Piece Of My Heart

by Peter Robinson

“Were they all backstage?”

  “At one time or another, if they weren’t onstage, yes.”

  “With guests?”

  “There were a lot of people.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know… maybe fifty or so. More. That’s including roadies, managers, publicists, disc jockeys, record company people, agents, friends of the bands, hangers-on and what have you.”

  “Did you keep guest lists?”

  “You must be joking.”

  “Lists of those who were given passes?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone keep track of comings and goings?”

  “Someone checked passes at the entrance to the backstage area. That’s all.”

  “And let in beautiful girls without passes?”

  “Only if they were with someone who did have a pass.”

  “Ah, I see. So our victim might not have been issued a pass for herself. In addition to beer, were there any other substances contributing to that general sense of well-being backstage?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. I was too busy. Most of the time I was running around like a blue-arsed fly making sure everything was running smoothly, keeping everyone happy.”

  “Were they?”

  “For the most part. You got the occasional pillock complaining his caravan was too small, but on the whole it was okay.”

  Chadwick jotted something down. He could tell that Hayes was craning his neck trying to read it, so he rested his hand over the words when he had finished. “Perhaps if we were to narrow down the time of death, do you think you’d be able to give us a better idea of who might have been backstage?”

  “Maybe. I dunno. Like I said, it was a bit of a zoo back there.”

  “I can imagine. Did you see her with anyone in particular?”

  “No. It might have been her or it might not have. I only got a fleeting glance. There were a lot of people. A lot of good-looking birds.” His expression brightened. “Maybe it wasn’t even her.”

  “Let’s remain optimistic, shall we, and assume that it was? Did the girl you saw have a flower painted on her right cheek?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I’m not even sure it was her. Lots of girls had painted flowers.”

  “Perhaps your security team might be able to help us?”

  “Maybe. If they remember.”

  “Was the press around?”

  “On and off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a matter of give and take, isn’t it? I mean, the publicity’s always useful and you don’t want to piss off the press, but at the same time you don’t want someone filming your every move or writing about you every time you go to the toilet, do you? We tried to strike a balance.”

  “How did that work?”

  “A big press conference before the event, scheduled interviews with specific artists at specific times.”

  “Where?”

  “In the press enclosure.”

  “So the press weren’t allowed backstage?”

  “You must be joking.”

  “Photographers?”

  “Only in the press enclosure.”

  “Can you give me their names?”

  “I can’t remember them all. You can ask Mick Lawton. He was press liaison officer for the event. I’ll give you his number.”

  “What about television?”

  “They were here on Saturday and Sunday.”

  “Let me guess – press enclosure?”

  “For the most part, they filmed crowd scenes and the bands performing, within strict copyright guidelines, with permission and everything.”

  “I’ll need the names of television companies involved.”

  “Sure. The usual suspects.” Hayes named them. It wasn’t as if there were that many to choose from, and Yorkshire Television and BBC North would have been Chadwick’s first guesses anyway. Chadwick stood up, stooping so he didn’t bang his head on the ceiling. “We’ll have a chat with them later, see if we can have a look at their footage. And we’ll be talking with your security people, too. Thanks for your time.”

  Hayes shuffled to his feet, looking surprised. “That’s it?”

  Chadwick smiled. “For now.”

  It was like a scene out of Dickens painted with Rembrandt’s sense of light and shade. There were two distinct groups in the low-beamed lounge, one playing cards, the other in the midst of an animated conversation: gnarled, weather-beaten faces with lined cheeks and potato noses lit by candles and the wood fire that crackled in the hearth. The two people behind the bar were younger. One was a local girl Banks was sure he had seen before, a pale willowy blonde of nineteen or twenty. The other was a young man about ten years older, with curly hair and a wispy goatee.

  Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked toward the door when Banks and Annie walked in, then the cardplayers resumed their game and the other group muttered quietly.

  “Nasty night out there,” said the young man behind the bar. “What can I get for you?”

  “I’ll have a pint of Black Sheep,” said Banks, showing his warrant card, “and DI Cabbot here will have a Slimline bitter lemon, no ice.”

  Annie raised an eyebrow at Banks but accepted the drink when it came, and took out her notebook.

  “Thought it wouldn’t be long before you lot came sniffing around, all that activity going on out there,” said the young man. His biceps bulged as he pulled Banks’s pint.

  “And you’ll be?”

  “Cameron Clarke. Landlord. Everyone calls me CC.”

  Banks paid for the drinks, against CC’s protests, and took a sip of his beer. “Well, Cameron,” he said, “this is a nice pint you keep, I must say.”

  “Thanks.”

  Banks turned to the girl. “And you are?”

  “Kelly,” she said, shifting from foot to foot and twirling her hair. “Kelly Soames. I just work here.”

  Like CC, Kelly wore a white T-shirt with “The Cross Keys Inn” emblazoned across her chest. There was enough candlelight behind the bar to see that the thin material came to a stop about three inches above her low-rise jeans and broad studded belt, exposing a flat strip of pale white skin and a belly button from which hung a short silver chain. As far as Banks was concerned, the bare-midriff trend had turned every male over forty into a dirty old man.

