‘I was wondering if you could tell me a little about your niece.’
‘What would you like to know, Inspector?’
There was a gentle air in her voice, but Tara had rather expected an accent similar to Jez’s. Instead, she spoke in the manner of a woman born and bred on the banks of the Mersey, a true Scouser.
‘Jez died in mysterious and terrible circumstances, Miss Gibson. I need to find out more about her background, the people she knew, her friends, family, anything that might shed light on why she was killed.’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said quite shocked. ‘If you fancy a cuppa, my place is just around the corner.’
‘A cup of tea would be great.’
‘Follow me then, I have plenty to tell you about our Jessica.’
CHAPTER 41
It was as Anne Gibson had said, just around the corner on Allerton Road. She led Tara inside a quaint terraced cottage in a row of three, nowadays, squeezed between a solicitor’s office and an estate agent’s.
The front door opened directly into a lounge where a narrow staircase sat to the left. It was a cosy-looking room, a mix of modern and dated furniture, a well-worn sofa and TV chair, an antique occasional table and a large-screen television. Within the reveals to each side of the chimney breast were a collection of framed photographs of various sizes. Some were in colour, others in black and white. To one corner and below the pictures were shelves crammed untidily with books, records, CDs and DVDs.
‘Please make yourself comfortable, Inspector. I’ll put the kettle on.’
Anne Gibson slid open a door to reveal a bright galley kitchen, while Tara remained standing looking around at the pictures and photographs on the walls. There were a pair of oil-painted landscapes of places she did not recognise, although she dared to assume that they had been painted by Jez. On the wall above the sofa was a collection of black and white photographs, depicting groups of young people. She did not immediately recognise anyone but wondered perhaps if a younger Anne Gibson was featured. The fashions displayed looked as though they came from way back, the sixties maybe, but she wasn’t sure.
Within a couple of minutes, Anne, still wearing her overcoat, entered the lounge carrying a tray with two cups of coffee, a jug of milk, sugar bowl and a plate of shortbread. She set the tray on the occasional table then pulled off her coat.
‘Help yourself to some shortbread,’ she said, handing Tara a china cup.
‘Thank you, Miss Gibson.’ Tara was feeling hungry and lifted one of the biscuits from the plate.
‘You can call me Anne, love, no need for formalities here.’
She took her coffee and sat down in the chair opposite Tara who had placed herself in the middle of the sofa.
‘And I’m Tara,’ she reciprocated.
‘So, what would you like to know about our Jessica?’
‘As much as you can tell me, Anne. I’m investigating her murder, but I was also friends with Jez… with Jessica for a short time.’
‘I see. Well, there’s not much I can tell you about her recent past. We haven’t been that close since she came home to Liverpool. If you ask me, I think she had changed greatly in the time she was away. I suppose we all do as we grow older.’
‘Was there anyone close to her, a boyfriend, or had she been married?’
Anne shook her head. ‘Not that I know of, although she might well have been at some point while she was living in London. Relationships were not something she ever spoke about to me.’
Tara felt she had to know the reason for the difference in surnames between Jez and her parents.
‘Can you tell me why Jessica used the surname of Riordan, since her parents were Gibson, like you?’
‘That was a puzzle to me too, the reason for the change. Riordan was her mother’s maiden name, but Jessica only started using it after she came home to Liverpool. She may have used it while she was in London, I suppose, in connection with her painting. Maybe she thought it suited her as an artist. She never discussed it with me, but I would guess that was the reason behind it.’
Tara couldn’t help herself from reaching for another piece of shortbread. She was starving.
‘I noticed from the gravestone that her parents died at an early age.’
‘Eleanor died when Jessica was only three.’
‘What happened?’
‘Overdose of drink and drugs. She had a problem for years. Paul, my only brother, drank himself to death. Two wasted lives, Tara, and Jessica was left on her own when she was just seventeen. She came here to live with me for a while until she went off to university in London. The house she had lived in, here in Woolton, belonged to Paul. She inherited the place, though I never thought she would ever move back in.’
