Piece Of My Heart

by Peter Robinson

  CHAPTER SIX

  There were some advantages to being a DCI, Banks thought on Sunday morning as he lingered over a second cup of coffee in the conservatory and read his way through the Sunday papers. Outside, the wind had dropped over the past couple of hours, the sun was shining and the weather had turned a little milder, though there was an unmistakable edge of autumn in the air – the smell of the musty leaves and a whiff of acrid smoke from a distant peat fire.

  He was still senior investigating officer, of course, and in a short while he would go to interview Calvin Soames. At some point he would also drop by at the station and the incident van to make his presence felt and get up-to-date with developments, if there were any. In an investigation like this, he could never be far away from the action for any length of time, but the team had enough to occupy itself for the moment, and the SOCOs had plenty of trace evidence to sift through. He was always only a phone call away, so barring a major breakthrough, there was no reason for him to appear at the office at the crack of dawn every day; he would only get lumbered with paperwork. First thing tomorrow morning, he and Annie would be on the train to London, and perhaps there they would find out more about Nick Barber. All Annie had been able to find out on Google was that he had written for MOJO magazine and had penned a couple of quickie rock star biographies. It was interesting, and Banks thought he recognized the name now he saw it in context, but it still wasn’t much to go on.

  Just as Banks thought it was time to tidy up and set off for Soames’s farm, he heard a knock at the door. It couldn’t be Annie, he thought, because she had gone to see Nick Barber’s parents near Sheffield. Puzzled, he ambled through to the front room and answered it. He was stunned to see his son, Brian, standing there.

  “Oh, great, Dad, you’re in.”

  “So it would appear,” said Banks. “You didn’t ring.”

  “Battery’s dead and the car charger’s fucked. Sorry. It is okay, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” Banks said, smiling, putting his hand on Brian’s shoulder and stepping back. “Come on in. It’s always good to see you.”

  Banks heard rather than saw a movement behind Brian, then a young woman came into view. “This is Emilia,” said Brian. “Emilia, my dad.”

  “Hi, Mr. Banks,” said Emilia, holding out a soft hand with long, tapered fingers and a bangled wrist. “It’s really nice to meet you.”

  “Can we bring the stuff in from the car?” Brian asked.

  Still puzzled by it all, Banks just said okay and stood there while Brian and Emilia pulled a couple of hold-alls from the boot of a red Honda that looked as if it had seen better days, then walked back to the cottage.

  “We’re going to stay for a few days, if that’s okay with you,” Brian said, as Banks gestured them into the cottage. “Only I’ve got some time off before rehearsals for the next tour, and Emilia’s never been to the Dales before. I thought I’d show her around. We’ll do a bit of walking – you know, country stuff.”

  Brian and Emilia put their bags down, then Brian took his mobile phone from his pocket and searched for the lead in the side pouch of his holdall. “Okay if I charge up the phone?” he asked.

  “Of course,” said Banks, pointing to the nearest plug socket. “Can I get you something?” He looked at his watch. “I have to go out soon, but we could have some coffee first.”

  “Great. Coffee’s fine,” said Brian.

  Emilia nodded in agreement. She looked terribly familiar, Banks thought.

  “Come through to the conservatory, then,” said Banks.

  “Conservatory. Lah-di-dah,” said Brian.

  “Enough of your lip,” Banks joked. “There’s something very relaxing about conservatories. They’re like a sort of escape from the real world.”

  But Brian was already poking his nose into the entertainment room. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Look at this stuff. Is this what you told me you got from Uncle Roy?”

  “Yes,” said Banks. “Your grandparents didn’t want it, so…”

  “Fantastic,” said Brian. “I mean, it’s sad about Uncle Roy and all, but look at that plasma screen, all those movies. That Porsche out there is yours, too, isn’t it?”

  “It was Roy’s, yes,” said Banks, feeling a bit guilty about it all now. He left Brian and Emilia nosing around the growing CD collection and headed for the kitchen, where he put the coffeemaker on. Then he picked up the scattered newspapers in the conservatory and set them aside on a spare chair. Brian and Emilia came through via the doors from the entertainment room. “I wouldn’t have had you down for a Streets fan, Dad,” he said.

