Piece of My Heart (39 page)

“I’ve read through the files and trial transcripts,” said Banks, “and apparently you weren’t worried about her?”

“No. We both knew we might go our separate ways. She knew I was heading off to Paris the next day, and she told me she’d probably stay with friends in Leeds, so I had no cause to worry. The very last thing you expected at a festival back then was a murder. This was before Altamont, remember, coming hot on the heels of successes at Woodstock and the Isle of Wight. Everyone was high on rock festivals. The bigger the better.”

“I appreciate that,” said Banks. “Did you see her talking to anyone in particular?”

“Not really. I mean, we talked to a lot of people. There was a sort of party atmosphere, and I must admit, it was a big thrill to be hanging out with the stars.” She gave Banks a coy smile. “I was still an impressionable young girl back then, you know. Anyway, Linda spent a bit of time with the Hatters, but she would, wouldn’t she? I mean, it was Vic got us the passes in the first place, and he was her cousin, even if they weren’t especially close.”

“Did anyone show unusual interest in her?”

“No. People chatted her up, if that’s what you mean. Linda was a very attractive girl.”

“But she didn’t go off with anyone?”

“Not that I knew of.” Tania leaned forward and pressed the plunger on the cafetière, then carefully poured two mugs. She
added milk and sugar to her own, then offered them to Banks, who declined. “Linda was in a very spiritual phase then, into yoga and meditation, Tibetan Buddhism. She wasn’t into drugs, and I don’t think she was into men all that much.”

“Did you actually see her leave the enclosure?”

“Not as such, no, but she told me she was going for a walk. I was heading to the front to see Led Zeppelin, and she said she needed a bit of space, she’d catch up with me later.”

“So where was Linda when you last saw her?”

“Backstage.”

“Was she with anyone?”

“A group of people.”

“Including?”

“I can’t really remember that far back. Some of the Hatters were there.”

“Vic Greaves?”

“Vic was around, but he took some acid after the show and…who knows where he was. Most people went round the front. It was a real crush in there, I do remember that. People trying to cop a feel in the crowd. I couldn’t say for certain who was there and who wasn’t.”

“So you didn’t see Linda head for the woods?”

“No. Look, you’re not saying Vic might have done this, are you? Because I don’t believe that. Whatever his problems, Vic was always a gentle soul. Still is, only he’s a bit disturbed. They caught the killer fair and square. They found his knife with Linda’s blood on it. I’d seen McGarrity with that knife myself, at Bayswater Terrace.”

“I know,” said Banks. “But he maintained at the trial that he was framed, that the knife was planted.”

Tania snorted. “He would, wouldn’t he? You of all people should know that.”

Banks had read all about McGarrity’s bumbling efforts at defending himself in court, and he had no doubts that the man had been his own worst enemy. But if Vic Greaves had killed his cousin Linda, it made much more sense of later events, including Nick Barber’s murder. Greaves certainly had a violent streak, as he had made evident at the cottage after Banks’s visit. Perhaps, Banks thought, Greaves wasn’t quite as crazy as he made himself out to be. But he couldn’t tell Tania this. She was partisan; she would stick by her friends. He sipped some coffee. It was strong and full of flavour.

“Delicious,” he said.

She inclined her head at the compliment. “Blue Mountain. Jamaica.”

“Did you know that Linda had an illegitimate child?”

“Yes. She told me she gave him up for adoption. She was only sixteen at the time.”

“And that child was Nick Barber?”

“He…what? My God! No, I didn’t know that. How…I mean, that’s an incredible coincidence.”

“Not really,” said Banks. “Plenty of people are adopted. Maybe Nick came by his love of music through Linda’s genes. I don’t know about that, but the knowledge did give him a particular interest in the Mad Hatters when he found out his birth mother was actually related to one of them. Then, when he found out she had been murdered, I should imagine his journalistic curiosity got him sniffing around that, too.”

“You don’t think it was anything to do with what happened to him, do you?”