  He glanced around. A middle-aged couple he hadn’t noticed when he came in sat on the bench below the bay window, tourists by the look of them, anoraks and an expensive camera bag on the seat beside them. Several of the people were smoking, and Banks suppressed a sudden urge for a cigarette. He addressed the whole pub. “Does anyone know what’s happened up the road?”

  They all shook their heads and muttered no.

  “Anyone leave here during the last couple of hours?”

  “One or two,” CC answered.

  “I’ll need their names.”

  CC told him.

  “When did the electricity go off?”

  “About two hours ago. There’s a line down on the Eastvale Road. It could take an hour or two more, or so they said.”

  It was half past nine now, Banks noted, so the power cut had occurred at half past seven. It would be easy enough to check the exact time with Yorkshire Electricity, but that would do to be going on with. If Nick, the victim, had been killed between six and eight, then, had the killer seized the opportunity of the cover of extra darkness, or had he acted sooner, between six and half past seven? It probably didn’t matter, except that the power cut had brought Mrs. Tanner to check on her tenant, and the body had been discovered perhaps quite a bit sooner than the killer had hoped.

  “Anyone arrive after the electricity went off?”

  “We arrived at about a quarter to eight,” said the man in the bay-window seat. “Isn’t that right, darling?”

  The woman beside him nodded.

  “We were on our way to Eastvale, back to the hotel,” he went on, “and this is the first place we saw that
was open. I don’t like driving after dark at the best of times.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Banks said. “Did you see anyone else on the road?”

  “No. I mean, there might have been a car or two earlier, but we didn’t see anyone after the power went out.”

  “Where were you coming from?”

  “Swainshead.”

  “Did you see anyone when you parked here?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so. The wind was so loud and the branches…”

  “You might have seen someone?”

  “I thought I saw the taillights of a car,” the man’s wife said.

  “Where?”

  “Heading up the hill. Straight on. I don’t know where the road goes. But I can’t be certain. As my husband says, it was a bit like a hurricane out there. It could have been something else flashing in the dark, a lantern or a torch or something.”

  “You didn’t see or hear anything else?”

  They both shook their heads.

  A possible sighting of a car heading up the unfenced road over the moors, then; that was the sum of it. They would make inquiries at the youth hostel, of course, but it was hardly likely their murderer was conveniently staying there. Still, someone might have seen something.

  Banks turned back to CC. “We’ll need statements from everyone in here. Names and addresses, when they arrived, that sort of thing. I’ll send someone over. For the moment, though, did anyone leave and come back between six and eight?”

  “I did,” said one of the cardplayers.

  “What time would that be?”

  “About seven o’clock.”

  “How long were you gone?”

  “About fifteen minutes. As long as it takes to drive to Lyndgarth and back.”

  “Why did you drive to Lyndgarth and back?”

  “I live there,” he said. “I thought I might have forgotten to turn the gas ring off after I had my tea, so I went back to check.”

  “And had you?”

  “What?”

  “Turned the gas ring off?”

  “Oh, aye.”

  “Wasted journey, then.”

  “Not if I hadn’t turned it off.”

  That raised a titter from his cronies. Banks didn’t want to get mired any deeper in Yorkshire logic.

  “You still haven’t told us what’s happened,” another of the cardplayers piped up. “Why are you asking all these questions?” A candle guttered on the table and went out, leaving his gnarled face in shadow.

  “This is just the beginning,” said Banks, thinking he might as well tell them. They would find out soon enough. “It looks very much as if we have a murder on our hands.”

  A collective gasp rose from the drinkers, followed by more muted muttering. “Who was it, if I might ask?” said CC.

  “I wish I knew,” said Banks. “Maybe you can help me there. All I know is that his name was Nick and he was staying at Moorview Cottage.”

  “Mrs. Tanner’s young lad, then?” said CC. “She was in here looking for him not so long ago.”

  “I know,” said Banks. “She found him.”

  “Poor woman. Tell her there’s a drink on the house waiting for her, whatever she wants.”

  “Have you seen her husband tonight?” Banks asked, remembering that Mrs. Tanner had told him her husband was at a darts match.

  “Jack Tanner? No. He’s not welcome here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’m sorry to say it, but he’s a troublemaker. Ask anyone. Soon as he’s got three or four pints into him he’s picking on someone.”

  “I see,” said Banks. “That’s interesting to know.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” protested CC. “I’m not saying he’s capable of owt like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know. What you said. Murdering someone.”

  “Do you know anything about the young man?” Annie asked.

  CC was so distracted by her breaking her silence that he stopped spluttering. “He came in a couple of times,” he said.

  “Did he talk to anyone?”

  “Only to ask for a drink, like. And food. He had a bar snack here once, didn’t he, Kelly?”

  Kelly was on the verge of tears, Banks noticed. “Anything to add?” he asked her.

  Even in the candlelight, Banks could see that she blushed. “No,” she said. “Why should I?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Look, he was just a normal bloke,” CC said. “You know, said hello, smiled, put his glass back on the bar when he left. Not like some.”

  “Did he smoke?”

