“If that’s okay,” said Brian.
“Of course it is.”
“If we’re not cramping your style, that is.”
Banks felt himself blush. “No. Why should you…? I mean…”
Emilia said good night again, smiled and went upstairs. “She seems like a nice girl,” he said to Brian when she was out of earshot.
Brian grinned. “She is.”
“Is it…?”
“Serious?”
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s what I meant.”
“Too early to say, but I like her enough that I’d hurt if she left me, as the song says.”
“Which song?”
“Ours, idiot. The last single.”
“Ouch. I don’t buy singles.”
“I know that, Dad. I was teasing. And it wasn’t even for sale on a CD. You had to download it from iTunes.”
“Hey, wait a minute. I know how to do that now. I’ve got an iPod. I’m not a complete Luddite, you know.”
Brian laughed and grabbed a can of lager from the fridge. Banks refilled his glass and the two of them went into the entertainment room.
The DVD started with manager Chris Adams giving a potted history, then segued into a documentary made up of old concert footage and interviews. Banks found it amusing and interesting to see the band members of thirty-five years ago in their bell-bottoms and floppy hats manage to sound pretentious and innocent at the same time as they spoke about “peace and love, man.” Vic Greaves, looking wasted as usual in a 1968 interview, went off at a tangent punctuated with long pauses every time the interviewer asked him a question about his songs. There was something icily detached and slightly more cynical about Robin Merchant, and his cool, practical intelligence often provided a welcome antidote to the vapid and meandering musings of the others.
But it was the concert footage that proved most interesting. There was nothing from Brimleigh, unfortunately, except a few stills of the band relaxing with joints backstage, but there were some excellent late-sixties films of the band performing at such diverse places as the Refectory at Leeds University, Bristol’s Colston Hall and the Paradiso in Amsterdam. At one of the gigs, an outrageously stoned and enthusiastic MC yelled in a thick cockney accent, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s ’ave a ’uge ’and for the ’ATTERS!”
The music sounded wonderfully fresh, and Vic Greaves’s innocent pastoral lyrics had a haunting and timeless sadness about them, meshing with his delicate, spacey keyboards work and Terry Watson’s subtle riffs. Like many bass players, Robin Merchant just stood and played expressionlessly, but well, and like many drummers, Adrian Pritchard thrashed around at his kit like a maniac. Keith Moon and John Bonham were clearly big influences there.
There was something a bit odd about the lineup, but Banks was only half watching and half talking to Brian, and the next thing he knew, both Vic Greaves and Robin Merchant were gone and the lovely, if rather nervous, Tania Hutchison was making her debut with the band at London’s Royal Festival Hall in early 1972. Banks thought about his meeting with her the other day. She was still a good-looking woman, and he might have fancied his chances, but he thought he had alienated her with his probing questions. That seemed to be the story of his life, alienating women he fancied.
The documentary went on to portray the band’s upward trajectory until their official retirement in 1994, with clips from the few reunion concerts they had performed since then, along with interviews from an older, chain-smoking, short-haired Tania, and a completely bald, bloated and ill-looking Adrian Pritchard. Reg Cooper and Terry Watson must have declined to be interviewed because they appeared only in the concert footage.
When the film came to a sequence about disagreements within the band, Banks noticed Brian tense a little. Since the investigation had taken him farther into the world of rock than he had ever been before, he had thought a lot about Brian and the life he was living. Not just drugs, but all the trappings and problems that fame brought with it. He thought of the great stars who had destroyed themselves at an early age through self-indulgence or despair: Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Buckley, Janis Joplin, Nick Drake, Ian Curtis, Jim Morrison… the list went on. Brian seemed all right, but he was hardly likely to tell his father if he had a drug problem, for example.
“Anything wrong?” Banks asked.
“Wrong? No. Why? What could be wrong?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that you haven’t talked about the band much.”
“That’s because there’s not much to say.”
“So things are going fine?”
