When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery

by Peter Robinson

  ‘Yes,’ said Mandy. ‘Both of us. With me being so close to my time, Toby doesn’t like to leave me alone. Especially at night.’

  ‘We’re usually in bed before eleven,’ said Toby. ‘We watch the ten o’clock news then lock up and head for bed. Sometimes Mandy’s there already, this past while, reading. Or munching on a tuna and banana sandwich.’

  ‘Liar,’ said Mandy, nudging him gently. ‘I do not. Well, maybe just the once.’

  ‘And during the night?’ Annie went on.

  A shadow crossed Mandy’s face, the flicker of a memory. ‘It was a warm night,’ she said. ‘Humid. Hardly a breath of air. We don’t have a fan, so we leave the bedroom windows open. It helps a bit. And I’ve not been sleeping very well.’ She gave a thin smile and patted her belly. ‘As you can imagine.’

  ‘Did you hear something last night?’

  ‘Mmm. It would have been about two o’clock, give or take a few minutes. I was lying awake. I wanted to go to the toilet, but I was so comfortable and . . . well . . . the baby was quiet. I wasn’t in the least bit sleepy, but I was trying to put off getting up, you know how you do.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, it was all very sudden, but I thought I heard a car and some loud music. The music got even louder for a few moments, and I heard a car door slamming, then it all faded into the distance.’

  ‘Could you tell what direction it was travelling in?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘I couldn’t swear to it, but I think it was going south, coming from up Eastvale way. At least, I seem to sort of vaguely remember the sound travelling in that direction, if you know what I mean. But I can’t be certain. I wasn’t really paying attention.’

  ‘Can you describe what you heard in any more detail?’

  ‘As I said, the music was quite loud at first, even when the door wasn’t open, like you get in the city sometimes.’ She squeezed her husband’s hand. ‘Toby always says they must have their stereo speakers on the outside.’

  ‘But sound carries well out here?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Especially with the windows open. It’s so quiet and flat between here and the road, and that’s the direction the bedroom faces.’

  ‘Did the car go by quickly?’

  ‘That’s just the thing. I mean, I could hear the engine, you know, first in the distance, then getting closer. Then I could see the light from the headlamps over the field, and I realised it must be going down the lane, which seemed odd, especially at that time of night, some kids playing loud music.’

  ‘You were watching by then?’

  ‘I was sitting on the edge of the bed. It was just the glow from the lights I could see, not the actual headlamps themselves, and – yes, of course. It must have been travelling south. That was the direction the lights were moving. Silly me. I’d forgotten.’

  ‘You thought it was kids?’

  ‘Well . . . that’s who does it, isn’t it? I don’t mean to sound prejudiced or anything, I don’t even really mind that much, but it’s usually kids who drive around with loud music playing.’

  Annie thought of Banks. He liked it loud sometimes. ‘You mean like rap music, hip hop?’

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that. That was the strange thing. That’s what you’d expect.’ She smiled. ‘But it wasn’t like that at all. It was that song I’d heard on the radio a year or two ago. I remember it because I liked it. It was on all the time. The two Swedish girls.’

  ‘First Aid Kit?’ Gerry suggested.

  ‘That’s right. “My Silver Lining”. It just seemed odd that someone would be playing that song so loud in the middle of the night. I could hear it clearly because when the car slowed down . . .’

  ‘Slowed down?’ said Annie.

  ‘Yes. I distinctly heard it slow down. The engine changed sound, and that’s when I could hear the music even louder for a while as if . . .’

  ‘As if what?’

  ‘As if someone opened the door or something, just for a moment. Which they must have done because it closed a few seconds later. And I thought I heard laughing and yelling or whooping, but I’m not sure about that.’

  ‘So the car actually stopped for a while?’

  ‘No, I don’t think it stopped. At least, the engine never stopped. Just slowed down. It sounded as if it skidded a bit first. I heard the tyres squeal a bit. It must have been going fast. Maybe it idled for a few moments. I don’t know. All I know is it shot off again just a few moments later, after the door slammed shut. Burning rubber, as they say. And the music went back to what it was like before.’

