Piece Of My Heart

by Peter Robinson

  “So what was it like working on that case?” Banks asked. “What do you remember most about the Robin Merchant investigation?”

  Enderby screwed up his eyes and gazed out of the window. “It must have been about ten o’clock by the time we got to the scene,” he said. “It was a beautiful morning, I do remember that. Clear. Warm. Birds singing. And there he was, floating in the pool.”

  “What was your first impression?”

  Enderby thought for a moment, then he gave a brief, barking laugh and put his cup down on the saucer. “Do you know what it was?” he said. “You’ll never believe this. He was on his back, naked, you know, and I remember thinking he’d got such a little prick for a famous rock star. You know, all the stuff we heard back then about groupies and orgies. The News of the World and all that. We assumed they were all hung like horses. It just seemed so incongruous, him floating there all shriveled, like a shrimp or a seahorse or something. It was the water, of course. No matter how warm the day was, the water was still cold.”

  “That’ll do it every time. Were the others up and around when you arrived?”

  “You must be joking. The uniforms were just rousing them. If it hadn’t been for Merchant’s drowning and our arrival, they’d probably have slept until well into the afternoon. They looked in pretty bad shape, too, some of them. Hungover and worse.”

  “So who phoned it in?”

  “The gardener, when he arrived for work.”

  “Was he a suspect?”

  “Nah, not really.”

  “Many hangers-on and groupies around?”

  “It’s hard to say. According to their statements, everyone was a close friend of the band. I mean, no one actually admitted to being a groupie or a hanger-on. Most of the guys in the band were just with their regular girlfriends.”

  “What about Robin Merchant? Was he with anyone that night?”

  “There was a girl asleep in his bed,” said Enderby.

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Groupie.”

  “According to what I’ve read,” Banks said, “the thinking at the time was that Merchant had taken some Mandrax and was wandering around the pool naked when he fell in at the shallow end, hit his head on the bottom and drowned. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” said Enderby. “That was what it looked like, and that’s what the pathologist confirmed. There was also a broken glass on the edge of the pool with Merchant’s fingerprints on it. He’d been drinking. Vodka.”

  “Did you consider other possible scenarios?”

  “Such as?”

  “That it wasn’t accidental.”

  “You mean somebody pushed him?”

  “It would be a natural assumption. You know what suspicious minds we coppers have.”

  “True enough,” Enderby agreed. “I must admit, it crossed my mind, but I soon ruled it out.”

  “Why?”

  “Nobody had any motive.”

  “Not according to what they told you.”

  “We dug a bit deeper than that. Give us some credit. We might not have had the resources you’ve got today, but we did our best.”

  “There was no friction within the band?”

  “As far as I know there’s always friction in bands. Put a group of people together with egos that big and there has to be. Stands to reason.”

  Banks laughed. Then he thought of Brian and wondered if the Blue Lamps were due for a split before too long. Brian hadn’t said anything, but Banks sensed something different about him, a certain lack of excitement and commitment, perhaps, and his turning up out of the blue like that was unusual. He seemed weary. And what about Emilia? Was she the Yoko Ono figure? Still, if Brian wanted to talk, he would get around to it in his own time; there was no use in pushing him. He’d always been that way. “Any-thing in particular?” he asked Enderby.

  “Let’s see. They were all worried about Vic Greaves’s drug intake, for a start. His performances were getting more and more erratic, and his behavior was unreliable. Apparently, he’d missed a concert engagement not that long back, and the rest of them were still a bit pissed off at him for leaving them in the lurch.”

  “Did Greaves have an alibi?”

  Enderby scratched the side of his nose. “As a matter of fact, he did,” he said. “Two, actually.”

  “Two?”

  Enderby grinned. “Greaves and Merchant were the only two band members who didn’t have regular girlfriends. That night, Greaves happened to be in bed with two groupies.”

  “Lucky devil,” said Banks. “I’d never have thought he had it in him.” He remembered the bald, bloated figure with the hollow eyes he had seen in Lyndgarth.

  “According to them, he didn’t,” said Enderby. “Apparently he was too far gone to get it up. Bloody waste, if you ask me. They were lovely-looking girls.” He smiled at the memory. “Not wearing very much, either, when I interviewed them. That’s one of the little things you don’t forget in a hurry. Not so little, either, if you catch my drift.”

  “Could Greaves not have sneaked away for a while during the night? They must have both slept, or passed out, at some time.”

  “Look, when you get right down to it, any one of them could have done it. At least anyone who could still walk in a straight line. We didn’t really set great store by the alibis, as such. For a start, hardly any of them could remember much about the previous evening, or even what time they finally went to bed. They might have been wandering about all night, for all I know, and not even noticed Merchant in the swimming pool.”

  “So what made you rule out murder so quickly?”

  “I told you. No real motive. No evidence that he’d been pushed.”

  “But Merchant could have got into an argument with someone, gone a bit over the top.”

  “Oh, he could have, yes. But no one says he did, so what are we supposed to do, jump to conclusions and pick someone? Anyone?”

  “What about an intruder?”