  CC seemed puzzled by the question, then he said, “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  “Did he stand at the bar and chat?” Annie asked.

  “He wasn’t the chatty sort,” said CC. “He’d take his drink and go sit over there with the newspaper.” He gestured toward the hearth.

  “Which newspaper?” Banks asked.

  CC frowned. “The Independent,” he said. “I think he liked to do the crossword. Too hard for me, that one. I can barely manage the Daily Mirror. Why? Does it matter?”

  Banks favored him with a tight smile. “Maybe it doesn’t,” he said, “but I like to know these things. It tells me he was intelligent, at any rate.”

  “If you call doing crossword puzzles intelligent, I suppose it does. I think they’re a bit of a waste of time, myself.”

  “Ah, but you can’t do them, can you?”

  “Does either of you have any idea what he did for a living?” Annie asked, glancing from CC to Kelly and back.

  “I told you,” said CC. “He wasn’t chatty, and I’m not especially the nosy type. Man wants to come in here and have a quiet drink, he’s more than welcome, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “So it never came up?” Annie said.

  “No. Maybe he was a writer or a reviewer or something.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, if he didn’t have the newspaper, he always had a book with him.” He glanced toward Banks. “And don’t ask me what book he was reading, because I didn’t spot the title.”

  “Any idea what he was doing here, this time of year?” Banks asked.

  “None. Look, we often get people staying at Moorview Cottage dropping by for a pint or a meal, and we don’t know any more or less about them than we did about him. You don’t get to know people that quickly, especially if they’re the quiet type.”

  “Point taken,” said Banks. He knew quite well how long it took the locals to accept newcomers in a place like Fordham, and no holidaying cottager could ever stay long enough. “That just about wraps it up for now.” He looked at Annie. “Anything else you can think of?”

  “No,” said Annie, putting away her notebook.

  Banks drained his pint. “Right, then, we’ll be off, and someone will be over to take your statements.”

  Kelly Soames was chewing on her plump pink lower lip, Banks noticed, glancing back as he followed Annie out of the pub.

  Monday, 8th September, 1969

  The newshounds had sniffed out a crime at about the same time that the incident van arrived, and the first on the scene was a Yorkshire Evening Post reporter, shortly followed by local radio and television, the same people who had no doubt been reporting on the festival. Chadwick knew that his relationship with them was held in a delicate balance. They were after a sensational story, one that would make people buy their newspapers or tune in to their channel, and Chadwick needed them on his side. They could be of invaluable help in identifying a victim, for example, or even in staging a reconstruction. In this case, there wasn’t much he could tell them. He didn’t go into details about the wounds, nor did he mention the flower painted on the victim’s cheek, though he knew that that was the sort of sensationalist information they wanted. The more he could keep out of the public domain, the better when it came to court. He did, however, get them to agree to let police look at the weekend’s footage. It would probably be a waste
of time, but it had to be done.

  When Chadwick was done at the field it was afternoon, and he realized he was hungry. He had DC Bradley drive him to the nearest village, Denleigh, about a mile to the northeast. It had turned into a fine day, and only a thin gauze of cloud hung in the sky to filter a little of the sun’s heat. The village had a sort of stunned appearance about it, and Chadwick noticed that it was unusually messy, the streets littered with wastepaper and empty cigarette packets.

  At first it seemed there was nobody about, but then they saw a man walking by the village green and pulled up beside him. He was a tweedy sort with a stiff-brush mustache and a pipe. He looked to Chadwick like a retired military officer, reminded him of a colonel he’d had in Burma during the war.

  “Anywhere to eat around here?” Chadwick asked, winding the window down.

  “Fish-and-chip shop, just round the corner,” the man said. “Should be still open.” Then he peered more closely at Chadwick. “Do I know you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Chadwick said. “I’m a policeman.”

  “Huh. We could have done with a few more of your lot around this weekend,” the man went on. “By the way, Forbes is the name. Archie Forbes.”

  They shook hands through the window. “Unfortunately, we can’t be everywhere, Mr. Forbes,” said Chadwick. “Was there any damage?”

  “One of them broke the newsagent’s window when Ted told them he’d run out of cigarette papers. Some of them even slept in Mrs. Wrigley’s back garden. Scared her half to death. I suppose you’re here about that girl they found dead in a sleeping bag?”

  “News travels fast.”

  “It does around these parts. Communism. You mark my words. That’s what’s behind it. Communism.”

  “Probably,” said Chadwick, moving to wind up the window.

  Forbes kept talking. “I still have one or two contacts in the intelligence services, if you catch my drift,” he said, putting a crooked finger to the side of his nose, “and there’s no doubt in my mind, and in the minds of many other right-thinking people, I might add, that this is a lot more than just youthful high spirits. Behind it all you’ll find those French and German student anarchist groups, and behind them you’ll find communism. Need I spell it out, sir? The Russians.” He took a puff on his pipe. “There’s no doubt in my mind that there are some very unscrupulous people directing events behind the scenes, unscrupulous foreigners, for the most part, and their goal is the overthrow of democratic government everywhere. Drugs are only a part of their master plan. These are frightening times we live in.”