Brian paused. “Well…”
“What is it?”
He turned to face Banks, who turned down the DVD volume a notch or two. “Denny’s getting weird, that’s all. If it gets much worse, we might have to get rid of him.”
Denny, Banks knew, was the band’s other guitarist/vocalist, and Brian’s songwriting partner.
“Get rid of him?”
“I don’t mean kill him. Honestly, Dad, sometimes I wonder about the effect your job has on you.”
So do I, Banks thought. But he also thought about killing off disruptive band members – Robin Merchant, for example – and how easy it would have been, just a gentle nudge in the direction of the swimming pool. Vic Greaves had been disruptive, too, but he had made his own voluntary exit. “Weird? How?” he asked.
“Ego, mostly. I mean he’s getting into really off-the-wall musical influences, like acid Celtic punk, and he’s trying to import it into our sound. If you challenge him on it, he gets all huffy and goes on about how it’s his band, how he brought us together and all that shit.”
“What do the others have to say about him?”
“Everybody’s sort of retreated into their own worlds. We’re not communicating very well. We’re going through the motions. There’s no talking to Denny. We can’t write together anymore.”
“What happens if he goes?”
Brian gestured toward the video. “We get someone else. But we’re not going pop.”
“You’re doing just fine as you are, aren’t you?”
“We are. I know. We’re selling more and more. People love our sound. It’s got an edge, but it’s accessible, you know. That’s the problem. Denny wants to change it, and thinks he’s got a right to do so.”
“What about your manager?”
“Geoff? Denny keeps sucking up to him.”
Banks immediately thought of Kev Templeton. “And how is Geoff dealing with that?”
Brian scratched his chin. “Come to think of it,” he said, “he’s getting sick of it. I think at first he liked it that someone in the band was giving him a lot of attention, not to mention telling tales out of school, but I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, it’s a weird thing, but eventually people get fed up with their toadies.”
From the mouths of babes, Banks thought, as a lightbulb went on in his brain. Though Brian was hardly a baby. It was as he had suspected. Templeton was digging his own grave. Nobody needed to do anything. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Annie ought to appreciate that, too, Banks, thought, with her interests in Taoism and Zen. “Have drugs got anything to do with it?” he asked.
Brian looked at him. “Drugs? No. If you mean have I ever done any drugs, then the answer’s yes. I’ve smoked dope and taken E. I took speed once, but when I came down I was depressed for a week, so I’ve never touched it since. Nothing stronger. And as it happens, I still prefer lager. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Banks. “It’s good of you to be so frank, but I was thinking more about the others.”
Brian smiled. “Now I see how you trick confessions out of people. Anyway, the answer’s still no. Believe it or not, we’re a pretty straight band.”
“So what next?” Banks asked.
Brian shrugged. “Dunno. Geoff said we all needed to take a breather, we’d been working so hard in the studio and on tour. When we get back… we’ll see. Either Denny will have changed h
is ideas or he won’t.”
“What do you predict?”
“That he won’t.”
“And then?”
“He’ll have to go.”
“Does that worry you?”
“A bit. Not too much, though. I mean, they did all right, didn’t they?” The Mad Hatters were performing their jaunty, rocking 1983 number one hit, “Young at Heart.” “The band will survive. It’s more the lack of communication that upsets me. I mean, Denny was a mate, and now I can’t talk to him.”
“Losing friends is always sad,” said Banks, aware of how pathetic and pointless that observation was. “It’s just one of those things, though. When you first get together with someone it’s a great adventure, finding out stuff you’ve got in common. You know, places you love, music, books. Then the more you get to know them, the more you start to see other things.”
“Yeah, like a whingeing, lying, manipulative bastard,” said Brian. Then he laughed and shook his empty can. “Want another glass of plonk?” he asked Banks, whose glass was also empty.
“Sure, why not?” said Banks, and he watched the lovely Tania sway in pastel blue diaphanous robes that flowed around her like water while Brian got the drinks.
