Many Rivers to Cross

Chapter 4

By the time Homicide and Major Crimes were called to number twenty-six Hollyfield Lane, the main street of the estate on the north-western edge of Eastvale, the sun was low and cast long shadows on the road. The first officers to respond — PCs John Carver and Sally Helms — had followed procedure, securing the scene and calling for paramedics to verify that the victim was, in fact, dead. It was only upon discovering that the deceased appeared to be, on the say-so of the paramedics, the victim of a drug overdose, that DI Annie Cabbot and DC Gerry Masterson ended up there. As yet, the discovery wasn’t sufficiently major for them to drag Banks away from his evening out in Gateshead. Annie had enough rank to manage the investigation as senior investigating officer for the time being, and she would report to AC Gervaise as soon as she had gathered a few more facts at the scene. Drug overdoses happened now and then, even in more rural areas like Eastvale, and were rarely cause for a major investigation once the basics had been established.

The sprawling estate of decrepit terrace houses formed a no man’s land to the west, beyond the more upmarket detached and semi-detached houses that straggled up tree-lined Elmet Hill and its tributaries towards The Heights, Eastvale’s most desirable and expensive enclave. Because the Hollyfield Estate was earmarked for development, many of the buildings were already empty, their windows broken, roofs missing slates, their inhabitants long rehoused elsewhere. Though Hollyfield hadn’t earned quite as rough a reputation as the East Side Estate, it had certainly been one of the poorest parts of town in its day, a poverty that was only thrown into relief by its proximity to its more affluent neighbours to the east.

Sean Bancroft and Luke Farrar, the ten-year-old boys who had reported finding the body, were at home with their parents, and someone would talk to them later. First of all, the police needed to examine the scene.

The smell of decay assaulted Annie before she had even got through the front door. Fortunately, the responding officers and attending paramedics had been careful and sensible enough to disturb things as little as possible, and both Annie and Gerry kept their distance as they studied the corpse. The smell didn’t come from the dead man, though; he hadn’t been dead long enough for that. It came from the house itself — neglect, unwashed dishes, damp walls, rotting food, old socks and blocked drains.

The man appeared to be in his late sixties, though it was often hard to tell with a drug addict. He had long, straggly, unwashed hair, thinning at the temples and on top, and a bushy beard stained yellow around the lips. He was slumped sideways on a mobility scooter wearing baggy corduroy trousers and a threadbare pullover. His left sleeve was rolled up almost to the shoulder, and a needle dangled from a vein at the bend of his elbow. Lucky man, Annie thought. Not so many junkies as ancient as he seemed to be had usable veins left in such an easily accessible part of their bodies. From what she could see of his arm, it was scarred from previous injections, and at one point above his wrist, the skin bulged an angry red, a sign of infection from a dirty needle. The room itself was sparsely furnished, and what there was looked as if it had been salvaged from a scrap heap. The ancient wallpaper was faded and peeling from damp where the walls joined the ceiling. Wet patches dappled the walls, throwing out of kilter the symmetry of the flower pattern.

‘Was the overhead light on when you arrived?’ Annie asked PC Carver.

‘No, ma’am. I turned it on. Had to. I could hardly see a thing.’

‘That’s OK. I just needed to know. Have you searched the house?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ PC Helms said. ‘We had a quick shufty around, at any rate. Nothing. It’s all much the same as this room. More like a squat than anything else.’

Annie nodded and gestured for Gerry to check the place out, then she turned her attention back to the body. ‘Do you know who he is?’ she asked PC Helms.

‘No, ma’am.’

‘OK. There’s not a lot more we can do until we get Doc Burns here to check him out. Did the kids say the back door was open?’

‘Yes. No signs of a break-in. Neither there nor here at the front.’

Annie squatted and peered more closely at the corpse. She noticed the edge of a worn leather wallet sticking out of his hip pocket. She was already wearing her latex gloves. ‘Take note, constables,’ she said as she reached forward carefully, grasped the wallet between her index finger and thumb and slowly pulled it from the pocket. ‘In case it ever comes up, for any reason, I’ve removed his wallet from his pocket at the scene.’

