Piece Of My Heart

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Is it just me, or do I sense a bit of an atmosphere around here?” Banks asked Annie in the corridor on Thursday morning.

“Atmosphere would be an understatement,” said Annie. Her head still hurt, despite the paracetamol she had taken before leaving Winsome’s flat that morning. Luckily, she always carried a change of clothes in the boot of her car. Not because she was promiscuous or anything, but because once years ago, a mere DC, when she had done a similar thing, got drunk and stayed with a friend after a breakup with a boyfriend, someone in the station had noticed and she had been the butt of unfunny sexist jokes for days. And after that, her DS had come on to her in the lift after work one day.

“You look like shit,” said Banks.

“Thank you.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

Annie looked up and down the corridor to make sure no one was lurking. Great, she thought, she was getting paranoid in her own station now. “Think we can sneak over the road to the Golden Grill without setting too many tongues wagging?”

“Of course,” said Banks. He looked as if he was wondering what the hell she was talking about.

The day was overcast and chilly, and most of the people window-shopping on Market Street wore sweaters under their Windcheaters or anoraks. They passed a couple of serious ramblers, kitted out in all the new fancy gear, each carrying the two long pointed sticks, like ski poles. Well, Annie supposed, they might be of some use climbing up Fremlington Edge, but they weren’t a lot of use on the cobbled streets of Eastvale.

Their regular waitress greeted them and soon they were sitting over hot coffee and toasted tea cakes, looking through the misted window at the streams of people outside. Annie felt a sudden rush of nausea when she took her first sip of black coffee, but it soon waned. It was always there, though, a low-level sensation, in the background.

Annie and Winsome had certainly made a night of it, shared more confidences than Annie could ever have imagined. It made her realize when she thought about it in the cold hangover dawn, that she didn’t really have any friends, anyone to talk to like that, be silly with, do girly things with. She had always thought it was a function of her job, but perhaps it was a function of her personality. Banks was the same, but at least he had his kids. She had her father, Ray, down in St. Ives, of course, but they only saw one another rarely, and it wasn’t the same; for all his eccentricities and willingness to act as a friend and confidant, he was still her father.

“So what were you up to last night that’s left you looking like death warmed up? Feeling like it, too, by the looks of you.”

Annie pulled a face. “You know how I love it when you compliment me.”

Banks touched her hand, a shadow of concern passing over his face. “Seriously.”

“If you must know, I got pissed with Winsome.”

“You did what?”

“I told you.”

“But Winsome? I didn’t think she even drank.”

“Me, neither. But it’s official now. She can drink me under the table.”

“That’s no mean feat.”

“My point exactly.”

“How was it?”

“Well, a bit awkward at first, with the rank thing, but you know I’ve never held that in very great esteem.”

“I know. You respect the person, not the rank.”

“Exactly. Anyway, by the end of the evening we’d got beyond that, and we had quite a giggle. It was ‘Annie’ and ‘Winsome’ – she hates Winnie. She’s got a wicked sense of humor when she lets her hair down, does Winsome.”

“What were you talking about?”

“Mind your own business. It was girl talk.”

“Men, then.”

“Such an ego. What makes you think we’d waste a perfectly good bottle of Marks and Spencer’s plonk talking about you lot?”

“That puts me in my place. How was it when you met up at work this morning? A bit embarrassing?”

“Well, it’ll be ‘Winsome’ and ‘Guv’ in the workplace, but we had a bit of a giggle over it all.”

“So what started it?”

Annie felt another wave of nausea. She let it go, the way she did thoughts in meditation, and it seemed to work, at least for the moment. “DS Templeton,” she said finally.

“Kev Templeton? Was this about the promotion? Because-”

“No, it wasn’t about the promotion. And keep your voice down. Of course Winsome’s pissed off about that. Who wouldn’t be? We know she was the right person for the job, but we also know the right person doesn’t always get the job, even if she is a black female. I know you white males always like to complain when a job goes elsewhere for what you see as political reasons, but it’s not always the case, you know.”

“So what, then?”

Annie explained how Templeton had behaved with Kelly Soames.

“It sounds a bit harsh,” he said when she had finished. “But I don’t suppose he was to know the girl would be physically sick.”

“He enjoyed it. That was the point,” said Annie.

“So Winsome thought?”

“Yes. Look, don’t tell me you’re going to go all male and start defending the indefensible here, because if you are, I’m off. I’m not in the mood for an all-lads-together rally.”

“Christ, Annie, you ought to know me better than that. And there’s only one lad here, as far as I can see.”

“Well… you know what I mean.” Annie ran her hand through her tousled hair. “Shit, I’m hungover and I’m having a bad-hair day, too.”

“Your hair looks fine.”

“You don’t mean it, but thank you. Anyway, that’s the story. Oh, and Superintendent Bloody Gervaise had a go at me yesterday in her office.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I went to complain about the personal remarks she made about me during the briefing. At the very least I expected an apology.”

“And you got?”

“A bollocking, more personal remarks, and an assignment to statement reading.”