“Only in that it set him on the course that led to his death. He probably wouldn’t have been writing that story and found out what he did–if, indeed, that’s what happened–if his mother hadn’t been Linda Lofthouse. But there again, maybe he would
have done it anyway. He was already a Mad Hatters fan. I just find it a curious detail, that’s all. You were at Swainsview Lodge the night Robin Merchant died, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Tania. Banks couldn’t be certain, but he thought he detected a certain reticence, or tightness, slip into her tone.

“What was he like?”

“Robin? Of all of them, he was probably the brightest and the most intellectual. The weirdest, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“He always seemed remote, unreachable, to me. You couldn’t touch him. You didn’t know where he was, what he was thinking. Yet on the surface he was always friendly and pleasant enough. He was well educated and well read, but musically a bit plodding.”

“What was he like with the girls?”

“Oh, they all fancied Robin. He was so pretty with that mass of dark curls and all, but I’m not sure…I mean, I don’t think he really cared that much for anyone, underneath it all. I didn’t know him long, but he never had any sort of relationship during that time. It was all rather mechanical for him. He took what he was offered, then cast them aside. He was more into metaphysical and occult things.”

“Black magic?”

“Tarot cards, astrology, eastern philosophy, the Kabbalah, that sort of thing. A lot of people were into it back then.”

“As they are again now,” said Banks, thinking of Madonna and all the other stars who had discovered the Kabbalah of late, not to mention Scientology, which had also been a powerful presence in the late sixties. If you just wait, everything comes around again.

“I suppose so,” Tania said. “Anyway, Robin was usually immersed in some book or other. He didn’t say much. As I said,
I didn’t really know him. Nobody did. His life outside the band was a mystery to all of us. If he had one.”

“Did Linda like him?”

“She said he was cute, yeah, but like I said, she was into other things at the time. Men weren’t really high on her list of priorities.”

“But she wasn’t off them completely?”

“Oh, no. I’m sure she’d have been interested if the right person had come along. She was just tired of the attitude some of the guys had.
Free love.
What they thought it meant was that they could screw any woman they wanted.”

“What about relations between Robin and Vic Greaves?”

“Nothing unusual, really. Robin seemed upset sometimes that Vic got more of his songs performed, but Vic was the better songwriter. Robin’s lyrics were too arcane, too dark.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, as far as I know. It was nothing more serious. Mostly they got along just fine.”

“And the rest of the band?”

“Same. There were disagreements, of course, as there always are when groups of people spend too much time cooped up together, but they weren’t at each other’s throats all the time, if that’s what you mean. I’d say, as things go in this business, as a group they were a pretty well-behaved bunch of kids, and I’ve seen some bad behaviour in my time.”

“And after you joined?”

“Everyone treated me with respect. They still do.”

“What were the other members like as individuals?”

“Well, Vic was the sensitive poet, and Robin, as I said, the intellectual and the mystic. Reg was the angry one. The working-class boy made good with a bloody great chip on his
shoulder. He’s over it now, more or less–I think a few million quid might have had a bit to do with that–but it was what drove him back then. Terry was the quiet one. He’d had a rough background. Apparently his father died when he was just a kid, and his mother was really weird. I think she ended up in an institution eventually. He was troubled, but he never really talked about it. He seems to be a bit better adjusted these days. At least he manages to smile and speak a civil word now and then. And Adrian, well, he was the joker, the fun-lover. Still is. Laugh a minute, Adrian.”

“And you?”

Tania raised her delicately arched eyebrows. “Me? I’m the enigmatic one.”

Banks smiled. “What about your relationship with Chris Adams?”

“It faded over time. It’s hard to keep a relationship going, the punishing schedule we had those first two or three years. We were touring or recording constantly. But we’re still friends, have been ever since.”

“The night Robin Merchant drowned,” Banks said, “did you really expect the police to believe that you were all sound asleep in bed?”

She seemed taken aback by the question, but she answered without much hesitation. “They did, didn’t they? Death by misadventure.”

“But you weren’t all asleep
all
the time, were you?” Banks pressed, shooting in the dark, hoping for a hit.

