The Vault

'I need your help. I'm a guest at the Royal Crescent Hotel. My wife is missing.'

'Your name, sir?' Flynn asked.

'Dougan. Professor Joseph Dougan. I'm on vacation here with my wife Donna. I've been waiting for her since before midnight. She ought to be here. I've been right through the hotel, all the public rooms, I mean. I've had the staff make a search. She isn't here.'

'When did you last see her, sir?'

'Middle of the evening. Eight-thirty, nine, something like that. We had dinner out. I walked her back to the hotel, saw her right up to our suite, then I had to go out. I was back by eleven-thirty. No sign of Donna. I went downstairs and across to the Dower House to see if she was in the bar, or something. No one remembered seeing her. So I went back to our room to wait. Nothing. This isn't like her. This is the middle of the night and my wife is missing. I want you to find her, please.'

'Right, sir, two of our officers will be with you shortly. Are you speaking from your hotel room?'

'The John Wood suite.'

'Stay where you are and they'll meet you there.'

'Listen, I want you to get on the job, find Donna. There's no sense in wasting time talking to me.'

'Professor, we need a description.'

'Okay, okay. Just be quick. I have a bad feeling about this.'

After the line went dead, Flynn spoke to the switchboard operator. 'Did we get that on tape?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Keep it. And send a car up to the Royal Crescent to get the full story. Professor Joseph Dougan. He said he has a bad feeling about this. So do I.' Maiden. God, I was going about in a black bomber jacket when I was past thirty.'

'I should have spotted a case of retarded development.'

He let that pass. 'Motorhead. It's easy to talk about fifteen or twenty years ago, but it takes a find like this to give you a sense of how long ago it was.'

'So was your victim a Heavy Metal freak?'

'It's got to be considered. The victim or the perpetrator, or both.'

'A gang killing?'

'I doubt it. Rockers had a tough reputation, but it didn't often run to murder.'

'Especially not in Bath.'

He gave a tired smile. 'I picture this as a dust-up between two labourers on the site. We're trying to trace people who worked there at the time.'

'You made that very clear on television.'

'Well, I hope it jogs someone's memory. We don't have many names so far.'

'It's all very bizarre,' said Steph.

'What is?'

'The link with Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. How did the press get onto it?'

'The first I heard was some reporter from the News of the World.'

'But who tipped them off'?'

'Does it matter?' He was uninterested, or appeared so. Then he shifted his head abruptly, like a thrush detecting a movement under the ground. 'Maybe it does.'

AT TEN past two in the morning, long after the calls from the Nationwide audience had dwindled to nothing, a 999 call was routed to Bath Central Police Station. It was put through to the senior officer on duty that night, Inspector George Flynn. The caller had an American accent, and was clearly agitated. borg, but not before the councillor asked Diamond sarcastically if it was safe on the streets of Bath tonight.

'Why-do you want a police escort?' Diamond asked.

Ingeborg giggled, clinging to Sturr's arm. 'Thanks for the offer, darling, but I'm a simple lass. Two's company.'

Sturr told her, 'Anyway, Mr Diamond should be back at Manvers Street taking all the phone calls from his television audience.'

'That's what lower ranks are for,' said Diamond. 'I'm off to my bed.'

'I'VE SEEN worse things on the box,' Stephanie assured him when they got home.

'I get brassed off with all the Frankenstein nonsense.'

'That was obvious from your face. Television is very revealing.'

'The young woman in Make-Up said I deserved a medal, but she was biased.'

'Oh?'

'She thought me rather sexy.'

Steph threw an oven glove at him. 'Are you getting anywhere at all with this case?'

He held up his hand and showed a tiny space between his thumb and forefinger. 'To be honest, I was hoping to put it on the back burner. It happened so long ago. But now it's in the headlines I'm not allowed to ignore it.'

'What have you got so far, apart from the hands in the vault?'

'The very latest is that forensic have found an interesting relic in the bits of concrete from the vault: a Motorhead emblem that seems to have been part of a ring.'

'You're talking about that rock group?'

'Heavy Metal. Remember?'

'When we married, you still had most of their LPs. You were nuts about them. And Black Sabbath.'

'Black Sabbath… Lord help us,' he reminisced. 'Iron an excuse and went back inside the house. 'God, I'd like to escape,' he told Steph. 'What time is it?'

'Twenty to ten. We can't,' she said. 'We've got to wait for the TV programme.'

'That!'

'Did something go wrong?'

'Only that I called Georgina's pin-up a monster.'

'Oh, Pete!'

'It was said in jest.'

'Sometimes when you say things in jest they sound horribly serious.'

'That's what bothers me.'

The next fifty minutes went slowly. It was the kind of party when people said, 'Isn't this fun?' whilst glancing furtively at their watches. Georgina flitted from group to group promising a surprise item at ten-thirty.

Across the room, Ingeborg's voice was showing the effects of the champagne. She seemed to be the only one enjoying herself, except John Sturr, her escort, who had his hand draped around her shoulder. They looked like gatecrashers from another party, Sturr with his lounge lizard looks and Ingeborg all legs and glitter.

Eventually Georgina began suggesting people move into the room where the TV was set up. 'What are we in for?' one of the Assistant Chief Constables asked Diamond. 'A blue movie?'

'Just blokes, I think.'

'Really? What a bore.'

Diamond drifted out of the room while the interview was transmitted and helped himself to a large scotch. By ten-forty, his bit of the show was over. Immediately after, people started making excuses and leaving. It was not really a response to the interview, more an opportunity made by the change in the pattern of the party.

Among the first through the front door were Sturr and Inge-police officer, and found a traffic warden, who called the police.

The crowd along the parapet increased.

Soon they saw two policemen in waders walk out along the edge of the weir to investigate. One of them stooped and grasped the body. For a second, the head was lifted clear of the water, a lily-white face with gaping mouth.

One of the crowd said, 'It's a woman, poor soul.'

The face was lowered again.

The police seemed uncertain what to do. Normally they would leave a body in the place where it was found for the scene of crime team and the forensic pathologist to inspect. In this situation there was a clear risk of its