“That’s steep.”

“Very. And she warned me off you.”

“What?”

“It’s true.” Annie looked down into her coffee. “She seems to think we’re an item again.”

“Where could she possibly have got that idea from?”

“I don’t know.” Annie paused. “Templeton’s in thick with her.”

“So?”

Annie leaned forward and rested her hands on the table. “She knew about the pint you had at the Cross Keys, that first night, when we went to the scene of Barber’s murder. And Templeton was there, too. He knew about that. But this… Look, tell me if I’m being paranoid, Alan, but don’t you think it’s a bit suspicious? I think Kev Templeton might be behind it.”

“But why would he think we were an item, as you put it?”

“He knows that we were involved before, and we turned up at Moorview Cottage together. We also stayed overnight in London. He’s putting two and two together and coming up with five.”

Banks looked out of the window, seeming to mull over what Annie had said. “So what’s he up to? Ingratiating himself with the new super?”

“It looks that way,” said Annie. “Kev’s smart, and he’s also ambitious. He thinks the rest of us are plods. He’s a sergeant already, and he’ll pass his inspector’s boards first chance he gets, too, but he’s also smart enough to know he needs more than good exam results to get ahead in this job. It helps to have recommendations from above. We know our Madame Gervaise thinks she’s cut out for great things, chief constable at the very least, so a bit of coattail riding wouldn’t do Templeton any harm. At least that’s my guess.”

“Sounds right to me,” said Banks. “And I don’t like what you told me earlier, about the Soames interview. Sometimes we have to do unpleasant things like that – though I believe in this case it could have all been avoided – but we don’t have to take pleasure in them.”

“Winsome thinks he’s a racist, too. She’s overheard him make the odd comment about ‘darkies’ and ‘Pakis’ when he thinks she’s not listening.”

“That would hardly make him unique in the force, sadly,” said Banks. “Look, I’ll have a word with him.”

“Fat lot of good that will do.”

“Well, we can’t go to Superintendent Gervaise, that’s for certain. Red Ron would probably listen, but that’s too much like telling tales out of school for me. Not my style. No, the way it looks is that if anything’s to be done about Kev Templeton, I’ll have to do it myself.”

“And what exactly might you do?”

“Like I said, I’ll have a word, see if I can talk some sense into him. On the other hand, I think it might be even better if I tipped the wink to Gervaise that we’re onto him. She’ll drop him like the proverbial hot potato. I mean, it’s no bloody good having a spy who blows his cover on his first assignment, is it? And gets the wrong end of the stick, into the bargain.”

“Good point.”

“Look, I have to go to Leeds to see Ken Blackstone later today. Want to come?”

“No, thanks.” Annie made a grim face. “Statements to read. And the way I feel today, if I’m doing a menial job, I might even just knock off early, go home and have a long hot bath and an early night.”

They paid and left the Golden Grill, then walked across the road to the station in the light drizzle. At the front desk, the PC on reception called Annie over. “Got a message for you, miss,” he said. “From Lyndgarth. Local copper’s just called in to say all hell’s broke loose up at the Soames farm. Old man Soames went berserk, apparently.”

“We’re on our way,” said Annie. She looked at Banks.

“Ken Blackstone can wait,” he said. “We’d better put our wellies on.”

Annie drove, and Banks tried to find out what he could over his mobile, but coverage was patchy, and in the end he gave up.

“That bastard Templeton,” Annie cursed as she turned onto the Lynd-garth road by the Cross Keys in Fordham, visions of flaying Templeton alive and dipping him in a vat of boiling oil flitting through her mind. “I’ll have him for this. He’s not getting away with it.”

“Calm down, Annie,” Banks said. “Let’s find out what happened first.”

“Whatever it is, he’s behind it. It’s down to him.”

“If that’s the case, you might have to join the queue,” said Banks.

Annie shot him a puzzled glance. “What do you mean?”

“If you were thinking clearly right now, one of the things that might cross your mind-”

“Oh, don’t be so bloody patronizing,” Annie snapped. “Get on with it.”

“One of the things that might cross your mind is that if something has happened as a direct result of DS Templeton’s actions, then the first person to distance herself will be Detective Superintendent Gervaise.”

Annie looked at him and turned into the drive of the Soames farm. She could see the patrol car up ahead, parked outside the house. “But she told him to do it,” Annie said.

Banks just smiled. “That was when it seemed like a good idea.”

Annie pulled up to a sharp halt, sending gobbets of mud flying, and they got out and walked over to the uniformed officer. The door to the farmhouse was open, and Annie could hear the sound of a police radio from inside.

“PC Cotter, sir,” said the officer on the door. “My partner, PC Watkins, is inside.”

“What happened?” Banks asked.

“It’s not entirely clear yet,” said Cotter. “But we had a memo from East-vale Major Crimes asking us to report anything to do with the Soameses.”

“We’re glad you were so prompt,” Annie cut in. “Is anybody hurt?”

