Piece Of My Heart

CHAPTER FIVE

10th-12th September, 1969

Over the next few days, Chadwick’s investigation proceeded with a frustrating lack of progress. The two essential questions – who was the victim, and who was with her at the time of her death – remained unanswered. Surely, Chadwick thought, someone, somewhere, must be missing her? Unless she was a runaway.

Things had been quiet on the home front since he and Yvonne had come to their compromise. He was convinced now that she had been at the Brimleigh Festival on Sunday night – she really wasn’t a very good liar – but there seemed little point in pursuing the issue now. It was over. The important thing was to try to head off anything along the same lines in the future, and Janet was right; he wouldn’t achieve that by ranting at her.

On Wednesday, though, Chadwick had paid a quick visit to the Grove, just to see the kind of place where his daughter was spending her time. It was a small, scruffy, old-fashioned pub by the canal, with one dingy room set aside for the young crowd. He checked with his friend Geoff Broome on the drugs squad and found it didn’t have a particularly bad reputation, which was good news. God only knew what Yvonne saw in the dump.

Dr. O’Neill – whose full postmortem report had yielded nothing to dispute the cause of death – had estimated the victim’s age at between seventeen and twenty-one, so it was conceivable that she had left home and was living by herself at the time of her murder. In which case, what about her friends, boyfriends, colleagues at work? Either they didn’t know what had happened, or they hadn’t missed her yet. Did she even have a job? Hippies didn’t like work, Chadwick knew that. Perhaps she was a student, or on holiday. One interesting point that Dr. O’Neill had included in his report was that there was a parturition scar on the pelvic bone, which meant that she had given birth to a baby.

DC Bradley had viewed all the television footage of the festival and spoken with newspaper reporters who had attended the event. He had learned precisely nothing. The victim was nowhere to be seen on the film, which more often than not panned over a sea of young idealistic faces, and cut back and forth from the gymnastic displays of the bands onstage to close-shot interviews with individual musicians and revelers. Perhaps it might all be of some use in the future, when they had a suspect or needed to pick someone out of the crowd, but for the moment it was useless.

Bradley had also contacted the festival’s press officer, Mick Lawton, and made a start phoning the photographers. Most were cooperative, had no objection to the police looking at their photographs and would be happy to send prints. After all, they had been taken for public consumption in the first place. What a difference it was from asking reporters to name sources.

The experts were still combing the area where the victim had been killed and the spot she had been moved to, collecting all the trace evidence for later analysis. If nothing else, it might provide useful forensic evidence in a trial. The lab had already reported back on the painted cornflower on the victim’s cheek, informing Chadwick that it was simple greasepaint, available in any number of outlets. The flower was still one small detail the police had not yet made public.

When it came to questioning the stars themselves, Enderby’s original doubts proved to be remarkably prophetic. It got done, mostly, but in a perfunctory and unsatisfactory way as far as Chadwick was concerned, usually by the local forces who had only minimal briefing in the case. There was more than one provincial DI just dying to have a crack at his local rock star, bring in the dogs and the drugs search team, despite the fiasco of the Rolling Stones bust a couple of years ago, but asking a few questions about a poxy festival up north hardly excited anyone’s interest. These long-haired idiots might be stoned and anarchic, the thinking mostly went, but they’re hardly likely to be bloody murderers, are they?

Chadwick preferred to keep an open mind on the subject. He thought of the murders in Los Angeles, a story he had been following in the newspapers and on television, just like everyone else. According to the reports, someone had broken into a house in Benedict Canyon, cut the telephone wires and murdered five people, including the actress Sharon Tate, who had been eight and a half months pregnant at the time she was stabbed to death. Later that night, another house had been broken into and a wealthy couple had been killed in a similar way. There was much speculation about drug orgies, as the male victims had been wearing hippie-type clothing and drugs were found in one of their cars. There was also talk about a “ritualistic” aspect to the murders: the word PIG had been written in blood on the front door of Sharon Tate’s house, and DEATH TO PIGS had been written on the living room wall of the other house, also in blood, and HEALTHER SKELTER inside the fridge door, which the authorities took to be a misspelling of “Helter Skelter,” a Beatles song from The White Album. What little inside knowledge Chadwick had been able to pick up on the grapevine indicated that the police were looking for members of some obscure hippie cult.

