Piece Of My Heart

by Peter Robinson

  Calvin Soames looked wet, cold and miserable. And old. At least there was some heat in the otherwise bleak interview room, and the constable had had the foresight to give him a gray blanket, which he wore over his shoulders like a robe.

  “Well, Calvin,” said Annie, after dealing with the preliminaries, and making it clear on the tape that Soames had refused the services of a duty solicitor, “what have you been up to?”

  Soames said nothing. He just stared at a fixed point ahead of him, a nerve at the side of his jaw twitching.

  “What’s wrong?” Annie said. “Cat got your tongue?”

  Still Soames said nothing.

  Annie leaned back in her chair, hands resting on the desk. “You’ll have to talk eventually,” she said. “We already know what happened.”

  “Then you don’t need me to tell you, do you?”

  “We do need to hear it in your own words.”

  “I hit her. Something snapped and I hit her. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Why did you hit Kelly?”

  “You know what she did.”

  “She slept with a man she liked. Is that so terrible?”

  “That’s not what he said.”

  Annie looked puzzled. “What who said?”

  Soames looked at Winsome. “You know who,” he said.

  “He means Kev Templeton, Guv,” Winsome said.

  Annie had worked that out for herself. “What did DS Templeton say?” she asked.

  “I won’t repeat the words he used,” Soames said. “Vile, terrible things. Disgusting things.”

  So Templeton’s inflammatory language had set Soames off on his rampage, Annie thought, as if she needed more evidence of his culpability. Even so, she cursed him again under her breath. “What about the drink?”

  Soames scratched his head. “I won’t say I’m proud of that,” he said. “I used to be a hard-drinking man, but I got it under control, down to a couple of pints for the sake of being sociable. I let myself…” He stopped and put his head in his hands. Annie wasn’t certain what the next words were, but she thought she heard him say, “…her mother.”

  “Mr. Soames,” she said gently. “Calvin, would you speak clearly, please?”

  Soames wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “I said she was just like her mother.”

  “What was her mother like?”

  “A good-for-nothing slut.”

  “Kelly said she thought you were talking to her as if she were her mother. Is that true?”

  “I don’t know. I just saw red. I don’t know what I was saying. Her mother was younger than me. Pretty. The farm… it wasn’t her sort of life. She liked the town and the parties and the dances. There were men. More than one. She didn’t care whether I knew about them or not. She flaunted it, laughed at me.”

  “Then she died.”

  “Yes.”

  “That must have torn you apart,” said Annie.

  Soames gave her a sharp glance.

  “I mean she caused you so much pain, but there she was, dying, thanks to medical incompetence. You must have felt for her despite how she hurt you.”

  “It was God’s judgment.”

  “How did Kelly react to all this?”

  “I tried to keep it all from her,” he said. “But she’s turned out to be just the same.”

  “That’s not true,” Annie said. She was aware that the tape was running and she was exceeding her role as interviewer, but she couldn’t help it. Let Superintendent Gervaise give her another bollocking, if that was what it came down to. “Just because Kelly slept with someone, it doesn’t mean she was a slut or any other of those words men like to call women. You should be talking to your daughter, not beating her with a chair leg.”

  “I’m not proud of what I did,” said Soames. “I’ll face the consequences.”

  “Damn right, you will,” said Annie. “And so will Kelly, unfortunately.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she’s lying there in a hospital bed because of you, and do you know what? She’s worried about you, about what will happen to you.”

  “I sinned. I’ll take my punishment.”

  “And what about Kelly?”

  “She’ll be better off without me.”

  “Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Annie didn’t trust herself to continue the interview. She shoved a statement sheet over to him and stood up. “Look, write down in your own words exactly what happened, what you can remember of it, then DC Jackman here will see that it’s typed up for you to sign. In the meantime, the police surgeon will be coming in to look you over, just routine. Anything else you want to say?”

  “Kelly? How is she?”

  “Recovering,” said Annie, her hand on the doorknob. “It’s nice of you to ask.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As Banks sifted through the files on his desk on Saturday morning, he noticed the extra photocopy he had made of the list of numbers at the back of Nick Barber’s book. It reminded him that he hadn’t heard back from DC Gavin Rickerd yet, so he picked up the phone. Rickerd answered on the third ring.

  “Anything on those numbers I gave you yet?” Banks asked.

  “Sorry, sir,” said Rickerd. “We’ve been snowed under. I haven’t had a lot of time to work on it.”

  “Any ideas at all?”

  “It might be some kind of code, but without a key it could be very difficult to crack.”

  “I don’t think we have any keys,” said Banks.

  “Well, sir…”

  “Look, just keep trying, will you? If I come up with anything that I think might help you I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  “Thanks, Gavin.”

  As Banks put down the phone, Annie came in to tell him that after fairly exhaustive inquiries made by the Metropolitan Police, there was no evidence to suggest that Nick Barber had been involved with the cocaine business.

  “That’s interesting,” said Banks, “seeing as it was Chris Adams who suggested we look there.”

  “A bit of nifty misdirection?”