Cotter looked at her. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Young girl. The daughter. She rang the station, and we could hear cursing and things breaking in the background. She was frightened. Told us to come as soon as we could. We came as soon as possible, but by the time we got here… Well, you can see for yourselves.”

Annie was first inside the farmhouse, and she gave a curt nod to PC Watkins, who was standing in the living room scratching his head at the sight. The room was a wreck. Broken glass littered the floor, one of the chairs had been smashed into the table and splintered, a window was broken and lamps knocked over. The small bookcase had been pulled away from the wall, and its contents joined the broken glass on the floor.

“The kitchen’s just as bad,” said PC Watkins, “but that seems to be the extent of the damage. Everything’s fine upstairs.”

“Where’s Soames?” Annie asked.

“We don’t know, ma’am. He was gone when we arrived.”

“What about his daughter, Kelly?”

“Eastvale General, ma’am. We radioed ahead to A and E.”

“How bad is she?”

PC Watkins looked away. “Don’t know, ma’am. Hard to say. She looked bad to me.” He gestured back into the room. “Lot of blood.”

Annie looked again. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now she could see dark stains on the carpet and the broken chair leg. Kelly. Oh, Jesus Christ.

“Okay,” said Banks, stepping forward. “I want you and your partner to organize a search for Calvin Soames. He can’t have gone far. Get some help from uniformed branch in Eastvale if you need it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Banks turned to Annie. “Come on,” he said. “There’s nothing more we can do here. Let’s go pay a visit to Eastvale General.”

Annie didn’t need asking twice. When they got back into the car she thumped the steering wheel with both fists and strained to hold back her tears of anger. Her head was still throbbing from the previous night’s excess. She felt Banks’s hand rest on her shoulder, and her resolve not to cry strengthened. “I’m all right,” she said after a few moments, gently shaking him off. “Just needed to let off a bit of steam, that’s all. And there was me thinking I’d go home early and have a nice bath.”

“You okay to drive?”

“I’m fine. Really.” To demonstrate, Annie started the car, set off slowly down the long bumpy drive and didn’t start speeding until she hit the main road.

Tuesday, 23rd September, 1969

“Yes, what is it?” Chadwick said when Karen stuck her head around his office door. “I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Urgent phone call. Your wife.”

Chadwick picked up the phone.

“Darling, I’m so glad you’re there,” Janet said. “I was worried I wouldn’t be able to reach you. I don’t know what to do.”

Chadwick could sense the alarm in her voice. “What is it?”

“It’s Yvonne. The school have rung wanting to know where she is. They said they’d tried to reach me earlier, but I was out shopping. You know what a busybody that headmistress is.”

“She’s not at school?”

“No. And she’s not here, either, I checked her room, just in case.”

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“No. Same mess as ever.”

Chadwick had left for the station before his daughter had even woken up that morning. “How did she seem at breakfast?” he asked.

“Quiet.”

“But she left for school as usual?”

“So I thought. I mean, she took her satchel and she was wearing her mac. It’s not like her, Stan. You know it’s not.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Chadwick said, trying to ignore the feeling of fear crawling in the pit of his stomach. McGarrity was in jail, but what if one of the others had decided to take revenge for the drugs squad raids? He had probably been foolish to identify himself to Yvonne’s boyfriend, but how else was he supposed to make his point? “Look, I’ll come straight home. You stay there in case she turns up.”

“Should I call the hospitals?”

“You might as well,” said Chadwick. “And have a good look around her room. See if there’s anything missing. Clothes and things.” At least that would give Janet something to occupy her time until he got there. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

Eastvale General Infirmary was the biggest hospital for some distance, and as a consequence the staff there were overworked and its facilities were strained to the limit. Just down King Street, behind the police station, it was a Victorian pile of stone with high drafty corridors and large wards with big sash windows, no doubt to let in the winter’s chill for the TB patients it used to house.

A and E wasn’t terribly busy, as it was only Thursday lunchtime, and they found Kelly Soames easily enough with the help of one of the admissions nurses. The curtains were drawn around her bed, but more, the nurse said, to give her privacy than for any more serious reasons. When they went through and sat by her, Annie was relieved to see, and hear, that most of the damage was superficial. The blood came almost entirely from a head wound, by far the most serious of her cuts and abrasions, but even this had only caused concussion, and her head was swathed in bandages. Her face was bruised, her lip split, and there was a stitched cut over her eye, but other than that, the nurse assured them, there were no broken bones and no internal injuries.

Annie felt an immense relief that didn’t diminish her anger against Kevin Templeton and Calvin Soames one bit. It could have been so much worse. She held Kelly’s hand and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know anything like this was going to happen.”

Kelly said nothing, just continued to stare at the ceiling.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Banks asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kelly said. Her speech was a little slurred from the painkillers she had been given, and from the split lip, but she made herself clear enough.

“I’d rather hear it from you,” Banks said.

Annie continued to hold Kelly’s hand. “Tell us,” she said. “Where is he, Kelly?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly said. “Honestly. The last thing I remember is feeling like my head was exploding.”

“It was a chair leg,” Banks said. “Someone hit you with a chair leg. Was it your father?”