PC Carver nodded and made a note in his book.

Annie smiled up at him. ‘You never know. Sometimes these little things make all the difference. Let’s have a look.’ She carried the wallet over to the table by the front window.

Gerry came back from upstairs in time to join the three of them. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Though there’s a mattress on the floor in each of the two bedrooms, and it looks as if someone’s been sleeping on one of them recently.’

Annie started to rifle through the wallet. It was certainly bare. ‘No driving licence,’ she said. ‘And no debit or credit or loyalty cards, either.’

‘Judging by the state of his arm,’ said Gerry, ‘it’s probably a good thing for all of us that he didn’t drive. I mean, you know, before he...’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Annie. ‘Aha. He’s got a senior’s bus pass here. Howard Stokes, age 67.’

Annie passed Gerry a scrap of paper she found stuck between two dirty five-pound notes, on which was scrawled something that resembled a mobile phone number. ‘Could be his dealer or someone?’

‘I’ll check it out,’ said Gerry. ‘Think it was an accident, guv?’

Annie peered at the body again. ‘No way of telling,’ she said. ‘Not yet. Not until the doc gets him on the slab and the experts go over the scene. Who knows, even then? We’ll need to find out if he was right-handed, for a start. If he wasn’t, we may have another murder to deal with. We also need to know whether his prints are on the syringe, where he might have got the drugs from, and so on. Even if we think we’ve got all the answers, there’ll always be a chance that someone else injected him, wiped the syringe and made sure his fingerprints would be found on it. Vic Manson’s good with this sort of thing. Odds are he’ll be able to tell us by the angles and impressions whether Stokes would have handled the syringe in that way to get it where it is. I can’t see any evidence of it, but there’s also a chance he was killed in some other way and it was made to appear like a drug overdose. But who would want to go to that much trouble, I have no idea.’

‘Should we call in the super?’ Gerry asked.

Annie shook her head. ‘No need. Let him have his evening out. I’ll talk to the AC in a while and see what she says. You have a chat with Sean and Luke. In the meantime, I’ll call for the forensics team. We’ll wait here for Dr Burns and the CSIs. We’ll get Peter Darby to take some stills and video, too. Then, when the doc’s finished, he can get the body wrapped up and transferred to the mortuary at Eastvale General ready for Karen tomorrow morning.’

‘She’s got the boy from the wheelie bin slated for tomorrow,’ said Gerry.

‘Right. Forgot.’ Annie looked at the late Howard Stokes again. ‘Well, he’ll just have to wait his turn, won’t he? I don’t imagine he’ll mind all that much.’

After a long telephone conversation with Raymond in New York, who urged her to go and see the Picasso exhibition at the Tate Modern if she had some spare time on her hands, Zelda picked up her book and went out to dine alone. She chose a waterfront restaurant that she had passed on one of her walks around the neighbourhood. The cuisine was French, which was her favourite. The restaurant was noisy inside, and though it was a mild enough evening, it was perhaps a little too cool for some people and she was able to get a table outside, from which she could see the river in all its twilit glory. The tourist boats were still out offering cruises, and tugs and barges plied their trade back and forth, as they had done for centuries.

Still on her Japanese reading jag, she had moved on from Kawabata to Mishima’s Spring Snow, the first of his Sea of Fertility quartet. But every once in a while, she needed a break from serious literature and went back to the books of her youth, sometimes even as far back as Enid Blyton or A.A. Milne. That afternoon, after her visit to Hawkins’s house and the pub, she had found a copy of Modesty Blaise in a second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road and decided to read through the whole series again. She had read them all years ago, back at the orphanage, but she didn’t care. Modesty Blaise was her heroine from her early teenage years, and she knew she could enjoy Modesty’s adventures with her right-hand man Willie Garvin all over again. She had already got well into the story in her hotel room. The evening light was still good enough to read by, and she flicked her eyes between the words on the page and the view. Modesty was tied up at knife-point and being forced to phone Willie and lure him into a trap by the time Zelda’s food arrived.

