Sports and Leisure Center

The Sports and Leisure Center is a functional public facility whose ordinary routines and distinctive setting become significant when the investigation turns to Gilbert Jones. The building is where he works, but its car park and enclosed interior also become the focus of an urgent police search for two missing people.

Setting and Architecture

Built in 1972 from concrete and reconstituted stone, the Center is described as an example of the packing-case style: functional rather than decorative. It stands on Bath Recreation Ground, apart from the city’s grander architecture. In daylight it is unobtrusive; at half past six on an October evening, caught in artificial light, it appears as a garish yellow monolith. The contrast makes the familiar civic building a stark landmark when the inquiry becomes an emergency.

Work and Daily Use

Gilbert Jones, better known as Bert, is an employee of the Center. Its busiest hours are in the evening, when he has to be there for work. That routine shapes the domestic life of his partner, Shirley-Ann Miller: while Bert is away, she spends many evenings reading and decides to try the Bloodhounds after hearing about the group in a booklet listing activities in Bath. The Center is thus part of the ordinary schedule that connects Bert’s work, Shirley-Ann’s evenings, and her entry into the detective-story enthusiasts’ circle.

The Investigation Reaches the Center

As Peter Diamond orders renewed checks on suspects and their associates, Julie Hargreaves is sent to the Center to establish whether Bert is there that morning. The visit is one part of a wider effort to account for people’s movements, alongside interviews and checks elsewhere. The Center’s importance changes sharply later: what first served as a workplace to check becomes the location around which the police organize a major search.

Emergency Search

At 5:25 p.m., officers find Julie’s car at the far end of the Center’s car park. Marlowe, Rupert Darby’s dog, is in the back seat; his barking and yelping help draw attention to the vehicle. The discovery immediately raises the response to an emergency. By 5:45, more than forty officers have assembled in the floodlit area outside the main entrance off North Parade.

Addressing the search party through a loudhailer, Peter Diamond identifies two missing people: Julie and Gilbert Jones. He describes Julie as a five-foot-eight female inspector with short blond hair, wearing a light brown leather jacket over a black sweater and black leggings. Jones is described as about thirty, five-foot-nine, dark-haired and brown-eyed, with a bodybuilder’s physique; he is probably in a dark blue tracksuit. Diamond says Jones is not known to be armed but is suspected of violent crimes, and instructs the officers to treat him with extreme caution.

The Center’s ordinary users are to be evacuated after the fire alarm sounds and directed toward the main doors, where uniformed officers will watch for Jones. If he is not found among them, the police plan a systematic search, starting on the ground floor and moving upward, with senior Center staff assisting. Enclosed areas receive particular attention, including changing rooms, saunas, storerooms, and cupboards. The facility’s practical layout therefore determines the operation’s next steps: its public entrances offer a point of control, while its many enclosed spaces require a room-by-room search.