“Who else would it be?”

“What happened?”

Kelly took some of the water Annie offered and flinched when the flexi-straw touched the cut on her lip. She put the glass aside and stared at the ceiling as she spoke in a listless voice. “He’d been drinking. Not like usual, just a couple of pints before dinner, but real drinking, like he used to. Whiskey. He started at breakfast. I told him not to, but he just ignored me. I caught the bus into Eastvale and did some shopping, and when I got back he was still drinking. I could tell he was really drunk by then. The bottle was almost empty, and he was red in the face, muttering to himself. I was worried about him. And scared. As soon as I opened my mouth, he went berserk. Asked me who I thought I was to tell him what to do. To be honest, I really thought he believed I was Mother, the way he was talking to me. Then he got really abusive. I mean just shouting at first, not violent or anything. That was when I phoned the local police station. But as soon as he saw me on the phone, that was it. He went mad. He started hitting me, just slapping and pushing at first, then he punched me. After that, he started breaking things, smashing the furniture. It was all I could do to put my hands in front of my face to protect myself.”

“He didn’t interfere with you in any way?” Annie asked.

“No. No. It wasn’t like that at all. He wouldn’t do anything like that. But the names he was calling me… I won’t repeat them. They were the same ones he used to call Mother when they fought.”

“What happened to your mother?” Annie asked.

“She died in hospital. There was something wrong with her insides – I don’t know what it was – and at first the doctors didn’t diagnose it in time, then they thought it was something else. When they finally did get around to operating, it was too late. She never woke up. Dad said something about the anesthetic being wrong, but I don’t know. We never got to the bottom of it and he’s never been able to let it go.”

“And your father’s been overpossessive ever since?”

“He’s only got me to take care of him. He can’t take care of himself.” Kelly sipped some more water and coughed, dribbling it down her chin. Annie took a tissue from the table and wiped it away. “Thanks,” said Kelly. “What’s going to happen now? Where’s Dad? What’s going to happen to him?”

“We don’t know yet,” said Annie, glancing at Banks. “We’ll find him, though. Then we’ll see.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to him,” Kelly said. “I mean, I know he’s done wrong and all, but I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

Annie held her hand. It was the old, old story, the abused defending her abuser. “We’ll see,” she said. “We’ll see. Just get some rest for now.”

Back at the station, Banks found Detective Superintendent Gervaise in her office and told her about Kelly Soames. He also hinted that he knew Templeton had been passing her information and warned her not to put too much trust in its accuracy. It was worth it just to see the expression on her face.

After that, he tried to put Kelly Soames and her problems out of his mind for a while and focus on the Nick Barber investigation again before setting off to visit Ken Blackstone in Leeds. A couple of DCs had read through the boxes of Barber’s papers sent up from his London flat and found they consisted entirely of old articles, photographs and business correspondence – none of it relating to his Yorkshire trip. He had clearly brought all of his current work with him, and now it was gone. Banks found a Brahms cello sonata on the radio and settled down to have another look through the old MOJO magazines that John Butler had given to him in London.

It didn’t take him very long to figure out that Nick Barber knew his stuff. In addition to pieces on the Mad Hatters from time to time, there were also articles on Shelagh MacDonald, JoAnn Kelly, Comus and Bridget St. John. His interest in the Hatters seemed to have started, as Banks had been told, about five years ago, well after his original interest in music, which he seemed to have had since he was a teenager.

Childhood. Now Banks remembered the little frisson of possibility he had experienced when Simon Bradley had talked about Linda Lofthouse’s unwanted pregnancy.

It shouldn’t be too hard to find out whether he was right, he decided, picking up the phone and looking up the Barbers’ number in the case file.

When he got Louise Barber on the phone, Banks told her who he was and said, “I know this is probably an odd question, and it’s not meant to be in any way disturbing or upsetting, but was Nick adopted?”

There was a short pause, followed by a sob. “Yes,” she said. “We adopted him when he was only days old. We raised him as if he were our own and that’s how we always think of him.”

“I’m sure you did,” said Banks. “Believe me, there’s no hint of criticism here. I wouldn’t expect it to enter your head at such a time, and from all I’ve found out, Nick led a healthy and happy life with many advantages he probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. It’s just that… well, did he know? Did you tell him?”

“Yes,” said Louise Barber. “We told him a long time ago, as soon as we thought he would be able to absorb it.”

“And what did he do?”

“Then? Nothing. He said that as far as he was concerned, we were his parents and that was all there was to it.”

“Did he ever get curious about his birth mother?”

“It’s funny, but he did, yes.”

“When was this?”

“About five or six years ago.”

“Any particular reason?”

“He told us he didn’t want us to think there was a problem, or that it was anything to do with us, but a friend of his who was also adopted told him it was important to find out. He said something about it making him whole, complete.”

“Did he find her?”

“He didn’t really talk to us about it much after that. You have to understand, we found it all a bit upsetting, and Nicholas was careful not to hurt us. He told us he found out who she was, but we have no idea if he traced her or met her.”

