Piece Of My Heart

by Peter Robinson

  “Go on, Yvonne,” Annie urged her.

  Yvonne looked at her as she answered. “He said he’d, you know, watched me with my boyfriend, and that now it was going to be his turn.”

  “So he threatened to rape you?” Annie said.

  “That’s what I thought. That’s what I was scared of.”

  “Did he have his knife?” Banks asked.

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “What did he say about Linda Lofthouse?”

  “Just how pretty she was, and how it was sad that she had to die, but that it was an absurd and arbitrary world.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Then he talked about the Manson murders and asked me if I would like to do something like that.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I made a break for it and ran for my life. He was pacing, spouting gibberish.”

  “And then what?”

  “I told my father. He was furious.”

  “I can understand that,” said Banks. “I have a daughter myself, and I’d feel exactly the same way. What happened next?”

  “The police raided Springfield Mount and a couple of other hippie pads that night. They gave everyone a hard time, brought some drugs charges against them, but it was McGarrity they really wanted. He’d been at the festival, you see, at Brimleigh, and plenty of people had seen him wandering around near the edge of the woods with his flick-knife.”

  “Did you think he did it?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so. I never really questioned it.”

  “Yet he went on to deny it, said he was framed.”

  “Yes, but all criminals do that, don’t they? That’s what my father told me.”

  “It’s pretty common,” said Banks.

  “So there. Look, what is this all about? He’s not due to be released, is he?”

  “You need have no worries on that score. He died in prison.”

  “Oh. Well, I can’t say I’m heartbroken.”

  “What happened after the arrest and everything?”

  Yvonne shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe what an absolute idiot I was. My father let my boyfriend at Springfield Mount know that he was my father and told him to stay away from me. Steve, his name was. What an awful self-obsessed little prick. But a good-looking one, as I remember.”

  “I’ve known one or two like that myself,” said Annie.

  Banks glanced at her, as if to say, “We’ll get back to that later.”

  “Anyway,” Yvonne went on, “it was the usual story. I thought he loved me, but he just wanted me out of the way. It was so embarrassing. You know, it’s funny, but the thing I remember most about the room is the Goya print on the wall. El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. The one of the sleeping man surrounded by owls, bats and cats. It used to scare me and fascinate me at the same time, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did you go there again, after the raid?”

  “Yes. The next day. Steve didn’t want to know me. None of them did. He spread the word that I was a copper’s daughter, and I was ostracized by the lot of them.” She snorted. “Nobody wants to share a joint with a copper’s daughter.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I was really hurt. I ran away from home. Took all the money I could and went to London. I had one address there, Lizzie, a girl who’d stayed at Springfield Mount once. She was nice and let me sleep in a sleeping bag on her floor. But it wasn’t very clean. There were mice, and they kept trying to get into the sleeping bag, so I had to hold it tight around my neck, and I couldn’t really get any sleep.” She gave a little shiver. “And there were even more weird people about than there had been in Leeds. I was very depressed, and I started to get frightened of my own shadow. I think Lizzie got really fed up with me. She talked about negative energy and stuff like that. I was feeling lost, then, really out of place, like I didn’t belong anywhere and nobody loved me. Typical adolescent angst, I can see now, but at the time…”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I went back home.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Two weeks. That was the sum of my life’s big adventure.”

  “And how did your parents react?”

  “Relief. And anger. I hadn’t rung them, you see. That was cruel of me. If my daughter did that, I’d be beside myself, but that’s how selfish and how upset I was. My father, being a policeman, always thought the worst. He had visions of me lying dead somewhere. He even told me that at first he thought something had happened to me, and that maybe it had something to do with McGarrity or the others taking revenge on me for shopping them. But he couldn’t do anything official because he didn’t want people to know. It must have torn him apart. He took his duty as a policeman so seriously.”

  “Didn’t want people to know what?”

  “About me and those hippies.”

  “What was your father like during the investigation and trial?”

  “He was working very hard, very long hours. I remember that. And he was very tense, tightly wound. He started getting chest pains, I remember, but it was a long time before he would go to the doctor. We didn’t talk much. He was under a lot of strain. I think he was doing it for me. He thought he’d lost me, and he was taking it out on McGarrity and everyone else involved. It wasn’t a comfortable time in the house, not for any of us.”

  “But better than mice in the sleeping bag?” Annie said.

  Yvonne smiled. “Yes, better than that. But we were all glad when it was over and McGarrity was convicted. It seemed to take forever, like a big black cloud over our heads. I don’t think the trial started until the following April, then it went on for about four weeks. Things were pretty tense. Anyway, in the meantime I went back to school, got on with my A levels, then I went to university in Hull. This would be the early seventies. There were still a lot of longhairs about, but I kept my distance. I’d learned my lesson. I applied myself to my studies, and in the end I became a schoolteacher and married a university professor. He teaches here, at Durham. We have two children, a boy and a girl, both married now. And that’s the story of my life.”

  “Did you ever hear your father express any doubts about McGarrity’s guilt?” Banks asked.

