The Vault (11 page)

twelve

THE SMELL OF DAMP, ancient stone and the cool of the night were marvellously suggestive, transporting him to the vaults and charnel-houses Frankenstein had visited in pursuit of the secret of life. "One
secret which I alone possessed was the hope
to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight
labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued
nature to her hiding'places."

Unlike Frankenstein, he was untroubled by the horrors. He embraced them eagerly.

thirteen

WHEN IT BECAME OBVIOUS that the television people would not let up, Diamond agreed to record an interview for BBC
Newsnight
that meant a drive to Bristol for a link-up with London. He got to the studio around six-thirty. They powdered his bald patch in Make-Up—"topped, if not tailed," as they put it—and then he found himself in front of a camera facing a famous talking head on a monitor. Usually he relished watching politicians ducking and diving under fire from Jeremy Paxman. Being on the receiving end was a different experience. Tonight he didn't much like what he saw of this formidable interrogator. If the lush crop of dark hair wasn't provocation enough for a bald man, the smile that came with the questions was.

"You seem to have got yourself an unusual case down there in Bath, Superintendent. What's all this about Frankenstein?"

Diamond replied dourly that he didn't have anything to say about Frankenstein.

"That's rather odd if I may say so because according to the evening papers, you're digging up bits of human anatomy in the cellar of the house where
Frankenstein
was written."

"That may be so," said Diamond, already wishing he had not agreed to do this.

"There's no 'may be' about it, Superintendent. Either it's the
Frankenstein
cellar, or it isn't. Have you read Mary Shelley's book?"

He admitted that he had not.

"Better get hold of a copy, hadn't you?"

"I've got more important things to do."

Paxman pricked up his eyebrows in a way familiar from years of
Newsnights.
Talking to a TV screen was a new experience for Diamond and concentration was difficult.

"You're familiar with the story, anyway—how Frankenstein put together this creature from spare parts gathered from dissecting-rooms and tombs?"

"I should think everyone has heard of it."

"And you won't deny that you're finding bones down there?"

"The bones have got nothing to do with
Frankenstein"
Diamond insisted.

"So can you reveal exclusively on
Newsnight
that he isn't a suspect?" The lips curved a fraction, in case any viewer had not picked up the irony.

"He's fiction, as far as I know."

"Well, that's good news for nervous viewers. What about the monster?"

Diamond felt he had endured enough of this. "I'm speaking to him, aren't I?"

There was an awkward moment when nothing was said. Then:
"Touche,
Mr Diamond. Bath Police are well on the case, by the sound of things." Paxman glanced at his notes. "You're quoted as saying you could find hundreds more bones in this vault."

He knew that remark would be turned against him. "It's over a churchyard."

"Over a churchyard?" Just one of the eyebrows popped up. "While you're catching up on your reading, you'd better look at
Dracula
as well. He could easily come into this."

"It wouldn't surprise me—if you people have your way."

"If you don't mind me saying, you sound slightly disenchanted by all the attention, Superintendent."

"I'm trying to keep it sensible, that's all."

"That's a pious hope I should think. Is there any way we can help?"

"Am I allowed to be serious for a moment?"

A smile.

"We're keen to interview anyone who worked on the Pump Room extension—which is over this vault—in the period 1982 to 1983."

"Archaeologists? Construction workers?"

"Anyone at all. Any information will be treated in confidence." He gave the Bath number.

"There you have it, then," Jeremy Paxman said to camera. "Don't call us, call the Bath Police. We'll display the number at the end."

In Make-Up, they wiped away the powder and told him he deserved a medal.

"What for?"

"You gave as good as you got. No one's ever called him a monster."

"I expect he thrives on it," said Diamond. "They'll edit that bit out."

"No, they won't. It was good television."

Wearily, he returned to his car and cruised around the city's infuriating one-way system looking for the route to Bath. He always got it wrong. At one stage, trying to read the directions, he drove through a red light. It was a pedestrian crossing and nobody was in the way, but with a sense of inevitability he saw in his mirror the pulsing blue beacon of a police car. They overtook him and forced him to stop.