“Do you remember her name? Did he tell you that?”

“Yes. Linda Lofthouse. But that’s all I know. We asked him not to talk to us about her again.”

“The name is enough,” said Banks. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Barber, and I do apologize for bringing up difficult memories.”

“I suppose it can’t be helped. Surely this can’t have anything to do with… with what happened to Nicholas?”

“We don’t know. Right now, it’s just another piece of information to add to the puzzle. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Banks hung up and thought. So Nick Barber was Linda Lofthouse’s son. He must have found out that his mother had been murdered only a couple of years after he was born, and that she was Vic Greaves’s cousin, which no doubt fueled his interest in the Mad Hatters, already present to some extent because of his interest in the music of the period.

But the knowledge raised a number of new questions for Banks. Had Barber accepted the standard version of her murder? Did he believe that Patrick McGarrity had killed his mother? Or had he found out something else? If he had stumbled across something that indicated McGarrity was innocent, or had not acted alone, then he might easily have blundered into a situation without knowing how dangerous it was. But it all depended on whether or not Chadwick had been right about McGarrity. It was time to head for Leeds and have a chat with Ken Blackstone.

Banks made it to Leeds in little over an hour, coming off New York Road at Eastgate and heading for Millgarth, the Leeds Police Headquarters at about half past three on Thursday afternoon. Like many things, he supposed, this business could have been conducted over the telephone, but he preferred personal contact, if possible. Somehow, little nuances and vague impressions didn’t quite make it over the phone lines.

Ken Blackstone was waiting in his office, a tiny space partitioned at the end of a room full of busy detectives, nattily dressed as ever in his best Next pinstripe, dazzling white shirt and maroon-and-gray-striped tie, held in place by a silver pin in the shape of a fountain pen. With his wispy gray hair curling over his ears and his gold-framed reading glasses, he looked more like a university professor than a police officer. He and Banks had known one another for years, and Banks thought Ken was the closest he had to a friend, next to Dirty Dick Burgess, but Burgess was in London.

“First off,” said Blackstone, “I thought you might like to see this.” He slid a photograph across his desk and Banks turned it to face him. It showed the head and shoulders of a man in his early forties, perhaps, neat black hair plastered flat with Brylcreem, hard, angled face, straight nose and square jaw with a slight dimple. But it was the eyes that caught Banks’s attention the most. They gave nothing away except, perhaps, for a slight hint of dark shadows in their depths. If eyes were supposed to be the windows to the soul, these were the blackout curtains. This was a hard, haunted, uncompromising man, Banks thought. And a moral one. He didn’t know why, and realized he was being a bit fanciful, but he sensed a hint of hard religion in the man’s background. Hardly surprising, as there had been plenty of that around in both Scotland and Yorkshire over the years. “Interesting,” Banks said, passing it back. “Stanley Chadwick, I assume?”

Blackstone nodded. “Taken on his promotion to detective inspector in October 1965.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, it’s a bit noisy and stuffy in here. Fancy heading out for a coffee?”

“I’m all coffeed out,” said Banks, “but maybe we can have a late lunch? I haven’t eaten since this morning.”

“Fine with me. I’m not hungry, but I’ll join you.”

They left Millgarth and walked on to Eastgate. It had turned into a fine day, with that mix of cloud and sun you got so often in Yorkshire when it wasn’t raining, and just chilly enough for a raincoat or light overcoat.

“Did you manage to find out anything?” Banks asked.

“I’ve done a bit of digging,” said Blackstone, “and it looks like pretty solid investigating on the surface of it.”

“Only on the surface?”

“I haven’t dug that deeply yet. And remember, it was essentially a North Yorkshire case, so most of the paperwork’s up there.”

“I’ve seen it,” he said. “I was just wondering about the West Yorkshire angle, and about Chadwick himself.”

“DI Chadwick was on loan to the North Yorkshire Constabulary. From what I can glean, he’d had a few successes here since his promotion and was a bit of a golden boy at the time.”

“I heard he was tough, and he certainly looks that way.”

“I never knew him personally, but I managed to turn up a couple of retired officers who did. He was a hard man, by all accounts, but fair and honest, and he got results. He had a strong Scottish Presbyterian background, but one of his old colleagues told me he thought he’d lost his faith during the war. Hardly bloody surprising when you consider the poor sod saw action in Burma and was part of the D-day invasion.”

“Where is he now?”

They waited until the lights changed, then crossed Vicar Lane. “Dead,” Blackstone said finally. “According to our personnel records, Stanley Chadwick died in March 1973.”

“So young?” said Banks. “That must have been a hell of a shock for all concerned. He would only have been in his early fifties.”

“Apparently, his health had been in decline for a couple of years,” Blackstone said. “He’d had a lot of sick time, and performancewise there were rumors that he was dragging his feet. He retired due to ill health in late 1972.”

“That seems a rather sudden decline,” Banks said. “Any speculation as to what it was?”

