Piece of My Heart (24 page)

“As far as I know.”

“Had she fought or argued with anyone recently?”

“Not that I know. I doubt it, anyway.”

“Why’s that?”

“Linda didn’t like scenes or arguments. She was a peaceful person, easygoing.”

“Did anyone threaten her in any way?”

“Good Lord, no.”

“Was anybody bothering her?”

“No. The only thing that was at all upsetting her was Vic Greaves. They weren’t close or anything, but they
were
family, and on the two or three occasions we saw the Mad Hatters, he seemed to be getting worse. She thought he ought to be getting treatment, but whenever she mentioned it to Chris, he just said shrinks were government brainwashers and mental hospitals were prisons for the true visionaries. I suppose he had a point.”

“Did either you or Linda try to do anything about Greaves?”

“What do you mean?”

“Persuade him to get treatment.”

“Linda did once, but he refused point-blank.”

“Did you try to change Chris Adams’s mind?”

“It wasn’t his decision,” Tania said. “Look, nobody was going to be party to getting Vic Greaves certified. Simple as that.”

“I see,” said Chadwick. The decision didn’t surprise him after the time he had spent with the Mad Hatters. He would be talking to them again soon anyway. He opened the door and went into the hall. “Many thanks, Miss Hutchison.”

“No problem.”

“I must say you seem to be one of the most sensible people I’ve talked to since all this began.”

Tania gave him an enigmatic smile. “Don’t count on it,” she said. “Appearances can be deceptive.”

Thursday, September 18, 1969

Perhaps it was the spices he had smelled in Portobello Road that sparked it–they say smell is closest to memory–or maybe it was even going to see
Battle of Britain
after his visit to Tania Hutchison that brought it all back, but Chadwick awoke in his
hotel bed at three in the morning in a cold sweat. He couldn’t say that it was a dream, because it had actually happened, but he had buried it so deeply in his subconscious that when it rose up, as it did from time to time, it did so in a jumble of images so vivid they were almost surreal.

Buried under two bodies, mouth and nose full of sand on Gold Beach, the air all smoke and fire, bullets cracking and thudding into the sand nearby, blood seeping through his uniform, the man on top of him whimpering as he died, crying for his mother. Charging the bunkers with Taffy in Burma. Taffy wounded, his guts poking out, stumbling forward into the gunfire, diving into the bunker of Japanese soldiers, knowing he was going to die and pulling the pin on his hand grenade. Bits of people raining down on Chadwick: an eyeball, pieces of brain, blood and tissue.

And so it went on, a series of fragmented nightmare images from the Burmese jungle and the Normandy beaches. He not only saw and heard but
smelled
it all again in his dream: the gunfire, smoke, heat, tasted the sand in his mouth.

He feared that there would be no more sleep tonight, so he sat up, took the glass of water he had left on his bedside table and drank it down, then went to refill it. Still hours to go until dawn. And these were the worst hours, the hours when his fears got the better of him. The only solution was to get up and do something to take his mind off it all. He wasn’t going to go walking around King’s Cross at this hour in the morning, so he turned on the bedside light, took Alistair MacLean’s
Force Ten from Navarone
out of his overnight bag and settled back on the pillows to read. By the time the pale glow of sunrise started spreading over the city from the east, his book had fallen on his chest and he was snoring quietly in a dreamless sleep.

11

I
n a village like Lyndgarth, Banks knew, the best way to find out about any resident was to ask at the local pub or at the post office. In the case of Vic Greaves, it was Jean Murray, in the post office-cum-newsagents, who directed him towards the last cottage on the left on Darlington Road, telling him that “Mr. Jones” had been there for a few years now, was de finitely a bit strange, not quite right in the head, but that he seemed harmless enough, and he always paid his newspaper bill on time. He was a bit of a recluse, she added, and he didn’t like visitors. She had no idea what he did with his time, but there had been no complaints about him. Her daughter, Susan, added that he had few visitors, but she had seen a couple of cars come and go. She couldn’t describe them.

Banks left his car parked on the cobbles by the village green. It was another miserable day, with wind and rain from the east, for a change, and the flagstone roofs of the houses looked as dark green as moss pools. Bare tree branches waved beyond the TV aerials, and beyond them lay the washed-out backdrop of a dishwater-grey sky.

At the top right of the village green between the old Burgundy Hotel and the dark, squat Methodist chapel, a
narrow lane led down towards a wooded beck. On each side was a terrace of small, one-up one-down limestone cottages, once used to house farm labourers. Banks stood for a moment in front of the end one on the left and listened. He could hear no signs of life, see no lights. The downstairs curtains were closed, but the upstairs ones were open, as were the windows.

Finally, he knocked on the door.

Nothing happened, so he knocked again, harder this time.

