Piece Of My Heart

pint?”

“It was dark. There was no electricity. Maybe the local was as good a place to hide as any.”

“What about blood?”

“Winsome checked after the lights came back on,” Annie said. “She didn’t see any signs, but they’d hardly have hung around till the lights came back on if they were hiding bloodstains. We could hardly strip-search everyone.”

“True,” said Banks. “Look, we’ve still got a long way to go. You mentioned that Nick Barber was a writer?”

“That’s what Kelly said he told her.”

“Who’d want to kill a writer?”

“There were plenty I wanted to kill when I was at school doing English,” said Annie, “but they were all dead already.”

Banks laughed. “But seriously.”

“Well, it depends what kind of writer he was, doesn’t it?” Annie argued. “I mean, if he was an investigative journalist onto something big, then someone might have had a reason to get rid of him.”

“But what was he doing up here?”

“There are plenty of cupboards full of skeletons in North Yorkshire,” countered Annie.

“Yes, but where to begin? That’s the problem.”

“Google?” suggested Annie.

“That’s a start.”

“And shouldn’t we be going to London?”

“Monday morning,” said Banks. “Then we’ll be able to talk to his employer, if we can find out who it is. You know how useless Sundays are for finding anything out. I’ve asked the locals to keep an eye on the place until then to make sure no one tries to get in.”

“What about next of kin?”

“Winsome sorted that, too. They live just outside Sheffield. They’ve already been informed. I thought you and Winsome could go and talk to them tomorrow.”

“Fine,” said Annie. “I was only going to wash my hair, anyway. Oh, there’s one more thing. About that book.”

“Yes?”

“It looks as if he might have bought it just over the road here. Kelly said she met him coming out of the secondhand bookshop.”

Banks consulted his watch. “Damn, it’ll be closed now.”

“Is it important?”

“Could be. It didn’t look as if the figures were written in the same hand as the price, but you never know.”

“We can ring the owner at home, I suppose.”

“Good idea,” said Banks.

“From the way you’re still sitting there, I assume you’re expecting me to do it?”

“If you would. Look, I’m sick of this bloody bitter lemon. As far as I’m concerned, we’re off duty, working on our own time, and if Lady Gervaise wants to make something of it, then good luck to her. I’m having a pint. You?”

Annie smiled. “Spoken like a true rebel. I’ll have the same. And while you’re getting them in…” She took her mobile phone from her briefcase and waved it in the air.

Banks had to wait until a party of six tourists, who couldn’t make up their minds what they wanted to drink, had been served, and when he got back with two foaming pints of Black Sheep, Annie had finished. “Well, he certainly didn’t do it,” she said. “Fair bristled at the idea of anyone writing anything but the price in books, even the blank pages at the back. Sacrilege, he said. Anyway, he remembers the book. It only came in the day before Nick Barber bought it last Wednesday, and he checks them all thoroughly. There was nothing written in the back then.”

“Interesting,” said Banks. “Very interesting indeed. We’ll just have to wait and see what young Gavin makes of it, won’t we?”

Saturday, 13th September, 1969

Yvonne sat upstairs at the front of a number 16 bus heading for the city center chewing on her fingernails and wondering what to do. Some clever sod had taken a marker to the NO SPITTING sign and altered it to read NO SHITTING. Yvonne lit a cigarette and pondered her dilemma. If she was right, it could be serious.

It had happened the previous evening, when her father came home late from work, as usual. He’d been taking something out of his briefcase when a photograph had slipped to the floor. He’d put it back quickly and obviously thought she hadn’t seen it, but she had. It was a picture of the dead girl, the one who had been stabbed on Sunday at the Brimleigh Festival, and with a shock, Yvonne had realized she recognized her: Linda.

She didn’t know Linda well, had only met her once and hadn’t really talked with her much. But the local hippie community was small enough that if you hung around the right places for long enough, you’d come across pretty much everyone in the scene eventually, whether at the Grove, the Adelphi, the Peel or one of the student pubs on Woodhouse Lane, in Hyde Park or Headingley. Even as far away as the Farmer’s Inn, where they had blues bands like Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack, Free and Jethro Tull on a Sunday night. You could also be damn sure that they’d all beg, borrow or steal to get to an event with a lineup like the Brimleigh Festival. So, when you thought about it, Linda being there wasn’t quite so much a coincidence as it appeared on the surface. The thing was, you didn’t expect to get killed there; it was supposed to be a peaceful event, a gathering of the tribes and a celebration of unity.

The bus lumbered down Tong Road, past the Lyric, which was advertising a double bill of last year’s Carry On Up the Khyber and Carry On Camping. What crap, Yvonne thought. It was a gray day, and light rain pattered against the windows. Rows of grim back-to-back terraces sloped up the hill toward Hall Lane, all dark slate roofs and dirty red brick. A couple of kids got on at the junction with Wellington Road, behind the Crown, by the flats, and took the other front seat.

They’d filmed part of Billy Liar there a few years ago, Yvonne remembered, while it was a wasteland of demolished houses before the flats were built. Yvonne had been about eight, and her father had brought her down to watch. She had ended up in one of the crowd scenes waving a little flag as Tom Courtenay drove through in his tank, but when she had watched the film, she couldn’t see herself anywhere.

The kids lit cigarettes, kept looking over at her and making cheeky remarks. Yvonne ignored them.

She had met Linda at Bayswater Terrace one evening during the summer holidays. She had got the impression that it was just a flying visit, that Linda used to live there for a while but had moved to London. Linda was really fantastic, she remembered. She actually knew some of the bands and hung around with lots of rock stars at clubs and other “in” places. She wasn’t a groupie – she made that clear – she just liked the music and the guys who played it. Yvonne remembered someone saying that one of the members of the Mad Hatters was Linda’s cousin, but she couldn’t remember which one.

Linda even played a bit of guitar herself. She had sat down that evening with an acoustic and played “As Tears Go By” and “Both Sides Now.” Not a bad voice, either, Yvonne had thought, a little in awe of her and that sort of luminous haze her long blond hair and the long white dress she wore created around her pale features. The guys were all in love with her, you could tell, but she wasn’t interested in any of them. Linda didn’t belong to anyone. She was her own person. She also had a great throaty laugh, which surprised Yvonne, coming from one who looked so demure, like Marianne Faithfull.

McGarrity had been there that night, Yvonne remembered, and even he had seemed subdued, keeping his knife in his pocket for once and refraining from muttering T. S. Eliot all evening. The guy they said was organizing the Brimleigh Festival, Rick Hayes, had also been present, which was how they managed to score some free tickets. He knew Linda from down in London and seemed to know Dennis, too, whose house it was. Yvonne hadn’t liked Hayes. He had tried to get her to go upstairs with him and got a bit stroppy when she wouldn’t.

That was the only time Yvonne and Linda had met, and they hadn’t talked much, but Linda had made an impression. Yvonne was waiting for her O-level results, and Linda had said something about exams not proving anything and the real truth of what you were was inside you. That made sense to Yvonne. Now Linda was dead. Stabbed. Yvonne felt tears prick her eyes. She could hardly believe it. One of her own. She hadn’t seen her during