It had not occurred to Chadwick that the crimes had anything in common with the Brimleigh Festival murder. Los Angeles was a long way from Yorkshire. Still, if people who listened to Beatles songs and called the police pigs could do something like that in Los Angeles, then why not in England?

Chadwick would have interviewed the musicians himself, but they lived as far afield as London, Buckinghamshire, Sussex, Ireland and Glasgow, some of them in small flats and bedsits, but a surprising number of them owned country estates with swimming pools or large detached houses in nice areas. He would have spent half his life on the motorway and the rest on country roads.

He had hoped that one of the interviewers might at least have sniffed out a half-truth or a full-blown lie, then he would have conducted a follow-up interview himself, however far he had to travel, but everything came back routine: no further action.

A lot of the bands whose names he had seen in connection with Brimleigh were playing at another festival, in Rugby, that weekend: Pink Floyd, the Nice, Roy Harper, the Edgar Broughton Band and the Third Ear Band. He sent Enderby down to Rugby to see if he could come up with anything. Enderby seemed in his element at the prospect of meeting such heroes.

Two of the bands at Brimleigh had been local. Chadwick had already spoken briefly with Jan Dukes de Grey in Leeds during the week. Derek and Mick seemed pleasant enough young lads beneath the long hair and unusual clothes, and both of them had left the festival well before the time of the murder. The Mad Hatters were in London at the moment but were expected back up north early in the following week, to stay at Swainsview Lodge, Lord Jessop’s residence near Eastvale, where they were to rehearse for a forthcoming tour and album. He would talk to them then.

It was half past two in the afternoon by the time DC Gavin Rickerd managed to make it over to Western Area Headquarters in Eastvale. Banks was due to sit in on the Nicholas Barber postmortem at three, but he wanted to get this out of the way first. He had rung Annie at Fordham, and they had given each other a quick update, agreeing to meet in the Queen’s Arms at six o’clock.

“Come in, Gavin,” said Banks. “How are things going in Neighborhood Policing? Teething troubles?”

“Busy. You know how things are with a new job, sir. But it’s fine, really. I like it.” Rickerd adjusted his glasses. He was still wearing old-fashioned National Health specs held together at the bridge with sticking plaster. It had to be a fashion statement of some sort, Banks thought, as even a poor DC could certainly afford new ones. The words “fashion statement” and Gavin Rickerd hardly seemed a match made in heaven, so maybe it was an antifashion statement. He wore a bottle-green corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches and brown corduroy trousers a bit worse for wear. His tie was awkwardly fastened and his shirt collar bent up on the left side. From the top pocket of his jacket poked an array of pens and pencils. His face had the pasty look of someone who didn’t get outside very much. Banks remembered the way Kev Templeton used to take the piss out of him mercilessly. He had a cruel streak, did Templeton.

“Miss the thrust and parry of policing on the edge?” Banks asked.

“Not really, sir. I’m quite happy where I am.”

“Ah, right.” Banks had never really known how to talk to Richard. Rumor had it that he was a bona fide trainspotter, that he actually stood out at the end of cold station platforms in Darlington, Leeds or York, come rain or shine, scanning the horizon for the Royal Scotsman, the Mallard, or whatever they called it these days. Nobody had actually seen him, but the rumor persisted. He also had a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and was reputed to be a whiz at puzzles and computer games. Banks thought he was probably wasted in Eastvale and should have been recruited by MI5 years ago, but at the moment their loss was his gain.

One thing Banks did know for certain was that Gavin Rickerd was a fanatical cricket fan, so he chatted briefly about England’s recent Ashes victory, then he said, “Got a little job for you, Gavin.”

“But, sir, you know I’m neighborhood Policing now, not CID or Major Crimes.”

“Yes,” said Banks. “But what’s in a name?”

“It’s not just the name, sir, it’s a serious job.”

“I’m sure it is. That’s not in dispute.”

“The superintendent won’t like it, sir.” Rickerd was starting to look decidedly nervous, glancing over his shoulder at the door.

