictures? If we can get pictures today, you'll be saved a lot of hassle.'
'That sounds suspiciously like blackmail.'
'Just the truth, Mr Diamond.'
'When we finish the search, you can get your pictures, but it won't be today.'
'You said the skull is much older than the hand?'
'Yes.'
'Where exactly was it found?'
'Buried under the flagstones, some distance from where the hand was found.'
'Probably medieval, you said?'
'I did.'
'So it was down there in 1816, when Mary Shelley lived in the house?'
'I can't say for sure. It could have been.'
'Would you describe it, Superintendent?'
He was becoming impatient. 'Look, I told you it's an old skull.'
'Male or female?'
'Female.'
'Adult?'
'Yes.'
'But not attached to the rest of a skeleton?'
His patience snapped. 'For crying out loud, this is the site of a churchyard. If we dug any deeper, we'd probably find many more bones. Hundreds of them.' He realised as he spoke that it was unwise. He had just fed them a quote they could splash all over their front pages. It was time he drew the curtains on this pantomime. 'Right. I've given you the statement, told you everything I can at this point.'
'Not everything.'
'Come again.' He turned to the speaker and found himself facing Ingeborg.
'You told us the skull is female. What about the hands?'
'Can't say.'
'Won't the forensic lab be able to tell you?'
'It's unlikely. If they turn out to be large hands, the supposition is that they belonged to a male, but it's only guesswork.'
'So what's the next step, Mr Diamond? If the lab can't tell you much more, where do you go from here?'
'We find out who had access to the vault fifteen to twenty years ago.'
'And who went missing?'
She was still on about the postgraduate woman. 'Of course. It's under investigation. For your information, about a hundred and fifty thousand people go missing every year. Nationally, I mean.'
Someone else said, 'You don't sound very confident of a result, Superintendent.'
'Would you be?' He turned to Halliwell. 'Let's go.'
Outside, a messenger from upstairs told him he was wanted immediately by the Assistant Chief Constable.
ALONE IN the carpeted office upstairs. That huge mahogany desk. A group photo taken at Bramshill, the police training college for senior officers. Another of Georgina in uniform shaking the hand of Margaret Thatcher. A shelf of books, mainly reports by the look of them. The saving grace was the corner cupboard used by the previous ACC for his supply of whisky.
He heard her quick footsteps along the corridor. 'The Police Authority like to be kept informed of developments,' she told him importantly as she swept in.
'Councillor Sturr?'
'How do you know I was with John Sturr?'
'He parked his Mercedes next to my old heap in the staff car park.'
'Sit down, then.' No offer of a scotch. Not so much as a lemonade. 'How did the press behave?'
'They didn't swallow me alive, ma'am,' said Diamond. 'But it was crowded in there. I had to shout. Makes your throat go dry.'
She didn't even glance at the drinks cupboard. 'What did they want to know?'
'They're only interested in the Frankenstein stuff. Frankenstein! The things you get thrown at you in this job.'
'Did you know of this connection?'
'Not until this afternoon. I know Jane Austen lived here, and Beau Nash and General Wolfe. Frankenstein, no.'
'To be accurate,' the ACC corrected him, 'it was the creator of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley.'
'You'd think it was the monster himself, the way they were going on about body parts.'
'She was here only a few months, but it appears she wrote most of the book at the house in Abbey Churchyard. There's no question that she lived there. In fact, her personal copy of Milton's poems was doing the rounds of the antiquarian book trade this very morning, and it's inscribed with her initials and the Abbey Churchyard address.' Georgina threw this in casually, apparently to let him know she had her finger on the Bath pulse. 'We're going to be in the spotlight shortly, I'm afraid.'
'Going to be?' he said with irony.
'This is why I asked you to see me. You'd better disregard the conversation we had earlier, about scaling down the investigation. We're coming under public scrutiny.'
Diamond frowned. 'What are you saying, ma'am? That we have to put on a show for the media?'
'I didn't put it quite so crudely, but that's the gist of it, yes.'
He felt a rush of blood. He was about to say something insubordinate. If Julie Hargreaves had been here, she would have put a restraining hand on his arm. But she was not. 'I'm a copper, not a circus acrobat.'
The ACC said in a voice as dry as the scotch she didn't dispense, 'What are you implying?'
For the first time in their dealings, Diamond allowed the ACC's gender to influence his conduct; if she had been a man, he would given her a mouthful. 'I'm not
The features across the desk tensed and turned paler. 'Policing priorities can include public relations, you know.'
'So that's it,' said Diamond. 'This is window-dressing.'
Her eyes flashed. 'If you ever rise above your present rank, Superintendent, you may come to appreciate that window-dressing, as you call it, is a necessary part of the job. As you know, I'm giving a party tonight-in my own time and at my own expense-and several members of the Police Authority will be there. I don't do it out of anything else than a sense of duty. Some of the people I've invited would not be my choice of guests-I don't mean you-but one does it just the same, to show the flag.'
'You're telling me to show the flag?'
'There's more to it than that. What was found in the vault requires investigation. You and your team have no other inquiry under way at the moment. I agree with you that this one presents difficulties, but that's no reason to walk away from it.'
'This isn't the only unsolved suspicious death in the past twenty years.'
'It's the most recent to come to light. Who do you have working on it at the moment?'
'Apart from the diggers? DI Halliwell and a couple of civilians.'
'Step it up, then. Get more people onto it. We ought to establish the identity of the victim.'
'Oh, yes?'
'And another thing, Mr Diamond…'
'Yes, ma'am?'
'I don't like the way you've conducted yourself in the last few minutes, don't care for it one bit. If you and I are going to continue to work together, I suggest you do some window-dressing of your own. This confrontational style
