“Here we are, sir.”
Chadwick snapped out of his reverie as Enderby pulled off the narrow track onto the grass. “Is this it?” he asked. “It doesn’t look like much of a place.”
What he could see of the house beyond its high stone wall and wooden gate was an unremarkable building of limestone with a flagstone roof and three chimneys. It was long and low with very few windows; all in all, a gloomy-looking place.
“This is just the back,” said Enderby as they approached the gate. It opened into a flagged yard, and the path led to a heavy red door with a large brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. “Tradesman’s entrance.”
Enderby knocked on the door, and they waited. The silence was oppressive, Chadwick thought. No birds singing. Even the sound of a rock band rehearsing would have been preferable. Well, on second thought…
The door opened and a young man of about thirty in a paisley shirt and flared black denim jeans greeted them. His
chestnut hair wasn’t as long as Chadwick would have expected, but it did hang over his collar. “You must be the police,” he said. “I’m Chris Adams, the band’s manager. I don’t see how we can help you, but please come in.”
Enderby and Chadwick followed him into a broad panelled hallway with doors leading off to the left and right. The dark wood gleamed, and Chadwick caught a whiff of lemon-scented polish. At the far end, a set of French windows framed a stunning view of the opposite daleside, an asymmetrical jumble of fields and drystone walls, and below them, at the bottom of the slope, was the river. The doors, Chadwick noticed as he got closer, led out to a terrace with stone balustrades. A table, complete with umbrella, and six chairs stood in front of the doors.
“Impressive,” said Chadwick.
“It’s nice when the weather’s good,” said Adams. “Which I can’t say is all that often in this part of the world.”
“Local?”
“I grew up in Leeds. Went to school with Vic, the keyboards player. It’s down here.”
He led them down a flight of stone steps, and Chadwick realized then that they had entered the house on its highest level and there was a whole other floor beneath. At least half of it, he noticed as they walked in through the door, was taken up by one large room, at the moment full of guitars, drums, keyboard instruments, microphones, consoles, amplifiers, speakers and thick, snaking electrical cords: the rehearsal studio, mercifully silent, except for the all-pervading hum of electricity. More French windows, these ones open, led out to a patio area in the shadow of the terrace above. Just beyond that, across a short stretch of overgrown lawn, was a granite and marble swimming pool. Why anyone would want an outdoor swimming pool in their backyard in Yorkshire was
beyond Chadwick, but the rich had their own tastes, and the wherewithal to indulge them. Perhaps it was heated. Sunlight reflecting from the surface told him the pool was full of water.
Four young men sat around in the large room smoking cigarettes and chatting and laughing with three girls, and one lay on a sofa reading. On a table by one wall stood a variety of bottles–Coca-Cola, gin, vodka, whisky, brandy, beer and wine. Some of the others seemed to have drinks already, and Adams offered refreshments, but Chadwick declined. He didn’t like to feel beholden in any way towards people who might very well be, or might soon become, suspects. Everyone was wearing casual clothes, mostly jeans and T-shirts, some tie-dyed in the most outrageous patterns and colours. Very long hair was the norm for both men and women, except for Adams, who seemed a shade more conservative than the rest. Chadwick was wearing a dark suit and muted tie.
Now that he was here, Chadwick didn’t know exactly where to start. Adams introduced the band members, who all said hello politely, and the girls, who giggled and retreated to one of the other rooms.
Fortunately, one of the group members stepped forward and said, “How can we help you, Mr. Chadwick? We heard about what happened at Brimleigh. It’s terrible.”
It was Robin Merchant, bass and vocals, and clearly the spokesman. He was tall and thin and wore jeans and a jacket made of some satiny blue material with zodiac signs embroidered on it.
“I don’t know that you can,” said Chadwick, sitting down on a folding chair. “It’s just that we have information the girl was in the backstage area at some point on Sunday evening, and we’re trying to find out if anyone saw her there or talked to her.”
“There were a lot of people around,” said Merchant.
“I know that. And I also know that things might have been, shall we say, a wee bit chaotic back there.”
One of the others–Adrian Pritchard, the drummer, Chadwick thought–laughed. “You can say that again. It was anarchy, man.”
They all laughed.
“Even so,” Chadwick said, “one of you might have seen or heard something important. You might not know it, what it is, but it’s possible.”