“Been warned off, have you?”

Rickerd adjusted his glasses again.

“Okay,” Banks said. “I understand. I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble. You can go. It’s just that I’ve got this puzzle I thought you might be interested in. At least, I think it could be a puzzle. Whatever it is, though, we need to know.”

“Puzzle?” said Rickerd, licking his lips. “What sort of puzzle?”

“Well, I was thinking maybe you could have a look at it in your spare time, you know. That way the super can’t complain, can she?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Like a little peek?”

“Well, maybe I could just have a quick look.”

“Good lad.” Banks handed him a photocopy of the page from Nick Barber’s copy of Atonement he had got from the SOCOs.

Rickerd squinted at it, turned it this way and that, and put it down on the desk. “Interesting,” he said.

“I was thinking that you like mathematical puzzles and things, know a bit about them. Maybe you could take it away with you and play around with it?”

“I can take it away?”

“Of course. It’s only a photocopy.”

“All right, then,” said Rickerd, evidently charged with a new sense of importance. He folded the piece of paper carefully into a square and slipped it into the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket.

“You’ll get back to me?” said Banks.

“Soon as I’ve got something. I can’t promise, mind you. It might just be some random gibberish.”

“I understand,” said Banks. “Do your best.”

Rickerd left the office, pausing to glance both ways down the corridor before he dashed off toward the Neighborhood Policing offices. Banks glanced at his watch and pulled a face. Time to go to the postmortem.

Saturday, 13th September, 1969

Chadwick was hoping to get away early, as he and Geoff Broome had tickets for Leeds United’s away game with Sheffield Wednesday. At about ten o’clock, though, a woman who said she lived on the Raynville Estate rang to say she thought she recognized the victim. She didn’t want to commit herself, saying the sketch in the paper wasn’t a very good likeness, but she thought she knew who it was. Out of respect for the victim, the newspapers hadn’t published a photograph of the dead girl, only an artist’s impression, but Chadwick had a photo in his briefcase.

This wasn’t the kind of interview he could delegate to an underling like the inexperienced Simon Bradley, let alone the scruffy Keith Enderby, so before he left he rang Geoff Broome with his apologies. There would be no problem getting rid of the ticket somewhere in Brotherton House, Geoff told him. After that, Chadwick went down to his aging Vauxhall Victor and drove out to Armley, rain streaking his windscreen.

The Raynville Estate was not among the best of the newer Leeds council estates, and it looked even worse in the rain. Built only a few years ago, it had quickly gone to seed, and those who could afford to, avoided it. Chadwick and Janet had lived nearby, on the Astons, until they had managed to save up and buy their semi just off Church Road, in the shadow of St. Bartholomew’s, Armley, when Chadwick was promoted to detective inspector four years ago.

The caller, who had given her name as Carol Wilkinson, lived in a second-story maisonette on Raynville Walk. The stairs smelled of urine and the walls were covered with filthy graffiti, a phenomenon that was starting to spring up in places like this. It was just another sign of the degeneracy of modern youth as far as Chadwick was concerned: no respect for property. When he knocked on the faded green door, a young woman holding a baby in one arm opened it for him, the chain still on.

“Are you the policeman?”

“Detective Inspector Chadwick.” He showed his warrant card.

She glanced at it, then looked Chadwick up and down before unfastening the chain. “Come in. You’ll have to excuse the mess.”

And he did. She deposited the baby in a wooden playpen in a living room untidy with toys, discarded clothing and magazines. It – he couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy – stood and gawped at him for a moment, then started rattling the bars and crying. The cream carpet was stained with only God knew what, and the room smelled of unwashed nappies and warm milk. A television set stood in one corner, and a radio was playing somewhere: Kenny Everett. Chadwick only knew who it was because Yvonne liked to listen to him, and he recognized the inane patter and the clumsy attempts at humor. When it came to radio, Chadwick preferred quiz programs and news.

He took the chair the woman offered, giving it a quick once-over to make sure it was clean, and plucking at the crease in his trousers before he sat. The maisonette had a small balcony, but there were no chairs outside. Chadwick imagined the woman had to be careful because of her baby. More than once a young child had crawled onto a balcony and fallen off, despite the guardrail.

