The Vault

tipping over the weir and being carried downstream.

The two officers returned to the side for instructions. More senior policemen had arrived. A consultation followed, dominated by a man in plain clothes with a large moustache. After what seemed an age, a decision was taken, for the two in waders stepped out to the centre again and took a firm hold on the body and lifted it. One was unbalanced by the weight and lost his footing. He sank to his knees. His companion, trying to help, let go of his burden, stretched forward, stumbled over the corpse and fell face down into the water. The spectacle had its black humour that certain of the onlookers found amusing. The majority watched in silence.

In this undignified way, with several more stumbles, the body was dragged and carried around the arc of the weir to dry land, where it was placed on a stretcher, covered with a sheet of black plastic and loaded into a van.

The two officers in wet clothes got into a police car and were driven away. The van containing the corpse remained. Nothing more happened for twenty minutes. The watchers began to lose interest. A number of them left.

Down beside the undertaker's van, the CID officer with the moustache, John Wigfull, was assessing the situation. He hated dealing with anything that departed from routine procedures. Already those two buffoons sent to retrieve the body had made the police into a laughing-stock. His preference was to get away from here as soon as possible, but it took him some time to reach the decision. He had to satisfy himself that this was not the sort of incident requiring a search for evidence at the place where the body was found. The water would have carried any traces well downstream by now. The body had been seen floating towards the weir, so it must have entered the water higher up the river. To call a pathologist to the weir would surely be a waste of time.

Just to be sure he had missed nothing, he climbed into the van for a final look at the body, forced into closer proximity than he really wanted. So far as he could judge when he lifted the plastic covering, the victim had not been in the water for more than a few hours. She was small, even girlish in stature, with dark, bobbed hair. She appeared middle-aged, maybe in her forties, allowing that no one looks in the bloom of youth after drowning. Plain white blouse, black skirt and dark tights. No shoes. No evidence of violence other than superficial marks consistent with being in the river. Remembering that many suicides are drugs-related, he examined her arms for injection scars and found none.

Outside, he told the driver to take the body to the mortuary. Then he mopped his forehead, got into his own car and drove away.

DIAMOND DEVOTED the morning to Hands, as he had now dubbed the owner of the bones found in the vault. The case couldn't be soft-pedalled any longer. Two of the tabloids had splashed the story across their front pages that morning and even the most solemn broadsheet papers had covered it somewhere. He'd been forced to run the gauntlet of mikes when he'd arrived for work.

At least there was something promising to work on: the Motorhead emblem. It was a fair assumption that either the victim or his killer had worn it.

'Talk to every one of the builders you traced, Keith,' he told Halliwell. 'See if they remember a Heavy Metal freak who worked on the Roman Baths extension. It may be a name they supplied already, or someone they remember now, or just a face they can't put a name to.'

His appeal for information on Newsnight had brought in over fifty calls, and he had a small team sorting the wheat from the chaff. The ratio of useful information was about one to twenty, if that, but they all had to be taken seriously. After a first sifting, he followed up on anything even faintly promising.

And something did emerge. Towards mid-day, he found himself talking to a retired plasterer in Winchester who had worked on the site for about five weeks in 1982. Retired, yes, but encouragingly all there. He reeled off a string of names, several that tallied with the list Halliwell had compiled.

Diamond wrote them all down, and found himself slipping into precisely the sort of shorthand he had mocked Halliwell for: Barham, talkative, ex-Korean War; Sims, short, snooker; Page, fancy rats; Andy…? nervous dyspepsia; Marshall, white Anglia… More than a dozen altogether.

'Is that the lot?'

'It's all I can think of now. I was only there a few weeks, chum.'

'Was there anyone interested in rock music?'

'You want a lot for your money.'

'Heavy Metal.'

'Most of the young blokes, I reckon.'

'So was there anyone who wore a Motorhead ring?'

'Motorhead?'

'Their trademark was the skull of a bull, with two big canine teeth.'

After a pause came the statement that would transform the case. 'There was someone with a ring like that. He didn't last long.'

'What do you mean? He left?'

'Didn't turn up for work one day. They was casual labour, a lot of them blokes. They got a better offer and jacked in the job.'

'You didn't see him again?'

'That's right.'

Diamond's hand tightened on the phone. 'Do you remember his name?'

He barely took time to think. 'No. That's gone.'

'Would you try, please?'

'Give me a break, guvnor. It was getting on for twenty years ago.'

'Even so.'

'Can't help. Sorry.'

'Anything about him? What was his trade?'

'Trade? I told you he wasn't a tradesman. General labourer, most like. An overgrown kid. Scruffy hair. You know, rats' tails. Didn't wash it much, or didn't appear to. Brown leather jacket. The reason I remember the ring is he was real proud of it. Any time we had a tea break, he'd be sitting admiring it, turning it round on his finger, tapping his heel at the same time, like he could hear the music in his head. He didn't talk much. These days he'd have one of them Walkman things, wouldn't he?'

'This is someone young?'

'Twenty. Not much over.'

'And he left suddenly?'

'He wasn't the only one. Other kids gave up. There were all sorts, and some of them wasn't suited to the work. Students, school-leavers.'

'Was he a student?'

'I doubt it. No, he wasn't no brain.'

'A loner?'

'I wouldn't say that. Now wait a bit. He had an oppo.' The voice grew more animated. 'This is coming back now. We used to call them Banger and Mash.'

'Any reason?'

'Banger. Head-banger, I suppose. Kids who go in for that rock music, right?'

'What about Mash?'

'Well, Banger and Mash. Geddit?'

Diamond would forgive this man anything. 'Was there any other reason for calling him Mash?'

'Not that I can think of. Except a Masher is a kind of ladies' man, isn't he?'

'Was he?'

'Search me.'

'Can you describe him, this Mash?'

'It's so long ago. I've got a feeling he kept himself cleaner than Banger, fancied his looks a bit. No, I'm probably guessing now. You'd better forget what I just told you.'

Nothing would be forgotten from this productive conversation. 'After Banger stopped coming, did Mash carry on working?'

'Couldn't tell you. I was on a short contract myself. I left soon after.'