Piece Of My Heart

CHAPTER FOUR

Annie took a chance that Kelly Soames would be turning up for work on Saturday morning, so she parked behind the incident van in Fordham and adjusted her rearview mirror so that she could see the pub and the road behind her. Banks had told her he thought Kelly didn’t want to talk last night because there were people around and she might have a personal secret; therefore, it would be a good idea to get her alone, take her somewhere. He also thought a woman might have more chance of getting whatever it was out of her, hence Annie.

Just before eleven o’clock, Annie saw Kelly get out of a car. She recognized the driver; he was one of the men who had been in the pub the previous evening, one of the cardplayers. As soon as he had driven off and turned the bend, Annie backed up and intercepted Kelly. “A word with you, please,” she said.

Kelly made toward the pub door. “I can’t. I’ll be late for work.”

Annie opened her passenger door. “You’ll be a lot later if you don’t come with me now.”

Kelly chewed her lip, then muttered something under her breath and got in the old purple Astra. It was long past time for a new car, Annie realized, but she’d had neither the time nor the money lately. Banks had offered her his Renault when he got the Porsche, but she had declined. It wasn’t her kind of car, for a start, and there was something rather shabby in her mind about taking Banks’s castoffs. She’d buy something new soon, but for now, the Astra still got her where she wanted to go.

Annie set off up the hill, past the youth hostel, where a couple of uniforms were still making inquiries, on to the wild moorland beyond. She pulled over into a lay-by next to a stile. It was the start of a walk to an old lead mine, Annie knew, as Banks had taken her there to show her where someone had once found a body in the flue. That morning, there was no one around and the wind raged, whistling around the car, plucking at the purple heather and rough sere grass. Kelly took a packet of Embassy Regals out of her handbag, but Annie pushed her hand down and said, “No. Not in here. I don’t like the smell of smoke, and I’m not opening the windows. It’s too cold.”

Kelly put the cigarettes away and pouted.

“Last night, when we were talking in the pub,” Annie said, “you reacted in a rather extreme way about what happened.”

“Well, someone got killed. I mean, it might be normal for you, but not round here. It was a shock, that’s all.”

“It seemed like a personal shock.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do I have to spell it out, Kelly?”

“I’m not thick.”

“Then stop playing games. What was your relationship with the deceased?”

“I didn’t have a relationship. He came in the pub, that’s all. He had a nice smile, said have one for yourself. Isn’t that enough?”

“Enough for what?”

“Enough to be upset that he’s dead.”

“Look, I’m sorry if this is hard for you,” Annie went on, “but we’re only doing this because we care, too.”

Kelly shot her a glance. “You never even saw him when he was alive. You didn’t even know he existed.”

True, it was one of the things about Annie’s job that she more often than not found herself investigating the deaths of strangers. But Banks had taught her that during the course of such investigations they don’t remain strangers. You get to know the dead, become their voice, in a way, because they can no longer speak for themselves. She couldn’t explain this to Kelly, though.

“He’d been in the cottage a week,” said Annie, “and you’re telling me you only saw him when he came into the pub and said hello.”

“So?”

“You seem more upset than I think you would be if that was all.”

Kelly folded her arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Annie turned to face her. “I think you do, Kelly.”

They sat silently cocooned in the car, Kelly stiff, facing the front, Annie turned sideways in her seat, looking at her profile. A few spots of acne stood out on the girl’s right cheek and she had a little white scar at the outer edge of one eyebrow. Outside, the wind continued to rage through the moorland grass and to rock the car a little with unexpected gusts and buffets. The sky was a vast expanse of blue with small, high fast-moving white clouds casting brief shadows on the moor. It must have been three, maybe four minutes, an awful long time in that sort of situation, anyway, before Kelly started to shiver a little, and before long she was shaking like a leaf in Annie’s arms, tears streaming down her face. “You mustn’t tell my father,” she kept saying through the tears. “You mustn’t tell my father.”

Tuesday, 9th September, 1969

On Tuesday evening, Yvonne was in her room after teatime reading Mark Knopfler’s column in the Yorkshire Evening Post. He wrote about the music scene, as well as sometimes jamming with local bands at the Peel and the Guildford, and she thought he might have something to say about Brimleigh, but this week’s column was about a series of forthcoming concerts at the Harrogate Theatre – the Nice, the Who, Yes, Fairport Convention. It sounded great, if her father would let her go to Harrogate.