  “Couldn’t be ruled out, either. It was easy enough to get into the grounds. But again, there was no evidence of an intruder, and nothing was stolen. Besides, Merchant’s injuries were consistent with falling into a swimming pool and drowning, which was what happened. Look, if you ask me, at worst it could have been a bit of stoned and drunken larking around that went wrong. I’m not saying that’s what happened, because there’s no proof, but if they were all stoned or pissed, which they were, and they started running around the pool playing tag or what have you, and someone tagged Merchant just a bit too hard and he ended up in the pool dead… Well, what would you do?”

  “First off,” said Banks, “I’d try to get him out of there. There was no way I could be sure he was dead. Then I’d probably try artificial respiration, or the kiss of life or whatever it was back then, while someone called an ambulance.”

  “Aye,” said Enderby. “And if you’d had as much drugs in your system as they had, you’d probably have just stood there for half an hour twiddling your thumbs before doing anything, and then the first thing you’d have done is get rid of your stash.”

  “Did the drugs squad search the premises? There was no mention in the file.”

  “Between you and me, we searched the place. Oh, we found a bit of marijuana, a few tabs of LSD, some mandies. But nothing hard.”

  “What happened?”

  “We decided, in the light of everything else – like a body to deal with – that we wouldn’t bring charges. We just disposed of the stuff. I mean, what were we to do, arrest them all for possession?”

  Disposed of? Banks doubted that. Consumed or sold, more likely. But there was no point in opening that can of worms. “Did you get any sense that they’d cooked up a story between them?”

  “No. As I said, half of them couldn’t even remember the party. It was all pretty fragmented and inconclusive.”

  “Lord Jessop was present, right?”

  “Right. Probably about the most coherent of the lot. That was before he got into the hard stuf
f.”

  “And the most influential?”

  “I can see where you’re going with this. Of course nobody wanted a scandal. It was bad enough as it was. Maybe that’s why we didn’t bring drugs charges. There’d been enough of that over the past two or three years with the Stones bust, and it was all beginning to seem pretty ridiculous. Especially after The Times ran that editorial about breaking a butterfly on a wheel. Within hours we had them all banging at the door and jumping over the walls. The News of the World, People, Daily Mirror, you name them. So even if someone else had been involved in a bit of horseplay, the thinking went, then it had still been an accident, and there was no point in inviting scandal. As we couldn’t prove that anyone else had been involved and no one was admitting to it, that was the end of it. Tea’s done. Fancy another pot?”

  “No, thank you,” said Banks. “If there’s nothing more you can tell me, I’d better be off.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “It wasn’t disappointing.”

  “Look, you never did really tell me what it was all about. Remember, we’re in the same job, or used to be.”

  Banks was so used to not giving out any more information than he needed to that he sometimes forgot to say entirely why he was asking about something. “We found a writer by the name of Nick Barber dead. You might have read about it.”

  “Sounds vaguely familiar,” said Enderby. “I try to keep up.”

  “What you won’t have read about is that he was working on a story about the Mad Hatters, on Vic Greaves and the band’s early days in particular.”

  “Interesting,” said Enderby. “But I still don’t see why you’re asking about Robin Merchant’s death.”

  “It was just something Barber said to a girlfriend,” Banks said. “He mentioned something about a juicy story with a murder.”

  “Now you’ve got me interested,” said Enderby. “A murder, you say?”

  “That’s right. I suppose it was probably just journalistic license, trying to impress his girlfriend.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Enderby.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure that Robin Merchant’s death was accidental, but that wasn’t the first time I was out at Swainsview Lodge in connection with a suspicious death.”

  “Really?” said Banks. “Do tell.”

  Enderby stood up. “Look, the sun’s well over the yardarm. How about we head down to my local and I’ll tell you over a pint?”

  “I’m driving,” said Banks.

  “That’s all right,” said Enderby. “You can buy me one and watch me drink it.”

  “What took you out there?” Banks asked.

  “A murder,” said Enderby, eyes glittering. “A real one that time.”

  Saturday, 20th September, 1969

  “She won’t come out of her room,” Janet Chadwick said as she sat with her husband eating tea on Saturday evening, football results on the telly. Chadwick was filling in his pools coupon, but it was soon clear that the £230,000 jackpot was going to elude him this week, just as it had every other week.

  Chadwick ate some toad-in-hole after giving it a liberal dip in the gravy. “What’s wrong with her now?”

  “She won’t say. She came dashing in late this afternoon and went straight up to her room. I called to her, knocked on her door, but she wouldn’t answer.”

  “Did you go in?”

  “No. She has to be allowed some privacy, Stan. She’s sixteen.”

  “I know. I know. But this is unusual, missing her tea like this. And it’s Saturday. Doesn’t she usually go out Saturday night?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll have a word with her after tea.”

  “Be careful with her, Stan. You know how on edge she seems these days.”

  Chadwick touched his wife’s wrist. “I’ll be careful. I’m not really the terrible child-gobbling monster you think I am.”

  Janet laughed. “I don’t think you’re a monster. She’s just at a difficult age. A father doesn’t always understand as much as a mother does.”