Anne shook her head, staring into space or the depths of family memories.
‘Jessica spent her entire childhood looking after her dad. He was seldom ever sober. Not since the end of The Moondreams.’
‘The Moondreams?’ Tara asked.
Anne Gibson’s eyes seemed to ignite at the sound of the words.
‘You’ve not heard of The Moondreams?’ Anne smiled. ‘No, I don’t suppose you would. You’re much too young.’
She rose from the chair and went to the bookshelves. After a few moments of searching, she pulled out what looked like a scrapbook. The cover was a jazzy array of colour with ‘Moondreams’ written in black felt pen across the top. She sat down next to Tara on the sofa and opened the book. The first page had a single black and white photograph stuck with Sellotape to the manila page.
Tara stared at the image of two young men with mop-top haircuts and smart suits. She could have been looking at two of The Beatles.
‘That’s our Paul on the left with the fag in his mouth and the other lad is Roddy Craig,’ said Anne. ‘They were best mates those two, a right pair of jokers.’ Anne turned the page to reveal several more photographs and cuttings from newspapers. ‘That’s me,’ she said with a slight laugh. Tara gazed at a very beautiful girl, a teenager, huddled with three other smiling girls all wearing the same school uniform. ‘Those were the days.’
Tara attempted to read some of the newspaper cuttings, but Anne quickly turned to another page in the scrapbook. Next, there was a picture of Anne, her brother and two other young men.
‘That’s Paul and me with two of The Hollies when they used to play The Cavern. That’s Alan Clarke and the other one is Graham Nash.’
On the next page was a small poster, glued in place. It advertised a show featuring The Merseybeats, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, The Mojos and, at the bottom of the line-up, The Moondreams. They were all on the bill for The Cavern Club in Mathew Street, made famous because The Beatles had played there so many times.
‘I used to sneak in on my lunch break to see all the different bands. I was a bit young when The Beatles played there although I saw them a couple of times. But when they became famous it was like we had lost them from Liverpool. We girls soon moved on to other groups. Paul and Roddy’s group, The Moondreams, were headed for the big time, too.’
Anne turned yet another page of the scrapbook to reveal several cuttings all displaying a similar message: ‘Roddy Craig drowns in the Mersey.’
‘What happened?’ Tara asked.
Anne Gibson shook her head and her eyes immediately filled with tears. She reached over the side of the sofa and pulled several tissues from a box, using them to blow her nose. Tara looked on; she could see that Anne had been a very pretty girl and still was an attractive woman, now in her early seventies.
‘Roddy and I were an item for a while, for a couple of months anyway. He was lovely, so full of life. He had everything, good looks, a sense of humour and – boy – could he sing.’
Anne jumped up from the sofa and went to the shelf that held her record collection. She had no difficulty extracting the disc she wanted, and within a few seconds it was on her turntable and she was adjusting the volume. Soon, a strong yet smooth voice filled the room
. For Tara, it could have been any song from the sixties, but she realised that the voice of the singer was indeed special.
‘That’s Roddy,’ said Anne. ‘It was his voice you heard at the end of the funeral, singing The Daring Night.’
They sat in silence for a while listening to the record until the second track began, the heavier-sounding music quite different from the opening song.
‘The Cavern was like heaven and hell rolled into one,’ Anne continued. ‘It had the best music, the best groups you could hear anywhere, but it was the most cramped space and had the worst toilets on the planet. You could hardly move in the place when a good band was playing, packed shoulder to shoulder with the condensation dripping like rain from the brick ceiling. But we wouldn’t have swapped it for anything. It was ours; it belonged to Liverpool and everyone who played there knew that, too.’
Tara read the newspaper clippings on the death of Roddy Craig as Anne told of her experiences back when she was a teenager. From what she read, there did not seem to be any definitive story on how the singer had come to drown in the Mersey.