When it seemed that no one was going to answer, the door opened and a figure stood there, looking anxious. It was hard to say whether it was Vic Greaves or not, as Banks only had the old group photographs to go by, when Greaves had been a promising twenty-something rock star. Now he must be in his late fifties, Banks thought, but he looked much older. Round-shouldered with a sagging stomach the size of a football, he wore a black T-shirt with a silver Harley Davidson on the front, baggy jeans and no shoes or socks. His eyes were bruised and hollow, his dry skin pale and lined. He was either bald or shaved his head regularly, and that accentuated the boniness of his cheeks and the caverns of his eyes. He looked ill to Banks, and light years from the pretty young boy all the girls adored, who had set the Mad Hatters’ career in motion.

“I’m looking for Vic Greaves,” Banks said.

“He’s not here today,” the man said, his expression unchanging.

“Are you sure?” Banks asked.

This seemed to puzzle the man and cause him some distress. “He might have been. He might have been, if he hadn’t been trying to go home. But his car’s broken down. The wheels won’t work.”

“Pardon?”

Suddenly, the man smiled, revealing a mouthful of stained and crooked teeth, with the odd gap here and there, and said, “He’s nothing to do with me.” Then he turned and walked back inside the house, leaving the door wide open. Puzzled, Banks followed him. The door led straight into the front room, the same as it did in Banks’s own cottage. Because the curtains were closed, the downstairs was in semi-darkness, but even in the poor light Banks could see that the room was cluttered with piles of books, newspapers and magazines. There was a slight odour of sour milk about the place, and of cheese that has been left out of the fridge too long, but a better smell mingled with it: olive oil, garlic and herbs.

Banks followed the man through to the back, which was the kitchen, where a bit more light filtered in through the grimy windows and past half-open floral curtains. Inside, the place was spotlessly clean and neat, all the pots and pans gleaming on their wall hooks, dishes and cups sparkling in their glass-fronted cupboards. Whatever Greaves’s problem was–and Banks believed he was Greaves–it didn’t stop him from taking care of his home better than most bachelors Banks had known. The man stood with his back to Banks, stirring a pot on the gas range.

“Are you Vic Greaves?” Banks asked.

No answer.

“Look,” said Banks, “I’m a police officer. DCI Banks. Alan, my name is Alan. I need to talk to you. Are you Vic Greaves?”

The man half turned. “Alan?” he said, peering curiously at Banks. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know any Alans. I
don’t
know you, do I?”

“I just told you. I’m a police officer. No, you don’t know me.”

“They weren’t really meant to grow so high, you know,” the
man said, turning back to his pot. “Sometimes the rain does good things.”

“What?”

“The hillsides drink it.”

Banks tried to position himself so that he could see the man’s face. When the man half turned again and saw him, he looked surprised. “What are you doing here?” he asked, as if he had genuinely forgotten Banks’s presence.

“I told you. I’m a policeman. I want to ask you some questions about Nick Barber. He did come and talk to you, didn’t he? Do you remember?”

The man shook his head, and his face turned sad for a moment. “Vic’s gone down to the woods today,” he said.

“Vic Greaves is in the woods?” Banks asked. “Who are you?”

“No,” he said. “He had to get some stuff, you know, he needed it for the stew.”

“You went to the woods earlier?”

“He sometimes walks there on nice days. It’s peaceful. He likes to listen to the birds and look at the leaves and the mushrooms.”

“Do you live here alone?”

He sighed. “I’m just passing through.”

“Tell me about Nick Barber.”

He stopped stirring and faced Banks, his expression still blank, unreadable. “Someone came here.”

“That’s right. His name was Nick Barber. When did he come? Do you remember?”

The man said nothing, just stared at Banks in a disturbing way. Banks was beginning to feel thoroughly unnerved by the entire experience. Was Greaves off his face on drugs or something? Was he likely to turn violent at any moment? If so, there
was a handy rack of kitchen knives within his reach. “Look,” he said, “Nick Barber is dead. Somebody killed him. Can you remember anything about what he said?”

“Vic’s gone down to the woods today,” he said again.

“Yes, but this man, Nick Barber. What did he ask you about? Was it about Robin Merchant’s death? Was it about Swainsview Lodge?”

The man put his hands over his ears and hung his head. “Vic can’t hear this,” he said. “Vic
won’t
hear this.”

“Think. Surely you can remember? Do you remember Swainsview Lodge?”

But Greaves was just counting now. “One, two, three, four, five…”

Banks tried to talk, but the counting got louder. In the end, he gave up, turned away and left. He would have to come back. There had to be a way of getting some answers from Vic Greaves.

On his way out of the village, Banks passed a sleek silver Merc, but thought nothing of it. All the way back to the station he thought about the strange experience he had just had, and even Pink Floyd’s “I Remember a Day” on the stereo could not dispel his gloom.

“Kev. What have you dug up?” Annie Cabbot asked, when a dusty and clearly disgruntled DS Templeton trudged over to her desk and flopped down on the visitor’s chair early that afternoon.

Templeton sighed. “We ought to do something about that basement,” he said. “It’s a bloody health hazard.” He brushed some dust off his sixty-quid Topman distressed jeans and plonked a collection of files on the desk. “It’s all here, ma’am,” he said. “What there is of it, anyway.”