  “Just shows how little you know me,” said Banks.

  “Yeah, but hip-hop?”

  “Research,” said Banks. “Have to get to know the criminal mind, don’t I? Besides, it’s not really hip-hop, is it? And the kid tells a great story. Sit down, both of you. I’ll fetch the coffee. Milk? Sugar?”

  They both said yes. Banks brought the coffee and sat on his usual white wicker chair opposite Brian and Emilia. He knew it was unlikely – Brian was in his twenties, after all – but his son seemed to have grown another couple of inches since he had last seen him. He was about six foot two and skinny, wearing a green T-shirt with the band’s logo, the Blue Lamps, and cream cargos. He had also had his hair cut really short and gelled. Banks thought it made him look older, which in turn made Banks feel older.

  Emilia looked like a model. Only a couple of inches shorter than Brian, slender as a reed, wearing tight blue low-rise jeans and a skimpy belly-top, with the requisite wide gap between the two, and a green jewel gracing her navel, she moved with languorous grace and economy. Her streaky brown-blond hair hung over her shoulders and halfway down her back, framing and almost obscuring an oval face with an exquisite complexion, full lips, small nose and high cheekbones. Her violet eyes were unnaturally bright, but Banks suspected contact lenses rather than drugs. He’d seen her somewhere before; he knew it. “It really is good to see you again,” he said to Brian, “and nice to meet you, Emilia. I’m sorry you caught me unawares.”

  “Don’t tell me, there’s no food in the house?” Brian said. “Or worse, no booze?”

  “There’s wine, and a few cans of beer. But that’s about it. Oh, there’s also some leftover vegetarian lasagna.”

  “You’ve gone veggie?”

  “No. Annie was over the other evening.”

  “Aha,” said Brian. “You two an item again?”

  Banks felt himself redden. “Don’t be cheeky. And no, we’re not. Can’t a couple of colleagues have a quiet dinner together?”

  Brian held his hands up, grinning. “Okay. Okay.”

  “Why don’t we eat out later? Pub lunch, if I can make it. If not, dinner. On me.”

  “Okay,” said Brian. “That all right with you, Emmy?”

  “Of course,” said Emilia. “I can hardly wait to try some of this famous Yorkshire pudding.”

  “You’ve never had Yorkshire pudding before?” said Banks.

  Emilia blushed. “I’ve led a sheltered life.”

  “Well, I think that can be arranged,” said Banks. He glanced at his watch. “Right now, I’d better be off. I’ll phone.”

  “Cool,” said Brian. “Can you tell us which room we can have and we’ll take our stuff up while you’re out?”

  Saturday, 13th September, 1969

  The Sandford Estate was older than the Raynville, and it hadn’t improved with age. Mrs. Lofthouse lived right at the heart of things in a semidetached house with a postage-stamp garden and a privet hedge. Across the street, a rusty Hillman Minx without tires was parked on a neighbor’s overgrown lawn, and three windows were boarded up in the house next door. It was that kind of estate.

  Mrs. Lofthouse, though, had done as much as she could to brighten the place up with a vase of chrysanthemums on the windowsill and a colorful painting of a Cornish fishing village over the mantelpiece. She was a small, slight woman in her early forties, her dyed-brown ha
ir recently permed. Chadwick could still read the grief in the lines around her eyes and mouth. She had just lost her husband, and now he was here to burden her with the death of her daughter.

  “It’s a nice house you have,” said Chadwick, sitting on the flower-patterned armchair with lace antimacassars.

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Lofthouse. “It’s a rough estate, but I do my best. And there are some good people here. Anyway, now Jim’s gone I don’t need all this room. I’ve put my name down for a bungalow out Sherbourne in-Elmet way.”

  “That should be a bit quieter.”

  “It’s about Linda, isn’t it?”

  “You know?”