Tania looked at him, her green eyes disconcerting. He could tell she was trying to size him up, figure out what he knew and how he might have found out. “It’s a long time ago,” she said. “I can’t remember.”

“Come off it, Tania,” Banks said. “Why did you all lie?”

“For God’s sake, nobody lied.” She shook her head, puffing on her third cigarette. “Oh, what the hell. It was just a lot easier that way. None of us killed Robin. We knew that. Why would we? If we’d said we were all up and about, they’d only have asked more stupid questions, and we were all a bit the worse for wear. We just wanted to be left alone.”

“So what really happened?”

“I honestly don’t know. I was drunk, if you must know.”

“Drugs?”

“Some of the others. I stuck to vodka. Believe it or not, I never did anything else, except for a few tokes once in a while. Anyway, it was a big house. People were all over the place. You couldn’t possibly keep track of one another even if you wanted to.”

“Were people out by the swimming pool?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t. If anybody saw Robin in there, then they knew it was too late to do anything for him.”

“So you just left him there until the gardener came the next morning?”

“You’re putting words into my mouth. I’m not saying that’s what happened. I didn’t see him there, and I don’t know for a fact that anyone else did.”

“But someone
could
have?”

“Of course someone could have, but what use is could have, especially now?”

“And someone could have pushed him in.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe things weren’t all as peachy as you say they were.”

Tania sat forward. “Look, I’ve had enough of this. You come into my house and call me a liar to my face…”

“I’m not the one calling you a liar. You’ve already admitted you lied to the police in 1970. Why should I believe you now?”

“Because I’m telling the truth. I can’t think of any reason on earth why any of us would have wanted Robin dead.”

“I’m just trying to find the connection between then and now.”

“Well, maybe there isn’t one. Have you thought of that?”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that. But put yourself in my position. I have one definite murder in September 1969, and though the killer was apparently caught and jailed, there’s still room for doubt in my mind. We have another death in June 1970, easily explained as an accident at the time, but now you tell me that people were up and about most of the night, maybe there’s some doubt about that, too. And the common factor to all of these: the Mad Hatters. And Nick Barber was going to write their story, specifically Vic Greaves’s story, and he made reference to a murder.”

Tania drew on her cigarette and thought for a moment. “Look,” she said, “I know when you put it like that, it sounds suspicious, but they’re all just coincidences. I was at that party when Robin died, and to my recollection there were no arguments. Everyone just had a good time and that was that. We all went off to bed–I was with Chris at the time–but it was hard to sleep, a hot night, and maybe people got the munchies, whatever, and wandered around, went to raid the fridge. I mean, I heard people around the place on and off. Voices. Laughter. Vic was tripping, as usual. Maybe some of the group even swapped partners. It happened.”

“You weren’t asleep the whole time?”

“Of course not.”

“And Chris Adams was with you all night?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, Tania.”

“Well, I…I mean, maybe not every minute of the night.”

“So you woke up and he wasn’t there?”

“It wasn’t like that. For crying out loud, are you trying to blame Chris now? What is it with you?”

“Believe it or not,” said Banks, “I’m just trying to get at the truth. Maybe it was a lark. Maybe someone was playing around with Robin beside the pool and he slipped and fell. An accident.”

“In that case, why does it matter now? Even if Robin wasn’t the only one by the pool at the time, if it was an accident anyway, why does it matter?”

“Because if someone feels threatened by the truth, and if Nick Barber was close to that truth, then…” Banks spread his hands.

“Couldn’t there be some other explanation?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Robbery?”

“Well, Nick’s laptop and his mobile were stolen, but that just supports the theory that someone didn’t want people to know what he was doing.”

“His girlfriend or something, then. A jealous lover. Aren’t most people killed by someone they know, someone close to them?”

“True enough,” said Banks. “And it’s an area we’ve been looking into, along with a drug connection, but we’ve had no luck there yet.”

“I just don’t see how the past could have had anything to do with it. It’s over. Judgments were handed down.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years as a detective,” Banks said, “it’s that the past is never over, no matter what has been handed down.”