“Does the tree fall in the woods if no one is there to hear it?” chimed in the one on the sofa. Vic Greaves, keyboards player.
“Come again?” said Chadwick.
Greaves stared off into space. “It’s a matter of philosophy, isn’t it? How can I know something if I don’t know it? How can I know that something happens if I don’t experience it?”
“What Vic means,” said Merchant, jumping to the rescue, “is that we were all pretty much focused on what we were doing.”
“Which was?”
“Pardon?”
“What were you doing?”
“Well, you know,” said Merchant, “just relaxing in the caravan, practising a few chord changes, or maybe having a drink or something, talking to guys in the other bands. Depends what time it was.”
Chadwick doubted it. Most likely, he thought, they were taking drugs and having sex with groupies, but none of them was going to admit that. “What time did you perform?”
Merchant looked to the others for confirmation. “We went on about eight, just after, right, and we played an hour set, so we were off again just after nine. After the roadies moved the
equipment around and set up the light show, Pink Floyd came on after us, about ten, then Fleetwood Mac, then Led Zep.”
“And after your set? What did you do?”
Merchant shrugged. “We just hung around, you know. We were pretty wired, the adrenaline from performing and everything–I mean, it went
really
well, a great gig, and a big one for us–so we needed a couple of drinks to come down. I don’t know, we just listened to the other bands, that sort of thing. I spent a bit of time in the caravan reading.”
“Reading what?”
“You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
“Try me.”
“Aleister Crowley,
Magick in Theory and Practice
.”
“Never heard of it,” said Chadwick, with a smile.
Merchant gave him a sharp, penetrating glance. “As I said, I didn’t think you would have done.”
“Did you stay until the end?”
“Yeah. Jesse said we could stay here for the night, so we didn’t have too far to go.”
“Jesse?”
“Sorry. Lord Jessop. Everyone calls him Jesse.”
“I see. Is he here now?”
“No, he’s in France. Spends quite a bit of his time there, down in Antibes. We saw him last month when we did a tour there.”
“In France?”
“Yeah. The album’s selling really well there.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
“Was Lord Jessop at Brimleigh?”
“Sure. He went down to Antibes maybe last Tuesday or Wednesday.”
All of a sudden a loud, violent buzzing noise cut like a chainsaw through Chadwick’s head.
“Sorry.” A sheepish Reg Cooper, lead guitarist, apologized. “Feedback.” He put his guitar down carefully. The noise ebbed slowly away.
“Boring you, am I, laddie?” said Chadwick.
“No,” Cooper muttered. “Not at all. I said I was sorry. Accident.”
Chadwick held Cooper’s gaze for a moment, then turned his attention back to Robin Merchant. “Let’s get back to the eighth of September,” he said. “We think the girl was killed between about one o’clock and twenty past one in the morning, while Led Zeppelin were playing a song called ‘I Can’t Quit You, Baby.’” Such language came only with difficulty from Chadwick’s mouth, and he noticed some of the others smirk as he spoke the words. “I understand that they’re very loud,” he went on, ignoring them, “so it’s unlikely anybody heard anything, if there was anything to hear, but were any of you in Brimleigh Woods at that time?”
“The woods?” said Merchant. “No, we didn’t go there at all. We were backstage, up front in the press enclosure or in the caravan.”
“All of you? All the time?” Chadwick scanned the others’ faces.
They all nodded.
“‘If you go down to the woods today…’” Vic Greaves intoned in the background.
“Why would we go to the woods, man?” said Adrian Pritchard. “All the action was backstage.”
“What action?”
“You know, man…the birds…the…”
“Shut up, Adrian,” said Merchant. He turned back to
Chadwick and folded his arms. “Look, I know what preconceptions you coppers have of us, but we’re clean. You can search the place if you like. Go on.”
“I’m sure you are,” said Chadwick. “You knew we were coming. But I’m not interested in drugs. Not at the moment, anyway. I’m more interested in what you were doing when this girl died, and in whether any of you saw her or talked to her.”
“Well, I told you,” said Merchant. “We never went near the woods, and how do we know if we saw her or not when none of us knows her name or what she looked like.”
“You didn’t see the papers?”
“We never bother with them. Full of establishment lies.”