  Mrs. Lofthouse bit her lip. “I saw the sketch in the paper. Ever since then I just… I’ve been denying it, convincing myself it’s not her, it’s a mistake, but it is her, isn’t it?” Her accent was noticeably Yorkshire, but not as broad as Carol Wilkinson’s.

  “We think so.” Chadwick slipped the photograph from his briefcase. “I’m afraid this won’t be very pleasant,” he said, “but it is important.” He showed her the photograph. “Is this Linda?”

  After a sharp intake of breath, Mrs. Lofthouse said, “Yes.”

  “You’ll have to make a formal identification down at the mortuary.”

  “I will?”

  “I’m afraid so. We’ll make it as easy for you as we can, though. Please don’t worry.”

  “When can I… you know, the funeral?”

  “Soon,” said Chadwick. “As soon as the coroner releases the body for burial. I’ll let you know. I’m very sorry, Mrs. Lofthouse, but I do have to ask you some questions. The sooner the better.”

  “Of course. I’ll be all right. And it’s Margaret, please. Look, shall I make some tea? Would that be okay?”

  “I could do with a cuppa right now,” said Chadwick with a smile.

  “Won’t be a moment.”

  Margaret Lofthouse disappeared into the kitchen, no doubt to give private expression to her grief as she boiled the kettle and filled the teapot in the time-honored, comforting ritual. A clock ticked on the mantel beside a framed photograph. Twenty-five to one. Broome and his pal would be well on their way to Sheffield by now, if they weren’t there already. Chadwick got up to examine the photograph. It showed a younger Margaret Lofthouse, and the man beside her with his arm around her waist was no doubt her husband. Also in the picture, which looked as if it had been taken outside in the country, was a young girl with short blond hair staring into the camera.

  Margaret Lofthouse came back with a tray and caught him looking. “That was taken at Garstang Farm, near Hawes, in Wensleydale,” she said. “We used to go for summer holidays up there a few years ago, when Linda was little. My uncle owned the place. He’s dead now and strangers have bought it, but I have some wonderful memories. Linda was such a beautiful child.”

  Chadwick watched the tears well up in her eyes. She dabbed at them with a tissue. “Sorry,” she said. “I just get all choked up when I remember how things were, when we were a happy family.”

  “I understand,” said Chadwick. “What happened?”

  Margaret Lofthouse didn’t seem surprised at the question. “What always seems to happen these days,” she said, with a sniffle. “She grew up into a teenager. They expect the world at the age of sixteen these days, don’t they? Well, what she got was a baby.”

  “What did she do with the child?”

  “Put him up for adoption – it’s a boy – what else could she do? She couldn’t look after him, and Jim and I were too old to start caring for another child. I’m sure he’s gone to a good home.”

  “I’m sure,” agreed Chadwick. “But it’s not the baby I’m here to talk about, it’s Linda.”

  “Yes, of course. Milk and sugar?”

  “Please.”

  She poured tea from a Royal Doulton teapot into fragile-looking cups with gold-painted rims and handles. “This was my grandmother’s tea set,” she said. “It’s the only real thing of value I own. There’s nobody left to pass it on to now. Linda was an only child.”

  “When did she leave home?”

  “Shortly after the baby was born. The winter of 1967.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “London. At least that’s what she told me.”

  “Where in London?”

  “I don’t know. She never said.”

  “You didn’t have her address?”

  “No.”

  “Did she know people down there?”

  “She must have done, mustn’t she? But I never met or heard of any of them.”

  “Did she never come back and visit you?”

  “Yes. Several times. We were quite friendly, but in a distant sort of way. She never talked about her life down there, just assured me she was all right and not to worry, and I must say, she always looked all right. I mean, she was clean and sober and nicely dressed, if you can call them sort of clothes nice, and she looked well fed.”

  “Hippie-style clothing?”

  “Yes. Long, flowing dresses. Bell-bottomed jeans with flowers embroidered on them. That sort of thing. But as I said, they was always clean and they always looked good quality.”