She heard a knock at her door and was surprised to see her father standing there. Even more surprised to see that he didn’t appear angry with her. Her mother must have put in a good word for her. Even so, she braced herself for the worst: accusations, the cutting of pocket money and limitation of freedom, but they didn’t come. Instead, they came to a compromise. She would be allowed to go to the Grove on Mondays, but had to be home by eleven o’clock and must under no circumstances drink any alcohol. Then she had to stop in and do her homework every other school night. She could also go out Friday and Saturday. But not all night. He tried to get her to tell him where she’d been on Sunday, but all she’d said was she spent the night listening to music with friends and had lost track of the time. Somehow, she got the impression that he didn’t believe her, but instead of pushing it, he asked, “Have you got anything by Led Zeppelin?”

“Led Zeppelin? Yes. Why?” They had only released one LP so far, and Yvonne had bought it with the record token her Aunt Moira had given her for her sixteenth birthday back in March. It said in Melody Maker that they had a new album coming out next month, and Robert Plant had mentioned it at Brimleigh, when they had played songs from it, like “Heartbreaker.” Yvonne could hardly wait. Robert Plant was so sexy.

“Would you say they’re loud?”

Yvonne laughed. “Pretty loud, yes.”

“Mind if I give them a listen?”

Still confused, Yvonne said, “No, not at all. Go ahead.” She picked it out of her pile and handed it to him, the LP with the big zeppelin touching the edge of the Eiffel Tower and bursting into flames.

The Dansette record player that her father had got for five thousand Embassy coupons before he stopped smoking was downstairs, in the living room. It was a bone of contention, as Yvonne maintained that she was the only one who bought records and really cared about music, apart from the occasional Johnny Mathis and Jim Reeves her mother put on, and her father’s few big-band LPs. She thought it should be in her room, but her father insisted that it was the family record player.

At least he had bought her, for her birthday, an extra speaker unit that you could plug in and create a real stereo effect, and she had the little transistor radio she kept on her bedside table, but she still had to wait until her parents were out before she could listen to her own records properly, at the right volume.

She went down with him and turned it on. He didn’t even seem to know how to operate the thing, so Yvonne took over. Soon, “Good Times, Bad Times” was blasting out loudly enough to bring Janet dashing in from the kitchen to see what was going on.

After listening to less than half of the song, Chadwick turned down the volume and asked, “Are they all like that?”

“You’d probably think so,” Yvonne said, “but every song is different. Why?”

“Nothing, really. Just something I was wondering about.” He rejected the LP and switched off the record player. “Thanks. You can have it back now.”

Still puzzled, Yvonne put the LP back in its sleeve and went up to her room.

Banks looked out of his office window. It was market day, and the wooden stalls spread out over the cobbled square, canvas covers flapping in the wind, selling everything from cheap shirts and flat caps to used books, bootleg CDs and DVDs. The monthly farmers’ market extended farther across the square, selling locally grown vegetables, Wensleydale and Swaledale cheese, and organic beef and pork. Banks thought all beef and pork – not to mention wine, fruit and vegetables – was organic, but someone had told him it really meant “organically raised,” without pesticides or chemicals. Why didn’t they say that, then? he wondered.

Locals and tourists alike mingled and sampled the wares. When they had finished there, Banks knew, many of them would be moving on to the big car-boot sale at Catterick, where they would agonize over buying dodgy mobile phones for a couple of quid and dubious fifty-pee inkjet refills.

It was half past twelve. Banks had spent the rest of the morning after the meeting going over the SOCO exhibits lists and talking with Stefan and Vic Manson about fingerprints and possible DNA samples from the bedding at Moorview Cottage. What they would prove he didn’t know, but he needed everything he could get. And these were probably the kind of “facts” over which Detective Superintendent Gervaise salivated. That wasn’t fair, he realized, especially as he had decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, but that remark about going to the pub had stung. He had felt like a schoolboy on the headmaster’s carpet again.

Martha Argerich was playing a Beethoven piano concerto on Radio 3 in the background. It was a live recording, and in the quiet bits Banks could hear people in the audience coughing. He thought again about seeing Catherine Gervaise and her husband at Opera North. They had much better seats than he had, closer to the front. They’d have been able to see the sweat and spittle at close hand. Rumor had it that Superintendent Gervaise was after a commander’s job at Scotland Yard, but until something came up, they were stuck with her in Eastvale.

Banks sat down and picked up the book again. It looked well-thumbed. He had never read any Ian McEwan, but the name was on his list. One day. He liked the opening well enough.

The book gave no clue as to where it had been bought. Some secondhand bookshops, Banks knew, had little stamps on the inside cover with their name and address on, but not this one. He would check the local shops to see if the victim had bought it in Eastvale, where there were two possible suppliers, and a number of charity shops that sold used books.

