Piece of My Heart (43 page)

“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?”

19

A
nnie 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’ website 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 offcial Mad Hatters website, 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 offcial 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 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 can 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 started to go over the results of her morning’s work. Soft music played in the background. Eastvale’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 website. “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 websites 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 Guildhall, 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 and 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 one 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–keyboards 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.

He walked up the short path and knocked on the door. The front curtains were closed. No answer. He remembered the last time, how it had taken Greaves a while to answer, so he knocked again. When he still got no answer, he walked around to the back, where there was a small cobbled yard and a storage shed. He peeked through the grimy kitchen window and saw that things were in pretty much the same spotless order as they had been when he had first visited Greaves.

Curious, Banks tried the back door. It opened.

He was treading on dangerous ground now, he knew, entering a suspect’s premises alone without a search warrant, but he thought that he could justify his actions if he had to. Vic
Greaves was mentally unstable, and Banks feared that he might have come to some harm, or harmed himself in some way. Even so, he hoped he didn’t stumble across the one piece of vital evidence that linked Greaves inextricably with Barber’s murder, or with Linda Lofthouse’s, or he might have a hard time getting it admitted in court. What he would do, he decided, was not touch anything and return with full authorization if he had to.

As he entered, Banks felt a shiver of fear run down his spine. Annie had been right in her warning. If he indicated that he was at all close to the truth, then Greaves might lash out, as Banks thought he had done at Nick Barber. He might already know who was at his door, might be lying in wait, armed and ready to attack. Banks moved cautiously through the dim kitchen. At least all the knives were in their slots in the wooden block where Greaves kept them. Banks stood still in the doorway that led through to the living room and listened. Nothing but the wind whipping the tree branches and the distant sounds of a car starting and a dog barking.

From what he could make out in the pale light that filtered through the curtains, the living room was just as it had been, too, with newspapers and magazines piled everywhere. Banks stood at the bottom of the stairs and called out Greaves’s name again. Still no answer.

Tense and alert, he started to walk up the stairs. They creaked as he moved. Every once in a while he would pause, but still he heard nothing. He stood on the upstairs landing and listened again. Nothing. It was a small cottage, and in addition to the toilet and bathroom there were only two bedrooms. Banks checked the first and found it almost as full of newspapers and magazines as the living room. Then he went into the second, which was obviously Greaves’s bedroom.

In one corner lay a mattress heaped with sheets and blankets. It reminded Banks of nothing so much as a nest of some kind. Carefully, he poked around with his toe in the bedsheets, but no one was there, either hiding or dead. Though the sheets were piled in an untidy mess, they were clean and smelled of apples. There was nothing else in the room except a wardrobe and a dresser full of old, but clean and neatly folded, clothes and underwear.

After a cursory glance in the toilet and bathroom, which told him nothing, Banks went back downstairs into the living room. It was an ideal opportunity for him to poke around, but it didn’t seem as if Greaves had anything worth poking around for. There were no mementoes, no Mad Hatters memorabilia, no photos or keepsakes of any kind. In fact, as far as Banks could tell, the cottage contained nothing but a few basic toiletries, clothes, kitchenware and newspapers.

He started looking at some of the papers on the top of a pile:
Northern Echo
and
Darlington and Stockton Times
, along with the
Yorkshire Evening Post
dating back about three years, as far as he could tell. The magazines covered just about everything from computing, though Greaves had no computer, as far as Banks had seen, to coin collecting, though there were none on the subject of rock music, or music of any kind. Many of the magazines still had free gifts stuck to their covers, and some hadn’t even been removed from their cellophane wrapping.

Finding nothing of interest among the papers, Banks headed for the shed in the backyard. It had a padlock, but it was already open, just hanging there loosely on the hasp. Banks opened the door. He expected more newspapers, at the very least, but the shed was empty. It had no particular smell except for soil and wood. Spiders went about their webs in the corners, and one particularly large specimen scuttled across
the window. Banks shuddered. He had hated spiders ever since he had found one under his pillow when he was about five.