  “Do you know how she earned a living?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “She told me about London, the parks, the buildings, the art galleries – I’ve never been there, you see. She was interested in art and music and poetry. She said all she wanted was peace in the world and for people to just be happy.” She reached for the tissues again.

  “So you got along okay?”

  “Fine, I suppose. On the surface. She knew I disapproved of her life, even though I didn’t know much about it. She talked about Buddhism and Hindus and Sufis and goodness knows what, but she never once mentioned our true Lord Jesus Christ, and I brought her up to be a good Christian.” She gave a little shake of her head. “I don’t know. Maybe I could have tried harder to understand. She just seemed so far away from me and anything I’ve ever believed in.”

  “What did you talk to her about?”

  “Just local gossip, what her old school friends were up to, that sort of thing. She never stopped long.”

  “Did you know any of her friends?”

  “I knew all the kids she played with around the estate, and her friends from school, but I don’t know who she spent her time with after she left home.”

  “She never mentioned any names?”

  “Well, she might have done, but I don’t remember any.”

  “Did she ever tell you if anything or anyone was bothering her?”

  “No. She always seemed happy, as if she hadn’t really a care in the world.”

  “You don’t know of any enemies she might have had?”

  “No. I can’t imagine her having any.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “In the summer. July, it would be, not long after Jim…”

  “Was she at the funeral?”

  “Oh, yes. She came home for that in May. She loved her father. She was a great support. I don’t want to give you the impression that we’d fallen out or anything, Mr. Chadwick. I still loved Linda and I know that she still loved me. It was just that we couldn’t really talk anymore, not about anything important. She’d got secretive. In the end I gave up trying. But this was a couple of months after Jim’s death, just a flying visit to see how I was getting along.”

  “What did she talk about on that visit?”

  “We watched that man walk on the moon. Neil Armstrong. Linda was all excited about it, said it marked the beginning of a new age, but I don’t know. We stayed up watching till after three in the morning.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m sorry. Nothing else really stood out, except the moon landing. Some pop star she liked had died and she’d been to see the Rolling Stones play a free concert for him in Hyde Park. London, that is. And I remember her talking about the war. V
ietnam. About how immoral it was. She always talked about the war. I tried to tell her that sometimes wars just have to be fought, but she’d have none of it. To her all war was evil. You should have heard it when Linda and her dad went at it – he was in the navy in the last war, just toward the end, like.”

  “But you say Linda loved her father?”

  “Oh, yes. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t say they saw eye to eye about everything. I mean, he tried to discipline her, got on at her for staying out till all hours, but she was a handful. They fought like cat and dog sometimes, but they still loved one another.”

  It all sounded so familiar to Chadwick that the thought depressed him. Surely all children weren’t like this, didn’t cause their parents such grief? Was he taking the wrong approach with Yvonne? Was there another way? He felt like such a failure as a parent, but short of locking her in her room, what could he do? When Yvonne went on about the evils of war, he always felt himself tense up inside; he could never even enter into a rational argument about it for fear he would lose his temper, lash out and say something he would regret. What did she know about war? Evil? Yes. Necessary? Well, how else were you going to stop someone like Hitler? He didn’t know much about Vietnam, but he assumed the Americans were there for a good reason, and the sight of all these unruly long-haired youngsters burning the flag and chanting antiwar slogans made his blood boil.

  “What about the boyfriend, Donald Hughes?”

  “What about him?”

  “Is he the father?”

  “I assume so. I mean, that’s what Linda said, and I think I know her well enough to know she wasn’t… you know… some sort of trollop.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  “He’s all right, I suppose. Not much gumption, mind you. The Hugheses aren’t exactly one of the best families on the estate, but they’re not one of the worst, either. And you can’t blame poor Eileen Hughes. She’s had six kids to bring up, mostly on her own. She tries hard.”

  “Do you know if Donald kept in touch after Linda left?”

  “I doubt it. He made himself scarce after he found out our Linda was pregnant, then just after the baby was born he became all concerned for a while, said they should get married and keep it, that it wouldn’t be right to give his child up for adoption. That’s how he put it. His child.”