Piece Of My Heart

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

As Banks sifted through the files on his desk on Saturday morning, he noticed the extra photocopy he had made of the list of numbers at the back of Nick Barber’s book. It reminded him that he hadn’t heard back from DC Gavin Rickerd yet, so he picked up the phone. Rickerd answered on the third ring.

“Anything on those numbers I gave you yet?” Banks asked.

“Sorry, sir,” said Rickerd. “We’ve been snowed under. I haven’t had a lot of time to work on it.”

“Any ideas at all?”

“It might be some kind of code, but without a key it could be very difficult to crack.”

“I don’t think we have any keys,” said Banks.

“Well, sir…”

“Look, just keep trying, will you? If I come up with anything that I think might help you I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”

“Okay, sir.”

“Thanks, Gavin.”

As Banks put down the phone, Annie came in to tell him that after fairly exhaustive inquiries made by the Metropolitan Police, there was no evidence to suggest that Nick Barber had been involved with the cocaine business.

“That’s interesting,” said Banks, “seeing as it was Chris Adams who suggested we look there.”

“A bit of nifty misdirection?”

“Looks like it to me. I want another word with Adams anyway. Maybe I can intimidate him with the old wasting-police-time routine.”

“Maybe,” said Annie.

“Any news on Kelly Soames?”

“She was discharged from hospital this morning. She’s staying with an aunt here in Eastvale for the time being.”

“Calvin Soames can’t just walk away, Annie, no matter how contrite he is. You know that.”

“I know,” said Annie. “You don’t think I want him to get off scot-free, do you? But it’s Kelly I’m concerned about at the moment.”

“Kelly’s young. She’ll get over it. I doubt that any magistrate or jury is going to put Calvin away, should he even see the inside of a courtroom.”

“He’ll plead guilty. He wants to be punished.”

“I’ll bet you Kelly won’t go into the witness box, and we won’t have much of a case without her testimony.”

“What’s that?” Annie pointed at the list on Banks’s desk. He realized that she hadn’t been with him when he’d found it, and he hadn’t looked at it since he gave the copy to Rickerd. “Some figures Nick Barber had scribbled in the back of his book.”

Annie peered at it. “Of course. The Kelly Soames business put it right out of my mind, but I was meaning to ask you about that. Barry Gilchrist in the computer shop mentioned that he saw Nick Barber writing in the back of a book while he was on the Web. I wonder what it is.”

“Does it mean anything to you?” Banks asked.

“No.” Annie laughed. “But it does remind me of something.”

“Oh? What?”

“Never mind.”

“Seriously. It could be important.”

“Just something I used to do when I was younger, that’s all.”

Banks could hardly keep the exasperation out of his voice. “What?”

Annie gave him a look. He could see that she was blushing. “You know,” she said. “Ring dates?”

“What dates?”

“For crying out loud.” Annie glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. She still sounded as if she were shouting at him. “Are you thick or something?”

“I’m trying not to be, but you’ve lost me.”

“My period, idiot. I used to ring the day of the month my period was due. It’s something a lot of girls do. I know this isn’t exactly the same, not the same time between them, for a start, but it’s the same idea.”

“Well, pardon me, but not being a girl and not having periods-”

“Don’t be sarcastic. Maybe it’s family birthdays or lottery numbers or whatever, but it amounts to the same thing. I’ve told you what you want to know. It reminds me of when I used to ring dates on the calendar to mark the start of my period. Okay?”

Banks held his hands up. “Okay?” he said. “I surrender.”

Annie snorted, turned away abruptly and left the room. Still feeling the disturbed air buffeting in her wake, Banks sat and gazed at the numbers.

6, 8, 9, 21, 22, 25

1, 2, 3, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23

10, , 13

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 30

17, 18,

2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, , 21, 22, 23

Six rows. Many numbers duplicated, and no list going beyond 30. A calendar of some kind, then? Ringed dates? But why were they ringed and, perhaps even more to the point, which months, which year did they refer to? And why were some days missing? It should be possible to find out, Banks thought, perhaps with the help of a computer, then he realized that each group was not even necessarily from the same month, or the same year. They could be strings of days taken over a period of, say, thirty years. His spirits fell, and he cursed Nick Barber under his breath for not being more clear with his notes, realizing that this might be the clue he was looking for, perhaps the only one Nick had left, and he felt about as far from understanding it now as he ever had.