Zelda turned to her Sancerre and sea bass, put her book aside and thought over her day. Hawkins’s death still troubled her. She hadn’t known him well, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t felt anything at his passing. What a terrible way to go. Of course, she knew more than Danvers did — his meeting with Phil Keane, the man Banks and Annie were after — and that Keane favoured fire as a means of getting rid of people. That didn’t mean Hawkins’s death had been anything other than an accident, but given the world he and Keane inhabited, in Zelda’s opinion they were far more likely to die by violence than anything else.

The main sticking point in her theory was that given the talents Alan had outlined, Keane would have been a documents man, a facilitator of movements across borders, of identity creation and manipulation. Such assets weren’t usually asked to kill people. That pleasure fell to others, to specialists whom Zelda had met, men who enjoyed their work and did it as professionally and as bloodily as possible. Still, Keane might have become an obvious choice for some reason — the fires, perhaps — and Hawkins may somehow have fallen afoul of those he worked for. Or it could have been something personal, something between Keane and Hawkins. But the gang wouldn’t like that, losing one of their well-placed informants on a whim, so where would it leave Keane? Was he still alive?

But that was all speculation. She needed to find Keane and, if possible, get him to lead her to Goran Tadić. Only then, when she had done what she had to do, could she hand Keane over to Alan and Annie.

She was well aware that she had lost much of her impetus in tracking down Keane after that one sighting had led nowhere. True, she hadn’t been in London very often since then, and never for long, but she would be the first to admit that she had felt discouraged. She was no detective. She had no resources to call on to find someone. And for what? True, Keane might lead her to Goran, but there could be other ways of locating him, through contacts she already had. She was in no hurry. She knew that whatever small dent she made, the organisation and its trade in female flesh would go on as ever. This was personal. Of that she was under no illusions.

But Hawkins’s death, for whatever the reason, had rekindled her interest in the task.

There was really only one other place she might find out something useful, she realised. When she had followed Hawkins that rainy night just before Christmas, when he had met Keane in a Soho restaurant, a woman had come out with them. Keane’s girlfriend, or so it had seemed. Zelda had taken photographs and followed the two of them afterwards while they went window-shopping and finally jumped in a taxi on Regent Street. There was a slim chance that the woman and Keane might have been regulars at that restaurant. In which case, perhaps someone who worked there might know something about them. It was a long shot, but then so was this whole business. It would have to wait until tomorrow, anyway. She had had enough of sleuthing for today. She considered checking out the dessert menu, then decided not to bother, drank some more of her Sancerre and went back to Modesty Blaise. Modesty would escape. She always did. That was one of the things Zelda so admired about her. The lonely call of a ship’s horn sounded from far away, downriver.

It was after nine o’clock and getting dark when Gerry finally arrived at Luke Farrar’s house near the top of Elmet Hill. Sean Bancroft was present, too, as were both boys’ parents. The boys were sipping hot chocolate and their parents red wine. Mrs Farrar asked Gerry if she would like a glass, but she declined. Much as she would have enjoyed a glass of wine right then, it wouldn’t do to accept alcohol from interviewees. Maybe Banks could get away with it, but he was Superintendent and Gerry was a lowly DC. She did, however, accept the cup of tea offered as an alternative. The children seemed no worse the wear for their adventure, and no doubt when the immediate shock wore off, they would end up with an exciting tale to tell at school. Out of the window, the tree branches silhouetted against the night sky swayed and creaked in the breeze that had sprung up. Cars were parked on both sides of the hill, but there was hardly any traffic at that time. Things would be different when the shopping centre was built.