  ‘How much later?’ Annie asked. ‘This could be important, Mandy.’

  Mandy bit her lip. ‘Not long. I mean, seconds, not minutes. It was very fast.’

  ‘You seem to have a remarkable ear for details,’ Annie said. ‘Did you hear anything else?’

  ‘Well, I was just lying or sitting there in the dark with the windows open. You tend to notice every little sound, don’t you, every creak and animal noise. I didn’t hear anything else for a while. I went to the toilet, and when I got back to bed, a short while later I heard another car. No music this time. But it was odd, two cars out there so close together in one night.’

  ‘How much later?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Not long. About ten or fifteen minutes after the first one.’

  ‘Again, this could be important, Mandy. Think carefully. Was it the same car as the one before? Did it sound the same? Could you tell?’

  Mandy frowned in concentration. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said finally. ‘I think it sounded different. But honestly, I couldn’t really tell. I’m not good at mechanical things.’

  ‘What did the second car do?’

  ‘It stopped.’

  ‘Completely?’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t even hear the engine, but I could still see the glow from the headlamps through the trees.’

  ‘And it started up again?’

  ‘A few minutes later.’

  Bingo, thought Annie. That was long enough to beat the girl to death. The second van, coming from the same direction ten or fifteen minutes later, when she had managed to stagger a quarter of a mile or so back up the road after being thrown naked out of a van.

  ‘Did you hear anything during the time it was stopped?’

  ‘I heard a car door slam, then someone’s voice. It might have been a scream and some shouting. I thought it was just someone being noisy. A drunk stopping to be sick or something, and her friend shouting at her. I’m sorry.’ She put her fist to her mouth and started sobbing. Toby put his arm around her.

  ‘You weren’t to know,’ Annie said. ‘It’s a wonder you could hear anything at all from so far away.’

  ‘My hearing’s good, as a rule. And as I said, sounds carry in the country in the dark. Mostly I just heard the car engines and the music in the distance, and the music was so loud and unusual. That’s why it seemed odd . . . I . . . I’m sorry. Perhaps if I’d realised what was happening, called the police . . .’

  ‘There was nothing you could have done,’ Annie reassured her. There was no way Mandy could have heard a girl being beaten to death almost a mile away, even if she had heard the music, the car engines and the whooping. And perhaps a scream. The victim would have stopped screaming soon after the first blow and the sounds of punching and kicking would have been muffled and wouldn’t have carried over the distance.

  ‘You said “her friend” a moment ago, when you mentioned being sick. Did you hear a woman’s voice?’

  ‘I must have done, I suppose.’

  ‘And a man’s? The friend shouting at her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was he angry?’

  ‘I don’t know. I could only hear sounds, not words or anything.’

  ‘But he shouted?’

  ‘Loud enough for me to hear. Yes.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’

  ‘Well, there is one thing. The second car turned and went back the way
it came. The gears made a sort of crunching sound, like when you do a three-point turn in a hurry. And again I could see the direction from the glow of the lights. That seemed odd.’

  ‘It didn’t drive on down the lane?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you hear anything, Mr Ketteridge?’

  ‘I was fast asleep,’ said Toby. He smiled. ‘Getting as much in as I can before the wee one comes along.’ He patted his wife’s knee and stood up. ‘I think my wife should rest now, if you don’t mind. You can see she’s distraught.’

  Annie handed him her card. ‘If either of you thinks of anything else, please don’t hesitate to phone. And we may need to come back for a statement. We’ll be in touch.’

  As they walked towards the door, Mandy looked over at them and said, ‘We’re not in any danger, are we? I mean, a murder so close to our home. There isn’t some sort of maniac on the loose, is there? Are you sure my baby’s not in any danger?’

  ‘No,’ said Annie. ‘I can’t think of any reason why you would be.’ Outside at the car she turned to Gerry. ‘I never knew you were a First Aid Kit fan.’

  ‘Hidden depths,’ said Gerry, with an enigmatic smile. ‘Hidden depths.’