Annie had got over her irritation with Banks by mid-afternoon, when he came poking his head around the squad room door to tell her that Ken Blackstone had discovered the whereabouts of Yvonne Chadwick, DI Stanley Chadwick’s daughter, and would she like to accompany him to the interview? She didn’t need asking twice. Bugger Superintendent Gervaise, she thought, grabbing her jacket and briefcase. She noticed Kev Templeton give her an evil eye as she left the room. Maybe he was already getting the cold shoulder from Madame Gervaise, now that what had happened to Kelly Soames had made the local news.

Banks was quiet as Annie drove the unmarked car she had signed out of the police garage. She kept snatching sideways glances at him and realized he was thinking. Well, that was a good sign. She drove on. “I checked the Mad Hatters web site, by the way,” she said.

“And?”

“Definite possibilities for the numbers in the back of the book. There are links to other fan sites with tour dates and all sorts of esoteric information. I’ll need a lot more time to follow up on it all.”

“Maybe when we get back.”

“Sounds good.”

Yvonne Chadwick, or Reeves, as she was now called, lived on the outskirts of Durham, which wasn’t too far up the A1 from Eastvale. The road was busy with lorries, as usual, and on a couple of occasions the inevitable roadworks canceled out a lane or two and slowed traffic to a crawl. Annie glimpsed Durham Castle high on its hill and followed the directions Banks had written down for her.

The house was a semi with a bay window in a pleasant, leafy neighborhood where you wouldn’t be afraid to let your children play in the street. Yvonne Reeves turned out to be a rather plump, nervous woman of about fifty, who favored a gray peasant skirt and a shapeless maroon jumper. If she dressed up a bit, Annie thought, she would be much more attractive. She wore her long graying hair tied back in a ponytail. The interior of the house was clean and tidy. Bookcases lined the walls, mostly philosophy and law, with a sprinkling of literature. The living room was a little cramped, but comfortable once they had wedged themselves into the leather armchairs. There wasn’t much natural light, and the room smelled of dark chocolate and old books.

“This is all very intriguing,” said Yvonne. Her voice still bore the traces of her Yorkshire roots, though many of the rough edges had been flattened over the years. “But I’ve no idea at all why you think I might be able to help you. What’s it all about?”

“Have you heard about the death of a music journalist called Nick Barber?” Banks asked.

“I think I saw something in the paper,” Yvonne said. “Wasn’t he murdered somewhere in Yorkshire?”

“Near Lyndgarth,” said Banks.

“I still don’t understand.”

“Nick Barber was working on a story about a group called the Mad Hatters. Do you remember them?”

“Good Lord. Yes, of course I do.”

“In September 1969, there was a pop festival in North Yorkshire at Brimleigh Glen. Remember? You would have been about fifteen.”

Yvonne clapped her hands together. “Sixteen. I was there! I wasn’t supposed to be, but I was. My father was terribly strict. He would never have let me go if I’d told him.”

“You might also remember then that a young girl was found dead when the festival was over. Her name was Linda Lofthouse.”

“Of course I remember. It was my father’s case. He solved it.”

“Yes. A man called McGarrity.”

Annie noticed Yvonne give a little shiver at the name, and an expression of distaste flitted across her features. “Did you know him?” she asked, before the moment was lost.

Yvonne flushed. “McGarrity? How could I?”

She was a poor liar, Annie thought. “I don’t know. You just seemed to react to the name, that’s all.”

“Dad told me about him, of course. He sounded like a terrible person.”

“Look, Yvonne,” Annie persisted, “I get the feeling there’s a bit more to it than that. I know it was a long time ago, but if you know anything that might help us, then you should let us know.”

“How could knowing about back then possibly help you now?”

“Because,” said Banks, “we think the cases might be linked. Nick Barber was Linda Lofthouse’s son. She gave him up for adoption, but he found out who his mother was and what happened to her. That gave him a special interest in the Mad Hatters and the McGarrity case. We think that Nick had stumbled across something to do with his mother’s murder, and that he was killed for it. Which means that we have to look very closely at what happened at Brimleigh and afterward. Someone who worked on the case with your father let slip that McGarrity had possibly terrorized another girl, but that never came up at the trial, or in the case notes. We also heard that Mr. Chadwick had a bit of trouble with his daughter, that she was perhaps running with a wild crowd, but we couldn’t get anything more specific than that. It might be nothing, and I might be wrong, but you are that daughter, and if you do know something, anything at all, please tell us and let us be the judges.”

