owned it and written the figures in the back. Still, it might mean something. Banks called up a SOCO to bag it and told him to be sure to make a photocopy of the page in question.
Frustrated by this early lack of knowledge of the victim, Banks went back downstairs. Usually he had a person’s books or CD collection to go on, not to mention the opinions of others, but this time all he knew was that Nick did the
By half past twelve, he’d had enough. Time to go home. Just as he was about to get PC Travers to fix up a lift for him, Annie edged over and said, “There’s not a lot more we can achieve hanging around here, is there?”
“Nothing,” said Banks. “The mechanics are all in motion and Stefan will get in touch with us if anything important comes up, but I doubt we’ll get any further tonight. Why?”
Annie smiled at him. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving and, as I remember, Marks and Spencer’s vegetarian lasagna heats up a treat. You know what they say about an army marching on its stomach and all that.”
Yvonne Chadwick accepted the joint that Steve passed to her and drew deeply. She liked getting high. Not the hard stuff, no pills or needles, only dope. Sex was all right, too, she liked that well enough with Steve, but most of all she liked getting high, and the two usually went together really well. Music, too. They were listening to Hendrix’s
Take now. She was supposed to be at school, but she had taken the afternoon off. It was only games and free periods, anyway; the new term hadn’t really got under way yet. There was a house just up the road from her school, on Springfield Mount, where a group of hippies lived: Steve, Todd, Jacqui, American Charlie, and others who came and went. She had become friendly with them after she met Steve upstairs at the Peel, on Boar Lane, one night in April when she’d gone there with her friend Lorraine from school. She had just turned sixteen the month before, but she could pass for eighteen easily enough with a bit of makeup and high heels. Steve was the handsome, sensitive sort of boy, and she had fancied him straightaway. He’d read her some of his poetry, and while she didn’t really understand it, she could tell that it sounded important.
There were other houses she visited where people were into the same things, too – one on Carberry Place and another on Bayswater Terrace. Yvonne felt that she could turn up at any one of them at any time and feel as if she really belonged there. Everyone accepted her just as she was. Someone was always around to welcome her, maybe with a joint and a pot of jasmine tea. They all liked the same music, too, and agreed about society and the evils of the war and stuff. But Springfield Mount was the closest, and Steve lived there.
The air smelled of sandalwood incense, and there were posters on the walls: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, a creepy Salvador Dali print and, even creepier, Goya’s etching
Mostly, they all just sat around and talked about the terrible shape the world was in and how they hoped to change it, end the war in Vietnam, free the universities from the establishment and their professor lackeys, put a stop to imperialism and capitalist oppression. Yvonne couldn’t wait to go to university; as far as she was concerned, that was where life got really exciting, not like boring old school, where they still treated you like a kid and weren’t interested in what you thought about the world. At university you were a
They had already seen a lot of great local gigs together that summer: Thunderclap Newman at the town hall; Pink Floyd, Colosseum and Eire Apparent at Selby Abbey. She regretted missing the Isle of Wight –
She had to admit, as she grinned through the haze of smoke, that things were looking pretty good. Sunday had been great. They had gone to the Brimleigh Festival – she, Steve, Todd, Charlie and Jacqui – and they had stayed up all night on the field sharing joints, food and drink with their fellow revelers. Steve had dropped acid, but Yvonne hadn’t wanted to because there were too many people around and she worried about getting paranoid. But Steve had seemed okay, though she’d got worried at one time when he disappeared for more than an hour. When it was all over, they went to Springfield Mount for a while to come down with a couple of joints, and then she went home to get ready for school, narrowly avoiding bumping into her father.
She hadn’t dared tell her parents where she was going. Christ, why did she have to have a father who was a
They were sitting on the living room floor propped up against the sofa. Just her and Steve this time; the others were all out. Some of the people who came and went she wasn’t too sure about at all. One of them, Magic Jack, was scary with his beard and wild eyes, although she had never seen him behave in any other way than gently, but the most frightening of all – and thank God he didn’t turn up very often – was McGarrity, the mad poet.
There was something about McGarrity that really worried Yvonne. Older than the rest, he had a thin, lined parchment face and black eyes. He always wore a black hat and a matching cape, and he had a flick-knife with a tortoiseshell handle. He never really talked to anyone, never joined in the discussions. Sometimes he would pace up and down tapping the blade against his palm, muttering to himself, reciting poetry. T. S. Eliot mostly, “The Waste Land.” Yvonne only recognized it because Steve had lent her a copy to read not so long ago, and he had explained its meaning to her.
Some people found McGarrity okay, but he gave Yvonne the creeps. She had asked Steve once why they let him hang around, but all Steve had said was that McGarrity was harmless really; it was just that his mind had been damaged a bit by the electric shock treatment they’d given him at the mental home when he deserted from the army. Besides, if they wanted a free and open society, how could they justify excluding people? There wasn’t much to say after that, though Yvonne thought there were probably a few people they wouldn’t like to have in the house: her dad, for example. McGarrity had been at Brimleigh, too, but luckily he’d wandered off and left them alone.
Yvonne could feel Steve’s hand on her thigh, gently stroking, and she turned to smile at him. It was all right, really it was all right. Her parents didn’t know it, but she was on the pill, had been since she’d turned sixteen. It wasn’t easy to get, and there was no way she would have asked old Cuthbertson, the family doctor. But her friend Maggie had told her about a new family-planning clinic on Woodhouse Lane where they were very concerned about teenage pregnancies and very obliging if you said you were over the age of consent.
Steve kissed her and put his hand on her breast. The dope they were smoking wasn’t especially strong, but it heightened her sense of touch as it did her hearing, and she felt herself responding to his caresses, getting wet. He undid the buttons on her school blouse and then she felt his hand moving up over her bare thighs. Jimi Hendrix was singing “ 1983” when Steve and Yvonne toppled onto the floor, pulling at one another’s clothing.
Chadwick leaned back against the cool tiles of the mortuary wall and watched Dr. O’Neill and his assistant at work under the bright light. Postmortems had never bothered him, and this one was no exception, even though the victim had reminded him earlier of Yvonne. Now she was just an unfortunate dead girl on the porcelain slab. Her life was gone, drained out of her, and all that remained were flesh, muscle, blood, bone and organs. And, possibly,
