Piece Of My Heart

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Soames farm was about half a mile up a narrow walled lane off the main Lyndgarth to Eastvale road, and it boasted the usual collection of ramshackle outbuildings, built from local limestone, a muddy yard and a barking dog straining at its chain. It also presented the unmistakable bouquet of barnyard smells. Calvin Soames answered the door and with a rather grudging good afternoon let Banks in. The inside was dim with dark low beams and gloomy hallways. The smell of roast beef still lurked somewhere in the depths.

“Our Kelly’s in the kitchen,” he said, pointing with his thumb.

“That’s all right,” said Banks. “It’s you I came to talk to, really.”

“Me? I told you everything I know the other night.”

“I’m sure you did,” said Banks, “but sometimes, after a bit of time, things come back, little things you’d forgotten. May I sit down?”

“Aye, go on, then.”

Banks sat in a deep armchair with a sagging seat. The whole place, once he could see it a bit better, was in some disrepair and lacked what they used to call a woman’s touch. “Is there a Mrs. Soames?” he asked.

“The wife died five years ago. Complications of surgery.” Soames spat out these last words, making it quite clear that he blamed the doctors, the health system, or both, for his wife’s untimely death.

“I’m sorry,” said Banks.

Soames grunted. He was a short, squat man, almost as broad as he was tall, but muscular and fit, Banks judged, wearing a tight waistcoat over his shirt, and a pair of baggy brown trousers. He probably wasn’t more than about forty-five, but farming had aged him, and it showed in the deep lines and rough texture of his ruddy face.

“Look,” Banks went on, “I just want to go over what you told us in the pub on Friday.”

“It were the truth.”

“Nobody doubts that. You said you left the Cross Keys at about seven o’clock because you thought you might have left the gas ring on.”

“That’s right.”

“Have you done that before?”

“He has,” said a voice from the doorway. “Twice he nearly burned the place down.”

Banks turned. Kelly Soames stood there, arms folded, one blue-jeaned hip cocked against the doorjamb in a graceful curve, flat stomach exposed. She certainly was a lovely girl, Banks thought again; she was fit, and she knew it, as the Streets would say. He’d been spoiled for lovely girls this morning, what with Brian’s Emilia turning up, too.

Should he have said something? Brian and Emilia obviously just assumed they were going to sleep together under his roof, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. His own son. What if he heard them? But what else could he have done? Made an issue of it? His parents, of course, would never have stood for such a thing. But attitudes changed. When he was young, he had left home and got a flat in London so he could sleep with girls, stay out late and drink too much. These days, parents allowed their kids to do all that at home, so they never left, had no reason to; they could have all the sex they wanted, come home drunk and still get fed and get their washing done. But Brian was only visiting. Surely it would be best just to let him and Emilia do what they usually did? Banks could imagine the kind of atmosphere it would create if he came on all disciplinarian and said, “Not under my roof, you don’t!” But the whole thing, the assumption, the reality, still made him feel uneasy.

Despite her cocky stance, Kelly Soames seemed nervous, Banks thought. After what Annie had told him about her exploits, he wasn’t surprised. She must be worried that he was going to spill the beans to her father.

“Kelly,” said Mr. Soames, “make a cup of tea for Mr. Banks here. He might be a copper, but we still owe him our hospitality.”

“No, that’s all right, thank you,” said Banks. “I’ve already had far too much coffee this morning.”

“Please yourself. I’ll have a cuppa myself, though, lass.”

Kelly slouched off to make the tea, and Banks could imagine her straining her ears to hear what they were talking about. Calvin Soames took out a pipe and began puffing at some vile-smelling tobacco. Outside, the dog barked from time to time when a group of ramblers passed on the footpath that skirted the farm property.

“What did you think of Nick Barber?” Banks asked.

“Was that his name, poor sod?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t say as I thought much, really. I didn’t know him.”

“But he was a regular in your local.”

Soames laughed. “Dropping by the Cross Keys for a pint every day or so for a week doesn’t make anyone a regular around these parts. Tha should know that.”

“Even so,” said Banks, “it was long enough at least to be on greeting terms, wasn’t it?”