  “Looks like it to me. I want another word with Adams anyway. Maybe I can intimidate him with the old wasting-police-time routine.”

  “Maybe,” said Annie.

  “Any news on Kelly Soames?”

  “She was discharged from hospital this morning. She’s staying with an aunt here in Eastvale for the time being.”

  “Calvin Soames can’t just walk away, Annie, no matter how contrite he is. You know that.”

  “I know,” said Annie. “You don’t think I want him to get off scot-free, do you? But it’s Kelly I’m concerned about at the moment.”

  “Kelly’s young. She’ll get over it. I doubt that any magistrate or jury is going to put Calvin away, should he even see the inside of a courtroom.”

  “He’ll plead guilty. He wants to be punished.”

  “I’ll bet you Kelly won’t go into the witness box, and we won’t have much of a case without her testimony.”

  “What’s that?” Annie pointed at the list on Banks’s desk. He realized that she hadn’t been with him when he’d found it, and he hadn’t looked at it since he gave the copy to Rickerd. “Some figures Nick Barber had scribbled in the back of his book.”

  Annie peered at it. “Of course. The Kelly Soames business put it right out of my mind, but I was meaning to ask you about that. Barry Gilchrist in the computer shop mentioned that he saw Nick Barber writing in the back of a book while he was on the Web. I wonder what it is.”

  “Does it mean anything to you?” Banks asked.

  “No.” Annie laughed. “But it does remind me of something.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Seriously. It could be important.”

  “Just something I used to do when I was younger, that’s all.”

  Banks could hardly keep the exasperation out of his voice. “What?”

  Annie
gave him a look. He could see that she was blushing. “You know,” she said. “Ring dates?”

  “What dates?”

  “For crying out loud.” Annie glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. She still sounded as if she were shouting at him. “Are you thick or something?”

  “I’m trying not to be, but you’ve lost me.”

  “My period, idiot. I used to ring the day of the month my period was due. It’s something a lot of girls do. I know this isn’t exactly the same, not the same time between them, for a start, but it’s the same idea.”

  “Well, pardon me, but not being a girl and not having periods-”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. Maybe it’s family birthdays or lottery numbers or whatever, but it amounts to the same thing. I’ve told you what you want to know. It reminds me of when I used to ring dates on the calendar to mark the start of my period. Okay?”

  Banks held his hands up. “Okay?” he said. “I surrender.”

  Annie snorted, turned away abruptly and left the room. Still feeling the disturbed air buffeting in her wake, Banks sat and gazed at the numbers.

  6, 8, 9, 21, 22, 25

  1, 2, 3, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23

  10, , 13

  8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 30

  17, 18,

  2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, , 21, 22, 23

  Six rows. Many numbers duplicated, and no list going beyond 30. A calendar of some kind, then? Ringed dates? But why were they ringed and, perhaps even more to the point, which months, which year did they refer to? And why were some days missing? It should be possible to find out, Banks thought, perhaps with the help of a computer, then he realized that each group was not even necessarily from the same month, or the same year. They could be strings of days taken over a period of, say, thirty years. His spirits fell, and he cursed Nick Barber under his breath for not being more clear with his notes, realizing that this might be the clue he was looking for, perhaps the only one Nick had left, and he felt about as far from understanding it now as he ever had.

  Annie had got over her irritation with Banks by mid-afternoon, when he came poking his head around the squad room door to tell her that Ken Blackstone had discovered the whereabouts of Yvonne Chadwick, DI Stanley Chadwick’s daughter, and would she like to accompany him to the interview? She didn’t need asking twice. Bugger Superintendent Gervaise, she thought, grabbing her jacket and briefcase. She noticed Kev Templeton give her an evil eye as she left the room. Maybe he was already getting the cold shoulder from Madame Gervaise, now that what had happened to Kelly Soames had made the local news.

  Banks was quiet as Annie drove the unmarked car she had signed out of the police garage. She kept snatching sideways glances at him and realized he was thinking. Well, that was a good sign. She drove on. “I checked the Mad Hatters web site, by the way,” she said.

  “And?”

  “Definite possibilities for the numbers in the back of the book. There are links to other fan sites with tour dates and all sorts of esoteric information. I’ll need a lot more time to follow up on it all.”

  “Maybe when we get back.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Yvonne Chadwick, or Reeves, as she was now called, lived on the outskirts of Durham, which wasn’t too far up the A1 from Eastvale. The road was busy with lorries, as usual, and on a couple of occasions the inevitable roadworks canceled out a lane or two and slowed traffic to a crawl. Annie glimpsed Durham Castle high on its hill and followed the directions Banks had written down for her.

  The house was a semi with a bay window in a pleasant, leafy neighborhood where you wouldn’t be afraid to let your children play in the street. Yvonne Reeves turned out to be a rather plump, nervous woman of about fifty, who favored a gray peasant skirt and a shapeless maroon jumper. If she dressed up a bit, Annie thought, she would be much more attractive. She wore her long graying hair tied back in a ponytail. The interior of the house was clean and tidy. Bookcases lined the walls, mostly philosophy and law, with a sprinkling of literature. The living room was a little cramped, but comfortable once they had wedged themselves into the leather armchairs. There wasn’t much natural light, and the room smelled of dark chocolate and old books.

