“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 websites, 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 favourites. 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 Indian take-away. There’s plenty if you want to share.”
“No,” said Banks, trying not to imagine what seismic reactions might occur in his stomach when curry met Amarone. “I’m not really hungry. Thanks. 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?”
“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 emcee 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 offcial 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 further 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 brings 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 towards 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 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 light bulb 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 his 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.”