‘I won’t keep you long,’ Gerry said, when she had her mug of tea in one hand and her pen in another, the notebook open on her knee. While she questioned them, she looked primarily at Sean, whom she knew was the elder of the two by several weeks, and who appeared to be the leader. ‘Do you often play down on Hollyfield Lane?’

Neither boy said anything at first. They glanced shiftily at one another and eventually Sean said, with a guilty glance towards his father, ‘We’re not supposed to go down there. But we weren’t doing any harm.’

‘There are all sorts of dubious characters on the streets,’ Sean’s father added.

‘But you do go, sometimes, right?’ Gerry insisted.

Sean nodded. ‘Most of the houses are empty now,’ he said. ‘We thought that one was empty.’

‘We like to play in the empty houses,’ Luke added.

Sean gave him a withering look.

‘That’s all right,’ Gerry said. ‘I was the same when I was a girl.’

Both boys stared at her open-mouthed, as if they couldn’t believe that a girl would be brave or adventurous enough to play the way they did.

‘Believe me,’ Gerry went on, ‘you’re not in any trouble for going in there.’ She glanced at the parents. ‘Not from me, at any rate.’

‘He won’t be going anywhere for a few weeks,’ Mr Bancroft said, through clenched teeth.

‘Had you seen the man on the mobility scooter before?’ Gerry asked.

‘Dunno,’ said Sean. ‘I mean, we didn’t get a really good look at him, did we, Luke?’

Luke shook his head. ‘We legged it,’ he said.

‘And it was pretty dark in there.’

‘So you don’t know if you’ve ever seen him before?’

‘There’s a bloke on a mobility scooter with long hair and a beard like his who comes in the park sometimes.’

‘What?’ said Mr Bancroft. ‘In our park?’ He glanced at Gerry. ‘It’s at the bottom of the hill,’ he explained. ‘Just a small park, like. But our kiddies play there. There’s been trouble about people from the old estate hanging around there before. There was a convicted paedophile—’

‘A park’s a public place, Mr Bancroft,’ Gerry said. ‘Hard to keep people out. But I get your point.’ She turned to Sean again. ‘What was he doing when you saw him in the park?’

‘Nothing,’ said Sean.

‘Just sitting there,’ Luke added.

‘On his scooter?’

‘No. On a bench. He’d have it beside him. The scooter. He could walk, but not very much.’

‘Did he ever say anything to you or any of the other children?’

‘No. He’d usually be reading a book or something.’

‘Did you ever see him with anyone else, talking to anyone?’

‘No. He was always by himself.’

‘Did you hear about that young lad we found on the East Side Estate yesterday?’ she asked.

‘The boy in the bin?’ said Luke, parroting a Daily Mail headline.

‘That’s the one.’ Gerry took the computer-generated photograph from her briefcase and showed it to them. ‘That’s what he looked like. Did you ever see him while you were playing?’

The boys shook their heads. ‘He’s an Arab,’ said Sean. ‘Dad says—’

‘That’ll do,’ cut in Mr Bancroft. ‘Just answer the lady’s questions.’

‘Yes, he’s an Arab,’ said Gerry. ‘Though that’s a bit of a broad description. Covers a wide area. We don’t know what country he came from yet.’

‘Is he one of those boat people?’ Luke asked. ‘Or an asylum seeker?’

‘I see you’ve been keeping an eye on the news.’

‘We do it at school,’ Sean explained. ‘Current affairs. Anyway, we haven’t seen him around here. If he did come from the Hollyfield he must be new there.’

‘But nobody’s new there,’ Luke said. ‘They’ve nearly all left.’

‘He could be a squatter or something,’ Sean argued. ‘They take over empty houses, don’t they?’

‘Not seen him in the park, on the swings or anything?’ Gerry asked.

‘No,’ said Sean, adding for no good reason, ‘we always play there with other boys and girls we know, and there’s always a grown-up there to keep an eye on us.’

‘A good thing, too,’ said Gerry. She glanced up at the boys’ parents. ‘I understand you have a Neighbourhood Watch in the area. Do either of you belong to it?’