Yvonne said nothing for a few moments. Annie could hear a radio in the back of the house, probably the kitchen; talking, not music. Yvonne chewed on her lip and stared over their heads at one of the bookcases.

“Yvonne,” Annie said. “If there’s anything we don’t know about, you should tell us. It can’t possibly harm you. Not now.”

“But it was all so long ago,” Yvonne said. “God, I was such an idiot. An arrogant, selfish, stupid idiot.”

“That would describe quite a lot of sixteen-year-olds,” Annie said.

It broke the ice a little, and Yvonne managed a polite laugh. “I suppose so,” she said. Then she sighed. “I used to run with a wild crowd, it’s true,” she said. “Well, not really wild, but different. Hippies, you’d call them. The kind of people my father hated. He’d go on about why he fought the war for lazy, cowardly sods like that. But they were harmless, really. Well, most of them.”

“And McGarrity?”

“McGarrity was a sort of hanger-on, older, not really part of the crowd, but they couldn’t summon the energy or find a reason to kick him out, so he drifted from place to place, sleeping on floors and in empty beds. Nobody really liked him. He was weird.”

“And he had a knife.”

“Yes. A flick-knife with a tortoiseshell handle. Nasty thing. Of course he said he lost it, but…”

“But the police found it in one of the houses,” said Banks. “Your father found it.”

“Yes.” Yvonne squinted at Banks. “You seem to know plenty about this already.”

“It’s my job. I read the trial transcripts, but they didn’t tell me about the girl he terrorized, the one your father asked him about during the interrogation.”

“I suppose not.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Me?”

“You knew McGarrity. Something happened. How else could you explain your father’s zeal in pursuing him or his reticence to pursue the issue? He abandoned all his other leads and concentrated on McGarrity. Now I’d say that was a little personal, wouldn’t you?”

“Okay, I told him,” Yvonne said. “McGarrity frightened me. We were alone together in the front room at Springfield Mount, and he frightened me.”

“What did he do?”

“It wasn’t so much anything he did, just the way he talked, looked at me, grabbed me.”

“He grabbed you?”

“My arm. Just a bruise. And he touched my cheek. It made me cringe. Mostly it was the things he said, though. He wanted to talk about Linda, and when that got him all excited he started going on about those murders in Los Angeles. We didn’t know who did it then – Manson and his family – but we knew the people had been butchered and someone had written PIGGIES on the walls in blood. He found all that exciting. And he said… he…”

“Go on, Yvonne,” Annie urged her.

Yvonne looked at her as she answered. “He said he’d, you know, watched me with my boyfriend, and that now it was going to be his turn.”

“So he threatened to rape you?” Annie said.

“That’s what I thought. That’s what I was scared of.”

“Did he have his knife?” Banks asked.

“I didn’t see it.”

“What did he say about Linda Lofthouse?”

“Just how pretty she was, and how it was sad that she had to die, but that it was an absurd and arbitrary world.”

“Is that all?”

“Then he talked about the Manson murders and asked me if I would like to do something like that.”

“What happened next?”

“I made a break for it and ran for my life. He was pacing, spouting gibberish.”

“And then what?”

“I told my father. He was furious.”

“I can understand that,” said Banks. “I have a daughter myself, and I’d feel exactly the same way. What happened next?”

“The police raided Springfield Mount and a couple of other hippie pads that night. They gave everyone a hard time, brought some drugs charges against them, but it was McGarrity they really wanted. He’d been at the festival, you see, at Brimleigh, and plenty of people had seen him wandering around near the edge of the woods with his flick-knife.”

“Did you think he did it?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. I never really questioned it.”

“Yet he went on to deny it, said he was framed.”

“Yes, but all criminals do that, don’t they? That’s what my father told me.”

“It’s pretty common,” said Banks.

“So there. Look, what is this all about? He’s not due to be released, is he?”

“You need have no worries on that score. He died in prison.”

“Oh. Well, I can’t say I’m heartbroken.”

“What happened after the arrest and everything?”

Yvonne shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe what an absolute idiot I was. My father let my boyfriend at Springfield Mount know that he was my father and told him to stay away from me. Steve, his name was. What an awful self-obsessed little prick. But a good-looking one, as I remember.”