"This is all I need," he told the young officer whose head appeared at the window.

"Superintendent Diamond?"

"You know me?"

"We were under orders to find you, sir. You're asked to make contact with Bath CID."

"That's why you stopped me?"

The young man grinned. "Well, it wasn't to ask the way."

Revived, he got out and ambled across to the patrol car to use their radio. Keith Halliwell answered the call.

"What's this—overtime?" Diamond asked, chirpy again.

"I've been trying to reach you, sir. You were supposed to get a message at the TV studio. We had a call from the lab at Chepstow earlier. They found something."

"What's that?"

"In the bits of concrete that came with the hand bones, they chipped out a piece of metal shaped into a skull."

"Full size?"

"No. Really small. Like a badge. This was curved, so they assume it was attached to a ring originally. You can see where it broke at the back."

"A ring? What are we talking about here? The kind of thing kids wear?"

"Yes. Cheap metal."

"In the shape of a skull, you said?"

"An animal skull, like a bull, but with large teeth sticking up, as far as the eyes."

"Motorhead."

"I'm sorry?" said Halliwell.

"You should be," Diamond chided him. "Don't you remember Heavy Metal?"

"Would you say that again, sir? I'm getting some static."

Diamond rolled his eyes at the young officer beside him. "He's getting some static. Rock music in the seventies, Keith. The animal skull with the teeth was the Motorhead emblem. Your musical education is sadly lacking. Where were you—at the ballet?"

"I was just a baby."

"Oh, yes?"

"The point is, sir, the ring could have broken when the body was dismembered. It may have belonged to the victim."

"Where's the rest of it, then? Shouldn't it be with the bones?"

"The killer could have removed it from the victim's hand, thinking it would help identify the corpse."

"Equally, it could have belonged to the killer and snapped off when he was doing his grisly work."

"His what, sir?"

"Never mind, Keith. You can knock off now."

He said goodnight to the patrol team, ambled across to his own car and drove home thinking it had not been such a bad day's work. Starting off with no more than a few bones to investigate, he was ending up with a mental picture of someone: probably young, in leathers and jeans, long-haired, a rocker. Rightly or wrongly, victim or killer, this had to be progress.

Then he remembered the ACC's 'At Home'. He would never make it there by eight. Steph would be sitting at home, dressed and ready to go. He'd better get to a phone.

NOT LONG after Joe left Noble and Nude, Ellis Somerset returned with the vanload of antiques from Si Minchendon's house in Camden Crescent.

Peg helped unload. To be precise, she unloaded the two pictures. The rest she left for Ellis to move.

She had been on tenterhooks to inspect those pictures. There could be no question that they were watercolours in William Blake's style, with the strange, archaic look his drawing had acquired from making hundreds of studies of medieval tombs during his apprenticeship as an engraver. They were essentially graphic illustrations in quill and ink, using the colour mainly as tint, rather than to indicate form. But the subjects of the pictures, if Peg's interpretation was correct, were not recorded anywhere. On her way back from Camden Place she had called at Bath Library and looked at the major biographies of Blake by Peter Ackroyd and David Erdman; neither made any mention that he had illustrated Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein.

She was sure in her mind that they could represent nothing else. The first had to be the frozen valley of Chamonix, with Mont Blanc "in awful majesty" as a backdrop for the meeting between Frankenstein and the creature he had brought to life. The figures facing each other differed markedly in physique, the one a mere man, puny beside the abhorred monster, who was unlike the Hollywood version, but faithful to Mary Shelley's concept: yellow skin thinly covering the muscles and arteries, lustrous black hair, pearly white teeth, black lips and watery, dun-white eyes.

In the second picture, the same grotesque face was staring through the window of the inn where Frankenstein's bride Elizabeth lay strangled on her wedding night. The gloating, grinning monster was mocking Frankenstein. What other interpretation could anyone make?

Peg had worked long enough in the antiques trade to know that synchronicity occurs from time to time in a quite eerie fashion. So she was not troubled that Mary Shelley had cropped up in another context the same day. It was not mere coincidence, nor entirely the mysterious working of fate. With the idea of Frankenstein already planted in her mind, she would have been alert to anything in Simon Minchendon's house that made connection with the story.