“Well, it wasn’t murder, if that’s what you’re thinking. He had a history of heart problems, hereditary, apparently, which had gone untreated, perhaps even unnoticed, for years. He died in his sleep of a heart attack. But you have to remember, this is just from the files and the memory of a couple of old men I managed to track down. And some of the old information is impossible to locate. We moved here from Brotherton House in 1976, which was well before my time, and inevitably stuff went missing in the move, so your guess is as good as mine as to the rest.”

Simon Bradley had told Banks he’d heard Chadwick wasn’t in good health, but Banks hadn’t realized things were that bad. Could there have been anything suspicious about his death? First Linda Lofthouse, then Robin Merchant, then Stanley Chadwick? Banks couldn’t imagine what linked them to one another. Chadwick had investigated the Lofthouse case, but had had nothing to do with Merchant’s drowning. He had, however, met the Mad Hatters at Swainsview Lodge, and Vic Greaves was Linda Lofthouse’s cousin. There had to be something he was missing. Maybe Chadwick’s daughter, Yvonne, would help, if he could find her.

They turned down Briggate, a pedestrian precinct. There were plenty of shoppers in evidence, many of them young people, teenage girls pushing prams, the boys with them looking too young and inexperienced to be fathers. Many of the girls looked too young to be mothers, too, but Banks knew damn well they weren’t merely helping out their big sisters. Teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases were at appallingly high rates.

Because he still had Linda Lofthouse and Nick Barber on his mind, Banks thought back to the sixties, to what the media had dubbed the “sexual revolution.” True, the pill had made it possible for women to have sex without fear of pregnancy, but it had also left them with little or no excuse not to have sex. In the name of liberation, women were expected to sleep around; they had the freedom to do so, the reasoning went, so they should, and there was subtle and not so subtle cultural and peer pressure on them to do so. After all, the worst anyone could get was crabs or a dose of clap, so sex was relatively fear-free.

But there were plenty of unwanted pregnancies back then, too, Banks remembered, as not all girls were on the pill, or willing to have abortions, certainly in the provinces. Linda Lofthouse had been one of them, and Norma Coulton, just down the street from where Banks lived, was another. Banks remembered the gossip and the dirty looks she got when she walked into the newsagent’s. He wondered what had happened to her and her child. At least he knew what had happened to Linda Lofthouse’s son; he had met the same fate as his mother.

“Any idea what happened to Chadwick’s family?” he asked.

“According to what I could find out, he had a wife called Janet and a daughter called Yvonne. Both survived him, but nobody’s kept tabs on them. I don’t suppose it would be too difficult to track them down. Pensions or Human Resources might be able to help.”

“Do what you can,” said Banks. “I appreciate it. And I’ll put Winsome on it at our end. She’s good at that sort of thing. The daughter may have married, changed her name, of course, but we’ll give it a try: electoral rolls, DVLA, PNC and the rest. Who knows, we might get lucky before we have to resort to more time consuming methods.”

They passed a thin bearded young man selling the Big Issue at the entrance to Thornton’s Arcade. Blackstone bought a copy, folded it and slipped it into his inside pocket. Two young policemen passed them, both wearing black helmets and bulletproof vests and carrying Heckler amp; Koch carbines.

“It’s a fact of the times here, I’m afraid,” said Blackstone.

Banks nodded. What bothered him most was that the officers looked only about fifteen.

“Sorry I’m not being a lot of help,” Blackstone went on.

“Nonsense,” said Banks. “You’re helping me fill in the picture, and that’s all I need right now. I know I’ll have to read the files and the trial transcripts soon, but I keep putting it off because those things bore me so much.”

“You can do that in my office after we’ve had a bite to eat. I have to go out. I know what you mean, though. I’d rather curl up with a good Flash-man or Sharpe, myself.” Blackstone stopped at the end of an alley. “Let’s try the Ship this time. Whitelocks is always too damned crowded these days, and they’ve changed the menu. It’s getting too trendy. And somehow I don’t see you sitting out in the Victoria Quarter at the Harvey Nichols café eating a garlic-and-Brie frittata.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Banks. “You’d be surprised. I scrub up quite nicely, and I don’t mind a bit of foreign grub every now and then. But the Ship sounds fine.”

They ordered pints of Tetley’s, and Banks chose the giant Yorkshire pudding filled with sausages and gravy and sat down in the dim brass and dark wood interior. Blackstone stuck with his beer.

Banks told Blackstone about their troublesome new superintendent and the fact that Templeton might be bringing in just too many apples for the teacher. Then he chatted about Brian and his new girlfriend Emilia turning up till their food came and they got back to Stanley Chadwick and Linda Lofthouse.

“Do you think I’m tilting at windmills, Ken?” Banks asked.

“It wouldn’t be the first time, but I don’t have enough to go on to advise you on that score. Usually your windmills turn out to be all too human. Explain your reasoning.”