“I suppose so. But I can’t say as I have much to do with visitors, myself.”

“Why not?”

“Do you need it spelling out? Bloody Londoners come up here buying properties, pushing prices up, and what do they do? They sit in the poncy flats in Kensington and just pull in the cash, that’s what they do.”

“It brings tourism to the Dales, Mr. Soames,” said Banks. “They spend money.”

“Aye. Well, maybe it’s all right for the shopkeepers,” Soames went on, “but it doesn’t do us farmers a lot of good, does it? People tramping over our land morning, noon and night, ruining good grazing pasture.”

As far as Banks had heard, absolutely nothing ever benefited the farmers. He knew they had a hard life, but he also felt that people might respect them more if they didn’t whine so much. If it wasn’t EU regulations or footpath access, it was something else. Of course, foot-and-mouth disease had taken a terrible toll on the Dales farms only a few years ago, but the effects hadn’t been limited to farmers, many of whom had been compensated handsomely. The pinch had also been felt by local businesses, particularly bed-and-breakfast establishments, cafés and tearooms, pubs, walking-gear shops and market-stall holders. And they hadn’t been compensated. Banks also knew that the outbreak had driven more than one ruined local businessman to suicide. It wasn’t that he had no sympathy for the farmers; it was that they often seemed to assume they were the only ones with any rights, or any serious grievances, and they had more than enough sympathy for themselves to make any from other sources seem quite superfluous. But Banks knew he had to tread carefully; this was marshy ground.

“I understand there’s a problem,” he said, “but it won’t be solved by killing off tourists.”

“Do you think that’s what happened?”

“I don’t know what happened,” said Banks.

Kelly came back with the tea, and after she had handed it to her father she lingered by the door again, biting her fingernail.

“Nobody around here would have murdered that lad, you can take it from me,” said Soames.

“How do you know?”

“Because most know you’re right. CC benefits from the holidaymakers, and so do most of the others. Oh, people talk a tough game, that’s Dalesmen for you. We’ve got our pride, if nowt else. But nobody’d go so far as to kill a bloke who’s minding his own business and not doing anyone any harm.”

“Is that your impression of Nick Barber?”

“I didn’t see much of him, like I said, but from what I did see he seemed like a harmless lad. Not mouthy, or full of himself, like some of them. And we didn’t even murder them.”

“When you came home on Friday to check on the gas ring, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

“No,” said Soames. “There were one or two cars on the road – this was before the power cut, remember – but not a lot. It was a nasty evening even by then, and most folks, given the choice, were stopping indoors.”

“Did you see anyone near the cottage where Nick Barber was staying?”

“No, but I live the other way, so I wouldn’t have.”

“What about you, Kelly?” Banks asked.

“I was in the pub all the time, working,” said Kelly. “I never left the place. You can ask CC.”

“But what did you think about Nick Barber?”

This was clearly dangerous ground, and Kelly seemed to become even more nervous. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. But Banks wasn’t worried about her. She didn’t know how far he was going to go, but without giving Kelly’s secret away, he wanted to keep his eyes on Calvin to see if there was any hint that he had known what was going on between his nubile daughter and Nick Barber.

“Don’t know, really,” said Kelly. “He seemed a pleasant enough lad, like Dad says. He never really said much.” She examined her fingernails.

“So neither of you knew why he was here?”

“Holiday, I suppose,” said Calvin. “Though why anyone would want to come up here at this time of year is beyond me.”

“Would it surprise you to hear that he was a writer of some sort?”

“Can’t say as I ever really thought about it,” said Calvin.

“I think he was mostly just looking for a secluded place to work,” said Banks, “but there might also be another reason why he was up here rather than, say, in Cornwall or Norfolk, for example.” Banks noticed Kelly tense up. “I don’t know if he was writing fiction or history, but it’s possible that, either way, he might have been doing some research, and there might have been someone he wanted to see, someone he’d been looking for with some connection to the area, maybe to the past. Any ideas who that might be?”