Nick hadn’t written his name on the inside, the way some people do. All it said was £3.50. There was a sticker on the back, and Banks realized it was from Border’s; he’d seen it before. There looked to be enough coded information on there to locate the branch, but he very much doubted that that would lead him to the actual customer who had bought it originally. And who knew how many people had owned it since then?

Once again he turned to the neat penciled figures in the back:

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

They meant nothing to him, but then he had never been any good at codes, if that was what it was supposed to be, or anything to do with numbers, really. He couldn’t even tackle sudokus. It might be the most obvious sequence of prime negative ordinals, or whatever, in the world, and he wouldn’t know it from a betting slip. He racked his brains to think of someone who was good at stuff like that. Not Annie or Kev Templeton, that was for sure. Winsome was good with computers, so maybe she had a strong mathematical brain. Then it came to him. Of course! How could he have forgotten so soon? He grabbed his internal telephone directory, but before he could find the number he wanted, the phone rang. It was Winsome.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Winsome.”

“We’ve got him. I mean, we know who he is. The victim.”

“That’s great.”

“Sorry it took so long, but my contact at the DVLA was at a wedding this morning. That’s why I couldn’t get in touch with her. She had her mobile turned off.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Nicholas Barber, and he lived in Chiswick.” Winsome gave Banks an address.

“Bloody hell,” said Banks. “That’s the second Londoner killed up here this year. If they get wind of that down south, the tourists will all think there’s a conspiracy and stop coming.”

“A lot of people might think that wouldn’t be such a bad idea, sir,” said Winsome. “Maybe then some of the locals would be able to afford to live here.”

“Don’t you believe it. Estate agents would find some other way to gouge the buyers. Anyway, now we know who he is, we can see about checking his phone records. I can’t believe he didn’t have a mobile.”

“Even if he had, he couldn’t have used it in Fordham. No coverage.”

“Yes, but he might have gone to Eastvale or somewhere to make calls.”

“But what network?”

“Check with all the majors.”

“But, sir-”

“I know. It’s Saturday. Just do the best you can, Winsome. If you have to wait until Monday morning, so be it. Nick Barber’s not going anywhere, and his killer’s already long gone.”

“Will do, sir.”

Banks thought for a moment. Nick Barber – there was something familiar about that name, but he couldn’t for the life him remember what it was. Then he reached for the directory again and carried on with what he had been doing.

Annie let Kelly Soames collect herself and dry her eyes, trying to minimize the embarrassment the young girl obviously felt at her outburst of emotion.

“I’m sorry,” Kelly said finally. “I’m not usually like this. It’s just the shock.”

“You knew him well?”

Kelly blushed. “No, not at all. We only… I mean, it was just a shag, that’s all.”

“Still…” said Annie, thinking that shagging was pretty intimate, even if there was no love involved, and that by speaking of it that way Kelly was trying to diminish what had happened so she wouldn’t feel it so painfully. If someone was naked with you one minute, caressing you, entering you and giving you pleasure, then lying on the floor with his head bashed in the next, it didn’t make you a softy if you shed a tear or two. “Care to tell me about it?”

“You mustn’t tell my dad. He’ll go spare. Promise?”

“Kelly, I’m after information about the… about Nick. Unless you were involved in some way with his murder, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I won’t have to go to court or anything?”

“I can’t imagine why.”

Kelly thought for a moment. “There wasn’t much to it, really,” she said finally. Then she looked at Annie. “It’s not something I do all the time, you know. I’m not a slag.”

“Nobody’s saying you are.”

“My dad would if he found out.”

“What about your mother?”

“She died when I was sixteen. Dad’s never remarried. She… they weren’t very happy together.”

“I’m sorry,” said Annie. “But there’s no reason for your father to find out.”

“As long as you promise.”

Annie hadn’t promised, and she wasn’t going to. The way things stood, she could see no reason why Kelly’s secret should come out, and she would do her best to protect it, but the situation could change. “How did it happen?” she asked.

“Like I said, he was nice. In the pub, you know. Lots of people just treat you like dirt because you’re a barmaid, but not Nick.”

“Did you know his second name?”

“No, sorry. I just called him Nick.”

The wind moaned and rocked the car. Kelly hugged herself. She wasn’t wearing much more than she had been the previous evening. “Cold?” Annie asked. “I’ll turn the heater on.” She started the car and turned the heat on. Soon the windows misted over with condensation. “That’s better. Go on. You got chatting in the pub.”