“Kev, I’ve told you before not to call me ma’am. I know that Superintendent Gervaise insists on it, but that’s her prerogative. A simple ‘Guv’ will suffice, if you must.”

“Right, Guv.”

“Give me a quick rundown.”

“Top and bottom of it is,” said Templeton, “that there was no full investigation, as such. The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death, and that was the end of it.”

“No reservations?”

“Not so far as I can tell, Guv.”

“Who was in the house at the time?”

“It’s all in that file, there.” Templeton tapped a thick buff folder. “For what it’s worth. Statements and everything. Basically, there were the band members, their manager, Lord Jessop, and various assorted girlfriends, groupies and hangers-on. They’re all named on the list, and they were all questioned.”

Annie scanned the list quickly and put it aside. No one she hadn’t expected, though most of the names meant nothing to her.

“It happened after a private party to celebrate the success of their second album, which was called–get this–
He Whose Face Gives No Light Shall Never Become a Star
.”

“That’s Blake,” Annie said. “William Blake. My dad used to quote him all the time.”

“Sounds like a right load of bollocks to me,” Templeton said. “Anyway, the album was recorded at Swainsview Lodge over the winter of 1969–1970. Lord Jessop had let them convert an old banquet room he didn’t use, first into a rehearsal space and then into a private recording studio. Quite a lot of bands used it over the next few years.”

“So what happened on the night of the party?”

“Everybody swore Merchant was fine when things wound up around two or three o’clock, but the next morning the gardener found him floating on his back, naked in the pool. The post-mortem found a drug called Mandrax in his system.”

“What’s that?”

“Search me. Some kind of tranquilizer?”

“Was there enough to kill him?”

“Not according to the pathologist. But he’d been drinking, too, and that enhances the effects, and the dangers. Probably been smoking dope and dropping acid, as well, but they didn’t have toxicology tests for them back then.”

“So what was the cause of death?”

“offcially, he slipped on the side of the swimming pool, fell in the shallow end, smashed his head on the bottom and drowned. The Mandrax might have slowed down his reactions. There was water in his lungs.”

“What about the blow to the head? Any way it could have been blunt-object trauma?”

“Showed impact with a large flat area rather than a blunt object.”

“Like the bottom of a swimming pool?”

“Exactly, Guv.”

“What did the party guests say?”

“What you’d expect. Everyone swore they were asleep at the time, and nobody heard anything. To be honest, they probably wouldn’t have even noticed if they were all full of drugs and he just fell in the pool. Not much to hear. He was already unconscious from hitting his head.”

“Any speculation as to why he was naked?”

“No,” said Templeton. “But it was par for the course back then, wasn’t it? Hippies and all that stuff. Free love. Orgies and whatnot. Any excuse to get their kit off.”

“Who carried out the investigation?”

“Detective Chief Inspector Cecil Grant was SIO–he’s dead now–but a DS Keith Enderby did most of the legwork and digging around.”

“Summer, 1970,” said Annie. “He’ll be retired by now, most likely, but he might still be around somewhere.”

“I’ll check with Human Resources.”

“Kev, did you ever get the impression, reading through the stuff, that anyone put the kibosh on the investigation because a famous rock band and a peer of the realm were involved?”

Templeton scratched his brow. “Well, now you come to mention it, it did cross my mind. But if you look at the facts, there was no evidence to say that it happened any other way. DS Enderby seems to have done a decent enough job under the circumstances. On the other hand, they all closed ranks and presented a united front. I don’t believe for a minute that everyone went to sleep at two or three in the morning and heard nothing more. I’ll bet you there were people up and about, on the prowl, though perhaps they were in no state to distinguish reality from fantasy. Someone could easily have been lying to protect someone else. Or two or more of them could have been in it together. Conspiracy theory. The other thing, of course, is that there was no motive.”

“No strife within the band?”

“Not that anyone was able to put their finger on at the time. Again, though, they weren’t likely to tell the investigating officers about it if there was, were they?”

“No, but there might have been rumours in the music press. These people lived a great deal of their lives in the public eye.”

“Well, if there was anything, it was a well-kept secret,” said Templeton. “I’ve checked some of the stuff online, and at that time they were a successful group, definitely going places.
Maybe if someone dug around a bit now, asked the right questions…I don’t know…it might be different.”

“Why don’t you see if you can track down this Enderby, and I’ll have a chat with DCI Banks.”

“Yes, Guv,” said Templeton, standing up. “Want me to leave the files?”

“Might as well,” said Annie. “I’ll have a look at them.”

Thursday, September 18, 1969

Rick Hayes’s Soho office was located above a trattoria in Frith Street, not too far from Ronnie Scott’s and any number of sleazy sex shops and strip clubs. Refreshed by an espresso from the Bar Italia across the street, Chadwick climbed the shabby staircase and knocked at the glass pane on the door labelled
HAYES CONCERT PROMOTIONS
. A voice called out for him to come in, and he entered to see Hayes sitting behind a littered desk, hand over the mouthpiece of his telephone.