Calvin shook his head, and Kelly followed suit. Banks studied them. He thought himself a reasonable judge, and he was satisfied from the reactions and body language he had seen that Calvin Soames did not know about his daughter shagging Nick Barber, which gave him no real motive for the murder. No more than anyone else, anyway. Whether Kelly had a motive, he didn’t know. True, she had been working at the time of the murder, but she admitted to seeing Barber in the afternoon, and if the doctor was at all wrong about the time of death, he could have been dead when she left him. But why? They’d only known one another a few days, according to Annie, and they’d both had a bit of fun without any expectation of a future.

It would be good to keep an open mind, as ever, Banks thought, but for now his thoughts moved toward London and what they might find out from Nick’s flat.

Monday, 15th September, 1969

One thing that disappointed Chadwick as he riffled through the stack of Brimleigh Festival photographs on Monday morning was that they had all, except for a few obviously posed ones, been taken in daylight. He should have expected that. Flash doesn’t carry a great distance, and it would have been useless for shots of the crowd at night, or of the bands performing.

One photographer did seem to have got backstage, though; at least several of his photographs were taken there, candids. Linda Lofthouse showed up in three of them; the flowing white dress with the delicate embroidery was easy to spot. In one she was standing, chatting casually with a mixed group of long-haired people, in another she was with two men he didn’t recognize, and in the third she was sitting alone, staring into the distance. It was an exquisite photograph, head and shoulders in profile, perhaps taken with a telephoto lens. She looked beautiful and fragile, and there was no flower painted on her cheek.

“Someone to see you downstairs, sir,” said Karen, popping her head around his door and breaking the spell.

“Who?” Chadwick asked.

“Young couple. They just asked to see the man in charge of the Brimleigh Festival murder.”

“Did they, indeed? Better have them sent up.”

Chadwick glanced out of his window as he waited, sipping his tepid coffee. He was high up at the back and looked out over British Insulated Callender’s Cables Ltd. up Westgate toward the majestic dome of the town hall, blackened like the other buildings by a century of industry. A steady flow of traffic headed west toward the Inner Ring Road.

Finally, there was a knock at his door and Karen showed in the young couple. They looked a bit sheepish, the way most people would in the inner sanctum of police headquarters. Chadwick introduced himself and asked them to sit down. Both were in their early twenties, the young man with neatly cut short hair and a dark suit, and the girl in a white blouse and a black miniskirt, blond hair pulled back and tied behind her neck with a red ribbon. Dressed for work. They introduced themselves as Ian Tilbrook and June Betts.

“You said it was about the Brimleigh Festival murder,” Chadwick began.

Ian Tilbrook’s eyes looked anywhere but at Chadwick, and June fidgeted with her handbag on her lap. But it was she who spoke first. “Yes,” she said, giving Tilbrook a sideways glance. “I know we should have come forward sooner,” she said, “but we were there.”

“At the festival?”

“Yes.”

“So were thousands of others. Did you see something?”

“No, it’s not that,” June went on. She glanced at Tilbrook again, who was staring out of the window, took a deep breath and went on. “Someone stole our sleeping bag.”

“I see,” said Chadwick, suddenly interested.

“Well, the newspapers said to report anything odd, and it was odd, wasn’t it?”

“Why didn’t you come forward earlier?”

June looked at Tilbrook again. “He didn’t want to get involved,” she said. “He’s up for promotion at the Copper Works, and he thinks it’ll spoil his chances if they find out he’s been going to pop festivals. They’ll think he’s a drug-taking hippie. And a murder suspect.”

“That’s not fair!” said Tilbrook. “I said it was probably nothing, it was just a sleeping bag, but you kept going on about it.” He looked at his watch. “And now I’m going to be late for work.”

“Never mind about that, laddie,” said Chadwick. “Just tell me about it.”

Tilbrook sulked, but June took up the story again. “Well, the papers said she was found in a blue Woolworth’s sleeping bag and ours was blue and from Woolworth’s. I just thought… you know.”

“Can you identify it?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. They’re all the same, aren’t they?”

“I suppose you both… er… it was big enough for the two of you… you spent some time in it over the weekend?”

June blushed. “Yes.”

