Piece Of My Heart

by Peter Robinson

  “Just asking if she was having a good time, that sort of thing. It was very casual. We only chatted for a couple of minutes. I didn’t even know that someone had taken a photo of us.”

  “Was she having a good time?”

  “So she said.”

  “Was anything bothering her?”

  “Not as far as I could tell.”

  “What was her state of mind?”

  “Fine. Just, you know, normal.”

  “Was she worried about anything, frightened by anything?”

  “No.”

  “Did you talk to her again after the photo was taken, later in the evening?”

  “No.”

  “See her?”

  “Only around, you know, from a distance.”

  “Did she have a flower painted on her cheek later?”

  Merchant paused for a moment, then said, “As a matter of fact, she did. At least, I think it was her. There was some bird doing body art in the enclosure.”

  Well, Chadwick thought, there went one theory. Still, it would be useful to track down the “bird,” if possible, and establish for certain whether she had painted the flower on Linda’s cheek. “How well did you know Linda?”

  “Not well at all. I’d met her in London a couple of times. Once when we were doing the album she got in touch with Vic through his parents and asked if she could sit in on the studio sessions with a friend. She’s interested in music – as a matter of fact we let her play a little acoustic guitar on one track, and her and her friend did some harmonies. They weren’t bad at all.”

  “What friend?”

  “Just another bird. I didn’t really talk to her.”

  “Did Linda ever go out with anyone in the group?”

  “No.”

  “Come off it, Mr. Merchant. Linda Lofthouse was an exceptionally attractive girl, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “There’s no shortage of attractive girls in our business. Anyway, she didn’t strike me as the sort to take up with a rock musician.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that she seemed like a decent, well-brought-up girl, just a little brighter than most and with broader interests than her friends.”

  “She had a baby.”

  “So?”

  “You have to sleep with someone to get pregnant. She did it when she was fifteen, so how can you tell me that on the strength of two meetings she wasn’t ‘that’ sort of girl?”

  “Call it gut instinct. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. She just seemed a nice girl, that’s all. Didn’t give off that kind of vibe. You get to recognize it, especially in this business. Take those three you saw when you came in.”

  “So Linda wasn’t going out with anyone in the group?”

  “No.”

  “What about the other groups at the festival?”

  “She might have talked to people, but I didn’t see her hanging around with anyone in particular for very long.”

  “What about Rick Hayes?”

  “The promoter? Yeah, I saw her with him. She said she knew him in London.”

  “Was he her boyfriend?”

  “I doubt it. I mean, Rick’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but he’s a bit of a loser in that department, and they weren’t acting that way toward one another.”

  Chadwick made a mental note. Losers in love often found interesting and violent ways to express their dissatisfaction. “Do you know if she had a boyfriend? Did she ever mention anyone?”

  “Not that I recall. Look, have you ever thought that it was something else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They might have thought that it was something other than murder.”

  “They?”

  “Figure of speech. Whoever did it.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “So I see. I don’t know. I’m just speculating. Not everyone sees the world the same way as you do.”

  “I’m coming to realize that.”

  “Well… you know… I mean, murder is just a word.”

  “I can assure you it’s more than that to me.”

  “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be offensive. But that’s you. I’m just trying to show you that other people think differently.”

  Chadwick was beginning to think he had wandered into a Wednesday Play. Desperate to get back to more tenable ground, he asked, “Do you know where she lived?”

  Merchant seemed to come back from a long way off and gather his thoughts before answering in a tired voice. “She had a room on Powis Terrace. Notting Hill Gate. That’s what she said that time she came down to the studio, anyway.”

  “You don’t know the number?”

  “No. I wouldn’t even know the street except when she said Notting Hill I asked her about it, because it’s a great neighborhood. Everyone knows Notting Hill – Portobello Road, Powis Square and all that.”

  Chadwick remembered Portobello Road from some leave he had spent in London during the war. “Expensive?”

  “Bloody hell, no. Not for London, at any rate. It’s all cheap bedsits.”

  “You said you met her a couple of times in London. When was the other time?”

  “A gig at the Roundhouse last year. October, I think it was. One of the ones Rick Hayes promoted. Again, she asked Vic to get her and a friend backstage passes and he delegated it to me.”

  “The same friend who sat in on the recording session with her?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, but, like I said, I didn’t talk to her. I can’t remember her name.”

  Chadwick stared out across the dale again. The tractor had disappeared. Cloud shadows raced across the fields and limestone outcrops as the breeze picked up. “Not much of a memory, have you, laddie?” he said.

  “Look, I’m sorry if I’m not sounding helpful,” said Merchant, “but it’s the truth. Linda was never part of the entourage, and she wasn’t a groupie. She got in touch with Vic exactly three times over the past two years, just to ask for little favors. We didn’t mind. It was no problem. She was family, after all. But that’s all there was to it. None of us went out with her and none of us really knew her.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Back to last Sunday. Where were you all between one and twenty past one that night?”

  Merchant flicked his cigarette end into the swimming pool. “I don’t really remember.”

  “Were you with the others listening to Led Zeppelin?”