“There is one thing I’d like to know,” he said, after a sip of Amarone. Plonk, indeed.
“What’s that?” Brian asked.
“Just what the hell does acid Celtic punk sound like?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Annie jotted something down, then turned back to the computer monitor and scrolled. It was Monday morning. On Sunday, most of the team had taken a well-deserved day off, their first since Nick Barber’s murder almost two weeks ago. Annie had spent the morning doing household chores, the afternoon on the Mad Hatters web site and the evening enjoying that long bath and the trashy magazines she had been promising herself. At lunchtime, she had gone out with Banks, Brian and Emilia to the Bridge in Grinton. Emilia had been absolutely charming, and Annie had been secretly awestruck to meet an up-and-coming actress. More so than by meeting Banks’s rock star son, whom she had met before, though Brian had also, in his way, been charming and far less full of himself than she remembered from previous occasions they had met. He seemed to have matured and become comfortable with his success, no longer the young tearaway with something to prove.
The coffee at her right hand was lukewarm, and she made a face when she took a sip. There was plenty of activity around her in the squad room, but she was still on the Web, oblivious to most of it as she felt herself finally zooming in on the mystery of the numbers in the back of Nick Barber’s book.
It wasn’t such an esoteric solution after all, she realized with a sense of disappointment. It didn’t suddenly make everything clear and solve the case, and it was nothing she wouldn’t have expected him to make a note of anyway.
She hadn’t found everything she wanted at the official Mad Hatters web site, but she had found links there that took her to more obscure fan sites, as Nick Barber must have done in Eastvale Computes. But all the owner had heard was the snatch of song that played when he accessed the official site. Now she negotiated her way through bright orange and red Gothic print, black backgrounds with stylized logos and flashing arrows. All signs that some young web designer was eager to show off and lacked restraint. Before long, her eyes were starting to buzz, and her eyeballs felt as if they had been massaged with sandpaper.
Once she had the final string jotted down, she printed the whole document, bookmarked the web site URL and closed the browser. Then she rubbed her eyes and went in search of a fresh cup of coffee, only to find that it was her turn to make a fresh pot. When she finally got back to her desk, it was close to lunchtime and she felt like a break from the office.
“I was just thinking about you,” she said when Banks popped his head around the door and asked her how she was getting on. “I’m feeling cooped up here. Why don’t you take me to that new bistro by the castle and we go over what I’ve found so far?”
“What?” said Banks. “Lunch together two days in a row? People will talk.”
“A working lunch,” Annie said.
“Okay. Sounds good to me.”
With Templeton’s deepening frown following them, Annie picked up her papers and they walked out into the cobbled market square. It was a fine day for the time of year, scrubbed blue sky and just a hint of chill in the wind, and a couple of coachloads of tourists from Teesside were disembarking by the market cross and making a beeline for the nearest pub. The church clock struck twelve as Banks and Annie crossed the square and took the narrow lane that wound up to the castle. The bistro was down a small flight of stone stairs about halfway up the hill. It had only been open about three months and had garnered some good local reviews. Because it was early, only two of the tables were occupied already, and the owner welcomed them, giving them the pick of the rest. They chose a corner table, with their backs to the whitewashed walls. That way nobody would be able to look over their shoulders. Little light got through the half-window, and all you could see were legs and feet walking by, but the muted wall lighting was good enough to read by.
They both decided on sparkling mineral water, partly because Annie rarely drank at lunchtime and Banks said he was beginning to find that even one glass of wine so early in the day made him drowsy. Banks went for a steak sandwich and frites and Annie chose the cheese omelette and green salad. The food ordered and fizzy water poured, they began to go over the results of her morning’s work. Soft music played in the background. East-vale’s idea of Parisian chic: Charles Aznavour, Edith Piaf, a little Françoise Hardy. But it was so quiet as to be unobtrusive. Banks broke off a chunk of baguette, buttered it and looked at Annie’s notes.