Banks sipped some beer, trying to put his thoughts in order. It was a useful, if difficult, exercise. “There isn’t much, really,” he said. “Superintendent Gervaise thinks the past is over and the guilty have been punished, but I’m not so sure. It’s not that I think Vic Greaves is a killer because he has mental problems. Christ, it might even be Chris Adams, for all I know. He doesn’t live that far away. Or even Tania Hutchison. It’s not as if Oxfordshire’s on the moon, either. I just think that if Nick Barber was as good and as thorough a music journalist as everyone says he was, then he might have struck a nerve, and Vic Greaves is one of the few people he had tried to speak to about the story before his murder. I’ve also just discovered that Nick was Linda Lofthouse’s son, adopted at birth by the Barbers, and that he found out who his birth mother was about five years ago. Barber was a journalist, and I think he simply tried to find out as much about her and her times as he could because he was already interested in the music and the period. One thing he found out was that Vic Greaves was her cousin. Greaves also lives only walking distance away from Barber’s rented cottage, and someone saw a figure running around at the time of the murder. The only things I can find in the past that cast any sort of suspicions on Greaves and the others are the murder of Linda Lofthouse, because she was backstage at the Brimleigh Festival with Tania Hutchison, and she was Greaves’s cousin, and the drowning of the Mad Hatters’ bassist, Robin Merchant, when Greaves, Adams and Tania Hutchison were all present at Swainsview Lodge. And they’re both closed cases.”

“Linda Lofthouse’s murderer was caught, and Merchant’s drowning was ruled death by misadventure, right?”

“Right. And Linda’s killer was stabbed in jail, so it’s not as if we can ask him to clear anything up for us. Sounds as if he was deranged in the first place.”

“But ruling out the angry husband or passing tramp theory, that’s the default line of inquiry?”

“Pretty much so. Chris Adams said Barber had a coke habit, but we can’t find any evidence of that. If he did, it obviously wasn’t big-time.”

“Have you got Barber’s phone records yet?”

“We’re working on it, but we don’t expect too much there.”

“Why not?”

“There was no landline at the cottage where he was staying, and he was out of mobile range. If he needed to phone anyone he’d have had to use the public telephone box, either in Fordham or in Eastvale.”

“What about Internet access? You’d think a savvy music journalist would be all wired up for that sort of thing, wouldn’t you?”

“Not if he didn’t have a phone line, or even wireless access. Blackberry or Bluetooth, or whatever it is.”

“Aren’t there any Internet cafés in Eastvale?”

Banks glanced at Blackstone, ate another mouthful of sausage and washed it down with a swig of beer. “Good point, Ken. Apart from the library, which is as slow as a horse and cart, there’s a computer shop in the market square, Eastvale Computes, and I suppose we could check there. Problem is, the owner’s only got two computers available to the public, and I should imagine the histories get wiped pretty often. If Nick Barber used either of them, it’d have been a couple of weeks ago, and all traces would be gone by now. It’s still worth a try, though.”

“So what next?”

“Well,” said Banks, “there are a few more people to talk to, starting with Tania Hutchison and Chadwick’s daughter, Yvonne, when we find her, but for the moment, I’ve got a CD collection with a lot of holes in it, and Borders is beckoning just up Briggate.”

Annie got Banks’s phone call from Blackstone’s office in Leeds late that afternoon and welcomed the break from the dull routine of statement reading. Kelly Soames was still holding her own and would most likely be discharged the following day. They still hadn’t found her father.

Before Annie left the squad room, Winsome came up trumps with Nick Barber’s mobile service, but the results were disappointing. He had made no calls since arriving at the cottage because he had no coverage there. He could, of course, have used his mobile in Eastvale, but according to the records he hadn’t. If he had been up to anything at all, he had kept it very much to himself. That wouldn’t be surprising, Annie thought. She had known a few journalists in her time, and had found that they were a secretive lot, on the whole; they had to be, as theirs was very much a first-come, first-served kind of business.

Templeton had just got back from Fordham, and Annie noticed him watching closely as she leaned over Winsome’s shoulder to read the notes. She whispered in Winsome’s ear, then let her hand rest casually on her shoulder. She could see the prurient curiosity in Templeton’s gaze now. Enough rope, she thought. And if he knew that she had stayed at Winsome’s the other night, who could guess what wild tales he might take to Superintendent Gervaise? After her talk with Banks, Annie’s anger had diminished, though she still blamed Templeton for what had happened. She knew there was no point confronting him; he just wouldn’t get it. Banks was right. Let him crucify himself; he was already well on his way.

Annie picked up a folder from her desk, plucked her suede jacket from the hanger by the door, said she’d be back in a while, and walked down the stairs with a smile on her face.

A cool wind gusted across the market square and the sky was quickly filling with dirty clouds, like ink spilled on a sheet of paper. Luckily, Annie didn’t have far to go, she thought, as she pulled the collar of her jacket around her throat and crossed the busy square. People leaned into the wind as they walked, hair flying, plastic bags from Somerfield’s and Boots fluttering as if they were filled with birds. The Darlington bus stood at its stop by the market cross, but nobody seemed to be getting on or off.