  The bottom of the door slid easily over the few scattered bills and junk mail the postman had delivered after Banks left for work that morning. He didn’t even bother bending to pick them up. They could wait.

  His front door led directly into a small study where he kept his computer, a comfortable armchair, table lamp and couple of bookcases. It used to be his main living room, but that had changed after the fire, when the insurance had allowed him not only to have the gutted cottage restored, but to enlarge the kitchen, add a conservatory at the back and an entertainment room along one side. That was where he usually watched TV or DVDs, kept his audio and video equipment and entertained visitors. He had speakers rigged up all over the house, so he could listen to music in just about every room. And now there was an extra en suite bedroom upstairs for when Brian or Tracy wanted to stay.

  The problem was that Banks rarely saw his children these days. Brian was either on the road with his band, the Blue Lamps, or in the recording studio, and Tracy was studying for a master’s degree in Newcastle, working part-time as a research assistant to one of the profs. She also had a boyfriend, Geoff, who lived in St Andrews, and she spent most of her spare time up there with him. Still, they both phoned from time to time, and both were happy and doing fine as far as Banks knew. For a while, Banks’s last girlfriend Oriana had lived with him on and off, but they had split up, amicably enough, a month ago and all vestiges of her presence were gone. Definitely off. She was a beautiful, intelligent and desirable young woman, and he missed her. But he was used to living alone, and he soon settled back into his old routines.

  Banks first went upstairs to his bedroom, took off his suit and shirt and put on jeans and a T-shirt. It was another sultry evening, and back downstairs he opened the windows in the conservatory before pouring himself a large glass of Barossa’s best Shiraz and raising a silent toast to Peter Lehmann, his favourite winemaker, who had died not so long ago. He felt like listening to something a bit different from the string quartets and trios he had been playing lately, so he flipped through his CDs in the entertainment room and put on Lana del Rey’s Ultraviolence. He hadn’t expected to like her after all the hype over her first album, but he’d seen a performance clip from Glastonbury and had enjoyed both the sound and the summer dress she was wearing. He took easily to the spaced-out music, the sound-wash of distant, distorted, swirling guitars and haunting background vocals of her second album, and her delivery, attitude and lyrics intrigued him. She seemed curiously disengaged yet full of disturbed and conflicting emotions and imagery, the voice both vulnerable and threatening. It was often uncomfortable listening. Anyone who dared quote the old Crystals song ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)’ in this day and age had a lot of nerve. And if Del Rey’s version of Jessie Mae Robinson’s ‘The Other Woman’ wasn’t as powerful as Nina Simone’s, it was still pretty damn good.

  Naturally, the title track ‘Ultraviolence’ got Banks thinking about the Caxton case, as well as the unidentified victim on Bradham Lane Annie had told him about. As detective superintendent, he was head of the Homicide and Major Crimes Unit, so in addition to the Caxton investigation, he also had to keep on top of any other cases the squad was handling. He knew he could trust Annie to do a thorough job, and he had no intention of dogging her every footstep. Yes, she herself had been raped – he remembered the shock he had felt when she had first recounted the experience to him in a cosy Soho bistro – but she would use her anger to fuel her search for who had beaten the poor girl to death. And if her foot slipped and happened to connect with his wedding tackle when she found him . . . well, these things happen to the best of us. Even in this day and age. Banks would probably be too busy to be of much use to her, but he would keep an eye on the case and try to be there if she needed him.

  When Banks thought about his own assignment, he realised that he felt differently about Danny Caxton since he and Winsome had talked with Linda Palmer. It wasn’t simply that he believed her story – though he did – but that he had found her honesty, strength and intelligence in talking about it had inspired him. He wanted to get Caxton, however old and famous he was. Wanted to knock that ‘Big Smile’ right off his face. As easy as it was to be cynical about historical abuse claims – and Banks was as guilty of that as anyone – he didn’t doubt that bad things had happened back then, things that had not been investigated for a variety of reasons.