“No. That’s just it. My dad’s always there, isn’t he? He was there last night. That’s why I… anyway, he watches me like a hawk at work. He’s like the rest, thinks a barmaid’s no better than a whore. You should have heard the arguments we had about me taking the job.”

“Why did he let you take it, then?”

“Money. He was sick of me living at home and not having a job.”

“That’ll do it. So you didn’t meet Nick in the pub?”

“Well, we did meet there. I mean, that’s where we first saw each other, but he was just like any other customer. He was a fit-looking lad. I’ll admit I fancied him, and I think maybe he could see that.”

“But he wasn’t a lad, Kelly. He was much older than you.”

Kelly stiffened. “He was only thirty-eight. That’s not old. And I’m twenty-one. Besides, I like older men. They’re not always pawing you like kids my own age. They understand. They listen. And they know about things. All the kids my age talk about is football and beer, but Nick knew everything about music, all the bands, everything. The stories he told me. He was sophisticated.”

Annie made a mental note of that while wondering just how long it took this Nick to start “pawing” Kelly. “How did you meet him, then?” she asked.

“In town. Eastvale. Wednesday’s my day off, see, and I was out shopping. He was just coming out of that secondhand bookshop down by the side of the church, and I almost bumped into him. Talk about blush. Anyway, he recognized me, and we got chatting, went for a drink in the Queen’s Arms. He was funny.”

“What happened?”

“He gave me a lift back – I’d come on the bus – and we arranged to meet later.”

“Where?”

“At the cottage. He invited me for a meal. I told my dad I was going out with some girlfriends.”

“And what happened?”

“What do you think? He made a meal – a curry – he wasn’t a bad cook, and we listened to some music and… you know…”

“You went to bed together.”

“Yes.”

“Only that once?”

Kelly looked away.

“Kelly?”

“We did it again on Friday, all right? I got two hours off in the afternoon to go to the dentist but I rearranged my appointment for next Wednesday.”

“What time on Friday?”

“Between two and four.”

That was the afternoon of the murder. Only two or three hours after Kelly had left, in all likelihood, Nick had been killed. “And those were the only occasions you spent with him? Wednesday night and Friday afternoon?”

“We didn’t spend the night together. Not that I wouldn’t have, mind you. Just the evening. Had to be home by eleven. As you might have gathered, my father’s a bit of a Victorian when it comes to matters of freedom and discipline.”

Yes, and you were off shagging some older bloke you’d just laid eyes on for the first time, Annie thought. Maybe Kelly’s father had a point. Anyway, it was none of her business. She was surprised at herself for being so judgmental. “What does he do for a living?”

“He’s a farmer. Can you imagine anything more naff?”

“Plenty of things.”

“Huh. Well, I can’t.”

“Do you know someone called Jack Tanner?”

Kelly seemed surprised at the question. “Yes,” she said. “He lives just down the road from the pub.”

“What do you think of him?”

“I can say I do very much. Think of him, that is. He always seems a bit of a miserable sod, to me. And he’s a total lech as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s always looking at my tits. He doesn’t think I know, but it’s well obvious. He does it with all us young girls.”

“Have you ever seen him in the pub?”

“No. CC barred him before I started working there. He can’t hold his drink. He’s always picking fights.”

Annie made a note to look into Jack Tanner further and went on. “What do you remember about the cottage?”

“It just looked like a cottage. You know, old furniture and stuff, a creaky bed, toilet with a wonky seat.”

“What about Nick’s personal things?”

“You must know. You were in there.”

“Everything’s gone, Kelly.”

Kelly gave her a startled look. “Somebody stole it? Is that why they killed him? But there was hardly anything there, unless he was hiding money under the mattress, and I don’t think he was. You could have felt a pea under that thing.”

“What did he have?”

“Just a few books, a portable CD player with a couple of those small speakers you can set up. Not great sound, but okay. Mostly he liked old stuff, but he had some more modern bands: Doves, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs. And he had a computer.”

“Laptop?”

“Yes. A little one. Toshiba, I think. He said he used it used it mostly for watching DVDs, but he did do some work on it, too.”

“What kind of work?”

“He was a writer.”

“What sort of writer?”

“I don’t know. He never told me about it and I never asked. None of my business, was it? Maybe he was writing his autobiography.”

That would be a bit presumptuous at thirty-eight, Annie thought, but people had written autobiographies at earlier ages than that. “But he definitely said he was a writer?”

“I asked him what he was doing up here at such a miserable time of year, and he said he wanted a bit of peace and quiet to do some writing. I could tell he was being a bit shy and secretive about it, so I didn’t push. I wasn’t after his life story, anyway.”