Mr and Mrs Farrar said they did. Gerry showed them the photograph, too, and the Bancrofts.

‘We’ve never seen him,’ said Mrs Farrar. ‘Mind you, we stay on our side of the park. That’s our boundary. We don’t go over to the Hollyfield Estate. No reason to. To be quite honest, we’ll all be glad when it’s been flattened to the ground. They say the plans for the new houses are quite nice. Then there’ll be the shopping. And the cinema.’ Mrs Bancroft smiled at her.

Gerry was running out of questions. Her cosy flat and a large glass of Chardonnay before bed were feeling increasingly attractive. ‘When you were in the house, did you touch anything?’ she asked the boys.

‘No,’ said Sean. ‘We just walked in the room, like. It was dark and it smelled funny. Then I saw the scooter. It wasn’t until I got around the side that I saw the man sitting in it. I saw his hair and his beard first, then his eyes, but that was enough. We ran out of the front door.’

‘Was the door open?’

‘No. I had to open it.’

‘I mean was it locked?’

‘Oh. No. It opened when I turned the handle. Why? Do you think someone went in and killed that man? But they could have gone in the back like we did. The back door was unlocked too, and even open a bit.’

Gerry smiled. ‘No, we don’t think that. It seems like an accidental death. I’m just trying to get all the details straight, that’s all.’ She set her mug down on the coffee table, put away her notebook and pen and stood up to leave.

‘Ooh, look at the time,’ said Mrs Bancroft, also standing. ‘We’d better be taking Sean home now, too.’ She patted her boy’s head. ‘It’s school tomorrow.’ Sean scowled and edged away, embarrassed. Gerry winked at him. He blushed.

It was going on for half past eleven when Banks got home from Gateshead, where he had taken his daughter Tracy and her fiancé Mark to The Sage for a Richard Thompson concert: over two hours of mostly powerhouse electric guitar, bass and drums, along with haunting acoustic versions of ‘Beeswing’, ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightning’ and ‘From Galway to Graceland’. RT could certainly tell a long story in few words. There were a lot of songs from the new album, of course, but he had also played some old Fairport Convention numbers, such as ‘Tale in Hard Times’ and ‘Meet on the Ledge’, along with ‘Wall of Death’, which he had first recorded years ago with his ex-wife Linda. Banks’s ears were still ringing with the music on the drive home down the A1.

Tracy had been unimpressed in the way only a daughter can be with her father’s taste in music. It just wasn’t her ‘cup of tea’ she had said. But Mark had loved every minute of it and talked enthusiastically about the concert all the way back to Tracy’s flat, where Banks had dropped them off. Banks already approved of Mark as a prospective husband for Tracy, and this display of good taste cemented his approval. It would be nice if Mark had chosen a more interesting career than accountancy, he thought, but you can’t have everything. Besides, he would never be short of work, and he had already introduced an element of stability into Tracy’s sometimes erratic life’s journey.

Now he was home, Banks felt too wired to go straight to bed, despite the lateness of the hour. He checked his landline phone messages and found only a brief call from Annie about a dead junkie two boys had found in a house on Hollyfield Lane. There was no reason for him to call her back, certainly not at this time of night. He could find out all about it at the meeting tomorrow morning. As there were no other messages, he assumed that the team had got no further with the case of the dead boy since he had briefed AC Gervaise before her lunchtime press conference.

The case had been all over the national news again that evening, mostly because knife crime loomed large in the media these days. Dr Karen Galway would be conducting the PM in the morning, Banks remembered with a sinking feeling, and he would have to attend. Hardly an occasion to look forward to, though he was interested in watching her work and knowing her findings.

He needed music, balm to soothe his soul, but nothing too busy or loud. With streaming services on Idagio and Apple Music, in addition to his own large collection of CDs, now ripped on to his computer, his choices were practically unlimited, which could be a nuisance from time to time. It was surprising how often he could find absolutely nothing he wanted to listen to at any particular moment.