“There’ll be evidence we can match. You’ll still have to look at it.”

June cringed. “I don’t think I could. Is there…? I mean, did she…?”

“There’s not a lot of blood, no, and you won’t have to see it.”

“All right. I suppose.”

“But first give me a few details. Let’s start with the time.”

“We weren’t really paying attention to time,” said Tilbrook, “but it was late Sunday night.”

“How do you know?”

“Led Zeppelin were on,” said June. “They were the last band to play, and we went to see if we could get anywhere closer to the stage. We left our stuff, thinking if we did find somewhere, one of us could go back and get it while the other remained, but we couldn’t find anywhere; it was so crowded near the front. When we got back it was gone.”

“Just the sleeping bag?”

“Yes.”

“What else did you have?”

“Just a rucksack with some extra clothes, a bottle of pop and sandwiches.”

“And that remained untouched?”

“Yes.”

“Where were you sitting?”

“Right at the edge of the woods, about halfway down the field.”

It was close, Chadwick thought with a surge of excitement, very close. So the killer had walked two hundred yards through the dense woods to the edge of the field and found a sleeping bag. Had that been what he was looking for? He would certainly have known that plenty of people there had one. It would have been dark by then. The crowd would, for the most part, be entranced by the music, all their attention focused on the stage, and it would have been easy enough for a dark figure to pick up a sleeping bag, even if the owners had been sitting nearby, and slip back into the woods.

Putting it back on the field with a body in it would have been more difficult, of course, and Chadwick was willing to bet that someone had seen something, a figure dragging a bag of some sort, or carrying it over his shoulder. Why had no one come forward? Clearly they hadn’t found what they saw suspicious, or they simply wanted to avoid any sort of contact with the police. Drugs might have played a part, too. Perhaps whoever saw it was too far gone to comprehend what he or she was seeing. On the other hand, the killer might have waited until Led Zeppelin had finished playing and people started wandering home. Then it would have been easy to plant the sleeping bag. However it happened, the best thing the killer had in his favor was that not one of the twenty-five thousand people present would expect to see someone dragging a body in a sleeping bag over the grass.

There were risks, of course; there always are. Someone might also have seen him steal the bag, for example, and raised a hue and cry. But it was so dark that they wouldn’t have been able to describe him, and those hippies, in Chadwick’s experience, had a very cavalier attitude toward private property. Also, someone might have found the body while he was away. Even then, all he would have lost was the opportunity to try to disguise the crime, to make it look as if the girl had been killed in the sleeping bag on the field.

It was clear they weren’t dealing with a criminal genius here, but he had had luck on his side. Even if he hadn’t disguised the crime scene and someone had found the body in the woods, there was still no evidence to link it to him and the police would be exactly where they were now. Or at least where they had been before June Betts and Ian Tilbrook had come forward. It hadn’t taken long to debunk the misleading evidence about where the victim was killed, and now, just as Chadwick had hoped, the attempt to mislead had yielded a clue. They now had a much better idea of the time of the murder, if nothing else, but they still didn’t know what had happened to the knife.

“Can you be a bit more specific about the time?” he asked. “How long had the group been playing?”

“It’s hard to say,” said June, looking at Tilbrook. “They hadn’t been on long.”

“They were playing ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’ when we set off to see if we could find somewhere nearer the stage,” said Tilbrook, “and they were still playing it when we got back. I think it was their second number of the set, and the first was pretty short.”

Chadwick had no idea how long these songs lasted, but he realized he could probably get a set list from Rick Hayes, to whom he wanted to speak again anyway. For now, this would have to do. “Say between five past one and half past, then?”

“We didn’t have watches,” said June, “but if you say they started at one, then yes, it would have been about twenty minutes into the show, something like that.”

That would put the time at about one-twenty, which meant that Linda must have been killed between about one, when the band started, and then. He showed them her photograph. “Did you see this girl at any time?”

“No,” they said.

Then Chadwick showed them the pictures of Linda with others. “Recognize anyone?”

“Isn’t that…?” June said.

“It could be, I suppose,” said Ian.

“Who?” Chadwick asked.