“Did he ever show you anything he’d written?”

“No. I mean, all we did was have a curry, a chat and a shag. I didn’t go searching through his stuff or anything. What do you think I am?”

“All right, Kelly, don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

Kelly managed a brief smile. “Bit late for that, isn’t it?”

“What did you use for contraception?”

“Condoms. What do you think?”

“We didn’t find any in the house.”

“We used them all. On Friday, like, he wanted to, you know, do it again, but we couldn’t. There weren’t any left, and it was too late to go into Eastvale. I had to be at work. And there’s no way I was going to do it without. I’m not totally stupid.”

“Okay,” said Annie. Once she had got Kelly talking, she had proved to be far less shy and reticent than she appeared in public. So that explained the rumpled bed and lack of condoms. But robbery hardly seemed like a motive. Obviously, if Nick had had something of great value there, he wouldn’t have told some local scrubber he’d picked up in a pub, but why cart anything of value up here in the first place? Unless he was blackmailing somebody. Or making a payoff.

“Did he have a mobile?”

“He did. A fancy Nokia. Fat lot of good it did him, though. They don’t work around here. You have to go to Eastvale or Helmthorpe. It’s a real drag.”

That was a problem in the Dales, Annie knew. They’d put up some new towers, but coverage was still patchy in places because of the hills. There wasn’t a landline at the cottage – most rental places don’t include one for obvious reasons – and both Mrs. Tanner and Winsome had used the telephone box across the road, by the church. “How did he seem when you were with him?” she asked.

“He was fine.”

“He didn’t seem upset, depressed or worried about anything?”

“No, not at all.”

“What about drugs?”

Kelly paused. “We smoked a couple of joints, that’s all. I’d never do anything harder than that.”

“Did he have a lot of gear?”

“No, just enough for himself. At least that’s all I saw. Look, he wasn’t a drug dealer, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“I’m not getting at anything,” said Annie. “I just want to establish some idea of Nick’s state of mind. Was he any different on Friday afternoon?”

“No, not so’s I noticed.”

“He wasn’t nervous or edgy, as if he was expecting someone?”

“No.”

“Did you make any plans for the future?”

“Well, he didn’t ask me to marry him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Annie laughed. “I don’t suppose he did, but were you going to see one another again?”

“Sure. He was up here for another week, and I said I could get away a few times – if he got some more condoms. He said I could come and see him in London, too, if I wanted. He gets lots of free tickets and he said he’d take me to concerts.” She pouted. “My dad would never let me go, though. He thinks London’s some sort of den of iniquity.”

“Did Nick give you his address?”

“We didn’t get that far. We thought… you know… we’d see one another again up here. Oh, shit! Sorry.” She dabbed at her face again. Crying had made her skin blotchy. Other than that, she was a beautiful young woman, and Annie could see why any man would be attracted to her. She wasn’t stupid, either, as she had pointed out, and there was a forthrightness about her attitude to sex that many might envy. But now she was just an upset and confused kid, and her skin was breaking out.

When she’d pulled herself together, she laughed and said, “You must think I’m well daft, crying over some bloke I just met.”

“No, I don’t,” said Annie. “You felt close to him, and now he’s dead. That must be terrible. It must hurt.”

Kelly looked at her. “You understand, don’t you? You’re not like the rest. Not like that sourpuss you had with you last night.”

Annie smiled at the description of Banks, not one she would have used herself. “Oh, he’s all right,” she said. “He’s just been going through a rough time lately, too.”

“No, I mean it. You’re all right, you are. What’s it like, being a copper?”

“It has its moments,” Annie said.

“Do you think they’d have me, if I applied, like?”

“I’m sure it would be worth a try,” Annie said. “We’re always looking for bright, motivated people.”

“That’s me,” Kelly said with a crooked smile. “Bright and motivated. I’m sure my dad would approve.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Annie said, thinking of what Banks had told her about the way his parents reacted to his chosen profession. “But don’t let it stop you.”

Kelly frowned, then she said, “Look, I’ve got to get to work. I’m already late. CC’ll go spare.”

“Okay,” said Annie. “I think I’m just about done for now.”

“Can you give me a minute before we go?” said Kelly, pulling down the mirror and taking a small pink container from her handbag. “I’ve got to put my face on.”

“Of course.” Annie watched with amusement while Kelly applied eye shadow and mascara and various powders and potions to hide the acne and blotchiness, then drove down the hill to drop the girl at the Cross Keys before heading back up to see what was happening at the youth hostel.