  “No. Not that I can remember. It’s as if he was on a crusade. I can’t imagine what he would have done if McGarrity had got off. It doesn’t bear thinking about. As it was, the whole thing ruined his health.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Mum stood by him. She was a brick. She was devastated when he died, of course. We both were. But eventually she remarried and lived quite happily. She died in 1999. We were close right until the end. She only lived a short drive away, and she loved her grandchildren.”

  “That’s nice,” said Annie. “We’ve nearly finished now. The only other thing we want to ask you about is the death of Robin Merchant.”

  “The Hatters’ bass player! God, I was absolutely gutted. Robin was so cool. They were one of my favorite bands, back when I used to listen to pop music, and we’d sort of claimed them as our own, too. You know they were from Leeds?”

  “Yes,” said Annie.

  “Anyway, what about him?”

  “Did your father say anything about it?”

  “I don’t think so. Why would he…? Oh, yes. My God, this is taking me back. He talked to them during the McGarrity thing, and he got me an LP signed by all of them. I think I’ve still got it somewhere.”

  “Must be worth a bob or two now,” said Banks.

  “Oh, I’d never sell it.”

  “Still… did he say anything?”

  “About Robin Merchant? No. Well, it was nothing to do with him, was it? That was the next summer, after McGarrity had been sent to jail, and my dad’s heart was starting to show the strain even more. We never really talked about those sorts of things – you know, the music and hippie stuff – not after I came back from London. I mean, I was done with that scene, and my dad was grateful for that, so he did
n’t go on at me about it anymore. Mostly I threw myself into my A levels.”

  “Does this mean anything to you?” Banks brought out a photocopy of the ringed numbers from the back page of Nick Barber’s book.

  Yvonne frowned at it. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I didn’t say I was a maths teacher.”

  “We think it might be dates,” Banks explained, “most likely dates connected with the Mad Hatters tour schedule or something similar. But we’ve no idea which months or years.”

  “Leaves it pretty wide open, doesn’t it, then?”

  Annie looked at Banks and shrugged. “Well, that,” Banks said, “is just about it, unless DI Cabbot has any more questions for you.”

  “No,” said Annie, standing and leaning forward to shake Yvonne’s hand. “Thanks for your time.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m only sorry I couldn’t be any more help.”

  “What do you think about what Yvonne told us?” Annie asked Banks over an after-work drink with cheese-and-pickle sandwiches in the Queen’s Arms. The bar was half empty and the pool table, happily, not in use. A couple of late-season tourists sat at the next table poring over Ordnance Survey maps and speaking German.

  “I think what she said should make us perhaps just a little more suspicious of Stanley Chadwick and his motives,” said Banks.

  “Chadwick? What do you mean?”

  “If he really thought his daughter had been terrorized and threatened with rape, and he was on a personal crusade… who knows what he might have done? I try to imagine how I would behave if anything like that ever happened to Tracy and, I tell you, I can really frighten myself. Yvonne told us that McGarrity talked about the dead girl to her, about Linda Lofthouse. Admittedly, she didn’t say he’d given her any information only the killer could have known, but we both know that sort of thing mostly just happens on TV. But what he did say sounded damn suspicious to me. Imagine how it sounded to her father, at his wits’ end trying to catch a killer and worried about his daughter hanging around with hippies. Then he finds out this weirdo who terrorized her had a flick-knife and was seen wandering around with it at Brimleigh Festival. Imagine he puts the two together, and suddenly the light goes on. Yvonne told us he didn’t really look at anyone else for the crime after that. Rick Hayes went right out of the picture. It was McGarrity all the way, and only McGarrity.”

  “But the evidence says McGarrity did it.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Everyone knew that McGarrity carried a flick-knife with a tortoiseshell handle, including Stanley Chadwick. It wouldn’t have been that hard for him to get hold of one just like it. Don’t forget, Yvonne says she didn’t see the knife when McGarrity terrorized her.”

  “Because he’d already hidden it.”

  “Or lost it, as he said.”

  “I don’t believe this,” said Annie. “You’d take the word of a convicted killer over a detective inspector with an unimpeachable reputation?”

  “I’m just thinking out loud, for God’s sake, trying to get a handle on Nick Barber’s murder.”

  “And have you?”

  Banks sipped some Black Sheep. “I’m not sure yet. But I do believe that Chadwick could have obtained such a knife, tricked McGarrity into handling it, and got access to Linda Lofthouse’s clothing and blood samples. It might be a lot tougher now, but not necessarily back then, before PACE. Someone in Chadwick’s position would probably have had free run of the place. And I think he might have been driven to do it because of what had happened to his daughter. Remember, this was a man on a mission, convinced he’s right but unable to prove it by legitimate means. We’ve all been there. So in this case, because it’s personal, and because of suspicious and disturbing things his daughter has told him about McGarrity that he can’t use without bringing her into it and losing all credibility, he goes the extra mile and fabricates the vital bit of evidence he needs. Remember, apart from the knife there’s no case; it falls apart. And there’s another thing.”

  “What?”

  “Chadwick’s health. He was basically a decent, God-fearing, law-abiding copper with a strong Presbyterian background, probably deeply repressed because of his war experiences, and angry with what he saw around him – the disrespect of the young, the hedonism, the drugs.”