Finally, he plumped for a collection of Takemitsu’s guitar music, spare and spacious, just what he needed. He hadn’t been drinking at all that evening and didn’t feel like opening a bottle of wine so late, so he poured himself a couple of fingers of the Macallan eighteen-year-old, a present from his old boss Superintendent Gristhorpe, which he usually reserved for special occasions. He settled down in his wicker chair in the dim orange-shaded light of the conservatory. He could hear the wind over the music, and several stars shone quite brightly in the clear sky above Tetchley Fell.

It was a sort of special occasion, he told himself, as his mind raced through the spaces between the notes to contemplate his forthcoming birthday with a mixture of awe and sheer terror. True, he was in good shape for a man of his age — especially a man of his tastes and habits. He had stopped smoking years ago, and though he didn’t go to a gym or jog, let alone have a personal trainer, he did enjoy long walks in the Dales as often as he could get out there. He would have been the first to admit that he probably drank too much and didn’t give a tinker’s toss about units and calories, but he also knew when to stop, most of the time. His only real ailments were slightly high blood pressure, which he took care of with pills from the doctor, and a nagging ache in his right hip after the longer walks. Statins had lowered his cholesterol to an acceptable level.

His mental health probably wasn’t so great. The ‘black dog’ of depression had been visiting more frequently and biting more viciously of late. Some days he just didn’t want to get out of bed. It wasn’t the old teenage laziness coming back, but rather that he didn’t want to face the world and felt no interest in the things he usually cared about, even music or work. Sometimes, too, he felt on the verge of tears for no reason at all and suffered from guilt-inducing bouts of self-pity. At work he often felt like Sisyphus pushing that bloody rock up the hill only to have it roll back down again.

He was also alone. There was no one special in his life, as they say, no significant other. He had family, of course — a distant ex-wife and two grown-up children very much preoccupied with their own lives and concerns: Brian with his band the Blue Lamps, and Tracy, his beloved daughter Tracy, about to get married at last, in her thirties. And he had friends. Not only work colleagues like Annie, Winsome, Gerry, Ken Blackstone and ‘Dirty Dick’ Burgess, but outsiders, like Linda Palmer, the poet; folk singer Penny Cartwright; Annie’s father, the artist Ray Cabbot; along with his partner Zelda, too, now, and psychologist Jenny Fuller. Even Joanna MacDonald. But he had no lover. No companion. No one with whom to share his highs and lows, his successes and failures.

The spaces between the notes seemed to grow longer. Banks sighed and refilled his glass. He wasn’t depressed — there was no black dog in sight — but if he went on thinking about his forthcoming birthday he might well end up that way.

He turned his mind to the case, the murdered boy. No money, no identification, nothing but a small wrap of cocaine in his pocket. Had someone emptied his pockets? Or was it the opposite? Had someone planted the coke there to misdirect the police? Was the killing nothing to do with drugs, after all? Both Annie and Gerry had suggested other possible reasons at the meeting this morning. The thing was, none of them really grabbed him. He could accept that there might have been another motive, but he could not, at the moment, imagine what it might be.

It had seemed apparent at first that the killer had wanted to delay the discovery of the victim’s identity for as long as possible. But perhaps that wasn’t the case at all. In Banks’s experience, most teenagers didn’t carry any identification; they didn’t usually have wallets on them. Why did it matter who the boy was? Maybe his killer had simply needed long enough to cover his tracks, escape, fix up an alibi, hide the evidence. Connor Clive Blaydon? Perhaps. But Banks very much doubted he would have carried out the task himself. As Joanna MacDonald had said, men like him used minions for jobs like that. Roberts, the butler? Frankie Wallace, the chauffeur? At least tomorrow he could check Blaydon’s alibi at Le Coq d’Or, and perhaps with a bit of luck find out what he was doing in Eastvale on the night the boy died.