“I’ve known one or two like that myself,” said Annie.

Banks glanced at her, as if to say, “We’ll get back to that later.”

“Anyway,” Yvonne went on, “it was the usual story. I thought he loved me, but he just wanted me out of the way. It was so embarrassing. You know, it’s funny, but the thing I remember most about the room is the Goya print on the wall. El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. The one of the sleeping man surrounded by owls, bats and cats. It used to scare me and fascinate me at the same time, if you know what I mean.”

“Did you go there again, after the raid?”

“Yes. The next day. Steve didn’t want to know me. None of them did. He spread the word that I was a copper’s daughter, and I was ostracized by the lot of them.” She snorted. “Nobody wants to share a joint with a copper’s daughter.”

“What did you do?”

“I was really hurt. I ran away from home. Took all the money I could and went to London. I had one address there, Lizzie, a girl who’d stayed at Springfield Mount once. She was nice and let me sleep in a sleeping bag on her floor. But it wasn’t very clean. There were mice, and they kept trying to get into the sleeping bag, so I had to hold it tight around my neck, and I couldn’t really get any sleep.” She gave a little shiver. “And there were even more weird people about than there had been in Leeds. I was very depressed, and I started to get frightened of my own shadow. I think Lizzie got really fed up with me. She talked about negative energy and stuff like that. I was feeling lost, then, really out of place, like I didn’t belong anywhere and nobody loved me. Typical adolescent angst, I can see now, but at the time…”

“So what did you do?”

“I went back home.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Two weeks. That was the sum of my life’s big adventure.”

“And how did your parents react?”

“Relief. And anger. I hadn’t rung them, you see. That was cruel of me. If my daughter did that, I’d be beside myself, but that’s how selfish and how upset I was. My father, being a policeman, always thought the worst. He had visions of me lying dead somewhere. He even told me that at first he thought something had happened to me, and that maybe it had something to do with McGarrity or the others taking revenge on me for shopping them. But he couldn’t do anything official because he didn’t want people to know. It must have torn him apart. He took his duty as a policeman so seriously.”

“Didn’t want people to know what?”

“About me and those hippies.”

“What was your father like during the investigation and trial?”

“He was working very hard, very long hours. I remember that. And he was very tense, tightly wound. He started getting chest pains, I remember, but it was a long time before he would go to the doctor. We didn’t talk much. He was under a lot of strain. I think he was doing it for me. He thought he’d lost me, and he was taking it out on McGarrity and everyone else involved. It wasn’t a comfortable time in the house, not for any of us.”

“But better than mice in the sleeping bag?” Annie said.

Yvonne smiled. “Yes, better than that. But we were all glad when it was over and McGarrity was convicted. It seemed to take forever, like a big black cloud over our heads. I don’t think the trial started until the following April, then it went on for about four weeks. Things were pretty tense. Anyway, in the meantime I went back to school, got on with my A levels, then I went to university in Hull. This would be the early seventies. There were still a lot of longhairs about, but I kept my distance. I’d learned my lesson. I applied myself to my studies, and in the end I became a schoolteacher and married a university professor. He teaches here, at Durham. We have two children, a boy and a girl, both married now. And that’s the story of my life.”

“Did you ever hear your father express any doubts about McGarrity’s guilt?” Banks asked.

“No. Not that I can remember. It’s as if he was on a crusade. I can’t imagine what he would have done if McGarrity had got off. It doesn’t bear thinking about. As it was, the whole thing ruined his health.”

“And your mother?”

“Mum stood by him. She was a brick. She was devastated when he died, of course. We both were. But eventually she remarried and lived quite happily. She died in 1999. We were close right until the end. She only lived a short drive away, and she loved her grandchildren.”

“That’s nice,” said Annie. “We’ve nearly finished now. The only other thing we want to ask you about is the death of Robin Merchant.”

“The Hatters’ bass player! God, I was absolutely gutted. Robin was so cool. They were one of my favorite bands, back when I used to listen to pop music, and we’d sort of claimed them as our own, too. You know they were from Leeds?”

“Yes,” said Annie.

“Anyway, what about him?”

“Did your father say anything about it?”

“I don’t think so. Why would he…? Oh, yes. My God, this is taking me back. He talked to them during the McGarrity thing, and he got me an LP signed by all of them. I think I’ve still got it somewhere.”