  “I’ll tread gently, don’t worry.”

  They finished their tea in silence, and while Janet went to wash the dishes, Chadwick went upstairs to try to talk to Yvonne. He tapped softly at her door but got no answer. He tapped again, a little louder, but all he heard was a muffled “Go away.” There wasn’t even any music playing. Yvonne must have had her transistor radio turned off. Another unusual sign.

  Chadwick reckoned he had two choices: leave Yvonne to her own devices, or simply walk in. Janet would favor the former, laissez-faire approach, no doubt, but Chadwick was in a mood to take the bull by the horns. He’d had enough of Yvonne’s sneaking around, stopping out all night, her secrets and lies and prima-donna behavior. Now was the time to see what was at the bottom of it. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and walked in.

  The outrage he expected didn’t come. The curtains were closed, the lights off, giving the room a dim, twilit appearance. It even disguised the untidy mess of clothes and magazines on the floor and bed. At first, Chadwick couldn’t see Yvonne, then he realized she was on her bed, under the eiderdown. When his eyes adjusted, he could also see that she was shaking. Concerned, he perched on the edge of the bed and said softly, “Yvonne. Yvonne, sweetheart. What’s wrong? What is it?”

  She didn’t react at first, and he sat patiently waiting, remembering when she was a little girl and came to him when she had nightmares. “It’s all right,” he said, “you can tell me. I won’t be angry with you. I promise.”

  Her hand snaked out from under the eiderdown and sought his. He held it. Still she said nothing, then she slowly slid the cover off her face, and he could see even in the weak light that she had been crying. She was still shaking, too.

  “What is it, love?” he asked. “What’s happened.”

  “It was horrible,” she said. “He was horrible.”

  Chadwick felt his neck muscles tense. “What? Has somebody done something to you?”

  “He’s ruined everything.”

  “What do you mean? You’d better tell me from the start, Yvonne. I want to understand, honestly I do.”

  Yvonne stared at him, as if trying to come to a decision. He knew he came across as strict and straight and unbending, but he really did want to know what was upsetting her, and not with a view to punishment this time. Whatever she thought, and however difficult it was, he really did love his daughter. One by one, the terrible possibilities crowded in on him. Had she found out she was pregnant? Was that it? Like Linda Lofthouse when she was Yvonne’s age? Or had someone assaulted her?

  “What is it?” he asked. “Did somebody hurt you?”

  Yvonne shook her head. “Not like you think.” Then she launched herself into his arms and he could feel her tears on his neck and hear her talking into his shoulder. “I was so scared, Daddy, the things he was saying. I really thought he was going to do something terrible to me. I know he had a knife somewhere. If I hadn’t run away…” She collapsed into sobs. Chadwick digested what she had said, trying to keep his fatherly anger at bay, and gently disentangled himself. Yvonne lay back on her pillows and rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands. She looked like a little girl. Chadwick handed her the box of tissues from the dresser top.

  “Start at the beginning,” he said. “Slowly.”

  “I was at Brimleigh Festival, Dad. I want you to know that before I start. I’m sorry for lying.”

  “I knew that.”

  “But, Dad?…How?”

  “Call it a father’s instinct.” Or copper’s instinct, he thought. “Go on.”

  “I’ve been hanging around with some people. You wouldn’t like them. That’s why… why I didn’t tell you. But they’re people like me, Dad. We’re into the same music and ideas and beliefs about society and stuff. They’re different. They’re not boring, not like the kids at school. They read poetry and write and play music.”

  “Students?�
��

  “Some of them.”

  “So they’re older than you?”

  “What does age matter?”

  “Never mind. Go on.”

  Yvonne looked a little uncertain now, and Chadwick realized he would have to keep his editorial comments to a bare minimum if he hoped to get the truth from his daughter. “Everything was fine, really it was. And then…” She started trembling again, got herself under control and went on. “There’s this man called McGarrity. He’s older than the others and he acts really weird. He always scared me.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s got this horrible, twisted sort of smile that makes you feel like some sort of insect, and he keeps quoting things – T. S. Eliot, the Bible, other stuff. Sometimes he just paces up and down with his knife.”

  “What knife?”

  “He’s got this knife, and he keeps just, you know, tapping it against his palm as he walks.”

  “What kind of knife is it?”

  “A flick-knife with a tortoiseshell handle.”

  “Which palm does he tap it against?”

  Yvonne frowned, and Chadwick realized again he would have to be careful. It could wait. “Sorry,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Go on.”

  “They say… Steve says, he’s a bit weird because he had electroshock therapy. They say he used to be a great blues harmonica player, but since the electric shocks he can’t play anymore. But I don’t know… He just seems weird to me.”

  “Is this the man who bothered you?”

  “Yes. I went over there this afternoon to see Steve – he’s my boyfriend – but he wasn’t in and only McGarrity was there. I wanted to go but he insisted I stay.”

  “Did he force you?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say he forced me, but I was uncomfortable. I was just hoping Steve and the others would get back soon, that’s all.”

  “Was he on drugs?”

  Yvonne looked away and nodded.

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “He said some terrible things.”