concerned: no respect for property. When he knocked on the faded green door, a young woman holding a baby in one arm opened it for him, the chain still on.
“Are you the policeman?”
“Detective Inspector Chadwick.” He showed his warrant card.
She glanced at it, then looked Chadwick up and down before unfastening the chain. “Come in. You’ll have to excuse the mess.”
And he did. She deposited the baby in a wooden playpen in a living room untidy with toys, discarded clothing and magazines. It – he couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy – stood and gawped at him for a moment, then started rattling the bars and crying. The cream carpet was stained with only God knew what, and the room smelled of unwashed nappies and warm milk. A television set stood in one corner, and a radio was playing somewhere: Kenny Everett. Chadwick only knew who it was because Yvonne liked to listen to him, and he recognized the inane patter and the clumsy attempts at humor. When it came to radio, Chadwick preferred quiz programs and news.
He took the chair the woman offered, giving it a quick once-over to make sure it was clean, and plucking at the crease in his trousers before he sat. The maisonette had a small balcony, but there were no chairs outside. Chadwick imagined the woman had to be careful because of her baby. More than once a young child had crawled onto a balcony and fallen off, despite the guardrail.
Trying to distance himself from the noise, the smell and the mess, Chadwick focused on the woman as she sat down opposite him and lit a cigarette. She was pale and careworn, wearing a baggy fawn cardigan and shapeless checked slacks. Dirty blond hair hung down to her shoulders. She might have been fifteen or thirty.
“You said on the phone that you think you know the woman whose picture was in the paper?”
“I think so,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure. That’s why I took so long to ring you. I had to think about it.”
“Are you sure now?”
“Well, no, not really. I mean, her hair was different and everything. It’s just…”
“What?”
“Something about her, that’s all.”
Chadwick opened his briefcase and took out the photograph of the dead girl, head and shoulders. He warned Carol what to expect, and she seemed to brace herself, drawing an exceptionally deep lungful of smoke. When she looked at the photo, she put her hand to her chest. Slowly, she let the smoke out. “I’ve never seen a dead person before,” she said.
“Do you recognize her?”
She passed the photo back and nodded. “Funnily enough, this looks more like her than the drawing, even though she is dead.”
“Do you know who she is?”
“Yes. I think it’s Linda. Linda Lofthouse.”
“How did you know her?”
“We went to school together.” She jerked her head in a generally northern direction. “Sandford Girls’. She was in the same class as me.” At least the victim was local, then, which made the investigation a lot easier. Still, it made perfect sense. While many young people would have made the pilgrimage from all parts of the country to the Brimleigh Festival, Chadwick guessed that the majority of those attending would have been from a bit closer to home – Leeds, Bradford, York, Harrogate and the surrounding areas – as the event was practically on their doorstep.
“When was this?”
“I left school two years ago last July, when I was sixteen. Linda left the same year. We were almost the same age.”
Eighteen and one kid already. Chadwick wondered if she had a husband. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, which didn’t mean much in itself, but there didn’t seem to be any evidence of male presence as far as he could see. Anyway, the age was about right for the victim. “Were you friends?”
Carol paused. “I thought so,” she said, “but after we’d left school we didn’t see much of one another.”
“Why not?”
“Linda got pregnant after Christmas in her final year, just before she turned sixteen.” She looked at her own child and gave a harsh laugh. “At least I waited until I’d left school and got married.”
“The father?”
“He’s at work. Tom’s not a bad bloke, really.”
So she was married. In a way, Chadwick felt relieved. “I meant the father of Linda’s child.”
“Oh, him. She was going out with Donald Hughes at the time. I just assumed, you know, like…”
“Did they marry, live together?”
“Not that I know of. Linda… well, she was getting a bit weird that last year at school, if you must know.”
“In what way?”
“The way she dressed, like she didn’t care anymore. And she was more in her own world, wherever that was. She kept getting into trouble for not paying attention in class, but it wasn’t as if she was stupid or anything, she even did okay in her O levels, despite being pregnant. She was just…”
“In her own world?”
“Yes. The teachers didn’t know what to do with her. If they said anything, she’d give them a right clever answer. She had some nerve. And that last year she sort of stopped hanging around with us – you know, there were a few of us – me, Linda, Julie and Anita used to go down the Locarno on a Saturday night, have a good dance and see if there were any decent lads around.” She blushed. “Sometimes we’d go to Le Phonograph later if we could get in. Most of us could pass for eighteen, but sometimes they got a bit picky on the door. You know what it’s like.”
“So Linda became a bit of a loner?”
“Yes. And this was before she got pregnant. Quiet. Liked to read. Not schoolbooks. Poetry and stuff. And she loved Bob Dylan.”
“Didn’t the rest of you?”
“He’s all right, I suppose, but you can’t dance to him, can you? And I can’t understand a word he’s singing about, if you can call it singing.”
Chadwick didn’t know whether he had ever heard Bob Dylan, though he did know the name, so he was thankful the question was rhetorical. Dancing had never been a skill he possessed in any great measure, though he had met Janet at a dance and that had seemed to go well enough. “Did she have any enemies, anyone who really disliked her?”
“No, nothing like that. You couldn’t
“Did she ever get into any fights or serious disagreements with anyone?”
“No, never.”
“Do you know if she was taking drugs?”
“She never said so, and I never saw her do anything like that. Not that I’d have known, I suppose.”
“Where did she live?”
“On the Sandford Estate with her mum and dad. Though I heard her dad died a short while ago. In the spring. Sudden, like. Heart attack.”
“Can you give me her mother’s address?”
Carol told him.
“Do you know if she had the child?”
“About two years ago.”
“That would be September 1967?”
“Around that time, yes. But I never saw her after school broke up that July. I got married and Tom and me set up house here and all. Then little Andy came along.”
“Have you ever bumped into her since then?”
“No. I heard that she’d moved away down south after the baby was born. London.”
Maybe she had, Chadwick thought. That would explain why she hadn’t been immediately missed. As Carol had said, the likeness in the newspaper wasn’t a particularly good one, and a lot of people don’t pay attention to the