“Must be worth a bob or two now,” said Banks.

“Oh, I’d never sell it.”

“Still… did he say anything?”

“About Robin Merchant? No. Well, it was nothing to do with him, was it? That was the next summer, after McGarrity had been sent to jail, and my dad’s heart was starting to show the strain even more. We never really talked about those sorts of things – you know, the music and hippie stuff – not after I came back from London. I mean, I was done with that scene, and my dad was grateful for that, so he didn’t go on at me about it anymore. Mostly I threw myself into my A levels.”

“Does this mean anything to you?” Banks brought out a photocopy of the ringed numbers from the back page of Nick Barber’s book.

Yvonne frowned at it. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I didn’t say I was a maths teacher.”

“We think it might be dates,” Banks explained, “most likely dates connected with the Mad Hatters tour schedule or something similar. But we’ve no idea which months or years.”

“Leaves it pretty wide open, doesn’t it, then?”

Annie looked at Banks and shrugged. “Well, that,” Banks said, “is just about it, unless DI Cabbot has any more questions for you.”

“No,” said Annie, standing and leaning forward to shake Yvonne’s hand. “Thanks for your time.”

“You’re welcome. I’m only sorry I couldn’t be any more help.”

“What do you think about what Yvonne told us?” Annie asked Banks over an after-work drink with cheese-and-pickle sandwiches in the Queen’s Arms. The bar was half empty and the pool table, happily, not in use. A couple of late-season tourists sat at the next table poring over Ordnance Survey maps and speaking German.

“I think what she said should make us perhaps just a little more suspicious of Stanley Chadwick and his motives,” said Banks.

“Chadwick? What do you mean?”

“If he really thought his daughter had been terrorized and threatened with rape, and he was on a personal crusade… who knows what he might have done? I try to imagine how I would behave if anything like that ever happened to Tracy and, I tell you, I can really frighten myself. Yvonne told us that McGarrity talked about the dead girl to her, about Linda Lofthouse. Admittedly, she didn’t say he’d given her any information only the killer could have known, but we both know that sort of thing mostly just happens on TV. But what he did say sounded damn suspicious to me. Imagine how it sounded to her father, at his wits’ end trying to catch a killer and worried about his daughter hanging around with hippies. Then he finds out this weirdo who terrorized her had a flick-knife and was seen wandering around with it at Brimleigh Festival. Imagine he puts the two together, and suddenly the light goes on. Yvonne told us he didn’t really look at anyone else for the crime after that. Rick Hayes went right out of the picture. It was McGarrity all the way, and only McGarrity.”

“But the evidence says McGarrity did it.”

“No, it doesn’t. Everyone knew that McGarrity carried a flick-knife with a tortoiseshell handle, including Stanley Chadwick. It wouldn’t have been that hard for him to get hold of one just like it. Don’t forget, Yvonne says she didn’t see the knife when McGarrity terrorized her.”

“Because he’d already hidden it.”

“Or lost it, as he said.”

“I don’t believe this,” said Annie. “You’d take the word of a convicted killer over a detective inspector with an unimpeachable reputation?”

“I’m just thinking out loud, for God’s sake, trying to get a handle on Nick Barber’s murder.”

“And have you?”

Banks sipped some Black Sheep. “I’m not sure yet. But I do believe that Chadwick could have obtained such a knife, tricked McGarrity into handling it, and got access to Linda Lofthouse’s clothing and blood samples. It might be a lot tougher now, but not necessarily back then, before PACE. Someone in Chadwick’s position would probably have had free run of the place. And I think he might have been driven to do it because of what had happened to his daughter. Remember, this was a man on a mission, convinced he’s right but unable to prove it by legitimate means. We’ve all been there. So in this case, because it’s personal, and because of suspicious and disturbing things his daughter has told him about McGarrity that he can’t use without bringing her into it and losing all credibility, he goes the extra mile and fabricates the vital bit of evidence he needs. Remember, apart from the knife there’s no case; it falls apart. And there’s another thing.”

“What?”

“Chadwick’s health. He was basically a decent, God-fearing, law-abiding copper with a strong Presbyterian background, probably deeply repressed because of his war experiences, and angry with what he saw around him – the disrespect of the young, the hedonism, the drugs.”