“They’re from the Mad Hatters,” Ian explained. “Terry Watson and Robin Merchant.”

Chadwick looked at the photograph again. He would be talking to the Mad Hatters that afternoon. “Okay,” he said, standing up. “Now if you’d like to come to the evidence room with me, you can have a look at that sleeping bag.”

Reluctantly they followed him down.

“I know you have a train to catch,” said Detective Superintendent Catherine Gervaise early on Monday morning, but I wanted to have a quick word with you before you left.”

Banks sat across the desk from her in what used to be Gristhorpe’s office. It was a lot more sparsely decorated now, and the bookcases held only books on law, criminology and management technique. Gone were the leather-bound volumes of Dickens, Hardy and Austen with which Gristhorpe had surrounded himself, and the books about fly-fishing and drystone-wall building. One shelf displayed a few of the superintendent’s archery awards, alongside a framed photograph of her aiming a bow. The only true decorative effect was a poster for an old Covent Garden production of Tosca on the wall.

“As you probably know,” Superintendent Gervaise went on, “this is my first murder investigation at this level, and I’m sure the boys and girls in the squad room have been having a good laugh at my expense.”

“Not at-”

She waved him down. “It doesn’t matter. That’s not what this is about.” She shuffled some papers on her desk. “I know a lot about you, DCI Banks. I make a point of knowing as much as I can about the officers under my command.”

“A very wise move,” said Banks, wondering if he was in for even more of the obvious.

She gave him a sharp glance. “Including your penchant for cheap sarcasm,” she said. “But that’s not why we’re here, either.” She leaned back in her executive chair and smiled, her cupid’s-bow lips turning up at the edges as if she was ready to fire an arrow. “I’d like, if I may, to be completely frank with you, DCI Banks, on the understanding that nothing that’s said in here this morning goes beyond you, me and these four walls. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” said Banks, now wondering what the hell was coming next.

“I’m aware that you recently lost your brother under appalling circumstances, and you have my sincere commiserations. I am also aware that you lost your home, and almost your life, not too long ago. All in all, it’s been quite an eventful year for you, hasn’t it?”

“It has, but I hope none of that has affected my job.”

“Oh, but I think we can be quite sure that it has, don’t you?” She was wearing oval glasses with silver frames, which she adjusted as she looked at the papers on her desk. “Withholding information in a major investigation, assault on a suspect with an iron bar. Need I go on? But you don’t need much encouragement to go a little bit over the top, do you, DCI Banks? You never did. Your record is a patchwork quilt of questionable decisions and downright insubordination. Res ipsa loquitur, as the lawyers are fond of saying.”

So you can quote Latin, Banks thought to himself. Big deal. “Look,” he said, “I’ve cut a few corners, I admit it. You have to in this job if you’re to keep ahead of the villains. But I’ve never perjured myself, I’ve never faked the evidence and I’ve never used force to get a confession. I admit I lost it in London last summer, but, like you said, a personal tragedy. You’re the new broom, I understand that. You want to make a clean sweep. Fair enough. If I’m a transfer waiting to happen, then let’s get on with it.”

“What on earth makes you think that?”

“Maybe something you said?”

She regarded him through narrowed eyes. “You got on very well with my predecessor, Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe, didn’t you?”

“He was a good copper.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What I said. Mr. Gristhorpe was an experienced officer.”

“And he gave you free rein.”

“He knew how to get the job done.”

“Right.” Superintendent Gervaise leaned forward and clasped her hands on the desk. “Well, let me tell you something that may surprise you. I don’t want you to change. I want you to get the job done, too.”

“What?” said Banks.

“I thought that might surprise you. Let me tell you something. I’m a woman in a man’s world. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know how many people resent me because of it, how many are waiting in the wings just to see me fail? But I’m also ambitious. I see no reason why I shouldn’t make chief constable in a few years. Not here, necessarily, but somewhere. Maybe they’ll give me the position because I’m a woman. I don’t care. I’ve got nothing against positive discrimination. We’ve had it coming for centuries. It’s well overdue. My predecessor wasn’t ambitious. He didn’t care. He was close to retirement. But I’m not, and I still see a career ahead of me, a long career, and a great one.”

