Piece Of My Heart
Page 13
“Hard not to.”
“Were you there?”
“Nah. Not my cup of tea. Look, why are you asking all these questions?”
“A young girl was killed there,” he said. “Stabbed.” When Hughes said nothing, he continued, “We’ve good reason to believe that she was Linda Lofthouse.”
“Linda? But… she… bloody hell…” Hughes turned pale.
“She what?”
“She went off to live in London.”
“She was at Brimleigh for the festival.”
“I should have known. Look,” he said, “I’m really sorry to hear about what happened. It was a long time ago, though, me and Linda. Another lifetime, it seems.”
“Two years isn’t very long. People have held grudges longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Revenge is a dish that’s best eaten cold.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“Let’s suppose we start at the beginning,” said Chadwick. “You and Linda.”
“We went out together for a couple of years when we were fifteen and sixteen, that’s all.”
“And she had your baby.”
Hughes looked down at his oily hands in his lap. “Yeah, well… I tried to make it right, asked her to marry me and all.”
“That’s not the way I hear it.”
“Look, all right. At first I was scared. Wouldn’t you be? I was only sixteen, I didn’t have no job, nothing. We left school. Linda stayed at home with her mum and dad that summer and had the baby, and I… I don’t know, I suppose I brooded about it. Anyway, I decided in the end we should make a go of it. I had a job here at the garage by then and I thought… you know… that we might have had a chance, after all.”
“But?”
“She didn’t want to know, did she? By then she’d got her head full of this hippie rubbish. Bob Dylan and his stupid songs and all the rest of it.”
“When did this start?”
“Before we split up. Just little things. Always correcting me when I said something wrong, like she was a bloody grammar expert. Talking about poets and singers I’d never heard of, reincarnation and karma and I don’t know what else. Always arguing. It was like she wasn’t interested in a normal life.”
“What about her new friends?”
“Long-haired pillocks and poxy birds. I hadn’t time for any of them.”
“Did she chuck you?”
“You could say that.”
“And when you came back, cap in hand, she wanted nothing more to do with you?”
“I suppose so. Then she buggered off to London soon as she’d had the kid. Put him up for adoption. My son.”
“Did you follow her down there?”
“I’d had enough by then. Let her go with her poncy new friends and take all the drugs she wanted.”
“Did she take drugs when she was with you?”
“No, not that I knew of. I wouldn’t have stood for it. But that’s what they do, isn’t it?”
“So they stole her from you, did they? The hippies?”
He looked away. “I suppose you could say that.”
“Made you angry enough to do her harm?”
Hughes stood so violently that his chair tipped over. “What are you getting at? Are you trying to say I killed her?”
“Calm down, laddie. I have to ask these questions. It’s a murder investigation.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m not your murderer.”
“Got a bit of a quick temper, though, haven’t you?”
Hughes said nothing. He picked up the chair and sat again, folding his arms across his chest.
“Did you ever meet any of Linda’s new friends?”
Hughes rubbed the back of his hand across his upper lip and nose. “She took me to this house once,” he said. “I think she wanted me to be like her, and she thought maybe she’d convince me by introducing me to her new friends.”
“When was this?”
“Just after she left school. That summer.”
“Nineteen sixty-seven? When she was pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“We weren’t getting along well at all. Like I said before, she was weird, into all sorts of weird stuff I didn’t understand, like tarot cards and astrology and all that crap. This one time she was going to see some friends and I didn’t want her to go – I wanted her to come to the pictures with me to see You Only Live Twice – but she said she didn’t want to see some stupid James Bond film, and if I wanted to be with her I could come along. If I didn’t… well… she made it clear I didn’t have much choice. So I thought, What the hell, let’s see what’s going on here.”
“Do you remember where she took you?”
“I dunno. It was off Roundhay Road, near that big pub at the junction with Spenser Place.”
“The Gaiety?”
“That’s the one.”
Chadwick knew it. There weren’t many coppers in Leeds, plainclothes or uniformed, who didn’t. “Do you remember the name of the street?”
“No, but it was just over Roundhay Road.”
“One of the Bayswaters?” Chadwick knew the area, a densely packed triangle of streets full of small terraced houses between Roundhay Road, Bayswater Road and Harehills Road. It didn’t have a particularly bad reputation, but quite a few of the houses had been rented to students, and where there were students there were probably drugs.
“That’s the place.”
“Do you know which one?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I think it was the terrace. Or maybe the crescent.”
“Remember where the house was?”
“About halfway.”
“Which side of the street?”
“Don’t remember.”
“Was there anything odd about the place from the outside?”
“No. It looked just like all the others.”
“What color was the door?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Okay. Thanks,” said Chadwick. Maybe he could find it. It was frustrating to be so close but still so far. Even so, it was probably a cold lead. The students who had been there two years ago might have graduated and left town by now. If they were students.
“What happened?”
“Nothing, really. There were these people, about five of them, hippies, like, in funny clothes. Freaks.”
“Were they students?”
“Maybe some of them were. I don’t know. They didn’t say. The place smelled like a tart’s window box.”
“That bad?”
“Some sort of perfume smell, anyway. I think it was something they were smoking. One or two of them were definitely on something. You could tell by their eyes and the rubbish they were spouting.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t remember, but it was all ‘cosmic’ this and ‘cosmic’ that, and there was this awful droning music in the background, like someone rubbing a hacksaw on a metal railing.”
“Do you remember any names?”
“I think one of them was called Dennis. It seemed to be his place. And a girl called Julie. She was blowing bubbles and giggling like a little kid. Linda had been there before, I could tell. She knew her way around and didn’t have to ask anyone, you know, like where the kettle or the toilet was or anything.”
“What happened?”
“I wanted to go. I mean, I knew they were taking the mickey because I didn’t talk the same language or like the same music. Even Linda. In the end I said we should leave but she wouldn’t.”
“So what did you do?”
“I left. I couldn’t stick any more of it. I went to see You Only Live Twice by myself.”
There couldn’t have been that many hippies in Leeds during the summer of 1967. It might have been the “Summer of Love” in San Francisco, but Leeds was still a northern provincial backwater in many ways, always a little behind the times, and it was only over the past two years or so that the number
s had grown everywhere. The Leeds drugs squad hadn’t even been formed until 1967. Anyway, if there was a Dennis still living on Bayswater Terrace, it shouldn’t be too hard to find him.
“How often did you see her again?”
“A couple of times; then after the baby was born, you know, when I tried to make things up between us. Then she went down south and her bloody mother wouldn’t even give me an address.”
“And finally?”
“I got over her. I’ve been going out with someone else for a while now. Might get engaged at Christmas.”
“Congratulations,” said Chadwick, standing up.
“I’m really sorry about Linda,” Hughes said. “But it was nothing to do with me. Honest. I was here working all last weekend. Ask the boss. He’ll tell you.”
Chadwick said he would, then left. When he turned on the car radio he found that Leeds had beaten Sheffield Wednesday 2-1, Allan Clarke and Eddie Grey scoring. Still, he hadn’t missed the game for nothing; he now knew who the victim was and had a lead on some of the people she’d knocked around with in Leeds, if only he could find them.
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?”
“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?”