Trying to distance himself from the noise, the smell and the mess, Chadwick focused on the woman as she sat down opposite him and lit a cigarette. She was pale and careworn, wearing a baggy fawn cardigan and shapeless checked slacks. Dirty blond hair hung down to her shoulders. She might have been fifteen or thirty.

“You said on the phone that you think you know the woman whose picture was in the paper?”

“I think so,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure. That’s why I took so long to ring you. I had to think about it.”

“Are you sure now?”

“Well, no, not really. I mean, her hair was different and everything. It’s just…”

“What?”

“Something about her, that’s all.”

Chadwick opened his briefcase and took out the photograph of the dead girl, head and shoulders. He warned Carol what to expect, and she seemed to brace herself, drawing an exceptionally deep lungful of smoke. When she looked at the photo, she put her hand to her chest. Slowly, she let the smoke out. “I’ve never seen a dead person before,” she said.

“Do you recognize her?”

She passed the photo back and nodded. “Funnily enough, this looks more like her than the drawing, even though she is dead.”

“Do you know who she is?”

“Yes. I think it’s Linda. Linda Lofthouse.”

“How did you know her?”

“We went to school together.” She jerked her head in a generally northern direction. “Sandford Girls’. She was in the same class as me.” At least the victim was local, then, which made the investigation a lot easier. Still, it made perfect sense. While many young people would have made the pilgrimage from all parts of the country to the Brimleigh Festival, Chadwick guessed that the majority of those attending would have been from a bit closer to home – Leeds, Bradford, York, Harrogate and the surrounding areas – as the event was practically on their doorstep.

“When was this?”

“I left school two years ago last July, when I was sixteen. Linda left the same year. We were almost the same age.”

Eighteen and one kid already. Chadwick wondered if she had a husband. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, which didn’t mean much in itself, but there didn’t seem to be any evidence of male presence as far as he could see. Anyway, the age was about right for the victim. “Were you friends?”

Carol paused. “I thought so,” she said, “but after we’d left school we didn’t see much of one another.”

“Why not?”

“Linda got pregnant after Christmas in her final year, just before she turned sixteen.” She looked at her own child and gave a harsh laugh. “At least I waited until I’d left school and got married.”

“The father?”

“He’s at work. Tom’s not a bad bloke, really.”

So she was married. In a way, Chadwick felt relieved. “I meant the father of Linda’s child.”

“Oh, him. She was going out with Donald Hughes at the time. I just assumed, you know, like…”

“Did they marry, live together?”

“Not that I know of. Linda… well, she was getting a bit weird that last year at school, if you must know.”

“In what way?”

“The way she dressed, like she didn’t care anymore. And she was more in her own world, wherever that was. She kept getting into trouble for not paying attention in class, but it wasn’t as if she was stupid or anything, she even did okay in her O levels, despite being pregnant. She was just…”

“In her own world?”

“Yes. The teachers didn’t know what to do with her. If they said anything, she’d give them a right clever answer. She had some nerve. And that last year she sort of stopped hanging around with us – you know, there were a few of us – me, Linda, Julie and Anita used to go down the Locarno on a Saturday night, have a good dance and see if there were any decent lads around.” She blushed. “Sometimes we’d go to Le Phonograph later if we could get in. Most of us could pass for eighteen, but sometimes they got a bit picky on the door. You know what it’s like.”

“So Linda became a bit of a loner?”

“Yes. And this was before she got pregnant. Quiet. Liked to read. Not schoolbooks. Poetry and stuff. And she loved Bob Dylan.”

“Didn’t the rest of you?”

“He’s all right, I suppose, but you can’t dance to him, can you? And I can’t understand a word he’s singing about, if you can call it singing.”

Chadwick didn’t know whether he had ever heard Bob Dylan, though he did know the name, so he was thankful the question was rhetorical. Dancing had never been a skill he possessed in any great measure, though he had met Janet at a dance and that had seemed to go well enough. “Did she have any enemies, anyone who really disliked her?”

“No, nothing like that. You couldn’t hate Linda. You’d know what I mean if you’d met her.”