  “Some of the time, yeah, but they’re not really my thing. I might have been in the caravan reading, or in the beer tent.”

  “That’s not much of an alibi, is it?”

  “I wasn’t aware I’d need one.”

  “What about the others?”

  “They were around.”

  “Your manager, Mr. Adams. Was he there?”

  “Chris? Yeah, he was somewhere around.”

  “But you didn’t see him?”

  “I don’t really remember seeing him at any particular time, no, but I did see him now and then in passing.”

  “So any one of you could have gone out to the woods with Linda Lofthouse and stabbed her?”

  “But nobody had any reason to,” Merchant said. “We didn’t hang out with her, didn’t really know her. I just got the passes for her, that’s all.”

  “Passes?”

  “Yeah, two.”

  “You didn’t say this before.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Who was the other pass for?”

  “Her friend, the girl she was with.”

  “The same one you saw her with at the Roundhouse and the recording session? The one whose name you can’t remember?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

  Merchant shrugged.

  “If you got her a pass, you must know her name.”

  “I didn’t look at it.”

  “Did you see her later, at the festival?”

  “
Once or twice.”

  “Were they together?”

  “The first time I saw them, yes. Later on they weren’t.”

  “What do you know about this girl?”

  “Nothing. She was a friend of Linda’s and that they sang together in clubs. I think they shared a pad or were neighbors or something.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “About the same age as Linda. Long dark hair, olive complexion. Nice figure.”

  “What time did you last see her?”

  “I don’t know. When Pink Floyd were on. It must have been close to midnight.”

  “And were the two of them together?”

  “I didn’t see Linda then, no.”

  “What was this other girl doing?”

  “Just standing around with a group of people drinking and chatting.”

  “Who?”

  “Just people. Nobody in particular.”

  So who was she? Chadwick wondered. And why hadn’t she reported her friend missing? Not for the first time he began to wonder about the mental faculties of the world he was dealing with. Didn’t these people care if someone stole their sleeping bag, or, worse, if someone close to them simply disappeared? He didn’t expect them to see the world as he did, with danger at every turn, but surely it was simple common sense to worry? Unless something had happened to her friend, too. He wouldn’t find that out by hanging around Swainsdale Lodge, he decided, and the thought of trying to talk to any of the others again brought on a headache.

  Chadwick thanked Robin Merchant for his time, said he would have to talk to Vic Greaves at some point when he was feeling better, then they went back inside. Enderby, looking pleased with himself, held out a copy of the Mad Hatters LP and asked Merchant if he would sign it. He did. The others were slouching in their chairs smoking and sipping drinks, Reg Cooper picking a quiet tune on his guitar, Vic Greaves apparently asleep on his sofa, tranquilized to the gills. The sound system was buzzing in the background. Chris Adams showed them out, apologizing for Greaves and promising that if there was anything else they needed, they should just get in touch with him, gave them his phone number and left them at the door.

  “Where did you get that?” Chadwick said in the car, pointing to the LP. “He gave it to me. The manager. I got them all to sign it.”

  “Better hand it over,” said Chadwick. “You wouldn’t want anyone to think you’d been accepting bribes, would you?”

  “But, sir!”

  Chadwick held his hand out. “Come on, laddie. Give.”

  Reluctantly, Enderby handed over the signed LP. Chadwick slipped it into his briefcase, suppressing a little smile as Enderby practically stripped the gears getting back to the road.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The MOJO office was a square open-plan area on the same floor as Q and Kerrang! magazines, accommodating about twenty or so people. There were two fairly large windows at one end, and two long desks equipped with Mac computers in various colors and stacked with CDs, reference books and file folders. Cluttered, but appealingly so. Filing cabinets fitted under the desks. Posters covered the walls, mostly blowups of old MOJO covers. The people Banks could see working there ran the whole gamut: short hair, long hair, gray hair, shaved heads. Dress was mostly casual, but there were even some ties in evidence.

  Nobody paid Banks any attention as John Butler, the editor he had come to see, led him to a section of desk close to the window. An empty Prêt A Manger bag sat among the papers on his desk, and a whiff of bacon hung in the air, reminding Banks that it was mid-afternoon and he was starving. He could feel his stomach growling as he sat down.

  John Butler looked to be in his late thirties and was one of the more casually dressed people in the office, wearing jeans and an old Hawkwind T-shirt. His shaved head gleamed under the strip lighting. There was music playing, some sixtyish piece with jangling guitars and harmonies. Banks didn’t recognize it, but he liked it. He could also hear the thumping bass of dance mix coming from round the corner. He thought it must be hard to concentrate on writing with all that noise going on.

  “It’s about Nick Barber,” said Banks. “I understand he was working on an assignment for you?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Poor Nick.” Butler’s brow crinkled. “One of the best. Nobody, and I mean nobody, knew more about late-sixties and early-seventies music than Nick, especially the Mad Hatters. He’s a great loss to the entire music community.”

  “It’s my job to find out who killed him,” said Banks.

  “I understand. Any help I can give, of course… though I don’t see how.”