“And my role in all this is?”

“You know as well as I do that we’re judged by results, and one thing I’ve noticed as I’ve studied your checkered career, is that you do get results. Maybe not in the traditional ways, maybe not always in the legally prescribed ways, but you get them. And it may also interest you to know that there are relatively few black marks against you. That means you get away with it. Most of the time.” She sat back and smiled again. “When the doctor asks you how much you drink, what do you tell him?”

“Pardon?”

“Come on. This isn’t about drinking. What do you tell him?”

“You know, a couple of drinks a day, something like that.”

“And do you know what your doctor does?”

“Tell me.”

“He immediately doubles that figure.” She leaned forward again. “My point is that we all lie about things like that, and this” – she tapped the folders in front of her – “simply tells me that the number of times you got caught out in something not exactly kosher is the tip of the iceberg. And that’s good.”

“It is?”

“Yes. I want someone who gets away with it. I don’t want black marks against you because they’ll reflect on me, but I do want results. And, as I said, you get results. It looks good on me, and when I leave this godforsaken wasteland of sheep-shaggers and Saturday-night pub brawlers, I want to take a shining record with me. And that might be sooner than we think if the Home Office has its way. I assume you’ve been reading the newspapers?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Banks. Many of the smaller county forces, such as North Yorkshire, had recently been deemed by the Home Office as not up to the task of policing the modern world. Consequently, there was talk of them being merged with larger neighboring forces, which meant that the North Yorkshire Constabulary might be swallowed up by West Yorkshire. Nobody was saying what would happen to the present personnel if such a shake-up actually went ahead.

“You can give me that shining record,” Superintendent Gervaise went on, “and in return I can give you enough rope. Drink on duty, follow leads on your own, disappear for days without reporting in. I don’t care. But all the while you’re doing those things, they’d damn well better be for the sake of solving the case, and you’d damn well better solve it quick, and I’d damn well better get all the reflected glory. No slacking. Am I still making myself clear?”

“You are, ma’am,” said Banks, struck with admiration and awe for the spectacle of naked ambition unfolding before him, and working in his favor.

“And if you do anything over the top, make damn sure you don’t get caught or you’ll be out on your arse,” she said. Then she straightened the collar of her white silk blouse and leaned back in her chair. “Now,” she said, “don’t you have a train to catch?”

Banks got up and walked to the door.

“DCI Banks?”

“Yes?”

“That Opera North production of Lucia di Lammermoor. Don’t you think it was just a little lackluster? And wasn’t Lucia just a little too shrill?”

Monday, 15th September, 1969

After a meeting with Bradley, Enderby and Detective Chief Superintendent McCullen later on Monday morning, Chadwick invited Geoff Broome for a lunchtime sandwich and pint at the pub across from Park Lane College. Most of the students hung out in the slightly more posh lounge, but the public bar was Chadwick’s domain, and that of a few old-age pensioners who sat quietly playing dominoes over their halves of mild. With a couple of pints of Webster’s Pennine Bitter beside them, and a plate of roast beef sandwiches each, Chadwick brought Broome up-to-date on the Linda Lofthouse murder.

“I don’t know why you’re telling me all this, Stan,” said Broome, finishing his sandwich and taking out a packet of ten Kensitas, tapping one on the table and lighting it. “It doesn’t sound like a drug-related killing to me.”

Chadwick watched Broome inhale and exhale and felt the familiar urge he thought he’d vanquished six years ago when the doctor found a shadow on his lung that turned out to be tuberculosis and cost him six months in a sanitarium.

“Smoke bothering you?” Broome asked.

“No, it’s all right.” Chadwick sipped some beer. “I’m not saying it’s a drug-related murder, but drugs might play a part in it, that’s all. I was just wondering whether you might be able to help me find out who the girl’s contacts in Leeds were. You know that scene far better than I do.”