  Banks wanted to find out why there had been no official investigation after Linda Palmer had reported the rape. That must have taken a lot of courage for a fourteen-year-old girl, even if her mother had pushed her into it and accompanied her to the police station. Why had nobody done anything? DCI Ken Blackstone, who worked out of the new Leeds District HQ on Elland Road, might be able to help him answer that question, and it would be good to see his old friend again. But he didn’t hold out a great deal of hope. Like memories, old police files become discoloured, crumble to dust and blow away in the wind. Or someone nicks them.

  Banks was also interested in the other man Linda had mentioned. If someone else had been present, someone even younger than Caxton, there was always a chance that he was still alive. Tracking him down would not only result in the apprehension of another rapist, it could also help strengthen the case against Caxton, especially if the accomplice could be made to talk. From what Linda Palmer had said, he may have been a reluctant participant, which meant that he may have been plagued with conscience over the years, something that might make him keen to get things off his chest in the hope of making some sort of deal. But how to track him down? Even the scene of the crime no longer existed.

  All in all, Banks knew that he had his work cut out. Everything his team came up with would be fed into the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System (HOLMES) along with information from all the other county force investigations into allegations against Danny Caxton. If something was there about the other man, it would turn up. The days when a rapist or killer could commit a crime in one county and no other counties would know about it were all but gone since the problems with the Yorkshire Ripper investigation. It still happened occasionally, mostly due to human error, which no number of computers could ever eliminate, but even before the NCA came along, the Ripper case had taught all the county forces a huge lesson.

  Banks refilled his wine glass and replaced Lana del Rey with Mark Knopfler’s Tracker. There was a pleasant cross-breeze, but he still felt his T-shirt sticking to him. It was that time of day he loved, between sunset and dark – the gloaming, as the Anglo-Saxons called it – when the swifts had returned to their nests and the bats had yet to come out. The light seemed to possess an ethereal, ineffable quality, perhaps intensified by its transience, and Knopfler’s smooth vocals and flowing melodic guitar work provided a fitting accompaniment.

 
It never got truly dark for long in the northern summers, and Banks had found himself adapting his routine to the cycle of the day. It meant he didn’t get as much sleep, as he found it difficult to drop off while it was still light outside, so he tended to stop up later. But he rose early, and he usually stayed late at the office most evenings and ate a sandwich while he finished the day’s paperwork. Once home, he’d do exactly what he was doing now, if he didn’t nip down to the Dog and Gun for a quick pint and a chat with Penny Cartwright, or whoever happened to be there from the folk crowd.

  He didn’t have much of a back garden, and, though he sometimes went out front and climbed over the wall to sit on the banks of Gratly Beck by the terraced falls, as often as not he spent his evenings in the conservatory. With the windows open, it was almost like being outside. There had been too few evenings spent this way since his promotion. So often he had been stuck with extra paperwork or away overnight on a course or at a conference. Where he was sitting, he could smell the sweetness of the honeysuckle clinging to its trellis, watch the shadows darken on the slopes of Tetchley Fell and the setting sun paint the sky orange and purple along the valley in the west. Times like this, he wondered how he had managed to live in Eastvale at all, let alone London. He imagined Linda Palmer sitting in her garden by the river composing poems. He wished he had that talent, or any writing ability at all. At least, he thought, he should read some of hers. And maybe also Ariel and Dart.

  He had recently started working his way through an anthology of English verse he had found in the second-hand bookshop off the market square, often out in the garden with a cup of freshly brewed coffee first thing in the morning. Early encounters with Chaucer and Spenser had almost defeated him, but he had skipped them, along with a number of other unintelligible contemporaries, and moved on. The old ballads presented him with no problems. He already knew most of them from recordings by Martin Carthy, June Tabor and others. He also knew some of Thomas Campion’s songs from Emma Kirkby and Iestyn Davies recordings. Next he breezed through the selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets, then Tichborne’s ‘Elegy’ moved him almost to tears. Now he was feeling a bit bogged down in Pope and Dryden, who probably thought they were wittier than they really were, but he was certain there were more delights to come. Not knowing what was coming next was part of the fun.