“Did she ever get into any fights or serious disagreements with anyone?”

“No, never.”

“Do you know if she was taking drugs?”

“She never said so, and I never saw her do anything like that. Not that I’d have known, I suppose.”

“Where did she live?”

“On the Sandford Estate with her mum and dad. Though I heard her dad died a short while ago. In the spring. Sudden, like. Heart attack.”

“Can you give me her mother’s address?”

Carol told him.

“Do you know if she had the child?”

“About two years ago.”

“That would be September 1967?”

“Around that time, yes. But I never saw her after school broke up that July. I got married and Tom and me set up house here and all. Then little Andy came along.”

“Have you ever bumped into her since then?”

“No. I heard that she’d moved away down south after the baby was born. London.”

Maybe she had, Chadwick thought. That would explain why she hadn’t been immediately missed. As Carol had said, the likeness in the newspaper wasn’t a particularly good one, and a lot of people don’t pay attention to the papers anyway. “Have you any idea what happened to the baby, or the father?”

“I’ve seen Don around. He’s been going out with Pamela Davis for about a year now. I think they might be engaged. He works in a garage on Kirkstall Road, near the viaduct. I remember Linda talking about having the baby adopted. I don’t think she planned on keeping it.”

The mother would probably know, not that it mattered. Whoever had killed Linda Lofthouse, it wasn’t a two-year-old. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Linda?” he asked.

“Not really,” said Carol. “I mean, I don’t know what you want to hear. We were best friends, but we sort of drifted apart, as you do. I don’t know what she got up to the last two years. I’m sorry to hear that she was killed, though. That’s terrible. Why would somebody do a thing like that?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Chadwick, trying to sound as reassuring as he could. He didn’t think it came over very well. He stood up. “Thanks for your time, and for the information.”

“You’ll let me know? When you find out.”

“I’ll let you know,” said Chadwick, standing up. “Please, stay here with the baby. I’ll let myself out.”

“What’s up with you, then?” asked Cyril, the landlord of the Queen’s Arms, as Banks ordered a bitter lemon and ice late that afternoon. “Doctor’s orders?”

“More like boss’s orders,” Banks grumbled. “We’ve got a new super. She’s dead keen and seems to have eyes in the back of her bloody head.”

“She’ll get nowt out of me,” said Cyril. “My lips are sealed.”

Banks laughed. “Cheers, mate. Maybe another time.”

“Bad for business, this new boss of yours.”

“Give us time,” said Banks, with a wink. “We’ll get her trained.”

He took his glass over to a dimpled copper-topped table over by the window and contemplated its unappetizing contents gloomily. The ashtray was half full of crushed filters and ash. Banks pushed it as far away as he could. Now that he no longer smoked, he’d come to loathe the smell of cigarettes. He’d never noticed it before, as a smoker, but when he got home from the pub his clothes stank and he had to put them straight in the laundry basket. Which would be fine if he got around to doing his laundry more often.

Annie turned up at six o’clock, as arranged. She’d been at Fordham earlier, Banks knew, and had talked to Kelly Soames. She got herself a Britvic Orange and joined him. “Christ,” she said, when she saw Banks’s drink. “They’ll be thinking we’re all on the wagon.”

“Too true. Good day?”

“Not bad, I suppose. You?”

Banks swirled the liquid in his glass. Ice clinked against the sides. “I’ve had better,” he said. “Just come from the postmortem.”

“Ah.”

“No picnic. Never is. Even after all these years you never get quite used to it.”

“I know,” said Annie.

“Anyway,” Banks went on, “we weren’t far wrong in our original suspicions. Nick Barber was in generally good health apart from being bashed on the back of the head with a poker. It fits the wound, and Dr. Glendenning says he was hit four times, once when he was standing up, which accounts for most of the blood spatter, and three times when he was on the floor.”

Annie raised an eyebrow. “Overkill?”

“Not necessarily. The doc said it needn’t have been a frenzied attack, just that whoever did it wanted to make sure his victim was dead. In all likelihood he’d have got a bit of blood on him, too, and blood’s hard to get rid of. It might give us something we can use in court if we ever catch the bastard. Anyway, there were no prints on the poker, so our killer obviously wiped it clean.”