Were the pictures genuine? Blake had been so prolific, despite failing health towards the end, that no one could be certain how many unrecorded works had survived.
Frankenstein
was published in 1818. Blake would certainly have known of the book; he was illustrating and engraving to the end of his life in 1827. The theme of the novel would have found a resonance with his hatred of perverted science.

Peg decided there was only one way to find out. Using a penknife, she cut into the already disintegrating brown paper backing one of the frames. Methodically she prised out the rusty pins and removed the board that held the picture against the glass. The age of the mount and frame was of no importance, but did the drawing paper pass the test? Was it almost two hundred years old?

With extreme care, she lifted out the painting and studied it. Certainly the paper smelt old. There was foxing at the edges, which were rough and fraying. She was not an expert on the age of paper, but her knowledge of antiques of all sorts gave her a pretty reliable sense of what was genuinely old. This, she decided without wishful thinking, could safely be placed in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.

Nothing was written on the reverse. A faker will often try too hard and add some embellishment to bring extra conviction.

She performed a similar dissection of the second frame and mount. No further clues were revealed.

"I'm all fired up, Ellis. You know whose work this is, don't you?"

"They're not signed," he pointed out.

"That's no guide, ducky. Blake often left his work unsigned. These look to me like studies for engravings. He did thousands." She smiled. "Well, it would have been nice in a way if there was a signature, but then I would never have got them so cheap."

"Are you sure they're kosher?"

"What's your opinion?" Holding it delicately by the edge to avoid marking it with her dusty fingers, she handed him the exterior scene.

"You think this is Frankenstein and the monster?"

"It's the core of the book, their meeting in the shadow of Mont Blanc. The monster has strangled Frankenstein's young brother, the child William, and the servant Justine has been hanged for the crime."

"It's a long time since I read the story," Somerset admitted. "I've seen plenty of films, of course, but we all know the liberties they take."

"Take it from me, this is straight out of the book. No liberties at all."

He held the picture at arm's length. "Blake and Mary Shelley? I've never linked them in my mind before."

Peg said, "I did some checking this afternoon. He collaborated with Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley's mother. She wrote some rather indifferent stories for children and dear old Blake illustrated them. So there is a link, in a way."

"What will you do with them? Is there a space on the wall anywhere?"

She shook her head. "People come here looking for bargains, and these are something else. I've got an arrangement under way."

"A dealer?"

"Get away." With a mysterious smile, she held out her hands to take back the precious painting.

"You know someone?"

"Someone who will want these."

"Who's that? A collector?"

"Big game, darling. The rare beast we all pursue, a party who really must buy. The entire trade depends on people like them."

"Aren't you going to tell me?"

She gave him a skittish look. "I may—after I've had my bit of fun."

"You're being mean to me, Peg."

"This is the jungle, ducky."

"Local?"

"Oh, yes," she said, "I've been on the phone. I'm expecting an offer tonight, if that doesn't sound indelicate."

Ellis looked away, pink-faced. A vein was throbbing in his neck.

* * *

DONNA HAD not, after all, booked for a meal. She was old-fashioned enough to believe restaurant reservations ought to be made by men. She wouldn't enjoy her dinner if the waiters knew she had made the phone call.

Joe came in and, typical Joe, gushed apologies like a man who had just walked into a ladies' changing-room. He went on to claim confidently that when she heard the reason why he had neglected her for so long, she would not only understand, she would throw her arms around him and give him the biggest kiss ever. Donna doubted that.

Worse, he suggested they had room service. He would order champagne and caviar as well, he offered.

"Why?" said Donna, keeping herself under control with difficulty. "Why don't we go out?"

"It's getting late, honey. We don't want to walk the streets looking for a place with a free table. I can't wait to tell you what happened. Shall I call room service?"

They walked the streets looking for a place with a free table. To be exact, they walked as far as Brock Street, a mere three minutes from the hotel, and found a table straight away in a quiet restaurant.