A professor’s daughter, no less. And no doubt they had moved to Canada because he was better paid over there. Even less reason, then, for Tania to be spending her days in a tiny, shabby bedsit in Notting Hill. “So what about Linda?” he asked. “Did she disappear into any caravans?”
“Not that I saw. Look, Linda got a bit claustrophobic, developed a headache, and when Led Zeppelin came on, she told me she was going for a walk in the woods. I told her I’d probably be heading back home as soon as they finished because I wanted to catch a bit of sleep before taking the ferry over to see my boyfriend, Jeff. She told me not to worry about her, she had friends she could stay with. I knew that. I’d been up with her before and met them. It was a place in Leeds, where she used to live before she moved to London.”
“Bayswater Terrace?”
“That sounds right.”
“So she told you she would stay there?”
“Not in so many words. Only that she wasn’t planning on heading back to London with me that night.”
“Any reason?”
“I guess there were just people she wanted to see. I mean, it was where she came from. Home, I guess.”
“Did you see any of these people from the house with her at the festival?”
“No. Like I said, we had backstage passes. We were in with the bands. We didn’t know anybody there apart from Vic, Robin, Chris and the rest. Didn’t even know them very well. Look, as you can imagine, it got a bit wild at times, like all parties do. Linda slipped away. I didn’t see her again.”
“Did she have a flower painted on her face when she left you?”
Tania looked puzzled. “Flower? I don’t think so. I don’t know. It was dark. I don’t remember.”
“Would you have noticed?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Lots of girls had flowers painted on their faces. Is it important?”
“It could be.” Chadwick remembered Robin Merchant saying that Linda did have the flower on her face when he last saw her. “How was she going to get to Leeds? It was the middle of the night.”
“Hitch a ride. There were plenty of people heading that way. Most of the crowd came from Leeds or Bradford. Stands to reason.”
“Was this your original plan? For her to stay in Leeds, hitch a ride?”
“Plan? We didn’t have a plan. It was all pretty spontaneous. I mean, she knew I was going to Paris on Monday and I had to drive back Sunday night, but she also knew she could come back down to London with me in the Mini if she wanted.”
“And what did you do?”
“After Zeppelin finished, I went round the back again, hung around awhile and waited for her. There was still a party going on backstage, but people were leaving fast. I didn’t see her, so I assumed she’d headed off to Bayswater Terrace. I got in my car and drove back down here. It was about four in the morning by the time I left and I got home about nine. I slept till two, then drove to Dover and took the ferry to Calais.”
“You must have been tired.”
“Not really.”
“Don’t you have a job?”
“I’m between jobs. I’m a temp. I happened to be good at typing at school. I can choose my own hours now.”
“But what about education? You said your father was a professor. Surely he would want you to go to university?”
She gave him a curious, almost pitying look. “What my father wants doesn’t come into it,” she said. “It’s my life. I might go to university one day, but it’ll be when I want to, not when someone else decides for me.” Tania shook her hair back and lit another cigarette.
Chadwick thought he saw a mouse scurry across the kitchen floor. He gave a little shudder. It wasn’t that mice scared him, but the idea of living with them held no appeal. “I’d like to know more about Linda,” he said. “I understand she was a shopgirl?”
Tania laughed. “‘Shopgirl.’ How very quaint and English. I suppose you could say that. She worked at Biba, but she wanted to be a designer. She was good, too.”
“Wouldn’t they be worried about her not coming back?”
“She took the week off.”
“So there was a plan?”
“There were possibilities, that’s all. There were some people in St. Ives she wanted to see. Maybe she was going to stay in Leeds a few days, see her friends and her mother and then go down there. I don’t know. She also had a friend living on Anglesey she wanted to visit. What can I say? Linda was a spontaneous sort of person. She just did things. That’s why I wasn’t worried about her. Besides, you don’t think… I mean, we were with people who are into love and peace and all that, and you just don’t expect…” Tears ran down her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all too much.”
Chadwick gave her a few minutes to compose herself and wipe away the tears, then he said, “When Linda left the enclosure for the woods, did you see anyone follow her?”
Tania thought for a moment, sucked at her cigarette and flicked some ash. “No,” she said.
“Did you see anyone else go out around that time?”
“Not that I remember. Most of us were excited about Led Zeppelin, getting ready to go round the front and get our minds blown.”
“Could she have arranged to meet someone? Could the headache have been an excuse?”
Tania gave him a blank look. “Why would she? If she’d been going to meet someone, she’d have said so. It wasn’t Linda’s way to be sly and sneaky.”
Christ, Chadwick thought, it was a lot easier when you were dealing with ordinary folk, most of whom lied and cheated as easily as they breathed, rather than this lot with their fancy ideals and high-handed attitudes. “Did you notice anyone paying her undue attention?” he asked.
“Linda’s a beautiful girl. Of course there were people talking to her, maybe trying to make an impression, pick her up.”
“But nobody succeeded?”
Tania paused. “Linda wasn’t seeing anyone this past while,” she answered. “Look, I’ve seen what the newspapers say about us. The News of the World, the People, trash like that. They paint us as being some sort of drug-addled and sex-crazed subculture, nothing but orgies and excess. Well, some people might be like that, but Linda was a very spiritual person. She was into Buddhism, the cabala, yoga, astrology, tarot, all sorts of spiritual stuff, and sometimes she just… you know… sex wasn’t always a part of it for her.”
“And drugs?”
“Out of the picture, too. I’m not saying she’d never smoked a joint or dropped a tab of acid, but not for a while. She was moving on, evolving.”
“I understand the two of you performed musical duets together?”