‘The Moondreams were going to be as big as The Beatles,’ said Anne. ‘Everybody who went to The Cavern knew it. Paul and Roddy were special; they had star written all over them, Roddy singing and Paul on guitar and harmonising with Roddy. The others in the group were all right too, but they were just along for the ride. Paul and Roddy were the geniuses. By the time Roddy died, they had progressed from playing The Cavern and Liverpool. They had moved to London and recorded their first album. Again, just like The Beatles, at Abbey Road Studios. I suppose in a way, like The Beatles, by that stage we had already lost them to the big wide world. I went down to visit Paul a couple of times in London. All the lads were living the high life, going to parties, beautiful women baying for them, and then there was the drink and the drugs. I don’t think I ever saw Roddy sober after he left Liverpool. Most of the time he was stoned. Paul wasn’t much better, but by then he had met Eleanor Riordan and for a while, she held him in check. Eleanor was gorgeous, a fashion model, she moved in the same circles as Marianne Faithful, Jean Shrimpton, and Twiggy. I used to see those types at every party we went to. Of course, I was completely spellbound by it all. It was a world away from Liverpool. Paul and Roddy fitted right in. I was so proud of them both and a little sad that I was no longer Roddy’s girl.’
Anne paused as another track on the album began. It was The Daring Night, and now Tara was hearing it for the second time that day.
‘This was Jessica’s favourite. She always said it summed up her parent’s life: full of life and hope yet destined to fail.’
‘What happened the night Roddy died?’
Anne looked at Tara and shrugged.
‘No one seems to know,’ she said. ‘At least no one in the group ever talked about it, including Paul.’ Anne rose from the sofa and stopped the LP on the player. ‘The Moondreams had just released this LP, and they were about to go off around the world to promote it. Paul had the idea that first, they should play The Cavern one last time to thank the fans who had been with them from the start. I was there watching with Eleanor. That night The Moondreams were fabulous. The entire audience just stood there in awe at their playing. When the show finished we all nipped across to The Grapes for a pint before closing time. The boys were all high, whether it was just the excitement of the night or whether they were all popping pills, I had no idea, but they wanted to move on to somewhere else. I went home with my girlfriends. I never heard anything until Monday morning. My friend phoned me at work to tell me that she’d heard that Roddy had been pulled out of the river on Sunday morning. When I checked the morning paper, the headline said that Roddy had drowned.’
‘Roddy’s death was also the end for The Moondreams,’ Anne continued. ‘Although Paul never spoke of it to me, there was a rift between him and the other lads in the group. Besides, without Roddy, they were never going to have the success they’d dreamed of. He was one half of the songwriting talent. Paul tried on his own for several years, but by then he had a serious problem with his drinking. He and Eleanor had moved to the house in Woolton, the house where Jessica was raised. But Eleanor, having given up her modelling career for Paul, had developed a drug habit. Even when Jessica was born, Eleanor was already on a downward spiral. She died of a heroin overdose when Jessica was three. Paul was devastated, but it just made his drinking worse. By this time, he had given up on his musical career and lived off his share of the royalties for The Food of Love LP which continued to sell all over the world.’
‘Who looked after Jessica?’
‘I did, although Paul was adamant that she should continue to live with him. So I went round there every day, made sure that Jessica was fed and dressed, got her off to school, made her tea and helped her with homework. By the time she was a teenager, Jessica was taking care of herself and her father. Paul passed away when she was seventeen. She came to live with me for a year before she went off to university. When she eventually came back home, three years ago, she decided to open up her old house again and she moved in. But I haven’t seen much of her these last three years.’
Tara decided she had taken enough of Anne Gibson’s time, but she asked one final question.
‘Did she ever mention why she moved back to Liverpool?’
‘Not to me. She came back here all of a sudden, and as far as I know, settled into her new job at Harbinson’s. She never told me why she left London.’
‘At the church, you seemed to be well acquainted with Mr McIntyre?’
‘Skip? Another of my beaus from the sixties. He was in The Moondreams with Paul and Roddy. He played the organ.’