Banks sipped his Macallan and let the music flow over him. All of a sudden, he knew what he wanted for his birthday: a guitar. Even if he had to buy one himself, having no one in his life likely to buy him an expensive present. It had been years since he’d played rhythm in a fledgling band called Jimson Weed, who hadn’t even managed to survive their first three gigs before splitting up. The lead singer had thought he was a cross between Roger Daltrey and Robert Plant, which also made him God’s gift to women.

Banks didn’t fool himself that he would ever be able to play the Takemitsu compositions he was listening to now, or any other classical works for guitar, but he could at least learn a few basic chords and belt out the occasional folk song, or strum an old Beatles tune or a bit of Dylan. His cottage was isolated enough that nobody would hear him. Besides, he had heard that learning a musical instrument was a healthy thing to do for the mind, that it helped keep dementia at bay, like learning a foreign language.

The phone started to ring.

Annoyed, Banks glanced at his watch. It was after midnight. Who would be calling at this hour? He didn’t recognise the number. Fearing some sort of emergency, he answered as quickly as he could.

‘Dad?’ came the disembodied voice on the other end.

‘Brian? Is that you? Something wrong?’

‘No. I’m fine. I’m sorry it’s so late, but I thought you’d still be up.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in Adelaide. It’s going on half eight in the morning here. I’m at the hotel.’

‘What day is it?’

‘Wednesday.’

‘Tomorrow, then.’

‘It’s today here.’

‘Smart arse. You know what I mean. Sure you’re OK?’

‘Never better.’

‘Then why the late-night phone call?’

‘I’ve got something to tell you and I didn’t want you to find out from the newspapers.’

‘You’re leaving the band?’

‘Something like that. Actually, the band’s packing it in. We had a meeting last night and decided. It’s been on the cards for a while.’

‘But why? You’re doing so well.’

‘We’ve been on autopilot for ages, Dad. Just coasting. Pulling in different directions. And it’s getting harder to make a living unless you’re Ed Sheeran or Beyoncé. The music business has changed so much. It’s all streaming now, and the musicians only get a pitiful amount. Even you don’t buy records any more.’

‘Fair enough. But I would if there were any record shops left.’

‘That’s what I mean. We’re all sick to death of endless touring, just to make ends meet or promote a new single. There seems to be no time left to write songs or have fun any more. It’s just constant hard slog, and that’s not what any of us want. I mean, I’m not saying we’re lazy or anything like that, but I am pushing forty.’

‘Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney are over seventy. Even Keith—’

‘But that’s the point, Dad. I don’t want to end up like them. And we don’t want to end up breaking apart and hating each other, each blaming the other for the mess we’re in. We don’t want to end up like the Beatles or Pink Floyd.’

‘Or even worse,’ Banks said, ‘the Gallaghers. So you’re going solo?’

‘No. I won’t say I’ll never make a solo album, because I might — I’ve got enough songs in the works — but no. I’m going into the production side.’

‘That’s quite a leap.’

‘Not really. I haven’t been wasting my time with drugs and groupies all these years, you know. I was interested in the studio stuff right from the start, how it all worked, and I’ve spent time with people who really know what they’re doing. I’ve learned a lot. You might not have noticed, but I produced our last album.’

Banks hadn’t noticed. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘That’s OK. Most people don’t notice things like that. Anyway, I’m no George Martin, but I know my way around a studio. I understand the equipment, and I have a good idea of the sort of sound I want from a band. It’s hard producing your own music. But with other bands and artists I can see a clearer path. Hear it, more like. It’s a real job at last. I thought you’d be pleased.’

Banks laughed. ‘I am, I am. But I’m a fan of the band. And you know damn well I’ve always been proud of you and what you’ve achieved.’

‘I know, Dad. I was teasing. Anyway, I wanted to tell you before you heard it on the news. And don’t believe everything you read in the papers.’

‘Don’t try to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs. I don’t believe anything I read in the papers. Have you told your mother yet?’

‘Next. I thought I’d let you know first.’