“Put simply,” she said, “it’s the Mad Hatters tour dates from October 1969 to May 1970.”
“But that’s eight months, and there are only six rows.”
“They didn’t tour in December or February,” Annie said. She showed Banks the printout from the web site. “I got this all from a site run by what must be their most devoted fan. The trivia some of these people put out there is amazing. Anyway, it must have been a godsend to a writer like Nick Barber.”
“But is it all accurate?”
“I’m sure there are errors,” Annie said. “After all, these web sites are unedited, and it’s easy to make a mistake. But on the whole I’d say it’s probably pretty close.”
“So the Mad Hatters were on tour the sixth, eighth, ninth, twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-fifth of October? That’s how it goes?”
“Yes,” said Annie. She handed him the printout. “And these were the places they played.”
“The Dome, Brighton; the Locarno Ballroom, Sunderland; the Guild-hall, Portsmouth. They got around.”
“They certainly did.”
“And the ringed dates?”
“Just three of them, as you can see,” said Annie. “The twelfth of January, the nineteenth of April and the nineteenth of May. All in 1970.”
“Any significance in those two nineteenths?”
“I haven’t figured out the significance of any of the ringed dates yet.”
“Maybe it was one of his girlfriends’ periods?”
Annie gave him a sharp nudge in the ribs. “Don’t be rude. Anyway, periods don’t come that irregularly. Not usually, at any rate.”
“So you did consider it?”
Annie ignored him and prepared to move on just as their food arrived. They took a short pause to arrange papers, plates and knives and forks, then carried on. “The first gap is three months, the second is one.”
“Drug scores?”
“Perhaps.”
“What about the venues?”
Annie consulted her notes. “On the twelfth of January, they were playing at the Top Rank Suite in Cardiff, on the nineteenth of April, they were at the Dome in Brighton, and on the nineteenth of May, they were at the Van Dyke Club in Plymouth.”
“You can’t get much more
diverse than that,” said Banks. “Okay. Now we need to find out if there’s any significance at all to those dates and places.”
The owner came over to see if everything was all right. They assured him it was, and he scooted off. That kind of solicitude wouldn’t last long in Yorkshire, Annie thought, finding herself wondering if his French accent was as false as his hairpiece. “I’ll enlist Winsome’s aid after lunch,” she said. “You?”
“I think it’s time I paid another visit to Vic Greaves,” said Banks. “See if I can get any more sense out of him this time. I was thinking of taking Jenny Fuller along, but she’s off on the lecture circuit, and there’s no on else around I can really trust for that sort of thing.”
“Be careful,” said Annie. “Remember what happened to Nick Barber when he got too interested in Greaves.”
“Don’t worry. I will.”
“And good luck,” Annie added. “By the sound of him, you’ll need it.”
Banks cut off a lump of glutinous brown gristle from his steak and put it on the side of his plate. The sight of it made Annie feel vaguely queasy and very glad to be a vegetarian. “You know,” Banks said, “I still can’t decide whether Greaves is truly bonkers or just a genuine English eccentric.”
“Maybe there isn’t much of a difference,” Annie said. “Have you thought of that?”
There were plenty of cars parked on Lyndgarth’s village green early on Monday afternoon, and several groups of walkers in serious gear had assembled for briefings nearby. Banks found a spot to park near the post office and headed up the lane to Vic Greaves’s cottage. He was hoping that the man might be a bit more coherent this time and had a number of questions prepared to jog the ex-keyboard player’s memory if he needed to. Since his last visit he had come to believe that Stanley Chadwick had been seriously misguided about Patrick McGarrity’s guilt, for personal reasons, and he now knew that not only had Greaves been Linda Lofthouse’s cousin, but that Nick Barber was her son, which meant that Greaves and Barber were also related in some complicated way that Banks couldn’t quite figure out. But most important, it meant connections between the different cases, and connections always excited Banks.
Piece Of My Heart Page 39