  “What was Nick Barber’s assignment?”

  “He was doing a big feature on the Mad Hatters,” said Butler. “More specifically, on Vic Greaves, the keyboards player. Next year is the fortieth anniversary of when the band was formed, and they’re re-forming for a big concert tour.”

  Banks had heard of the Mad Hatters. Not many people hadn’t. They had rebuilt themselves from the ashes of the sixties in a way that few other bands had, except perhaps Fleetwood Mac after Peter Green, and Pink Floyd after Syd Barrett left. But not without tremendous cost, as Banks recalled. “Where are they now?” he asked.

  “All over the place. Most of them live in L.A.”

  “Vic Greaves disappeared years ago, didn’t he?” Banks said.

  “That’s right. Nick had found him.”

  “How did he manage that?”

  “He protected his sources pretty well, but I’d say most likely through a rental agency or an estate agent. He had his contacts. Vic Greaves doesn’t go to extraordinary lengths to stay anonymous, he’s just a recluse and he doesn’t advertise his presence. I mean, he’s been found before. The problem is that no one can ever get much out of him so they give up, except maybe some of the weirdos who see him as a sort of cult figure, which is why he guards his privacy to the extent that he does, or Chris Adams does. Anyway, however Nick did it, you can guarantee it wouldn’t be through Adams, the manager.”

  “Why not?”

  “Adams is very protective of Greaves. Has been ever since the breakdown. They’re old friends, apparently, go back to school days.”

  “Where did Nick find Greaves?”

  “In North Yorkshire. The Hatters always had a strong connection with Yorkshire through Lord Jessop and Swainsview Lodge. Besides, Vic and Reg Cooper, the lead guitarist, were both local lads. Met the others at the University of Leeds.”

  “North Yorkshire? How long has he been living there?”

  “Dunno,” said Butler. “Nick didn’t say.”

  So the object of Nick Barber’s pilgrimage had been right under his nose all the time, and he had never guessed. Well, why would he? If you wanted to live as a hermit in the Dales, it could be done. Now Banks had a glimmer of a memory. Something that he might have guessed brought Nick Barber to Swainsdale. “Help me here,” he said. “I didn’t grow up in the area, and I wasn’t there at the time, but as far as I can remember, there was some other connection with the group, wasn’t there?”

  “Robin Merchant, the bass player.”

  “He drowned, didn’t he?”

  “Indeed he did. Drowned in a swimming pool about a year after Brian Jones did exactly the same thing. June 1970. Tragic business.”

  “And that swimming pool was at Swainsview Lodge,” said Banks. “Now I remember.” He was surprised at himself for not getting the connection earlier, but when it came down to it, although he knew that Brian Jones had also died in a swimming pool, he didn’t know where that pool was, either. To him, a swimming pool was a swimming pool. But Nick Barber would know things like that, just the way sports fans knew their team’s scores, statistics and greatest players going back years.

  “Swainsview Lodge has been empty for a few years now,” Banks said. “Ever since Lord Jessop died of AIDS in 1997. There were no heirs.” And nobody wanted the old pile of stone, Banks remembered. It cost too much to keep up, for a start, and it needed a lot of work. A couple of
hotel chains had shown a brief interest, but the foot-and-mouth business had soon scared them off, and there was at one time talk of the lodge being converted into a convention center, but nothing had come of it. “Tell me more about Nick Barber,” he said.

  “Not much to tell, really,” said Butler.

  “How did he get into the business? According to his parents, he had no training in journalism.”

  “This might sound a bit odd to you, but journalistic training is rarely encouraged in this line of work. Too many bad habits. Naturally, we require writing ability, but we judge that for ourselves. What counts most is love of the music.”

  That would suit Banks right down to the ground, he thought, if only he could write. “And Nick Barber had that?”

  “In spades. And he had in-depth knowledge on all sorts of genres, too, including jazz and some classical. Like I said, a remarkable mind, and a tragic loss.”

  “How long had he been writing for you?”

  “About seven or eight years, on and off.”

  “And his interest in the Mad Hatters?”

  “The last five years or so.”

  “He seemed to live quite frugally, from what I’ve seen.”

  “Nobody said music journalism pays well, but there are a lot of fringe benefits.”

  “Drugs?”

  “I didn’t mean that. Backstage passes to concerts, rubbing shoulders with the rock aristocracy, a bit of cachet with the girls, that sort of thing.”

  “I think I’d rather have an extra hundred quid a week,” said Banks.

  “Well, I suppose that’s one reason why this business isn’t for you.”

  “Fair enough. Why didn’t he have a job on staff?”

  “Didn’t want one. We’d have taken him on like a shot, as would the competition, but Nick wanted to keep his independence. He liked being a freelancer. To be quite frank, some people just don’t function at their best in an office environment, and I think Nick was one of them. He liked the freedom to roam, but he always delivered on deadline.”

  Banks understood what Butler was talking about. Wasn’t that pretty much what Detective Superintendent Gervaise had said about him that very morning? Stay out of the office, but bring me results.

  “How did he get the assignment?”