Tania looked at him as if she didn’t understand, then she managed a brief smile. “Performed musical duets? We sang together sometimes, if that’s what you mean, just in folk clubs and such.”
“Can I have a look at Linda’s flat?”
Tania bit her lip. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t. I mean…”
“You can come with me, keep an eye on me. It’ll have to be done eventually. Officially.”
Finally, Tania said, “Okay. I’ve got a key. Come on.”
She led him across the hall. Linda’s room was the same shape as Tania’s, but like a mirror image. It was more luxuriously furnished, with a couple of patterned rugs on the floor and a stylized painting of a man sitting cross-legged under a tree, surrounded by strange symbols, on the wall. Chadwick recognized the signs of the zodiac from the newspaper horoscopes Janet read. There was also a small bookcase full of volumes on mysticism and the spiritual life and packs of variously scented joss sticks. An acoustic guitar, similar to the one in Tania’s room, leaned against the wall.
Linda also had a small record player, and beside it stood a stack of LPs similar to those Yvonne had. There was nothing really personal in the room, at least not that Chadwick could find. One drawer held a couple of letters from her mother and some old photographs taken with her father. There were no diaries or notebooks – whatev
er she had been carrying with her at Brimleigh had disappeared – and very little else apart from her birth certificate and post office book showing that she had £123 13s 5d in her account, which seemed rather a lot to Chadwick. She had also set up a sewing machine at a makeshift table, and there were a few bolts of printed fabric lying around. In her small wardrobe hung many long dresses and skirts of bright print fabrics and other materials.
He searched under the drawers and tried the cupboards and wardrobe for false bottoms but found nowhere that might have provided a good hiding place for drugs. If Tania knew this was what he was doing, she didn’t say anything. She just leaned against the doorjamb with her arms folded.
As far as food was concerned, the pickings were slim. Linda had no oven, only a gas burner beside the little sink, and the contents of her cupboard consisted of brown rice, chickpeas, muesli, tahini, mung beans and various herbs and spices. There was no refrigerator, either, and no sign of meat, vegetables or dairy products, except for a bottle of sterilized milk on the table. Frugal living indeed.
Frustrated, Chadwick stood by the door and gave one last look around. Still nothing.
“What will happen to it now?” Tania asked.
“I suppose it’ll be relet eventually,” he said. “For the moment I’ll get the local police to come in and seal it off until we’ve done a thorough search. What do you know about Rick Hayes?”
Tania locked Linda’s door and led Chadwick back to her room, where they resumed their previous positions.
“Rick Hayes, the promoter?”
“That’s the one.”
“Nothing much. I chatted with him a couple of times. He’s a bit of a creep. If you must know, he tried to pick me up, suggested we go to his caravan.”
“And?”
“I told him to get lost.”
“How did he react?”
“He laughed and said he liked a girl who spoke her mind. Look, Hayes is one of those men who asks every girl he meets to sleep with him. He thinks the odds are pretty good. If nine out of ten tell him what they think of him, or slap his face, there’s always the tenth who might say yes.”
“He knew Linda, is that right?”
“They’d met before, yes. Once we went backstage at a Mad Hatters concert at the Roundhouse and Rick was there. He’s harmless enough, really. To be honest, he’s far too taken with himself to really give much thought to anyone else.”
“But if someone he wanted turned him down, do you think he could get violent?”
Tania gave him a sharp look. “I… I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never really thought about it. He’s got a bit of a temper. I saw him laying into one of the security guards, but that was just… I don’t know, some sort of a power trip, I thought. You’re not suggesting he might have killed Linda because she wouldn’t let him fuck her?”
If the word was meant to shock Chadwick, it did. He wasn’t used to such language coming from the mouths of such lovely young women. He was damned if he was going to give her the satisfaction of a reaction, though. “Did you see him leave the enclosure during the time you were there?”
“No. Mostly he was coordinating with the performers and roadies, making sure the equipment got set up right and everything went smoothly. There were a few problems with the PA system and so on that he also had to deal with. And he acted as MC, introducing the bands. He was really pretty busy all the time. I don’t think he’d have had a chance to slip away even if he’d wanted to.”
“So he was always in sight?”
“Pretty much. Not always, but most of the time you’d see him out the corner of your eye here and there, running around. There was always somebody wanting him for something.”
“Where was he while Linda was in the woods?”
“I don’t know. Like I told you, I went round to the front to get a good view.”
“Was he there?”
“No. He introduced the band, then he left the stage.”
“Did you see him after that?”
“Come to think of it, no. But I don’t believe it. I don’t believe he could have had anything to do with what happened.”
“Probably not,” said Chadwick, standing to leave. “It just pays to cover all the angles, that’s all.” He lingered at the door. “Before I leave, tell me how Linda was behaving these past few weeks.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did anything out of the ordinary happen?”
“No.”
“Was she upset, depressed or worried about anything?”
“No, she was her usual self. She was saving up to go to India. She was really excited about that.”
Chadwick, who had spent time in India before seeing action in Burma during the war, didn’t understand what there was to get excited about. As far as he was concerned, the place was filthy, hot and unsanitary. Still, it explained the reason for the £123 13s 5d in her post office account. “Is that all?”
“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, 18th September, 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 The Battle of Britain after his visit to Tania Hutchison that brought it all back, but Chadwick awoke in his hotel bed at 3:00 a.m. 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.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In 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-newsagent’s, who directed him toward the last cottage on the left on Darlington Road, telling him that “Mr. Jones” had been there for a few years now, was definitely 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-gray 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 toward a wooded beck. On each side was a terrace of small, one-up-one-down limestone cottages, once used to house farm laborers. 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.
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