“Anyway,” Chadwick said, reaching for his briefcase. “I was getting to that. As it happens I now have a fairly recent photograph. It should interest you.” He took out the photograph of Linda with the members of the Mad Hatters and passed it to Merchant, who gasped and stared, open-mouthed. “Is that…Vic?” He passed it to Vic Greaves, who still lay sprawled on a sofa smoking and looking, to Chadwick, quite out of it. Greaves stirred and took the photo. “Fuck,” he said. “Fucking hell.” The photo slipped out of his hands.
Chadwick went over and picked it up, standing over Greaves. “Who is it?” he asked. “You know her?”
“Sort of,” said Greaves. “Look, I don’t feel too good, Rob. My head, it’s…like snakes and things coming back, you know, man…like I need…” He turned away.
Merchant stepped forward. “Vic’s not too well,” he said. “The doctor says he’s suffering from fatigue, and his emotional state is pretty fragile right now. This must be a hell of a shock for him.”
“Why?” asked Chadwick, sitting down again.
He gestured towards the photo. “That girl. It’s Linda. Linda Lofthouse. She’s Vic’s cousin.”
Cousin.
Mrs. Lofthouse had never mentioned that. But why should she? He hadn’t asked her about the Mad Hatters, and she had probably been in shock. Still, this was a new development worth following. Chadwick looked at Vic Greaves with more interest. By far the scruffiest of the bunch, he looked as if he hadn’t shaved in four or five days, and his skin was deathly pale, as if he never saw the sun, his face dotted with angry red spots. His dark hair stuck out in tufts as if he had slept on it and not washed or combed it for a week. His clothes looked rumpled, slept-in, too. There was a well-thumbed paperback on the sofa beside him called
Meetings with Remarkable Men
.
“Were they particularly close?” Chadwick asked Robin Merchant.
“No, not really, I don’t think, just cousins. She grew up in west Leeds, and Vic’s family lived in Seacroft.”
“But we understand she lived in London,” Chadwick said. “Isn’t that where you all live now?”
“It’s a big place.”
Chadwick took a deep breath. “Mr. Merchant,” he said, “I appreciate that you lads are busy, not to mention famous, and no doubt wealthy. But a young girl has been brutally murdered at a festival in which you were taking part. She was seen backstage talking to two of you, and now it appears that one of you is also her cousin. Is there any particular reason Mr. Greaves over there is suffering from fatigue, that his emotional state is distressed? That’s exactly the kind of thing that killing someone might do to you.”
A stunned silence followed Chadwick’s controlled tirade. Greaves tossed on the sofa and his book fell to the floor. He
put his head in his hands and groaned. “Talk to him, Rob, talk to him,” he said. “You tell him. I can’t handle this.”
“Look,” said Merchant. “Why don’t we take a walk outside, Inspector. I’ll answer all your questions as best I can. But can’t you see it’s upsetting Vic?”
Upsetting Vic Greaves was not Chadwick’s main concern, but he thought he might be able to get a bit more information out of Robin Merchant, who seemed the most level-headed of the lot, if he did as requested. He gestured to Enderby to stay with the others and accompanied Merchant out to the flagged patio down the slope towards the swimming pool.
“Ever use it?” Chadwick asked.
“Sometimes,” Merchant answered with a smile. “For midnight orgies on the two days in August when it’s warm enough. Jesse tries to keep it cleaned up, but it’s difficult.”
“Lord Jessop isn’t a relation, too, is he?”
“Jesse? Good Lord, no. He’s a patron of the arts. A friend.”
They stood by the side of the pool looking out across the dale. Chadwick could see a red tractor making its way across one of the opposite fields towards a tiny farmhouse. The hillside was dotted with sheep. He glanced down at the swimming pool. A few early autumn leaves floated on the water’s scummy surface, along with a dead sparrow.
“All right, Mr. Merchant,” said Chadwick. “Am I to I take it you’re the leader of the group?”
“Spokesman. We don’t believe in leaders.”
“Very well.
Spokesman.
That means you can speak for the others?”
“To some extent. Yes. It’s not that they can’t speak for themselves. But Vic, as you can see, is not exactly a social charmer, though he’s a great creative force. Adrian and Reg are okay, but
they’re not especially articulate, and Terry is way too hip to talk to the fuzz.”
“You sound educated.”
“I’ve got a degree, if that’s what you mean. English literature.”
“I’m impressed.”