“Turned psychoanalyst now, have you?”

“You don’t need to be a psychoanalyst to know that if Chadwick really did fabricate a case against McGarrity, even for the best of reasons, it would tear a man like him apart. As Yvonne said, he was a dedicated copper. The law and basic human decency meant everything to him. He might have lost his faith during the war, but you can’t change your nature that easily.”

Annie put her glass to her cheek. “But McGarrity was seen near the murder scene, he was known to be seriously weird, he had a flick-knife, he was left-handed, and he had met the victim. Why do you insist on believing that he didn’t do it, and that a good copper turned bad?”

“I’m not insisting. I’m just trying it out for size. We’d never prove it now, anyway.”

“Except by proving that someone else killed Linda Lofthouse.”

“Well, there is that.”

“Who do you think?”

“My money’s on Vic Greaves.”

“Why, because he was mentally unstable?”

“That’s part of it, yes. He had a habit of not knowing what he was doing and he had dark visions on his acid trips. Remember, he took acid that night at Brimleigh, as well as on the night of Robin Merchant’s death. It doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to guess that maybe he heard voices telling him to do things. But Linda Lofthouse was his cousin, so if you work on the theory that most people are killed by someone they know, particularly a family member, it makes even more sense.”

“You don’t think he killed Robin Merchant, too, do you?”

“It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility. Maybe Merchant knew, or guessed?”

“But Greaves had no history of violence at all. Not to mention no motive.”

“Okay, I’ll give you all that. But it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have flipped. Drugs do very strange things to people.”

“What about Nick Barber?”

“He found out.”

“How?”

“I haven’t got that far yet.”

“Well,” said Annie, “I still think Stanley Chadwick got it right and Patrick McGarrity did it.”

“Even so, Rick Hayes might be worth another look, too, if we can find him.”

“If you insist.” Annie finished her Britvic Orange. “That’s my good deed for the day,” she said.

“What are you up to tomorrow?” Banks asked.

“Tomorrow? Browsing web sites, most likely. Why?”

“I just thought you might like to take an hour or two off and come out for Sunday lunch with me and meet Emilia.”

“Emilia?”

“Brian’s girlfriend. Didn’t I tell you? She’s an actress. Been on telly.”

“Really?”

“Bad Girls, among others.”

“One of my favorites. All right, sounds good.”

“Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that nothing interrupts us like it did the other night.”

For once, it wasn’t long after dark when Banks got home, having checked back at the station after his drink with Annie and found things ticking along nicely. Brian and Emilia were out somewhere, which allowed him a few delicious moments alone to listen to a recent CD purchase of Susan Graham singing French songs and enjoy a glass of Roy’s Amarone. When Brian and Emilia finally got back, the CD was almost over, and the glass of wine half empty. Banks went into the kitchen to greet them.

“Dad,” said Brian, putting packages on the table, “we went to York for the day. We didn’t know if you were going to be here, so we picked up an Indian take-away. There’s plenty if you want to share.”

“No, thank you,” said Banks, trying not to imagine what seismic reactions might occur in his stomach when curry met Amarone. “I’m not really hungry. I had a sandwich earlier. How did you enjoy York?”

“Great,” said Emilia. “We did all the tourist stuff. You know, toured the Minster, visited Jorvik. We even went to the train museum.”

“You took her there?” Banks said to Brian.

“Don’t blame me. It was her idea.”

“It’s true,” Emilia said, taking Brian’s hand. “I love trains. I had to drag him.”

They both laughed. Banks remembered taking Brian to the National Railway Museum, or York Railway Museum, as it was then known, on a day trip from London when he was about seven. How he had loved climbing all over the immaculate steam engines and playing at being the driver.

Brian and Emilia ate their curry at the kitchen bench while Banks sat sipping his wine and chatting with them about their day. When they had finished eating, Brian tidied up – an oddity in itself – then said, “Oh, I forgot. I bought you a present, Dad.”

“Me?” said Banks. “You shouldn’t have.”

“It’s not much.” Brian took an HMV bag from his backpack. “Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to wrap it properly.”

Banks slipped the case out of the plastic bag. It was a DVD: The Mad Hatters Story. Judging by the account on the back of the box, it contained footage from every stage of the band’s career, including the earliest lineup with Vic Greaves and Robin Merchant. “Should be interesting,” Banks said. “Do you want to watch it with me?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Emilia?”

