Piece of My Heart (16 page)

“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 Woolworths sleeping bag, and ours was blue and from Woolworths. 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 favour 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 towards 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 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, he 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.
Resipsa 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 neighbouring 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 shakeup 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 favour.

“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 lacklustre? And wasn’t Lucia just a little too shrill?”

Monday, September 15, 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.