Anne Gibson reacted to the expression of surprise on Tara’s face.
‘Oh, I should have said. Eddie Harbinson, Skip McIntyre and Jimmy Ewing were the other lads in The Moondreams. Jimmy played drums and Eddie, the bass guitar. When they broke up Eddie went back to work in his father’s food business. Jimmy and Skip had worked there too before they were in the band, and they all ended up back where they started. Eddie has made a big success out of the company.’
Tara stood up, suddenly eager to leave.
‘It was a pleasure to meet you, Anne. Thank you for sharing your story with me.’
‘I hope it’s of some help to you in finding who killed Jessica, but somehow I don’t think her past life has anything to do with it. Some madman, off his head on booze, ran her over and couldn’t face up to it. That’s what I think.’
Anne stood by her front door as Tara stepped outside.
‘One thing troubles me though,’ said Anne. ‘I can’t think why Jessica ever took a job with Harbinson’s. She was better qualified than to be a secretary.’
‘You mean with her degree in art and her painting?’
‘No, no. Painting was never more than a hobby for Jessica. She didn’t study art at university. She studied chemistry.’
CHAPTER 42
Tara decided to call at the station on her way home. She thought that if Murray was still there she could run her fresh theory past him. If she was right, then they might be close to explaining why four people had been fatally poisoned with a strange toxin. Her mind swirled with theories. She was trying hard to reconcile the impression she held of Edward Harbinson, company CEO, with the idea of him as a pop star of the 1960s.
Wilson was first across to her desk as she sat down.
‘Ma’am, the telephone number that you asked me to trace? It’s a mobile phone registered to a Thomas Gracey.’
Tara smiled. It was exactly what she had been expecting to hear.
‘Okay, Alan. Arrange for Mr Gracey to come in for a chat in the morning.’
Murray was nowhere to be seen, so she made for home.
* * *
She fetched a microwave dinner from the freezer, gave it the requisite time in the oven and sat down to eat in front of her laptop. The Thai green curry was much too hot and she burnt her tongue with the first mouthful. She se
t her plate to the side and opened up Google. Among several references to the Norman Petty song Moondreams, and to Buddy Holly, there was plenty of information on the short-lived Liverpool band. Much of it referred to the death of lead singer Roddy Craig in 1968, the consensus being that he had drowned in the Mersey after a night of partying in Liverpool’s city centre.
There were downloads available for the album The Food of Love including several links to Amazon and Spotify. She clicked on a link to images of the band and was presented with a large array of photos, mostly black and white with a few pictures in colour dotted around the page. Roddy Craig was no doubt a handsome young man, dark hair, fire in his eyes and devilment in his smile, Tara thought. Paul Gibson, too, had an attractive face, a little more serious in expression and more deliberate in his pose. Eddie Harbinson bore hardly any resemblance to the man she had already met as CEO of a large food company. His face was full of laughter; he appeared a carefree young man. Conversely, Skip McIntyre looked no different from the man she last saw at Jez’s funeral: a thin face, much younger, of course, and long hair hanging in all directions. Jimmy Ewing, the drummer in the band and father of Toby, had an inconspicuous face, a man easily forgotten, easily missed in a crowd. He sported the fashion of the period but didn’t have the looks to go with the clothing.
She found pictures also of various band members in the company of other famous people. Roddy standing with John and Yoko Lennon, Skip McIntyre enjoying champagne in the company of Princess Margaret, and Eleanor Riordan in the arms of Jimi Hendrix. They were heady times, she thought, and yet life was to change dramatically and tragically for the young men in The Moondreams. She clicked on a link to YouTube and sat back to listen to a rare live recording of the band performing for BBC Radio. As the music played she attempted another mouthful of chicken curry before going to her kitchen and tipping the entire meal into the bin. She removed a half-full bottle of chardonnay from her fridge and finally slumped on to her sofa with a full glass as the song The Daring Night played in her head for the third time in a day.
THE DARING NIGHT Page 16