Emilia took a book out of her shoulder bag, Reading Lolita in Tehran. “Not me,” she said with a smile. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day. I think I’ll go to bed and read for a while and leave you boys together.” She kissed Brian, then turned to Banks and said, “Good night.”

“Good night,” Banks said. “Look, before you go, would the two of you like to come out for Sunday lunch with Annie and me tomorrow? If we can get away, that is?”

Brian raised his eyebrows and looked at Emilia, who nodded. “Sure,” he said, then added with the weight of many broken engagements, “if you can get away.”

“I promise. You are staying a while longer, aren’t you?”

“If that’s okay,” said Brian.

“Of course it is.”

“If we’re not cramping your style, that is.”

Banks felt himself blush. “No. Why should you…? I mean…”

Emilia said good night again, smiled and went upstairs. “She seems like a nice girl,” he said to Brian when she was out of earshot.

Brian grinned. “She is.”

“Is it…?”

“Serious?”

“Well, yes, I suppose that’s what I meant.”

“Too early to say, but I like her enough that I’d hurt if she left me, as the song says.”

“Which song?”

“Ours, idiot. The last single.”

“Ouch. I don’t buy singles.”

“I know that, Dad. I was teasing. And it wasn’t even for sale on a CD. You had to download it from iTunes.”

“Hey, wait a minute. I know how to do that now. I’ve got an iPod. I’m not a complete Luddite, you know.”

Brian laughed and grabbed a can of lager from the fridge. Banks refilled his glass and the two of them went into the entertainment room.

The DVD started with manager Chris Adams giving a potted history, then segued into a documentary made up of old concert footage and interviews. Banks found it amusing and interesting to see the band members of thirty-five years ago in their bell-bottoms and floppy hats manage to sound pretentious and innocent at the same time as they spoke about “peace and love, man.” Vic Greaves, looking wasted as usual in a 1968 interview, went off at a tangent punctuated with long pauses every time the interviewer asked him a question about his songs. There was something icily detached and slightly more cynical about Robin Merchant, and his cool, practical intelligence often provided a welcome antidote to the vapid and meandering musings of the others.

But it was the concert footage that proved most interesting. There was nothing from Brimleigh, unfortunately, except a few stills of the band relaxing with joints backstage, but there were some excellent late-sixties films of the band performing at such diverse places as the Refectory at Leeds University, Bristol’s Colston Hall and the Paradiso in Amsterdam. At one of the gigs, an outrageously stoned and enthusiastic MC yelled in a thick cockney accent, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s ’ave a ’uge ’and for the ’ATTERS!”

The music sounded wonderfully fresh, and Vic Greaves’s innocent pastoral lyrics had a haunting and timeless sadness about them, meshing with his delicate, spacey keyboards work and Terry Watson’s subtle riffs. Like many bass players, Robin Merchant just stood and played expressionlessly, but well, and like many drummers, Adrian Pritchard thrashed around at his kit like a maniac. Keith Moon and John Bonham were clearly big influences there.

There was something a bit odd about the lineup, but Banks was only half watching and half talking to Brian, and the next thing he knew, both Vic Greaves and Robin Merchant were gone and the lovely, if rather nervous, Tania Hutchison was making her debut with the band at London’s Royal Festival Hall in early 1972. Banks thought about his meeting with her the other day. She was still a good-looking woman, and he might have fancied his chances, but he thought he had alienated her with his probing questions. That seemed to be the story of his life, alienating women he fancied.

The documentary went on to portray the band’s upward trajectory until their official retirement in 1994, with clips from the few reunion concerts they had performed since then, along with interviews from an older, chain-smoking, short-haired Tania, and a completely bald, bloated and ill-looking Adrian Pritchard. Reg Cooper and Terry Watson must have declined to be interviewed because they appeared only in the concert footage.

When the film came to a sequence about disagreements within the band, Banks noticed Brian tense a little. Since the investigation had taken him farther into the world of rock than he had ever been before, he had thought a lot about Brian and the life he was living. Not just drugs, but all the trappings and problems that fame brought with it. He thought of the great stars who had destroyed themselves at an early age through self-indulgence or despair: Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Buckley, Janis Joplin, Nick Drake, Ian Curtis, Jim Morrison… the list went on. Brian seemed all right, but he was hardly likely to tell his father if he had a drug problem, for example.