“Of course, if I can,” said Broome. As usual, his hair looked disheveled and his suit looked as if it had been slept in. All of which might have masked the fact that he was one of the best detectives in the county. Perhaps not good enough to detect that his wife had been having it off with a vacuum-cleaner salesman behind his back, but good enough to reduce significantly the amount of illegal drugs entering into the city. He also ran one of the most efficient networks of undercover officers, and his many paid informants within the drugs community knew they could depend on absolute anonymity.

Chadwick told him what Donald Hughes had said about visiting the house in one of the Bayswaters.

“I can’t say anything springs immediately to mind,” said Broome, “but we’ve had call to visit that neighborhood once in a while. Let me do a bit of fishing.”

“Bloke called Dennis,” said Chadwick. “And it’s maybe Terrace or Crescent. That’s all I know.”

Broome jotted the name and streets down. “You really think it’s not just some random nutcase?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Chadwick answered. “If you look at the crime, what we know of it, that’s certainly a possibility. Until we know more about the girl’s background and movements and whether she was drugged or not, for example, we can’t really say much more. She was stabbed five times, so hard that the knife hilt bruised her chest and the blade cut off a piece of her heart. But there were no signs of any sort of struggle in the surrounding grass, and the bruising around her neck is minimal.”

“Maybe it was a lovers’ quarrel? Lovers kill each other all the time, Stan. You know that.”

“Yes, but they’re usually a bit more obvious about it. Like I said, this has more deliberate elements. The killer stood behind her, for a start.”

“So she’s leaning back on him. She felt safe. What about her boyfriend?”

“Didn’t have one, so far as we know. She had an ex-boyfriend, Donald Hughes, but his alibi checks out. He was working most of the night on a rush job at the garage where he works, and he wouldn’t have had time to go anywhere near Brimleigh.”

“Someone else close to her, then?”

“I suppose there’s a chance she knew her killer,” Chadwick admitted, “that it was someone she felt familiar with, felt comfortable with. Why he did it is another matter entirely. But to find out any more we need to track down her friends.”

“Well, I can’t promise anything but I’ll see what I can do,” said Broome. “Good Lord, is that the time? Must dash. I have to see a man about a shipment of Dexedrine.”

“All go, isn’t it?”

“You can say that again. What’s next on your agenda? Why so gloomy?”

“I’ve got an appointment with their royal majesties the Mad Hatters this afternoon,” Chadwick said.

“Lucky you. Maybe they’ll give you a free LP.”

“They know what they can do with it.”

“Think of Yvonne, though, Stan. You’d be golden in her eyes, you met the Mad Hatters and got a signed LP.”

“Get away with you.”

“I’ll come back to you about the house,” Broome said, then left.

Broome’s cigarette butt still smoldered in the ashtray. Chadwick put it out. That made his fingers smell of smoke, so he went to the toilet and washed them before sitting down to finish his drink. He could hear a group of students in the lounge laughing over Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” on the jukebox, a song Chadwick actually quite liked when he heard it on the radio. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get a signed LP for Yvonne, he thought, then immediately dismissed the idea. A lot of good that would do for his authority, begging a bunch of drug-addled layabouts for their autographs.

Chadwick tried to picture the twenty-five thousand kids at the Brimleigh Festival all sitting in the dark listening to a loud band on a distant lit-up stage. He knew he could narrow his range of suspects if he tried hard enough, especially now that he had a more accurate idea of the time of the murder. For a start, Rick Hayes was still holding something back, he was certain of it. The candid photographs proved that Linda Lofthouse had been in the backstage area, and that she had talked with two members of the Mad Hatters, among others. Hayes must have known this, but he didn’t say anything. Why? Was he protecting someone? On the other hand, Chadwick remembered that Hayes himself was left-handed, like the killer, so if he knew more than he was telling…

Still, he admonished himself, no point in too much theorizing ahead of the facts. Imagination had never been his forte, and he had seen enough to know that the details of the murder did not necessarily give any clues as to the killer’s state of mind, or to his relationship with the victim. People were capable of strange and wondrous behavior, and some of it was murderous. He finished his pint and went back to the station. He would get DC Bradley to give the boffins a gentle nudge while he went out to Swainsview Lodge with young Enderby.