  “Turned psychoanalyst now, have you?”

  “You don’t need to be a psychoanalyst to know that if Chadwick really did fabricate a case against McGarrity, even for the best of reasons, it would tear a man like him apart. As Yvonne said, he was a dedicated copper. The law and basic human decency meant everything to him. He might have lost his faith during the war, but you can’t change your nature that easily.”

  Annie put her glass to her cheek. “But McGarrity was seen near the murder scene, he was known to be seriously weird, he had a flick-knife, he was left-handed, and he had met the victim. Why do you insist on believing that he didn’t do it, and that a good copper turned bad?”

  “I’m not insisting. I’m just trying it out for size. We’d never prove it now, anyway.”

  “Except by proving that someone else killed Linda Lofthouse.”

  “Well, there is that.”

  “Who do you think?”

  “My money’s on Vic Greaves.”

  “Why, because he was mentally unstable?”

  “That’s part of it, yes. He had a habit of not knowing what he was doing and he had dark visions on his acid trips. Remember, he took acid that night at Brimleigh, as well as on the night of Robin Merchant’s death. It doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to guess that maybe he heard voices telling him to do things. But Linda Lofthouse was his cousin, so if you work on the theory that most people are killed by someone they know, particularly a family member, it makes even more sense.”

  “You don’t think he killed Robin Merchant, too, do you?”

  “It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility. Maybe Merchant knew, or guessed?”

  “But Greaves had no history of violence at all. Not to mention no motive.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you all that. But it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have flipped. Drugs do very strange things to people.”

  “What about Nick Barber?”

  “He found out.”

  “How?”

  “I haven’t got that far yet.”

  “Well,” said Annie, “I still think Stanley Chadwick got it right and Patrick McGarrity did it.”

  “Even so, Rick Hayes might be worth another look, too, if we can find him.”

  “If you insist.” Annie finished her Britvic Orange. “That’s my good deed for the day,” she said.

  “What are you up to tomorrow?” Banks asked.

  “Tomorrow? Browsing web sites, most likely. Why?”

  “I just thought you might like to take an hour or two off and come out for Sunday lunch with me and meet Emilia.”

  “Emilia?”

  “Brian’s girlfriend. Didn’t I tell you? She’s an actress. Been on telly.”

  “Really?”

  “Bad Girls, among others.”

  “One of my favorites. All right, sounds good.”

  “Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that nothing interrupts us like it did the other night.”

  For once, it wasn’t long after dark when Banks got home, having checked back at the station after his drink with Annie and found things ticking along nicely. Brian and Emilia were out somewhere, which allowed him a few delicious moments alone to listen to a recent CD purchase of Susan Graham singing French songs and enjoy a glass of Roy’s Amarone. When Brian and Emilia finally got back, the CD was almost over, and the glass of wine half empty. Banks went into the kitchen to greet them.

  “Dad,” said Brian, putting packages on the table, “we went to York for the day. We didn’t know if you were going to be here, so we picked up an Indian take-away. There’s plenty if you want to share.”

  “No, thank you,” said Banks, trying not to imagine what seismic reactions might occur in his stomach
when curry met Amarone. “I’m not really hungry. I had a sandwich earlier. How did you enjoy York?”

  “Great,” said Emilia. “We did all the tourist stuff. You know, toured the Minster, visited Jorvik. We even went to the train museum.”

  “You took her there?” Banks said to Brian.

  “Don’t blame me. It was her idea.”

  “It’s true,” Emilia said, taking Brian’s hand. “I love trains. I had to drag him.”

  They both laughed. Banks remembered taking Brian to the National Railway Museum, or York Railway Museum, as it was then known, on a day trip from London when he was about seven. How he had loved climbing all over the immaculate steam engines and playing at being the driver.

  Brian and Emilia ate their curry at the kitchen bench while Banks sat sipping his wine and chatting with them about their day. When they had finished eating, Brian tidied up – an oddity in itself – then said, “Oh, I forgot. I bought you a present, Dad.”

  “Me?” said Banks. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s not much.” Brian took an HMV bag from his backpack. “Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to wrap it properly.”

  Banks slipped the case out of the plastic bag. It was a DVD: The Mad Hatters Story. Judging by the account on the back of the box, it contained footage from every stage of the band’s career, including the earliest lineup with Vic Greaves and Robin Merchant. “Should be interesting,” Banks said. “Do you want to watch it with me?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Emilia?”

  Emilia took a book out of her shoulder bag, Reading Lolita in Tehran. “Not me,” she said with a smile. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day. I think I’ll go to bed and read for a while and leave you boys together.” She kissed Brian, then turned to Banks and said, “Good night.”

  “Good night,” Banks said. “Look, before you go, would the two of you like to come out for Sunday lunch with Annie and me tomorrow? If we can get away, that is?”

  Brian raised his eyebrows and looked at Emilia, who nodded. “Sure,” he said, then added with the weight of many broken engagements, “if you can get away.”

  “I promise. You are staying a while longer, aren’t you?”