Eastvale Computes had been open a couple of years now, and the owner, Barry Gilchrist, was the sort of chap who loved a technical challenge. As a consequence, people came in to chat about their computer problems, and Barry usually ended up solving them for free. Whether he ever sold any computers or not Annie had no idea, but she doubted it, with Aldi, and even Woolworth’s, offering much lower prices.

Barry was one of those ageless young lads in glasses who looked like Harry Potter. Annie had been in the shop fairly often, and she was on friendly enough terms with him; she had even bought CD-ROMs and printer cartridges from him in an effort to give some support to local business. She got the impression that he rather fancied her because he got all tongue-tied when he spoke to her and found it hard to look her in the eye. It wasn’t offensive, though, like Templeton, and she was surprised to find that she felt more maternal toward him than anything else. She didn’t think she was old enough for that sort of thing, but supposed, when she thought about it, that she might, at a pinch, be old enough to be his mother if he was as young as he looked. It was a sobering thought.

“Oh, hello,” he said, blushing as he looked up from a monitor behind the counter. “What can I do for you today?”

“It’s official business,” Annie said, smiling. Judging by the expression that crossed his face and the way he surreptitiously hit a few keystrokes, Annie wondered if he’d been looking at Internet porn. She didn’t have him down as that type, but you never could tell, especially with computer geeks. “You might be able to help us,” she added.

“Oh, I see.” He straightened his glasses. “Well, of course… er… whatever I can do. Computer problems at the station?”

“Nothing like that. It’s Internet access I’m interested in.”

“But, I thought…”

“Not for me. A customer you might have had maybe a couple of weeks ago.”

“Ah. Well, I don’t get very many, especially at this time of year. Tourists like it, of course, to check their e-mail, but most of the locals either have their own computers, or they’re just not interested.” Not to be interested, the way Barry Gilchrist said it, sounded infinitely sad.

Annie took a photograph from the folder she had brought and handed it to him. “This man,” she said. “We know he was in Eastvale on Wednesday two weeks ago. We were just wondering if he came in here and asked to use your Internet access.”

“Yes,” said Barry Gilchrist, turning a little pale. “I remember him. The journalist. That’s the man who was murdered, isn’t it? I saw it on the news.”

“What day of the week did he come in?”

“Not Wednesday. I think it was Friday morning.”

The day he died, Annie thought. “Did he tell you he was a journalist or did you hear it?”

“He told me. Said he needed a few minutes to do a spot of research, that there was no access where he was staying.”

“How long was he on?”

“Only about fifteen minutes. I didn’t even bother charging him.”

“Now comes the tricky part,” said Annie. “I don’t suppose there’d still be any traces of where he went online?”

Gilchrist shook his head. “I’m sorry, no. I mean, I said I don’t get a lot of customers this time of year, but I do get some, so I have to keep the histories and temporary Internet files clean.”

“They say you can never quite get rid of everything on a computer. Do you think our technical unit could get anything if we took them in?”

Gilchrist swallowed. “Took the computers away?”

“Yes. I hardly have to remind you this is a murder investigation, do I?”

“No. And I’m very sorry. He seemed like a nice enough bloke. Said he had wireless access on his laptop but there were no signals around these parts. I could sympathize with that. It took long enough to get broadband.”

“So would they?”

“Sorry, what?”

“If they took the computers apart, would they find anything?”

“Oh, but they don’t need to do that,” he said.

“Why’s that?” Annie asked.

“Because I know the site he visited. One of them, at any rate. The first one.”

“Do tell.”

“I wasn’t spying or anything. I mean, there’s no privacy about it, anyway, as you can see. The computers are in a public area. Anyone could walk in and see what site someone was visiting.”

“True,” said Annie. “So you’re saying he was making no efforts to hide his tracks. He didn’t erase the history himself, for example?”

“He couldn’t do that. That power’s limited to the administrator, and that’s me. Providing access is one thing, but I don’t want people messing with the programs.”

“Fair enough. So what was he doing?”

“He was at the Mad Hatters web site. I could tell because it plays a little bit of that hit song of theirs when it starts up. What’s it called? ‘Love Got in the Way’?”

Annie knew the song. It had been a huge hit about eight years ago. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes. I had to go around the front to check the printer cartridge stock, and I could see it over his shoulder – photos of the band, biographies, discographies, that sort of thing.”

Annie knew Banks would be as disappointed as she was with this. What could be more natural for a music journalist writing about the Mad Hatters than to visit their web site? “Was that all?”

“I think so. I mean, I heard the music when he first started, and he finished a short while after I’d checked the stock. He could have followed any number of links in between, but if he did, he went back to the main site again.” Gilchrist pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. “Does that help?”

Annie smiled at him. “Every little bit helps,” she said.

“There’s one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Well, he was carrying a paperback book with him, as if he’d been sitting and having a read in a café or something. I saw him writing something in the back of it with a pencil. I couldn’t see what it was.”

“Interesting,” said Annie, remembering the Ian McEwan book Banks had found at Moorview Cottage. He had said something about some penciled numbers in the back. Maybe she should have a look. She thanked Gilchrist for his time and headed out into the wind.