“What do you make of it all?”

“I don’t know,” said Banks, sipping bitter lemon and pulling a face. “It certainly doesn’t look professional, and it wasn’t frenzied enough to look like a lovers’ quarrel, not that we can rule that out.”

“I doubt if the motive was robbery, either.” Annie told Banks more detail than she had given him over the phone about her conversation with Kelly Soames and what little she had discovered about Barber from her.

“And the timing is interesting,” Banks added.

“What do you mean?”

“Was he killed before or after the power cut? All the doc can tell us is that it probably happened between six and eight. One bloke left the pub at seven and came back around quarter past. The others bear this out, but nobody saw him in Lyndgarth. Banks consulted his notes. Name of Calvin Soames.”

“Soames?” said Annie. “That’s the barmaid’s name. Kelly Soames. He must be her father. I recognized him when he dropped her off.”

“That’s right,” said Banks.

“She said he’s always in the pub when she’s working. I know she was terrified of him finding out about her and Nick.”

“I’ll have a talk with him tomorrow.”

“Go carefully, Alan. He didn’t know about her and Nick Barber. Apparently he’s a very strict father.”

“That’s not such a terrible thing, is it? Anyway, I’ll do my best. But if he really did know…”

“I understand,” said Annie.

“And don’t forget Jack Tanner,” said Banks. “We don’t know what motive he might have had, but he had a connection with the victim, through his wife. We’d better check his alibi thoroughly.”

“It’s being done,” said Annie. “Ought to be easy enough to check with his darts cronies. And I’ve got Kev following up on all the blokes who left the pub between the relevant times.”

“Good. Now the tourist couple, the Browns, say they arrived at about a quarter to eight and thought they saw a car heading up the hill, right?”

Annie consulted the notes she had taken in the incident van. “Someone from the youth hostel, a New Zealander called Vanessa Napier, told PC Travers that she saw a car going by at about half past seven or a quarter to eight on Friday evening, shortly after the lights went off. She was looking out of her window at the storm.”

“Did she get any details?”

“No. It was dark, and she doesn’t know a Honda from a Fiat.”

“Doesn’t help us much, does it?”

“It’s all we’ve got. They questioned everyone in the hostel and Vanessa’s the only one who saw anything.”

“She’s not another one been shagging our Nick, too, has she?”

Annie laughed. “I shouldn’t think so.”

“Hmm,” Banks said. “There seem to have been more comings and goings between half past seven and eight than there were earlier.”

“Yorkshire Electricity confirms the power went out at seven twenty-eight p.m.”

“The problem is,” Banks went on, “that if the killer came from some distance away and timed his arrival for half seven or a quarter to eight, he can’t have known there would be a power cut, so it’s not a factor.”

“Maybe it gave him an opportunity,” Annie said. “They’re arguing, the lights go out, Nick turns to reach for his cigarette lighter and the killer seizes the moment and lashes out.”

“Possibly,” said Banks. “Though the darkness would have made it a bit harder for him to search the cottage and be certain he took away everything he needed to. Also, your eyes need time to adjust. Look at the timing. Mrs. Tanner showed up at eight. That didn’t give him much time to search in the dark and check Barber’s car.”

“He might have had a torch in his own vehicle.”

“He’d still have had to go and get it. There would’ve been no reason for him to be carrying one if he arrived before the power cut.”

“Does the electricity failure really matter, then?”

“I think we can assume that the killer would have done what he came to do anyway, and if the lights went out, that just gave him a better opportunity.”

“What about the Browns? Their timing is interesting.”

“Yes,” said Banks. “But do they strike you as the types to kill someone and then drop by the local pub for a pint?”

“It was dark. There was no electricity. Maybe the local was as good a place to hide as any.”

“What about blood?”

“Winsome checked after the lights came back on,” Annie said. “She didn’t see any signs, but they’d hardly have hung around till the lights came back on if they were hiding bloodstains. We could hardly strip-search everyone.”

“True,” said Banks. “Look, we’ve still got a long way to go. You mentioned that Nick Barber was a writer?”

“That’s what Kelly said he told her.”