Banks felt inordinately proud to hear that he was the first family member Brian had told. ‘And Tracy?’

‘You or Mum can tell her if either of you is likely to be talking to her soon. Or I can ring her, too, it’s—’

‘I’ll let her know. Don’t worry. Not that she doesn’t have enough on her mind at the moment, what with the wedding and all that. We went to see Richard Thompson tonight.’

‘Fantastic.’

‘Tracy didn’t think so.’

‘She’s got no taste. Remember when we were growing up, she used to like the Spice Girls? I’ll bet she doesn’t even listen to our albums.’

‘I’m sure she does. When are you making the announcement?’

‘Tomorrow. That’s Thursday here. We’ve got a press conference.’

‘In Adelaide?’

‘Why not? We’ve always been big in Australia.’

‘No farewell tour?’

‘Tonight’s our last gig here. We’re playing the Thebarton Theatre. The “Thebby”, they call it here. It’s a great venue. We’ve got a few dates back home and we’ll honour those. I suppose you could call that a farewell tour, though it wasn’t planned that way. Maybe you can come and see us in Leeds or Gateshead. But after that...’

‘Of course I’ll come and see you. Then what are your plans? Do you already have a production job to go to?’

‘Not yet. But don’t worry about me. I’ve got enough to get by for a while. I’m going to drift around the studios for a month or so. Talk to a few people. See what’s available and what’ll work best for me.’

‘Any idea where?’

‘Not yet. Maybe LA. Maybe London. It just depends.’

‘Any plans to come home for a while, other than for your final shows?’

‘I’ll be over for Tracy’s wedding next month.’

‘Excellent. Come down and stay for a few days. We’ll go walking up on Tetchley Fell. Pub lunches in Helmthorpe and Lyndgarth. And maybe in exchange, you can teach me a few guitar licks.’

‘You’ve got a guitar?’

‘Not yet. But I’ve decided I’m buying myself one for my birthday.’

‘Good for you, Dad. And happy birthday.’

‘Thanks. But I’ve still got a while left before I get my bus pass.’

Brian laughed. ‘OK. Well, I’d be happy to teach you a few chord progressions. And maybe even that odd folk tuning I learned from Martin Carthy.’

‘Martin Carthy? When was that?’

‘A while back. At your folk singer friend’s house. Penny Cartwright.’

‘I remember,’ said Banks. ‘But I didn’t know you’d been discussing guitar tunings.’

‘Us professionals. What can I say?’

Banks laughed. ‘It’s a deal,’ he said, then paused. ‘Are you sure everything’s OK?’

‘I told you. Never better. We’ve got the day off tomorrow, after the press conference, and I’m off up to the Barossa Valley with Dennis, our bass player, to do a bit of wine tasting. He’s quite the expert. And before you start worrying, it’s all right. We’ve got a driver. I’ll bring you a bottle of Peter Lehmann’s. I know you like that.’

‘Much appreciated. Well, as long as you’re sure.’

‘It was time for a change, Dad. I’m happy the decision is made.’

‘Well, good. Thanks for telling me. And the best of luck. See you soon.’

‘Bye. See you soon.’

Banks hung up and felt the emptiness he always experienced after a long-distance phone call. They seemed to magnify the distance rather than shorten it. But he was glad Brian had phoned him with the news. That was a turn-up for the book. There’d be a lot of disappointed fans out there. But Brian seemed genuinely happy with the decision. Relieved. Which made Banks wonder about what big changes might be coming his own way in the near future.

The original guitar works ended, and next came Takemitsu’s arrangements of popular western songs, starting with ‘Londonderry Air’, which was odd to hear after the Japanese style of the other pieces, but no less enjoyable.

‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ came next, and Banks started to feel buoyed by the whisky, Brian’s phone call and the music, happy to leave his cares behind for a while. Then ‘Summertime’ came on, and he knew it would be a while before he dragged himself upstairs to bed. He would have to dig out Billie Holiday’s version first.