“Anything wrong?” Banks asked.

“Wrong? No. Why? What could be wrong?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that you haven’t talked about the band much.”

“That’s because there’s not much to say.”

“So things are going fine?”

Brian paused. “Well…”

“What is it?”

He turned to face Banks, who turned down the DVD volume a notch or two. “Denny’s getting weird, that’s all. If it gets much worse, we might have to get rid of him.”

Denny, Banks knew, was the band’s other guitarist/vocalist, and Brian’s songwriting partner.

“Get rid of him?”

“I don’t mean kill him. Honestly, Dad, sometimes I wonder about the effect your job has on you.”

So do I, Banks thought. But he also thought about killing off disruptive band members – Robin Merchant, for example – and how easy it would have been, just a gentle nudge in the direction of the swimming pool. Vic Greaves had been disruptive, too, but he had made his own voluntary exit. “Weird? How?” he asked.

“Ego, mostly. I mean he’s getting into really off-the-wall musical influences, like acid Celtic punk, and he’s trying to import it into our sound. If you challenge him on it, he gets all huffy and goes on about how it’s his band, how he brought us together and all that shit.”

“What do the others have to say about him?”

“Everybody’s sort of retreated into their own worlds. We’re not communicating very well. We’re going through the motions. There’s no talking to Denny. We can’t write together anymore.”

“What happens if he goes?”

Brian gestured toward the video. “We get someone else. But we’re not going pop.”

“You’re doing just fine as you are, aren’t you?”

“We are. I know. We’re selling more and more. People love our sound. It’s got an edge, but it’s accessible, you know. That’s the problem. Denny wants to change it, and thinks he’s got a right to do so.”

“What about your manager?”

“Geoff? Denny keeps sucking up to him.”

Banks immediately thought of Kev Templeton. “And how is Geoff dealing with that?”

Brian scratched his chin. “Come to think of it,” he said, “he’s getting sick of it. I think at first he liked it that someone in the band was giving him a lot of attention, not to mention telling tales out of school, but I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, it’s a weird thing, but eventually people get fed up with their toadies.”

From the mouths of babes, Banks thought, as a lightbulb went on in his brain. Though Brian was hardly a baby. It was as he had suspected. Templeton was digging his own grave. Nobody needed to do anything. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Annie ought to appreciate that, too, Banks, thought, with her interests in Taoism and Zen. “Have drugs got anything to do with it?” he asked.

Brian looked at him. “Drugs? No. If you mean have I ever done any drugs, then the answer’s yes. I’ve smoked dope and taken E. I took speed once, but when I came down I was depressed for a week, so I’ve never touched it since. Nothing stronger. And as it happens, I still prefer lager. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Banks. “It’s good of you to be so frank, but I was thinking more about the others.”

Brian smiled. “Now I see how you trick confessions out of people. Anyway, the answer’s still no. Believe it or not, we’re a pretty straight band.”

“So what next?” Banks asked.

Brian shrugged. “Dunno. Geoff said we all needed to take a breather, we’d been working so hard in the studio and on tour. When we get back… we’ll see. Either Denny will have changed his ideas or he won’t.”

“What do you predict?”

“That he won’t.”

“And then?”

“He’ll have to go.”

“Does that worry you?”

“A bit. Not too much, though. I mean, they did all right, didn’t they?” The Mad Hatters were performing their jaunty, rocking 1983 number one hit, “Young at Heart.” “The band will survive. It’s more the lack of communication that upsets me. I mean, Denny was a mate, and now I can’t talk to him.”

“Losing friends is always sad,” said Banks, aware of how pathetic and pointless that observation was. “It’s just one of those things, though. When you first get together with someone it’s a great adventure, finding out stuff you’ve got in common. You know, places you love, music, books. Then the more you get to know them, the more you start to see other things.”

“Yeah, like a whingeing, lying, manipulative bastard,” said Brian. Then he laughed and shook his empty can. “Want another glass of plonk?” he asked Banks, whose glass was also empty.

“Sure, why not?” said Banks, and he watched the lovely Tania sway in pastel blue diaphanous robes that flowed around her like water while Brian got the drinks.

“There is one thing I’d like to know,” he said, after a sip of Amarone. Plonk, indeed.

“What’s that?” Brian asked.

“Just what the hell does acid Celtic punk sound like?”