“Who’d want to kill a writer?”

“There were plenty I wanted to kill when I was at school doing English,” said Annie, “but they were all dead already.”

Banks laughed. “But seriously.”

“Well, it depends what kind of writer he was, doesn’t it?” Annie argued. “I mean, if he was an investigative journalist onto something big, then someone might have had a reason to get rid of him.”

“But what was he doing up here?”

“There are plenty of cupboards full of skeletons in North Yorkshire,” countered Annie.

“Yes, but where to begin? That’s the problem.”

“Google?” suggested Annie.

“That’s a start.”

“And shouldn’t we be going to London?”

“Monday morning,” said Banks. “Then we’ll be able to talk to his employer, if we can find out who it is. You know how useless Sundays are for finding anything out. I’ve asked the locals to keep an eye on the place until then to make sure no one tries to get in.”

“What about next of kin?”

“Winsome sorted that, too. They live just outside Sheffield. They’ve already been informed. I thought you and Winsome could go and talk to them tomorrow.”

“Fine,” said Annie. “I was only going to wash my hair, anyway. Oh, there’s one more thing. About that book.”

“Yes?”

“It looks as if he might have bought it just over the road here. Kelly said she met him coming out of the secondhand bookshop.”

Banks consulted his watch. “Damn, it’ll be closed now.”

“Is it important?”

“Could be. It didn’t look as if the figures were written in the same hand as the price, but you never know.”

“We can ring the owner at home, I suppose.”

“Good idea,” said Banks.

“From the way you’re still sitting there, I assume you’re expecting me to do it?”

“If you would. Look, I’m sick of this bloody bitter lemon. As far as I’m concerned, we’re off duty, working on our own time, and if Lady Gervaise wants to make something of it, then good luck to her. I’m having a pint. You?”

Annie smiled. “Spoken like a true rebel. I’ll have the same. And while you’re getting them in…” She took her mobile phone from her briefcase and waved it in the air.

Banks had to wait until a party of six tourists, who couldn’t make up their minds what they wanted to drink, had been served, and when he got back with two foaming pints of Black Sheep, Annie had finished. “Well, he certainly didn’t do it,” she said. “Fair bristled at the idea of anyone writing anything but the price in books, even the blank pages at the back. Sacrilege, he said. Anyway, he remembers the book. It only came in the day before Nick Barber bought it last Wednesday, and he checks them all thoroughly. There was nothing written in the back then.”

“Interesting,” said Banks. “Very interesting indeed. We’ll just have to wait and see what young Gavin makes of it, won’t we?”

Saturday, 13th September, 1969

Yvonne sat upstairs at the front of a number 16 bus heading for the city center chewing on her fingernails and wondering what to do. Some clever sod had taken a marker to the NO SPITTING sign and altered it to read NO SHITTING. Yvonne lit a cigarette and pondered her dilemma. If she was right, it could be serious.

It had happened the previous evening, when her father came home late from work, as usual. He’d been taking something out of his briefcase when a photograph had slipped to the floor. He’d put it back quickly and obviously thought she hadn’t seen it, but she had. It was a picture of the dead girl, the one who had been stabbed on Sunday at the Brimleigh Festival, and with a shock, Yvonne had realized she recognized her: Linda.

She didn’t know Linda well, had only met her once and hadn’t really talked with her much. But the local hippie community was small enough that if you hung around the right places for long enough, you’d come across pretty much everyone in the scene eventually, whether at the Grove, the Adelphi, the Peel or one of the student pubs on Woodhouse Lane, in Hyde Park or Headingley. Even as far away as the Farmer’s Inn, where they had blues bands like Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack, Free and Jethro Tull on a Sunday night. You could also be damn sure that they’d all beg, borrow or steal to get to an event with a lineup like the Brimleigh Festival. So, when you thought about it, Linda being there wasn’t quite so much a coincidence as it appeared on the surface. The thing was, you didn’t expect to get killed there; it was supposed to be a peaceful event, a gathering of the tribes and a celebration of unity.