  “This is all very intriguing,” said Yvonne. Her voice still bore the traces of her Yorkshire roots, though many of the rough edges had been flattened over the years. “But I’ve no idea at all why you think I might be able to help you. What’s it all about?”

  “Have you heard about the death of a music journalist called Nick Barber?” Banks asked.

  “I think I saw something in the paper,” Yvonne said. “Wasn’t he murdered somewhere in Yorkshire?”

  “Near Lyndgarth,” said Banks.

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “Nick Barber was working on a story about a group called the Mad Hatters. Do you remember them?”

  “Good Lord. Yes, of course I do.”

  “In September 1969, there was a pop festival in North Yorkshire at Brimleigh Glen. Remember? You would have been about fifteen.”

  Yvonne clapped her hands together. “Sixteen. I was there! I wasn’t supposed to be, but I was. My father was terribly strict. He would never have let me go if I’d told him.”

  “You might also remember then that a young girl was found dead when the festival was over. Her name was Linda Lofthouse.”

  “Of course I remember. It was my father’s case. He solved it.”

  “Yes. A man called McGarrity.”

  Annie noticed Yvonne give a little shiver at the name, and an expression of distaste flitted across her features. “Did you know him?” she asked, before the moment was lost.

  Yvonne flushed. “McGarrity? How could I?”

  She was a poor liar, Annie thought. “I don’t know. You just seemed to react to the name, that’s all.”

  “Dad told me about him, of course. He sounded like a terrible person.”

  “Look, Yvonne,” Annie persisted, “I get the feeling there’s a bit more to it than that. I know it was a long time ago, but if you know anything that might help us, then you should let us know.”

  “How could knowing about back then possibly help you now?”

  “Because,” said Banks, “we think the cases might be linked. Nick Barber was Linda Lofthouse’s son. She gave him up for adoption, but he found out who his mother was and what happened to her. That gave him a special interest in the Mad Hatters and the McGarrity case. We think that Nick had stumbled across something to do with his mother’s murder, and that he was killed for it. Which means that we have to look very closely at what happened at Brimleigh and afterward. Someone who worked on the case with your father let slip that McGarrity had possibly terrorized another girl, but that never came up at the trial, or in the case notes. We also heard that Mr. Chadwick had a bit of trouble with his daughter, that she was perhaps running with a wild crowd, but we couldn’t get anything more specific than that. It might be nothing, and I might be wrong, but you are that daughter, and if you do know something, anything at all, please tell us and let us be the judges.”

  Yvonne said nothing for a few moments. Annie could hear a radio in the back of the house, probably the kitchen; talking, not music. Yvonne chewed on her lip and stared over their heads at one of the bookcases.

  “Yvonne,” Annie said. “If there’s anything we don’t know about, you should tell us. It can’t possibly harm you. Not now.”

  “But it was all so long ago,” Yvonne said. “God, I was such an idiot. An arrogant, selfish, stupid idiot.”

  “That would describe quite a lot of sixteen-year-olds,” Annie said.

  It broke the ice a little, and Yvonne managed a polite laugh. “I suppose so,” she said. Then she sighed. “I used to run with a wild crowd, it’s true,” she said. “Well, not really wild, but different. Hippies, you’d call them. The kind of people my father hated. He’d go on about why he fought the war for lazy, cowardly sods like that. But they were harml
ess, really. Well, most of them.”

  “And McGarrity?”

  “McGarrity was a sort of hanger-on, older, not really part of the crowd, but they couldn’t summon the energy or find a reason to kick him out, so he drifted from place to place, sleeping on floors and in empty beds. Nobody really liked him. He was weird.”

  “And he had a knife.”

  “Yes. A flick-knife with a tortoiseshell handle. Nasty thing. Of course he said he lost it, but…”

  “But the police found it in one of the houses,” said Banks. “Your father found it.”

  “Yes.” Yvonne squinted at Banks. “You seem to know plenty about this already.”

  “It’s my job. I read the trial transcripts, but they didn’t tell me about the girl he terrorized, the one your father asked him about during the interrogation.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Me?”

  “You knew McGarrity. Something happened. How else could you explain your father’s zeal in pursuing him or his reticence to pursue the issue? He abandoned all his other leads and concentrated on McGarrity. Now I’d say that was a little personal, wouldn’t you?”

  “Okay, I told him,” Yvonne said. “McGarrity frightened me. We were alone together in the front room at Springfield Mount, and he frightened me.”

  “What did he do?”

  “It wasn’t so much anything he did, just the way he talked, looked at me, grabbed me.”

  “He grabbed you?”

  “My arm. Just a bruise. And he touched my cheek. It made me cringe. Mostly it was the things he said, though. He wanted to talk about Linda, and when that got him all excited he started going on about those murders in Los Angeles. We didn’t know who did it then – Manson and his family – but we knew the people had been butchered and someone had written PIGGIES on the walls in blood. He found all that exciting. And he said… he…”