The bus lumbered down Tong Road, past the Lyric, which was advertising a double bill of last year’s Carry On Up the Khyber and Carry On Camping. What crap, Yvonne thought. It was a gray day, and light rain pattered against the windows. Rows of grim back-to-back terraces sloped up the hill toward Hall Lane, all dark slate roofs and dirty red brick. A couple of kids got on at the junction with Wellington Road, behind the Crown, by the flats, and took the other front seat.

They’d filmed part of Billy Liar there a few years ago, Yvonne remembered, while it was a wasteland of demolished houses before the flats were built. Yvonne had been about eight, and her father had brought her down to watch. She had ended up in one of the crowd scenes waving a little flag as Tom Courtenay drove through in his tank, but when she had watched the film, she couldn’t see herself anywhere.

The kids lit cigarettes, kept looking over at her and making cheeky remarks. Yvonne ignored them.

She had met Linda at Bayswater Terrace one evening during the summer holidays. She had got the impression that it was just a flying visit, that Linda used to live there for a while but had moved to London. Linda was really fantastic, she remembered. She actually knew some of the bands and hung around with lots of rock stars at clubs and other “in” places. She wasn’t a groupie – she made that clear – she just liked the music and the guys who played it. Yvonne remembered someone saying that one of the members of the Mad Hatters was Linda’s cousin, but she couldn’t remember which one.

Linda even played a bit of guitar herself. She had sat down that evening with an acoustic and played “As Tears Go By” and “Both Sides Now.” Not a bad voice, either, Yvonne had thought, a little in awe of her and that sort of luminous haze her long blond hair and the long white dress she wore created around her pale features. The guys were all in love with her, you could tell, but she wasn’t interested in any of them. Linda didn’t belong to anyone. She was her own person. She also had a great throaty laugh, which surprised Yvonne, coming from one who looked so demure, like Marianne Faithfull.

McGarrity had been there that night, Yvonne remembered, and even he had seemed subdued, keeping his knife in his pocket for once and refraining from muttering T. S. Eliot all evening. The guy they said was organizing the Brimleigh Festival, Rick Hayes, had also been present, which was how they managed to score some free tickets. He knew Linda from down in London and seemed to know Dennis, too, whose house it was. Yvonne hadn’t liked Hayes. He had tried to get her to go upstairs with him and got a bit stroppy when she wouldn’t.

That was the only time Yvonne and Linda had met, and they hadn’t talked much, but Linda had made an impression. Yvonne was waiting for her O-level results, and Linda had said something about exams not proving anything and the real truth of what you were was inside you. That made sense to Yvonne. Now Linda was dead. Stabbed. Yvonne felt tears prick her eyes. She could hardly believe it. One of her own. She hadn’t seen her during the festival, but that wasn’t surprising.

The bus carried on past the gasworks, over the canal and river and past the huge building site where they were putting up the new Yorkshire Post building at the corner of Wellington Street, then past the dark, high Victorian buildings to City Square, where Yvonne got off. There were a couple of new boutiques she wanted to visit and that little record shop down the ginnel off Albion Street might still have a copy of the Blind Faith LP. Her parents hadn’t let her go to the free concert in London’s Hyde Park last June, but at least she could enjoy the music on record. Later she was going over to Carberry Place to meet up with Steve and have a few tokes. A bunch of them were going to the Peel that night to see Jan Dukes de Grey. Derek and Mick were quite the local celebrities and they were like real people; they’d talk to you and sign their first LP cover, Sorcerers, not hide away backstage like rock stars.

Yvonne’s problem persisted, though: whether or not to tell her father about Linda. If she did, the police would be at Bayswater Terrace like a shot. Maybe Dennis and Martin and Julie and the others would get busted. And it would be her fault. If they found out, they’d never speak to her again. She was sure that none of them could have had anything to do with what happened to Linda, so why bring grief on them? Rick Hayes was a creep and McGarrity was weird, but neither of them would kill one of their own. How could knowing about Linda being at Bayswater Terrace in July possibly help the police investigation? Her father would find out who Linda was eventually – he was good at finding things out – but it wouldn’t be from her, and nobody would be able to blame her for what happened.

That was what she decided in the end, turning the corner into the wet cobbled ginnel; she would keep it to herself. There was no way she was going to the pigs, even if the chief pig was her father.